Tuesday,
July 25, 2023
“The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will greatly increase the
human population and the number of animals here in Israel and Judah. In
the past I deliberately uprooted and tore down this nation. I overthrew it, destroyed it, and brought
disaster upon it. But in the future I
will just as deliberately plant it and build it up. I, the Lord, have spoken! “The people will no longer quote this
proverb: ‘The parents have eaten sour
grapes, but their children’s mouths pucker at the taste.’ All people will die for their own
sins—those who eat the sour grapes will be the ones whose mouths will pucker. “The day is coming,” says the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. Jeremiah 31:27-31
This text was the focus of study in this past Sunday’s
lesson at church. That phrase about children
experiencing puckered mouths because their parents ate some sour grapes became
a well-known idiom of that time, largely due to sin’s judgment affecting an
entire family. It was Old Testament law:
I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire
family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations
of those who reject me. Exodus 20:5[1]
But Jeremiah said that was all coming to an end. God’s special people would be responsible
individually for their sins. No longer
would judgment extend to the son for the sins of the father. The inverse would also be true…no longer
could there be an automatic benefit of righteousness because you were born into
a household of the righteous. Each
individual would bear the judgment of his or her own actions. That was welcome news to Israelites born during
the Babylonian captivity. They had been
born slaves, due to the sins of their ancestors; now they were to be a restored
nation.
In his day Jeremiah delivered mostly unwelcome news,
judgment – a message of gloom and doom approaching because of sin. Often called The Weeping Prophet,
Jeremiah’s prophecies were the main reason he spent a good deal of time in
jail. What king likes to hear everything
he does is more cause for God to bring the hammer down?
But the ultimate message was one of great news and
blessing…there was a new covenant of grace on the rise:
“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 31:33-34
That’s the way it is with prophecy; sovereign God
does what a sovereign God does, rule over His people. A loving, grace-filled, mercy-loving God does
that which is righteous and best. He
fulfilled that promise on Calvary’s cross.
For You Today
You chew on that as you
hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
There are about 2,600 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.
Title Image: via Pixabay.com Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT©
[1] These words were repeated in Exodus 34:7, Numbers 14:18, and Deuteronomy 5:9
