A New Covenant For God’s People
There is a movement to make America the covenant nation of God. It is misguided and unscriptural. Beside which, God made it clear in Hie word that He has made a new covenant promise, not with a nation, but with each individual person. In Jeremiah 31:29–34 and John 1:17, scripture tells us that God will hold each person accountable for their decision of obedience and faith. Your salvation is not dependent on your whether your parents were faithful nor on the faithfulness/unfaithfulness of a nation. And that’s good news for anyone who loves the Lord! I pray that we would Know that God‘s offer of salvation is personal and available to all. Amen.
“In those days people will no longer say,
‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:29-30)
God introduced His plan to institute a new covenant with His people. They had repeatedly failed to live up to the covenant He made with them on Mt. Sinai. So the new covenant would require individual obedience and accountability rather than the obedience and accountability of the nation. Unfaithfulness of one generation would not cause the next generation to be cursed.
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
Israel had been repeatedly unfaithful to God. It was the reason that both the northern and southern kingdoms had been taken into captivity by foreign nations. Unfortunately, their leaders had failed them through corruption, oppression, greed and failure to follow God. Under God’s new covenant promise, His people won’t need to rely on priests, prophets or other leaders to make sure that the people knew God. God himself would make sure that everyone knew Him, so they would have no excuse for disobedience and unfaithfulness to Him. God would insure this knowledge because He would write His law on their hearts.
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)
The covenant in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah was directed toward Israel. However, in the New Testament, John attested that God’s covenant of grace in response to an individual’s faith, was now offered to all people (not just Israel) through Jesus.
God holds each of us accountable for our decision to either trust Him in obedience and faithfulness or rebel against Him. The decision by our parents to follow God will not save us. We must each decide to accept God’s gracious offer of salvation through our faith in Jesus. We must also make sure our children know that their salvation does not come from our faith, but their own declaration of faith. That is what God’s new covenant promise did for you and I. It untethered us from anyone else’s unfaithfulness and placed the accountability squarely on each of us for our own decision of salvation. God’s new covenant gave each of us the opportunity to say….. “I’m His child”!
Blessings,
Rev. Glenn
