Jeremiah 31:31–34
Exaudi
Dear congregation,
For God, it is time for a new beginning. God wants things to be different from now on. Things must not remain as they are. It is unbearable for God.
The Book of Jeremiah centres around the destruction of Jerusalem. The Babylonians had captured and pillaged the city in 587/586 BC. The prophet addresses the question that preoccupied many people at the time: How could this have happened? Who is to blame? What are the causes? These are very human questions.
The captive Jews in exile asked themselves:
What does God have to do with this? Is He punishing us? Has God forgotten and abandoned us, His people?
Has God now had enough of us because we repeatedly disobey His commandments?
Has our selfishness, our mistrust, our complicity in so much injustice so enraged God that he has withdrawn?
Who would not harbour such doubts – then and now? It would certainly be understandable if God were to give up and turn away. It is conceivable that God might come to the realisation:
I cannot help these people. They know everything. They know the commandments. They know, in theory, how to resolve conflicts peacefully. They actually know that love for one’s neighbour prevents inhumanity.
Jeremiah preaches from God’s perspective. Jeremiah, who has maintained a close relationship with God since his youth, realises: a sermon on repentance alone is not enough. Certainly, it is good to appeal to people’s consciences and remind them of what they have long known. But is that enough?
Jeremiah listens to God. Jeremiah lets God have His say.
It is a miracle when people can hear and understand God. That is the work of the Spirit. That is the hope behind every sermon and the hope when we open the Bible: that God may speak. That God may reveal Himself and make Himself understood.
Jeremiah listens to God and perceives how God himself is wrestling with himself.
This is also found elsewhere in the Bible:
God wrestles with his wrath and his anger. God wrestles with himself as to whether he should give up on humanity, the work of his hands.
Just as Jacob wrestled with God at Jabbok, so here God himself is wrestling.
And the struggle ends in blessing.
Jeremiah is given the wonderful task of proclaiming what he hears from God. It is a great and reassuring assurance:
God remains true to himself. God is and remains love. God is creating a peaceful new beginning with his people. Just as he had already promised Noah: Never again will I destroy my people. God speaks through Jeremiah and lets everyone know:
God is reconnecting with you. No longer just from the outside. No longer just through commandments and instructions. But from within.
‘I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.’
Perhaps this can be compared to music.
When you first start learning an instrument, you follow the sheet music. You’re constantly looking at the sheet. You pay attention to every rule and are afraid of making mistakes. But eventually, a good musician no longer just plays by the book. The music lives within him. It’s written on his heart. He doesn’t need to be constantly reminded of it.
Or you could compare it to a child learning to ride a bike.
At the beginning, a father holds his child steady whilst they ride.
He runs alongside. He holds the saddle.
He says: “Steer! Brake! Careful!” That’s like the first covenant: guiding from the outside,
taking them by the hand, giving commands. But at some point, something else happens.
The father lets go. Not because he doesn’t care about the child.
But because the child has now found its own balance. The child no longer rides because someone is holding on, but because it can now maintain what previously came from outside.
Perhaps the new covenant is similar: God no longer holds us just from the outside.
He writes his guidance into our hearts. We learn to live from within.
And yet the Father remains close by. Not control —but trust.
This is how Jeremiah describes God’s new covenant.
God does not remain external. God’s Will is to come alive within people.
In this way, God establishes a deep connection with his people. Nothing is to separate them from God any longer — neither a restless mind nor a wounded or hardened heart.
Paul takes this up later in the Epistle to the Romans: Nothing can separate us from the love of God. What is happening here is a kind of new creation.
At the beginning of creation, humankind lived in direct communion with God. But humankind wanted to determine for itself what is good and evil. It wanted to be independent of God. Since then, humankind has experienced separation — from God, from other people and often from itself as well. And this is precisely where God’s new covenant comes in:
It is not man who works his way back to God.
Rather, God comes to meet man and writes his love into the heart.
What I find particularly important:
‘And no one will teach another, nor will a brother teach another, saying, “Know the Lord”; for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest.’
This direct relationship with God is already evident in Jeremiah. No priest needs to stand in between. Closeness to God does not depend on age, knowledge or education. It is actually that simple to know God.
And yet, at the same time, we often make it so difficult for ourselves.
These words offer deep comfort. They prevent us from being broken by the world and by evil. Nothing and no one can take God from our hearts. And with God in our hearts, we can continue to hope. But God’s new covenant is also a source of encouragement.
It is worth struggling — with ourselves, with the world, and even with God.
It is only human that we are not always in harmony.
Yet at the end of an honest struggle lies not despair, but blessing.
God does not simply take us by the hand and lead us along a fixed path.
God speaks to the heart.
God changes people from within.
Suddenly a person realises: faith means I do not first have to search for God somewhere.
He already dwells within me.
The New Covenant means: God remains closer to us than we can ever be to ourselves.