Christmas at the Castle – Part 4

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Old Testament studies from Jeremiah 30-31.

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“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess,” says the Lord.’

These are the words the Lord spoke concerning Israel and Judah: ‘This is what the Lord says: “Cries of fear are heard—terror, not peace. Ask and see: Can a man bear children? Then why do I see every strong man with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor, every face turned deathly pale? How awful that day will be! None will be like it.

It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it. In that day,” declares the Lord Almighty, “I will break the yoke off their necks and will tear off their bonds; no longer will foreigners enslave them. Instead, they will serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

So do not fear, O Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, O Israel,” declares the Lord. “I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid. I am with you and will save you,” declares the Lord. “Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you but only with justice; I will not let you go entirely unpunished.”

This is what the Lord says: “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing. There is no one to plead your cause, no remedy for your sore, no healing for you. All your allies have forgotten you; they care nothing for you. I have struck you as an enemy would and punished you as would the cruel, because your guilt is so great and your sins so many. Why do you cry out over your wound, your pain that has no cure? Because of your great guilt and many sins I have done these things to you.

But all who devour you will be devoured; all your enemies will go into exile. Those who plunder you will be plundered; all who make spoil of you I will despoil. But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,” declares the Lord, “because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.”

This is what the Lord says: “I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents and have compassion on his dwellings; the city will be rebuilt on her ruins, and the palace will stand in its proper place. From them will come songs of thanksgiving and the sound of rejoicing. I will add to their numbers, and they will not be decreased; I will bring them honor, and they will not be disdained.

Their children will be as in days of old, and their community will be established before me; I will punish all who oppress them. Their leader will be one of their own; their ruler will arise from among them. I will bring him near and he will come close to me, for who is he who will devote himself to be close to me?” declares the Lord. “So you will be my people, and I will be your God.” ’

See, the storm of the Lord will burst out in wrath, a driving wind swirling down on the heads of the wicked. The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come you will understand this.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

The four chapters of Jeremiah 30 through 33 constitute a unit full of promise and hope. Up until now, we’ve seen that most of the material in the chapters that we’ve read … even though a bit of hope and anticipation peeks through now and then … has been pretty bleak, but here is the promise of recovery and restoration. Indeed, it is more than mere restoration but something better than what the people have ever enjoyed in the past. Previous blessings will be entirely eclipsed in the splendor of God’s lavish grace in these four chapters.

Sometimes these chapters are called the book of hope or the book of consolation. Hope, first, of return to the land after exile (which dominates chapter 30 that I’ve just read) and second, hope for spiritual renewal bound up with the enactment of a promised new covenant (which dominates chapter 31, which we’ll read in a few minutes).

The two are not entirely disparate. That is, the two hopes overlap now and then, but they’re distinguishable. This hope of return to the land after the exile and a return to God himself in renewed, transformed relationship enacted by a new covenant. The past, clearly, just from what we’ve read already, is not forgotten. The sins and the judgments have been so deep, so awful, and so wretched that they can’t be wiped out as if they’re not there. But now there is also life and hope because of what God himself will do.

We don’t have time to run right through chapters 30 to 33. We’ll scan chapters 30 and 31 only, and even here, we’ll spend disproportionate time on chapter 31 and even more disproportionate time on one part of chapter 31. Still, it’s worth getting a feel for the whole thing.

1. Restoration to the land

Chapter 30. There is a brief introduction in the chapter: verses 1 to 3. Jeremiah is told to write a book. That’s actually quite unusual among the prophets. Most of the prophets gave their oracles, and then they were collected. Sometimes, doubtless, they were collected by the prophets themselves and sometimes by others, by a disciple.

That’s the implication of Amos 1, for example, or of Isaiah 8:16. “Bind up the testimony and seal up the law among my disciples.” That is, the disciples have a kind of collecting function. But here, Jeremiah is told to write a book, and if you read the rest of it, you discover that he does so by dictation. He has a scribe to do it, not unlike the apostle Paul, who sometimes uses a chap called Tertius. Here, Jeremiah uses a chap called Baruch.

In fact, it’s worth mentioning, on the side, that this generates a passage that we’re supposed to find very funny. A little farther on in the book, when Jeremiah is in deep water with the authorities again (he is under arrest), along comes one of those authorities and tears off the book that Jeremiah has written. Page by page, he tears it off and dumps each part that he tears off in the fire.

You’re supposed to be killing yourself laughing when you hear that, because this was given by God. Has God forgotten what he said? If it depends on Jeremiah, doubtless it can’t be reconstructed perfectly, but you’re supposed to remember that God has said all of this. So the way it’s restored is that God says it again to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah dictates it to Baruch, and Baruch writes it up again. It’s better than a tape recorder! God doesn’t forget.

That’s the way we’re supposed to read these chapters. God wants this written down as a kind of sign of authority, of guarantee, of what God himself has said. In fact, it’s worth pausing for a further reflection here. Christians regularly say that the Bible is inspired, no doubt, but it is important to recognize that there are different modes of inspiration. It’s not all the same way.

Here, Jeremiah is told exactly what to say. That can also be the case, for example, in some of the prophecies of Daniel. He gets some visions, is told what to say, puts it down in a book, and doesn’t even understand what he himself has written. Then he turns to God and says, “Do you mind just telling me what I’ve just written down? I don’t mind being a secretary, but I’d like to know what I’ve written.” God frankly tells him, “Daniel, it’s none of your flipping business. Seal it up. It’s for a later time.”

In fact, I’ve had some secretaries like that over the years. A number of years ago, I had a secretary who was a very capable woman. I didn’t know then, but she used to have a joke with other secretaries in the divinity faculty about “Carson’s word for the day.” What she meant by that was some word or other that I’d used in dictation. I’d give her these cassette tapes full of letters and so on, and she’d stumble across some word or other than she’d never heard before, whose meaning and spelling she had no idea of.

Often, these letters have to do with projects or giving theological advice to someone, and I’d thrown in these words. I mean, how often does the average secretary know what supralapsarianism is? So in all fairness, they had this joke going for four years before I found out about “Carson’s word of the day”!

Occasionally, I would give her something to type up and then, afterward, I would comment, “Did you notice what I said to so-and-so?” “No, I didn’t notice.” Because, you see, it went, somehow, from her earplugs all the way through to her fingers on the computer without passing through any thoughtful part of her brain. She didn’t know what the text said; she just transcribed it.

She was very good at it; there were almost no mistakes. If she didn’t know a word, she’d look it up in the dictionary and make note of things that needed clarification. When she was done she’d give me back some options in the manuscript that I was supposed to check: “Did you mean this, this, this, or this?” So she was very careful, but that didn’t mean she understood what I was saying.

Sometimes God uses the mode of dictation, and dear ol’ Daniel himself doesn’t understand, but there are other times when that’s clearly not what’s going on. David comes in from a hard day, and it’s not as if he curls himself up, ready for sleep, when a voice somehow says, “David, not yet. Dictation time.” “All right, all right.” So he gets out his quill feather pen, dips it in some ink, and gets the parchment ready. “All right, here we go. Write the following: The Lord …”

“The Lord …”

“… is my shepherd.”

“… is my shepherd.”

“I shall lack …”

“I shall lack …”

“… nothing.”

“… nothing.”

Give me a break! David is writing out of his experience. This is what he feels and knows. No doubt, he is superintended by God and so guarded by him, in God’s wisdom and providence and sovereignty, that what David puts down is, in fact, what God wants him to put down. This is no less the Word of the Lord, but the mode of inspiration, certainly, in that context, is not dictation.

Therefore, it is a heartfelt psalm. My former secretary didn’t feel very strongly about anything that I wrote, thank you. It didn’t have to pass through any thoughtful process in her brain. Nevertheless, when David writes Psalm 23, he’s speaking out of the deepest reflections of his own life and heart and thought.

It wouldn’t take long to recognize that there are other modes of inspiration that occur in Scripture as well. One should recognize that God, in the mystery of his wisdom and kindness, has given us his most Holy Word, not all of it dictated, but all of it verbal in the sense that what comes out is not less than what God wants to come out, but the modes of inspiration are remarkably diverse.

In any case, the book now puts Jeremiah in the same class as Moses, an actual writer of Scripture. What comes out in the part of the book that we know as Jeremiah 30 to 33 are 14 oracles, all centered on restoration and the like. Isn’t that what we read in verse 3? “ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity …’ ”

Notice both the North and the South? We’ve made that distinction before. “… and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess.” So we’re primarily, now, talking about the restoration of the people to the land. Let me run through the four oracles quickly. I’m not going to spend any time on them, I’m merely giving you enough of an outline now that you can think about them yourself.

A) God will break the yoke of enemy oppressors.

Verses 4 to 9. This will be in the context of conflict. So, “It will also be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it.” (Verse 7) As a result, “In that day, I will break the yoke off their necks and will tear off their bonds; no longer will foreigners enslave them.” (Verse 8)

In other words, it’s not just a matter of getting on the next train or airplane and getting back to the Promised Land. They are in captivity, so for them to return to the land, it is required that the oppressors, the overlords, be shattered and that their strength be reduced.

B) God will be with his people and save them.

Verses 10 to 11. The verb that is used is save, but in this context, it means to save them out of the curse of being in a distant place, away from the land of promise. “I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile.”

C) God will restore their health: their national, spiritual health.

Here, health is used as a metaphor for the well-being of the entire nation. In fact, there’s a kind of play that’s going on that’s really quite rich. This occupies verses 12 to 17. On the one hand, God can say, “Quite frankly, your wound is incurable. You have no spiritual health. In fact, yours is a hopeless case. It’s fatal. Your injury is beyond healing.”

Or you can put it into a judicial realm instead. It’s a metaphor, so now put it in a judicial metaphor: “There is no one to plead your cause …” Then back to a medical metaphor: “… no remedy for your sore, no healing for you.” Why? Verse 14: “I myself have struck you as an enemy would, because your guilt is so great and your sins so many.” Now you recall all of the earlier chapters and all of the emphasis on the wretchedness of the idolatry and God’s judgment upon them.

But, verses 16 and 17: “All of the oppressors whom I have used to oppress you are also held to account for all of their sins. All who devour you will be devoured; all your enemies will go into exile. Those who plunder you will be plundered; all who make spoil of you, I will despoil. But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.” So they’re not completely incurable after all.

They’re incurable in the normal course of events; that’s what it is saying. “You can’t cure them yourself, and you can’t find anyone else to heal them. It’s not as if your captivity is finally going to save you. There’s no other savior, but I will cure, I will heal, this incurable disease, this incurable malady, this wretched slavery to sin.” Verse 17: “ ‘You are an outcast now, Zion whom everyone despises, but I will heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord.” Verse 18: “This is what Lord says, I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents and have compassion on his dwellings.”

Thus, today, you don’t find many citizens of ancient Babylon or ancient Assyria running around the place. You still find God’s nation. You still find Jews running around the place. It’s remarkable. In fact, that point is one that he’s going to bring up again in chapter 31. It is not to be misunderstood; nevertheless, it is a remarkable reality. “I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents.”

D) God will restore their honor.

Verses 18 to 22. God will restore their honor. There will be rejoicing and thanksgiving. The city will be rebuilt, and so forth. All of this is slam-dunk certain. It is guaranteed. Verses 23 to 24: “The storm of the Lord will burst out in wrath, a driving wind swirling down on the heads of the wicked.” That is, not only the wicked of Israel and of Judah, but of these nations as well.

“The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he finally accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come you’ll understand it.” After all, at this point, the northern tribes have been off in captivity for almost a century. As far as the southern tribes, well, there have been one or two waves that have taken off some people, but the final destruction of Jerusalem has not yet taken place.

They haven’t yet swallowed the idea that they’re going off into captivity. So to hear promises that, ultimately, there is hope at the end of it, doesn’t mean much when they’re having a hard job believing Jeremiah is telling the truth when he says there’s going to be judgment first. “But in later times you’ll understand this.”

Can you imagine how much the prophecy of Jeremiah much have served to provide some hope in the darkest years of the exile, when it looked as if there was no way back at all? Daniel thought so. Do you remember at the end of the 70 years? He was reading the prophecy of Jeremiah and set himself to pray for his people.

“You promised, Lord God, in 70 years to return. The 70 years are coming up, and I don’t see a way back. Where are your promises, Lord God?” These promises were all grounded in prophecies given even before the exile for the South had begun. “In later times,” God says, “you will understand this.”

2. Restoration to God

 Now I’m going to take time to read the next chapter. Part of it includes a number of oracles that interact with the restoration of the nation to the land, but also the restoration to God. We’ll run through some of them very quickly, take a little more time on a couple of them, and focus on the last one. Hear, then, what Scripture says in Jeremiah 31:

“ ‘At that time,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they will be my people.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘The people who survive the sword will find favor in the desert; I will come to give rest to Israel.’ The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel.

Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful. Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria; the farmers will plant them and enjoy their fruit. There will be a day when watchmen cry out on the hills of Ephraim, “Come, let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.” ’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations. Make your praises heard, and say, “O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.”

See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son.

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: “He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.” For the Lord will ransom Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they. They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord—the grain, the new wine and the oil, the young of the flocks and herds.

They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty,’ declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,’ declares the Lord. ‘They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your future,’ declares the Lord.

‘Your children will return to their own land. I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: “You disciplined me like an unruly calf, and I have been disciplined. Restore me, and I will return, because you are the Lord my God. After I strayed, I repented; after I came to understand, I beat my breast. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”

Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,’ declares the Lord. ‘Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take. Return, O Virgin Israel, return to your towns. How long will you wander, O unfaithful daughter? The Lord will create a new thing on earth—a woman will surround a man.’

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘When I bring them back from captivity, the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words: “The Lord bless you, O righteous dwelling, O sacred mountain.” People will live together in Judah and all its towns—farmers and those who move about with their flocks. I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.’ At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me.

‘The days are coming,” declares the Lord, ‘when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals. Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,’ declares the Lord. ‘In those days people will no longer say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.

The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord.

‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “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 wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’

This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord Almighty is his name: ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the Lord.

‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the hill of Gareb and then down to Goah. The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the Lord. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord.

At first glance, this chapter is better news that the previous chapter. Yes, it still is talking about some restoration to the land, here and there, but more fundamental, there is a restoration to the Lord. It’s quite remarkable. This is more fundamental precisely because, if there is restoration to land but not restoration to the Lord, the restoration to land is not going to be more than ephemeral. It’s not going to be more than temporary. There will be another cycle of rebellion and sin and destruction all over again. What we must have is restoration to God.

It’s worth pausing to think about that just a wee bit. Have you ever read the little book, The Sunflower? It was written by one of the survivors of the Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal. It’s only about 80 pages. Simon Wiesenthal’s entire family was wiped out. Toward the end of World War II, just before the Russians freed Auschwitz, he was on a work crew. As he came out to work … emaciated, thin, not able to survive much longer himself … he was suddenly pulled out of the line and told to go into a little room.

There was a young German soldier dying there, only 17 or 18 or 19 years old, just a kid. Clearly, he had received wounds that were so bad that this young man was not going to survive. He had asked to speak to a Jew to ask for forgiveness. In the peculiar providence of God, Wiesenthal was the one pulled out of the line and shoved into the room. This young soldier cried and begged for forgiveness, not only for what his nation had done but for what he, himself, had participated in, in cruelty and asked for forgiveness.

Most of the 80 pages of Wiesenthal’s book describe what goes on in Wiesenthal’s mind in the course of not more than a few seconds. Who has the right to forgive? Supposing on your way home from this conference, you are attacked, viciously beaten up, and perhaps gang raped. You end up in the hospital. So I delay my flight on Monday, and I go to see you.

By some peculiar circumstance, I found your attackers. As you’re lying there in the hospital with casts and patches and drips everywhere, very sore and ashamed and dirty and angry, I tell you, “Be of good cheer. I have found your attackers, and I have forgiven them.” What will you tell me? Won’t you be outraged, and rightly so? Because I wasn’t the one attacked. How can I pronounce forgiveness on someone who hasn’t offended me? It is only the one offended who can finally pronounce forgiveness.

That’s what happens, of course, in the case of the man who is lowered down by his friends through tiles in the roof before Jesus. He’s a paralytic, and he’s dropped down on them because the crowd wouldn’t let the men through. If you’re not going to let people in to Jesus because you’re selfish, then you might let them in because a bed is landing on your head.

When Jesus sees this paralytic, he says, “My son, your sins are forgiven you.” The crowd asks, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” This is ridiculous. This paralytic hasn’t offended Jesus. So if Jesus is forgiving this man’s sins, he’s taking the place of God. He’s acting as if he is in God’s place. Because, by all biblical assumptions everywhere, when we sin, the one most offended is always God. Always.

So when David commits adultery and murder, he eventually writes in Psalm 51, addressing God, “Against you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” Well, at one level, of course, that was a load of codswallop. It is utter nonsense at one level because, you see, he certainly sinned against Bathsheba; he seduced her.

He sinned against her husband; he had him killed. He sinned against his own family; he betrayed them. He sinned against the nation. He sinned against the military high command; he corrupted them to get the young man killed. It’s hard to think of anybody that he hasn’t sinned against! Yet he has the cheek to say, “Against you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

Yet, at the most profound level, that is exactly right, because the most offended party, the party who sees what you have done as offense against him, is God. If you cheat on your income tax, God is the most offended party. If you’re very angry with a co-worker, God is the most offended party. If you’re greedy, God is the most offended party. If you nurse bitterness, God is the most offended party. If you flame lust and watch pornography, God is the most offended party. Always. That is why, whatever else we have, we must have forgiveness from God.

Wiesenthal is reasoning these things out in his mind, as a Jew, as he watches that young German. His reasoning is: “The most offended parties of the Nazis are dead. I’m still alive. I’m not one of the most offended parties. How can I pronounce forgiveness? How can I give this young German soldier absolution when there are hundreds of thousands who have gone through the ovens? They’re not here to pronounce absolution. If only the offended parties may forgive, then I don’t have the right to forgive this German.”

So without saying a single word, he turned and walked out of the room. After the war was over, he wrote this up as this little book, The Sunflower, and he sent it around to a lot of world-class ethicists, Christians and Jews, in various corners of the world. He simply asked the question, “Did I do right? Was I right?”

It kicked off a huge discussion that is still referred to in ethicists’ literature to this day. Wiesenthal, you see, almost got it right. He did understand that only the offended party can forgive. What he did not understand is that God is the most offended party. Always. Christians learn to forgive because we have, ourselves, been forgiven by the most offended party.

So already, here, there is restoration to the land, but there must be restoration to God. If judgment comes upon the UK it’s not enough to have the kind of restoration that restores the economy, builds the infrastructure, gives us fine political leaders, and sees the economy booming. What we must have is restoration to God or we have nothing stable, nothing secure, and nothing worth much in the light of eternity. That, eventually, is what this chapter is about. We can go through some of these oracles rather quickly.

A) God restores his people to himself because, as the Father of his people, he has loved them from eternity.

Verses 1 to 9: “At that time, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel …” That is, north and south. “ ‘… and they will all be my people.’ Indeed, the Lord appeared to us in the past saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.’ ”

However wrathful he is against his people because of their sin, his choice of them is grounded in his own love for them in eternity past, before they were even born. “I will build you up again …” Do you see what he says in verse 4? The expression shows up one or two more times in these chapters. “I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel.”

All along, as we saw from the very first chapters, he has described Israel as a prostitute and a whore. There’s a kind of spiritual apostasy that’s taken place. It’s like the prophecy of Hosea. The people are whoring after all the other gods. In fact, earlier on, Israel is portrayed as a wild jackass in heat, waiting for some animal to come and have its way with her yet again. They are opening saying, “We don’t want to give up our gods. We love our gods.”

God becomes the almighty cuckold, and now, in restoring her, he refers to her as virgin Israel. How do you restore your virginity? It reminds you of what some of the other prophets say without the sexual metaphor. “I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten.” He not only forgives, but he starts you all over again. Christians who have been saved from really wretched backgrounds in life testify to that. “Your sins and your iniquities I remember no more.” So he keeps referring to Israel, now, not as the prostitute but as virgin Israel. It’s remarkable.

Then the metaphor changes again. He’s the Father of his people. Verse 9, “You see, I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son.” Ephraim, as we’ll see in a moment, is another name for the northern tribes. So God restores his people to himself because, as the Father of his people, he has loved them from eternity. At the end of the day, the solution is not in their perfection or even in the depth of their repentance but in the eternality of his covenant love.

B) God restores them to himself because, as the Shepherd of his flock, he ransoms them and redeems them from those stronger than they are.

Verses 10 to 14. Now through the prophet, God addresses the nations: “Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, proclaim it in distant coastlands. He who scattered Israel …” That is, among the nations. “… will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.”

Of course, in the ancient world, shepherds did not function exactly like the owners of great sheep-holding estates in Australia. Rather, in the ancient world, shepherds knew their individual flocks by name and led them. They were not only the ones who led them to green pastures but doctored them, looked after their sores, and protected them from wild animals (the way David did).

In other words, the shepherd is the ruler, as it were, of the flock. He is the protector, the healer, the guide, the one who feeds them, the one who nurtures them, the one who helps them, and the one who carries the young on his shoulders. God himself is now viewing these people, who he himself has scattered in judgment, as his own flock.

The people are not able to save themselves. They’re in captivity. But God is able to ransom them and redeem them because he’s the Shepherd. He’s stronger than the nations, and he restores them and brings them back. Verse 11: “He redeems them from the hand of those stronger than they. They will come and shout for joy.”

Of course, this shepherd language is picked up pretty often in the Old Testament. David, we saw, was a shepherd, but can write, “The Lord is my shepherd.” David is both a shepherd and a sheep, depending on the point of view. He is the shepherd of his own people. (In fact, the king of Israel is regularly referred to as the shepherd of Israel, and the priests and prophets are often collectively referred to as the shepherds of Israel as well). But David recognizes that, looked at from God’s point of view, he’s at most an under-shepherd. He himself is one of the sheep.

That happens in the New Testament, too, doesn’t it? We are the flock of his pasture, and yet the word pastor is simply from a Latin root that means shepherd. If you refer to Pastor So-and-So, you’re actually referring to Shepherd So-and-So. That’s all the word means. So we have one supreme Shepherd, and that language is drawn from these prophets as well.

In Ezekiel 34 … this Ezekiel who is speaking at about the same time that Jeremiah is speaking, except 700 miles away to those who are already in exile.… God says, “Woe to the shepherds of Israel.” That is, the priests, the royal family, and the prophets. They’ve led the people astray. We’ve seen that sort of language in Jeremiah, too, haven’t we? The prophets prophesy lies. The priests lead the people astray. The royal family is corrupt. In other words, they’re the shepherds who are leading the people astray.

But 25 times or so, God himself, Yahweh himself, says in Ezekiel 34, “I will shepherd my flock. I will led them by springs of clear water. I will feed them with good grazing. I will distinguish between sheep and goat. I will look after them. I will be their shepherd.” On and on and on. He says this about 25 times. Then toward the end of the whole unit, he says, “I will send my David to be their shepherd,” and six centuries later a voice is heard saying, “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep.”

Suddenly, all these voices about shepherding … who is a good shepherd, who is not, and why … come together in Christ Jesus himself: the one who is simultaneously God, who comes to visit his people as the Shepherd of his sheep, and the son of David who, as the king of Israel, is the shepherd of the flock. So God restores them to himself, we realize here, because as the Shepherd of his flock, he ransoms them and redeems them from those stronger than they are.

C) God restores them to himself because, as the God of compassion, he takes pity of the desperate state of his people.

Verses 15 to 22. There are a couple of bits in this one that need explaining or the text is a bit hard to understand. Verse 15: “This is what the Lord says: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.’ ”

Rachel was the second wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin (who, along with Judah formed the southern kingdom) and, thus, the grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s sons. Ephraim was the biggest tribe in the North after the split, so it sometimes serves as the name for the entire northern kingdom. Rachel was the grandmother of the northern tribes, as it were. Ephraim, who is mentioned in verse 18, the largest of the tribes of the North, has his name used to refer to the northern kingdom.

Ramah (“A voice is heard in Ramah …”) is where Rachel was buried. It’s about five miles north of Jerusalem, right on the borderline between the North and the South. So what we have here is a picture of Rachel weeping from her tomb. She’s weeping and crying from her tomb. “A voice is heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.” That is, they’re no more in the land. They’re no more with her. They’ve been transported; they’ve been taken out. That’s what’s going on.

One of the interesting things is that this verse is quoted in Matthew 2. In Matthew 2, at the slaughter of the innocents (that is, when Jesus escapes down to Egypt and Herod comes in with his troops and kills all male Jewish boys in Bethlehem under the age of 2), we’re told that this took place to fulfill this text: “A voice is heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Do you see what is being said? It’s being said that even the tears of the mothers and families in Bethlehem, at the time of the slaughter of the innocents, is part of this ongoing pattern of people being under the slavery of overlords who are knocking them off, killing them, assassinating them, killing their children, and oppressing them. It’s more of the same. It’s a fulfillment of that entire pattern.

But, as so often when the Old Testament is quoted in the New, you’re supposed to remember the context from which it was drawn. What is next said? “This is what the Lord says …” To Rachel who is weeping, to the mothers of Bethlehem who are weeping. “ ‘Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded,’ declares the Lord. ‘They will return from the land of the enemy. There is hope for the future. Your children will return to their own land. I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning.’ ”

What does Ephraim say? Now there’s a kind of little exchange between Ephraim and God. What is it that Ephraim moans? Ephraim acknowledges, “You disciplined me like an unruly calf, and I have been disciplined. Restore me, and I will return, because you are the Lord my God. After I strayed, I repented; after I came to understand, I beat my breast. I am ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”

God says, as a kind of soliloquy, “Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him.” Why not? He’s the God who has loved his people with an everlasting love, from all eternity, we’ve been told. “ ‘Therefore my heart yearns for him. I have great compassion for him,’ declares the Lord.” So God, then, restores his people to himself because, as the God of compassion, he takes pity on the desperate state that they are in.

Once again, in verses 21 to 22, Israel is called virgin Israel. Verse 22 is perhaps the hardest verse in Jeremiah to understand (at least that’s what the commentaries say). They all get to this verse, and they say, “This is a very difficult verse. This is the hardest verse in the book of Jeremiah.” I could easily take an hour simply listing and explaining the various clever interpretations that have been thought up.

For example, when we read, “The Lord will create a new thing on earth; a woman will surround a man,” Jerome, in the fourth century, took this to be a reference to the virginal conception of Christ. Well, it sounds suitably pious. It’s like what they teach you in Sunday school, where the answer to everything is Jesus. So that’s the way Jerome got this one too: the answer is simply Jesus, the virginal conception of Christ, in this case.

There are many other interpretations; I don’t have the time to go through (and I’m sure you don’t have the interest to hear) them all. But I suspect that the meaning is a littler simpler. It needs to be understood within its own context. God, we’re told, creates a new thing, just as a few verses on he creates a new covenant (that’s what we’re going to look at in a moment).

He creates a new thing, and what is it exactly? Formerly, you see, God encompassed Israel. He surrounded Israel. He protected Israel. He encompassed Israel. Now when God brings about a new things, Israel, we’re told, encompasses a man. Literally, in Hebrew, it’s a strong man who, I think, is standing in for God himself. Israel now encompasses the man.

I think this is an Old Testament equivalent of what the New Testament describes as the marriage supper of the Lamb. Now there is a union that is absolutely wonderful. It’s an anticipation of the union between God and human beings, finally, in the consummated splendor. I think that’s what’s going on in anticipation of the language we find so shockingly strongly in the book of Revelation.

D) God restores his people to himself because, as the God who releases his people from captivity, he ends their weariness and exhaustion.

Verses 23 to 26. I won’t spend more time on that one.

E) God restores his people to himself because, as the Lord of history, he chooses to build them up and create a stable society.

Verses 27 to 29: “The days are coming when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals.”

Then, get this: “ ‘Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear them down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,’ declares the Lord.” In other words, he’s the Lord of history, and he can so reign over them providentially that he threatens them with judgment, but he can, in his mercy, come along and restore their fortunes.

“In those days, people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ” That is, “Our fathers sinned, and all the curses of the past have come upon us; that’s why we’re suffering.” They won’t say that anymore. “Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.” We’ll come back to that because this introduces us, finally, to the new covenant. This is where we’ll end.

F) God restores his people to himself because, as the Lord of the covenant, he creates a new covenant.

Verses 31 to 37. We need to stop and think about this in two or three ways, because this ties you very closely to the New Testament, to the cross, and to Christ.

Start with the word new. “I will make a new covenant.” There are many, many commentators and preachers today that say, “Well, it’s not really new; it’s sort of renewed and updated, but it’s not new.” But do you recall the passage that was read from Hebrews 8 a little earlier, how it ends? Go back and look at it after this meeting is over. Look at verse 13, the closing verse. Do you hear what the writer to the Hebrews says?

He says, “Don’t you understand? Six hundred years before the coming of Christ, God says …” And then he quotes this passage. “In those days, I will create a new covenant, not like the old covenant, but I will create a new covenant.” The writer to the Hebrews infers from this, in verse 13, “By declaring this one ‘new,’ he has made the old one old; and that which is old is obsolete and about to vanish away.” That sounds pretty new to me!

In other words, do you sometimes wonder where in the Old Testament you find the actual texts that really do, clearly and unambiguously, anticipate the coming of Christ and all that he brings? You look at the New Testament, and how the New Testament is using the Old, and say, “Okay, I’ll take it on faith, but it looks a bit screwball to me.” But one of the things that the epistle to the Hebrews is doing is saying, “Listen, if you read your Old Testament aright, there are already lots of places in it which announce the obsolescence of the old covenant itself.”

The reference to the old covenant, here, is to the covenant with Moses. That is to say, the tabernacle, the priestly system, the sacrifices, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Passover, the high feasts, and going up to the temple in Jerusalem once the temple is built, which was the place for covenantal renewal and atoning for sins. So when the people are scattered, they’re away from the city, from Jerusalem, and from their means of grace, which under the old covenant, was tied up with the temple. Now the temple is down, and they’re in exile. What hope is there?

Well, God graciously does bring them back and the temple is rebuilt, but now God says, “Yet it’s more than a question of rebuilding a temple and reinstituting the sacrifices. I’m going to create a new covenant. Let me tell you how it’s going to be different than the old one.” The writer to the Hebrews says, “Don’t you see? If God promises a new covenant, in principle, he’s already said that the old one is already out of date. It’s not going to last.”

In fact, that sort of argument is drawn on several occasions. Let me give you one more from about 1000 BC, at the time of David (that is, 400 years earlier than this but after the exodus, of course). So you have Moses, the exodus, the giving of the covenant, and then, some centuries later, David becomes king.

David writes a psalm, Psalm 110. This is one of only two places in the Old Testament where Melchizedek is mentioned. Melchizedek is mentioned in Genesis 14 when Abraham comes back from the slaughter of the kings and offers a certain homage to Melchizedek, who was a priest-king in the ancient world. Centuries later, David writes Psalm 110, and he’s looking forward a coming messianic figure who sits on the throne of David. Then God says to this messianic figure, sitting on the throne of David, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

Oh, now, wait a minute. Any Old Testament reader at the time this was first given must have thought, “This is weird. This is strange.” Because according to the old covenant, priests came from the tribe of Levi, kings came from the tribe of Judah, and never the twain shall meet. A priest couldn’t be a king, and a king couldn’t be a priest.

In fact, the first king of Israel, King Saul, who was genuinely a king, tried to be a priest. He was so worried about some things that were going on politically, and Samuel, the priest, wasn’t there, so he thought he’d offer the sacrifices all by himself, thank you. God was outraged because King Saul was defying the covenant. The covenant stipulated that the priests are to be priests; they come from the tribe of Levi. The kings are something else, and you can’t mix the two.

Now along comes King David, from the tribe of Judah, and he’s the king. The priests are over there, doing their thing. Yet David writes Psalm 110, in which he pictures the coming Messiah, who is sitting on David’s throne and ruling, and God addresses him and says, “You are a priest.” Whoa. No, not a priest according to the order of Levi (that couldn’t have happened), but a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Like that old priest that was mentioned once in Genesis who was a priest-king, a thousand years before Christ.

What does the writer to the Hebrews infer from that? He says, “Don’t you see? Already, a thousand years before the coming of the Messiah, God is announcing the obsolescence of that old covenant. Because, you see, if a priest is coming who is both priest and king, he can’t be under the old covenant. Under the old covenant, that couldn’t happen. It has to be a new covenant.”

So already there are these hints dropped into the text that are saying that the old covenant is fine. God gave it. It was important. It taught people the difference between right and wrong. It instituted an entire priestly system, a sacrificial system, to teach us that where there is sin, there must be an atoning sacrifice. There must be some creature that loses its life, the life that we should have lost, to take our place. There must be the shedding of blood to pay for sin. Yes, it taught us all kinds of things.

But a thousand years before Christ, already, God is himself announcing, “This isn’t the final covenant. This is on the way. It’s temporary. It’s obsolete in principle.” Then 400 years later, along comes Jeremiah, and God gives him another oracle saying, “There is a new covenant coming, and it won’t be like the old covenant.” Then the writer to the Hebrews says, again, “Don’t you see? That means that God has announced that the old one is old, and it’s passing away.”

You are not to think that the old covenant was ever designed by God to be permanent. It never was. From the beginning, it announced its own principial obsolescence, its own out-of-dateness, in favor of that to which it was pointing, in which, one day, we would have a priest-king and a new covenant.

Now in what way is this one new? In what sense is it new? Obviously, covenants overlap in meaning in some respects. How is this new one so new? Why is this such an important passage? “ ‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt.’ ”

That’s how we know that it is the covenant with Moses … that is, the old one, the one at the time of the exodus. It won’t be like that. Why not? “Because,” God says, “it wasn’t strong enough actually to transform them. They broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.” That’s picking up the imagery we’ve already seen of marriage and how apostasy is a kind of spiritual adultery.

“ ‘They broke the covenant, just as a marriage covenant can be broken, so my covenant with them, my covenant with Moses, was broken,’ declares the Lord. ‘So I’m going to make a new covenant. It’s going to be on a slightly different principle. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.’ ” This is the way, in other words, in which it is different. What is it?

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “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 wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.’ ”

Now let’s work backward. “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will remember their sins no more.” The old covenant couldn’t do that. It’s true that God, under the terms of the old covenant, prescribed some sacrifices which, in God’s gracious purpose, did enable the people to find their sins forgiven. But let’s be quite frank: they sinned again and again.

Then they had to wait until the next year for the annual feast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, for the priest to offer the blood of bull and goat again and pay for that sin. They had to wait for the annual feast of Passover before.… Once again, they had this picture of a lamb who absorbs death so that the wrath of God passes over. So in one sense, this annual recitation of feasts and sacrifices becomes almost an annual reminder of their sins. It’s not dealt with in a final way.

Then on the night that he is betrayed, the Lord Jesus takes the cup, and he says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Anyone who knows his Bible knows that has to come out of Jeremiah 31, the promise of a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins.

Now it’s not the blood of a bull or a goat or of a Passover lamb. “This is the new covenant in my blood.” No wonder Jesus is called the Lamb of God. No wonder Paul, writing to the Corinthians, calls him the Passover Lamb. No wonder Hebrews insists that he is the ultimate atoning sacrifice of Yom Kippur. That’s the whole point of Hebrews 9.

Christ, having died once, dies no more. There is no more annual reminder of sins. Any sins that God’s people, if they truly are God’s people, have ever committed or do commit or will commit are finally handled by one bloody sacrifice. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. There is no more sacrifice for sin, so that in the midst of the world’s failures, in the midst of the failures of God’s people, in the midst of my own sins and failures we have no argument stronger than this.

Under the terms of the new covenant God says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Because the blood of the new covenant has been spilled. As the songwriter says, “I have no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me.” That will be the nature of the new covenant: not a temporary thing with cyclical feasts and cyclical sacrifices and thousands of lambs slaughtered on Passover weekend. No, no, no, no. A final sacrifice in Christ’s blood, and “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Now let’s work back a little farther. In the ancient world, the priests were mediators. Under the Mosaic covenant, the priests were mediators. Only they could do the priestly things, and only the high priest could go into the Most Holy Place. Not only so, but the Levites and the priests were sort of special teachers. Their job was to go around the nation of Israel and actually teach people, “This is the way of the Lord. This is what the law says.” They were supposed to be mediators of God’s truth, and they had a certain priestly function.

The king, likewise, was supposed to be a voice from God, standing in for God. God was the ultimate King, and the king was seen as God’s son, as it were, to mediate God’s justice, God’s rule, and God’s administration to the people. So the king was unique as well.

Now comes a new covenant. Under the terms of the old covenant, there was priest and prophet and king to say to the people, as it were, “Know the Lord,” from positions of mediation and from special, God-ordained positions. That covenant had established that they would be there. They were mediating teachers and priests. Now under the terms of the new covenant, there are no more teachers saying, “Know the Lord.”

“Wait a minute,” you say. “In all fairness, Don, this does sound a wee bit hypocritical. What do you think you’re doing standing at the front? Huh? Aren’t you a teacher who is basically telling us how to know the Lord? Aren’t there pastors and teachers in the New Testament?” Yes, yes, yes. There are. This is not saying that there are no teachers of any sort. It’s saying there are no teachers like the old covenant teachers.

The old covenant teachers were all mediators. They were in a class by themselves. But in the new covenant, there is nothing that any teacher of the Word of God has … no special claim to grace, no special belonging to a special tribe, no belonging to a special family (the Davidic family) … there’s nothing like that that qualifies me to be a priest. I’m not saying, “Hey, listen. God has given me a special, unique experience of God’s grace, and you can’t question me in this. I’m teaching you the Word of God. I’m on an inside track, and you’re not. Now, know the Lord.”

There is that built right into the very structure of the old covenant, but under the new covenant, I’m just a part of the body. That’s it. We have different functions in the body. They are worked out, for example, in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 and elsewhere. You can sort of think of me as a stomach. I take in all kinds of food and distribute it to the rest of the body. It destroys all my dignity but, basically, I’m just a glorified stomach! That’s it. It’s a part of the body, and there are different parts of the body that all contribute to the body.

It’s not that I have some special priestly mediating function. I am not qualified to have special experiences of grace that nobody else can have. Oh, I know that there are degrees of maturity and experience and knowledge in the church, of course, as there were under the old covenant. But under the old covenant, it wasn’t just degrees of experience and maturity. It was a special status given by God himself, and that’s exactly what I don’t have.

This is why Paul writes, in the Pastoral Epistles, “Don’t you understand? There is now only one priest. There is only one mediator …” That’s what a priest is. “… between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.” Oh, there’s another sense in which all of us are priests. That is, all of us who are Christians mediate between God and this lost world. In that sense, we’re all priests. But as soon, of course, as we’re all priests, then Don Carson isn’t some special priest. I’m just a stomach.

So in other words, under the terms of the old covenant, there were these mediating figures: the fathers themselves and then the voices of authority. When a king went astray or the fathers went astray, the curses came on the entire clan. Isn’t that what you see in verses 29 and 30? “People will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ”

Instead, there is going to be a certain kind of freedom from that because this new covenant is not a tribal-representative system anymore. It’s a covenant with only one mediator, and that mediator is perfect. If one of the kings of Israel or one of the kings of Judah fell into great sin, he eventually led the whole nation into great sin. The mediators were such flawed characters.

We have one King-Priest, and he is not flawed at all. Just one. Under the terms of the new covenant, “No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord …’ ” That is, in this mediating way. “ ‘… because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.”

There is not only forgiveness of sin, but there is a peculiar immediacy and knowledge of God … bound up with the gift of the Spirit, the down payment of the age to come … that is a radical improvement on old covenant experience and that is in anticipation of the glory yet to be revealed. The way it’s described is this: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”

By contrast, listen to this from Deuteronomy, where the law itself is described. Deuteronomy 29:4: “But to this day, the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.” Oh, in some measure God does this in all kinds of ways to various individuals and pours out his Spirit upon them, but as the very defining essence of what all the people of God are like, that is a new covenant blessing. “ ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord.”

How certain is this? Look at verses 35 to 38. “This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day and decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord Almighty is his name. ‘Only if these decrees …’ ” That is, the decrees that govern the sun and the decrees that govern the night and the decrees that govern gravity. The waves tossing back and forth, pulled by the moon, and the winds: all under God’s decrees.

“ ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.’ ” God knows his people from before the foundation of the world. He’s loved them with an everlasting love. He can pull them back. “This is what the Lord says, ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be stretched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the Lord.” God is a covenant-electing, sovereign God. He will bring about his new covenant.

The New Testament makes it abundantly clear, in Hebrews 10, that this new covenant is extended not only to Jews (whether from the North or the South) but to us. We’ve already seen glimpses of this with the pagans … the Gentiles, the Babylonians, the Egyptians … joining in with the people of God on the last day, recognizing the God of the new covenant.

We live this side of the inauguration of the new covenant. Every time we come to the Lord’s Table, with our various traditions, we hear the words repeated again, the words that Jesus spoke. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in remembrance of me.” Let us pray.

We marvel, Lord God, that before the foundation of the universe you not only knew your own people but in your own mind you entered into a relationship with them and you loved them, and your electing love is unshakable.

We marvel, Lord God, that all through the countless ages of history, you have carefully prepared models and types and pictures, historical accounts to teach us not only of your righteous, rightful outrage against sin but also of the deep compassion that has you chasing sinners, providing a means of access and restoration to you yourself, pronouncing judgment upon us and then sending your Son to bear that judgment. Lord God, we can scarcely take it in.

We thank you for the covenants you have given in the past which, in their own way, point forward to Christ. We thank you for the grace that has placed us on this side of the inauguration of the new covenant, sealed by Christ’s blood, his life sacrificially ended on our behalf. We are free from the guilt of sin and shame, and we are free from the enslaving powers of sin, for one stronger than sin has broken our bands.

You have written your law on our hearts. We discover that we now want to do things that we did not want to do. We now do not want to do things that at one time we lusted after. We thank you for the power of regeneration, the work of your Spirit in our lives to make us want to respond with heart and faith and joy to the Lord Christ himself, who bore our sins in his own body on the tree.

O Lord God, pour out grace upon us that we will never tire of explaining this gospel to folk around us, exploring its dimensions, understanding how your most Holy Word is put together so that we can worship you aright and see how central is the dawning of this new covenant to all of our hopes and fears and aspirations.

In a rapidly changing world, with various siren voices rising and falling, Lord God, anchor us in eternity, anchor us in Christ in history, anchor us in your most Holy Word, which remains steadfast and secure, and anchor us in yourself, who alone can bring about all your good purposes for your dear Son’s glory and for our good. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.