Jeremiah 31:31 – A Mutual Dependence Clears History's Hurdles
31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… Jeremiah 31:31, New King James Version
My brother and I, as yet separated by the yawning biblical chasm between lost and saved, were watching his children swim. The two oldest were plunging from the side of the pool into its depths, delighted. The youngest, and on other fronts the bravest, wasn't so sure. I commented, and my brother was patiently philosophical. Even if, he said, the youngest waits another year before being ready to dive in, he's still ahead of the pace set by the other two.
That my brother maintained such calm geniality in this conversation is remarkable, and not just because at the time he didn't know the Lord. Jesus said even the evil could be good parents. My brother's unwillingness to push or even come in critically was completely averse to the example he knew in me. I was the censorious, perpetually crabby older brother.
"Mom," I remember sanctioning out loud, "he's making up words!" I was perpetually scoring that my brother, three years younger and much more of a free spirit, with not doing this or that right in my eyes and on my timetable.
I consider this compared to the freedom of the Spirit of the Lord as announced in Jeremiah 31:31. Judah is enough of a mess for the Lord to admonish through Jeremiah. Their Temple will fall, and with it their sense of self-centered and readily processed religious security. Move them out. Bring them back. Inculcate their dependence upon Yahweh, from the least to the greatest, from the virgins to the priests. In all this, ring out restoration to the ears of the listening nations. Surely that's enough to glorify God.
No, let's raise the bar, God seems to say in His commitment to show He is still in the business of comprehensive newness. That preceding insistence on individual accountability, He meant that. He meant that to such a degree that by it He will rewrite history. Where the legacy of Israel and Judah diverged, God can bring healing and a sense of mutual accountability to Him.
Where Rehoboam's heavy hand as Solomon's immature heir prompted the fracturing of what Headman on people for generations, God could, He says, make on people with one covenant. Each of us, He will show, have Rehoboam's heart to overstretch prerogatives.
Each of us have the seceding tribes of Israel's heart to withdraw from inconvenient or less than winningly expressed authority. Moreover, when withdrawing Israel resents distance as much as they resented the stricture of unity and attempts to build idols in case they are cut off by true worship, we have that in our hearts as well.
These are, Christian, the vain imaginations Christ will cast down. He addresses the hurts of our history, the atavism of our tribal tendencies, with both gentleness and aplomb. Did this part of His flock come to understand this about Him first? So be it. Time is His to reveal, and woo, and redeem. Those He wins will celebrate Him beyond time's constraints. Did that part of His flock walk less boldly by faith, showing their dependence on sight either by being overbearing or by being satisfied with worshiping what was near to hand? So be it. As the conviction He brings is personal, so is the redemptive story He fashions.
As we mature, then, the differences in plot lines by which we come to Him will be interesting, a spark for celebration rather than divisiveness. Every culture is an imperfect alloy. All of its assumptions within which we travel so blithely, with so much readiness to compare our tribe favorably to others, will need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
By the discernment which the Holy Spirit grants, even as we walk, belonging more to the customs of this shire than to others, we can sift the assumptions bequeathed to us for aspects of HIS story, and for aspects to be shed as we are made into a people, one in Him, who were not a people beforehand. Our Israel and Judah angles still exist, but they are put in perspective by our mutual gratitude and eternal identity.
My brother and I, as yet separated by the yawning biblical chasm between lost and saved, were watching his children swim. The two oldest were plunging from the side of the pool into its depths, delighted. The youngest, and on other fronts the bravest, wasn't so sure. I commented, and my brother was patiently philosophical. Even if, he said, the youngest waits another year before being ready to dive in, he's still ahead of the pace set by the other two.
That my brother maintained such calm geniality in this conversation is remarkable, and not just because at the time he didn't know the Lord. Jesus said even the evil could be good parents. My brother's unwillingness to push or even come in critically was completely averse to the example he knew in me. I was the censorious, perpetually crabby older brother.
"Mom," I remember sanctioning out loud, "he's making up words!" I was perpetually scoring that my brother, three years younger and much more of a free spirit, with not doing this or that right in my eyes and on my timetable.
I consider this compared to the freedom of the Spirit of the Lord as announced in Jeremiah 31:31. Judah is enough of a mess for the Lord to admonish through Jeremiah. Their Temple will fall, and with it their sense of self-centered and readily processed religious security. Move them out. Bring them back. Inculcate their dependence upon Yahweh, from the least to the greatest, from the virgins to the priests. In all this, ring out restoration to the ears of the listening nations. Surely that's enough to glorify God.
No, let's raise the bar, God seems to say in His commitment to show He is still in the business of comprehensive newness. That preceding insistence on individual accountability, He meant that. He meant that to such a degree that by it He will rewrite history. Where the legacy of Israel and Judah diverged, God can bring healing and a sense of mutual accountability to Him.
Where Rehoboam's heavy hand as Solomon's immature heir prompted the fracturing of what Headman on people for generations, God could, He says, make on people with one covenant. Each of us, He will show, have Rehoboam's heart to overstretch prerogatives.
Each of us have the seceding tribes of Israel's heart to withdraw from inconvenient or less than winningly expressed authority. Moreover, when withdrawing Israel resents distance as much as they resented the stricture of unity and attempts to build idols in case they are cut off by true worship, we have that in our hearts as well.
These are, Christian, the vain imaginations Christ will cast down. He addresses the hurts of our history, the atavism of our tribal tendencies, with both gentleness and aplomb. Did this part of His flock come to understand this about Him first? So be it. Time is His to reveal, and woo, and redeem. Those He wins will celebrate Him beyond time's constraints. Did that part of His flock walk less boldly by faith, showing their dependence on sight either by being overbearing or by being satisfied with worshiping what was near to hand? So be it. As the conviction He brings is personal, so is the redemptive story He fashions.
As we mature, then, the differences in plot lines by which we come to Him will be interesting, a spark for celebration rather than divisiveness. Every culture is an imperfect alloy. All of its assumptions within which we travel so blithely, with so much readiness to compare our tribe favorably to others, will need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.
By the discernment which the Holy Spirit grants, even as we walk, belonging more to the customs of this shire than to others, we can sift the assumptions bequeathed to us for aspects of HIS story, and for aspects to be shed as we are made into a people, one in Him, who were not a people beforehand. Our Israel and Judah angles still exist, but they are put in perspective by our mutual gratitude and eternal identity.
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