Heart Trouble
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
31 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.
32 It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
33 No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my Instructions within them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
34 They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “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 wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.
Heart Trouble
Heart Trouble
A four-year-old girl was at the pediatrician's office for a checkup. As the doctor looked into her ears, he asked, "Do you think I'll find Big Bird in here?"
The little girl didn't answer.
Next, the doctor took a tongue depressor and looked down her throat. He asked, "Do you think I'll find the Cookie Monster down there?"
Again, the little girl was silent.
Then the doctor put a stethoscope to her chest. As he listened to her heartbeat, he asked, "Do you think I'll hear Barney in there?"
"Oh, no!" the little girl replied. "Jesus is in my heart. Barney's on my underpants."
That little girl certainly has her priorities straight, getting right to the heart of the matter.
I won’t ask anyone to raise their hands, but I know that there are several of you who have experienced heart problems.
A number of years ago I had issues with A-Fib. Hearing the diagnosis helped me realize that I wasn’t crazy and that there was something going on in my chest. I said at the time it felt like that there was a bird trapped inside my chest and it kept fluttering it’s wings in a failed attempt to escape.
The first time I recognized it, they did a heart catheterization to see if I some type of blockage. I was glad to hear when the anesthesia wore off that everything was good, no blockages.
A experienced it a second time and when I went to my PCP they did a EKG and they could see it on the printout. This time I was sent to see an electrocardiologist. She started me on some pills to help control my heart rhythm, but that failed to keep my heart in rhythm and out of A-Fib.
She told me that my only other option was to do an ablation procedure to kill some of the nerves that were causing me to go into A-Fib.
That was a little scary thinking that she would be killing some nerves. I think I asked her if I needed those nerves. She reassured me that I would be ok, so I trusted my heart to her.
The procedure was scheduled and all went well with it. I experience an occasional flutter but I have not experienced any significant A-Fib since then.
Our hearts are one of the most vital organs in our bodies, however, it takes all of our organs working the way that God designed them to ensure that we are healthy.
We often will talk about problems we have in church. Many will give answers as to why we have this problem or that problem, but when asked they don’t volunteer to help solve the problem.
When we talk about funding the operation of the church, I’ve said many times that we don’t have a money problem.
When we talk about getting volunteers to help with a ministry, I’ve said, we don’t have a people problem.
When we talk about discipleship, I’ve said we don’t have a disciple problem.
The church doesn’t have a money problem or a people problem, the church has a heart problem. It really is not anything new. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote:
9 Whatever has happened— that’s what will happen again; whatever has occurred— that’s what will occur again. There’s nothing new under the sun.
We have been bouncing around with Jeremiah over the past couple of weeks. We’ve learned about some of his prophecies leading up to Jerusalem being conquered. We jumped ahead and looked in Lamentations which was written after Jerusalem was conquered.
We’re now back to just before Jerusalem was conquered.
There is really nothing new under the sun. God’s people had repeatedly turned away from God and worshiped false gods. They would repent and follow God. They would turn back to worshipping false gods. It was a constant cycle of following God, abandoning God, following God, abandoning God, and now it is time for punishment.
Jeremiah in the opening verse of our text makes an astounding announcement from God.
31 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.
God had made a covenant with the Jews at Mount Sinai. You can go back and read it in Exodus 19:5-6 “5 So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. 6 You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation. These are the words you should say to the Israelites.””
A priest is a visible representative of God. Their mission in the Old Testament was to offer sacrifices, to teach, to declare healing. They were to speak on behalf of God, bringing God to the people.
Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, they were to live holy lives.
They kept failing, they kept walking away from God. They kept running away from their side of the covenant with God. They had a serious heart problem.
Jeremiah recognized that. In chapter 17 he wrote
9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
He wrote about this deceitfulness a number of times in this book.
Jer 3:17 “17 At that time, they will call Jerusalem the Lord’s throne, and all nations will gather there to honor the Lord’s name. No longer will they follow their own willful and evil hearts.”
Jer 7:24 “24 But they didn’t listen or pay attention. They followed their willful and evil hearts and went backward rather than forward.”
Jer9:14 “14 Instead, they have followed their own willful hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them.”
Jer 11:8 “8 But they didn’t listen or pay attention; they followed their own willful ambitions. So I brought upon them all the punishments I prescribed for violating this covenant—for refusing to obey.”
Jer 17:1 “1 Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron pen. It’s etched with a diamond point on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.”
John Bate, a Methodist minister from the 1800s wrote about how some Christians can get caught up in a cycle of sinning and repenting. He wrote:
We should not move in a circle of sinning and repenting, but should enter through the straight gate and go on our way until we pass into the country of eternal sinlessness and joy. To be sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning, is to remain in religion like a man in a ship, while a headwind and a strong under-current drive him back to the point whence he started and may dash his vessel on the rocks, which will bring upon him sudden destruction.
Can a man who one day builds his house and the next day pulls it down ever get his home completed?
Will that traveler who goes on his journey a few miles and then returns and repeats this continually ever reach the destination upon which he first fixed his mind?
No more can you who, are repeating the commission of sin and the exercise of repentance. Giving in to the temptation and sinning, and then repenting of it, promising to not do it again, obtaining forgiveness, and then no sooner joyous in the favor of God and His people, than you fall into the sin again.
This course of religious life will never bring you excellence, stability, usefulness, confidence with your brethren, or the reward of heaven.
It is true that if you sin, you should repent and seek a quick pardon from God, but you should not repeat the sin. Having been canceled, it should never appear again. Once committed and forgiven, it should only exist in the recollection and never be touched by you.
You should become stronger and stronger every day in grace and sin proportionably weaker and weaker. Instead of the tears of repentance for sins into which you have fallen, there should be tears of joy for increased conformity to Christ and readiness for heaven. Unless you come out of the circle, you may finally be drifted into the yawning vortex of despair. The last thing you do may be the sin that besets you, without time or grace to repent, and so, after all your religious attempts, die without religion. [1]
Israel had fallen into that sinning and repenting cycle and the cycle ended with their exile from the promised land.
God could have just left them go and started all over again. But God said Jer 31:31 “31 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.”
God said that they had broken that old covenant. Jer 31:32 “32 It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”
God is proposing to do something entirely new. It wasn’t going to be like He had done before. The people proved that they could not live within the scope of that first covenant.
God said in the very next verse Jer 31:33
33 No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my Instructions within them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Rather than having an external set of commandments and such. God says that He is going to put his “Instructions within them on their hearts.”
That is a pretty radical change. The old covenant is broken. God is not going to fix it. Sometimes things are beyond repair and cannot be fixed. It needs to be tossed out and something new needs to be done.
This new covenant is going to be a new relationship between God and His people. This new covenant is a covenant of grace.
God is taking the initiative to invite the people into a new relationship. He takes the initiative and He invites the people to respond.
God says in verse 33 that He will make a new covenant. He doesn’t leave us hanging about how He is going to do. The first thing he is going to do is
Jeremiah 31:33 (CEB)
33 I will put my Instructions within them on their hearts.
As I thought about this, the idea that came to my mind is that this new covenant was moving from just knowing God to experiencing God. It is one thing to know God, to know His commandments and know about Him. Lots of people know about but they don’t know Him because they haven’t experienced Him.
It is easy to go through all the externals of religion, but religion is not necessarily about a relationship. God is wanting a relationship with His people. Throughout the prophets He has used relationship language such has husband and wife, Father and son.
How is going to put His instructions within them? This points forward to Jesus.
God says later in that verse Jer 31:33
Jeremiah 31:33 (CEB)
33 I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Again, this is pointing to a relationship with God. The New Covenant incorporates the personal relationship, which was also the basis for the Old Covenant. Biblical faith always emphasizes this personal contact between God and man. The Old Covenant established this upon a national basis; the New Covenant makes provision for the individual. Because of Calvary, I can say, “My Father!” [2] This is
God says in Jer 31:34
Jeremiah 31:34 (CEB)
34 They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the Lord!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord
This is no head knowledge. A person can study the Bible and read commentaries and know a lot about God. That person can know lots of facts and still not know God. God is saying that this will be a living experience with God.
The Message of Jeremiah: Grace in the End c. Universal Knowledge of God (34a)
To know God, or more correctly, to know YHWH as the true living God, meant being committed to relating to him in love, loyalty and obedience. Knowing God was a matter of life and practice, of character and behaviour, of reflecting the character of YHWH in human relationships as well as in faith and worship.13
Finally God gives the greatest news in verse 34 when He says Jer 31:34
Jeremiah 31:34 (CEB)
34 for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.
Under the Old Covenant there were stiff punishments for sin. There were rituals that had to be performed, sacrifices to be made and punishment. This new covenant promised something entirely different. One commentator wrote:
Yahweh’s promise that he will not remember the sins of his people is intended to liberate them from the power of guilt and the fear of punishment in the new covenant relationship. No longer will they live in fear, but in the assurance of Yahweh’s forgiveness of sins.
This is all made available through Jesus. It involves a radical new heart for us.
What is it that the Church (big C) needs? It needs a radical transformation. It needs people with new hearts and minds. It needs people living out their faith.
We have to stop talking about our faith and begin living it out.
This can only begin with repentance, seeking God’s forgiveness because he has promised to forgive our sins. 1 John 1:9
9 But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong.
Forgive and forget. Can you really do it? Of course we forgive the wrongs done to us. That is the Christian way. But do you really forget the indiscretion? Do you not keep your eye on the one you forgave, just in case, even if you sincerely forgave them? Even when you forgive yourself for a bad decision or a bad habit, you do not forget it. Your memories are scarred by it. That is precisely why you and I, why our society, is in such bondage. We cannot get past our bad memories.
Oh, but that is not the way that God forgives. He wipes the slate clean! God remembers your sin and my sin no more. We really are forgiven. Our sins are forgotten!
Can you feel how freeing this Word is? The sins of the past, the misdeeds of the past, and the bad habits that may still be plaguing you, God has forgotten them. And if God has forgotten them, all those wrongs do not have ultimate meaning any more. They have no eternal significance. If God has forgotten them, perhaps you and I can too.[3]
God’s grace is amazing. We need to live in the reality of that grace.
[1] Bate J. (1865). The class leader's assistant. Retrieved October 15 2022 from http://books.google.com/books?id=kPoCAAAAQAAJ.
[2] Hall, B. H. (1969). The Book of Jeremiah. In Isaiah-Malachi (Vol. 3, p. 279). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[3] Ellingsen, M. (n.d.). Your Sins Are Remembered No More! You Are Free! Sermons.Com. https://www.sermons.com/sermon/your-sins-are-remembered-no-more-you-are-free/1345933