The Promise

Given by: 
Stephen Webster
Date given: 
9th March 2008
Book: 
Jeremiah
Chapter: 
31
Parish: 
Oundle with Ashton
 
Let’s remind ourselves where we left the children of Israel two weeks ago when Alison White spoke to us. A large number of them are sitting in the dust in despair many hundreds of miles from their home country. Hundreds of miles from Jerusalem - exiles in Babylon. They have seen their beloved Jerusalem – overrun by foreign soldiers and destroyed. Walls broken down. Beautiful buildings raized to the ground. And worst of all the temple – the symbol of God’s dwelling place with His people – desecrated and burnt down.
 
Blinded and shackled the King has been brought to Babylon – along with every other notable person in the land. And nearly everyone in the royal line has been slaughtered. And the story that began with Abraham and Moses; the story of God’s people, living in His land under His King. The story has come to an end. No King. No temple. No land. Israel and its history is over. Swallowed up by mighty Babylon. Some sit in the dust and blame God. And who dare argue? Where was God when it mattered? God who once rescued them from Egyptians – where was He when Babylonians came?
 
But others reflect that – well – to be honest they abandoned God long before He abandoned them. Way back long ago – through Abraham and later Moses they had entered a covenant with God. A covenant of love between God and His people – a bit like a marriage. He was their God and they were His people. He rescued them from Egyptians. Gave them His loving laws. Brought them to a land of their own. Gave them a King. But well – to be honest - they had always found it so hard to keep their side of the covenant.
 
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” So went the covenant. “Impress God’s laws on your children. Talk about them … at home and when you’re out walking, when you lie down and when you get up.” That’s what they had been told to do. “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
 
‘Love the Lord Your God with all your heart’. Well the intention had been there – some of the time. But actually in practice it was so hard to do. In times of trouble it had been so tempting to hedge their bets. To pray to Baal as well as the Lord God. It had been so easy to neglect God’s commands… to neglect widows and orphans and mistreat foreigners. So easy to go through the motions of worship – but not know Him, not love Him, not actually do what He asked. Time and again – generation after generation – they had drifted away from God. Failed to love Him with all their heart. Failed to love their neighbours. You see the problem with this old covenant was that somehow they didn’t seem to have the strength in themselves to carry it out.
 
And now – sitting in the dust in exile - the story was at an end. Israel was no more. Well that’s the story of a different people in a different millennium – far far removed from us by time and place and culture. A story with nothing to say to us today surely. Surely. Except – well – disaster strikes and God seems far away. Not an experience peculiar only to the people in our reading. Maybe some of us have known times in our lives when we have felt something like that. A people who feel that they’ve messed up. Struggle as they might they seem unable to live as God wants. Well I for one have known what that feels like.
 
So what does God say to these exiles? And what might He also be saying to us today? Sitting in the dust in Babylon the exiles receive a message – a message we heard read 2 weeks ago. A message sent from God’s prophet Jeremiah - a letter from Jeremiah containing a message from God: “I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord through Jeremiah "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you and I will gather you from all the nations and will bring you back… from …exile." No King. No temple. No land. The story seems over. Not so says God. I have not given up on you; there is a future. There is hope. You will return from exile. I will bring you back. So God says to the exiles.
 
And if that’s what He says to the exiles what might He be saying to us today? Perhaps it tells us that God is never finished with us. However bad our situation seems – however much we feel we have messed up – He’s never finished with us. He is always there waiting to bring us back to Himself. Waiting to give us hope and a future. And as for Israel His promise did come true. In 539BC – 48 years after Jerusalem was destroyed - Jewish exiles began to return to rebuild the city and the temple.
 
But this promise of hope and a future is more than just a promise of a return home for Israelites. God also promises to address the heart of their problem. ‘Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ That’s what God had asked of them. And yet in practice it had been so hard to do. Try as they might – living all day everyday as God wanted them to - that had been too hard.
 
And I can identify with the problem can’t you? Our world, today’s world, is full of hatred and greed and violence and selfishness. It often seems to be a mess. But if I’m honest it’s probably a mess because it’s filled with six billion people a little bit like me. And loving God with all my heart and loving my neighbours as myself – that’s something I struggle with. That’s something we all struggle with. And magnified by six billion – well that means there’s quite a problem. As someone once said, ‘The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.’ It’s hopeless we think; it’s hopeless think the exiles, how can we ever love God the way we should?
 
But God promises the exiles a future and a hope. He promises an answer to the problem. An answer as relevant to us today as it was to them then. The promise is contained in the message of two prophets who lived during the time of the exile. One called Jeremiah never got taken to Babylon. The other called Ezekiel did – and he ministered in Babylon to the exile community. In both prophets we get a promise of an answer to the problem of the human heart. And we heard words from both prophets in our readings today. So what is this promise?
 
Jeremiah writes, “The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors… because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them…’ "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel…" declares the Lord. "I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbours, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" declares the LORD“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean;” declares the Lord through Ezekiel.
 
What is the promise? There will be forgiveness, cleansing and a new start. Past wrongs forgiven. But there will also be an answer to this problem of the human heart. ‘The days are coming’ declares God ‘when I will make a new covenant. I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts.’
 
‘Write God’s law on your heads and hands’ ancient Israel was told. 'No no,' says God. 'The day is coming when I will write My law on your hearts.' “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you” says God through Ezekiel “I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
 
A new covenant is coming – God promises His people – and under that new covenant your hearts will be transformed. Forgiveness for the past. A new heart so there can be change in the future.
 
And how will God transform these hearts? How will the heart transplant happen? “I will put My Spirit in you” God says through Ezekiel, “and move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws.” Forgiveness for the past. God’s Holy Spirit – the very power of God Himself to help change in the future.
 
“I will be their God,” declares the Lord “and they will be My people. No longer will they… say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.” Forgiveness. God’s Holy Spirit. A new heart. A relationship with God Himself. A heart in love with God.
 
So when? How? What was this new covenant? Shortly we will gather round this table to share communion and we will hear these words – words from Luke’s gospel spoken by Jesus on the night before He died, ‘Drink this all of you; this is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ Forgiveness for the past. Cleansing and a new start made possible by the death of Jesus on the cross. His blood shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. And not only forgiveness – but a new heart given to all who turn to Him – and God’s Holy Spirit to help the day by day transformation.
 
‘If you love Me you will obey what I command’ says Jesus in today’s gospel reading ‘and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth… Those who love Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them…. and the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send… will teach you all things.’
 
‘I will put My Spirit in you’ God had said through Ezekiel, ‘and move you to follow My decrees.’‘They will all know Me, from the least to the greatest.’ He said through Jeremiah.‘Those who love Me obey Me’ Says Jesus, ‘The Holy Spirit will come. My Father will love them and we will make our home with them.’ Forgiveness. The Holy Spirit. A new heart. A new relationship with God. A New Covenant between God and people made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus. New life for all.
 
A story before we finish. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the death of John Wesley the man who did so much to transform Christian life in our country. Wesley grew up in a clergy home and took his faith extremely seriously. He went to Oxford and got ordained. He joined the so-called ‘Holy Club’ with its regime of rigorous discipline serious bible study twice weekly fasting lengthy daily prayer and harsh daily character examination. All in pursuit of a closer relationship with God. Wesley wrote this, ‘I diligently strove against all sin. I omitted no sort of self-denial… I omitted no occasion for doing good…And yet… and yet I could not find that all this gave me any comfort or assurance of acceptance with God.
 
Mind, Strength, Will all bent on pleasing God. Yet he felt dissatisfied. Yet he felt he didn’t really know God. And then on May 24th 1738 he went to an evening gathering in London of Moravian Christians and listened to a sermon about the cross of Jesus. And as he listened something began to happen. He wrote, ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and assurance … that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death; and then I testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.’ A clergyman of years that moment he called his conversion and it marked the beginning of a remarkable ministry. Mind. Strength. Will. Wesley had them all. But what he needed was a new heart. A new heart he received that evening in May 1738. A new heart and a new relationship with God made possible through Jesus death on the cross.
 
'Draw near with faith’ Richard will say shortly, ‘Receive the body of our Lord Jesus Christ which He gave for you, and His blood which He shed for you. Eat and drink in remembrance that He died for you, and feed on Him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.’
 
As we come forward for communion today, let’s celebrate the new covenant in His blood which makes forgiveness and a new relationship with God possible. And may each one of us know deep in our hearts that transformation which God promises.