Sunday School Curriculum Jeremiah 31:31-34 April 13, 2014

Introduction This week we begin a two-part Easter series called The Story, based out of Acts 13. In the LAUNCH series, one of the core passions of our church, that we elevated as defining who we are and how God wants to use us, is that we are passionate about biblical truth. We explained that a main implication of valuing biblical truth is recognizing that we are a part of God’s story.

There is a temptation, when we read the Bible, to lapse into a mindset that what we are reading happened a long time ago, to people whose names we sometimes can’t even pronounce. Some of the places don’t even exist anymore. Our historical removal from the original setting of the Bible narrative can lull us into the dangerous misperception that there is a great distance between the figures of biblical narrative and our experience today, as though they are not related.

There are some warning signs that we are being drawn toward that misperception. We begin to think things like, “Well, sure. But THEY are in the Bible. I’m trying to live my life now.” The other side of that coin is that we look down on the sinfulness of the biblical figures. We think that surely we would not have denied Jesus like Peter did. Or we wonder how the disciples could have been so blind to everything going on around them. Why did Adam and Eve bite that piece of fruit in the first place? I mean, they heard the voice of God! As we let our minds wander down these types of thought processes, we inadvertently allow ourselves to slip away from identifying with the Story.

Instead, it is critical that we gaze deeply into the pages of Scripture as the Spirit leads us so that we understand that the same bent toward sinfulness that is evident in all of these figures plagues us as well. We are unified by the same need for a Savior. There is one story, written by one Author, and we all play a role over the span of millennia. If we pay close attention as we read God’s Word, we can see periodic glimpses of God tying his story together – even starting as early as Genesis 3:15 with the first prophecy of the coming Christ.

When we observe these points in Scripture that remind us that God holds all of time, from beginning to end, in the palm of his hand, we can understand in a profound way that we are all a part of the same story. What is more, that story was completed before the events recorded in Genesis 1:1 ever happened. Peter bears witness to such in 1 Peter 1:18 – 20. As Easter week approaches, we look at a passage this week that demonstrates the reach of God’s redemptive story, a story that we are all a part of - Jeremiah 31:31 – 34. 1

Biblical Background Jeremiah was called to be a prophet as a young man in 627 BC. Jeremiah’s ministry took place in the final days of the crumbling monarchy in the kingdom of Judah. His ministry to his own people was extremely difficult and filled with persecution. He endured ostracism of every kind, kinsmen conspiring to kill him, being dropped in a cistern and left for dead, and imprisonment. The book of Jeremiah is remarkable in the way Jeremiah interweaves the description of his soulful torment with the prophecies of God’s coming wrath.

Jeremiah’s internal turmoil is more than understandable. The message he is commissioned to preach is one of judgment and conviction. He preaches of the coming fall of everything that represented God’s favor and covenant to the Jewish people: the land, the people, the king from the line of David, and the temple. He prophesied of the coming Babylonian exile. This was much more inflammatory than just telling his countrymen that bad days were ahead. He was preaching that God had commissioned him to tell them that God was going to publicly strip away their identity due to their sinfulness and idolatry. In over 40 years of public preaching and ministry, Jeremiah does not record a single convert. It is no wonder that Jeremiah is referred to as the “weeping prophet.”

However, in the midst of tremendous sorrow and oppression that Jeremiah experiences, there is hope. Chapters 31 – 34 are referred to as the Book or Comfort or the Book of Consolation. Those chapters contain the promise of restoration of God’s people. God promises that, despite the horrific and treacherous unfaithfulness of Israel and Judah, they will be reunited in a new covenant as one people who will again share in the ceaseless faithfulness of holy God.

The Text In a notable departure from the preceding 30 chapters, hope streams from chapter 31. In keeping with the cyclical pattern that occurs from the Exodus throughout the Old Testament, the book of Jeremiah demonstrates the failure of God’s people to faithfully uphold their part of the covenant, reflects the righteous anger of God as a result, and then presents the lavish grace of God’s faithfulness and restoration. We see that in our passage immediately:

“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…” (Jeremiah 31:31)

“The days are coming” alerts us to the fact that whatever comes next happens in the future. That sounds like a simple thing, but it is important for Jeremiah’s hearers to understand that the following words of hope are not meant to mean that the judgment that was spoken of in the previous thirty chapters is now null and void and everything is ok. At this point in Jeremiah’s ministry, the people of Judah have not even entered exile yet. There are still 7 decades of judgment in exile coming as God promised. The point is that the exile is not the final chapter. Hope is.

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This is the only time this term, “new covenant,” is used in the Old Testament. In this verse, the only thing we are told about this new covenant is that it will be with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. That is incredibly significant because, long before the historical reunification of these two countries is reality, it is spoken of by God. The mentioning of both names together conjures the images of what has been lost by the Israelites, due to their hard-heartedness and idolatry, since the glories of King David’s rule. Mentioning the two parts of the divided kingdom together in covenant with Yahweh carries the sweet aroma of restoration. God is initiating covenant renewal, but not with the current generation that will go into exile.

“…not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 31:32)

The new covenant will not be like the old and it will not be made with the people who had broken the old. The covenant that was made with the people of Israel as Moses led them was repeatedly broken. Perhaps the most egregious instance occurred while Moses was still up on Mount Sinai meeting with God regarding the covenant. The people pressured Aaron, the father of the priesthood, to make them a golden calf to worship. Since that time, every generation of Israelites repeatedly broke the covenant, even up to the generation of Jeremiah’s day. The time for judgment had come.

To heighten the understanding of how significant the covenant breach was, Jeremiah places in the context of broken marriage vows. There is a play on words in the Hebrew here that is significant. The name of the god that the Hebrews repeatedly worshiped in their idolatry was Baal. That name has the same root in Hebrew as the word “husband.” The implication is that God is saying that the idolatry of the Hebrew people meant abandoning God in their covenantal relationship; they had walked away from the marriage. Scholars point out that, “the Sinai/Horeb covenant had been brought to an end. Both the analogy to a broken marriage and the promise of a ‘new’ covenant make this point clear: Only a powerful act of divine mercy could make them God and people for each other again.” A powerful act of divine mercy indeed.

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares 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.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

“After those days” again reminds the reader that God orchestrates the future with sovereignty. That phrase refers to the coming days of judgment. Notice that at this point in the oracle that there is no longer a separation between the house of Judah and the house of Israel. The hope of the new covenant already envisions the reality of a reunited Israel.

Next we see the essential difference between the old covenant and the new. The covenant at Sinai was written on stone tablets and read to the people by Moses. At Moses’ death the Law was written and entrusted to the Levites, who were commanded to read the Law in its entirety to the people every seven years. This new covenant, though, was not to be written

3 on stone and transmitted through a mediator. The new covenant was to be written on the hearts of the people of God. This will be etched in the soul and known.

Writing the law on their hearts has more to do than just knowing it, though. This phrase has everything to do with changing the character of the heart. Earlier in Jeremiah 17, Jeremiah refers to the hearts of the people as requiring the heaviest of instruments for engraving due to their hard-heartedness. The new covenant will change the character of the heart from rebellious and hard, to soft and obedient to God. This changing of the will is transformation.

“And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)

In the new covenant, all the people of God will know him intimately. When speaking of knowing, the concept refers to knowing his will and his character. It is intimate and loving, not cold and factual. Neither is it bound by status or standing. The new covenant is available to all, from the child to the extremely elderly. From the destitute to those of greatest means. The reason this is possible is because of the unfathomable grace of the new covenant. The promise of God to remember sin no more means that the days in which Jeremiah in ministering, which are characterized by righteous judgment because of God’s mindfulness of sin, will cease for the people of God under the new covenant.

That obviously doesn’t mean that the people will be any more capable of staying in covenant with God of their own strength. Something else must hold them in the position of faithfulness, which is exactly why, upon instituting the Lord’s Supper, Jesus spoke these world-changing words:

“’This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” (Luke 22:20 b)

The Text in Life These words of Jeremiah’s prophecy were received by Jeremiah 600 years before the birth of Jesus. Yet, even as we read them, we know precisely what the new covenant that he speaks of refers to. We know that because it is part of the story that we are in that binds all of human history together. That is an incredible thought, but the logical question that follows is, “How do I apply that?” I think the best place to start is the 1 Peter 1:18 – 20 passage we mentioned in the introduction. That passage, in referring to the work of Jesus on the cross, says:

“…knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you.” (1 Peter 1:18 – 20)

Jesus has always been the answer for our sin, even before it existed. “Before the foundation of the world” means it predates Genesis 1:1. Sin doesn’t enter the picture until Genesis 3. The application from this is life-changing. 4

First, it means that there is nothing about your life that takes God by surprise. That may sound like the greatest understatement in the history of human speech, but sin causes us so much guilt and shame that we begin to believe the lie that we’re too filthy or rotten to be loved or forgiven. The truth of the Bible is that Jesus was the answer for our sin from eternity past. Paul tells us in Romans that while we were yet sinners, enemies of God, Jesus died for us. So the next time we fail and fall into sin big-time, and the urge to believe that God doesn’t like us any more starts to seep in, we have the freedom to admit that we didn’t have anything to do with his loving us in the first place. Nothing about our lives, good or bad, takes God by surprise.

Second, God is a God of hope. The story is already written and, to use a familiar cliché, we know how it ends. That is critical to how we view the world we live in. Nothing other than the truth of God’s Word would lead us to be hopeful. We are bombarded by how families don’t measure up, kids are in trouble, jobs aren’t available, habits turn into addictions, governments are corrupt, and a million other things that would cause us anxiety. God is a God of hope. He is good and holy and nothing rivals his might. This changes the way we pray. It changes how we interact with others. It changes everything.

Third, God loves you. There is a tendency to move past this because we read it so often on bumper stickers, t-shirts, signs at football games, and so on. But just for a moment, try to read it like you’re reading it for the first time. God loves you. God is not mad at you. God does not think you’re disgusting. God’s thoughts about you are of extravagant love, not whatever superficial nonsense the world says you are. We are created in his image and he has had in mind to heal and restore us forever, literally. What is more, we can’t do anything to earn more of his love any more than we can do anything to make him love us less. Why? Because it has never been dependent on us. God loves us so much that he willingly made it possible to no longer remember our sin – even though it cost Jesus his life.

Discussion Questions This week’s lesson is not as easy to apply as some because it is so deeply personal between each one of us and our Savior. The questions below are meant to help you process this week’s lesson with your group, so please intersperse the questions to make your discussion as helpful as possible.

1. When you read the Bible, how connected do you feel to the people you are reading about? When do you seem to feel the most connected? 2. Think of Israel’s significant failures that you know about in the Old Testament. How does knowing that God was continuously faithful to them color your view of your relationship with him when you fail? 3. Of the three take-away truths above, which one is the most important for you this week? Why? 4. How would you explain to someone what it means to be a part of God’s story? 5. Who do you need to share your part of the story with this week? 6. We saw in Jeremiah’s prophecy that restoration with God also means restoration of relationships here, such as between Judah and Israel. What relationships in your life need to experience that type of restoration? How can you move toward that this week? 5