There was once a couple who had been married for 60 years [David Daniels, Preaching Today]. Throughout their life they had shared everything. They loved each other deeply. They had not kept any secrets from one another, except for a small shoebox that the wife kept in the top shelf of her closet. When they got married, she put the box there and asked her husband never to look inside of it and never to ask questions about its contents. For 60 years the man honored his wife’s request. In fact, he forgot about the box until a day when his wife grew gravely ill, and the doctors were sure she had no way of recovering. So the man, putting his wife’s affairs into order, remembered that box in the top of her closet, got it down, and brought it to her at the hospital. He asked her if perhaps now they might be able to open it. She agreed. They opened the box, and inside were two crocheted dolls and a roll of money that totaled $95,000. The man was astonished.
The woman told her husband that the day before they were married, her grandmother told her that if she and her husband were ever to get into an argument with one another, they should work hard to reconcile, and if they were unable to reconcile, she should simply keep her mouth shut and crochet a doll. The man was touched by this, because there were only two crocheted dolls in the box. He was amazed that over 60 years of marriage, they apparently had had only two conversations that they were unable to reconcile. Tears came to his eyes, and he grew even more deeply in love with this woman. Then he asked about the roll of money. “What’s with this?” he asked. His wife said, “Well, every time I crocheted a doll, I sold it to a local craft fair for five dollars.”
Sometimes you find out that a romantic relationship you thought was just fine, really isn’t. At its core the book of Jeremiah is just that. It’s a splash of cold water in the face helping us see that the most important romantic relationship—the one between us and God—isn’t just fine.
On the surface, it appears to be. The temple services in Jeremiah’s day are still packed. The people still study Scripture. They still say their prayers.
In reality, however, the relationship is hurting. As God will say in a moment, this relationship is broken. The responsibility of a prophet like Jeremiah is to go to the people and to declare the ways in which they have broken their relationship with God. Much of the book of Jeremiah is devoted to this very thing. Again and again, Jeremiah’s preaches, “Your relationship with God is broken.”
And perhaps Jeremiah’s most important word to you this morning is just that: your relationship with God is broken. Forget, for a moment, your relationship with your friends, your love interest, your kids or your parents. Focus on your relationship with God. It’s very possible this morning that what Jeremiah needs you to hear is this: that relationship is broken.
And, it seems as if God responds to this brokenness in the worst possible way. God’s so heartbroken that he allows a foreign nation called Babylon to kidnap his people and force them into exile in Babylon.
And the question God’s people are now asking is, “What’s next?” Is this the beginning of a downward spiral that will end only in “And they did not live happily ever after?”
Is this what God’s going to do with us? What if your relationship with God is broken this morning? Is this how God’s going to respond to you? Is he just going to send you away, get rid of you, wash his hands of you?
What do you do when it seems as if you’ve broken your relationship with God? What’s God going to do? And what should we do?
On the surface, this appears to be one of those questions that only matters on Sunday mornings. It doesn’t appear to be one of those questions that can help you be a better parent, or get through calculus, or provide insight about some issue at work. It just seems to be one of those questions that only matters on Sundays.
Yet in fact it is the one question that affects everything else in life. If you can answer this question correctly, it makes you a better parent, and a better student, and a better worker. Nothing is more relevant than the question of what you do with a broken relationship with God; because if that relationship is broken, everything else is impacted by that brokenness. Nothing is more important than resolving that brokenness in a healthy way.
Which, as a side note, is why we are having Invitation Sundays this year. Our first one is Easter Sunday. On that Sunday we invite you to consider being baptized. We’re offering classes about baptism the two Sundays prior to Easter Sunday. We believe there is nothing more important than repairing a broken relationship with God. And baptism is the beginning of that. And if you haven’t taken that step, you need to do so. We hope you’ll do that on Easter Sunday. And we hope you’ll attend the two classes on baptism prior to that date.
But, back to this question: What do you do when it seems as if you have broken your relationship with God? What’s God’s response? And what’s our response?
Well, it turns out that God did a lot more than just send the people into exile. His response is far more comprehensive and far more compassionate. Listen to these words:
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.” (Jer. 31:31-34 ESV)
You probably noticed right away that God decides to frame his relationship with his people as a marriage. He talks about himself as a husband and his people as his wife. This is about romance. This is not about rules. This is about romance. God is head over heels in love with you. He wants to be as close to you as a husband and wife are close.
Perhaps you also noticed the word “new”: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. God responds to this broken relationship with something new. But what is this new thing God is doing regarding our broken relationship with him?
Consider, first, what is not new. What is not new is who God loves. God is not saying, “In light of our broken relationship I’m going to find someone new besides you to love. I’m going to find someone who doesn’t treat me the way you treat me. I’m going to find a new person who will love me the way I deserve to be loved.”
It can be easy to feel that way—especially if you’ve broken your relationship with God. It can be easy to feel that God is through with you. But that is not the new which God speaks of. The new is not who God loves as if he’s going to find someone new besides you to love.
Second, what is not new is how God loves. God is not saying “I have discovered a new place in my heart unknown to me. And now I am able to love you with the love that is deeper than any love I have ever expressed before. I’ve had to develop a deeper love so that I can deal with your deeper sin.” God is not the Grinch whose heart suddenly grows three times larger. The new is not how God loves.
At the end of this text God says “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” Would you say this out loud? “God will forgive my iniquity. God will remember my sin no more.” This forgiveness and this gracious amnesia are not new to God. God has always loved in this way. God meets your same old sin with the same old love. God’s old word to you this morning is this: I will forgive your sin and remember it no more.
I would like to stop and explore that for a second. Because when many people read in Jeremiah that God allowed Babylon to destroy the city of Jerusalem and to force into exile thousands of Jews, it seems as if it was a terribly unloving thing to do. It seems God was not forgiving. How could a God of love allow his temple to be destroyed and his people to be sent into exile?
Here’s one way to answer that. I was listening to the radio recently and heard a story about a program in Little Rock, Arkansas which is similar to Memphis’ HopeWorks program. They were interviewing a man who had spent a long time in prison. He was talking about how this program in Little Rock had helped him to find and keep work after he was released from prison.
The first job which this ex-con got was at McDonald’s. He worked hard and eventually became the manager of that McDonald’s. However he relapsed and lost the job. The woman running this program in Little Rock continued to work with him and helped him find more work.
During the interview the woman who mentored this man asked him this question: “Have you ever felt like I was too hard on you?” “Yes!” he said without hesitation. “I have felt at times that you were being too hard on me.” But then he said this: “But during those times I remembered prison. They were also hard on me in prison. But when you were hard on me, I knew that there was a love in it.”
And that is what we must believe about the God of the book of Jeremiah who would be so hard on his own people that he would allow them to be taken away into exile. We must believe that there is love in it. God may allow some hard things to happen to you when you’ve broken your relationship with him. But there is love in it.
And it’s not a new love. God’s always loved people. And he’s going to respond to our broken relationship with him in the same old way: with forgiveness and gracious amnesia.
So what is this new thing that God is bringing to the table? What is new is this: how you love God. What is new is not who God loves – God’s going to keep on loving you; he’s not given up on that. What is new is not how God loves – God’s going to keep responding to with forgiveness and gracious amnesia. What’s new is how you love God.
See, God understands that the real problem in this God-human relationship lies in our heart. Simply put: we have a hard time loving God. We end up loving other things and other people. And we have a hard time accepting and reciprocating his love. So God decides to do something about that. He’s going to help you love him. He’s going to help you overcome what’s keeping you from loving him.
Now eventually he’s going to do this by coming to dwell within us. Jesus will dwell in us. The Father will live in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit will help us love the God. The Spirit will help you overcome what’s keeping you from loving God.
And this all matters, because it’s very difficult for us to accept the love of a God who says he wants us back. Tony Campolo tells of sitting with his parents in a worship service on Sunday. It was time for communion. The minister had just finished saying something about communion and the cross and Jesus. And Tony became aware of a young woman in the pew in front of him who was sobbing and shaking. Whatever the minister had said had deeply moved her. She was despondent. As the communion plate was passed to the crying woman, she waved it away and lowered her head in despair. Apparently she was weighed down by some sin, some failure of hers, and she felt unworthy to eat that bread and drink that cup. Her relationship with God was broken. And God was responding with the same old love. But she just couldn’t take it. So at that very moment, Tony’s father leaned over the woman’s shoulder from behind. And he spoke into her ear with great conviction, “Take it, girl! It was meant for you. Do you hear me?” She raised her head and nodded—and then she took and ate. [Tony Campolo’s Letters to a Young Evangelical (Perseus Books Group, 2006)]
It’s one thing to believe Jesus died for us, forgave us, loves us. It’s another to accept it. Consume it. Believe it. It’s one thing to believe God responds to our sinfulness with forgiveness and gracious amnesia. It’s another to actually accept it.
And that is the new thing God’s doing here. God sees our own inability to accept his love and respond to his love. So, he’s going to do something within us to help us with that: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. God’s going to do heart surgery. He’s going to help us accept his love and live in that love.
In the late 1980’s/ early 1990’s, Nashville song-writers Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin spent six months working on a song. When they finally completed it, they knew it was something special. The song, they later shared, had been inspired by an actual event. They had read an article about a man arrested for vandalizing his girlfriend’s car. The judge asked him if he had learned anything, to which he replied, “I learned, Your Honor, that you can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.” There was something profound about that conclusion. And Reid and Shamblin wrote a song about it. The song focused on a broken relationship. And the singer mourned her inability to make her man love her.
First sung by Bonnie Raitt, she recorded the song in one take. Reportedly, it was so emotional that she simply could not go through it again. The song became wildly popular, one of Raitt’s most successful. Here’s how it went:
‘Cuz I can’t make you love me
If you don’t.
You can’t make your heart feel
Something it won’t.
Here in the dark
In these final hours,
I will lay down my heart
And I’ll feel the power;
But you won’t.
No, you won’t.
‘Cuz I can’t make you love me
If you don’t.
That sadness is what lies behind Jer. 31. God cannot make Judah love him. God cannot make you love him. No amount of laws written on stones will do it. No amount of words written in a book will change that. So God’s going inside. God’s going to do some work on our hearts to try to jump-start this relationship. He’s going to try to get our heart to feel what it seems like they won’t.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
God can’t make you love him. But he will do everything short of that. He will help you love him. If show you the slightest bit of affection for him, he will come right on in and help you go the rest of the way.
No matter what has broken your relationship with God, he’s not going to find someone new to love. And he’s not going to have to find some new way to love. He’s going to respond to that same old sin with that same old love, that same old forgiveness and divine amnesia. But he’ll do even more than that. He will help you love him. He will help you accept what seems impossible to accept—that one of the worst sinners on earth is loved by the great God of heaven.
As I mentioned earlier, the begins in baptism. God washes away our sin. He comes to live in us by his Spirit. And you don’t have to wait until Easter to do that. You can do that today.
And for those of you who have already taken that step, all God’s waiting for is for you to take just one step toward him. He’s ready for you. He wants you back. Take one step this morning, and he will close the rest of the distance. What’s that one step you need to take this week?
