Covenant Series: Future
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Over the past five weeks we listened to Scripture depict holy covenants. We heard God’s promise to Noah never to destroy all living things again. Then we heard El Shaddai promise to be God to Abraham and Sarah, and to bring them a miraculous pregnancy, which would lead to a multitudinous family. After Abraham and Sarah gave birth to Isaac, whose wife Rebekkah gave birth to Jacob, who with 4 women gave birth to the 12 tribes of Israel, those families were enslaved in Egypt. God called Moses to deliver the people from enslavement, and after the Hebrew people escaped, Yahweh led them through the wilderness, establishing a covenantal teaching we know as the ten commandments (the tablets of the covenant). With each covenant and new teaching, we hear LORD Yahweh enforce relationship with humanity; God promises to be God to us, fully knowing we always fall short of our end of the arrangement. Last week we heard the liberated people’s complaining against God in the wilderness, until God sent snakes to encourage them to stop whining. But Yahweh also heard Moses’ plea for mercy, and provided protection for the people, if they look beyond the snakes to God.
None of us is probably surprised how in each covenantal moment, God is faithful while the people fail. We know the holiness of God, and the flimsiness of us. We end the series today with the promise given at Judah’s most frightening moment, as the realm of the Babylonians is perched to conquer them. Yet Jeremiah claims God is still sovereign and we are still responsible for how we act. God initiates relationship again, promising still to be their God and to have them as God’s people. At the core of who we are and who God is, there is a holy connectedness. The final covenant is one of a promised future, when our relationship with God will be even more intimate, an internal knowing of each other, yet to come. From the 31st chapter of the book of the prophet Jeremiah, listen for the word of God.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 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. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
People mistakenly think Jeremiah meant Jesus. We say the coming of Jesus began a new covenant, but Jesus does not bring in the promised covenant that Jeremiah says God has promised. True, the final line does say God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more, and we believe God does forgive all. But the rest of the prophecy has clearly not happened. The law is not within each person. Otherwise no little hands would be reaching into empty cooking pots in Gaza to scratch out some tiny taste of dried leftover scrapings. Children who should have been playing and going to school instead are getting used to daily hunger while their parents try to figure out a safe place to sleep.
No one would disagree that the promises of the new covenant where from the least to the greatest everyone knows God, have not arrived yet. Otherwise the NAACP would not be urging their student athletes to stay away from predominantly white colleges in Florida, warning them of an “all-out attack on Black Americans, accurate Black history, voting rights, members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, women’s reproductive rights, and free speech…”[1] Jeremiah claims the coming covenant will put God’s ways into our very being. We won’t have to be taught, although clearly as of now, not everyone knows God internally. Jeremiah’s prophecy is still a future prediction.
But God’s future will come. We have been promised a new covenant which will put God’s holy ways within us. God understands our failure to keep constant with what we have learned, so the new covenant will be placed into our very being. Just as we don’t need to think about breathing, so we won’t need to be taught the merciful presence of God. The ways of God will be within people.
Jeremiah wrote his prophecy while Yahweh’s people lived in the shadow of the coming conquest by the Babylonians. In spite of the coming defeat, Jeremiah’s words are firm. “The days are surely coming, when LORD Yahweh will establish a new covenant.” No matter how horrific the situation is in the world, God is still God and we are still claimed as God’s precious people. Which means: No matter how many times we break covenant, God will not break with us. God is intimately involved in the world. None of the unbearable things going on is beyond God’s purview. In other words, no power structure, no chaos, no realm is above God’s vision and authority. So when Yahweh says, “I will put my covenant within you,” we can trust the promise.
So what is the promise? Jeremiah is actually a little vague about the specifics. He makes no call to build an ark or start a family or follow some “thou shall not” direction. Instead the promise points to our assured participation in God’s future. We don’t need more specifics. The coming covenant claims that the ways of God will be placed within all God’s people, like a compass, always pointing us to our true north, which is God’s righteousness. We won’t have to be taught God’s will; we will be directed from within. The One who is eternally trustworthy, who forgives all our iniquities, and who is eager even to forget our sins, guarantees humanity will be filled with the knowledge of God. God’s promised future covenant is coming.
Until then, God empowers us with Spirit. We already recognize the Spirit of God among us, as we wait for the promised covenant. Of course, we don’t know what the future covenant will be like exactly. We cannot even know what Jeremiah meant or if he completely understood the prophecy himself. But we know there are moments when we the world seems amazingly right. In those moments we catch a glimpse of the new covenant.
Think of it. Even when the Israelites had to face the fact that Babylon will still win for a while, can’t we imagine when they lit the Shabbat candles when the sun went down on Friday, they experienced the world the way it is supposed to be? Maybe not every Friday, but sometimes, as they lit the candles and remembered the faithfulness of the One who had been their holy companion for generations, can’t we imagine they breathed in the fullness of being God’s people?
In our day-to-day lives, we have those moments, too, when God’s presence is felt even within our wreckage. Think of the times we flood with emotion when goodness happens. We know the Spirit is moving within people, like when a ship unloads tons of food in Gaza and, even in the midst of so much wrong, we see a glimpse of the world made right. Something within us links to the Spirit within the people who made sure the food got there. The “something” linking us together is God, at work within and among us. We glimpse it. We sense God’s will at work – when the courts decide it is illegal to prevent a child from talking about her family in school. We sense the goodness now, even while we are waiting for the promise. We can feel hints of the future covenant resonate within us.
Perhaps most clearly, we sense the future covenant in the life of Jesus. We don’t have it yet, but he does. We know God’s law is within him, defines who he is. What Jesus has in fullness; we already have in little moments. So in following Jesus, we move towards God’s future covenant, empowered by the Holy Spirit who lives among us. The new covenant is not here in its fullness yet. But while we wait, God empowers us with Holy Spirit.
[1] NAACP statement quoted in Brandon Girod, “NAACP is urging student-athletes to boycott Florida universities, The Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, Wednesday, march 13, 2024, 1C.