342. The Promise of a New Way

Jeremiah 31:31-34 & 2 Corinthians 3:1-3

Key Verse: "You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."  2 Corinthians 3:3

When God first called Abram, out of Ur of the Chaldeans, He called Abram into a relationship.  He separated Abram from everything that he knew, friends, family, familiar lands and he asked Abram to trust Him. We think of Peter stepping out of the boat as a big act of faith, but Abram's stepping out of everything familiar was no less spectacular. For twenty-five years, Abram learned how to walk with God until God finally fulfilled His promise to Abram and gave him Isaac, his son. Abram's trust was secure enough in Jehovah that, when God then asked him to sacrifice that same promised Son, Abram, now Abraham, demonstrated his trust through his act of submissive obedience.

As generations came and went, however, the closeness to God that Abraham had experienced grew silent. Grandchildren and great grandchildren of Abraham, understood that they were a chosen people, but the warmth of a personal relationship was lacking and it became easier and easier for the next generations to stray.

After the Exodus, God again drew close to the Children of Abraham. Because there were so many, God gave them a list of simple rules to follow, so that His people would know how to please and honor Him and act in a manner that He would consider Holy. These rules were written on tablets of stone. They could be memorized. But rote memory is not a guarantee of willing obedience such as God experienced with Abraham.

Eventually, the people failed and were punished as God promised they would be. Then, the rulers decided that God's law wasn't enough. They needed to help God out by creating laws that would not only explain what God meant by His laws, but also protect the people from accidentally violating God's intentions. This served only to make living as one of God's chosen people a burdensome task that even the rulers themselves couldn't exactly sustain.

God wanted, for each of His children, a relationship such as the one He had enjoyed with Abram. Thus He promised: "The time is coming, when I will make a new Covenant with the House of Israel. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them. This is the covenant I will make with them, 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 a man teach his neighbor or brother saying, "Know the Lord," because they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jer. 31:31-34) This could only be accomplished when the Holy Spirit, the counselor promised by Jesus in John 14, would come.

As we will see, this is what the Holy Spirit accomplished on that day of Pentecost. So much so, that Paul would say of Christians later, "You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (2 Corinthians 3:3) It's only when the Holy Spirit comes in that God's law can be written on our hearts. Once it is there, not just as a rule, but as a way we want to live, we can say that it is written on our hearts and no longer just on stone tablets from the outside. God works in us to not only transform our hard hearts to soft ones, ready for God's engraving, but the rest of us can be transformed as well so that we are no longer the way Christ found us, but rather, we are being changed to look more and more like Christ every day. We are transformed, from stone statues, as in Lewis' book "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," to living creatures, ready to go for and do His will.

Hymn: “Change My Heart, Oh God”