Written on your heart

March 21, 2021

I was talking to a friend this week who said, “It’s like we all lost a year of our life due to Covid.” We didn’t literally lose a year. But we had to change our daily lives, lost some time in school, some lost jobs or had to change how or where we work, we got distanced from other people and some of us lost friends and family to the coronavirus, or lost a loved one and had to have a smaller funeral.  

Whenever times get tough, we can ask God, “Why? Why did you let this happen? Where are you when I’m suffering?”  

If you ever felt like that, you’re not alone. I imagine we have all at one point felt God was not doing all we hoped, that God felt distant. 

Over 2500 years ago, the people of Israel experienced a time of chaos and destruction. The people lost their king, their holy temple was destroyed, and many people were sent in exile to Babylon, 1700 miles away. Back then you couldn’t sneak away and fly or drive home. At first, they hoped that their time in exile would be short and they would go home soon. But as time dragged on, they realized this was a long punishment. And it took between 50 and 70 years before they would go home. 

The prophet Jeremiah told them why all this had happened: they had done wrong, they had done violence to the stranger, the fatherless, the widow and they had shed innocent blood. They had worshipped other gods.  God had warned them through Jeremiah to turn from their sins, but they hadn’t listened. The king had not listened to God’s word through Jeremiah, warning that their country would be handed over to the Babylonians. The king was angry and threw Jeremiah in a cistern, to die, but he was rescued. The Babylonian army attacked Israel, because they had revolted against it. That was the end of the independent country of Israel.  

So many of the people of Israel were 1700 miles away from home, without a temple or a king, and they were depressed. Psalm 137is a psalm from the time of exile: 

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept 
    when we remembered Zion. 
²There on the poplars 
    we hung our harps, 
³for there our captors asked us for songs, 
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy; 
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 

⁴How can we sing the songs of the Lord 
    while in a foreign land? 

They felt like they couldn’t even worship God, they were so depressed! 

Psalm 10 verse 1 says, Lord, why are you so far away? 
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? 

What did God do at this very low point in the lives of the people of Israel? When times got harder, God got closer. 

Jeremiah 31:31 says: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 

God realizes how devastated people are, and says, “I’m going to do something different to help you. When you return to Israel, to your homeland, things will change between you and me. 

God had covenants in the past with Abraham, Noah and Jacob. God promised Abraham that he and Sarah would have descendants as countless as the stars! God had a covenant with Noah: the rainbow was the sign that he would never again send such a terrible flood.  

God had a covenant with Jacob: Your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but your name shall be Israel. I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation shall come from your body. Those were the covenants in the past.  

Now, God was going to do a new covenant with the people of Israel after the exile:  verses 32-33 say, It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says 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.  

God is telling them, this time, with this covenant, I’m getting closer to you. You don’t have to go somewhere to look up my teaching, you don’t have to ask around to try to figure out what I want. It will be written on your heart. You’ll know. Your conscience will tell you. You will know me in your heart. When times get harder, God gets closer. 

This is the first part of the new covenant, that God is going to be so close, he will write his teaching on their heart! 

Vs 34 says, No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.  

The second part of the covenant is forgiveness. It used to be God would punish not only the people who sinned, but also their children and grandchildren and generations beyond! But Jeremiah says, I’m tweaking that. I’m changing it. I will forgive, and I’ll forget your sin. Your kids are not responsible for your sin. You are responsible for your sin. But even so, I’ll forgive. Sin won’t be standing between you and me, God says. When times get harder, God gets closer. 

God promises the people, my relationship with you will continue. You will know me, and I will forgive.  

Once one of my kids got an in-school suspension or detention. At home, he cried about it. He knew he did something wrong, but he didn’t think he deserved that harsh a punishment. Well, he went to school the next day and did his time and even enjoyed it! He and the other kid had fun. (Maybe they needed a better punishment!) At any rate, he did his time, he realized he was forgiven, he was still a good kid, his school was ok with him. 

You know what? I loved my kid, no matter what he did. And isn’t that how any parent feels? You never stop loving. When things go wrong, you get closer, you listen to their troubles, you feel their pain. That’s intimacy. That’s a close relationship.  

And God, gets closer to us in hard times. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done, it doesn’t matter how bad things are. God is with you. 

God made things good with the Israelites, and he makes things good with us. We can be assured of God’s love. God’s people have always experienced some bad times. When the exile happened, God was ready to tweak the relationship, to work things out, and to draw closer to them. 

And we are living in a different time than the exile. It’s not our fault the coronavirus came about. But even if there was a person responsible for Covid-19, say the person that ate the animal that carried the coronavirus-19, and that person was found, you know what God would do? When they are sorry, God would come close to that person, and forgive. That’s the kind of God we have.  

My homework for you is to read Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love!” Remember God loves you.  

So where is God when we are suffering? When times get harder, God gets closer! God spoke words of comfort through Jeremiah. And he was with the people in a new way. His teaching was written on their hearts, he was so close to them. He forgave them and brought them back, rebuilt their temple and rebuilt their lives. God is as close as a prayer, so come to him and know his love. Amen.