Lesson Focus:
God, through Jesus, has made a new covenant with us. It has been written on our hearts, guiding
us, strengthening us, and helping us to become Christ-like.
Lesson
Outcomes:
Through this lessons students should:
1.
Recognize that the new covenant about which
Jeremiah speaks is the covenant that Jesus has brought.
2.
Confess that we have not been faithful to the
covenant that God has made with us.
3.
Desire to renew their covenant with God through
Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Catch
up on the story:
God, since the time of Noah, Abraham and Moses has been
covenanting with God’s people to be their God.
As the story progresses from Noah to Moses the covenant gets more and
more specific. At the time of our
passage, Israel is God’s special covenant people. God has promised to provide and protect them,
remaining faithful to them. As with all
covenants there are stipulations. Israel,
as a partner in the covenant, must remain faithful and fulfill its obligations
as well. Some of the most significant
obligations are to not have any other gods along with God and to observe the
Sabbath.
God has done all that God has promised to do. Israel had grown into a great nation with
lots of people and a great land that they called their own. Israel, on the other hand, had not been so
faithful to the covenant. The curses
that God set forth at Sinai for breaking the covenant are beginning to
happen. God is turning Israel over to
reap the penalties of their unfaithfulness.
Those punishments have come from the hands of the Assyrians and now the
Babylonians. The northern kingdom of
Israel has already been destroyed. Much
of Judah has been taken away into exile and now Jerusalem is about to be
destroyed. There have been many prophets
who have come to warn God’s people. But
no one has listened to them. Jeremiah,
who is very sad at the current state of affairs, is currently trying to offer
hope and a bright future to the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
The
Text:
Chapter 31 begins with a proclamation from God that God is
indeed going to bring the exiles home.
Those who have survived will be able to return home. God declares that God has never ceased loving
them. God has continued in God’s
faithfulness toward God’s people.
Earlier in the book of Jeremiah God has promised to pluck up
and destroy Israel and Judah for their unfaithfulness. Now that their time of punishment and
correction is over, God is going to plant and build his people up once more.
Then he calls them virgins.
This is incredible. Throughout
almost all of Israel’s prophetic literature God has been likening Israel to
prostitutes and unfaithful wives. All of
that has been forgotten. God, even
though the past is still there, is choosing to remember Israel as she was, a
virgin characterized by faithfulness and steadfastness. God will once again call Israel his
wife.
Israel is told to mark out the road for the journey
home. They will be returning from
exile. No longer will God bring
punishment upon the children of the wicked. Those who eat sour grapes will have their
teeth set on edge. The children will be
innocent. Each one will die for his or
her own sin. Our passage, verses 31-34,
belongs with what precedes it. The
result of God bringing Israel home from exile is that God will do a new thing,
make a new covenant with Israel. Things
will not be the same as they had been for Israel. The days are coming, God says, when this new
covenant will come. God is going
to do a new thing. God is going to make
a new covenant to replace the old one.
This new covenant will be better.
It will not be external. It will
not be written on stone tablets like the old one; it will be written on the
people’s heart. This new covenant will
be able to do what the old one was unable to do: it will help God’s people walk
more faithfully in the ways of God.
The days are coming, Jeremiah proclaims. We say today that the day has come. This new covenant that God was going to make
has been made in the birth of Jesus. It
has been made through the life of Jesus.
It has been made through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This new covenant is here now and ready for
us to enter and have God’s law written on our hearts. To have our lives defined and shaped by the
one with whom we are in covenant. To
have God be our God and for us to be God’s people
This internalization of God’s law, one day, will be so
complete that God’s people will no longer need to teach each other, they will
no longer need to spur one another on, they will just know what to do. The sins and iniquities of the people will be
remembered no more. We aren’t yet to
that point, though. We do have this new
covenant with God. It has been written
on our hearts. If we are faithful, it
will begin to define us as the people of God.
So
What…?
Why is this important for us? First, looking back, we now
know that this new covenant that Jeremiah spoke about is the work that God did
in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus is
the bringer of the new covenant. He has
provided a way for our sins to be forgiven and our relationship with God to be
restored. Jesus has provided a way for
the Holy Spirit to replace our hearts of stone with hearts that have the will
of God written on them.
The birth of Jesus, which we celebrate each year, is the
beginning. It is the inauguration of
this new covenant. The day has come, but
is still in the process of coming. It is
appropriate to talk about this new covenant during Lent because it is during
Lent that we become more aware of our unfaithfulness to the covenant.
Because of
what Jesus has done, the new covenant has arrived, and we can live in complete obedience to the law, because the Holy Spirit
has changed our hearts and empowered us for holy living. As Wesleyans, we would
say that in the grace of entire sanctification, God’s will is written on our
hearts and we can live in accord with it, and no longer intentionally violate
his law.
Yes, God
remains faithful to us, even when sin remains in our hearts after conversion.
Yet, God wants to do a radical transformation, and write his will on our
hearts, and empower us to obey it. That can happen on this side of the
resurrection.
So, as we gather together let us confess our sins and
remember that God had promised to make a new covenant with his people, to
remember that he has done that in the birth, life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ and that we need to accept this new covenant, through the power of
the Spirit A faithful relationship, to
God or to anyone else, requires a regular recommitment to that relationship.
Critical
Discussion Questions:
1. What
does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in
this text?
a.
God, despite Israel’s unfaithfulness,
has remained faithful. God chooses to
view Israel as a virgin again instead of the soiled prostitute and unfaithful
wife that she has been. God is going to
restore his people. God is
faithful.
2. What
does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
a.
Holiness looks like responding to God’s
faithfulness with a faithfulness of our own.
It means accepting this new thing, the new covenant and the One who
brings it. It means remembering our
covenant with God on a daily and yearly basis.
It also means a routinely confessing of our sins and/or shortcomings so
that we might move on from those things to an ever-increasing faithfulness to
the new covenant.
3. How
does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should
become?
a.
It should remind us of our own
unfaithfulness in contrast to the love of the Faithful One. At the same time it should spur us on toward
a response of greater faithfulness. It should give us hope that God can so
transform our hearts that his will and law will be written on them, and we can
live in obedience through grace.
Specific
Discussion Questions:
Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself
quietly. Read it slowly, as if you were
very
unfamiliar with the story.
1. What
is a covenant? How do they differ from a
contract? What kind of relationship is
normally described as a covenant?
2. God
begins by saying that the days are coming when he will make a new covenant with
Israel. This new covenant will not be
like the old one. What was the old
covenant like? How is it different than
the new one God is bringing?
3. Who is
the bringer of this new covenant?
4. What
does it mean that the covenant will be written on our hearts?
5. The
text says that with this new covenant no one will have to say, “Know the Lord”
because everyone, even the very small, will already know the Lord. What does this mean?
6. When
parties are in covenant with one another they begin to be defined by their
relationship with the other person in the covenant. How are you being defined by your covenantal
relationship with God? What are some of
the ways in which you have been changed?
7. How
does confessing our sins and/or shortcomings help us live in greater
faithfulness to this new covenant?
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