The New Covenant

A reading today comes from the book of Jeremiah.

In the fourth year of Judith King. Jehoiakim. Josiah's son. This word came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Take a scroll and write in it all the words. I have spoken to you concerning Israel Judah and all the nation from the time of Josiah until today. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I intend to bring upon them. They will turn from their evil ways and I will forgive their wrongdoing and sins. So Jeremiah sent for Baruch nariah, son. Has your Maya dictated all the words that the Lord has spoken to him the recruit them in the school.

Then Jeremiah tilbrook I am confined here and cannot go to the Lord's Temple. So you go to the temple on the next day of fasting and read the Lord word from the scroll that I have dictated to you read them so that all the people in the temple can hear them as well as all the Judy in who have come from their towns. If they turn from their evil ways, perhaps the Lord will hear their prayers. The Lord have threatened them with Fierce anger.

Baruch psoriasin did everything the Prophet Jeremiah instructed him. He read all the Lord's words from the scroll in the temple.

The king sent Jody to take this role and he retrieved it from the room of Elijah by The Scribe then djehuty, read it to the king and all his Royal officials who were standing next to the king.

Now it was the ninth month and the King was staying in the winter is part of the palace with the fire part pot burning near him. And whenever djehuty read three or four Columns of the scroll the king would cut them off with a scribes nice and throw them into the fire pot until the whole scroll with burned up.

Neither King nor any of his attendance who heard all these words were alarmed or tore their clothes. Alison Delilah and Jamara big the king not to burn the scroll, but he wouldn't listen to them.

The king commanded Jeremy All the King's son along with Sariah Azrael son and shelling Mia Abdul son to arrest describe Baruch and the Prophet Jeremiah, but the Lord hid them.

The Lord's word came to Jeremiah after the king of burn the scroll containing the words written by Baruch at Jeremiah's dictation. Get another scroll and write in it all the words that were in the first scroll that you just King. Jehoiakim burned.

The time is coming to clear the Lord when I will make a New Covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. It won't be like the Covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that Covenant with me, even though I was their husband to clear the Lord. No, this is the Covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time to clear the Lord. I will put my instructions within them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. 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.

Hearing the reading.

One of the things I find most interesting about Christianity Today and perhaps for a long time not just today. Is this idea of the New Covenant?

There have been many times in the history of the church where the text of the Bible has been used to. Other people to create people a group of people in and consider them to be somehow outside of God's covenant. And usually when this is done, usually not always it's done with the Old Testament. the Hebrew scriptures the Jewish scriptures the Torah

the prophets the section that was the Bible that we called the Old Testament often it's done with books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy

talking it's done with things that were originally designed to differentiate the people of Israel from the surrounding Nations because the people of Israel were under a specific Covenant with God they were God's people

but as we read in Jeremiah God proclaimed there will be a new covenant a different Covenant.

And yet the church. For all its days seems to always be interested in pushing people away and making people. them US versus them

one of my favorites ministers is Clarence. Jordan have spoken about the four.

Jordan was a unique in that he created a integrated community. In the south of the US during a time of heightened racial tensions, and he talks about how that came from his faith. And yet he also talks about how the local Baptist Church. Kicked him out and kicked out all the members of his community when they brought somebody with them to church who the church members saw as other the church member saw that he had brought brought a black man to service.

In fact, it was someone from I from India if I remember correctly.

And they told him that this wasn't allowed and they voted to remove him from the from the church in the car gation and he and and his wife who came. They were the one that remembered he and his wife who came they came to the boat and they voted with them. They agree that they should be removed from the the membership rolls because of this but

the thing is that he he Shou Dao. That the church was using these words to to push people away push you out.

but he threw his own reading and understanding of the Gospel that come to the opposite conclusion that God included everybody and then nobody should be passed out passed away We see us now. with inclusion of lgbtq + people in the church in the life of the church we see people who think that the Bible says that the love between two people of the same gender is wrong that dressing outside of our own cultural gender. Norms is wrong.

And yet most of the references most of the so-called clobber verses that people .24 that come from the Old Testament. They come from parts of the Old Testament that I can call the Purity codes or places that were talking about ritual purity.

and so it's always interesting because people point to these verses and yet they don't point to other verses in the same books that point out things that we take for granted today that that were also considered to be in pure petroleum. Pure in the in the ancient any Jennifer Israel. And there are lots of books there books in sermons and things written on this. I'm not going to go into detail of them. I just want to point out the fact that people use those versus to condemn.

and yet in Jeremiah we see this talked about the New Covenant alpaca for a minute. Let's look at the reading itself. Who is Jeremiah Jeremiah is a prophet and Jeremiah is one of the the greater prophets in the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah actually quite long more than more than 50 chapters. Jeremiah the prophet during a very important time in the history of Judah he is. prophesying during the time that Babylon the first take control of Judah and then sieges Jerusalem and send everyone and exile. And so his prophecies are are coming before during and after the exile mean, I guess technically his properties and at the moment of the Exile but people are reading them in the context of being an exile. first God tells Jeremiah to go and tell the people what they've done wrong and get them to repent and turn back so that God can spare them, but they don't and if a Christian AR reading The most spectacular failure kind of the point of no return of this when God finally tells Jeremiah after many years of of Jeremiah preaching to the people. I finally told Jeremiah get a scroll write everything down. Take the scroll to the temple and read it and then leave the scroll there. That's not what happens Baruch read the scroll in the Scrolls left Brook runs because he's afraid of being killed and a and I-10 and the skulls left in the temple with the Scribe there and given to the king and the King has a school red, but as the scroll is ready cut it up and throw them to the fire in front of it because he his contempt for Jeremiah prophecy is just so great. He doesn't he doesn't believe anything that you're my Assange.

And this is the point when? God begins to tell Jeremiah to prophesy to the people about the destruction of Jerusalem and about life under Babylonian rule during this period. Where the king is coming up the scroll? This is a. Were Babylon it already come to rule the area and already sent some people into Exile but it's kind of in-between when Babylon first kind of takes control and when they they finally come in and and destroy the city. and there are lots of there are lots of people in this time who are poor prophesying and some of them are saying that they should they should fight back against Babylonians that the Babylon will be destroyed and that Jerusalem will be will be fine when we returned and will be great. But what Jeremiah says that people would God tell Jeremiah to say to the people is to accept the reality of their Exile into Babylon to settle down to start families. Have children to find spouses for their children to be good citizens of the land that they're being sent into Exile in. Because God plans to leave them there until Babylon is no more which is of course what happens in the end of Babylon falls to the Persian and the Persians later come through in and I send people back surgeries on but the important thing here is is that that message was not one. That was very well liked by the king and others around him who wanted to kind of throw off the Yoke of Babylon. Remind me a lot of enemies political enemies. And in fact on more than one occasion, they threatened to to kill him if I can hear you that I believe he's under a rest when when Baruch would eat when he quit the thing as a group. That's why I tell her I can't leave here cuz he's under arrest. They send the proof in his place. So Jeremiah had a very difficult time.

The book itself is interesting in that in its current form It Was Written really for the survivors of the Exile. There was a war there was a seed there was death and destruction the city was burned. and the people were carried off into Exile and some fled to Egypt and so the book is being read in the context of the survivors of this catastrophe and they're trying to understand they're trying to understand how God could allow this to happen they're trying to understand how considering the Covenant that God has made with them as God people how God allowed them to be carried away from the promised land for the land and got a promise to them how God allowed them to experience the horrors of war and exile and what they were supposed to do now that they were so distant from their Homeland. But were they how are they going to live? How are they going to to to continue forward? What did it mean to worship? Yahweh to worship the god of Israel? When you weren't in Israel when you didn't have access to the temple anymore.

And join very long and in any in the book of Jeremiah, we see kind of three different takes on this idea this idea by the way, how how does God allow evil in the world the the name of this in and kind of academic research is called The Odyssey The Odyssey, how how does how does God allow evil? Why is that love evil and Jeremiah has kind of three different? Takes on this and then I kind of the the most shallow reading of the other text what we see is Jeremiah telling the people that it's their fault that they have they have fallen away from God's Commandments. They've been worshipping other God they have been doing the things that God told him not to do both the people and more perhaps more importantly the leaders the kings of of Judah and so God has come in and has I'm destroyed Jerusalem because of their actions

But they're II reading there other. Are there other packages were where Jeremiah says that this is really all part of God's plan that God build up and tear down God got plants and and harvest and Destroy them creates over and over as part of God's larger plan because God has a long a longer Vision than we do and understand things in the atom in a more big picture way than we can possibly do it. We can possibly understand them. And the third set of writings talks about this idea that that the horrors of War and the the violence and the terrible things that people had to experience. We're not really from God at all that that that got that they're there or some reason here where God is kind of removed from this and it's about the Babylonians in the end of people more. And I think these are probably the three main takes on theodicy and it's interesting to see people. Really? Dealing with it look grappling with this question. So far back in history and yet we've we've come up with basically the same kind of answers either. We did something wrong and God is punishing us for all we've done. Or it's all part of God's plan and we just can't see the plan until we can't appreciate how this horrible things happen to us is actually for our own good or for the good of the community as a whole. Or the evil have nothing to do with God. And evil is our own creation or is he in some readings created by Satan or buy another and they're being but it's what I'm for whatever reason is if not from God. I think it's Christians. We we often kind of hold these three ideas in intention with one another. Sometimes we want to stay that our actions because our actions lead to 2 results. An American in the American psyche than what I think of his idea, which most Americans don't understand and its original contacts, but they think if I have if I do something good something good happens to me if I have something bad that something bad happens to me in this was very much the idea of the temple priests. I am second temple Judaism to sew a lot of a lot of stuff in here like that, but the king's isn't bad. And so the people just being bad and so the City was destroyed, but I think that that I know it is important as it's so important understand there are consequences to your actions one of the things people kind of say about Universal them Chris universal time is that you get off scot-free there are no consequences to your actions and we will definitely say that's not true. They're definitely consequences to your actions is definitely a time of of Correction for everybody if I don't to go to the side and completely but at the same time I think that often thinking about what did I do wrong that led to this is just not always helpful and then if we turn and think about what's going on right now in the world covid-19 and the pandemic and all of the death and sickness and economic disaster that we seen in the world because of it We have the same question that I see that the the judeans had in Exile in Babylon. How would God allow this to happen to us? I certainly don't think it's because Society is not living up to God's laws there. Certainly Christian. You think this you know the most most spectacularly, I guess the Westboro Baptist Church, which I did, you know. Is Christianity a very wide contacts here Wednesday? Cuz I don't I don't think there really a Churchman too much more of a cult specially considering the composition of them and what not. But none the less. This is kind of what they believe that the people that are not living up to God Commandments. And so all this horrible stuff going to happen. But I just don't I don't believe that. II need to be it could be part of God's larger plan. And this is that idea that is often. Someone's first response when they are confronted with real pain or misery. So when someone approaches them, especially a believer and that I just can't understand why this is happening to me. I don't understand. I don't understand why my grandfather died of covid-19. He we took all the precautions. We we did that we did everything we were supposed to do. And yet, you know, he died because because a you know a single person that's a caregiver. I was sick and didn't know it. right

Why would God do this to me? right and sometimes referred answer can be well, it's all part of God's plan and we can't know what that is, but we have to have faith in God. That is not a helpful thing to say to somebody that situation most time most times. That is not helpful.

Because what does that mean?

What does it mean that means that God needed this person to die of this disease? Why?

I think the third option.

It really the best one.

This evil does not come from God.

Sometimes bad things happen.

And it sucks. There's nothing we can do about it. There's no way we can get around it. But it didn't happen because of our failure. And it didn't happen. Because it's part of a larger plan. It just happened.

I'm a bit in a kind of bigger more specific way is because of our failure you could say and the reason why the panda make it so bad is because lots of little failures lots of little problems.

You know, we have one point five million people dead worldwide from this pandemic and of those one out of six are in the United States. More than 250,000 people dead.

Considering the population density of United States compared to other countries that have had problems with the Vault with the pandemic.

We did something wrong. right so when I'm big picture systemic kind of way, yes there it's a kind of you know, we did something we didn't do everything we could do to prevent it, but it's not because Gay people are getting married and it's not because you know, there's rampant Atheism in the country. And if you know that it's not if paraben off the office lease option on oven setting of all the Hurricanes are because you know because of the gays or whatever, I mean, that's just that that's just not how God works in my in my opinion and of course you made it to disagree with me and that's fine, but I can't imagine a God who works like that who would who would harm millions of innocent people because of the the actions of a small component of a society I just don't accept believe that so I we see in Jeremiah the same the same questions and we have them today. I think that this is a text that I haven't read Dragon very much like Wright bits and pieces. I've been out of the whole tax in preparation for the sermon this week. I sat and read a large chunk of the book and it just struck me it struck me how how meaningful the text was given our current situation how similar it is now like hahaha and where we are now to the judeans an exile in Babylon. Away from our homes away from our family is not allowed to do the things we want to do not allowed to worship perhaps in the way. We want to worship. We can't get together.

we have to wear masks we have to Listen to what? Being told by the scientist and those who are trying to keep us safe. And sucks. and yet Your God tell Jeremiah is. You just have to settle in you have to make a family make a life. Give to the city that you're in.

God says because when Babylon has had their 70 years they'll be over. and the people will return to Jerusalem in the 70 years here meant a lifetime in their case cement some nonspecific long amount of time

that guy code is very similar. Luckily, I won't be 70 years, but it'll probably be another year. we have to learn to live with it in a very real in a real way. Change our lives in a very real way just like that. You didn't have to learn to live in Exile in Babylon and change their faith and find new ways to worship God in that environment just as we are finding new ways, but the the final message of Jeremiah is Hope

all of this pain all of the suffering all of this.

evil What happened? But there's hope that when this is over the people will return and then in the meantime, the community will continue to exist the community will continue to move forward. And that's why we have now too. And I didn't kind of with this idea of the New Covenant. And this this reading from Jeremiah about the New Covenant is very important because I had to Christianity because it's quoted in the in the New Testament actually the New Testament. I'll buy it that that section of the Bible we call the New Testament is called the New Testament because of this passage talking about the New Covenant in Jesus talks about how he is bringing the New Covenant. And are you Christopher verse? We talked about the New Covenant in Jesus's blood. And so for Christians the New Covenant is very important because it is through the New Covenant that those outside of the tribes of Israel that the rest of the nations are brought in tracking info and reconciliation with God the Jewish people, of course are as well there. Can you continue but everybody, you know, everybody has brought in it and it says in the reading Even it says that it says I will put my instructions within them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people 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 for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.

This is the real good news

The universalism of the New Covenant this idea that all are welcome all are forgiven all are reconciled with God.

And that's our hope. That's our hope that Christians is to remember that we will all be reconciled with God no matter what happens in this life. Of course. We ought to have so much hope in this life. We don't want to be a people only looking forward to death of course, but there's so much hope in this life. We have so much. Hope going forward. 4 things to improve we see things beginning to turn as far as the pandemic is concerned we see. vaccines Being tested we see.

government taking things more seriously we see hope at the end of the pain but there's still a lot of pain to go through just as he's Judy and said a lot of pain to go through as they were have they found themselves in Exile in Babylon.

so Ali move forward reason why is it that I think the free income. Because we're moving forward into Advent into the season before we celebrate the birth of Jesus. and the season of advent is the the the waiting the fusion of waiting for the Messiah to appear waiting for Jesus to come into this reading is here because it shows The first glimpse of that hope that God will create a new covenant that God will bring a new leader from the line of David. Can through that new leader this New Covenant will come into being. Have you gone through add event for the next four Sundays will be it will move towards that. Hope the hope it is. It's Jesus. but for now, I hope that

we all have hope in the now in the present. remember that I know it sucks not being able to see your fit your family. Happy as someone who lives on the other side of the world to my family. I get it.

I'd really hoped to go back to the US long before now to see my family but instead Zoom is all I have and that's okay. I hope that everyone stay safe this Thanksgiving holiday in the u.s. And through the Christmas holidays. And all the family gatherings would normally have I hope that everyone stay safe. The focusing on the horrors of now how God could do this to us now try to stay focused on the hope of what is Yet to Come the hope that we are going to move through this and that we're going to be okay at the community together. Community focused on Hope Community focused on the reconciliation of the world

I'm at.