Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  October 30, 2022

“The days are coming, declares the LORD…” How does that make you feel? Perhaps you’ve heard similar words in your life? Maybe as a teenager, when you felt you were invincible, you heard someone say, “Someday, you’ll get what’s coming to you…the days are coming when you won’t be able to live like you are today.”  Perhaps it was when you graduated from college and you felt you could conquer the world with your knowledge and education. Maybe someone said to you, “Someday, you’ll understand that you really don’t know anything.”  “The days are coming, declares the LORD…” Eleven times, God told Jeremiah, “The days are coming.” So what was God talking about? What was coming? 

From what we know about the book of Jeremiah, we might very well assume that “the coming days,” were days of judgment. Much of Jeremiah’s book is a call to repentance and a warning of judgment. However, more often than not, when God told Jeremiah, “the days are coming,” he was giving Jeremiah and the remnant in Israel an assurance of his grace. And that’s exactly what we find here in chapter 31. As God told Jeremiah, so today we hear The Day Has Come!

But perhaps the lingering question is what does this have to do with the Lutheran Reformation? Why is this the first reading for today? One of the reasons is the similarity between Jeremiah’s time, Martin Luther’s time, and most certainly our time today. Jeremiah and Luther both lived in an age of outward unfaithfulness to God’s covenant. For Jeremiah, it was unfaithfulness to the first covenant, the covenant of the law. Listen to how God describes the relationship. “It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant of mine, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.”  Israel cheated on God. The covenant relationship that God shared with his people was like a marriage. God had led his bride, Israel, out of her slavery in Egypt. He made a promise to be faithful to her, that he would be her God and she would be his people. He would provide for her, love her, bless her. All she was to do was simply follow his lead. But Israel wasn’t satisfied with God as her head, as her leader, as her provider. She adulterated herself. She annulled that marriage relationship by selling herself cheaply to the gods of every nation around her. 

The same problem existed in Luther’s day. Only this time, it was unfaithfulness towards God’s new covenant of grace. Instead of relying solely on grace alone, the church of Luther’s day had covered God’s new covenant with a doctrine of human regulations and laws. Penance and works were the way to win favor with God, to win your own salvation, not trusting in God’s Son and his salvation. And we could well identify our own situation, our own culture as a combination of Jeremiah’s and Luther’s. Gross, open idolatry runs rampant. Rather than relying on God and his grace, it’s all about self-help and pulling yourself up. It’s like we’re looking at the same portrait. We might well expect God’s judgment when we hear, “The days are coming.” 

The only hope for the repentant remnant in Jeremiah’s time, the only hope for the reformers of Luther’s day, the only hope for us today is to look to the New Covenant. What is the New Covenant? Let’s listen as Jeremiah tells us again. “Yes, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant of mine, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will each one teach his neighbor, or each one teach 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 guilt, and I will remember their sins no more.”

The New Covenant God promised was going to be different than the first covenant. That first covenant was a two-sided covenant. It required people on both sides to hold up their end of the bargain. God would do everything that he promised; Israel would be faithful to him. But Israel didn’t hold up her end of the covenant. So this time, God wasn’t going to make a two-sided covenant. This time, the covenant would be one-sided. God would make the promises, no strings attached; Israel would receive the blessings. That New Covenant wasn’t really new at all. It was the same covenant that God made with Abraham. It was the covenant of the Savior. 

In the Hebrew, the words literally read, “to cut a covenant.” When an agreement was made, people at this time didn’t simply shake on it, they didn’t sign a contract; but in a very vivid way they showed their agreement. They would cut animals in half, and make a path between the halves. Then each person would walk between the pieces declaring that if they broke the agreement, that they should be cut into pieces like the animals. When God first made that covenant with Abraham, they set up the covenant ceremony, just like normal. However, this is what happened: “Then when the sun had gone down and it was dark, suddenly a smoking oven and a flaming torch passed between the pieces.” Abraham never walked through the pieces. It was the presence of God alone that passed through the pieces. It was God alone who was making a promise, God alone who would keep his promise to send the Savior through Abraham’s line at the appointed time. 

My dear Christian friends, The Day Has Come! God has kept his promise to send the Savior. God fulfilled the new covenant and continues to fulfill it today! Unlike that first covenant, which Israel disastrously failed to keep, God has made a new covenant in which he does everything. “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” God is our God because he desires to be, not because we ask him, not because we choose him. We are his people because God has chosen us, not the other way around. God has put his Word in our minds and written it on our hearts through his chosen means of grace. Through the waters of baptism, faith is created and there that Word resides. Through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, that faith grows and produces fruit. All the time, God is giving, doing, acting; we are receiving and responding. 

Luther’s reformation stood in the pillars, sola gratia, sola scriptura, sola fide: God’s grace alone, God’s Word alone, God’s gift of faith alone! The doctrine of justification, where God declares that sinners are “not guilty” because of Jesus, is the heart and core of this new covenant! Listen again. “No longer will each one teach his neighbor, or each one teach 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 guilt, and I will remember their sins no more.” God comes to us miserable sinners and he puts his Word in our hearts. He forgives our wickedness! He removes our sins so that he no longer remembers them. He makes us his people!

The Day Has Come! 505 years ago, in 1517, Martin Luther reawakened the church to this truth as he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. In the very first thesis, he made God’s new covenant promise of forgiveness plain as he said, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Our entire life is one of repentance, confessing our sins, trusting in God’s forgiveness, and serving our God because we live under the new covenant of forgiveness. 

The Day Has Come! Our great heritage as spiritual descendants of Abraham and Luther is this wonderful doctrine of grace, of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Every time we gather for worship, God serves us with his new covenant. Each week we confess our sins and eagerly hear those sins are forgiven because of Jesus. Every week we are fed and nourished as the Word is renewed in us and strengthened by the Scriptures. When we have opportunity to eat and drink at the Lord’s Supper, we hear again of this new covenant. Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant  in my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” 

The Day Has Come! Our great heritage is not something to simply boast about and relish on Reformation Sunday and then put away for another year. Our great heritage is something to share. It’s something we can pass on to our own children, but more than that, it’s something we can pass on to all people. We can share the Word of God! We can share the promise of a New Covenant, a covenant of God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, and God’s Word. A covenant where God does everything! Like Jeremiah, like Luther, we’ve been given a great opportunity to share this heritage. “The days are coming…” when there won’t be any more time. The Day has come. The Day is now! Share your great heritage! See the joy on someone’s face when they hear all that God has done for them. Make your heritage theirs as well! The Day Has Come! Amen.