WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 12/04/05

Jeremiah 31:31-34 “Know the Lord”

Many of us long at certain points in life for a new start. Maybe a relationship has gone sour, or a job, or we have gone through one of those periods when everything seems out of tune. Some people, I am sure, are looking forward to ’05 being over! Especially after failure or disappointment or sadness, we need to feel we can start afresh, to recapture the feeling that anything is possible, that this time it will all be different, and better! Advent speaks to our longing that in the Providence of God, the future will be better than the past; that he will do “a new thing.”

Israel’s history, as always, illustrates the principle. Israel was constituted as a nation by the Exodus - their delivery from slavery in Egypt into nationhood in Canaan. As a people, they were bound to God by a covenant, a solemn agreement, an oath of loyalty, that was given in its major form to Moses on Mt. Sinai. When the Lord rescued his people from Egypt, he told them the terms of his covenant: “Obey me, and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God.”

1) Broken Covenant

But as we know, Israel did not and could not obey everything God commanded, and they repeatedly wandered from him and his ways. So God sent the prophets to warn them of the discipline and destruction he would send if they did not reform. Jeremiah stood at the very end of that period of warning: he prophesied up to the moment Jerusalem was destroyed and God’s people went into the Babylonian exile. His message was almost entirely of impending doom - indeed his name lives on in our language long after most people have forgotten what he said: a “jeremiad” is a gloomy prophecy of destruction. But Jeremiah also saw beyond the gloom to the way God would deal graciously with the remnant that survived the Exile.

“Return, faithless people,” declares the Lord, “for I am your husband... but like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel.” “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert;” but now “the people of Israel have returned to the sins of their forefathers... they have followed other gods to serve them... they have broken the covenant I made with their forefathers.”

Because of their infidelities, God brings the “curses of the covenant” on Israel. Yet he still cares for his people. The nation of Israel is exiled, but God will not give up on a “remnant” who will carry the line of promise. But what will he do with those who return? They have shown they cannot live up to his law.

2) The New Covenant

For a new people, says the Lord, “I will make a new covenant... not like the one I made with their forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.” How will his new covenant differ from the old?

Firstly it will be written on the heart. It is no longer an external code of behavior to be obeyed, but is now an inner motivation to do God’s will. This is not just a matter of emotion; in the Hebrew idiom, the heart is the source of the will. God will work within his people to desire and to do the good he requires. Minds will be changed, wills will be strengthened, emotions will be reoriented. Inner attitudes to God will alter, transforming what Jonathan Edwards would later call the “affections” – those deep inner inclinations that drive our lives.

This will be a gift of God, not a result of human striving. “I will gather them... I will bring them back... I will give them singleness of heart and action;” “I will give them a heart to know me.” Because of God’s new action, people will be able to heed his call and to “return to me with all their heart.”

This is the first principle of the new covenant that we all now live under: it is a work of God, a gift we cannot earn, designed to deal with a weakness we could never overcome.

3) Know the Lord

The second important part of the new covenant is that his people will know the Lord. You will remember that knowing, in a biblical sense, is always more than an intellectual process. Yes, our minds are affected by God’s truth. But in addition, our wills have also to be reshaped to make a commitment to what we know. I can know facts, and be unmoved, but when I commit myself to their importance, my life is changed. But biblical knowing goes even a step beyond this. It speaks of a relationship of trust and intimacy. When I say “I know my wife, and she knows me,” I am talking about more than head knowledge, or even commitment, I am talking about trust, intimacy, personal knowledge.

As you will recall, in biblical language, to “know” someone can mean to have intimate relations with them - as when Adam “knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” Marriage and sexuality, in biblical thought, are images of the relationship between God and his people - so all the talk of Israel as a bride, and of her unfaithfulness. This deep symbolism should remind us of the great importance of marriage, and - the focus in this passage – of the importance of personal knowledge of God that he makes possible under the new covenant.

Many years ago, an older Christian asked me “Do you know the Lord?” I was a little taken aback at the unfamiliar language, but I also knew the importance of his question. At that stage I was seeking, wrestling with issues of faith, not yet at the point of commitment to Jesus Christ. Those words have stayed with me over the years, a reminder that this is the center of faith - to know the Lord. Coming to know him may occur in a dramatic moment, or it may be a slow dawning - which often happens when we gradually get to know a person. The end result is what matters; so I ask you, as I was asked, “do you know the Lord?”

4) Forgiven Sin

But how can this new personal encounter happen? There is a crucial third aspect of the new covenant. God himself removes the barrier that stands in the way of our intimate relationship with him, the same barrier that stopped Israel from being the faithful bride. It is called sin, and it is a name for every bad act and every bad inclination - the bad heart, if you will - that draws us away from God. We all have a very well-established slant toward giving in to every temptation brought our way by the world, the flesh and the devil.

Sin is defined in many ways in Scripture; as breaking laws, of turning our backs in rebellion against God, of missing the mark of his calling. One writer described watching children shooting with bows and arrows, and how an arrow wide of the target went through the tail feathers of the family dog, who emerged with an arrow sticking out of it. The writer said it reminded her that if sin is missing God’s mark, many of our sins injure innocent people (Marva Dawn).

How does God deal with the barrier of sin? From his side, he tears it down “with his own hands.” The new covenant that Jeremiah announces is finally ratified and put into effect when Jesus gathers his little group of followers around him at supper, takes a cup of wine, and says “this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you... and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The new covenant is possible because Jesus deals finally and completely with sin. Because he died for us, the barrier of guilt between us and God is removed. If we confess our sin, and embrace the salvation that he offers us, we come to “know the Lord” in a new way. We discover that we are reconciled to God, accepted, forgiven, and we are able to develop this personal and dynamic relationship with him, because our sin is “covered,” it is “put away,” we are “washed clean” and sin no longer separates us from God.

5) All Can Know

There is one more thing to grasp about the new covenant that Jeremiah foresees. It will be open to all. Everyone will be able to “know the Lord, from the least to the greatest.” Under the old covenant, there were few people who could claim to really know God. The ordinary Israelite probably knew little of him, and even among the leaders, their knowledge of him was often remote, ritualistic, fearful.

To a few chosen ones, God revealed himself more fully: to Abraham, “God’s friend,” who talked with God; to Moses, the “man of God” to whom he spoke on the mountain and revealed himself as the compassionate and gracious God; to David, “the man after God’s own heart,” who perhaps knew the Lord in all his ways better than anyone.

But now, under the new covenant every person can know the Lord as well as Abraham, or Moses or David. We know him better, because we know him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore as “our Father.” Because Jesus has ratified the new covenant in his blood, and risen in glory to be with his Father, the Holy Spirit is sent to all believers, young and old, male and female, and gifts them to know God in a way few have ever done before.

That includes you, and me, and all the people out there in our families and neighborhoods and workplaces who are hungering for something new, but they know not what. Everyone can know the Lord, can find that their sin and failure and moral weakness have been dealt with, can discover that if we have faith, God graciously writes his law in our hearts so that we desire to live for him. His promise, to people who come to him with all their hearts, is that “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” That’s what it means to be in covenant with God. It is a promise he will never break; we are his, and he is ours, forever.

You and I need to know this in the dark and stormy days, in the dead cold of winter, in the long dark evenings of lost loved ones, lost health and strength, of weakness and failure. We need to know this when the culture and the season demand that we celebrate frantically, but we don’t know that we can manage that again this year. We need to know this on those wonderful occasions when new birth, new joy, new life, new hope come into our lives or our families. We need to know at all times that he is “our God” and we are “his people.”

Advent is about looking forward to the “coming of the Lord.” Jeremiah’s vision of the “new covenant” is a high moment in OT prophecy, and points forward to Jesus our Savior and Lord, the one who made the new covenant a reality. Do you know the Lord?

Let us pray...