December 9, 2018 Jeremiah 1:4-10 Jeremiah 20:7-18 Jeremiah 31:27-34 A NEW COVENANT How can I talk about Jeremiah without getting sidetracked? Or more accurately in this case, without sidetracking myself? Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, was born in Anathoth, a village a few miles north of Jerusalem where many prominent priests had their homes and raised their families. Hilkiah may have been one of the high priests during the reign of Josiah and may have assisted Josiah in reforming Israel s religion. (The so-called Deuteronomic Reform.) In any case, Jeremiah grew up in a prominent and priestly family, so he knew and was known by the prominent leaders of Jerusalem and the temple. This was during the last days of the kingdom of Judah. The priests at Anathoth expected Jeremiah to be a respectable and supportive member of the religious establishment. And at first, he expected them to be faithful leaders of a sincere and serious Judaism, along the lines of the great revival that Josiah had begun. (If you wish to know more about that reform, read the Book of Deuteronomy.) Jeremiah began his ministry at an early age in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah (627 B.C.). But Josiah s reign only lasted another eighteen years, not nearly long enough to cement his reforms in the hearts and minds of Judah. Josiah s father, Manasseh, had been Judah s worst king (most idolatrous and faithless), and he had reigned for fifty-five years. So we get an interesting dynasty: Hezekiah, one of Judah s best kings, followed by his son Manasseh, the worst, followed by his son Josiah, perhaps the best king since King David. We expect the best children to come from the best and most conscientious parents, but that is not always the reality. Jeremiah s ministry lasted for forty years and through the last five kings of Judah. But the last four kings had none of the stature of Josiah. Jeremiah s life closed with a remnant of those left in Jerusalem hauling him down to Egypt against his will and against his advice. Jerusalem was already destroyed, and the temple was in ruins. The majority of the population had been slaughtered by the armies of Babylon, and all the valuable citizens that remained had been hauled off to Babylon to serve their conquerors. It was not a pleasant time to be alive. Jeremiah had seen it coming, and most of his life was spent trying to warn his people about what was coming. Jeremiah had still BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 1 OF 8
believed that if the people repented turned back to faith and the genuine worship of Yahweh perhaps God would still find a way to avert the disaster. But no one paid serious attention to him, until long after his death. * * * Reading between the lines, Jeremiah fell in love with a beautiful woman of his own class, but as he began his ministry, her parents broke the engagement, and more and more of the people who knew Jeremiah and his family turned against him. Finally (chapter sixteen) God tells Jeremiah not to marry: what is coming will not be a good thing for wives or children. Apparently Jesus picked up on this same message, and so did Paul. Jeremiah spoke to the nation the Southern Kingdom known as Judah but he had no following. He carried the message God gave to him through all his years and despite total scorn and opposition. It is hard to imagine his loneliness and discouragement and also his faithfulness. He did end up with one friend: Baruch, his scribe. I am always fascinated by how often God brings a faithful friend to our heroes. Sometimes it is only reflected in stories, but sometimes in real life as well. The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. Paul and Luke. Jesus and Peter. And there with Jeremiah was Baruch, the son of Neriah. Well, already I have wandered off into some of the things that fascinate me about Jeremiah s life. Before I get us all mired in cisterns and false prophets (Hananiah), let me return to the three vignettes put forth in this morning s Scripture readings. BEFORE I FORMED YOU IN THE WOMB Jeremiah is not confused about his calling to be a prophet. He does not always see it as a compliment or as something desirable, but it is the clear and major reality of his life. Moreover, it has been part of God s plan since long before he was born. It is an amazing, even stunning perspective. If we believe it at all, we get two options. Most people assume the first, which is that Jeremiah was a very special instrument of God s, and therefore this plan was in effect even before Jeremiah was conceived. The second option is harder to believe and few believe it, but it is probably closer to the truth: All of us are special all of us have a special destiny to which God is trying to call us. Only, BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 2 OF 8
few of us listen as carefully and faithfully as Jeremiah or some of the other heroes did. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Jeremiah, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Teresa of Avila, Jonathan Edwards: all of our religious heroes were great listeners they were people of earnest prayer. All true prayer is listening. In any case, we notice that Jeremiah s call includes the kind of prophet he will become. In summary, Jeremiah s purpose will be to tear down Judah and then build her up again. That is indeed a summary of his life. For almost forty years, Jeremiah will preach of the destruction that is coming. He tries to call the nation to repentance, believing this might still avert the disaster. But nobody is listening, at least not enough to make any real difference. Instead, more and more people hate Jeremiah as if he is inventing the message, not just carrying it as a faithful prophet must. But at the tail end of his ministry, when Babylon has conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, when the Israelites despair, when everyone believes that all is lost and that it is all over, then Jeremiah becomes the only positive voice around. It is not all over, he says. God still has plans beyond the disaster and the destruction. But of course nobody believes Jeremiah in hope and confidence when he tries to encourage them, any more than they had believed him when he was calling them to repentance. So in our first passage we are struck with the reality of God s plans and purposes working way behind and long before our awareness of any of it. And Jeremiah is assured that God will be with him no matter how many enemies he makes for proclaiming the message God gives him. And we are reminded that being young has nothing to do with whether or not we are obedient and faithful to God. God calls people at any age, if they will listen. A CURSE ON THE DAY WHEN I WAS BORN Jeremiah lets us into the personal and private side of being a prophet. He does not get to choose the message; the message chooses him. But of course people blame Jeremiah for what he tells them, as if he were making it up like it was something he wants to tell them. Yet Jeremiah is an extremely sensitive and caring person. On the inside, his sorrow is huge for what he sees coming. And when people BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 3 OF 8
hate him for his message, it burns and hurts him more than they can know. When Pashur has him beaten and thrown into the stocks so that everybody can scold and scorn him, it breaks his heart. We hear the lament on the prayer side, when he takes it back to God: You have deceived me... That is: What You told me to say has not come true, not yet, so how can anybody believe me, and why should I go on speaking for You? There is no joy or light in Jeremiah s life at this point, so he tries to resign from being a prophet. But his destiny is too strong for him. He tries to hold it in promises himself that he will keep quiet from now on. But it is like a fire shut up in his bones, and he cannot hold it in. He ends up wishing he were dead wishing he had never been born. So much for the rewards of being faithful. Meanwhile, on the outside, Jeremiah never shows this side of his weakness. He tells Pashur and later Hananiah that they and all their loved ones will perish in the future he has tried to warn them about. It is small comfort that Jeremiah sees his personal prophecies coming true. Hananiah is a false prophet who keeps telling the people that prosperity and good fortune are coming to them. Jeremiah has walked into Jerusalem carrying a wooden yoke over his shoulders to represent the yoke of Babylon that is coming down upon them. Hananiah grabs the old wooden yoke and smashes it on the ground. Then Hananiah tells the people that Jeremiah is no true prophet that none of his negative predictions will come true. Jeremiah tells Hananiah that he (Hananiah) is the false prophet, that God has never given him the message that he is proclaiming, and further, that he will be dead within the year. When Hananiah dies not long afterward, that should have been a hint, but life moves on and not many people were paying attention. Meanwhile, the next day, Jeremiah comes walking into Jerusalem carrying an iron yoke on his shoulders. This one will not be so easily broken. Just reminding us that Jeremiah was no shrinking violet just because he was sensitive and caring and because the whole nation was against him. Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet. But tears do not make us weak. Sometimes they only show that we care. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 4 OF 8
A NEW COVENANT Mostly we turn our attention to the prophecy of a New Covenant. Jeremiah had spent much of his ministry warning of the consequences of failure to keep the Old Covenant. It was his tearing down of the nation. For years he warned of the coming destruction under Babylon s huge armies. (Babylon, by the way, did not really care about Judah. Jerusalem was destroyed along the way, a mere side effect of Babylon s campaign against Egypt.) But then, in an amazing and incredible way, Jeremiah will build back up what he has torn down. A NEW Covenant. How do we fathom it? Maybe it was just the Holy Spirit and divine revelation, but often God includes faithful servants in the process participants. Jeremiah had been trying for most of his forty years of ministry to bring the Israelites to a conscious awareness of the many ways they were neglecting and abandoning the Covenant they had made on Mount Sinai under Moses. It is both hard and easy to comprehend how it was that Israel would not and could not keep the Covenant they had made with God. To the prophets, it was clear and obvious that this disobedience was the source of all their troubles. God could not help them if they would not trust him if they would not obey. Every parent knows the feeling. Every child both knows and does not know that disobedience will make it impossible for the parents to fully bless them. Perhaps a minor illustration: At Community Church in Corona del Mar, we recite a cut-down version of our Covenant. Every Sunday the people recite: We move earnestly toward tithing to our church, that the Kingdom may increase its resources. I have suggested several times that we stop using that portion of our worship, but this suggestion always brings an outcry. I suppose some people think it might be good for others to hear it, even if they themselves pay no attention. So the congregation says it most every Sunday, and has for over twenty years. Is the principle of tithing well attested? Yes. Is it part of our heritage? Yes. Is it well documented in our history and in our Scriptures? Yes. Do the people believe it when they say it? Not hardly. If the congregation meant it and obeyed the precept, would it not bless them and transform the life and purpose of their church? Most certainly! But ninety percent of the congregation has not moved one inch, not one iota, toward the tithing they proclaim. In fact, taking into BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 5 OF 8
account the increased cost of living, they fall further behind every year. It is a very nice church with very nice people. But behind the mask is disobedience, deceit, and apostasy, and they keep experiencing the punishments that go with breaking the Covenant. Anyway, Jeremiah tries year after year to bring Judah (the Southern Kingdom) into awareness of their plight and into repentance and a return to keeping their Covenant with God. He meets with scorn, abuse, contempt, and growing anger, as if he himself were the source and reason for their problems. Punishments increase. Efforts to silence him, and ultimately to kill him, also increase. Finally Jeremiah realizes that trying to call the people back to faith and obedience to the Old Covenant is hopeless. It cannot happen for the whole community. Somehow God must change the rules and make it an interior thing make it a Covenant that each individual can keep if or when they are ready: one person at a time. You picked that up, didn t you? [T]hey shall no longer say, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own sin... This in itself was revolutionary. Israel was a people they stood or fell together. But the New Covenant would no longer operate on that basis. From now on, it would be one at a time. Toward the end, banned from even entering the royal court, Jeremiah sends his scribe, Baruch, to read his book (scroll) to the king. In one of the greatest scenes of derision and contempt in our history, King Jehoiakim cuts off pieces of the scroll one by one as they are read to him and throws them into the fire. He has no awareness of how his contempt is acting out and symbolizing the disaster that is descending on him and his kingdom even as he does this. Afterward, Jeremiah dictates his book to Baruch all over again (chapter thirty-six). A huge task in any time, but far more so before typewriters or computers or pens or paper as we know it. And so, six hundred years before Jesus, we hear the clear and clarion call of a New WAY that God will bring into the effort to reconcile humans to God: a WAY of mercy, forgiveness, grace, and love. But is it really a softer WAY? Is it a less demanding WAY? The One who brought it gets crucified. The One who brought it is named after JOSHUA, as stern and determined a warrior as anyone in the Old Testament. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 6 OF 8
Some of us think it is no accident that JESHUA carries that name; Joshua means the Lord is Salvation. Only, Jesus will bring a salvation greater than the walls of Jericho falling down. The walls of our frightened and stubborn hearts will fall down. Never have we seen a greater or more incredible warrior of the Spirit a warrior of the spiritual realms. And Jesus says point-blank at the Last Supper: This cup is the new covenant in my blood... What happens in the six hundred years prior to Jesus? Very little, in some ways. Oh, life goes on. Israel comes out of Babylon and tries to rebuild the temple and the Jerusalem walls. And some, like the Maccabees, are very brave. But the tiny nation does not really keep the Covenant, even after all that. Israel is no better off. We merely shift from Babylonian oppression to Persian and then Greek and then Roman oppression. And in strange and eerie ways, it feels like life is on hold as if waiting for a Messiah is not merely a myth or a legend, but the only real and genuine hope there is. And then... He comes. Unto us, a child is born. Unto us, a son is given... 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, 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. 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. 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. It is the most astounding proclamation the most startling and far-reaching Message in the entire Old Testament. The New Covenant the New Age does not come nearly as fast or as automatically as we always hope it will. But it does come: individually and personally specifically and relationally. And it is difficult indeed not to realize that this is a very early description of our Pentecost: Tongues of fire, resting on each one. Guidance and caring and love that no one can provide for another, or mass-produce, BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 7 OF 8
or turn into a creed or a program to sell to all of us in general. We give our hearts and our lives to Jesus when we are ready. The New Covenant enacts and energizes for each of us whenever we do that. There is no outer reward to tempt or appeal to us with false motives. There is no way to cheat or pretend any of it. We discover His love and we love Him back, or the Covenant just sits there quietly waiting. No coercion. No outer pressure. The Damascus Road, as we often nickname it, is light and love that we discover one at a time that we respond to when all our best efforts have failed. So yes, it is Advent again. The hoopla and the hype will beguile and distract most of the world around us like they always do. But baptism is the real Christmas, and the coming of the Holy Spirit is the real drama going on behind the scenes. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Thou Resurrected Lord. Wherever YOU lead us, we will follow. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2018 All rights reserved. PAGE 8 OF 8