“A Field, a Faith, and a Future” (Jeremiah 32:1-15)

 I wonder if any of you have ever spent money on something and later regretted doing it. I know I have on more than one occasion. And I suspect I’m not the only one here this morning who’s guilty of it.

We call them impulse purchases. And just for fun, I thought I’d share a few examples that I came across recently on the internet:

•  I bought $50 worth of Beanie Babies because I thought they’d be worth something.

•  My partner went out to buy vegetables for dinner and came home with a kayak. He forgot the vegetables and the kayak has never been used.

•  I bought a onesie for my Great Dane. I don’t know why I bought it but I think he liked it.

•  I’ve bought a lot of “how to” kits and books, like how to knit, how to do calligraphy, how to paint, how to write poetry, etc. Have I learned how to do a single one of those things? No, I have not.

And here’s the one that I think should win the prize:

•  I bought a rare exotic cucumber from a guy who said it would give me good luck.

When we look at this morning’s passage, it might seem that Jeremiah was guilty of the same thing when he bought that field from his cousin Hanamel. Just take a moment to try to fix the scene in your mind. The city of Jerusalem was within days of total destruction. The seemingly invincible armies of the King of Babylon had rolled through the towns and villages of Israel and were now in the process of raising their siegeworks against the walls of Jerusalem. Their battering rams were pounding against the gates. The methodical, slow thump…, thump…, thump… could be heard resounding through the city, as soldiers from within vainly twanged their bows and hurled their spears in defence, and while women and children cowered in their homes in terror.

In the midst of all this, Jeremiah was himself being held under arrest for refusing to stop prophesying the ruin of Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s real problem, as Jeremiah saw it, however, was not the armies that were attacking it from without, but the moral rot that had long been causing it to decay from within. The armies of Babylon that were now pounding at Jerusalem’s gates were God’s punishment for its leaders’ and its people’s long abandonment of him and of his righteous laws.

If that weren’t enough, along comes Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel. Hanamel had not come to comfort Jeremiah or give him company. Quite the opposite, he had come to pressure Jeremiah to purchase a piece of land—a field in Jeremiah’s home town of Anathoth, just a few miles away. I can only imagine that, with the occupation of the Babylonian troops, property values in the area had taken something of a nosedive! But Hanamel hadn’t come to offer Jeremiah a deal. He was insisting that Jeremiah had an obligation to his ancestors to purchase the property. So apparently without any negotiation or haggling, Jeremiah bought the field for seventeen shekels of silver—a weight of around two hundred grams or a little less than half a pound by today’s measure.

Now I can’t tell you whether seventeen shekels of silver was a bargain for a field or not. And besides, Jeremiah never reveals its. But whatever the case, that was not what it was all about.

It wasn’t that Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel was some fast-talking huckster. Nor was it that Jeremiah was a fool for a good deal or even that he felt an obligation to his ancestors. No, Jeremiah was acting in obedience to a direct command from the Lord himself. God had told him in advance, “Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative and it is not only your right, it is your duty to buy it.’”

“I knew that this was the word of the Lord,” Jeremiah reflected, “so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels  of silver.”

Jeremiah’s Parables

So what was this property deal all about? What was Jeremiah doing when he knew that it was probably only a matter of a few days before Jerusalem’s walls would be breached, the city would lie in ruins, and its people? Well, I suppose you could think of it as a kind of object lesson.

Back when I was pastoring congregations, one of the features of the Sunday morning service every week was the children’s talk. It usually took the form of an object lesson, something from everyday life that the children could relate to and hopefully would stick in their minds. One of the great disappointments of my ministry, however, was the number of adults on the way out of the service who would remark on the children’s talk but would never mention the sermon that I had spent hours preparing!

Object lessons can be memorable. (Think of Jesus’ parables.) And Jeremiah was a master of them. There was the almond tree—which in Hebrew sounds very much like watching. And so Jeremiah used it as a reminder that the Lord was always watching over his people Israel (1:11-12). In alarming contrast to that, there was the boiling pot, tilting over and about to spill—a warning that God would be pouring out his judgement over his people (1:12-16).

Move along a few chapters and there is the linen belt that the Lord instructed Jeremiah to purchase and bind around his waist, only to tell him to hide it among the rocks, where it quickly began to mildew and disintegrate—a visible reminder that God had once bound his people to himself but they had turned from him and strayed (13:1-11). The parable of the belt was followed by the wine jars, which spoke of a people drunk on excess and decadent behaviour and warning that God would soon smash them in his anger (13:12-14). Proceeding to chapter 18, there was what is perhaps Jeremiah’s most memorable parable of the potter’s wheel. If the potter wasn’t satisfied with his work, it was a simple matter for him to reshape it. So it was that the Lord spoke through Jeremiah, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.” (18:1-6)

And the list goes on, with the two baskets of figs, one with good figs, the other with figs that had gone rotten (24:1-10). The bad figs were a warning to King Zedekiah and his officials, who had all become corrupt, that God would banish and destroy them. The good figs stood as a word of comfort to the exiled citizens of Israel: “My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.”

Move along to the next chapter and there is the dark parable of the cup of the wine of God’s wrath, which he would force all the nations to drink—including Judah (25:15-29). And two chapters later the Lord instructs Jeremiah to make a yoke and put it over his neck (27:1-11). It was to serve as a warning that Israel and the surrounding nations would soon be made to bow their necks under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

Now move along to our chapter this morning, and you can see how Jeremiah was able to use this incident in his life as another parable, another object lesson on the Lord’s dealings with his people. This time Jeremiah was literally putting his money where his mouth was, giving substance to his conviction that God was calling him to stay in Jerusalem.

Yes, the city was doomed to destruction. And Jeremiah could easily have said, “I’m outta here.” But God still had a purpose for him there. Jeremiah was acting out of a deep trust in God’s unfailing promise—a promise made more than a millennium in the past to Abraham:

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7-8)

Jeremiah’s purchase of the field, in the midst of a world that was falling apart, was a demonstration of his faith in the unchanging purposes of God. With the Babylonian armies pounding at the gates, Jeremiah was well aware that in all likelihood he would never set foot on that field. Yet rather than disengaging from the realities around him, he chose to do something that from a purely worldly perspective didn’t make any sense at all. His purchase of the field was a witness to his commitment his people and to his unshakeable belief that God, who had shown his faithfulness to them again and again in the past, would continue faithful in the years ahead.

Engagement

Flash forward now to the twentieth century. When I gave my life to Christ as a teenager, I was encouraged to start memorizing verses from the Bible. And one of the verses I remember committing to memory early in that process was 2 Corinthians 6:17, which in the old King James Version runs thus: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord…”

Around the same time I became active in a church youth group where we often sang a song that ran like this. (Perhaps some of you are familiar with it.)

This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Now put these influences together, and I found that there was a constant tug on me not to get too involved in “the world” or to allow myself to be influenced by worldly thinking and attitudes. And I can’t argue that there isn’t a certain wisdom in that. We live in perilous times, when the truth is being bent and twisted and outright denied all around us, to the point where it’s hard to know whom to believe.

Looking back, however, I am grateful to God that he put other believers around me who encouraged me not to insulate myself from the world, but to be engaged in it, to wrestle with secular thinking, to have deep friendships and to work alongside people who didn’t necessarily share my Christian presuppositions. And I found that my trust in God was only deepened and strengthened as a result.

Like Jeremiah, it was vital that I seek, not to insulate myself from the world, but instead, to influence it, even if only in a small way, and to make a positive impact.

Surely that was what Jesus meant when he told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth…” “You are the light of the world…” Salt doesn’t do a lot of good when you store it in its box or in leave it in a shaker. It needs to be sprinkled out and mixed in with the food.

We use salt as a flavour enhancer and we also use it as a preservative. Right now is pickling season. It’s hard to imagine pickling without salt. It’s salt that helps to preserve the pickles, to keep them fresh. And it’s salt that gives them flavour. And that is what Jesus was challenging his disciples to do—and by extension, you and me today.

Years ago there was a popular book called Out of the Saltshaker by a woman named Rebecca Manley Pippert. One little quote from that book that stands out for me runs like this:

What do you do with a man who is supposed to be the holiest man who has ever lived and yet goes around talking with prostitutes and hugging lepers? What do you do with a man who not only mingles with the most unsavory people but actually seems to enjoy them? The religious accused him of being a drunkard, a glutton and having tacky taste in friends. It is a profound irony that the Son of God visited this planet and one of the chief complaints against him was that he was not religious enough.

Jeremiah recognized that, in spite of all the mayhem that was happening around him, in spite of the doom that was surrounding the city, God was calling him to stay. Even more, God was calling him to invest himself in it. And, as I said, I don’t know what seventeen shekels of silver was worth, but it served to signify Jeremiah’s commitment to staying put.

So as we listen to Jeremiah, let me ask you, How is God calling you to invest in your world today—in your neighbourhood? —in your workplace? —in your school? Like Jeremiah, you may never be privileged to see the fruits, but I guarantee you won’t regret it when you hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

“An Everlasting Love” (Jeremiah 31:2-6)

 

About a third of the way through the letter “J” in my dictionary you will come across the word “jeremiad”. And what, you ask, is a jeremiad? Well, a jeremiad is defined as (and I quote) “a long literary work, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall”.

With a long definition like that, it is clear to anyone who knows their Bible where the word “jeremiad” originates: from the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament—fifty-two chapters of almost uninterrupted gloom and doom. And if that weren’t enough, Jeremiah wrote an equally doleful sequel: the book of Lamentations—five more chapters of melancholy and woe!

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I remember coming across a book entitled, Are You Joking, Jeremiah? I don’t think it was the author’s intention to turn Jeremiah into a kind of seventh-century BC stand-up comedian. A humorist Jeremiah certainly was not. What the author was really trying to do was to ask the question, “Jeremiah, can things really be that bad? Are the circumstances really as dire as you want us to believe?” And I have no doubt that Jeremiah’s answer would have been an unequivocal “Yes”. Or maybe, “Worse!”

For the past few months I’ve been working my way through Jeremiah as a part of my daily quiet time. And it hasn’t been easy reading. Jeremiah lived in the late years of the seventh and the early years of the sixth century BC. He proclaimed the message that the Lord had entrusted to him over a period of forty years, spanning the reigns of the last four of Judah’s kings: Josiah (640-609 BC), Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

As he wrote, all that was left of the once-great nation of Israel were just two of the original twelve tribes, Benjamin and Judah, clustered around the capital city of Jerusalem. Now their existence too was being threatened with the expansion of the Babylonian Empire to the north and the rapid advance of its seemingly invincible armies. What were the people of Judah to do?

Much of the leadership were urging that they form an alliance with the Egyptian Empire to the south—indeed, if worse came to worst, to abandon Judah altogether and flee to Egypt. Imagine the irony, though, of going back to the very place where their ancestors had escaped from slavery five hundred years before—to the land from which God himself had intervened to rescue them with miracles on a scale never witnessed before or since!

A Message of Warning

To Jeremiah the notion of turning to Egypt was unthinkable. God’s words through him to the people and their leaders were these: “If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up” (42:10). Again and again with words like these Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to remain in their land.

Yes, the Babylonian army would attack and enslave them. Yes, those who survived would be lucky to escape with their lives. And all of this, said Jeremiah, was not just that Judah happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, what was unfolding around them was the due punishment that they had brought upon themselves—retribution for the countless ways in which they had blithely abandoned God and his laws, to adopt pagan practices and to oppress the poor.

So it was that Jeremiah went through the streets of Jerusalem, confronting prophets and priests, generals, landowners, leaders, merchants and kings—anyone he could find—with his message of warning. And he didn’t fear to mince his words!

I have seen your abominations,
your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings,
on the hills in the field.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
How long will it be before you are made clean? (13:27)

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice,
who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing
and does not give him his wages… (22:13)

Behold, the storm of the Lord!
Wrath has gone forth,
a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord will not turn back
 until he has executed and accomplished
 the intents of his heart. (23:19-20)

Needless to say, Jeremiah and his constant warnings of doom did not meet with a positive response. On one occasion his prophecies were cut up and torn to shreds by the king himself. On another he was arrested on charges of treachery and locked away in a dungeon. And on still another he was tossed into a cistern and would have died of starvation in the mud had he not been rescued. Yet none of this halted Jeremiah’s determination to issue the warnings that God had given him.

Their little kingdom was doomed. But the Lord would restore them—if only they would turn from evil and injustice, and be faithful to him once again.

The Message of God’s Love

Now it’s not as though Jeremiah was just an angry old man (or an angry young man for that matter!). Beneath all his words of woe and retribution and judgement (as with all the prophets) was the unquenchable conviction of God’s undying love for his people.

So it is that in today’s passage we come across some of the most beautiful and moving words in all of Scripture. There through Jeremiah God addresses his wayward people: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

Now this was not some new-fangled idea that Jeremiah had come up with. He was not inventing anything. The everlasting, undying love of God is a thread that weaves its way through the whole of the Bible, from beginning to end.

It takes us all the way back to that unforgettable scene in the Garden of Eden, where God takes the creature that he has created in his own image—that he has formed from the dust of the ground—and tenderly breathes into him the breath of life. We witness it as Adam and Eve are banished from the garden for their disobedience. Yet in his fatherly care for them the Lord will not see them go cold and naked, but caringly provides them with garments of animal skins.

It thunders from Mount Sinai as the mighty God proclaims to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (Exodus 34:6-7). Later on, as they near the Promised Land, Moses proclaims once again the Lord’s message to the people of Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession… It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you…” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a)

As we move farther through the Bible, the chorus of God’s love rings through the psalms as well. Psalm 33, for example, reminds us that, “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (5b). But most notably it is in Psalm 136, where we are invited to sing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his love endures forever.” But not just once! In each of the twenty-five verses that follow, the psalmist calls upon us to repeat the chorus, “for his steadfast love endures forever.”

But one of the most moving pictures of God’s inexhaustible love comes to us in the book of Hosea. I suspect many of you are familiar with Hosea’s unrelenting devotion to his wife Gomer. Perhaps we could blame Hosea for making a poor choice of a wife in the first place, since Gomer already had a reputation for promiscuity long before he took her in marriage. Yet God had a plan in it all. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Gomer has not given up her adulterous lifestyle. Although forced to divorce her, Hosea continues to love Gomer in spite of her unfaithfulness, to the point where later he finds her living as a slave and purchases her freedom, giving us in the process a profound, real-life parable of God’s love for his people.

The Message Made Flesh

So it is that God could instruct Jeremiah to write, even to a people who had rejected him, “I have loved you with an everlasting love…” That love is a theme that weaves its way through the whole of Scripture (as I’ve attempted to point out) from the beginning to the end. And so it is on this fourth Sunday in Advent, with Christmas just around the corner, that we focus on God’s love.

The poet Christina Rossetti put it to rhyme in a little poem that later became a Christmas carol:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.

The only problem is that, with all the charming pictures of sheep and oxen and shepherds, we run the risk of romanticizing that love—turning it into something that is cute and cuddly like the little baby gazing innocently up from the manger. (Let’s not forget the smell of the sheep and the oxen! And let’s not forget that those crusty shepherds were terrified—scared out of their wits—at the sight of the angels!)

No, the love that entered the world at Christmas was a fierce love, a costly love. And it would be forty days after that first Christmas that old Simeon would draw attention to that truth, when Mary and Joseph brought their newborn son to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem. As he stared down on the little infant, Simeon’s words to Mary were bone-chilling: “This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also...” (Luke 2:34-35)

Simeon could not have been aware of it. But with the advantage of hindsight we know that what he was pointing to would ultimately lead to the cross. And looking back on it years later from the other side, the apostle John could write, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) If we want to catch a vision of the love of God in all its fullness, it is not to the manger that we must look, but past the manger, to Calvary, to the one who, in the Apostle Paul’s words, loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

And so today you and I come together on this final Sunday in Advent, this Sunday of love. In a few minutes that fourth candle, the love candle, will be extinguished. But let us never lose sight of the fact that the love that you and I celebrate this Christmas season is a love that will never falter or fail. For we come together in the presence of the God who says to us, as he said to Jeremiah centuries ago, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

“A Better Covenant” (Hebrews 7:20-28)

 

The other day I was going through some old DVDs in our basement, when I came across one of my favourites: The Princess Bride. I find it difficult to believe that it goes back thirty-five years, so I’ll excuse you if many of you are not familiar with it.

I won’t recount the whole story for you. (I’m not sure I remember it all that well myself!) But there was one character in it called Vizzini who stood out for me. It seemed that in almost every scene where he appeared, he would find a reason to utter the word, “Inconceivable!” In fact it gets to the point where another character ends up saying to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Well, I suppose we may all have our favourite words. That certainly seems to have been the case with the author of Hebrews. I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his favourite words is “better”. In all he uses it eleven times: We have a Saviour who is better than the angels (1:4), we are heirs of a better hope (7:19), we are recipients of better promises (8:6), we desire a better homeland (11:16), we are purified by a better sacrifice (9:23), we will rise again to a better life (11:35) … And in verse 22 of this morning’s passage we find that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.

Which brings us to a second favourite word in Hebrews: “covenant”. It occurs for the first time in verse 22 this morning. And by my count we will come across it a total of nineteen times before we arrive at the conclusion of the final chapter. So if we’re going to understand the message of Hebrews, we need to understand what its author means by the word “covenant”.

So let me ask you: What comes to your mind when you hear the word “covenant”? Personally, I can think of covenant being used in a couple of settings. The first is in the realm of legal contracts, where two parties agree to certain conditions that must be met in order for a deal to be settled. The second is in the realm of marriage, where bride and groom swear to love, honour and cherish each other to the exclusion of all others “till death do us part”.

Perhaps you can think of other examples. But whatever the case, I think we all can agree that a covenant of any kind involves solemnity, permanence and commitment.

The Four Covenants of the Old Testament

Outside of marriage, covenants may not be a regular feature of life today. But they were not uncommon in the world of the ancient Near East. There were covenants between kings, covenants between cities, and covenants between rulers and their subjects. And some of them can be traced back to more than four thousand years ago. However, common though covenants may have been in the ancient world, the Old Testament is the only place where you will find a covenant in which one of the parties is God. So let’s take a few moments to look at some of the covenants we find there.

The first time the word “covenant” appears in the Bible is in the account of Noah. No doubt you are familiar with the scene, as after what seemed an endless time in the ark, Noah at last stood on dry ground once again. As he gazed into the sky, there was a rainbow and God spoke to him: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature … that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)

Turn another half dozen or so chapters through Genesis and you will come to a second covenant, this time with Abraham. God promises that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Added to that, they will no longer be wanderers but will be possessors of a land that they can call their own. Unlike the covenant with Noah, however, this time there was an obligation on the part of Abraham and his descendants: that every male should be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.

We come to a third covenant when we turn to the book of Exodus and stand with the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. There the Lord lays down the conditions that his newly rescued people are to uphold if they are to remain in relationship with him. We think of them as the Ten Commandments. But rabbis would tell you that there were in fact no fewer than 613!

The fourth covenant comes two centuries later, when the nation of Israel was entering its golden age under King David. God’s promise to David is summarized for us in Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring for ever, and build your throne for all generations.”

Now these are all amazing promises. The people of Israel stood in immense privilege. No other nation was so favoured. But the problem was that they never upheld their side of the covenant. They failed to recognize that circumcision did not involve just a surgical procedure, but that that outward act was intended as a sign of an inward commitment to serve the Lord God and him alone. Instead, they found themselves being attracted to the false deities and pagan practices of the nations that surrounded them. They bowed before images made of wood and precious metals and some even sacrificed their children to them. Their priests and their leaders from the king down became corrupt and the people were not far behind in following them. The poor were trodden under foot and widows were forced to beg to keep themselves and their children alive.

The Promise of a New Covenant

It was into the midst of this ongoing scene that God sent his prophets. Their task was to warn the people, including the king and the royal family, the priests and all the religious officials, of their rampant corruption and infidelity.

But the prophets came not just to alert the people to their waywardness. They also brought a message of hope and redemption, of forgiveness and restoration, of new life and a whole new relationship with God. Among those prophets was Jeremiah, who came with these words:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

It was a remarkable promise—and we don’t have the time to go into it in any great detail right now. Suffice it to say, though, that this new covenant would not be a matter of outward obedience to laws and regulations. Rather, it would be centred in a relationship—knowing God, not as a distant being out there, but as a living presence, God himself coming to dwell within us. And we know that those promises were fulfilled in a person—in Jesus.

I love the way the apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 1:20) Jesus has come to usher in a better covenant than the covenant with Noah or Abraham or Moses or David—a covenant that is sealed not with the sacrifice of bulls and sheep and goats, but with his own life’s blood; a covenant that involves not an outward obedience but his daily presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. All of that is wrapped up in the words from Hebrews we have heard this morning, where we read that Jesus , “the Son who has been made perfect forever”, “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him”.

Four Promises of Jesus

So it is that “Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant”—a covenant that was sealed by his blood shed for you and for me on the cross and ratified by his resurrection from the grave on the third day. But what does that mean in practical terms? How does it work out for you and me today? Part of the answer at least can be found in four promises that Jesus makes in the gospels.

The first is found in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) So we have the assurance that when we put our faith in Jesus, he will never let go of us. We may fail him. Indeed we most certainly will. I know I have time and time again. But he will never turn his back on us. Peter found that out after he denied knowing Jesus not once but three times. It was not many days later that Jesus was coming to him once again and saying to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:19)

A second promise of Jesus comes to us from the week before his crucifixion, when he assured his followers, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination. Back then there were theologians who were claiming that God was dead. Now those theologians are the ones who are dead—and the good news of Jesus continues to be proclaimed with power and to prove itself true in people’s lives all over the world.

The church in Nigeria grows by more than a million new disciples a year. At last count the largest church in Europe was where? In Kyiv, with more than thirty thousand adherents.[1] And where are the world’s largest Christian congregations? Not in North America, but in Korea and India.

A third promise that Jesus made to his followers came as they gathered for the Passover supper on the evening before his crucifixion. It was on that occasion that he told them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3) And so Jesus gives us the assurance that not only will he be with us in every circumstance of life, but that when life ends, we will be gathering among that joyful throng to sing his everlasting praise:

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)

And the fourth promise that Jesus has left with us comes in his very last words before he ascended to be with his Father: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

John Baillie was a Scottish theologian of the early twentieth century. He was fond of telling the story of going for a walk one day with his young grandson, who was just a toddler. At one point along their way the little boy began to stumble. He might have fallen down altogether, had his little hand not been held in the firm grasp of his grandfather’s. And that, said Baillie, is how it is with Jesus. We may stumble and fall, but Jesus is with us and he will never let us go.

With all that in mind, maybe you can see now why covenant is one of the favourite words of the author of Hebrews. May it be one of your favourite words too. And by the power of the Holy Spirit may you seek to live out that covenant in your daily walk with the one who sealed it with his blood.

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[1]     Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent, 88