When I was a little kid I would spend the summers at my grandmother’s house. She lived in the same town as my parents, but she had one thing that my parents house didn’t; a golf course in her backyard. My grandmother’s backyard ran right next to the 18th hole of Northwood Country Club in Meridian, MS. That was how I spent my summers, I would wake up to a fully furnished breakfast by who I still consider to be one of the greatest cooks I have ever known. After that, came the shower and I was out the door to play golf pretty much until my parents got off of work and came to take me home for a few hours. It was amazing and I hope that when the time has come for me to retire that my retirement could mirror my childhood. Even the rainy days were great. We would stay inside at her house and watch TV and play card games all day long. I can remember watching the game show “Let’s Make a Deal” with my grandmother every rainy day. Some of you may remember the show. Contestants were allowed to select a door or curtain and they would receive whatever was behind that barrier as their prize. After they had already won one prize, Monty Hall would try and offer them another door in exchange for their prize. This second door could contain something even greater than what they had already won. It could contain a car, or a vacation, but there was also a chance that it could contain a zonk, something that no one wanted or had any use for. The suspense came in this dilemma of keeping what the contestant already had in exchange for a chance at something much greater, but there was also a risk of losing everything and leaving with a few old rusted car tires instead of a new entertainment center.
In this text in Jeremiah we are told of two possible “deals” or agreements between God and His people in the Old Testament. These agreements are referred to as covenants. Now the subject of covenantal agreements between God and His people would take us a long time to completely discuss, but for the purposes of our text today we will simply use O. Palmer Robertson’s definition of a covenant as “a bond in blood sovereignly administered.” Regardless of the definition, we see in our text today mentions of two different covenants between God and His people. We have the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. After reading our text in Jeremiah it is pretty clear which one is the better “deal.” There isn’t suspense here like there is in a game show. We know without a doubt which covenant is greater than the other. There isn’t a chance of us choosing a zonk and losing everything by choosing this “new deal”. Let’s look at the Old Covenant that God made with His people and the New Covenant He now extends to all people.
The beginning of our text records God speaking through Jeremiah and telling the people that He will make a NEW covenant. Well, in order for it to be a new covenant there has to be an old one. This old one, we read, is the one that God made with Israel following their exodus from Egypt. Think back with me for a second, after the Red Sea had been parted and the Israelites had all passed through safely on dry land, Moses (as played by Charlton Heston in my mind) lowers his hands and the waters crash back together swallowing Pharaoh and his men whole. With this series of events well in their minds, God enters into a covenant with His people. In this covenant, if the Israelites observed God’s laws and commands, He would bless them. But if they failed to live as His law instructed, they would suffer for it. As history tells us, just about as soon as the agreement was reached, Israel failed to uphold their end of the covenant. Despite witnessing something that should have made them bend over backwards to obey God’s laws, they quickly forgot about it in order to follow their sinful desires. And this wasn’t a one-time thing. The entire Old Testament is filled with accounts of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. The rest of the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) records Israel’s failures in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. Joshua points out their faults after they have entered the Promised Land. The book of Judges tells us of how God’s people continuously failed and where corrupt the instant that they didn’t have someone to keep them in line with God’s will. The rest of the historical books and all of the prophets continue to record instance after instance, time after time, Israel’s failure to keep in line with the will of their Lord. This particular book that we’re in today records the words of the prophet Jeremiah. Speaking almost 700 years after the events recorded in Exodus, to the nation of Judah, the small remnant of Israel, Jeremiah’s words are filled with doom and gloom and warnings to this nation because of their continuous forsaking of God. One author describes the time in which Jeremiah wrote his book as a time when, “Finally God said, ‘Have it your way! If you don’t want to live under my covenant and be my people; fine!’ So God gave them a seventy-year “time out” (a gross understatement, to say the least)! He allowed an enemy nation to attack, defeat, and deport them from their homeland for seven decades. That’s what was going on when Jeremiah wrote his book.”
I often get asked the question, “If God loves us, then why do bad things continue to happen to us?” Or another common one, “If God hates sin, then why doesn’t He just cause us not to sin?” The answer to these two questions is in fact, one-in-the-same. In other words, “If God is a loving God, then why doesn’t He put an end to all the suffering and evil sinful things of this world.” I believe that all parents already know the answer to this question. Parents love their children more than anything in this world. Parents also know that nothing in this world can frustrate you more than your children. I did it to my parents and am now being repaid the favor with my two. Many times we see them doing something bad and we put a stop to it. The other day when Thomas decided that he was going to climb onto his wooden riding horse, onto the ottoman, onto the chair, onto the arm of the chair, and reach for the fireplace mantle, I ran over and stopped him from reaching the mantle. But there are other times when we have to let them suffer from their own mistakes. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have spoken the phrase, “Asbhy, if you don’t stop doing that you’re going to hurt yourself,” only to have tears and consoling follow in mere moments. Now, I don’t want my daughter to hurt herself, but sometimes that’s the only way she will learn. We’re a stubborn bunch in my house and it can take a lot to teach us a much needed lesson. I don’t want bad things to happen to my children, but I want them to learn so that they can better themselves. God is the same way. He doesn’t want us to sin and suffer, but sometimes that is the only way we will learn. We have continuously, throughout history, sinned and follow in the footsteps of Judah. We saw 2 weeks ago in Genesis 3 Adam and Eve and the first occurrence of sin in the world. It hasn’t stopped since. We have naturally and instinctively opted for sin. We aren’t just letting bad things happen, we are causing them to happen. We are sinning! We are failing to uphold our end of the covenant. Such actions should remove us from God’s presence. Such actions should cast us out just as it did Adam and Eve from the Garden.
But here’s the great news of this text: that was the Old Covenant. That was the “old deal.” The New Covenant that Jeremiah speaks of has God telling us, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor, and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” You see, the Old Covenant was a two-sided agreement. God did His part. We did our part. Simple as that. The problem is that we never did our part. No ordinary person did, or ever could, do their part and keep their end of the agreement. So God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people of a time when He will establish a new agreement, a New Covenant. There will be a new special relationship under this New Covenant that didn’t exist under the Old Covenant. The new covenant relationship with God won’t be based on what people do; it will be based on the One in whom they believe. And Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah in whom God’s people believe, brought about this key aspect of the New Covenant. God isn’t changing, but our relationship with Him is growing and becoming even better. And it is happening through the very person who we read about last week in the prophet Isaiah. This person who is going to be born of the virgin named Immanuel, God with us.
In this New Covenant, our wickedness will be forgiven and our sins forgotten. All iniquities will be pardoned for the sake of His Son. Our failures and our falling short of what God requires of us will no longer be remembered because God will now remember His Son’s sacrifice which will be made on our behalf. There is no fine print on the bottom of the page to trip us up. This is a one-sided deal, a unilateral covenant that will be signed, sealed, and secured in the holy, precious blood of Jesus Christ. And that signed covenant will be brought to us through faith in the precious blood of Jesus. We will now be saved through grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone.
There is no question about it; this New Covenant that God will establish is so much greater than the Old Covenant. To use the term “deal” may be downplaying this covenant a bit. But looking back at the game shows of my childhood, there isn’t even a choice. We know what is behind the curtains. We know what’s in the boxes. We know that what awaits us in the Old Covenant is continued failure. Our prize, our bounteous and merciful gift from the Father is found in this New Covenant. Jesus is coming with righteousness that covers all of our sins. Jesus Christ is coming, just as the words that we read in our call to worship at the beginning of our service today told us, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” God himself, in human form, is coming to dwell with us. As we continue to look forward during this Advent season to the time in which we celebrate this miraculous birth, let us keep in mind how much truly changed at this time. How our relationship with God changed. How the world changed, as we stand in awe as we celebrate a moment in history when everything that we know was forever changed. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
