It is Good to be a New Covenant Follower!

Have you ever made the same mistake over and over again?

I am not know for being a patient person so I can get a little crazy when frustration takes over and frustration takes over frequently when I put a lot of effort into something that I just can't seem to get right.

Making the same mistake repeatedly can be maddening, but it can be downright devastating if that mistake comes with consequences.

Israel and Judah were what you might call frequent offenders. They always went down the same path of idolatry and rebellion.

God rescued them from Egypt and they end up worshipping a golden calf. God gives them the Promised Land and they end up worshipping Baal. God establishes their kingdom and they build high places and worship idols.

God's people were idolaters by nature and habit. It was not an "Oops, I just committed adultery" kind of a thing. It was more of an "Oops, I did it again" kind of thing (yes, I did just do quote Brittany in my devotional blog).

So, here we have God sending His people into exile for seventy years as punishment for their latest idol fling but the real question is will this ever end? Will God's people ever just worship the living and true God?

For a reader of the Old Testament, it would seem at this point that the pattern of God blesses, His people chase after idols, and God punishes was destined to be on repeat eternally.

But God has a remedy for that and He voices it in Jeremiah 31:33-34

But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days (exile), 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.

God had a covenant (pre-exile) with Israel that He had given to them in the Pentateuch that basically said, "If you obey me and listen to My voice then I will bless you."

Sounds like a good deal, right? But the problem with that covenant was that the people of Israel were inherently sinful. They could not keep their promise to God.

Telling them not to chase idols was like sitting a chubby fifth grader in front of brownies and asking them not to take a bite while you are gone. They could only resist so long.

I don't mean to say that Israel wasn't guilty for their sin or that God was unjust for punishing them. I just want you to realize that there was never any chance Israel could be as faithful to God as God was back to them.

And that is why God puts forth this solution in Jeremiah 31. He suggests that the new covenant would be one which placed the emphasis on the internal and not the external. It would be less about outward obedience and more about inward worship that produced outward obedience.

God says that He is going to put my law within them and write it on their hearts. In other words, He is going to transform Israel from idolater to worshipper from the inside-out.

He was going to burn the truth, righteousness, and wisdom of His law into their hearts. This is important because Proverbs 4:23 tells us that the heart is the epicenter of action:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

What had been springing forth from Israel was idolatry. The idolatry of Israel was inevitable, however, because theirs was an idolater's heart. Asking them to remain faithful to God was like asking a water fountain to give you a dose of Mt. Dew. It was asking something they couldn't deliver.

But God promised that the new covenant would focus on turning the water fountain into a Mt. Dew dispenser. He would take out the idolaters heart and put in its place a heart that longed to worship.

The results would be that God would be their God and they would be my [God's] people, that they shall know me [God], that God would forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

They would enter into a new kind of relationship where the vicious cycle of idolatry and punishment would be replaced with a new cycle of worship and blessing.

So, what does this mean for us?

We (all who are Christ-followers) are the fruit of that new covenant.

Did you know that Jesus also taught that you and I were desperate sinners born with a heart that would produce the same cycle of disobedience and rebellion? We were the evil people whose evil actions came from evil hearts:

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. [Luke 6:45]

So, what were we to do? Jesus came as God's emissary to bring about the new covenant that God had promised in Jeremiah 31.

He claimed this when He instituted the Lord's Supper--

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
(I Corinthians 11:25)

Jesus is the one who brought about the new covenant that God had promised Israel in Jeremiah 31. It was through His death and resurrection that God could give us new hearts with His law written on them. It was through Jesus' death and resurrection that God could break the cycle of sin and rebellion and replace with a cycle of worship and obedience.

This is the message that Jesus shared with Nicodemus in John 3:3

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

We needed the old idolaterous heart to be taken out and a new worshipping heart to be put in.

Think about it. Were you and I any different from Israel? We sinned frequently and habitually. We could not overcome our desire to rebel against God and follow the idols that sparkled and shined.

But God, in His mercy, sent us His Son to live, die, and raise from the dead in order that we might break free from the bondage of our old sinful hearts and be born again to live with a heart that had God's law tattooed on it.

Praise God today that you are a "New Covenant" follower. You are not being asked to give something that you cannot give. You are being asked to receive the new heart and the new covenant earned for you on the cross of Jesus Christ.

Rejoice today that you can obey God because His law is written on your heart.

Praise God today that you don't need someone to broker communications between you and God but that you know Him personally.

It is good to be a part of God's new covenant.