God Promises A New Covenant Transcript

We're in the second of two major prophets. Isaiah, that we talked about last week, was a prophet who was predominantly talking to the northern kingdom, about 150 years before Jeremiah. He was prophesying to the northern kingdom that the foreign nation of Assyria would come and destroy them because of their iniquity. And the Isaiah passage, if you did read past where we stopped last week, it isn't full of a lot of hope. There isn't that, if my people turn away. It's just, this is what's going to happen.

We come now to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is speaking to the king of the southern kingdom, of Judah. And we follow, the king that he's talking to in this passage that we just read, is the son of the one who found the secret scroll hidden behind, like in a closet. And he says, oh my gosh, we should have been following God this whole time. This whole time, we've been getting it wrong. And he renews himself, he renews the people, he renews the actions of the temple and the priests, and he restores it all to following God.

And to renewing that covenant and living it out. It was a heyday for the monarchy after a long period of kings not following God's will. Of kings rejecting the requirement of justice and of worshiping the God only. And it was good. And his son is the one we heard about in chapter 36. And what we find is that it does not take long from things to go really well of the people following God and the leaders instituting and helping the people follow God to something that's radically different.

The imagery in this chapter is so powerful. Jeremiah has been a prophet for about 30 or 40 years now. and and and he's told by God to take everything that God has told him everything he's prophesied and to write it on a scroll and he does that now he is in hiding at this point he's not allowed to go to the temple that the Lord is keeping him hidden because the king is against him and so he calls a scribe to him to take all that he has said and write it down and then to share it now now the people who hear this originally in the the verses that we skip over and we skipped over a number of verses partly because of the names in them I mean there's some passages that are a little difficult to read but for for for for Larry's sake and I think for so many the narrative lectionary skips over a lot of this chapter so I encourage you to go back and read it sometime and several people along the way hear and read this scroll scroll and they're dismayed by it they say no we've got to go get somebody else and share it with them no we've got to go one step higher and share it with them and finally they go into the temple Jeremiah can't go and they read the the the scroll aloud and the people are dismayed by what they are hearing but the king who is in his winter palace and you did really well there's a story I was I was told of another pastor who was reading this passage and talking about the fire burning and that translation can the pastor was reading brassiere so you talk about the flame and the brassiere the fire and the brassiere it's a brazier it's a fireplace it's a place to keep warm and and this translation says pen knife but others more accurately describe it as a scribe's knife what a scribe's knife was for was going through a scroll and when they saw mistakes when they saw things that shouldn't have been included when they see things that need to be fixed they would take a knife and they would carefully cut out the parts that needed to be removed and they would whittle whittle away the mistakes so that they didn't get transferred over to new copies or they didn't get shared with the people and read aloud in the temple it was a way for the scribes it was white out before white out existed you can't erase you can't cover it up so the best bet is to remove it from the scroll and they had

a very sharp knife to do that so think about the king the son of the heyday when the people were following after god and right relationship was restored his son is sitting in a winter palace next to a fire and he's got a scribe's knife knife and as he's read the scroll bit by bit he is removing from the scroll everything he is hearing everything that god had told jeremiah to prophesy and everything that jeremiah had the scribe write down he is just whittling it away removing it and peeling it off and throwing it into the fire essentially saying all of this is wrong all of this is a mistake none of this is going to happen none of it is from god this is what the king is declaring by using that scribe knife saying all of this that jeremiah has been prophesying over the last 40 years is a mistake and wrong and he burns the entire thing 40 years of prophecy 40 years of god's message to god's people delivered through jeremiah and written down at last how far have we come from josiah the revivalist to hear his son destroying the message of god through the prophet it shows us how fickle those in power can be it shows us how fickle that we can be we do this with scripture so often when we see things we don't like we see things we struggle with we see things that makes us upset we'd rather not deal with it we'd rather take a pen knife to it and just pretend it

doesn't exist and destroy it the people who had heard this the scroll this these prophecies read and proclaimed at the temple who were dismayed by it who were called to repentance they were given to the people who were called to repentance they were given to the option in this scroll unlike isaiah where the people had no chance of forgiveness they are given the chance god says write this down so that my people will hear it so that they might turn away from their sins and be saved from what's going to happen they are given the chance and the people are are moved by it they're dismayed by it you get the sense that they want to move forward they want to repent and when they give it to the ruler when they give it to the king he burns it any chance that the people had any chance that the country had of repenting and turning away was whittled away with a scribe's knife and thrown into the fire their future becomes sealed everything that god said was going to happen is now going to happen because the people did not repent the leaders who are in charge of helping the people do that did not repent in fact they removed the scroll so that wouldn't even be read anymore much more different would it have been if the king like nineveh a couple of weeks ago had put on sackcloth and ashes and repented and called the city to do the same and yet they didn't and so babylon the the the nation the foreign nation that would invade judah

would come and lead the leaders lead the people lead the people out of jerusalem and take them to babylon and they live in exile and if that were the end of the story there would be no reason to continue if there was no hope of repentance if god had left everything at that point and said well i did my best the people have made their choice and i'm done we would be a starry set we would be in a sorry state with no hope but after the king tries to whittle away god's prophecy and remove it from the people's hearing god goes back to jeremiah and says take it and write it down again and the scribe that he called now has to go in hiding because he does so the scribe that went to jeremiah who wasn't hiding for living in fear ends up taking on jeremiah's condition his fate of having to live in fear of what they were doing and what they were doing and what they were doing and what they were doing and what the king would do and so they write not only what was originally written down but more is added to it the word of god proclaimed the word of god written down the word that god wants his people to hear cannot be destroyed by whoever's in power the word of god that leads people to repentance cannot be destroyed simply because those in power would say no this is not true it is a mistake it is not the right way of reading god it is not the right way of understanding god the scroll gets out the message of god gets out the people eventually repent and so we move forward those 10 or so years where jeremiah is again speaking to the people and writing to them and here god is giving

to jeremiah a message of a new covenant to be given with to the people a new covenant covenant to be made with the people. We've been talking a lot about covenants over these last few months since we started this journey in September. Covenants with Abraham, covenants with Moses, covenants renewed again and again where God would call his people to live according to his will, that it would be good for them, that it would be good for the people in their midst. And we see over and over again that God is faithful, and yet God's people turn away. And

over and over again, God calls his people to a new way of living, to a renewal of the covenant. He never says, I'm done. He came close. If you remember with the story of Moses, where God is so displeased with his people after the creation of the golden calf, that God's like, all right, I'm going to wipe those out. I'm going to leave them behind, and I'm going to start with you, Moses, and your family will be the ones that will carry on my will. God came really, really close. But fortunately, Moses talked God down. He said, well, what will people say about you if you lead your people into the wilderness only for them to die? God over and over again provides a new way,

a chosen way, a covenant to help God's people live the right way, turn away from their sin, and live into a new future. And those covenants have been written down on scrolls, on stones, and whatnot, and passed down. They have been taught by people. In Deuteronomy, God says to put these signs of these on your doorposts, put them on your wrist, put them on your forehead, teach them to future generations. It has to be passed down orally. It has to be passed down orally. It has to be passed down through writing. And God is saying in this Jeremiah passage that there will be a day when a new covenant is written, not on stone tablets,

not on things that can be destroyed, not on things that leaders can cut away from and say, that does not matter. We're probably more modern because we don't have to worry so much about people throwing books into a fire to wipe them out, but simply saying, well, what God said is not what God means. That's not the way to apply it. That's not the way to understand it. God is saying that there will be a new covenant written, not on stone tablets that can be broken, not on scrolls that can be cut away and destroyed, but written on the very hearts of my people. And if God is writing something on our heart, this

should be a physical transformation. How our heart changes, how it's written there should affect how we live. And when it is written on the people's hearts, it cannot be destroyed. It cannot be forgotten. It cannot be ignored. This is the covenant that we long for. This is the covenant that is made, that we are grafted into through Jesus Christ. He gives us a new way of understanding God, a new way of coming back to God, a new way of living out God's commandments of his people. Because if it is written on our hearts, it should change

our lives and how we live and how we act. And if it is written on our hearts, it should interact with others. And this covenant will not be erased. This covenant, we do not have to be afraid that somebody will come and destroy. Because God has shown his faithfulness over and over again, sharing this covenant that has not changed much over the years. This covenant to live as his people, to treat the poor with justice, to welcome the stranger, to live faithfully as God's people. With eyes on how God wants us to live and treat those around us, so

that we might be his people. covenant rings true. through Christ, that covenant is being instilled within us. But we have to be careful. We have to be careful because we can ignore what is written on our hearts. We can ignore the proddings of the spirit. We can say, God, you didn't really mean that. We have to listen. We have to listen to those proddings. Because the same spirit that led the king to take that scribe's knife and whittle away and burn it and pretend it didn't exist, pretend that God didn't say it, still exists in this world today. And we need to guard our hearts. We have to guard our lives. We have to guard what we are doing with

the covenant that God has made with us. To make sure that we are not breaking it. And turning away from God. The good news is the same good news that we heard from Jeremiah. That in spite of the tragedy that was coming, in spite of the Babylonians coming and leading the people into exile, in spite of the anger that the people have kindled against them, God does not abandon his people. They still need to go through the Babylonian exile. They still need to go through the experience, the experience that their lives and their choices have sown. But God does not end it there. So no matter where you are, no matter how you are feeling, whether you feel close to God or away from God, whether you feel like you've been following God or rebelled against God, whether you feel worthy of

God's love or not, or you feel that you have turned away from God so often that how could God even love you? Over and over again God God has shown his love for you over and over again through God's people and through Christ and through us who have gathered around us. There are people in this room that you will not imagine what they have done and left undone, how they have broken God's will and how they've rebelled against God's love. And yet there are people in our midst who have done that, who have experienced that, and then have felt the forgiveness that comes, that God offers. And if you are feeling unworthy of God's love, unworthy of God's forgiveness, know that there is nothing that you can do to turn away from God's love. Nothing you can do to say that God would say, I'm done with you. Nothing you can do that would break God's love for you that he will not continue

to reach out for you, to repent and turn around and live a new way and begin writing anew the new covenant. A new covenant on your heart. In this we have hope. In this we find peace. In this we find forgiveness. And in this we have an invitation to a new way of living. May we step out in faith, turn away from the ways that we have turned away from God and turn towards God seeking forgiveness and hope. And in that we will find peace and power and assurance that we are the people of

God called to be the people of God into the world and will be enabled to do so by his love and his spirit.