Exploring the Scripture
The scripture text for this Sunday is a message of hope and restoration that God extends in a new covenant with the house of Israel.
To understand this powerful message, it is important to place it in a historical frame of reference.
People from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been taken by the Assyrians and then Babylonians and exiled from their homeland. The message Jeremiah declares comes amid the deep suffering and turmoil the people experienced. Their daily lives were filled with the loss of identity, family, home, and a sense of belonging, coupled with the disturbing question of why God had abandoned them.
The story surrounding the text for today has its beginning in chapter 30, where God reminds the people they were not forgotten. In chapter 31, God describes the coming restoration.
“A new covenant,” God declares, is what God will make with the houses of Israel and Judah. This new covenant will be different from what God made with their ancestors, who came out of Egypt.
The word covenant, used throughout the Old Testament, is not to be interpreted as strictly an agreement between two individuals. When covenant is used about God, it is always about expressing a special relationship between God and the people.
When God declares that a new covenant will be made with those in exile, God affirms a transformative relationship is being birthed with the people. This new covenant will not be words written on stone as their ancestors experienced with Moses. God is going to place this new covenant in the hearts of the people. From the external laws on stone to the internal presence of God placed on their hearts, a new way of relating with God will form them as a nation and people of God.
In these four verses, we encounter the depth of love God extends to the people. It is always God’s initiative to offer love, grace, forgiveness, and restoration formed in a new covenant that describes the relationship God yearns to have with all people. It is not a relationship formed by fear and blind obedience. Rather, it’s a relationship that invites people into the heart and love God has for them. In that encompassing relationship of love, God makes the multiple factors of salvation known through restoration that is about to come forth.
In this text, we face the invitation to consider how this new covenant of love frees us to live fully the life God has created in us. Even more, we are challenged to consider our covenant response to the relationship of love God yearns to share with each human life. But even when we fail to uphold our shared part of the covenant relationship, God is faithful, extending new opportunities to experience God’s grace and restoration.
Project Zion Podcast
Co-hosts Karin Peter and Blake Smith consider how this week's scripture connects to our lives today.
Central Ideas
- God constantly seeks to bring healing, renewal, and redemption in the covenant made with all creation.
- The new covenant challenges us to consider the depth of our response to living in a significant relationship with God and one another.
- When God places a new covenant in our heart, that covenant is filled with love, grace, forgiveness, and restoration that brings joy, hope, love, and peace to our lives and how we choose to be with others.
Questions to Consider
- How does the message God shared with the people of Israel and Judah, who struggled in their suffering and questions, speak to us today in our different life circumstances and cultures?
- What do you find in this scripture passage that awakens in you and your congregation to the new covenant God is seeking to place in your heart?
- How does this new covenant that expresses love, grace, forgiveness, and restoration invite you to see differently those in your community or neighborhood? What message will you live and share?