Sunday Praise & Worship 10:00
Christian Education - 10:00 - Casual Dress - Loving Childcare
|
|
|
|
Key Verse (31:33): “‘But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,’ says the Lord. ‘I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’”
You’ve got to hand it to the prophets. When the world was falling around their ears (literally) and most of what they thought they had understood about God unraveled around them, they held onto faith with a ferocity that enabled them to see with new eyes in the smoke and ashes. Jeremiah prophesied during the last gasp of the empire of Judah. Assyria had already wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel in 733 BC, and now in 586 BC, the Babylonian armies were engulfing the southern kingdom both physically and spiritually.
If Jeremiah was not inspired, he was delusional. His faith was grounded in little of the material evidence of defeat and exile. While the armies of Babylon taunted and smashed the walls and the Temple Solomon had built, Jeremiah counseled the children of Israel to buy land while it was cheap because God would return them one day to their rightful home. Yet he was also a complicated realist, counseling surrender while the frantic last kings of Judah sought in vain the protection of an alliance with Egypt. For Jeremiah, faith meant trusting in God who was working through history in ways that were beyond the people’s understanding—adapting a divine perspective that would outlast our human life span.
This prophetic witness required a new interpretation of the ancient stories and scriptures that celebrated the mighty power of God on behalf of the chosen people, the children of Israel. At Sinai, God had inscribed the law on tablets of stone and given them to Moses to deliver to the people. These words of God were entombed in the ark of the covenant and separated from the reach of the people in the Holy of Holies within the Temple. Little wonder that their relationship with God had become strained and tenuous. Babylon came not to confront God, but the obstinacy of the people who no longer knew God and who no longer followed God’s way.
The tales of God’s covenant with father Abraham involved conversations between God and a family chosen to bless the nations of the world. Abraham and God stood together on the brow of a mighty dune and gazed into a dazzling starscape to imagine the countless generations that would worship God alone. Jeremiah mined this tradition of scriptural testimony as well as the teachings of the Law and the Holiness Code that defined the way the children of Israel should live. Years later, in his letter to the Christians gathered in Rome, Paul would argue that the Law could not effect life change, but only awaken us to the truth of our need for God.
While the enemy pounded at the gates of Jerusalem, Jeremiah shared a vision of a new kind of covenant written on human hearts. Other scriptures echo this vision, notably Deuteronomy 30:11-14: The message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it (quoted in Romans 10:8-10). For Jeremiah, faithfulness was entirely bound up in our relationship with God, rather than our religious beliefs or practices. Without the foundation of friendship and heart knowledge of God (v. 34), we can neither be faithful, forgiven, or loved.
Questions for Reflection
1. What
ways do you allow God to write the message of hope and salvation on your heart?
What different ways of reading (and ingesting) the words and the truth of God’s
word might allow God more access to your heart?
2. What
is the difference between words written in stone and word written on human
hearts? How do we comprehend words written on human hearts? Play with this
metaphor a bit and think about how the writing tablet of a human heart changes
the role and interpretation of God’s word in the community of God’s children.
3. Read
verse 37 to yourself, along with Deuteronomy 30:11-14. What do these scripture
promises reveal to you about your relationship with God and with God’s other
children. In other words, who is God calling you to be?
For Next Week: Please read John 8:1-11 (key verses are 10-11). Our theme is Formation: Use imagination to identify with the characters. The teaching statement: We read scripture to encounter the living Word and allow ourselves to be formed into new life. How has scripture changed your life?
|
|
