By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 17, 2024
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Jeremiah 31:31–34 (ESV)
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers 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. 33 For 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. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor 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.”
Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent. For most of us this does not really mean a great deal. For me, it does not really mean too much, since as Friends we do not put much emphasis on Holy Days and seasons. We do not emphasize these traditional church seasons because of our belief that every moment of every day is holy and sacred in the eyes of God. I believe this. I believe that a Tuesday in June is as important as a Sunday in March. I even believe that any random day of the year holds the same importance as Christmas or Easter.
I believe this in my own life. If that is how I live, many have asked why I even mention the traditional church calendar. There are not any required special observances during this season among Friends. We do not believe that we are required to participate in fasts or penance during this time. But the traditional liturgical calendar gives us something. It allows us to join with all those who claim the name of Christ, to join together as a greater community and remember our shared history and faith.
Lent is a season of forty days, where we remember significant events in our faith’s history. These forty days remind us of the forty years Israel journeyed in the wilderness. These forty days remind us of the period of time Moses spent on the mountain of God, where he received Torah. These forty days remind us of the forty days Jesus spent in the desert undergoing every form of temptation that we as humans face.
This number often occurs in scripture. I just listed several instances, but there are more. We observe periods of forty, and usually they are accompanied by a trial or struggle. This is why I want us to remember lent, even though we may not participate in the wider Lenten traditions. We face struggles personally. We face struggles as a community. Our nation faces struggles, and is facing struggles. What do we do? Where is God?
Jeremiah understood struggle. We frequently forget that the individuals God inspired to write the words we have within scripture, lived. I mean this in a very real sense, not only that they were once alive eons ago, but that they lived. Just like each of us they had relationships. These inspired authors lived through difficult times throughout their history. We forget the humanity of scripture because we focus so much on the authority. Jeremiah knew struggle, personally.
We understand this in a scholarly sense. We call him the weeping prophet. But do we recognize it personally? There was a reason Jeremiah wept. He wept because his nation was apathetic to God. He wept because he could perceive where their current path was taking them. Jeremiah wept because God had given him a message to share, and many did not want to listen. I hope we can identify with Jeremiah to some degree.
Jeremiah watched as the kingdom fell apart. He watched as armies amassed on their boarders. He watched as kings made treaties based on personal interest. He watched as the religious leaders twisted words and lead people away from God. He watched, he wept, and he attempted to speak out.
I believe that we all can understand a bit of Jeremiah’s situation. We each feel an overwhelming responsibility as we near another election. The news constantly conveys various reports of doom if we allow one side or the other to gain power. We listen to reports of battles, attacks. We see celebrities taking a side that we might not agree with. We look out at the current events surrounding us, and we question what might happen.
My entire life, I have been taught that the end is near. Twenty-five years ago I watched my community filling storage containers with nonperishable food items and other items for survival. Our community did this because we were being told that when the calendar moved from 1999 to 2000 all the computers would crash and society along with it. I was taught that in the chaos that would follow this collapse, the events depicted in the Revelation begin. I was terrified.
Looking back now I can see how we were all caught up in an apocalyptic mania, but at the time it was very real. We needed to be prepared. We did not want to be one of the virgins from the parable of Jesus that failed to have oil for their lamp as the bridegroom approached. We should be prepared. We should always be prepared, but we should also be wise.
I saw during that era of history, just how easily we can be distracted by fear. I saw just how easy we can take our eyes off the true goal and refocus our attention on temporal affairs. We, and I mean all of us, can be distracted. In our honest attempts to be righteous and responsible we miss the larger goal.
Are we again approaching an apocalyptic mania driven by fear?
The prophets all struggle with this. They have this divine inspiration that tells them that something dramatic is approaching. An existential crisis that threatens their existence. It would be easy to be driven by fear. I would venture to say it would be prudent to take it serious. And they did. Jeremiah and the other prophets wrote, and spoke out against the coming storm. They did not go quietly toward the dark horizon. They wept, plead, urged and demanded for people to listen. And all to often the people looked at them as we so often do, they were crazy.
Many people during Jeremiah’s days spoke of the coming storm, but their words have not been preserved. Many spoke, but why did the message of Jeremiah remain?
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…”
Throughout the verses recorded by Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, we are given things that cast fear, along with words of hope.
Jeremiah said the days are coming. Days of doom were approaching. Days of suffering, days of sorrow. Judgement will meet the houses of Israel and Judah. But the struggle will not be eternal.
I want us all to understand this. There will be eras of darkness within our existence. This can be something that we experience personally or collectively. And we have all been there at some point in our lives. We might be there right now, or it may come upon us unexpectedly. Our temptation is to hide these experiences. Bury them beneath a joyful facade. We know that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This fruit is what we want. It is what we desire people see in us, but it is not always what we feel.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…”
We will face trials, we will face struggles. We will come to the end of ourselves. We may even experience a moment where we cannot fathom a way forward. These are emotional responses. And our emotions are important. They are what NT Wright might call a sign post. They can give us direction, but they are not the whole story.
As many of you know, I am not perfect. In the grief I experienced over the loss of my sister, I succumbed to various temptations. I did not realize that I was struggling with the emotions of grief at that time. All I was aware of was that what I felt, what I saw did not match what I thought I was supposed to be feeling. I wanted to turn my back on faith. I wanted to just walk away. I wanted to simply enjoy life. And I pursued that. I went through a period of time when I did not believe. I did not leave the church, but I did not believe. I questioned everything, and that path led me to consequences I did not anticipate. I had a child outside of marriage and the mother did not want to marry me.
My world was falling apart. I was angry at God. I was angry at the universe and everything in it, except for one little child. That child brought everything into focus because I now experienced something I had not yet experienced. I felt parental love. The grief, the anger, the confusion, and the love all swirled around within me and I realized at that moment that there had to be something beyond.
Behold, the days are coming…
Jeremiah spoke of the darkness Israel would face, but he does not stop there. Hope remains even in the darkness. There is something just beyond. God is going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
At this point in time generations had lived in the divided kingdom. Israel had cut ties with Jerusalem and had gone their own way. Judah had written the northern tribes off as heretics and apostate because they would not worship their way, or submit to their rule. This division had placed a wedge of separation that no one could perceive overcoming. Yet Jeremiah does not say one or the other will have a new covenant. He does not say God will restore the covenant of David, he says I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. What once divided them, what once caused separation, God would again unite.
A new covenant will be made, not like the covenant that he made with their fathers on the day he took them out of Egypt. We have considered this covenant over the past few weeks. This old covenant that Jeremiah speaks of was the one given at Sinai. The presence of God had rested on the summit of this mountain. And from the cloud that provided shade for their journey all the tribes had heard the ten words, and they proclaimed together that they would live by those words. They would be God’s people and he would be their God. Then after this proclamation was made, Moses was called up to speak with God on that mountain and for forty days, Israel waited.
They waited for forty days. Their leader was nowhere to be seen and they waited. When they could wait no longer, they went to Aaron and demanded that he make them a god to follow because they did not know what had happened to Moses. In forty days they had turned their backs on the promise they had made. Yet God did not give up on them.
For forty years, they wandered through the wilderness. Learning to be a covenant people. For forty years they had to learn to be the people God called them to be. And for those forty years Moses led them, taught them, showed them that life and lifestyle.
Then they entered the land promised to their fathers. They drove out and conquered the people that opposed the most high God living in the land. Only to then be swayed by their ways once they took possession of the land. Very soon, a people zealous in their righteousness became a people who lived only for what they thought was right in their own hearts.
The division began. Slowly they began to turn, and soon the nation was completely divided. They were divided because they entrusted or put their faith on humanity instead of God.
Jeremiah reminds them of what lead them to this place, but he does not leave them in that darkness. He tells them that it may seem hopeless at this moment, but just beyond our current perspective hope remains.
God had given them his wisdom on the mountain. He had etched them in the stone tablets, and they had carried them within the ark of the covenant. The law, the wisdom of God was sealed in an ark that they could not touch.
God tells us through Jeremiah, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”
The tablets were sealed in the ark. The wisdom was separated from the people.
I want us to stop for a moment and look at the larger picture. Why was Israel called, or chosen? What is the point? This goes back to the very first book of scripture, we were created in the image of God, but out of our desire to equal with God, with the knowledge of good and evil, we turned away from Him. We separated ourselves from God. We relied on our wisdom instead of the wisdom of God. What Jeremiah is showing us is the reintegration or redemption of humanity.
God called Israel not because they were better than any other people, but because they were not great. He selected Abraham, a man without an heir, to be the father of a nation. And through this nation, God would reveal his goodness to all people, and reverse the curse that had been initiated in Eden.
Slowly God reveals himself. First to one man, then to that man’s son, then to that son’s twins, and then to the twelve. With each generation the message spreads and yet separation remains. The people go into slavery, and they cry out to God. God brings them out of slavery and establishes the covenant, yet there is still a separation.
God patiently waits. He incrementally provides revelation, and draws humanity toward him. God is met with resistance. We again separate ourselves from God. We hold him at a distance. We continue to rely on our own knowledge of good and evil. The wisdom was there. It has always been there, sealed in the ark. But we kept God at a distance. We, as humanity, wanted the separation. We demanded that Moses stand in our place, and just let us know if something important happens.
This separation, as it always does, leads to greater and continued separation. When we pass our responsibility to others we pull away. When we pull away, we allow the distraction to come because we are no longer mindful. Soon selfishness and greed take hold. Jealousy and envy. Violence, and war. And the prophets weep over us as they proclaim the coming day.
But a new covenant is upon us. God will write his law, his wisdom, on our hearts, not on stone tablets that can be sealed in an ark, but our hearts. The wisdom of God will be integrated within us. His wisdom can become our wisdom. His hope our hope. We can know God.
I sat with this passage this week. I prayed with it. I visualized several ways of presenting this message. And for some reason I was drawn to the fruit of the spirit. Paul tells us of this fruit and I mentioned them earlier. He wrote about them to the church of Galatia, saying:
“Now the works of the flesh are evident; sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control: against such things there is no law.”
I sat with these words, and I considered them with what Jeremiah says. We can get hung up on the legalism of the words and say these are the things Paul says we cannot do. But what if Paul is saying something deeper? He says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident.” These are our desires, and the things we do to fulfill our desires. What if Paul like Jeremiah is telling us of a different perspective, or a new hope. When we seek what we want, when our focus is on ourselves even in our desire for righteousness we can often resort to the works of the flesh.
We can see this all around us. Even within the church there is division and dissensions. Even within the church there is envy and strife, at times there might even be fits of anger. This is human nature, unfortunately there are times we are as savage as the beasts of the field.
How do we move from the flesh and allow the fruit of the spirit to grow?
Let us look at this fruit. Love, joy, peace, patience…each of these come through trial. Each of these take mindful participation. We do not just love, we must actively participate in love. We do not just have patience, but patience is obtained through continuous trials. Self-control just does not happen, it instead comes to us through discipline and sacrifice. We obtain the fruit of the spirit by living lives with the spirit. We gain these things, when we integrate the wisdom of God into the very core of who we are and allow him to write it on our hearts.
The fruit grows when we turn away from our own desires, and instead turn to God. Yet even this is a desire. Even this can cause distraction from the very one we hope to draw closer to. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant.” I have read these words multiple times, and yet I frequently miss the most important part. Who is the one doing the work, who is initiating this new covenant?
It was humanity that caused the separation when they joined rebellious spirits in the garden. It was the serpent, the shining one, the elohim that was supposed to be the messenger of Yahweh that deceived humanity into their rebellion. God’s messenger deceived, and because the deception came through that fallen angel, God himself has to come to redeem. Jesus, God incarnate and God with us, came to live a full human life. He faced the same trials we face. He experienced the fullness of injustice that results from our attempts of harnessing power over good and evil. And he suffered our trials with us and for us. He lived, he taught, he showed us what life with God can be, and he took on the curse we inherited from our first parents. He made the new covenant himself, through the Life, death, and resurrection of Jesus his one unique son. And all who believe in him will not perish but will have life with him. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Jesus knows our struggles because he experienced them. He knows what hell we can go through because he endured it on the cross. He knows despair because he was sealed in the darkness of a tomb for three days. But we are not left in the dark. The day is coming and is here, because hope has risen. And God’s spirit dwells with us as our ever present teacher and guide. Let us entrust our lives to his wisdom and direction, and let us be enlightened by his hope.
Previous Messages:
Living Stones
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 03, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 2:2–10 (ESV) 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have…
Endure
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 26, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 4 (Faith and Practice of EFC-MAYM pg 61) Do you provide for the suitable Christian education and recreation of your children and those under your care, and…
Ransomed to Love
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
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