All Things Made New

We are continuing our sermon series about life. We have been focusing on how Old Testament scriptures can offer us insights into our lives today. We have seen how God desires for us to cry out to him when life is rough.

Last week we looked at how no matter what we are going through we need to find a way to live our lives to the fullest. You can find all of the previous sermons from this series and all of our previous sermons on our You Tube channel.

Today we are looking at what it means for us to be made new. Our scripture comes from Jeremiah 31:27-34. The words will be on the screen.

27 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the offspring of people and of animals. 28 Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord. 29 “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ 30 Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge. 31 “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. 32 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. 33 “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. 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,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Please pray with me…

We have spent this sermon series so far offering the bad news that sometimes life can be tough. Offering the need at times of being resilient and getting up and choosing to do the best that we can.

This week we hope to offer a glimmer of hope. That through our willingness to not wallow in the dark places we had been in. That through our desire to do the best that we can. That we can find ourselves in a place of “being made new.”

The word often used within the church for this work from God is transformation. Transformation is speaking of an inner change within us that should lead to us to changing the way that we view God, ourselves, and the world around us.

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We can become transformed through the act of grieving and lamenting the loss that we have faced. A willingness to struggle with where we are in life. Being willing to tell God how we feel and maybe even question if we believe he even is with us.

This leads to that next step of putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward despite the pain, despite our doubts and fears. It is us saying to God, “I am going to rely on you to help me and keep me going in my pain and disappointment.”

It is our willingness to keep going that will hopefully eventually lead to where we find Jeremiah leading the Jewish people to today. A time and a place when things are going to get better. A hope in a future to come. A trust in God that all things will eventually be made right.

This message of hope should be the same hope that we can find during our times of struggle. The ability to believe that God is with us. We can often find this hope through a realization that we are not alone.

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In our scripture Jeremiah is not letting the people off the hook. He is reminding them that as the saying goes “you have made your bed and now you need to sleep in it.” He wants to remind them that they created the mess that has led them to this point.

Just a reminder that the people have been exiled to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem. They feel stuck and lost but Jeremiah tells them things aren’t going to get better anytime soon,. They need to live their lives to the fullest under the circumstances they are in.

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We sometimes can make a mess out of our lives. We can do things that are against God through our iniquities. Iniquities are the wrongs that we commit against God and those around us. Sin is the result of our iniquities.

The Hebrew people ended up where they did because they had in some ways began living lives not focused on God. God allowedthem to separate themselves from him. God did not cause the destruction of Jerusalem, but he didn’t prevent it because the people had moved themselves away from him.

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God also allows us to be separated from him if we make that decision. God doesn’t move. We can make choices that move us away from God. The problem is that this is our human condition. We may not want to, but we still find a way to do things against God.

Paul speaks of this about his in his own life in Romans chapter 7.

He says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

This is why we needed Jesus. We are going to sin. We cannot be good enough. The law was developed to attempt to lead people into a closer relationship with God. What it ended up doing was leading people into feelings of guilt and shame.

Guilt from those around them and shame because of the inadequacy of not being able to prevent ourselves from sinning. We need forgiveness because without forgiveness we can end up finding ourselves farther and farther away from a close relationship with God.

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Jeremiah is telling the people that God has a plan. The plan is for better times ahead, but they need to choose to live their lives for God instead of for themselves. We would say that they need to begin living like Jesus.

They, like us, need to decide that they want to listen to God and follow the ways of God. The difference being that we make this choice not out of obedience to the law. We make the choice to follow God because of the love that we have for the one that first loved us.

This is why we shouldn’t allow guilt and shame to impact our lives. We should acknowledge as Paul does in our scripture that we can’t be good enough. What we can do is attempt to live a life with God that with God’s help we will live the best life that we can.

Again, God does not move. He awaits us deciding that we want to reconnect with him. He wants to be as close to us as we want to be but at the same time, he loves us too much to force us to be in a close, personal relationship with him.

We find this lived out in the captivity of the Jewish people in Egypt. God brought Moses to free them because he heard their cries. He heard them stating that they were interested in intensifying the relationship that he had with them.

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What can become a bigger problem for us is when we don’t find the part that we played in the mess that we are in. We find in our lives that the circumstances around us have led us to this point. We can’t discover a direct action that we have taken that has caused these circumstances to take place.

I think of Job and the story of how according to scripture he was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. But despite these scriptural statements, he loses almost everything. He is spending time trying to figure out what he has done to deserve the situation that he is in.

He also doesn’t receive help from those around him. He has these “friends” who ask him what he has done to upset God so much. It was believed during that time that it was something that you did against God that led to trouble in your life.

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We know that this is not the case. It is why we have the question “why do bad things happen to good people.” A question that really doesn’t have an answer that is pleasing to the person going through it. A question that has led some people to lose faith instead of becoming closer to God.

Jeremiah in our text is offering hope to the Jewish people within the turmoil. He is saying that it is true that you may feel “stuck and lost” right now but things are going to get better. Keep the faith. Attempt to follow the will of God. And you will find your lives changed on the other side. Your life will be made new.

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This is where the hope comes in. Jeremiah is saying that God will return you back to where you were. God will return you back to a people who are no longer enslaved. But he wants to see that you desire to return back into a right relationship with him.

The word we use for this is repentance. Repentance is us making a U-turn. It is us deciding that we want to be forgiven. We want our sins to be forgotten. We accept and desire the forgiveness that God desires to offer to us. We want to walk with God instead of away from God.

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It is why we acknowledge Jesus as not only our Savior but also our high priest. The Jewish people would make sacrifices to help atone for their sins. These sacrifices were to help bring them back into a right relationship with God.

The High Priest had an even more important job. On the Day of Atonement he was to take a sacrifice into the Holy of Holies, where God resided and he would sprinkle it upon the Mercy Seat where it was believed God sat.

This was to remove, or atone, for any sins that had not previously been forgiven. Jesus became our high priest. He fulfilled the role of providing a worthy sacrifice, himself, and having that sacrifice atone for our sins if we are willing to believe in him.

Our first reading said it this way: Jesus “entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” What Jesus did for us made it so that we can have eternal life. We are through his actions able to be good enough to reside with God forever.

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This makes Jesus not only our Savior and High Priest but also our mediator.

“The mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them and us free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

Jesus makes us right with God. This does not mean that we will no longer sin, but it does mean that our sins are forgiven. This allows us also to have God embedded within us. We that are followers of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will attempt to help us be the person that God desires for us to be. The Holy Spirit will try to lead us away from us separating ourselves from God. The Holy Spirit will attempt to help us know when we are making a decision that would move us away from God.

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Jeremiah in today’s scripture explains the actions that God will take in order to try to stop his followers from making the decision to move away from him. Our scripture calls it “God’s new covenant with us.” It says that he “will put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”

This new covenant is God attempting to have us become closer to him. The Holy Spirit will help us connect with God and follow God. The Jewish people turned the commandments into two commandments. They are for us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.

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We are living out these commandments when we are living out our mission statement. In case you forgot or haven’t heard it, our mission statement at The Church of the Good Shepherd says that we will connect with those around us. We will show the love of God to all people, and we will grow in faith together.

We are following God when we are choosing to love our neighbor. This would include the first two parts of our mission statement. We are to choose to reach out to those in our communities. We should desire to get to know those around us.

We spoke about this during our Love our Neighbor sermon series where we laid out the importance of listening to our neighbors, eating or spending time in fellowship with our neighbors, and serving those around us.

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We are also called to love God. We show our love of God as a church when we are growing in faith together. God doesn’t want any one of us to remain where we are in our relationship with him.

He wants us to grow in faith. He wants us to spend time with him through reading his word and praying and listening to what he may say to us. We offer opportunities for you to do this. We have Bible study each week shortly after our services. We have a devotional that you can find every weekday on our Facebook page. We want to help you connect with God and with those that are a part of The Church of the Good Shepherd.

We also can find ourselves growing in faith together by serving together. We lived that out on Friday by serving those at the Beechcroft homecoming game. Through this event and the events we have planned in the future we can show those around us that we love God and love our neighbor by serving together.

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We have been made new. We that are followers of Jesus have been transformed and will hopefully continue to be changed within because of the hope given to us through Jesus. We have been made new with a purpose.

We have been made new in order to love God and love our neighbor. We have received the love of God. We have been filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can figure out the ways that God wants us to show his love to those we meet.

Let us decide that we want to share the story. The story of truth and light. The story of someone who came to earth to be an example to us and to die for us so that we can be made new. Let us show those around us this message through our words and through our actions.

Let us pray…