Delivered March 25, 2012
Time Magazine recently had a special annual issue on the “Ten Ideas that are Changing Your Life.” They dealt with things like technological, sociological, and environmental changes in our society. Number four on the list dealt with religion. I don’t think the topic they choose was particularly new. I have been reading about it for years. It is a variation on the “spiritual but not religious” theme that religious professionals have been talking about for the last twenty years. What is new is that this trend is growing. The article notes that the fastest growing religious group in America is those who say they have no religious affiliation. This article calls them the Nones – not the Catholic sisters nuns, but N-O-N-E-S. When asked in surveys what their religious affiliation is their answer is ”none.” Their numbers have doubled since 1990. They now make up 16% of the population. These people are not atheists or agnostics, which make up 4%. The nones believe in God, pray, and many will even participate in spiritual practices, but they are not involved in traditional religious organizations. The emergent church movement of the last few years is one aspect of this phenomenon. It is reinventing Christian spiritual community. It is the next new thing in religion.
In my mind it is not really new. The prophet Jeremiah was talking about something like this 2500 years ago. Jeremiah prophesied about the “next new thing” in religion in his day. He called it a new covenant. I think it is the heart of true Christian spirituality. It is what causes periodic reformations in the Christian church. There is a phrase from the 17th century Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda: The church reformed and always being reformed. (Dutch Reformed theologian, Gisbertus Voetius, 1589–1676) It was understood that the Protestant reformation of the 16th century was not a one-time event, but that the church needed to continually be reformed. This was not understood as the church reforming itself; it was understood that God would undertake this reformation in each generation. Christianity easily falls into legalism and dogma. It continually needs to be revitalized. This is what Jeremiah was talking about concerning Hebrew religion in his day over 500 years before there was a Christian church, and it is what I would like to talk about this morning using his words as my format.
Jeremiah talks about a new covenant that was different than the old covenant. He says, “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, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.” Christians understand this prophecy to refer to the new covenant established by Jesus. Jesus used Jeremiah’s phrase at the Last Supper, “For this is My blood of the new covenant.” The Letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus the mediator of the new covenant. This new covenant needs to be a continually renewed covenant; otherwise it just sinks back into the old legalism and dogmatism. Jeremiah describes four aspects of this new thing – this new covenant.
I. The first is INNER GUIDANCE. Jeremiah says in verse 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….” Jeremiah is talking about the difference between outer religion and inner religion. The old covenant was about following external rules. It was Law. Laws are not bad. We are a nation of laws. Our country has countless laws and ordinances at the federal, state, county and local level. Congress seems to love passing more and more laws. And the judicial branch of government interprets these laws, and the law enforcement enforces these laws. We Americans are in love with laws. If we think something is wrong with the world, we will pass a law. We assume that every problem can be solved by new laws and regulations. We are a nation of legalists. There is no wonder that there are movements in our country devoted to trying to get government off our backs.
Religion tends to follow the same pattern. We think that spiritual and moral problems in life can be solved by following moral laws and religious rules. Jeremiah is saying that when it comes to spiritual matters there is a need for something new. God says, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts….” Jeremiah is saying that true religion and morality is from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It is internal and not external. This does not mean that there is no right and wrong – or that everyone decides for themselves what is correct. The Bible describes the period of lawlessness in the OT called the time of the Judges as a time when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” That is not what Jeremiah is advocating. He is not advocating anarchy or moral relativism. He was saying that God’s guidance had to come from the inside of the human being and not be imposed from the outside.
When it comes to practical application for us it means that we do not surrender our moral responsibility to external religious authorities. We are not children who need to be told what to do by religious organizations or institutions. We don’t follow a religious rule book. We follow God’s law written on our hearts and in our minds. It means that we trust God within us more than those religious authorities who say they speak for God.
II. The second point Jeremiah makes is in the rest of verse 33 “and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” My first point was about Inner Guidance. This second point is about INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP. True religion is about a real relationship with God. Evangelicalism talks a good game when it comes to this point, but I don’t think it has always practiced what it preached. My experience being a pastor of churches – both mainline Protestant and evangelical - is that many people who talk the most about the importance of a personal relationship with God don’t really have much more of a relationship than those who don’t talk about it as much – traditional Protestants.
A lot of people don’t have what one would call a close relationship with God. I don’t know this for sure; I can’t see into anyone’s heart. Only God knows. But I know what people have confided to me in private moments over 38 years of ministry. Many people have a belief in God. They believe God exists and that he got the universe going sometime in the distant past, but they don’t really feel connected to him. God is not directly involved in their lives. Others have spiritual experiences and strong emotions connected to religion and are very faithful to a religious tradition, but it can’t really be called a relationship. Jeremiah is describing something more. He is describing an intimate relationship.
Of course, atheists don’t think I have a real relationship with a real God either. They would describe God as my imaginary friend. Like children growing up have an imaginary friend, they think Christians simply haven’t outgrown our childhood imaginary friend. They don’t think God is real; they think I am just making God up and believing a figment of my own imagination. They might be right. But I never had an imaginary friend as a child, so I wouldn’t know what that was like. I didn’t believe in God as a teenager. I never had a relationship with God until I was in my twenties, and this connection with God I have now certainly feels real to me. I believe that I have a real relationship with God. And I don’t think I am unusual. I believe that anyone can have such a relationship. This leads me to my next point.
III. Third, Jeremiah says that in his new covenant there is INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. He says in verse 34 “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.” How do you develop an intimate relationship with God? It is more intuition than objective knowledge. There are things we know physically with our five senses. There are things we know mentally through deduction and reasoning. For me God is not like that. I do not know God through my senses because he is not physical. I do not even know God through reasoning, even though I think it is reasonable to believe in God. I don’t think you can logically prove the existence of God. That is why I do not get into the Intelligent Design arguments for the existence of the Creator.
I know God through my spirit, which is just as real to me as my mind or body. I know God through intuition. I know his will through conscience. I commune with God in my heart. The way to have a real relationship with God is to cultivate this dimensions of your soul. There is no three or four step formula for this, any more than there is for any relationship you have. You have to find your own way and develop your own relationship with God - like with any human relationship . But if we desire a relationship with God we must devote time to that relationship. Spend lots of time thinking about God. Spend lots of time with God. I am not just talking about formal prayer or printed devotions. Those are fine to do, but what if the only time you spoke with your spouse or your friends was when you read something that someone else wrote, then you will not have much of a relationship.
I am talking about cultivating a continual awareness of God – living in the presence of God. Living in God like we live in this world. Breathing God like we breathe air. Swimming in God like a fish swims in the ocean. If you asked a fish what water was he couldn’t tell you because he lives in it. In the same way we live in God. “In Him we live and move and have our being” the Scripture says. The key to a relationship with God is to direct our attention to our intuitive awareness of the presence of God. God is here now. That is not just a doctrine of the omnipresence of God. It is experienced reality. All we have to do is use our intuitive knowledge to notice that reality. We can do that right now. Sense the presence of God right here right now. It is obvious. In fact it is so obvious that we often miss it. We take it for granted like the light around us. Developing a relationship with God is taking the time to pay attention to the God you can sense is here and foster a conscious awareness of this Presence throughout the day.
IV. I want to move on to the fourth point that Jeremiah makes in this passage. It is TOTAL FORGIVENESS. The last line of our passage says, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Forgiveness has historically been the main focus of Christianity. There is a lot more to Christianity than the forgiveness of sins, but forgiveness is the heart. This is exactly why some people don’t like Christianity – there is too much talk of sin and forgiveness. But this is an important dimension of our human condition which needs to be addressed. That is what the gospel does. It takes the reality of sin seriously and deals with it directly. It doesn’t explain sin away psychologically or sociologically. It doesn’t downplay it or minimize it. It acknowledges that guilt is real and needs to be addressed.
The Christian gospel frees us from the power of guilt and sin. A lot of people think that Christianity is all about making you feel guilty. It is just the opposite! It gets us to acknowledge guilt and then eliminates it, so that it does not control us. It is a powerful spiritual and emotional freedom! We can be free from the bondage of the things that we have done wrong and the things that people have done wrong to us. We can experience complete forgiveness and have the ability to completely forgive those who have harmed us. That is the power of the gospel. If you don’t sin and have never been sinned against, then you don’t need the gospel. But if you have ever wronged a person and if a person has ever wronged you then you need the gospel. We can go through all the counseling and psychotherapy we want to. I am a believer in counseling; it does a lot of good in helping us to emotionally deal with psychological harm that is done to us. But we also need a spiritual solution to the spiritual problem of sin and guilt.
That is what the gospel does. It does it through the Cross of Jesus. I can’t explain very well how it does it. The theology of the Cross can get very complicated, theoretical and philosophical very quickly. I don’t think we need a new philosophy. We need the inner assurance that our sins are completely dealt with and forgotten by God. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” We need the power to be able to forgive people for the things that they did that we can’t forget. That is what the Cross provides. Somehow by the power of God, Jesus dealt decisively with sin by dying on the Cross and rising from the grave. That is what the gospel says. This power of forgiveness can be appropriated into our lives and experiences through faith in Christ. That is the bottom line. We can spend a lifetime trying to understand it, but it only takes a moment to accept it and experience it. That is the new covenant that Jeremiah prophesied, and that is the new covenant that was established by Jesus Christ.
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