Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 03 – October 1979

 

The Approaching Day

 

Sermon by Rev. G. Van Schie on Jeremiah 31:31-4

Scripture Reading: John 4:1-26

Hymns: 394, 190, 331 & 393

 

Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,

I wonder how many of the children in the congregation have stayed up late at night. So late that they saw the beginning of a new day?

There is something beautiful about the coming of a new day. Before the sun can be seen rising in the sky all is very dark and it is almost impossible to see anything. Then as the dawn begins, bit by bit light begins to cut through the darkness. Many things which we could not see before now are seen clearly. But it does not stop there! For as the light becomes brighter and brighter there comes about an explosion of activity as birds and animals begin to move about and greet the new day.

Our text this morning talks of an approaching day. A day to which the people of God were to look with a deep longing. The prophet Jeremiah had been sent by God to tell Israel of the coming exile because of her sinful rebellion. She had gone her own way and caused God’s anger to burn against her. Therefore, because she was under the cloud of God’s wrath, things were to get very bad. Instead of sunshine there would be darkness.

How terrible it would be to receive such a message from God. If you or I were told that a foreign nation was going to invade Australia and take us away because of our sins, we too would become very upset, and our hearts too would sink.

Yet even in His wrath God is a God of love and mercy. Yes, the people of Israel had sinned and they had to be punished, yet in their punishment the Lord of the Covenant gave them hope the hope of the NEW DAY. God had not and would not forget His Covenant promise made to the great men of old. The Promised Seed would come to save His people from their sins. The exile in a foreign land was not to last forever. The people in their ‘dark’ situation were allowed to see the light at the end of the tunnel. How merciful is our God!

The passage we have before us speaks of what will occur in this approaching day. Certain things could be expected:

First of all, the approaching day of the Lord would be a day in which God’s Law would be planted within the hearts of His people.

This is a most important thing to realise. Many covenant people today think that the Law has been abolished and that we no longer have to abide by what it says. This argument is especially used with respect to the observance of the Lord’s Day.

Yet here in our text we do not find a prophecy of abolition, but instead there is the teaching of a changed relationship to the Law. The Covenant. God speaks of planting His Law within the hearts of His people! This does not speak of severing the tie between the people and the Law. It speaks of a more meaningful and committed relationship between the two!

This does not mean that all the Old Testament sacrificial system is still meant for us today. Christ in His sacrifice upon the cross fulfilled what these things taught. Yet the moral law concerning our conduct or behaviour before God is what is meant here. And that never changes! We see this more clearly when we understand that the moral Law as illustrated by the Ten Commandments reflects the very nature of God. If the moral Law is a thing which changes with different cultures, then so too must God! And if God is changeable, then where is our salvation?

What then is this changed relationship to the Law? Since the Law of God applies to His Covenant people, how then should we relate to it?

In the time of Israel living in the Old Testament, the Law was something eternal. It was something that God in the Old Testament had imposed upon His Covenant people. This is why Israel so often fell into the trap of outward observance or formalistic type worship. The worship performed with the actions but not with the heart.

The Pharisees of Jesus day are a good example of the relationship the Old Testament people of God had to the Law.

But here God points His people to a coming day when this would change. No longer would the Law be something merely external which was a burden more than anything else! It would in that day no longer be something one had to keep whether he liked it or not!

In the coming day this Law would give up its external position to God’s people and would be planted within their heart! It would become a part of them! It would dwell within! In other words, instead of being a burden, the Law of God would be the believer’s delight!

What a change! How could such a difference be brought about?

The answer is quite simple when you eventually find it. The Law of God becomes the delight of the sinner when his relationship with God has been changed!

Even though Israel was the Covenant people of God they still lived at a time before the penalty for sin had been paid. Man before the fall lived in perfect harmony with the Creator. After the fall, that harmony disappeared when man became the enemy of God. Sin caused the things of God to become a burden, especially doing the will of the Lord. But the day was coming when all this was to change. The Promised Seed, even Jesus, would restore that former relationship by offering up Himself as a sacrifice for sin!

It is just as Paul said in 2Corinthians 5:21 – “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”. The same is also expressed in Ephesians 4:24 where the believer is exhorted to put on the new self which has been created in God, a nature which is one of righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Jesus makes all the difference! In Him the things of God, especially His Law are our delight! OR AT LEAST OUGHT TO BE!

How many of us still look upon God’s Law as that which is ‘legalistic’ and only serves to spoil our fun? A Law which restricts our freedom and ruins what we want to do?

If that is the way we view God’s will then we testify that Christ is not within us and that our relationship with God has not been changed. Such an attitude speaks of the things of God as alien and unwanted. If that is the way we view the things of the Law, especially knowing what Christ has done for us, then we must ask the question – do we really know God?

This brings us to the second point in our text: in the Coming Day there would be an overflowing measure of the knowledge of God.

In the days of the Old Testament saints, the knowledge of God was limited to Israel. It was to His covenant people that God had revealed Himself and given the hope of the Saviour to come.

Yet in the Coming day this was to change. The Spirit would cause the knowledge of God to become widespread! This is a clear prophecy of the Pentecost event. With the work of Christ accomplished, the Spirit of the Lord would rush forth and apply to sinners the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice! Those who were not formerly called God’s people and did not know Him, would now become His people and would have that knowledge of Him they formerly lacked!

Again we see that the great change revolves around the work of Jesus! It is He alone who reconciles man to God. It is He alone, by the work of the Comforter He sends, who brings the sinner into an intimate relationship with the Father!

This was not something new. God had already promised this to Abraham. Not only would Abraham himself be blessed, but in Him the nations would also be blessed! From His Seed the promised Deliverer would come! The Coming Day was the fulfillment of that promise!

Our first reading reveals this to us. When the Samaritan woman asked the Lord about where one ought to worship, she received a beautiful answer. Formerly the knowledge of God was confined to the Jews, but a time was coming and now is, said Jesus, that Jerusalem would no longer be central as a place of worship. Why? Because He, the promised Messiah had come that made all the difference!

But has it made all the difference to you and to your life style? Are you living in your ‘Christianity’ as though you were still looking forward to this approaching day?

Are you like so many of the former Covenant people who knew about God but did not know Him? You have heard all about His wondrous works, the wonderful salvation wrought in Christ, and yet it has not touched your inner life? The deep seated heart knowledge, does it exist within?

Brethren, the approaching day is no longer a future event, it is already here, Christ HAS come and His benefits are here and now! Behold your Saviour who by His suffering and death restores the sinner to the Father!

Our problem is all too often one of indifference. We know it all but we act as if we do not know Him. What a tragedy! Just think on it for a moment. How can we live in the day for which Israel longed and be unaffected by it all – or at least behave as if this were the case!

Christ has come! He has died and risen again! We have been reconciled to God through Him by faith. Now therefore, glorify God in your bodies and present your lives as living sacrifices unto Him! Be what you are! Live as those who are filled with the Spirit and who truly know the Lord.

What a blessing it is to live in these times! But that is not yet all there is to see. We have not even come to the most important blessing of the day that is Coming and NOW IS.

When the prophecy was given to Israel she was in rebellion and under the wrath of God. She deserved nothing in the way of mercy or love. Yet with a tender voice of comfort towards the people He was about to punish, the Covenant Father spoke of forgiveness.

The Coming Day, besides everything else it was going to be, was to be a day in which the Lord would not take into account the sin of His people.

With the Coming of the Messiah, together with the application of His work by the Holy Spirit, the sins of the people would be passed over by God as if they never existed! It was to be a day in which the guilt of sinners would be taken away.

What Grace and Mercy we find here! Who said that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as that of the New? ? !

In their sin and misery, although they deserved eternal punishment; the covenant people of the Lord were given the hope of mercy and abundant love!

We the covenant people of today stand in exactly the same position as those of old.

Even though we live in this day spoken of by God through the prophet Jeremiah, we still rebel against God as we run after our modern idols. Although we have the full record of Divine Revelation we still act as those who do not know. In spite of the fact that we know of the price paid for our salvation, we still take it for granted and behave as though it were like any cheap item one can buy in a supermarket!

Indeed, we deserve the full wrath of God to be unleashed upon us because of our sinfulness. We too deserve our homes, families, country and even life to be taken from us. Yet in the cross of Christ we hear words of love and mercy.

In Christ God looks upon the wretched sinner. A man saturated with sin and rebellion, and declares that sinner to be clean! Indeed, the day that NOW IS, is a day of forgiveness!

Yes the day has arrived and has long been. The dawn has become brilliant sunshine, and what a beautiful day it has turned out to be!

When we consider this new day which the faithful Father of the Covenant has given us in Christ, we can only stand in awe at the majesty we see and ask the question:

And can it be that I should gain,
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me who caused His pain,
For me, who Him, to death pursued?
AMAZING LOVE! how can it be,
That Thou, my God shouldst die for me?