Wednesday, November
15, 2017
“The day is coming,”
says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel
and Judah. This covenant will not be
like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and
brought them out of the land of Egypt. They
broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says
the Lord. “But this is the new covenant
I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them,
and I will write them on their hearts. I
will be their God, and they will be my people.
And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to
teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone,
from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I
will never again remember their sins.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34(NLT)
At
my age I’m a lot closer to my last sermon than my first one. I’ve often said (mostly after conducting a
funeral) that the way I’d prefer to go out doesn’t involve a hospital room,
tubes and waiting for the inevitable. As
much as I value the wonderful work of all our healing and palliative care
professionals, such as Hospice, I don’t want to be a client. Rather I would love to have it be on a
Sunday, God having allowed and strengthened me to preach the best sermon of my
life; sometime during my afternoon siesta I suddenly awaken and find myself in
the splendor of heaven! But of course,
the most important part of that scenario is not a sermon; the best part is
seeing Jesus!
Jeremiah
gave us a peek at the end of the preaching profession; there will come a time
when all the preaching is over. When the
New Covenant is finally put into its perfect fulfillment there will be no need
for sermonizing; God will write every part of his will and way on our hearts,
meaning love will have been completed.
There will be no need for teaching or preaching, because we will live it
as God first intended for humans to act when he placed Adam and Eve in the
garden.
God
will forgive all our past wickedness and never bring it up again. We will live in perfect relationship to
God. As John the beloved apostle wrote:
Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not
yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know
that we will be like him,
for we will see him as he really is. 1 John 3:2(NLT)
For You
Today
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
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