Devotional Reading: Psalm 87
As I studied and meditated I recalled an old gospel song entitled, Walking up the Kings Highway. Unless we have the Word written in our heart, how can we walk to heaven on the straight and narrow path where God resides with Christ by His right side? The lyrics of the gospel song in part, It’s a highway to heaven, None can walk up there But the pure in heart. It’s a highway to heaven, Walking up the Kings highway. If you’re not walking. Start while I’m talking. Walking up the Kings highway. There’ll be a blessing, you’ll be possessing. Walking up the Kings highway. Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount at Matt 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.” (NKJV) This means having a heart that aims to be kept from pollution and entirely to the LORD by faith.
We are in Unit III “An Everlasting Covenant” of the three units of the quarter. This is the second lesson of a four lesson study. Last week we studied the requirement of people to have an unwavering commitment for the LORD. Today we shall examine the unconditional, unilateral covenant God established with the Israelites through Jeremiah and His forgiveness of the unfaithful. The new covenant sealed by God’s pure grace through Christ as Mediator was written on the hearts of God’s people.
Jeremiah is best known as the weeping prophet. The messages he had to deliver from the LORD had caused his soul to cry for the nation. No doubt Jeremiah, who was only about 17 when God called him, had great inner turmoil over the fate of his people, and he begged them to listen. He cried tears of sadness, not only because he knew what was about to happen, but because no matter how hard he tried, the people would not listen. Furthermore, he found no human comfort. God had forbidden him to marry or have children (Jeremiah 16:2), and his friends had turned their backs on him. So, along with the burden of the knowledge of impending judgment, he also must have felt very lonely.1 https://www.gotquestions.org/life-Jeremiah.html
We are now coming to a time in the Book of Jeremiah where hope is given to the Israelites. The more they think of their trouble, the more they are now able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and believe in their deliverance. Chapters 30-33 indicates the shining message of encouragement from the LORD. At Jer 30:7b the prophet proclaims, “…it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, But he shall be saved out of it.” (NKJV) In other words, Israel is still suffering, but they will be delivered, saith the LORD.
Why would God deliver these Israelites with the way they had acted? Well that’s like asking why God does things for people today with the way we are acting. The reason God restores the Israelites back to the land can be seen in Jer 31:3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn thee.” (NKJV) So God never gives up on us. His love is a forever, everlasting love. The remnant shall be delivered as is stated at Jer 31:17, 25-26, “There is hope in your future, says the LORD, That your children shall come back to their own border…For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. After this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me. (NKJV) As Jeremiah reflects upon his new dream, he is refreshed. Just think, the weeping prophet was given a sweet dream from the LORD to deliver to the people.
God Almighty promised to restore the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Jer 31:27-28 speaks in part as to the promise, “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict, so I will pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. (NKJV) Here we see Jeremiah telling the people of blessed days to come. He is not warning them of bad consequences of the future. When you compare this to Jeremiah’s calling in Jer 1:10-12 which indicates he was called to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant the wording is very similar or the same. The LORD had used Jeremiah to pronounce judgment upon the nation. Now God is using him to pronounce the restoration of the people after their repentance unto Him.
God will watch over His restored children and once again cause them to be both numerous and prosperous. He will do them good with no opportunity that their prosperity shall be lost. The LORD intends to replenish the men and cattle of Israel very quickly as if they are sown with seed to increase and multiply. They shall be fruitful because God said He will plant them and build them. Everything had been against them for a long time, but now everything will turn around. God will be as ready to comfort those that repent of their sins as he is to punish those that continue in their sins.
The future exiles will be given a new understanding for individual accountability for sins. As is stated in Jer 31:29-30, In those days they shall say no more: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. (NKJV) The children of Israel had an understanding that they had inherited the bitterness or punishment and were being blamed for the sin or sour grapes their fathers had committed. God declares in the Ten Commandments, in part, in Exodus 20:4a-5, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anything…you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, (NKJV) The future exiles were unnerved to be accountable by the sins of their fathers, feeling God was unjust. However, under the New Covenant the future exiles shall now look forward to only being accountable for the consequences of their own individual sins and lack of faith. They will complain no more, unless they themselves ate of the sour grape (forbidden fruit) for which they will receive a just consequence.
Jeremiah continued to deliver the message of his sweet dream from the LORD to the future exiles. God promises to make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah beginning at Jer 31:31-32, “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. (NKJV) Once again Jeremiah is telling the future exiles of blessed days to come. It will not be a covenant of law but a covenant of grace. It will not be a bilateral agreement between an unfaithful people to a faithful God. He has always done everything He promised to do. All they had to do was to obey. The people always broke their promises to God. The new covenant will be a unilateral agreement from our faithful God and His unconditional love.
The contrasting elements between the old covenant and the new covenant continue in Jer 31:33-34. 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 in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (NKJV) God promises four (4) things in His new covenant relationship: 1) He promises to put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, 2) a new relationship I will be their God, and they shall be My people.), 3) all shall know Me and 4) forgiveness of sins. Of the need for a new covenant it is stated at Heb 8:7, 13 “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second…In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete…(NKJV)
The Mosaic Law a/k/a old covenant was written on stone. The law would no longer be on a cold stone where the Israelites would have to wait for a priest to read it to remind them to obey. The new covenant is the covenant of grace where God promised He would put His law in the minds of the people of Israel and write it on their hearts. The heart is symbolically the center of man’s mental and moral activity. By placing the new covenant in their minds and on their hearts, there would be a willingness to obey because the people would have a greater knowledge of Him. Their obedience would not be coerced and their relationship would become more personal. God knows our hearts and minds. Jesus, who knows our hearts and minds also, is the Mediator between God and man. He did not come to destroy or break the law, but to fulfill it. Jesus ushered in the Age of Grace. The new covenant was ratified by His blood. (Luke 22:20) God promised to forgive wickedness and remember their sins no more. His Son’s redemptive work on Calvary fulfilled this promise.
After all these glorious promises from God, what was the assurance they were to receive the promises? In Jer 31:37-40 the prophet assures the Israelites and all future generations that God is the Creator and Maintainer of the world. As long as there is a world, there shall be a church to stand for God, whether it is targeted or not, it shall continue in its existence. If God messed up and one of His creative forces that He controls departed from Him, then He suggests the (spiritual) seed of Israel would cease being a nation. Or if there is any way man (one of His creatures) is able to measure the heaven or completely search the waters, then He suggests He would no longer own the (spiritual) seed of Israel. Exactly what are the odds these ifs could happen? Like the song, "Who’s On the Lord’s Side?” by Timothy Wright, that is a no-brainer for me. I know who wins the war in the end. I’m on the LORD’s side, and I’m glad He wrote the new covenant on our minds and hearts, ratifying it with the blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
1https://www.gotquestions.org/life-Jeremiah.html
Deborah C. Davis
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