Jill Minnich                                                                            10/21/2001

“Time for the Truth”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

 

Many Americans express great concern about the moral decay of our nation.  I don’t doubt that everyone here could point to something that happened this week that caused them to long for the good old days.  Now, a new survey by Barna Research Group  “suggests that a major share of the [moral] struggle pertains to the basis on which people make moral choices.”  According to this survey, three-quarters of adults are concerned about the moral condition of the nation.  When they were asked about the basis for the moral decisions they make, most of the adults admitted that they chose whatever would bring them the most pleasing or satisfying results (44%).  Others tried to make the choice that made other people happy or caused the least amount of conflict.  About the same number look to the values their families taught them.  The really sobering statistic was that only one out of four adults relied upon religious principles and teaching or Bible content when making moral decisions.[1] 

These statistics are hardly surprising, however.  We already knew that fewer and fewer people are using the Bible as the basis for any kind of life choices.  All we had to do is look around us to see that!  The question is why?  Why don’t we use the Bible to guide our lives?  Many people seem to see the Bible as an old, out-dated book.  Others admit they have trouble understanding it.  And even in America, there are people who have never even read the Bible!  How would you answer someone who asks you, “Why bother reading the Bible?”

Let’s go back to the people of Israel for one answer.  Remember where we left their story last?  They are in exile in Babylon.  They are far from home and living in a foreign culture, nothing is familiar and they need to find new answers to old questions.  It is to these exiles that God through Jeremiah says:

“The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.  It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt.  Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant.  The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God and they will be my people. None of them will have to teach a neighbor to know the Lord, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest.  I will forgive their sins and will no longer remember their wrongs.”[2]  I want you to notice three important things in this passage.

First, this passage is about a covenant.  Do you know what a covenant is?  “Covenant” is one of those “Bible words” that make it so difficult for some people to understand the Bible.  Despite what you may have learned in Sunday school, a covenant is not a legal agreement.  Yes, the word was used of treaties, but that is obviously not what the word means here.  God is talking about a relationship here.  God, it says, is like a husband to Israel.  The people of Israel did not break a legal agreement with God.  They betrayed a loving relationship.  Covenant means relationship.  God is proposing a new relationship with Israel.

That is the second thing we need to notice.  Over the years, some people have taken this passage to mean that the new covenant God is talking about is the covenant relationship God makes through Jesus Christ.  God is leaving Israel behind and creating a new people, the Christian church.  That is not what the passage says at all.  God is clearly talking to the same people, Israel, about the new relationship he wants with them.  We know this because God calls them by name and because God intends to forgive them for breaking the relationship.  This new relationship is with the same people, the people of Israel. 

So, we learn that a covenant is a relationship.  The new covenant relationship is with the same people who broke the first one.  And we learn that “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.”[3]  The new relationship is internal not external.  In the past, the law was outside the people, written on scrolls.  Now, in the new relationship, the law will be written in their hearts.  How will it get there?  Do the people of Israel have to do anything? No, God will put it there.

Now we jump about eight hundred years to Paul’s final instructions to Timothy.  In this passage, Paul emphasizes the importance of scripture.  He tells Timothy to keep on following the truths he has been taught all his life.  Don’t give up, but keep on doing what you’ve been taught.  It is tempting to give up, isn’t it?  Especially when it seems as though we are the only ones left doing what we were taught is right according to scripture.  Paul says, keep on following the scripture.  Paul tells Timothy that “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living, so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed.”[4]

What Scripture is Paul talking about here?  He is talking about the Old Testament:  the law and the prophets.  The Old Testament was, after all, the Scripture of the early church and the only one they studied.  Paul is talking about the same law as the prophet Jeremiah eight hundred years before.  The law that would be written in the hearts of the people of Israel so that they could have a new relationship with God was Paul’s scripture.  It is the Old Testament that could give Timothy “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.”[5]  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?  The truth, the good news, was the same in Jeremiah’s time as in Paul’s era.  The essential truth didn’t change even though more than eight hundred years had passed.

The people hadn’t changed much either.  Just as in Jeremiah’s days, the first century people “will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires and will collect for themselves more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear.” This sounds strangely like the results of the Barna study, doesn’t it?  It seems that it doesn’t matter whether we are living in exile in Babylon, or members of the early church, or living in Ogden in the year 2001!  People are remarkably similar and the truth is still the same!

What was good news then is still good news now.  God wants to be in relationship with us.  Even though we may break that relationship, God is willing to forgive his people.  Even though we choose to make decisions based on what pleases us best and causes the least conflict, even though we follow teachers who tell us what we want to hear, God stands ready to forgive his people.  For hundreds and thousands of years, God forgives us when we betray our relationship with him and God is ready make a new relationship with us, one that is written in our hearts. 

This is the good news that is written in the Old and New Testament, the Bible.  This is the good news that qualifies us and equips us to do every good deed.  It is not enough to be forgiven and to have a new relationship with God.  This is the law that God will write on human hearts.  And if God’s law is written in our hearts, then it will become evident in our lives, in our words, and in our choices.  It is this good news and these good deeds that our world needs, now more than ever.