History of the Church: The Church from Exile to Eternity, Part 1

Was the Exile the End of God’s Work of Gathering a People?

Over the last three weeks, we’ve done a brief overview of what the Bible says about the people of God so that we can better understand who we are as the church.  Over these three weeks we’ve learned that the church is the chosen, miraculously created, international, marked-off people of God who believe the promises of God and who’re gathered together by God in order to listen to and obey God. 

We saw last week that one of Israel’s main problems after the exodus was that they boiled worship down to their temple activities and lived the rest of their lives without regard for the Lord.  Their shallow religion and hypocrisy eventually led to their exile.  God would not let his people live in rebellion against him forever.

This leaves us wondering if the exile brought God’s work of gathering his people to an end.  Would God assemble his people again?  How could his people be gathered together since they were now scattered all over the world?  How could all the nations of the world be blessed through Israel if Israel was a colossal failure? 

A Promised Restoration

The same prophets who pronounced judgment also promised restoration for the people of God (Isa. 27:12-13; Jer. 16:14-15).  Though the people of God sinned against God and were judged by God through being taken out of their promised land, they would not be forgotten by God.  The Lord would not forget his promises.  His plan to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars and to bless all the nations through his offspring was still in motion.  The sin of God’s people was not stronger than the grace of their God.

But God’s restoration of his people undoubtedly brought up another question for them.  After they were restored to their land, how would they know that the same thing wouldn’t happen again?  Could they be sure that they’d stay faithful to the Lord?  How could God’s people enjoy the promises of the Abrahamic covenant as long as the curses of the Mosaic covenant hung over them? 

The Mosaic covenant said that if they broke God’s law, they’d lose their inheritance as his people.  In mercy, God let them rebel against him for hundreds of years before he finally applied the punishments promised in the Mosaic covenant.  This is what happened in the exile.

After they came back into the land after the exile, they were still under the Mosaic covenant.  As long as they were under the Mosaic covenant, how could they be sure that they would stay faithful to the Lord?  The bottom line is that they couldn’t.  This is why, in God’s mercy, he had another covenant that he was going to establish with his people.  It would be a covenant of grace, just like the Abrahamic covenant, meaning that it didn’t depend on the people’s obedience, but rather on God’s sovereign grace. 

A New Covenant

This covenant was called the “new covenant” and was promised to come to the people of God through the prophet Jeremiah (31:31-34).  Let’s spend some time looking at what God promised to do for his people in the new covenant.

Verse 31 says that God will make a “new covenant” with his people.  This first applied to the people of Israel returning home from exile in Babylon.  We know this because Jeremiah mentions the rebuilding of Jerusalem in verses 38-40.  The new covenant has a first fulfillment when God begins to bring back the Jewish exiles in 539 BC. 

But this prophecy of a “new covenant” suggests more than just the return of the Jews to their land.  Jeremiah’s inclusion of “Israel” in verses 31 and 33, which had ceased to exist as a nation in Jeremiah’s time, suggests that a deeper and fuller fulfillment is in view than merely the return of the Jews to their land.  In other words, Jeremiah is speaking to people beyond his immediate audience in Judah.  He’s talking about something that God will do with the wider people of God. 

Verse 32 tells us that this covenant will not be like the Mosaic covenant.  The language of marriage here reminds us how tragic the faithlessness of the people of God was.  Their sin is often described in the Old Testament as “adultery” because they were rejecting the One who they’d bound themselves to and cheating on him with false gods.  Though there was judgment for their sin, the Lord would not divorce himself from his people.  Rather, he will establish a new kind of relationship with them that will deal with their sins in a similar but new way.

The Word Written on the Heart

Verses 33-34 say that the new covenant will have four distinctives.  First, the Lord will write his word on their hearts.  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (v. 33b).  The external word of the law needed to be internalized.  God would write his law on their hearts instead of on stone tablets. 

This is a huge difference between the old and new covenants.  In the old covenant, the law was set before them.  In the new covenant, the law will be put in them.  In the new covenant, the word of God would become more than merely what God required of his people.  It would, by the Spirit of God, become the “animating life principle” of his people.  In other words, as one commentator says, “The covenant will be a warm delight to the people, not a cold prescription.” 

The prophet Ezekiel describes it like this: “I (the Lord) will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules” (36:26-27).  In the new covenant, God will give his people a new heart that enables his people to walk in his ways. 

Moses said that God would do this back in Deuteronomy 30:6, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”  God does this inward circumcision and heart-softening work by the power of his Holy Spirit.  This is what Paul is talking about when he says that the Corinthian Christians are “a letter from Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3).   

The Spirit Gives Us a Love for God’s Word and a Hatred for Our Sin

This first distinctive of the new covenant has massive implications for the way we think about our faith.  Those under the new covenant are said to have God’s word on and in their hearts in such a way that enables them to live it out.  This means two very important things for us, especially for those of us who grew up in the Bible-Belt where everyone claims to be a Christian. 

It first means that if there’s no love for the law of the Lord in our heart and life, then we aren’t part of the people of God.  And it means, secondly, that if there’s no desire to obey God, and no actual growth in obedience to God, then we aren’t part of the people of God. 

Those in the new covenant say with King David that the “law of the Lord” is “more to be desired…than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10).  People under the new covenant think that God’s word is the most valuable thing on earth and they find it sweeter than any of life’s other sweet things.  This isn’t something that they decide to do, but rather defines who they are.  Does this describe you? 

Those in the new covenant also want to please God by obeying him, not because they have to but because they want to.  The apostle John says it this way, “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.  Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 Jn. 2:3-4). 

And again, “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him…No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (3:6, 9). 

One of the clearest litmus tests for whether or not someone is actually a Christian, whether someone has the law of God written on their hearts, is that they will not be living in continual, unrepentant sin.  They will not make peace with their sin.  They will not make excuses for their sin.  They’ll own it, hate it, and do everything they can to get rid of it. 

We all of course sin every day.  That’s why the language of “practice of sinning” is so important.  One way to tell a Christian from a non-Christian is that a Christian is trying to kill sin, while a non-Christian is practicing it, getting better at it, and not bothered by it.  A Christian understands that God, through the gospel, not only forgives our sins, but also changes our hearts so that we don’t want to sin any more.  Truly believing the gospel results in truly hating sin.

We Need to Judge Ourselves and One Another

Through the new covenant, the Spirit of God comes into our lives and gives us a love for God’s word and a hatred for our sin.  Often lost in all the talk in Christian circles about not being judgmental is the reality that one of the most eternally important things we can do is judge ourselves to see whether we meet the standards that God graciously gives us in the Bible to help us discern whether or not his grace has come into our lives.  2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.” 

The Bible also says we should help other Christians do this.  1 Corinthians 5:12-13, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Is it not those inside the church who you are to judge?  God judges those outside.  ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’”  We’ll consider this in more detail in later weeks, but for now consider whether you’ve allowed yourself to get close enough to other believers so that they can help you see yourself.  How can you be kept safe from self-deception if you live on an island? 

This is one reason we encourage, though don’t require, our members to be in community groups.  We all need other believers to walk alongside us for the good of our own souls.  Hebrews 3:12-13, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”  It’s possible to think you’re a “brother” or “sister” and yet fall away from God because your heart was actually dead spiritually instead of alive. 

One of God’s good gifts meant to protect us from this is other Christians who will “exhort” us, or who’ll warn us and counsel us and encourage us and pray for us.  Is there anyone in your life doing this with you?  Are you doing this with anyone?  We’ll learn in later weeks that members of local churches have a special responsibility for the spiritual growth of the other members.  When we take this responsibility seriously, we show our love for one another and protect the integrity of the gospel.      

  

“I Will Be Their God, and They Shall Be My People”

The end of verse 33 mentions the second distinctive of the new covenant.  The people of God will have a personal relationship with God.  They will be God’s and God will be theirs.  Despite our faithlessness and rebellion, God wants to be friends with us. 

Do you ever stop and consider the fact that God is a person who you can know?  He’s not a force or a feeling or an idea or a lifestyle.  God is a person who wants to know you and be known by you.  Do you know God?  Does God know you (Gal. 4:9)?       

Personal Instruction from God

The third distinctive of the new covenant is that God’s people will receive instruction directly from him (v. 34a).  The knowledge of God will no longer be taught merely through outward teaching of one person to another person. Rather, every kind of person, “from the least of them to the greatest,” will be taught by the Spirit of God to know the Lord.  In other words, the Lord himself will be the One who brings his people into the right knowledge of him. 

This doesn’t mean that we don’t need teachers in the church.  God says that these are one of his gifts to the church (Eph. 4:11).  It means that the knowledge of God isn’t dependent on the instruction of human teachers.  The knowledge of the Lord is not theoretical knowledge that you can get by listening to Bible teachers.  Rather, it’s knowledge that comes as a result of God’s grace working on and in a sinner’s heart. 

The Holy Spirit must teach us that God is holy, that we are not, and that Jesus is a sufficient and glorious Savior.  I cannot teach you in a convincing way that these things are true.  I can tell you that Jesus is beautiful, but I can’t make you see his beauty with the eyes of your heart.  I can tell you that God is good, but I can’t make you taste his goodness (Ps. 34:8).  The Lord must teach you these things or you will never know them.  This is what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 2:12-14.   

This is why we pray regularly for the preaching of the Word in our church.  If the Spirit doesn’t come and work in our hearts, we’ll never change.  Do you want God to do something amazing in our church?  Then pray for the preaching of his word.  Pray that he would be writing his word on our hearts as we look at the Bible together.  We’ll only know the Lord if the Lord comes, by his Spirit, and teaches our hearts to know him.

The Removal of Sin

The fourth distinctive of the new covenant is that God will remove and forget the sins of his people (v. 34b).  This is a permanent forgiveness, unlike the temporary forgiveness offered under the Mosaic covenant, where the people had to bring sacrifices every year for their sins. 

Notice the word “for” at the beginning of the sentence.  This alerts us that this is the reason, or the ground, behind all the other promises.  In other words, God will write his law on his people’s hearts, be their personal God, and teach them to know him because he will remove their sins forever. 

The permanent forgiveness of sin is the basis of the new covenant.  As long as the people still carry their sin, the holy God who made them can’t be in an intimate relationship with them.  In order for God to be friends with his people, he must first remove the thing that has made them his enemies.    

Has the New Covenant Been Ratified?

This makes us wonder whether God has removed the thing that separated him from his people, and if so, how?  How has God enacted this new covenant?  How was it fulfilled?  Did all these blessings just magically come when God’s people got their act together and started going to church again and decided to make a life change?  How God ratified the new covenant is what we’ll consider next week.