Sunday
03/22/15 Freeville/Homer Ave UMC’s
Sermon Title: “I will put my
Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts”
Old Testament Lesson:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
New Testament
Scripture: Hebrews 5:5-10
Gospel Lesson:
John 12:20-33
Welcome again this
morning, to this our Fifth Sunday in this the Season of Holy Lent. During the
40-days of the Season of Lent, we are called to repent of our sins, to pray, to
grow closer to God, and to love each other like Jesus loved others.
Next Sunday will be Palm or Passion Sunday, the day where
Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of “Hosanna!” As
Jesus entered into the city, Palms were laid before his path out of love and
reverence. Next Sunday then, we will celebrate Palm or Passion Sunday, with the
waving of Palms and the shouts of “Hosanna!,” as we remember that day so long
ago.
This Sunday however, we remain in the Season of Lent, the
Season that we prepare our hearts, our minds, and our hands, for the death of
Jesus Christ on a cross.
With this said, this morning I want to talk about the
difference between our heads or our brains, and our hearts. No this is not a
human anatomy lesson, but I want to talk about the difference between what we think
in our heads, and what we feel in our hearts.
For example, if we in our heads only, believe in Jesus, and
believe in God, is that the same as really knowing and loving God in our hearts?
You see, centuries before Jesus ever walked the earth, God revealed
to Moses what is commonly called the “Old Law,” or the religious rules that the
Jewish people follow. These rules or this “First Covenant” are in the first
five books of the Old Testament, that we often call the Torah. These rules,
this “Old Law,” were the “do’s and don’ts,” and the instructions for living.
In some ways, and in some perspectives of Judaism, the
behaviors of a person were what really mattered around many of these laws. The rituals,
being clean, doing things just so, were a big part of the Jewish law. Certainly
there would be prayer, and likely an intimate relationship with God, but there
was heavy focus on the external, or the out word behaviors.
An example of this, is the commandment from God given to
Moses that says “Do not kill.” What if we have great constraint though, and
never kill anybody? Is it not sinful to think about strangling our boss, our neighbors,
and others? Well if you did not kill under the “Old Law,” you were judged
merely by your behaviors, not your thoughts.
In this way, the 10-Commandments are believed to have been
written or chiseled onto stone, but not written onto our hearts. They were
present for the Jewish people. They saw them, and the behaviors prescribed on
them, were often measurable. The 10-commandments were even put in the “Holy of
Holies,” in the inner most chamber of the temple. Where the “Ark of the Covenant”
was, which embodied the actual tablets of the “First Covenant,” or the “Old
Law.”
Yet this morning, in the book of Jeremiah, God speaks
through Jeremiah these word, “I will put my Instructions within them and
engrave them on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33b, CEB). In the reading from the
prophet Jeremiah from this morning, Jeremiah then, makes a huge prophecy. By
the way, this prophecy was likely made over 600-years before Jesus Christ was
born.
In this scripture, Jeremiah begins by saying, “The time is
coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of
Israel and Judah” (Jer. 31:31, CEB). So we have the “First Covenant,” or the “Old
Law” that God gave to Moses. Yet Jeremiah is saying that, a “New Covenant” is
coming. Well what will this “New Covenant look like according to the prophet
Jeremiah?
Jeremiah goes on to say, “It won’t be like the covenant I
made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the
land of Egypt” (Jer. 31:32a, CEB). So this covenant will be different than the
covenant that God first gave to Abraham, to Noah, to Moses. Why do we need a
new covenant though? The next verse says, “They broke the covenant with me even
though I was their husband, declares the LORD” (Jer. 31:32b, CEB)
So, Jeremiah, who is the only Old Testament prophet to use
the term “New Covenant,” then goes on to explain what this “New Covenant” will
look like. Jeremiah then says, that God said, “I will put my Instructions
within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they
will be my people” (Jer. 31:33b, CEB). This new covenant then, will go beyond
just tablets with commandments, beyond just behaviors and words. This “New
Covenant” will be engraved on our hearts, and will be within us all.
Jeremiah says further about the “New Covenant,” “They will
no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the LORD!” because they will
all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD” (Jer.
31:34a, CEB). Jeremiah then finished with God saying, “for I will forgive their
wrongdoing and never again remember their sins” (Jer. 31:34b, CEB)
So let’s unpack this scripture a little more. God tells
Jeremiah that a “New Covenant” is coming, and that it is going to be different
than the “Old Covenant,” or the “Old Law.” God tells Jeremiah that this “New
Covenant” is going to happen, because the Jewish people kept breaking the “Old
Law,” and because prophet after prophet was sent by God, and the people were
just not getting it.
This “New Covenant” then, will not just be rules on stone,
but it will be a living and an abiding covenant. This “New Covenant,” of Jesus
Christ, will die for the sins of all of humanity, both past and present. Due to
this, the love of Christ is in our hearts, and the instructions for faith and
salvation are in our hearts.
Jeremiah then says that the faith will be in us all, and
then says that this “New Covenant,” Jesus Christ, will forgive all of our sins
and never again remember them. This “New Covenant,” Jesus Christ, will also be
for the poorest of the poor, to the richest of the rich.
So six-hundred years or more before Jesus Christ walks this
earth, the prophet Jeremiah prophesies a “New Covenant,” a change, a Messiah,
one who change everything. This Messiah would put his “Instructions within” us,
and “engrave them” on our hearts.
This is why in the Apostle Paul’s Epistle or letter to the
Hebrews from this morning, he says that Jesus “didn’t promote himself to become
high priest. Instead, it was the one who said to him, You are my Son” (Heb.
5:5, CEB). The Apostle Paul then was saying that Jesus didn’t decide he was
going to be the “New Covenant,” rather that he always was the “New Covenant.”
He is God’s Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, and must know him, and
be in him, to be saved.
In the gospel reading from the gospel of John from this
morning, Jesus speaks to his disciples, but also speaks to some Greeks who are in
the temple. Remember, this “New Covenant” will be for all people, as Greeks are
now hearing Jesus. Jesus says in the gospel according to John for this morning,
“I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:25,
CEB). Jesus in this gospel lesson is essentially foreshadowing his coming death
and resurrection, which is what the prophet Jeremiah was talking about in his “New
Covenant,” at least 600-years before this actually happened.
So the prophet Jeremiah prophesies centuries before Christ,
that the “New Covenant” was coming. This “New Covenant,” Jesus Christ, will die
for us soon, and forgive the sins of all of humanity, both past and present.
For when Christ was at the table with his disciples at the Last Supper, he took
the cup and said, “This is the blood of the New Covenant.”
Very soon then, the prophet Jeremiah’s prophecy will come
to full fruition, when Christ dies for our sins. When he is risen from the
dead, and when we are offered the free gift of the forgiveness of our sins.
When we are offered the free gift of eternal life.
I
would like to share a story with you this morning called “Tony Bullimore,” by Scott
Higgins, with Bullimore quotes taken from The Sunday Age January, 1997. Here is how the story
goes: “In January 1997 British yachtsman Tony Bullimore was
sailing solo deep in the Southern Ocean. A gale was raging. The waves, reaching
the height of a five story building, rushed on him with a sound like roaring
thunder. As his yacht plummeted down the face of a wave it hit something
submerged in the water and turned upside down.”
“Tony, who had been
sheltering in the two meter by three meter cockpit found it had become his
prison. As giant waves buffeted the boat, water poured in and out a broken
window, knee high at one end, waist high at the other, the air temperature was
down to 2 degrees Celsius or about 35-36 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was pitch
black – the sun couldn’t penetrate the upturned yacht.”
“Twelve times Bullimore
left the cockpit in a vain attempt to release his life raft. Meeting with no
success he took refuge in his little cabin. Sitting inside the cold inky
darkness Bullimore had few rations – some chocolate and a device for
making fresh water from salty sea. His fingers became frostbitten and Bullimore
thought that he was going to die. The odds of being rescued seemed impossibly
small.”
“For four long days Tony
survived, until late Wednesday night when a RAF or Royal Air Force plane
located him and dropped an electronic probe next to his yacht. Bullimore could
hear the faint pings, and with hope rising in his heart, he started tapping on
the hull to communicate to whoever was listening that he was alive. Early the
next morning the HMAS Adelaide drew alongside, and some sailors were dispatched
to bang on the hull. Tony heard the banging, took a deep breath, and swam out
through the wreckage of his yacht to meet them.”
“How did he feel at that
moment? Bullimore says “When I looked over at the Adelaide, I could only get
the tremendous ecstasy that I was looking at life, I was actually looking at a
picture of what life was about. It was heaven, absolute heaven. I really,
really never thought I would reach that far. I was starting to look back over
my life and was starting to think, `Well, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done most
of the things I had wanted to do’ I think if I was picking words to describe
it, it would be a miracle. An absolute miracle.”
“Reflecting on the
experience later Bullimore told reporters “…Now that I’m getting a bit old
there is one thing, and I don’t mind telling the world, I’ve become more human.
In these last six days I’m a different person. I won’t be so rude to people,
not that I was, but I’ll be much more of a gentleman and, equally, I’ll listen
to people a lot more. And as a dear old friend of mine, David Matherson, said
when he had a heart attack (and I’ve never had a heart attack), I’ve got a strong
heart, I hope I still have (he said that when he got over it and opened his
window in his bedroom and he peered out and smelt the fresh air and all the
rest of it”, he said: `God it was like being born all over again, life was
great!’ Well that’s how I feel now, like being born all over again.”
“Tony Bullimore learned
the power of hope. It was hope of being rescued that drove him to survive and
it was the fulfilment of hope that brought him such joy and a new perspective
on life. In the same way the gospel promises hope to all of us, and
particularly to those of us who find life tough going. A time will come when
the Rescuer, Jesus, will arrive and release the world from the pain and
suffering. And it’s that hope that drives us forward.”
“Bullimore reflects a
common outlook among those who’ve had a brush with death. In almost religious
language he says it’s like being born all over again, a fresh start at life, and
one he will make a better go of. The death and resurrection of Jesus likewise
brings us a fresh appreciation of life, a fresh start and a new way of living.”
This morning my brothers
and sisters, the prophet Jeremiah announces the “New Covenant,” is coming, and
like being trapped in a dark cold boat, Jesus Christ will come and die for us
soon, to forgive the sins of humanity. To save us, and to be our hope. He will
then be raised to new life. For he is the “New Covenant.” Let us in this Season
of Holy Lent, and always then, draw closer to Jesus the Risen Christ, the one
who said that he would “put my Instructions within them and engrave them on
their hearts” (Jer. 31:33b, CEB). Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment