Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34 & Hebrews 8
Speaker: Paul McCabe
This Week’s Thoughts
I saw a film once that was loosely based on Greek myth. It wasn’t particularly good, and I can’t remember much of the plot, but there are two things from it that I can recall: that it starred Liam Neeson as Zeus, and that he was dying. And it was the reason that he was dying (Zeus, not Neeson) that stuck in my mind more than anything. According to the film, the source of his immortality was human prayer, and people had stopped praying to him.
You do not need to be well versed in Greek myths to know that the lowercase ‘gods’ that muck about in them could not be further removed from the one true God, but this addition on the part of the filmmakers makes them even more alien in concept. To require the work of mortals to continue being divine calls into question just how divine they could be in the first place.
For God does not need our prayers to go on being God. Instead, He hears our prayers for our benefit out of love, not necessity. The same goes for the sacrifices of the old covenant with the Israelites. ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,’ writes the psalmist, for He does not want these things in themselves, and ‘burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require’ (Psalm 40:6). The sentiment is echoed in Isaiah: ‘“The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the LORD. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats’ (Isaiah 1:11).
This shouldn’t suggest that the sacrifices of the old covenant were wrong, or contrary to God’s will. He commanded them, after all, and laid out the ceremonial law in great detail for a reason. They provided atonement (albeit provisionally) for the people in a manner that showed them the severity and cost of their sins, and reminded them of their God and what He had done for them. The covenant was made for their benefit, out of God’s love for them. The problem lay in the people.
The people, like the psalmist, continually needed lifting ‘out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire’ (Psalm 40:2) for they were surrounded by their iniquities: ‘my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head’ (Psalm 40:12). They broke the covenant in spite of God’s faithfulness (Jeremiah 31:32), and the sacrifices were made out of habit. A tax, almost, that had to be made to supposedly appease the LORD.
How telling it is that it is easier to make so-called sacrifices and follow detailed ceremony than it is to effect genuine change to the wayward heart. For it is genuine repentance and obedience that God wants for us. To be able to say: ‘I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart’ (Psalm 40:8). Not for God’s benefit, but for ours.
And so through Jeremiah, God promised a new covenant, unlike the first, whereby He would incline His people to their duty: ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts’ (Jeremiah 31:33). The law would no longer be merely external but internal, and they would all not only know the law but ‘[k]now the LORD’ (Jeremiah 31:34). Do we not have a helper in the Holy Spirit for achieving this end?
And in this new covenant, God said: ‘I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more’ (Jeremiah 31:34), because He was going to provide a sacrifice that was perfect and all sufficient. Not for His benefit, but for ours.