“The days are surely coming, says the Lord ... ” There is, to me, at least, a sense of desperate yearning in those words. After a brief detour at Thanksgiving, we're back to the prophet Jeremiah, you see, and the people are now at their lowest. Babylon has conquered, Israel and Judah are destroyed, the people have been expelled and there seems to be no hope. The future holds only bleakness and hopelessness. And then God begins this message through Jeremiah with the words “The days are surely coming.” Something good is on the horizon – it might be the distant horizon, but it's there. There's a light shining in the darkness; there's hope in the midst of hopelessness. God isn't finished with His people. They haven't reached the end of the road; God is just preparing a different path for them to take. “The days are surely coming,” says the Lord, , and “after those days” something glorious is going to happen. God will be revealed anew, in different ways. God will touch His people anew; God will lead them in a new direction; God will give them a fresh beginning. When you're dealing with God, the problems of the present are always merely the sprinboard into the hope of the future. There's an old saying that you've probably heard: there are no problems; there are only solutions waiting to be found. God's people in the days of Jeremiah had problems – but there were solutions to be found. God would not abandon them. God would not cast them aside. God would work with them to bring new life out of what seemed to be dead. God would give a new beginning to that which seemed to have come to an end. The people of God would go on. There would be “a new covenant” into which God's people would be invited, a new way for God's people to be God's people. It might have to wait until “after those days,” but there's no doubt that “the days are surely coming.” We need to be careful as Christians not to read too much into the Scriptures of the Old Testament. We understand these things differently. No doubt for the people of God of three millennia ago “after those days” was a look ahead to the time when  the exile would come to an end and when God's people could return to their land and to their homes. At some point about a thousand years later, a group of Jews decided that “after those days” meant the time after the coming of the Messiah, whom they had discerned was an obscure travelling preacher named Jesus of Nazareth. Today, “after those days” is a reminder to a church struggling to find its place in an increasingly secular society that God is still at work; that God is still here; that God is still with us. In all thress cases, the promise God made was to bind His people to Himself by means of 'a new covenant” - not “the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,” but “a new covenant” that would change the entire basis of how God related to His people. Jesus saw Himself as One Who offered the “new covenant” to the world. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Holy Communion. Do you remember the words? “This cup is the new covenant ...” Jesus said. We are people of the “new covenant.” What does it mean? The “new covenant” seems to have four parts to it.

 

     God said “I will put My law within them.” The old covenant was a written covenant. Moses went up Mount Sinai and returned with tablets on which were witten the rules and regulations involved with being God's people. The first five book of the Bible, from Genesis to Deuteronomy go in great detail through the requirements and expectations God had for His people. The old covenant was based on an external code of conduct or code of law. It was based on rules to follow and sacrifices to make. The “new covenant” is different. The “new covenant” is put within the people of God. The “new covenant” is something we understand and respond to internally rather than something we merely obey externally. A lot of Christians have difficulty with that understanding – and so did the people of God of centuries ago. Jesus often criticized the Pharisees and called them to account because they tried to backtrack on the “new covenant.” They set about re-establishing rules and regulations for the people to follow, and Jesus tried to remind them and the rest of God's people: “no. It's inside you,” was Jesus' message. And yet, Christians do the same thing today. Whenever you hear a Christians say simply “the Bible says ...” that's falling back into an old covenant way of thinking. I'm not saying that what the Bible says is unimportant, but its importance is in what it does to us on the inside rather than in how it makes us act on the outside. To live faithfully as a person of God is to live with the full benefit of God's word, but also with the benefit of the conscience God has given us that works within us, that allows us to discern right from wrong. The written word we hold to be sacred leads us but doesn't dictate to us. It strikes me that this is one of the great mistakes of fundamentalist Christianity – setting up the New Testament to be merely the updated version of the old written law. But the law isn't found in a book or on paper anymore. It's within us.

 

     God said “I will write it on their hearts.” In the ancient world the heart was believed to be the seat of human emotions. Today we understand that emotion comes from the brain, but the imagery remains. We speak today of broken hearts in times of sorrow, our hearts are warmed when good things happen and the heart is the symbol of love. That symbolism is at work here. The old covenant – that set of rules and regulations written on paper – doesn't really encourage a response on the basis of love and faithfulness. It encourages a response based on fear and obedience. The whole theory of law is that we threaten people with punishment or consequences of some kind if they break the rules. But the “new covenant” isn't written on paper – it's written on our hearts. It calls for a response of faithfulness rather than mere obedience; it seeks a response that comes from love rather than fear; it's based not on outer conformity but on inner transformation.

 

     Understanding the nature of the new covenant leaves us with a promise. “I will be their God.” That's a promise and an assurance. “I will be their God.” The old covenant – with its emphasis on following rules and regulations - always seemed to leave open the possibility of being cast aside by God. God's people worried that their misfortunes were a punishment from God and a sign of abandonment by God. The “new covenant” says that we shouldn't fear. “Do not be afraid.” Jesus said those words over and over. “Do not be afraid.” Why not? Simply because “I am with you always to the end of the age.” God is our God. That won't change. We can err, we can wander, we can screw things up royally – God will still be our God! That won't change. 

 

     Of course, along with that, we're told that “they shall be my people.” Therein lies the focal point of all the good news that God's people have and that God's people proclaim: we belong to God. Not everything has come full circle. The world is still moving onward, Paul writes in Romans that “the whole creation has been groaning ... right up to the present time.” God has created, but God is still creating. Life continues, creation continues and God's people continue. It all continues. But one day - “after those days” which I fear in some ways are still upon us – all will be well. For now, God is our God and we are God's people. That's pretty good news all by itself! Thanks be to God!