Gloria Deo
April 17, 2025
Sermon for Maundy Thursday
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Theme: God Has Negotiated a New Contract for Us!
- The need for this contract
- The terms of this contract
- The negotiator of this contract
Contracts and contract negotiations are commonplace occurrences in America. They are as American as baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Indeed, it is in the field of sports that we often hear the most about contracts and contract negotiations. We hear about the multi-million dollar contracts signed by big league baseball, basketball and football players. In fact, you may remember hearing earlier this year that the Twins signed pitcher Jhoan Duran to a new one-year deal worth more than $4 million.
Contracts and contract negotiations are certainly not limited to the field of sports, however. They extend to nearly every walk of life, from trash collectors to corporate CEO’s and just about everything in between. Teachers work under contract. Construction workers work under contract. Electricians work under contract. Even when you take your car to the local dealership to get it fixed and you fill out a work order, you are dealing with a type of contract: This is what’s not working. This needs to be replaced. They say they will fix it or replace it. And this is approximately how much it will cost.
With contracts being such an integral part of our lives, it really shouldn’t surprise us to learn that even God works with contracts. In fact, in these verses from Jeremiah, ch. 31 we see God renegotiating a contract. Perhaps you’ve never thought of it in those terms before, but that’s essentially what God is doing. He’s negotiating a new contract for us.
Before we look at this new contract in detail, though, it may be helpful for us to back up and find out a little more about the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived toward the end of the 7th century B.C., around the year 600 B.C.. He prophesied, that is, he proclaimed the Word of God during the reigns of the last 6 kings of the nation of Judah. His message was a very ominous one. It is summarized back in ch. 1, v. 14: “The LORD said to me, ‘From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.’” Not exactly a very encouraging message, was it?
“Jeremiah, how can you say that? God certainly isn’t going to destroy his people.”
“Oh yes he is,” came Jeremiah’s answer. “Worse than that, God is going to have them carried off into captivity.”
“Now, Jeremiah, these are God’s people you are talking about, the Children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham. You can’t be serious. I mean, why would God do such a thing?”
“Because his people have broken their covenant with him.” Yes, God had made a covenant, a contract–if you will—with his Old Testament people. We find the terms of this agreement in the book of Exodus. There in ch. 19 God says:
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”(vv. 4-6).
This was the essence of God’s covenant, his contract with his people in the Old Testament. “If you do this, if you keep my commands, then you will be my people, and I will be your God.”
Sounds simple enough; but it wasn’t—at least not for the Children of Israel. They broke this agreement over and over and over again, the first time less than 40 days after it had been confirmed. You remember what happened. While Moses was still up on Mt. Sinai, receiving instructions from God, the people made an idol for themselves and began to worship it, violating one of the most basic terms of the agreement: “You shall have no other gods.” When Moses came down from the mountain, he made a graphic display of what the people had done. He took the two tablets of stone on which God had written the 10 Commandments and threw them on the ground, busting them into pieces. But that was just the first time.
Throughout their years of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites repeatedly rebelled against God and broke his covenant. The same thing happened once they reached the Promised Land. The book of Judges records how unfaithful the Children of Israel were to the Lord. Time and time again the Israelites broke the covenant God had made with them and began to worship other gods. So God gave them into their hands of the enemies—the Moabites and Midianites and Philistines, who oppressed them and destroyed their land, until they repented of their sin and turned back to the Lord. Then God sent a judge to rescue them.
Later the Israelites asked for a king; and they got one: Saul, who was also unfaithful to the Lord, who also broke his covenant. If only he had been the exception! Sadly, of the 42 kings who ruled over the nations of Israel and Judah, only 9 were faithful to the Lord and his covenant—only 9! And these were the leaders of God’s people!
Which brings us to the time of Jeremiah. By this time God’s covenant more than lay in pieces on the ground. There was hardly anything left. Because of their unfaithfulness to him, God already had rejected the 10 northern tribes of Israel as his people. In judgment God had sent the Assyrians to conquer them and carry them away into captivity. You would think the people of the southern kingdom of Judah would have learned from this; but they didn’t. They continued to be unfaithful to the Lord as well, and now God had rejected them too. As Jeremiah predicted, they too were about to be carried off into captivity in Babylon. And at least for a time, they would cease to exist as a nation.
Obviously there was a need for some changes. This covenant, this contract God had made with his people was just not working out. Naturally, it wasn’t God’s fault. He had held up his side of the bargain. He had been completely faithful to his people. As he states in v. 32, he was like a husband to them. No, the fault for this breach of contract lay with God’s people. They were the unfaithful ones. They were the ones who had failed to keep the agreement.
Of course, you and I would never have done something like that. We wouldn’t have broken God’s covenant the way the Israelites did. We would have been faithful to God, right? Perhaps a better question would be: Have you? Have you been faithful to the Lord? Have you kept his laws and commands? Have you always put God first in your life, before anything and anyone else? Have you always been careful not to misuse God’s name? Have you ever decided to sleep in on Sunday morning and skipped going to church? Have you ever disobeyed your parents? Have you ever hated or hurt anyone? Do I need to go on? No, if you and I had been a part of God’s Old Testament people, it wouldn’t have been any different. We would have broken God’s covenant too. There still would be a need for a new contract.
And that’s exactly what God had planned: a new contract with new terms. And here are those terms:
“This is the covenant I will make with house 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 a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘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.”(vv. 33+34)
Notice that the terms of the covenant are entirely one-sided. There is no “If you will do this, I will do that,” “If you will obey my commands, then I will be your God and you will be my people.” Instead God simply says, “I will do this,” “I will be their God and they will be my people.” God leaves nothing up to us. This new covenant is completely dependent on God and his faithful love rather than on us or our ability to meet certain conditions. The reason God did it this way I think is rather obvious: so that this covenant would be certain and sure, so this covenant could not be broken.
The people with whom God established this covenant are “the house of Israel” and “the house of Judah.” At first we might think that refers to the physical nation of Israel, but it doesn’t. Remember, the nation of Israel was no longer in existence by Jeremiah’s time. They had been carried off into captivity and they had never returned. The nation of Judah likewise was about to be carried off into captivity. They too would soon cease to exist as a nation. And even after some of them returned from captivity, they were never again an independent nation as they once had been. Nor do these words find fulfillment in the present nation of Israel.
Rather, we need to remember what the apostle Paul says in the book of Romans. The true Children of Israel, the true descendants of Abraham are not the physical descendants, but those who have the faith of Israel, those who have the faith of Abraham—in other words, believers. Writers in the Old Testament frequently used the picture of a reunited Israel as a picture of the Holy Christian Church, the Church of all believers. That’s the picture here as well. This new covenant God is making—he is making with believers, with you and me.
The most significant and most striking feature of this new contract is found in the last part of v. 34: “I will forgive their wickedness,” says the LORD, “and will remember their sins no more.” This is the heart and core of God’s new covenant: forgiveness, full and free forgiveness. That’s why God can say that these people will be his people and he will be their God, because he has completely forgiven their sins.
Really? Is that really true, that God will remember my sins no more? Yes, it is. Even though you may have trouble forgetting your sins, God does not. He can forget them. He has already forgotten them, because they have been paid for with the blood of his own Son. As far as he is concerned, they’re gone without a trace.
And we can be absolutely certain of that because of who the negotiator of this new contract was. Notice what the LORD says in these verses. He says, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel”(v. 33), “I will put my law in their minds”(v. 33), “I will forgive their wickedness”(v. 34). This covenant God would make. There would be no mediator like Moses, as there was with the first one. This one God would take care of himself. Only God could, and he did. Or shall I say, Jesus did—the one they call Immanuel, “God with us.” Jesus established this new covenant for us. He put it into effect on the cross, where the deal was sealed with his own blood. Nothing could make the forgiveness it offers to us more certain and sure.
And tonight we get to celebrate this new covenant God has made with us in the special meal that Jesus established for that very purpose. As we come to his table tonight and receive the bread and wine, Jesus gives us something else as well, his own body and blood, the very blood he shed on the cross to establish this covenant. And he assures us, in a very real and personal way, “Your sins are forgiven. Your guilt is taken away. Go in peace.” What tremendous comfort we receive in this sacrament! Here we find assurance that even though we have sinned again, God’s covenant remains in effect and our sins are fully forgiven.
So congratulations! You have a new contract. I must say, you had an excellent negotiator. This contract offers you more than several million dollars a year, a handsome signing bonus and some fabulous fringe benefits. The bonus for signing is God’s presence and power in your life. The salary is equivalent to the eternal treasures of heaven. And the fringe benefits—well, let’s simply say they’re out of this world. “Where do I sign?” you ask. You don’t have to sign. It’s already yours, compliments of Jesus our Savior. Amen.