A Surprising New Start
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Tony’s Overview Video
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- Read the Bible Lesson by Tony Cartledge in this month’s issue of the Nurturing Faith Journal
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Key Text: Jeremiah 31:33
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.“
Have you ever been the recipient of underserved and unexpected grace? As children, youth, and adults, most of us have known the sinking feeling of getting caught in some transgression. We fear what the repercussions will be and steel ourselves for a heated scolding or a cold shoulder – but it doesn’t come.
For some reason, the teacher or friend or spouse we have offended chooses not to yell or turn away, but to forgive. We know where we went wrong and the other person knows it, too, yet they give us another chance. If we have a single wise bone in our bodies, we will be not only relieved and grateful, but determined to do better in the future.
Individual accountability (vv. 27-30)
Our lessons for the past several weeks have been concerned with Israel in exile, a people who had been forced from their homes in Judah and resettled in Babylon. Their northern neighbors had been conquered by the Assyrians and scattered many years before, around 722 BCE. The exile to Babylon took place in waves, mainly in 597 and 587 BCE.
The prophets Isaiah and Amos and Micah had warned that Israel would fall because of the people’s poor ethics and idolatrous worship, and it did. Jeremiah predicted the same fate for the people of Judah, and he was right, too. Even though King Josiah had promoted a time of reform and revival, it was too little and too late. [DD]
Many among the exiles believed that they were paying for the sins of their ancestors, and this helps to explain the first portion of our text for today. Verses 27-30 may not seem to fit very well with the verses that follow, largely because both texts are salvation oracles that would have been spoken at different times. When they were written down and compiled into a scroll, the writer – probably Baruch – apparently saw a connection.
The oracle begins with good news: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals” (v. 27).
The odd image of sowing was Jeremiah’s way of promising that the exile would come to an end: God would return the people to their homeland and prosper them so that both people and animals would flourish.
Note that Jeremiah’s hope extended beyond the recently-exiled people of Judah to include the “house of Israel,” who had been scattered more than a century earlier. Ezekiel, Jeremiah’s contemporary, offered a similar promise that God would multiply the population and rebuild their towns (Ezek. 36:10-11).
Jeremiah’s call had included a divine appointment “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” by making God’s intentions known (Jer. 1:10).
Now he declares that the overthrow and destruction had taken place, and the time had come for God to “watch over them to build and to plant” (v. 28).
In that day, the people would still be subject to judgment, but for their own sins alone. No longer could they blame their suffering on the sins of the ancestors by citing the old proverb “The parents have eating sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (v. 29).
Rather, individual accountability would be the rule: people would taste the effects of their own choices (v. 30).
Fortunately, Jeremiah had more to say. The future would hold more than judgment: it would be awash in grace. [DD]
Amazing grace (vv. 31-34)
The heart of Jeremiah’s hope, and perhaps the most beautiful passage in the Old Testament, is found in vv. 31-34. [DD] [DD] The promise seems too good to be true, as it offers amazing grace to a people who had blown their chance time and again.
Jeremiah saw a coming day when people could have an entirely new kind of relationship with God (v. 31). Something had gone badly wrong with Israel’s understanding of the old covenant, which had grown out of their exodus from Egypt. The people had come to regard the law of God and the rituals of temple worship as unconnected to daily life, Jeremiah believed. The law was something external, written on stone tablets, taught by the priests, used in the courts, but not followed faithfully (v. 32). [DD]
That was not God’s intent: the ideal was that the law should be internalized and lived out (Deut. 30:6, 14). The new covenant, Jeremiah declared, would be more definitively engraved on people’s hearts: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33).
Everyone could know God, Jeremiah said, from the inside out. God’s law would be accompanied by an internal assurance that God would “forgive their sin and remember their iniquity no more” (v. 34).
When Jeremiah proclaimed these oracles, along with the following affirmations that God would never abandon Israel (vv. 35-37) and that Jerusalem would be rebuilt and never conquered again (vv. 39-40), he visualized both Israel and Judah returning to the whole land and living happily and faithfully.
That didn’t happen.
When the people of Judah were allowed to return to Jerusalem after 538 BCE, they occupied only a small portion of the land as a small sub-province of Persia. The Jews regained some measure of independence for about a century after the Hasmonean revolt in 167-160 BCE, but then came under Roman control. The second temple, so beautifully and painstakingly expanded by Herod, was destroyed in 70 CE and replaced with a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus.
Does that mean Jeremiah’s words were empty? They certainly were not fulfilled within his lifetime or shortly thereafter. Some Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians argue that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 fulfilled the prophecy, but that is hardly the case (see “The Hardest Question” online for more on this).
Though many Jews still hold to the hope of a messiah who will inspire the sort of return to both land and God that Jeremiah envisioned, many Christians believe the new covenant Jeremiah prophesied was fulfilled in the life and work of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, when we speak of the “New Testament,” we’re really talking about a “New Covenant.” Because we can examine Jeremiah’s prophecy through the lens of Christ’s coming, we can appreciate it in a way that the prophet himself could not.
It may seem strange to think of God’s law being written on our hearts, but isn’t that what happens when God’s presence is also living and working within us? In some way beyond our understanding, through the work of Christ, the very Spirit of God lives within those who entrust their lives to him. Paul spoke of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
It is hard to comprehend what this means. Our typical language is in the concrete thought of a child, as we speak of “inviting Jesus to live in our hearts.” [DD] Adults are capable of thinking more abstractly, but we can’t understand the full meaning of God’s indwelling any more than a child does. There is something mystical about the way God lives and works within us. Fortunately, we don’t have to understand God’s promise in order to trust in it.
We see evidence of God’s indwelling Spirit when we see a change in our attitudes and actions. We discover a sense of compassion that leads us to react to harm with forgiveness and to be proactive in showing tangible love toward others. God has written the law of love upon our hearts through the gift of the Spirit who dwells in all believers.
Jesus made it very clear that Christians were to follow a new law, a law of love that is not written in a book, but in our hearts. The decisions we make, the actions we take, are not determined by a manual of rules, but by a heart that is ruled by God.
We love God because God first loved us. When we come to understand Christ’s love and to experience the Spirit’s presence, it changes our lives.
Jeremiah looked to a day when God would say “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.” That is what happens when we trust in Christ. We are forgiven. The grace of God purifies our past and sets us on a new road with a new heart.
But there are some who cannot deal with grace on that level. They are people of law. They are people who can’t get out of the Old Testament, out of the old covenant. They cannot get out of the rulebook and into a relationship. [DD]
Jeremiah looked beyond a religion based on rules to the covenant based on relationship that God always intended. The great promise he foresaw has now been offered to every person. Jesus Christ stands ready to forgive us completely, to set us free from sin and death, if only we will accept the amazing grace he offers.
We may choose to hold on to our old way of thinking, but our end will be the same. We will live dark and bitter lives and die a dark and bitter death when there is light for the asking. On the other hand, we may choose the path of grace. We are sinners and we know it, but when confronted with the amazing grace of God’s love, we can look past our sin and be changed from the heart-side out.
We can, in short, become new.
Adult Teaching Resources
Download the PDF of teaching resources for this lesson.
This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Jeremiah 31:27-34
Youth Teaching Resources
Parent Prep
Showing grace and holding our students accountable. Two of the hardest things to do, and made even harder that they have to be done at the same time. How do you do both of these at the same time when they seem to going in two different directions? What I have witnessed, is that when I show grace, the student holds themselves accountable. They want to do better because they see that you believe in them. Show grace. Support your students. Hold them accountable to be who they want to be.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Jeremiah 31:27-34
Download the PDF for youth teaching resources using the button below. This PDF contains the Teaching Guide for this lesson:
Video
Encourage youth to check out this video ahead of the lesson.
“Acts of Random Kindness” from Evan Almighty
via www.youtube.com
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