Jeremiah 31: 31-34
“The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, through I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
A Thought
God had made a covenant with Israel that God would protect and provide for them if they would obey him. God had faithfully delivered them from their bondage of slavery in Egypt, but they grumbled and complained against God while creating idols to be their god. God now speaks through Jeremiah that the time is coming when God will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah where God will forgive their wickedness and will no longer remember their sins.
This new covenant has now been established not only to Israel and Judah but to all peoples of the world, including each of us. It is now through Jesus the Christ that we can be forgiven and God will place his word in our hearts instead of on tablets of stone; we can now personally know God and grow in the likeness of his Son through the work of the Holy Spirit. God is now establishing a new heaven and a new earth where all who know God will live forever in perfect harmony with God and we will be his people.
Our Prayer
Father thank you for your perfect, righteous faithfulness to your covenant to all that will receive your word. Thank you for our forgiveness made possible through your Son. Continue to open our hearts to receive and to live in your word to grow into the likeness of Jesus the Christ by the power of your Holy Spirit that we may know you better. We ask in the name of Jesus’, amen.
