The Unbreakable Covenant

Text: ESV Jeremiah 31:31&32 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.”

Goal: That we never divorce ourselves from God.

ESV 1 Timothy 1:2 Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Have you ever made a promise? Most of us have. As kids we make promises to our friends. As adults we make promises to our spouses and kids. We make promises to pay off loans and credit cards. Have you ever made a promise that you couldn’t keep? That’s a tougher question, because many of us can remember times when we’ve made a promise and then we didn’t keep it. Maybe something came up to make the promise impossible to keep. Maybe we didn’t intend to keep the promise in the first place.

I remember quite well one promise that I made and didn’t keep. The promise was more of a pact between friends. We’d all done something wrong, together as a group, so we made a promise never to tell any adults what we’d done. We knew we were crawling around in an attic space that was off limits. We knew that we were supposed to be playing basketball in the gym, but we just had to do a little exploring, while no one was around. We knew that when I broke through the floor of the attic space (which just happened to be the ceiling of the boy’s locker room) that we should tell someone. We knew that taping the ceiling back into place would never fool anyone. But we made a promise anyway – never to tell an adult what had happened.

A week went by and no one questioned us about the hole in the ceiling. Two weeks passed and a rumor went though the school that someone must have broken into the school through a vent in the roof and then fallen through the attic into the boy’s locker room. Thankfully nothing was missing. For a while we were like the kids on the movie “A Christmas Story”. We knew darn well that it was better not to get caught than to tell the truth. We kept our promise and whenever our conscience started to bother us we reminded each other that we’d made a promise. It would be a terrible thing to violate our pact, even more terrible than keeping the truth from our parents and teachers.

About three to four weeks after the incident, I was called out of class to go to the principal’s office. Mr. Ludwig was a big man with a perfectly shaped crew cut. He started each year by visiting each classroom, just to show us the razor sharpening strap that he promised to use on our backsides if we ever dared to challenge the authority of our teachers. To get sent to the principal’s office brought fear and trembling. I can remember the sick feeling in my stomach as I sat outside his door, waiting for him to tell me to enter. I’d never even seen the inside of his office and there I was, sitting across from his desk, looking at the leather strap hanging on the wall. How many lashes would I receive for breaking through the attic ceiling? Five . . . ten . . . possibly more. My only chance . . . my only hope for some leniency was to break the pact, to break my promise and tell Mr. Ludwig everything that had happened. So I cracked under pressure and told him everything, including the names of my accomplices. I’ll never forget what Mr. Ludwig said next, “Matthew, I’m glad that you told me everything, but that’s not why I called you to my office today.”

I later realized that I had made an impossible promise. We had a pact to live in a lie. Our promise was a promise and it was wrong to break my promise to my friends (a fact that they still remind me of to this day!), but it was also wrong to continue in the lie. When God makes a promise, He never breaks it. He never makes a promise that He cannot fulfill. God cannot lie and His Words stand forever.

So to what is Jeremiah referring when he says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah”? If God had to make a “new” covenant, doesn’t that imply that something was wrong with the “old” covenant? What was God’s “old” covenant anyway? The first time that the word covenant is used in Scripture is during the time before the flood. God promised that He would establish a covenant with Noah and his family. God made good on His promise as He saved Noah and his family by placing them in the ark as the world was flooded. The sign of this covenant was seen after the flood, as God placed a rainbow in the sky. God’s promise to Noah preserved Noah’s family, along with animals and land.

The second time the word covenant shows up is when God chose Abram to be the father of many nations. This covenant, this promise included land and descendants. God promised to bless Abraham and his offspring for eternity. The mark of the covenant was circumcision. With a cut and through the shedding of blood, God set apart Abraham’s descendants as people of the covenant, a people of God’s promise. The only problem was God’s people of the promise kept pushing away from God. God chose them to be His people. He sealed them with the sign of circumcision. He rescued them from slavery. He delivered them from their enemies. He provided for all their needs. He showed them how to live as His people. He went after them when they strayed. He never, ever broke His covenant with Noah, or with Abraham, or with their descendents. God keeps His promises.

By the time that the prophet Jeremiah wrote, God’s people of the promise had broken His covenant many times. God says that even though He was “their husband,” they broke His promise. So God made a new covenant. It’s the same old promise, but revealed in greater detail. And the greater detail shows us what our God is all about. The greater detail reveals that God kept His promise, even though He paid the ultimate price to do it. The Son of Man, Jesus Christ was delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes. He was condemned to death and delivered over to the Gentiles. They mocked Him and spit on Him and flogged Him and killed Him. And after three days, he rose again.

God kept His promise. His covenant never fails. He is still claiming people to be people of the promise. His blood has been shed, so now we are sealed and marked as people of the promise through our Baptism into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He will never break His promise to us. He will never fail us. God went all the way to the cross to keep His promise and even when we are unfaithful, He takes us back. Even when we break our promises, even when we lie, He says, “Your sins are forgiven. I’ve paid the price with my Blood.” He’s the reason that we’re able to forgive one another. He’s the source of our love for each other. His promise will carry us into eternal life with Him. It’s the same old promise, but every day of our lives we learn a little more about His love for us.

ESV Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.