By His Mercy

(Jeremiah 31:1-17, Jeremiah 31:31-34; Titus 3:3-8)

Jeremiah 31 gives us one of the great biblical pictures of revival.  We could have read the whole chapter, but it would have been too much to absorb all at once, let alone to address in one sermon.  There’s powerful imagery here, building off the previous chapter with its promises of restoration and reminders of judgment.  Look at verse 2:  “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.”  The Lord brought the sword down on his people for their rebellious ways; it was his hand, wielding the conquering armies of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, that drove them into the wilderness.  At that point, they were a dead nation.  Of the conquered nations of the ancient world, there were some few who survived through cultural conquest—their culture was so great, it overcame that of their conquerors; think China or Greece.  A few survived in name only; we still have nations called Syria and Egypt, but they have nothing else in common with their ancient namesakes.  All the rest disappeared into the sands of time.

Except for Israel.  They were a dead nation walking, but after God drove them into the wilderness, there he showed them grace, and reaffirmed his covenant faithfulness, the faithfulness of his promise, to them.  He has razed them to the ground; now he promises a day when he will build them up again, bringing them back to life as a people.  They are devastated, as a consequence of their own sin, but he promises them abundance and prosperity.  They are scattered to the four winds; he will gather them home, tenderly care for them on the way, and then guard them as their shepherd.  They are mourning now, but they will rejoice, because the Lord who sold them into slavery to the nations for their disobedience has now redeemed them—has bought them back for himself.  Even the children who were lost will be found, and brought home from the land of the enemy.

Why will this happen?  Is it because the people of God finally came to their senses and turned back to him?  Is God responding to a new spirit of faithfulness in Israel?  No.  There is some evidence of repentance in verses 18-19, but it’s not much more than, “You punished me, I’m sorry, please stop punishing me.”  Beyond that, nothing.  This chapter doesn’t begin with anything people do, it begins with what God is doing, and almost all of it is about what he’s doing and what he’s going to do.  This is God’s initiative and God’s work from beginning to end.

As far as I know, there has never been a revival born out of an organized political or social movement to improve the world.  There’s never been one that started with the rich, the powerful, and the influential.  If you want to talk about social reform movements, the Pharisees are an absolutely classic one, and what did they do about the revival that was born through Jesus and burst out in the early church?  They fought it at every turn and did their level best to kill it.  You will not bring revival by demanding your rights, campaigning for politicians, or fighting in court.  You may hinder it, though, if you’re not careful.

Revivals don’t come through demonstrations of human power, but through admissions of human weakness, and dependence on God.  They don’t come through money; in fact, money doesn’t seem to have much to do with them at all.  They may come through people who happen to be rich, or powerful, or wise, but only if they heed the words of God in Jeremiah 9:  “Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, let not the powerful boast in their power, let not the rich boast in their riches, but if anyone would boast, let them boast in this:  that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord who practices covenant love and mercy, justice, and righteousness in the earth.”  That’s hard, which is why revival more often comes through people on the margins of society.  They’re the ones who know they need it.  The greatest enemy of revival is self-satisfaction.

If revival won’t come through human power and human efforts to be righteous, then how and why will it come?  Jeremiah is ruthlessly clear on this:  only by the mercy of God.  I’ve talked about this before, that the Hebrew word we translate “mercy” is the word ḥesed; there’s only a couple Hebrew words you need to know, and this is first among them.  Sally Lloyd-Jones in her wonderful Jesus Storybook Bible describes it as God’s “Never Stopping, Never Giving up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love,” and that captures it as well as anything.  It is the relentless faithfulness of God to his people, to keep the promises he has made, and the love that absolutely refuses to stop loving us, or even to love us any less.  Thus he declares, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

God’s work is drastic.  Jeremiah and Paul both know this.  God doesn’t save us because we’ve done anything right at all.  He does it according to his own mercy, because he loves us despite ourselves.  And when he saves us, he doesn’t just give us a list of rules and tell us to go out and behave ourselves better.  That’s what we do with our kids, not what God does with us.  He’s not on about giving us some life skills and some tools and principles for self-improvement.  Lifehacker is a useful website, but it’s not a model for Christlike living.

God is on about making us new the way he’s making the heavens and the earth new.  We’ll still be ourselves, because we’ll be ourselves as we’re supposed to be—which means we’ll be very, very different from who we are now.  In Jesus, we’re born all over again, brand new from the inside out, made new by the Holy Spirit, “whom God poured out on us richly, abundantly, overflowing, through Jesus Christ our Savior.”  Laws?  Where we’re going, we won’t needlaws—not when God gets done with us.  Our hearts will beat with his law, and the knowledge of God will be the marrow of our bones.

Of course, we don’t see this fully now, and we won’t until all the world is judged; but remember, the work of revival is the work of the new Jerusalem, the power of the kingdom of God breaking in to this world order.  What we see in Jeremiah is what God is doing with this world, it’s what he’s doing in us and through us and with us, and what every part and every moment of our lives is for.  This is what the church is for, and what we’re about:  this is the gospel—not just the gospel of salvation, but the gospel of the kingdom.  It’s the promise that the covenant faithfulness and mercy of God is overcoming and will overcome the faithlessness and false justice of this world.

This is why I had Kaleb sing “The Great Storm Is Over” two weeks ago.  I wanted him to sing it while we were in Revelation because that’s the main source of the imagery of the song; I was hoping it would stick in some of your minds, attach itself to the biblical text, and just keep humming there in the back.  The Book of Revelation is the soil from which that song grows; here this morning is the application.  Our message to the world isn’t, “You need to live better.”  It isn’t, “You’d better shape up—or else.”  It isn’t, “We’re going to pass a bunch of laws to make you behave.”  We’ve been given a promise of hope to those who know they’re weak and vulnerable in the face of the storm of life:  One is coming who will calm the storm.  In fact, he already has—we just haven’t gotten to that point in the story yet.

Our message is, “Be at peace—let go of your fear.  Your Father in heaven loves his own, and his faithful mercy is more sure than this world’s faithless justice.”  No, we don’t see our heavenly Father with us, but we do have a spiritual mother here:  the bride of Christ, the church.  We have been given a song to sing in the night, a song of peace and love and hope, a song of the mercy of God; and whatever else we do and whatever may come, we’ll keep singing it until our Lord returns.