Proper 24
Preaching
Preaching and Reading the Old Testament Lessons:
With an Eye to the New
The lectionary has included two separate oracles in this reading, verses 27-30 and verses 31-34. The first includes a quotation from Ezekiel 18:2 and is probably a later addition to the genuine oracles of the prophet. Nevertheless, it picks up a theme from Jeremiah's call. Judah languishes in Babylonian exile. God has plucked up and broken down, overthrown and destroyed (Jeremiah 1:10), because of his people's faithlessness toward him. But now God will build and plant in Judah's future. Judgment is never God's last word.
The promise of the new covenant that follows in verses 31-34 forms God's solution to Israel's sinfulness. God had held out the invitation to his people to mend their ways and to return to him. But they would not. To every gracious invitation from God, they replied, "That is vain. We will follow our own plans and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart" (Jeremiah 18:12). In fact, they not only rejected God's grace, but mocked his word and persecuted his prophet. Their sin had such a grip on them that they no longer had any power of self-assessment (cf. Jeremiah 8:4-7), and finally, they had no power in themselves to repent and return (cf. Hosea 5:4). "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" God asked. "Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Israel's sin was written with the point of a diamond on her heart, replacing God's word that was supposed to be there (Jeremiah 17:1; Deuteronomy 6:6).
The history of Israel's sin is reviewed in verses 31-32 of our text. Despite God's grace -- despite the fact that he took his people by the hand and led them, like a father his son, out of captivity in Egypt and made a covenant with them at Sinai, and then renewed that covenant with them in the Deuteronomic reform of 621 B.C. -- despite the whole long history of God's mercy toward his covenant people -- they nevertheless broke covenant faithfulness with him. He was their husband -- to use the figure in the text -- the one who had so tenderly loved them in the wilderness (Jeremiah 2:2). Yet Israel whored after other lovers (Jeremiah 2:23-25) and gave her devotion to other gods and goddesses (Jeremiah 7:17-18, 30-31). God therefore rejected them as his people and sent them into exile (Jeremiah 12:7).
When we read the account of Israel's inability to see her own sinfulness and to repent, we find a very accurate description of our sin too, do we not? We sinners do not see ourselves as God sees us. We think we are righteous people who do good most of the time. We rationalize our faithless ways, excuse our shortcomings, consider our day-by-day commitment to other goals and loves, rather than to the love of God, as necessary to our lives. Or when we do earnestly try to follow God's will and to do the good, we find that we always fall short, secretly looking out for our own interests instead of for the interests of God and neighbor. In Paul's words, "We are slaves of sin" (Romans 6), unable to do the good that we would, and doing the evil that we do not want (Romans 7:19). We are captive to our selfishness, our pride, our anxieties for our own well-being. Such was the nature of Israel's life in Jeremiah's time, and such is still the nature of ours.
A merciful God did not give up on Israel, however, and he does not give up on us. Instead, God here in our text adopts the one solution for sin that is possible. He announces that he will make a new covenant with his people Israel. He will in the future change his people's sinful hearts (cf. Ezekiel 36:26-27), transforming them from the inside out, because it is from our hearts that our sin comes forth (cf. Mark 7:21-23). In place of the sin written on Israel's heart, God will write the words of his law or teaching, enabling the people to obey him in faithfulness and in love (cf. Deuteronomy 6:4-6). Their sinful past will be forgotten -- God will forgive it all -- and they will be reunited with him in a new covenant relationship of devotion and gratitude and obedience. Indeed, so thorough will be God's transformation of the hearts of his people that no one will have to teach his or her neighbor about the character of God. All will know him, in an intimate relationship like that of a faithful wife with her husband. All will cleave to him and follow him and love him with all their being. What his people could not do for themselves, God will do for them in an act of pure mercy and love.
Such was the promise that God made for Israel's future. But like everything in the Old Testament, we have to ask, Did God keep his promise? What happened to these ancient words? Were they fulfilled, or were they allowed to disappear into the forgotten mists of time?
The testimony of the New Testament is that God kept this ancient promise to his covenant folk. "The Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread ... In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood' " (1 Corinthians 11:23-25; cf. Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20). God replaced his old covenant, which his people broke, with his new covenant in Jesus Christ and thereby made it possible for his covenant people to live new lives of faithfulness and obedience (cf. Hebrews 8:8-12; 10:16-17).
God has written this new covenant upon our hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit, testifies Paul (cf. Romans 5:5). He has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, so that we are no longer slaves but heirs (Galatians 4:6-7). He "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Christians therefore now can live the new life of the Spirit (Romans 7:6). Though we were once slaves of sin, we now can be obedient from the heart to the will of God (Romans 6:17). In short, Christians now have the possibility not to sin -- not by their own power, but solely by the power of God working in them. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies," Paul admonishes us (Romans 6:12), and by the power of Jesus Christ, lent to us in the Spirit, we can follow that admonition. We can in truth become new creations in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and lead a new life of faithfulness.
Like so much in the Old Testament, Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant finds its fulfillment in the New. However, the fulfillment is "already," but it is also "not yet." It is not complete. We have been made new creations in Christ, but our perfect obedience awaits that time when the Spirit, given us as a guarantee (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14), changes us wholly into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), and we are presented before the Father "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing ... holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5:27). Similarly, our Jewish brothers and sisters await that blessed time when "all Israel will be saved," (Romans 11:26) and we all are joined together in God's one covenant fellowship in Christ.
There is also a missionary message in this new covenant passage that must not be overlooked by us Christians. Its promise is that all people will know the Lord, "from the least of them to the greatest." But all people have not yet, in faith, received the Spirit of Christ into their hearts. And so we who, by the mercy of God, have been grafted into the new covenant as members of the "commonwealth of Israel" (Ephesians 2:12), are sent into all the world to proclaim the glad news that new life and goodness and eternal life with God are possible through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
The promise of the new covenant that follows in verses 31-34 forms God's solution to Israel's sinfulness. God had held out the invitation to his people to mend their ways and to return to him. But they would not. To every gracious invitation from God, they replied, "That is vain. We will follow our own plans and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart" (Jeremiah 18:12). In fact, they not only rejected God's grace, but mocked his word and persecuted his prophet. Their sin had such a grip on them that they no longer had any power of self-assessment (cf. Jeremiah 8:4-7), and finally, they had no power in themselves to repent and return (cf. Hosea 5:4). "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" God asked. "Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Israel's sin was written with the point of a diamond on her heart, replacing God's word that was supposed to be there (Jeremiah 17:1; Deuteronomy 6:6).
The history of Israel's sin is reviewed in verses 31-32 of our text. Despite God's grace -- despite the fact that he took his people by the hand and led them, like a father his son, out of captivity in Egypt and made a covenant with them at Sinai, and then renewed that covenant with them in the Deuteronomic reform of 621 B.C. -- despite the whole long history of God's mercy toward his covenant people -- they nevertheless broke covenant faithfulness with him. He was their husband -- to use the figure in the text -- the one who had so tenderly loved them in the wilderness (Jeremiah 2:2). Yet Israel whored after other lovers (Jeremiah 2:23-25) and gave her devotion to other gods and goddesses (Jeremiah 7:17-18, 30-31). God therefore rejected them as his people and sent them into exile (Jeremiah 12:7).
When we read the account of Israel's inability to see her own sinfulness and to repent, we find a very accurate description of our sin too, do we not? We sinners do not see ourselves as God sees us. We think we are righteous people who do good most of the time. We rationalize our faithless ways, excuse our shortcomings, consider our day-by-day commitment to other goals and loves, rather than to the love of God, as necessary to our lives. Or when we do earnestly try to follow God's will and to do the good, we find that we always fall short, secretly looking out for our own interests instead of for the interests of God and neighbor. In Paul's words, "We are slaves of sin" (Romans 6), unable to do the good that we would, and doing the evil that we do not want (Romans 7:19). We are captive to our selfishness, our pride, our anxieties for our own well-being. Such was the nature of Israel's life in Jeremiah's time, and such is still the nature of ours.
A merciful God did not give up on Israel, however, and he does not give up on us. Instead, God here in our text adopts the one solution for sin that is possible. He announces that he will make a new covenant with his people Israel. He will in the future change his people's sinful hearts (cf. Ezekiel 36:26-27), transforming them from the inside out, because it is from our hearts that our sin comes forth (cf. Mark 7:21-23). In place of the sin written on Israel's heart, God will write the words of his law or teaching, enabling the people to obey him in faithfulness and in love (cf. Deuteronomy 6:4-6). Their sinful past will be forgotten -- God will forgive it all -- and they will be reunited with him in a new covenant relationship of devotion and gratitude and obedience. Indeed, so thorough will be God's transformation of the hearts of his people that no one will have to teach his or her neighbor about the character of God. All will know him, in an intimate relationship like that of a faithful wife with her husband. All will cleave to him and follow him and love him with all their being. What his people could not do for themselves, God will do for them in an act of pure mercy and love.
Such was the promise that God made for Israel's future. But like everything in the Old Testament, we have to ask, Did God keep his promise? What happened to these ancient words? Were they fulfilled, or were they allowed to disappear into the forgotten mists of time?
The testimony of the New Testament is that God kept this ancient promise to his covenant folk. "The Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread ... In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood' " (1 Corinthians 11:23-25; cf. Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20). God replaced his old covenant, which his people broke, with his new covenant in Jesus Christ and thereby made it possible for his covenant people to live new lives of faithfulness and obedience (cf. Hebrews 8:8-12; 10:16-17).
God has written this new covenant upon our hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit, testifies Paul (cf. Romans 5:5). He has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, so that we are no longer slaves but heirs (Galatians 4:6-7). He "has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Christians therefore now can live the new life of the Spirit (Romans 7:6). Though we were once slaves of sin, we now can be obedient from the heart to the will of God (Romans 6:17). In short, Christians now have the possibility not to sin -- not by their own power, but solely by the power of God working in them. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies," Paul admonishes us (Romans 6:12), and by the power of Jesus Christ, lent to us in the Spirit, we can follow that admonition. We can in truth become new creations in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and lead a new life of faithfulness.
Like so much in the Old Testament, Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant finds its fulfillment in the New. However, the fulfillment is "already," but it is also "not yet." It is not complete. We have been made new creations in Christ, but our perfect obedience awaits that time when the Spirit, given us as a guarantee (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14), changes us wholly into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), and we are presented before the Father "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing ... holy and without blemish" (Ephesians 5:27). Similarly, our Jewish brothers and sisters await that blessed time when "all Israel will be saved," (Romans 11:26) and we all are joined together in God's one covenant fellowship in Christ.
There is also a missionary message in this new covenant passage that must not be overlooked by us Christians. Its promise is that all people will know the Lord, "from the least of them to the greatest." But all people have not yet, in faith, received the Spirit of Christ into their hearts. And so we who, by the mercy of God, have been grafted into the new covenant as members of the "commonwealth of Israel" (Ephesians 2:12), are sent into all the world to proclaim the glad news that new life and goodness and eternal life with God are possible through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
