Terms of the Covenant: A Meditation on Jeremiah 11 for the Season of Pentecost

And the Lord said unto me,

A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah,

and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

 They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers,

which refused to hear my words;

and they went after other gods to serve them:

the house of Israel and the house of Judah

have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.

 

Therefore thus saith the Lord,

Behold, I will bring evil upon them,

which they shall not be able to escape;

and though they shall cry unto me,

I will not hearken unto them.

Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go,

 and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense:

but they shall not save them at all in the time of their trouble.

For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah;

and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem

have ye set up altars to that shameful thing,

even altars to burn incense unto Baal.

 

I find it a reflection of our age, that even the modern revised lectionary of readings for today from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, manage to clip three verses (18-20) while avoiding the calamitous Word of God which led to them in preceding verses.  Jeremiah was a prophet tasked with delivering the Word of God to the apostate people of Israel prior to the Babylonian Captivity, delivering His Law with brutal clarity and His Gospel with undiminished hope.  For example, chapter 11 records God speaking directly to the people of Israel that their having abandoned the covenant of Moses at Mt. Sinai would result in God abandoning Israel to her enemies, where in righteous judgment God would allow the wicked pagans and their infernal deities to overwhelm Israel, whose desperate calls unto their demonic gods would not save them.  Further, He warned them that in the day of judgment He would not hear their calls either, as the time of repentance would be past.  However, to that faithful remnant, including Jeremiah, God promised to preserve them in the midst of that horrible calamity which would befall the nation, even as they would be sold into slavery in Babylon.

 

Such words of national, communal judgement are not popular in our era, and nor were they in Jeremiah’s time roughly 2600 years ago.  The Founders of our nation understood it, as they appealed to God for providence and protection in the founding of this nation, and the pulpits of American churches thundered with calls to repentance, faith, and virtue that our nation might be blessed through our fidelity to God and His Word.  And indeed, our nation was blessed as a land of liberty, prosperity, and faith, always in need of repentance and yet continuing to strive toward the good.  Such calls to faith and repentance rang out in our wars of Independence, during the Civil War, and during the great World Wars of the 20^th century.  Yet over the last 100 years, and particularly in the last two generations, our people have become increasingly dismissive of the God who established and prospered us.  In place of the true God, we have pagan altars on every street, gods more numerous than the count of our cities, and growing public ascent to the secular humanist philosophies of technological atheism.  We have allowed our children to be brainwashed into Darwinian Marxism by government schools, and our adults to be intellectually neutered by self-proclaimed messiahs of technology.  The American population is wandering away from the true God much the way ancient Israel did, substituting false gods and human philosophies to substantiate their growing desire for debauchery, tyranny, violence, and evil.

 

And what has been the result?  American communities are collapsing even as families are disintegrating from coast to coast, and some American politicians are openly hostile to the Word of God, the words of our country’s founding documents, and that remnant of people still clinging to them.  Our economy is in tatters, trust in public institutions is abysmal, suicide rates have skyrocketed to historic levels, and large swaths of people drug themselves into distraction with opioids or technology.  The world is on fire due to irrational, rampant human evil, all to the cheers and encouragement of the demonic deities who have always fanned such destructive flames.  We have brought these calamities upon ourselves by abandoning the covenant of God, first of which that we should have no other gods before Him, because there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved than Jesus Christ alone.  For all the incredulity of modernity and all our presumptuous sophistication, we can’t escape the reality written into the Natural Law of the cosmos:  the Covenant of God is given on His terms, and we either receive His blessings by grace through faith in Him and His Word, or we receive His judgment through rebellion and unbelief.  There is no brokerage of this Covenant with other gods, either infernal or of our own making, and there is no escaping it.  What is true of individuals is also true of nations:  we will either live by faith, or we will die in our sins.

 

We must come to see this clearly, as hard as the truth may be, if we are to find the fountains of refreshment once again.  While Jeremiah was sent specifically to the people of ancient Israel with prophecy specifically fulfilled in the fall of Israel, the Babylonian Captivity, and the restoration of Jerusalem a couple generations later, the principles God spoke through Jeremiah ring across the ages to the end of time.  God’s Covenant with us is a gift of unsurpassed grace and mercy, leading to eternal life, for the sake of His sacrifice on our behalf in Jesus.  In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the hope of all mankind, calling us to a path of restoration and fellowship first with our Creator, and through Him to all creation.  It is the grace upon which individuals find their hope and purpose, and by which families are made strong in the bonds of faith, hope, and love.  It is the blessed communion of the saints in every time and place, which hears the Word of the Lord and strives to keep it, confessing Christ as the only Way, Truth, and Life.  It is this fellowship with God and one another that makes our communities kind and gracious, and our nation courageous and virtuous.  This is the Covenant where love covers a multitude of sins, where we love others in reflection of the divine love which we have first received, and shine like a beacon into the darkness of our fallen world.  This is the Covenant which declares that no greater love does any man have than to lay down his life for his friends, and so the fear of death in the face of any infernal enemy is swallowed up in the eternal life, love, and victory of Jesus.

 

We do not know the time for our nation, or for ourselves, when the call of our repentance will end and judgment will begin, but we do know that once judgment falls, it is inescapable.  The modern infatuation with pagan gods and technological messiahs will not save anyone in that final hour, nor will they quench the fires of eternal perdition.  Until that day, therefore, let us remember the gracious promises of our God, and redouble our efforts to echo His Words of Law and Gospel to all who may hear, repent, believe, and live.  For while we do not know the times and seasons which God has reserved to His own wisdom alone, we do know that the Word of God is mighty and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to pierce into the hearts of people and nations, so that faith and repentance might bring souls back into fellowship with the only True God who is life and blessing to all who receive Him.  May the Word and Spirit of Almighty God shatter once again our unbelief, open our blinded eyes and deafened ears, that our people may sing together now and for eternity to glory of God our Savior.  Amen.