A New Way Forward

Today I’m going to flesh out a passage from Jeremiah. When we think of the book of Jeremiah, we often think of Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. But the passage we’re looking at today is beyond dispute. Scholars say it has had a tremendous influence on the New Testament, and that it’s Jeremiah’s greatest contribution. It sits right in the centre of the book, in Jeremiah 31:31–34. Biblical writers often structured their pieces in a chiasm, which means the thing in the middle is what they’re trying to draw attention to. So turn with me to Jeremiah 31. I love starting my message by reading Scripture.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

— Jeremiah 31:31–34

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, I thank you that you are here. I ask that you would speak through me, and that your word in Jeremiah 31 would come alive. This prophecy you gave Israel is relevant for us today. It has as much influence on us now as it did for them. Thank you that we can look back on what you’ve done and appreciate you, and thank you for giving us your Son Jesus as a guarantee of our salvation. We’re so grateful, and I pray that you would be magnified through all of this. Speak through me now. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Picking the team

I told you that this year I’ve been getting into all sorts of random jobs. Last week I picked up one that involved tennis coaching. My old school sometimes calls me up and says, “Jeremy, are you free on this day? I need help with coaching, or sports, or refereeing,” and if I’m free I say yes, because I love going back. This was a weekly thing on Thursday afternoons, taking the junior tennis players to compete against other schools.

When the head of sport called, he said, “For the first session you’re going to have to pick the team.” “Sounds good.” “There are 32 kids, and you need to cut it to a team of eight.” I thought, this is going to be brutal. I don’t like being the bad guy. I like being the nice, friendly guy. I rocked up not looking forward to it. I was going to have to break some kids’ hearts.

Some of the kids came with their racquets, ready. They came up and said, “Jeremy, you’re the tennis coach? I play tennis so much, I play outside of school,” trying to talk themselves up. Secretly I knew that if they had a racquet, they were probably going to be in the team. But I watched each of them play, one by one, and I had to be completely brutal. I had to pull them aside and say, “Sorry, you’re not good enough. Go find another sport. Try again next year.” They’d say, “Please, I haven’t shown my full potential, I’m so much more capable, give me another chance.” And I’d say, “Sorry, I’ve seen enough. You’re going to have to go.” It was pretty brutal.

One kid came up and said, “Jeremy, please be patient with me. I’m not very good at tennis, but I really love the sport and I just want to be part of the team.” I had to tell him, “Sorry, there are other people who are better than you.” Being part of the team was conditional on how good their skills were, whether they could serve or not. In sport, that’s often the case. You pick people for a team based on how well they perform.

It’s always a tension to walk in. Do you keep someone around and hope they improve, or remove them from the team to keep the standards high? I support Manchester United, and they have a defender who isn’t very good. He always stuffs up, does no-look defending, lets in so many goals, and all the fans think he needs to go. But it seems his position is unconditional, because he’s the captain, so he stays. Even in our work settings there’s a tension. Do we keep an employee who isn’t doing their job well, or do we let them go so we can keep the organisation’s standards high?

In the same way, I wonder: is my relationship with God conditional on what I do, or unconditional? Some say it doesn’t matter what I do, because God loves me anyway and he’ll always be there for me. Others say it’s my God-given duty to live righteously, to walk holy and do the right thing. There are two camps.

A covenant is not a transaction

Jeremiah 31:31–32 says, “The days are coming when I will make a new covenant… not like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant.” Here’s the history. Yahweh delivers his people out of Egypt, as he promised their forefather Abraham, and makes a covenant with them at Sinai. God often communicates himself through covenants. With Abraham, he has him cut animals in two. When a covenant was made, the parties would walk between the pieces, which meant, “May I be like these animals if I don’t keep my end of the bargain.” The core purpose of God’s covenant was that he would be their God and they would be his people.

That’s different from a transactional relationship. When I bought that bike I told you about, it was all about how much I could get from the transaction. I sold it at a profit of a thousand dollars. But when God makes a covenant, it’s not about what he can get. It’s about how much he can give. God’s covenant is also intimate and permanent, personal and permanent. Tim Keller says:

The covenant God initiates is more intimate and loving than a mere contract, but more binding and accountable than a mere relationship. It’s a stunning blend of both law and love.

— Tim Keller

The best example is marriage. You could just continue to have a relationship and live on, but people get married to make it permanent, and it’s permanent partly because it’s legal. A covenant is both duty and affection, passionate and permanent at the same time.

Israel, though, turned against God. They rebelled against the covenant and didn’t fulfil their end of the bargain. They got into idolatry and worshipped other gods. There was rampant social injustice, with widows, orphans and foreigners taken advantage of. It became a toxic environment, with even child sacrifice starting to happen, following the pagans around them.

Two camps

There are two ways we, as sinners, often relate to the covenant. I want to step into both for a moment.

The first camp is legalism. The philosophy is that God’s love is conditional, based on something we can do. Knowing what is right and doing what is right is extremely important. Asian society tends to lean this way. It’s a shame-and-honour culture, all about doing your duty for the family, which is why you’ve got to be the doctor, the lawyer, the dentist. People who lean this way are often very rule-driven. They value a good argument, they like to debate and come out on top, and they’re happy to tell you you’re out of line. They’re very truth-oriented. They’ll say it straight to your face with no sugar-coating. It hurts, but you can trust them, and I respect that. People like this often have an image of God as a holy being they need to appease. The verses they lean on sound like this: “If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you.”

The problem is that it can lead to harsh, overly sensitive criticism. These people are often deeply insecure and jealous of others, and their identity and worth rest on their performance. It leads one of two ways. Either self-hatred, because you realise you can’t fulfil all these laws and you’re not good enough. Or self-righteousness, where you think you’ve made it and you push others down to lift yourself up. They’re so busy pointing the finger that they forget they need grace too.

The other camp is liberalism. This sees the covenant like this: since God loves me regardless of my record, he doesn’t mind how I live morally. Everyone needs to determine right and wrong for themselves. It’s relative. Western societies tend to lean this way. It’s very individualistic: you do you, follow your passion, follow your dreams. You just need to love and accept yourself and everything will be fine. It’s feeling-based and emotion-based. These people are generally fun and comfortable to be around. They won’t tell you to your face if you’re doing something wrong, and they’re generally warm because they don’t give harsh feedback. The verses they lean on sound like this: “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” Even when you sin, God will be there, pursuing you and forgiving you at the end of the day.

There are passages to back up both camps. But the problem with the liberal view is that it assumes we know what we want and that our inner desires are harmonious and coherent. They aren’t. You want muscles but don’t want to put in the work. You love Domino’s five-dollar pizzas. You want good grades but also want to have fun with your hobbies, and you don’t want to put in the effort to study. Our desires conflict. The other problem is that people in this camp talk a great deal about God’s love and mercy, but they don’t think of themselves as sinners. They imagine God’s love for humanity cost him nothing. In an effort to show a lot of grace, they lower the standard of truth.

Despite the vast external differences, at the core these two camps are the same, and they come from the same root problem: they don’t trust God enough. It goes right back to creation. Eve takes the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, which symbolises the question: do I trust God to determine good and evil for me, or do I take it into my own hands? The serpent is challenging God’s character. He’s saying God doesn’t really desire your good, your joy and your happiness, so maybe you should take it into your own hands. That’s the core problem for all of us. Through the fall our relationship with God is fractured because we don’t trust that he has good in store for us. Both camps function as their own spiritual saviours, and both have a distorted image of God. It’s the same root problem dealt with in different ways. One rejects God’s law and discards it. The other takes on the burden of God’s law and says, “This is my God-given duty, and I have to carry it.” Neither is right.

Written on the heart

That’s where the way of the new covenant comes in, and it’s beautiful. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” The word “mind” follows the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. In the original Hebrew the word is qereb, which runs deeper. It literally means one’s inward parts, the internal organs: your intestines, heart, kidneys. In the ancient Near East people didn’t know that the mind was in charge of reason. They thought the internal organs were the seat of both reason and emotion. So Jeremiah uses imagery relevant to his culture to show that Yahweh is greater than the other ancient Near Eastern gods, because he makes his ways and expectations clear to his people.

That’s why a covenant is a very loving thing: it communicates expectations. The gods of the ancient Near East were capricious. They’d be happy about certain things one day and want different things the next. Yahweh is saying, “I’m a different God. I communicate what aligns with my heart and what doesn’t.” And he prophesies a time coming when his law, the very heartbeat of his love, won’t be something out there, far off and unattainable. It will be in here, living inside you, at the centre of your thoughts and emotions. He promises, “I’m going to heal your rebellious heart so you can truly love and follow me. I’m not going to let sin have the final word. My own faithfulness will bring about the covenant. I know you’ve rebelled and haven’t upheld your end, but I’m going to take matters into my own hands.”

When Jeremiah talks about the new covenant, he isn’t necessarily talking about a different set of laws. He’s talking about a new way of living according to the law. You can live in the new covenant era and have an old covenant experience, and the reverse is true too. David shows it’s possible. In Psalm 40:8 he says, “I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.” David is having a new covenant experience while living in the old covenant era. Living after the death of Jesus doesn’t mean we automatically have a new covenant experience. We can very much have an old covenant, legalistic or liberal or rebellious, experience of the law.

Sheet music and chords

The best way I can picture it is learning the piano. I learned through sheet music, the classical way, reading each note and finding it on the keys. I just wasn’t very good at it. I couldn’t read those notes, and to this day I still can’t. I just pulled up “Amazing Grace” sheet music on my phone. I’ll give it a crack. That’s my sight-reading.

Eventually I learned a new way of playing songs, called chords, and it was a game changer. Everything started making sense, and music became so much more enjoyable. No offence to those of you who can sight-read, you’re probably better than me, but I see sheet music as legalism. Chords freed me to express myself through music. The music was no longer something out there. It was something in here. It was the same song and the same notes, just played differently.

For me that’s how an old covenant experience compares to a new covenant experience. In one, you’re desperately trying to follow the rules and live up to the standard, or you give up on it altogether. In the other, it’s in your heart. You’re not meticulously trying so hard. It’s natural. It’s just in you.

Here’s a story about a woman called Melissa. As a young woman she was married to a mean, abusive husband named Edward, who wrote out a long to-do list for her every day before he went to work. If she hadn’t finished everything to his satisfaction by the time he returned, he would beat her. She lived in fear and misery, and when Edward died she hardly missed him. A few years later she fell deeply in love with a man named Alan. His loving concern made her life totally different. Instead of ordering her to do things, he discussed with her what needed to be done, and they divided the duties around the house. Years later Melissa found one of Edward’s old lists up in the attic. She felt a rush of adrenaline and a crawling sensation on her skin as she began to read. Then she realised that everything on the list was something she was doing regularly, and now she loved doing it, because she loved the man she was doing it for. The law hasn’t changed, but love can transform begrudging subservience into joyful cooperation. That’s what the new covenant is all about. It’s the law working differently.

There are different views on how we relate to the old and new covenants. It’s complicated, and I haven’t figured it all out. But the key thing to understand is that we are not saved by the law, we are saved for the law. The law is God’s love in action. The gospel transforms obedience to God’s commands from a legalistic means of acquiring salvation into a loving response to a received salvation.

Direct access, and a God who takes responsibility

Jeremiah 31:34: “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The teaching of the Torah was a prominent part of a Jew’s life, but access was mediated through priests. The only way to access God was through the priest, through the temple. People didn’t have direct access. This verse isn’t saying we no longer need to teach or preach. It’s saying we can all have direct, unmediated access to God, because Jesus is now the High Priest we can approach directly. The prophet imagines a situation where the divine teaching is available even from the least to the greatest. No matter who you are, God is accessible to you. Interpreting God’s word isn’t something only I can do, or only a pastor can do. Anyone can open the Bible, read, and ask God, “What are you saying to me?”

There’s also a key point in this verse: Yahweh will forgive Israel’s wickedness and remember their sins no more. That shows Yahweh takes responsibility for the covenant. Remember the covenant made with Abraham, where animals are cut in two and laid side by side. You’d expect Abraham to walk between them, or both parties to, because the lesser party, the one in need, would usually take responsibility for breaking the covenant. But Abraham goes to sleep, and Yahweh walks through the animals. He’s saying, “May I be like these animals if there is a break in this covenant.”

Where I’m going with this is that God takes responsibility even when it isn’t his fault. Whether we’ve veered into the legalistic camp or the liberal camp, it’s God who takes responsibility, and he does it by creating a new covenant, made not with the blood of animals but with his very own blood, shed on the cross for us. It’s an everlasting covenant of love that has endured from eternity past and will endure into eternity future. It bonds together the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and it’s what moved God to redeem us.

The Bible says, if you obey the covenant you’ll be blessed, and if you disobey it you’ll be cursed. Jesus Christ obeyed the covenant perfectly as a human being and earned the blessing, but at the end of his life he took the curse we deserved. There was an exchange: he was treated as we deserve so that we can be treated as he deserves.

The cross shows us that obedience matters, because if the law didn’t matter, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross. It also shows us that grace matters, because even when we stuff up and sin and don’t meet God’s standard, we can see our Saviour on the cross and know that God will never leave us nor forsake us. It shows both. Truth is important and grace is important. The law is important and mercy is important. When you see Jesus dying on the cross, you know the law is important, sin is wrong, and you have to resist it with all your might. And you also know that Jesus is fully committed to you. A Christian is more flawed than you’d ever believe, yet more loved and accepted than you’d ever dare believe. It’s a beautiful paradox of both law and love, grace and truth.

I don’t know which camp you find yourself in. I’ve swung from legalism to liberalism and back, and I haven’t quite figured it out. But what the new covenant presents is neither of those. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” I don’t do that out of mere duty. I do it because I love God, and I love him because he loved me first. When I see him on that cross, putting his life out there for me, I realise there is no greater love than this, laying down one’s life for one’s friends. And I know that even when I stuff up, which I do, God is going to love me, accept me and have mercy on me. And this grace isn’t a grace that says, “Alright, keep sinning.” It’s a grace that empowers me to live in freedom, in his truth, according to his law, where the very heartbeat of his law is in me. It isn’t something out there and external. It happens naturally within me.

I boast in nothing but the cross, and in Jesus, who gave his life for me.