Jeremiah 31:32c – A Sometimes Subtle Change of Sovereigns

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— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt…" Jeremiah 31:31-32c, New King James Version

My former pastor was born and deaf-mute. He is asked by the curious whether God healed him or whether he went to therapy. He says both. But at the time, as a child, he reflects that he didn't know about the process that was going on. He didn't know he was disabled, and he didn't know he was in speech therapy. He just thought he was following along, playing games with the nice lady who turned out to be a speech therapist.

There is something of this in the Lord's overview of the deliverance of His people from Egypt in Jeremiah 31:32. Yes, he led them out of Egypt. Yes, they changed statuses and sovereigns as well as locations. These dramatic changes took place, visible in retrospect, but their actualization was a matter of taking Him by the hand, a personal, gradual process of depending on Him for the day's manna and directions.

My former pastor had the advantage, I think, in participating in this sort of transformation as a child. Children live in the moment, can have their hearts captivated by thoughtful influences with big goals in mind they can't conceptualize. Those of us who undergo the far more thorough therapy of sanctification as adults, we tend to live the life described on a T-shirt I saw it recently: "wait a minute while I overanalyze this."

Having some idea by God's grace that have been transformed from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, I want to know at exactly what moment it happened. Having noticed that some strongholds of the old way of thinking have fallen by Christ's gracious power, I want to know exactly when and how so I can reenact the process with the same results, often with Him as Bystander this time. I am more partial to process than play, more partial to perfecting the skill of MY hands than continuing to grasp His to be led in His timing from glory to glory.

With this my curious and sometimes querulous quest to know exactly when I cross this line of spiritual maturity, exactly when this stronghold fell, no wonder the Lord calls us back to first love! No wonder as discerning a student of sanctification as John Piper's confesses, "God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them." Did those following in obedience and expedience in the Exodus know they were participating in what would be used as a type of baptism thousands of years later? Certainly not. They celebrated God's goodness by obeying in the moment. They, consciously or not, let Him draw the big picture on which they were but pixels.

So can we, and rejoice in it. We can be led by His hand. We can pick up His manna and be grateful for it every morning. We can focus on the equivalent of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, asking Him to guide us incrementally and grateful when He does. As we let go of our growth charts and our reputations, He can prosper both. This vulnerable band, after all, struck fear in Rahab's countrymen because of what God was doing through them as they followed and dependent on Him. Let us, then, play in today and know that He uses it as the grist of transformation.


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