Jeremiah 31
Devotional by Pastor Lawrence
Although chapter twenty-nine of Jeremiah is probably the most well-known by church members today, it is chapter thirty-one that is most familiar to pastors, for it is a pivotal chapter in the progressive history of God’s redemption. It contains the promise of a new covenant that builds upon the Adamic covenant (Gen. 2-3; Hos. 6:7); the Noahic covenant (Gen. 8-9), the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 12 15, 17), the Mosaic Covenant (Ex. 19-20), and the Davidic Covenant (2 Sam. 7). The Lord initiated each one of these previous covenants with their particular promises and stipulations to point God’s people to Christ who was to come. Each one of them built upon the others and added a little more revelation, glory and grace to help them in their relationship with God, but they weren’t complete apart from Christ.
Now about six hundred years prior to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, Jeremiah foresees the establishment of a new covenant, the final one. In verse thirty-one, he says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” It is this very language that Jesus uses in the upper room during the Lord’s Supper to show his disciples the meaning behind his impending death and resurrection. Upon giving them the cup of wine he says to them in Luke 22:20 “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” But what is this new covenant?
Jeremiah sees only a foretaste of it, but what he sees is glorious. In vv.33-34, the Lord, speaking through him, says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, 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.”
This covenant that would apply to both Jews and Gentiles who come to God by faith in Jesus Christ would also build upon the previous covenants, for it would not abolish the law and the prophets but rather uphold them. This covenant administered by the power of the Holy Spirit would write these same laws on the heart of all believers that were at one time written merely upon stone. Thus the Holy Spirit himself would both teach God’s people the knowledge of the Lord and make them willing and able to keep God’s law in a way that they had not known before. With the victory of Christ in conquering the grave, the Holy Spirit would grant the spoils of war to all his people enabling them to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
But this would only happen as a result of the blood of Christ poured out for the sins of his people. The greatest promise of the New Covenant is that God’s people can know the assurance of God’s love and favor through the sacrifice of his son Jesus. All the sacrifices that were ordered and performed continually throughout the Old Testament accomplished nothing in themselves. They all were merely signs and ceremonies pointing to the perfect sacrifice of God’s own son. Once he laid down his life for his brothers, they could know that their iniquities were indeed forgiven and that God would remember their sins no more.
This is an important announcement of good news for God’s people during Jeremiah’s time, for they were at that very moment experiencing a portion of God’s wrath because of their many sins and because of their waywardness in breaking God’s covenant. But this new covenant restored their confidence in the Lord rather than in themselves. They were a helpless people, a sinful people, who fully deserved God’s condemnation, but even in this midst of His wrath, He remembered mercy.
And that same promise of mercy is granted to us who have sinned even today. Even now, his Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come and reminds us of the perfect works of Christ, his perfect sacrifice on the cross, and his perfect justice that will be administered on the final day to all who do not trust in the name of Jesus. He then works faith and repentance into our hearts to turn to Christ, to know him and to love him, to serve him and obey him. He helps us once again to see the beauty and goodness of God’s law and instills in us a desire and ability to walk in God’s ways and to keep his commandments as friends of God.
Indeed, this is a very precious promise of grace given to a people who are under discipline, who have squandered God’s riches, and who have forsaken him for some other god. But that is why it is called good news, for it is not given to good people.