Bible Recap Week 33

Pastor Eric is back! 

In this episode, we walk through the book of Jeremiah; a powerful story of warning, heartbreak, judgment, and hope. Jeremiah faithfully delivers God’s message to a people who have turned away, while reminding us that God remains faithful even in the midst of rebellion and suffering.

Join us as we explore Jeremiah’s calling, the struggles of being God’s messenger, and the promises of restoration woven throughout the book. It’s a powerful reminder that even when things feel hopeless, God is still at work and His promises remain true.

Come recap Jeremiah with us!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So you can live like Jesus. Love like Jesus. I love spending time in the world with you like this, so let's get started. There are some things you can learn because somebody tells you, and then there are some things you have to live long enough to understand. When I was younger, there were things people told me about life that I believed intellectually. Older people would tell me, oh Eric, life goes quickly, and I guess I believe them, but I understand that differently, knowing that life does go pretty quickly. Someone can tell you that relationships matter more than your job, and you can believe that in your head, but sometimes you have to spend years before you realize that things and careers don't love you back. Someone can tell you that you can't control everything, and you can believe it, but then life gives you something you absolutely cannot control. Someone can tell you that forgiveness is better than bitterness, and then somebody hurts you, and suddenly forgiveness isn't this theological concept anymore. That's what I feel when I was reading Jeremiah this week. Today I want to talk specifically about Jeremiah 31, because Jeremiah 31 is about people who have learned some things the hard way. Jeremiah is speaking to Israel in the context of this enormous upheaval and problems in their life. The nation has fallen apart, the security has disappeared, their assumptions about the future have been shattered. Exile is either upon them or coming very quickly over everything. And Jeremiah is speaking into this. This is the remarkable thing about this chapter, is that right in the middle of this story of all this stuff that's going on, judgment, failure, exile, God begins to start talking about hope. In fact, some scholars will call Jeremiah 30 and 31, and you probably felt this as you were reading this week, that uh out of all of this uh troubling stuff going on, we have chapter 30 and 31. Uh, and uh scholars often call this kind of a break in Jeremiah, and the they call it the book of consolation, after chapter after chapter of warning and judgment, and suddenly you hear God in 30 and 31 saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. That's Jeremiah 31, 3. Then think about when God says that. Not when Israel is doing great, not when everybody has been faithful, not when Israel has finally gotten everything right, God says it to a people who have wandered away from him. He says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Throughout these podcasts, I've mentioned several times as we're in the Old Testament, Walter Brugeman, he's one of my favorite Old Testament scholars. And he describes, Brugeman describes Jeremiah in terms of exile, all problems and bad stuff, and homecoming. Jeremiah takes seriously the collapse produced by Judah's unfaithfulness, but he also brings about God's persistent yearning for his covenant people. And that's important. Because sometimes we think that the Christian messages, and this is kind of what we've talked about through Proverbs as we've looked through Proverbs on Sunday mornings in the series Summer and Proverbs, we sort of think the Christian message is make better decisions and you'll have a better life. And there's some wisdom in that. But Jeremiah is saying something much bigger than just make better decisions. He's saying that even when you've made a mess of life, God is capable of creating a future that isn't determined by your past. Wow. That is a message of hope. That's grace. Difficulties in life, diff difficult times and seasons reveal what we really worship and love. Difficult times exposes the heart. If you want to know what my heart is like, watch me in difficult times. You know, wh watch wa watch what spills over when life bumps me. Watch what spills out of my life when when I'm at a uh breaking point. Because difficulty re don't watch too closely, by the way. Difficulty reveals what's inside of us. Because you don't always know what you trust until it's threatened. We talked about this in our men's group last week. Uh Andy Clark led that session and he did such a great job. But you don't always know how you're going to react in difficult times. You don't know how much you need people's approval until someone doesn't approve of you. You don't know how much your identity is connected to your work until maybe you don't have work. You don't know how much you trust money until there isn't enough. You don't know how badly you need to control things until you're in a situation that you can't control. And sometimes sometimes, friends, you don't know what you really believe about God until God doesn't do what you thought he was going to do. Pressure reveals your allegiance. And that is Israel's story. Throughout Jeremiah, Israel continually looks somewhere other than God for security. They look to other nations, they look to political alliances, they look to their strength militarily, uh, they look to false prophets, they build idols, um, they look at their own wisdom and their own heart, and before we're too hard on them, I think we probably have to recognize that we're remarkably similar. We just have more sophisticated idols. Like I have never built a golden idol. However, to think that we would have that much gold at the price of gold today, wow. Our idols aren't usually statues, though. Um our idols are things like uh success or achievement or money or approval or um uh being comfortable or pleasure. Um perhaps the greatest idol, I think, in our age is um self. Um self says, I'll decide what I want to believe, I'll decide what's right for me, I'll decide. Uh recently I was teaching on um the Wesleyan quadrilateral of of interpreting scripture, and and you take these four four ideas. You take scripture, which is the largest in in uh the idea, what does scripture say? But then you also can look at traditions of the church, just church history, you can look at your own personal experience, and you can look at uh reasoning, like what makes sense, and you bring all those four together to say this is what I believe. Well, a lot of people will not look at scripture or church traditions, they'll just say, I I need I need to believe what my heart says I believe, or what the culture says, or what other people say I should believe, so I'm gonna decide what I believe and what's right for me. That's an idol. Because eventually all those things fail us. And that's when we face one of life's most important questions. Where will I turn now? There's a fascinating statement in uh verses 18 and 19 of Jeremiah 31. Um God's people look back. Uh they um in scripture it says Ephraim, but that represents God's people. Ephraim looks back and recognizes what has happened. God's people look back and they recognize what's happened. They say, Oh, there's been wandering, there's been discipline, there's been pain in our life. And then Jeremiah says, after I stray, after I strayed, after I strayed, I repented after I came to understand. I love that phrase. After I came to understand. That's the whole journey. That that's the message of hope. After I came to understand, I repented. I wandered, I didn't experience anything, but I came to understand. I repented, I returned. Maybe that's been your story. I know it has been my story in life. I wonder how many things you understand about God today that you didn't understand, say um five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago. Not because somebody told you, but because now you've lived it. You knew you knew what the Bible said, you knew the verse, like you knew you knew the verse said, don't worry, but now you know why you shouldn't worry. Now you know the truth behind the scripture, and that's the difference of maturity. That's the for me, that's the glorious thing about getting older in the faith. Some truth is learned in a classroom, some truth is learned in a small group, some truth is learned in a Bible study or in your own reading, but other truth is learned in the wilderness. God says, forgive. And then eventually in life you discover why you need to forgive, because you know what resentment does to your soul, and you say, Ah, now I understand. And God says, Don't make money, you're God. And then you watch people sacrifice their health and their marriage and children and integrity and friendship and all these things, trying to get more and more, and you say, Ah, now I understand. Or God says, Rest. And when you're 25, you think, I don't need to rest. I'm I have all this energy, I can rest when I get old. And then eventually, your body and your soul reminds you that you were created as a human being, not a human machine. And you say, Oh, I understand. God says, Trust me. And eventually you enter a season where you can you can't fix things and you can't control things and you can't predict and you can't make it go away. And somehow God carries you through. And you come out on the other side and you say, uh, now, now I understand. Pain. Pain doesn't automatically transform us or change us. But but pain presents us with a decision. Difficult times present us with a decision. What am I gonna do with this? Where am I gonna turn now? Who am I gonna trust? Will I return to the gods that have already failed me? Or will I trust myself? Or will I surrender this to God? That's why the promise at the end of Jeremiah 31 is so extraordinary. Because God doesn't simply say, Well, friends, hopefully you've learned your lesson. He says He says, I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do something about your heart. I hope this jumped out at you when you were reading 31. It's it's uh Jeremiah 31, 31. I'm gonna write it on their hearts. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. And then verse 33 I will put my law, I will write my law within them, on their hearts. That's one of the most important promises in the Old Testament. And notice who's doing the work God will write, God will put, God will be their God, and then later, and God will forgive. The hope of Jeremiah 31 isn't oh my people are gonna try and finally try harder to do the right thing. The hope is God's going to do something Israel cannot do for itself. He's going to write his ways in them. This is a this would be a concept uh um in the context of what's happening, the people that Jeremiah is writing to would understand this because people who worship false gods often believe those false gods would would speak to them and answer questions about life when an animal would die and it would be uh cut or sacrificed, they would take the organs out, and these uh fortune tellers or uh um uh spiritual leaders, um I don't know, strange people, uh, would read the organs of these animals. Like they would hold a heart or a liver and they would say, This is what God is saying to you according to this heart of this animal, right? So when when um when Jeremiah says, Oh, don't go to the animals, don't read the hearts of these uh, you know, these cows, don't do that anymore. God's gonna write his law on your heart inside of you. You want a God that speaks to you, he's gonna write it on your heart. Walter Brugeman points out that the Hebrew word Torah, which we know is the book of the law, has a broader sense here. Um the new covenant doesn't mean that God's ways uh of the written word no longer matter, but God's instruction now is not only in the written word, but is now placed within his people. That's the difference. God doesn't merely want his way in a written word in our Bible and how much we cherish God's Bible, our God's word, he wants his ways inside of us, and that's the important distinction here. When we hear the word, he's gonna write it on our hearts, we usually think about our feelings, and that's not exactly how the Old Testament talks about the heart. Biblically, the heart is the center of the person. We might even say the soul of the person, the place of thought and desire desire and our will and decision makings and our intentions. So when God says, I will write my instruction on their heart, he isn't saying I'm gonna make them feel religious. He's saying I'm gonna transform the deepest place from which they live. You see, God isn't satisfied with just compliance, like, oh, I've got to do this because this is what God's word says. He wants transformation. He doesn't merely want I shouldn't do that because God said not to. He wants to bring us toward I don't want that anymore because I've learned to want what God wants. That's maturity. Life helps us recognize what God is writing on our hearts. God said so is not enough. I mean, it it's okay uh when you're when you are um first walking with Christ and you start to see things in God's word, and you say, Oh, well, if God said that, I'm not gonna do that. But when you've walked with God for years, something begins to happen, and you start saying things like, oh, now I know why God said that. Uh the same thing with growing up. I mean, my mom and dad had certain rules, and um one of one of the rules was when we got out of bed, we had to make our bed. And I was like, Oh, what a waste of time. You're just gonna get back in your bed in another, you know, 10 hours, you're gonna be back there. What's the purpose of making your bed? But do you know today, when I get out of my bed, I make my bed. And every night when I get into my bed and I pull my sheets down and I and everything is straight, and uh and you get in and it's comfortable, and I'm like, oh, I'm so glad I took those two minutes to make my bed this morning because there's nothing like getting into a bed that is freshly made. I think that's what that's what I'm saying here. It's like it's like don't be prideful. Okay, I'm not gonna be prideful because God said so. But now I've lived long enough to know what pride does. Now I've lived long enough to know what bitterness does, so that's why I forgive quickly. Now I know why I've lived long enough to see what greed does, so I don't want to be greedy. Um I've lived long enough to see what uh constant hurry and hurry and never taking a rest does to the person and to the soul. And so now I see the importance of Sabbath. I've lived long enough to know that I'm not very good at being my own God. I've lived long enough to discover that God's ways are good. That's different from simply knowing that God is good. I've lived long enough to know that God's ways are good. Finally, Jeremiah 31, 34 says, they will all know me. Notice what God doesn't say. He doesn't say someday they're finally gonna follow all the rules. He says, No, someday, someday they will all know me. That's the destination, friends. The covenant has always been relational at its core. God is after a relationship with us, not simply to get us to march correctly. It's always been about I will be their God and they will be my people. And that's what God has wanted all along. He wants us, not our religious behavior, not our church attendance, not our accomplishments, not even our obedience. He wants our heart. Because when he has our heart, obedience begins to become something very different. So maybe here's the question that I want to uh leave with you, and I want to wrap this up. What has life taught you about the goodness of God that you could not have understood five years ago or ten years ago? Where can you now look back and say, now, now I understand? I mean, maybe you understand why God told you to forgive, or maybe you understand why he warned you about pride, or maybe he maybe you understand why uh why relationships matter more than um money or work. Maybe you understand why you need rest or why you need Sabbath. Um maybe you understand why you can't control everything. Maybe you're going through something right now and you don't understand it yet. And that's important too. Because Jeremiah 31 doesn't say that God's people understand everything, it tells us something even better. It tells us that the God who is leading us through the wilderness is the God who says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. So perhaps the question is, who will I trust when I don't understand? Pay attention to those moments, friends, when you find yourself saying, I understand now why God said that. Because through it all, God is after something much deeper than outward obedience. He wants your heart. He wants you to know him. And perhaps that's one of the greatest promises in all of Jeremiah. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Thanks so much for listening to the Water's Edge Bible recap. I look forward every week to walking in the Word with you. You can find more information about Water's Edge Church at www.watersedge.fa. And you can listen to our weekly message on any platform under the Water's Edge website by downloading the Water's Edge.