Jeremiah 31:33 – God's Claimed People
33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Jeremiah 31:33, New King James Version
I befriended Yael when we cofounded a Facebook group in tribute to Aaron Sorkin's show of one-season wonder Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I described myself aspirationally and maybe ostentatiously for a first meeting as the Harriet of these kinds of groups. I aspire to be what the comedienne on the show was, a Christian living to shine light, in context but in unexpected places. Her frontier of faith was late-night comedy within the fictional framework of the show. Mine was to integrate the Gospel authentically into conversations on secular pop culture.
Eyeing each other from across the Atlantic, we recognized that we shared a love for quality wording often missing in a culture of banality. We also shared a ferreting enthusiasm for finding larger meaning in mass entertainment. She was writing her PhD thesis, in fact, on the notion of the American hero in entertainment before and after 9/11.
Co-mingled with these commonalities, we shared an insistence on finding out the back story. As I was the only Christian she knew from her background as a non-practicing Jewish atheist, she zeroed in on the origin of our divergence. Her most pointed but polite questions centered around my family's belief system. She probed for the possibility that my faith was handed to me from the culture around me along with the values of what was acceptable, and what pointed toward the heroic, on television.
She has biblical company in leaning toward the likelihood that faith is humanly handed off. Some of the indifference or indignation Jeremiah faced earlier in the book that bears his name is of this sort. The Lord will punish US like you say, Jeremiah. We are His people. We have a guarantee of that with His Temple here among us.
I'm more interested, though, in identity given vertically by God to men rather than claimed by men to each other that they are His. This is the resounding answer of Jeremiah 31:33. As I marvel at it, the full work of sovereign grace is not that I was born among people who could call on God's Name, who knew the fullness of His revelation in Christ, though I was, and I am grateful. As my relatives and mentors were commanded, they surrounded me with the principles of God's Word.
As He says in Romans 10:17, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." By staggering, persistent, transformative grace, that Word wasn't just dropped on me once with its awesome responsibility. It was lived before me as my family rose up, and laid down, and went about life's ways in true Deuteronomy 6:6-10 saturation. This was just as Yael would have expected.
Yet authentic identification as one of God's people does not come about as a touchstone, given to some proceeding in this cultural slot and not to others simply according to the norms into which they are born. Men may CALL their kindred, cultural and biological, God's people according to a shared history, a common vocabulary, and inculcated ritual. But what matters infinitely more is whom GOD calls His people. This is Jeremiah 31:33's revolutionary prerogative.
Charles Spurgeon marvels in his sermon "A New Heart" in a way that works is immeasurable contrast to God's centuries-long cultural nurturing described in Jeremiah 33:32. "To sanctify a man is a work of the whole life; but to give a man a new heart is the work of an incident in one solitary second, swifter than the lightning flash God can put a new heart into a man and make him a new creature in Christ Jesus.“
HE calls His those to whom He gives a new heart. He carefully traces the best case scenario of faith imparted by the combined conspiracy of heredity and environment and declares it dead on arrival. His dealings with past ages were good, as Paul says the Law itself was good, but true faith is not imparted by heredity or environment. God who started the biological heart beating is the one Who grants eyes to see and ears to hear, the One Who will call His from every tribe and tongue according to Revelation.
With or without early exposure, with or without lifelong, faith-filled models, God can quicken according to His purposes to display His glory. Those to whom He is an altogether new experience have less to unlearn, fewer human norms to forget as governors whispering, this is how far faith goes, and no farther. In true newness of faith without limits, sometimes they most readily go forward with the candid question at which Paul, moments before Saul, arrives: "Lord, what do You want me to do?"
Whether God brought us to the realization of the new heart He imparted gradually or suddenly, the impact is compounding, even exponential over the time He grants us to walk with Him by faith. Matthew Sink contrasts, ""Because of sin, we lost our idea of who God created us to be. Once you know the name inside of you is Jesus Christ," Sink challenges, likening us to the renamed Peter, "every decision is filtered through that identity"
I befriended Yael when we cofounded a Facebook group in tribute to Aaron Sorkin's show of one-season wonder Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I described myself aspirationally and maybe ostentatiously for a first meeting as the Harriet of these kinds of groups. I aspire to be what the comedienne on the show was, a Christian living to shine light, in context but in unexpected places. Her frontier of faith was late-night comedy within the fictional framework of the show. Mine was to integrate the Gospel authentically into conversations on secular pop culture.
Eyeing each other from across the Atlantic, we recognized that we shared a love for quality wording often missing in a culture of banality. We also shared a ferreting enthusiasm for finding larger meaning in mass entertainment. She was writing her PhD thesis, in fact, on the notion of the American hero in entertainment before and after 9/11.
Co-mingled with these commonalities, we shared an insistence on finding out the back story. As I was the only Christian she knew from her background as a non-practicing Jewish atheist, she zeroed in on the origin of our divergence. Her most pointed but polite questions centered around my family's belief system. She probed for the possibility that my faith was handed to me from the culture around me along with the values of what was acceptable, and what pointed toward the heroic, on television.
She has biblical company in leaning toward the likelihood that faith is humanly handed off. Some of the indifference or indignation Jeremiah faced earlier in the book that bears his name is of this sort. The Lord will punish US like you say, Jeremiah. We are His people. We have a guarantee of that with His Temple here among us.
I'm more interested, though, in identity given vertically by God to men rather than claimed by men to each other that they are His. This is the resounding answer of Jeremiah 31:33. As I marvel at it, the full work of sovereign grace is not that I was born among people who could call on God's Name, who knew the fullness of His revelation in Christ, though I was, and I am grateful. As my relatives and mentors were commanded, they surrounded me with the principles of God's Word.
As He says in Romans 10:17, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." By staggering, persistent, transformative grace, that Word wasn't just dropped on me once with its awesome responsibility. It was lived before me as my family rose up, and laid down, and went about life's ways in true Deuteronomy 6:6-10 saturation. This was just as Yael would have expected.
Yet authentic identification as one of God's people does not come about as a touchstone, given to some proceeding in this cultural slot and not to others simply according to the norms into which they are born. Men may CALL their kindred, cultural and biological, God's people according to a shared history, a common vocabulary, and inculcated ritual. But what matters infinitely more is whom GOD calls His people. This is Jeremiah 31:33's revolutionary prerogative.
Charles Spurgeon marvels in his sermon "A New Heart" in a way that works is immeasurable contrast to God's centuries-long cultural nurturing described in Jeremiah 33:32. "To sanctify a man is a work of the whole life; but to give a man a new heart is the work of an incident in one solitary second, swifter than the lightning flash God can put a new heart into a man and make him a new creature in Christ Jesus.“
HE calls His those to whom He gives a new heart. He carefully traces the best case scenario of faith imparted by the combined conspiracy of heredity and environment and declares it dead on arrival. His dealings with past ages were good, as Paul says the Law itself was good, but true faith is not imparted by heredity or environment. God who started the biological heart beating is the one Who grants eyes to see and ears to hear, the One Who will call His from every tribe and tongue according to Revelation.
With or without early exposure, with or without lifelong, faith-filled models, God can quicken according to His purposes to display His glory. Those to whom He is an altogether new experience have less to unlearn, fewer human norms to forget as governors whispering, this is how far faith goes, and no farther. In true newness of faith without limits, sometimes they most readily go forward with the candid question at which Paul, moments before Saul, arrives: "Lord, what do You want me to do?"
Whether God brought us to the realization of the new heart He imparted gradually or suddenly, the impact is compounding, even exponential over the time He grants us to walk with Him by faith. Matthew Sink contrasts, ""Because of sin, we lost our idea of who God created us to be. Once you know the name inside of you is Jesus Christ," Sink challenges, likening us to the renamed Peter, "every decision is filtered through that identity"
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