Jeremiah 31:27-34
Our Old Testament readings for the last couple of months have been from the prophet Jeremiah, the great prophet of the downfall of Jerusalem and Judah’s exile to Babylon. A book vast in its prophetic scope and the longest book in the bible.
It can be difficult to follow because it’s not necessarily chronological!
God’s prophecy through Jeremiah shifts or transitions from a message of repentance to a message of the promise of salvation; of future hope and blessing. Jeremiah 30 and 31 are the tipping point of this transition.
Now for us as post-Pentecost believers baptised in the Holy Spirit, we read passages like this (and much of the prophets) as very clearly pointing to Christ Jesus as the one, true fulfiller of all prophesy. To us it speaks so clearly of Jesus.
In Jeremiah 1–29, Jeremiah speaks to God’s people warning them regarding their breaking of the covenant made with Moses at Mt. Sinai, which they continued to do, ultimately leading to the captivity and exile of God’s people in Jerusalem and Judah to Babylon.
Then we have Jeremiah’s prophecy that transitions to a message of hope and joy, a message of God’s vindication and rescue, and a message of God’s love and forgiveness for all people throughout all time.
In Jeremiah 31:25, just 2 verses before today’s reading begins. the Lord declares, “For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish,” and in v.31 in today’s reading we hear how he will do this:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
Here God is revealing that he is about to do something “new.” God does not end or replace the old covenant; he builds afresh the nation of God’s people.
He promises to bring his people back to the “land” and again “be their God, and they shall be my people” (31:33). The restoration of God’s people is tied fully to the making of the new covenant.
All of us I think, know in our heads what it means to suffer a broken heart, probably most of us in our hearts as well. Sometimes a broken heart is a result of unrealistic hopes or expectations that aren’t returned – unrequited love.
Sometimes a heart is broken by death—losing a loved one. But a broken heart may be a result of broken promises or as in our text from Jeremiah broken covenant promises.
Some of us have surely suffered that kind of broken heart, that kind of pain. So has the Lord regarding the covenant at Sinai. God says through Jeremiah in v.32, ‘a covenant they broke, even though I was a husband to them.’
But his love is still sure and certain. His love can repair our broken hearts, even enable us to love again when we don’t think we can. He declares this to us today through Jeremiah the prophet, he pours his own love into our hearts.
We can’t generate this kind of love ourselves.
By the promises of his Word, the love of God is written upon our hearts. God’s people had broken the covenant God made with them . . . and consequently had broken the very heart of the Lord himself.
In our text, Jeremiah proclaims to God’s people, “The days are coming” when God will “make a new covenant” with his people. Why? What was wrong with the old covenant? Certainly nothing on God’s end.
The Lord had established the covenant with his people and always been faithful to them. He had brought them out of slavery, out of the land of Egypt. He had freed them from the hand of Pharaoh.
In the wilderness and then in the Promised Land that he gave them, God had been a “faithful husband” to his people - providing for them freedom, providence (manna, quail, water), and protection from their enemies through victory in battle.
Yet the people refused to acknowledge God with faithfulness to him. They had broken the covenant and were being unfaithful - by offering empty sacrifices to him, by worshiping other gods, by cruel and evil dealings with each other.
Their breaking of the covenant broke the very heart of God, who loved them so dearly and poured his whole self into caring for them. And for these sins God’s people now found themselves suffering.
The Lord had cast them far from his love, into exile and captivity in Babylon. It broke God’s heart to do this too! God’s heart breaks over each one of us as well. He aches when we suffer broken hearts.
Every time we sin, i.e., separate ourselves from God by putting ourselves in first place, we break each other’s hearts, which breaks God’s heart.
We know God’s heart breaks because Jesus’ heart was broken on the cross.
Still, God promises to “remake” his covenant with his people and to be their God by having his “law” written upon their hearts forever. Jeremiah’s prophecy and the gracious promise of God was that the exile apart from the land would end.
That all God’s people will return to God’s land. God’s Kingdom. God will bring new and complete blessings. The new covenant promise will come “after those days,” after the days of suffering, after seventy years in exile.
After the time of exile in Babylon, the “new” covenant will take hold, and a transition for God’s people will occur. They will be allowed to return to the Promised Land, to resume life and begin again to live as the faithful people of God.
The normal life would be restored, a life of worship, sacrifice, service, and prayer. The new covenant includes a new relationship with God, in which the “law” of God, the willingness to live as God’s people, will be instilled in their hearts.
This reality comes not immediately but finally in the incarnation of God’s Son in the person of Jesus Christ. By his presence in the flesh, he enters our world, and by the Holy Spirit he lives in the hearts of his people, the Church.
Ultimately, the fulfillment of God’s new covenant is completed only in the eternal kingdom of God’s glory when Jesus returns.
As for now, the heart upon which God’s “law” is written is our hearts. Hearts filled with God’s love and again able to love.
The “law” written upon our hearts as Christians is the wonderful news that Jesus has become our victorious Lord and has broken the chains of sin, death, and the power of evil so that we may live in a restored relationship with God our Father.
A relationship with the Lord God of heavenly hosts, the God of Angel Armies, yet closer than a devoted parent to their child. One of complete freedom to be yourself and of blessing, protection, and eternal grace.
Having been so loved by God after our hearts have been broken and after we have broken others’ hearts we do love again!
This “new” covenant through Jesus Christ and his cross, his forgiveness, and his love causes and allows us to live in faith and trust, acting according to the “law” written upon our hearts and displayed in our day to day lives.
Through the atoning sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross our broken hearts have been remade and put back in the right shape to fit, and we now live with this message of love written on our hearts.