“A New and Better Covenant!” Sermon notes Jeremiah 31.31-34, Lent 5B, March ’15

1.                  Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word this 5^th Sunday in Lent is taken from Jeremiah 31:31-34, it’s entitled, “A New and Better Covenant!”  It’s better, because it won’t fail (vv. 31, 32).  It’s better, because it is written in our hearts (vv. 33, 34a), and the new covenant is better, because it offers full and free forgiveness (v. 34b).  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                  A Charlotte, North Carolina man, having purchased a case of rare, very expensive cigars, insured them against—get this—FIRE! Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single payment on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company.  In his claim, the man stated that he lost his cigars “in a series of small fires.” The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had smoked the cigars in normal fashion. The man sued and won!  When delivering his ruling, the judge stated that since the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that cigars were insurable, and also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining what it considered “unacceptable fire,” it was obligated to compensate the man for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy appeals process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in “the fires.”  After the man cashed the check, however, the insurance company had him arrested on twenty-four counts of arson! With testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning rare cigars and sentenced to twenty-four consecutive one-year terms.

3.                  The covenant God made with us is far different from the covenant this man and his insurance company made with each other, a contract in which both were, quite obviously, looking only to their own interests. God made his covenant with us solely for our benefit, not his, and he himself paid the premium to establish it. Now we, too, know and love God and live for him.  Jer 31:31–34 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, 32not 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. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: 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. 34And 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.”

4.                  Jeremiah says that from the ashes of the ruined city and temple would rise a new Jerusalem. From the shattering of the old covenant would rise a new and more glorious covenant. It is that covenant which lay at the heart of Israel’s hope. It is that covenant about which Jeremiah now writes.

5.                  The way of salvation in both covenants, the old and the new, is the same. A person is saved by faith in Christ. The believer under the old covenant looked ahead to Christ as the fulfillment of all the types and pictures of the old covenant. The believer under the new covenant looks back to the accomplished work of Christ. Because the Lord understands human nature and its weakness for sinning, the Lord provided many ways under the old covenant for the believer to receive forgiveness. Through many offerings and various sacrifices, the repentant sinner was assured he had been reconciled with God.

6.                  The old covenant pointed to Jesus as its fulfillment. By its very nature, then, it was temporary. Many of its activities—the repeated animal sacrifices, for example—emphasized its fleeting nature. The old covenant, announced at Mount Sinai, also served to keep the Jewish people separate from the surrounding heathen, a unique nation, preserved intact by the regulations laid upon them by the old covenant. Their separation ensured that they would remain a people until the promised Messiah would come.

7.                  Paul described this purpose of the old covenant in Galatians 3:23–25: “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”

8.                  In contrast, the new covenant is far different. “It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers.” It contains no laws, rules, or regulations that have to be kept. It has no external mark. It does not limit the priesthood and the right to approach God to any one group. Peter wrote to all Christians, “You are … a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). It invites all, regardless of nationality, to believe. It sets aside ethnic, racial, and other boundaries. The invitation is to all the world.  The new covenant urges all to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth—“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” This is the miracle of conversion. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23, 24).

9.                  God’s new covenant is new also because the one who mediates it is one greater than Moses.

While we were busy breaking our promises with God in the old covenant, he was making one with us. God said in Jeremiah 31 he would forgive our wickedness and remember our sins no more. That covenant was realized in the work of his Son Jesus.

10.              Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises of forgiveness and eternal life. He lived the life we should have lived, died our death, and paid the ultimate price. There was hell to pay for the promises we broke and the relationship we destroyed with God, and Jesus Christ paid it. He suffered hell for us on the cross when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

11.              God didn’t stop there. Not only did he earn our forgiveness, but he promised to bring it to us. He fulfilled that promise at our Baptism, when our sins were forgiven and we were given the gift of faith. That baptismal promise is as effective today as when it was first made. So often I hear Christians say, “I don’t feel forgiven. My sin is too big.” God’s promises are sure. They aren’t dependent on us. The Bible constantly reminds us of that. God promised the Israelites a way out of slavery in Egypt and a new home. Even though they doubted God, cursed the hardship of the wilderness, and built a golden idol, Joshua led them into the Promised Land and proclaimed, “Not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you” (Josh 23:14). God promised David that the Messiah would be his descendant. Even when David committed adultery with Bathsheba and tried to cover over his sin, God traced the line of Christ through their offspring.

12.              Have you come here today feeling guilty because you haven’t talked to your kids about Christ? Do you regret doing something that hurt your marriage? Are you sorry that worship and Bible study haven’t been a priority in your life? Well, I want you to know that forgiveness is yours right now. Not after you do 14 good deeds or get a warm fuzzy feeling inside that tells you you’re forgiven. God forgives you, loves you, has a relationship with you because he has promised it to you through His Son Jesus Christ who has given to us a new and better covenant.

13.              Now that we live in the new covenant of God in Christ Jesus, our promises are our Christian witness. We’re only able to say, “I promise,” and keep it, because of a God who has done that very thing in our lives. In an age when divorce is increasingly rampant, a happily married couple points to Christ. When it’s easier for everyone to inhale dinner and let the kids go play, a family that sets aside time for devotions shows their neighbors that God is the priority. When society says putting your parents away at the first sign of disease—or even killing them—is okay, children who provide for their parents’ need, even at a great personal cost, show they believe something different. This won’t be easy, and you’ll break your promises again. But when you do, God will lead you to this place, this altar. You’ll kneel under the weight of your broken promises, receive bread and wine and, attached to them, the very words of Christ: “This is my body. This is my blood. You are forgiven. Amen!

“God’s Grace Makes the Difference,” Ephesians 2:1-10, March ’15 Series B

  

1.                  Sanctify us in the truth, O Lord, Your Word is truth.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  As we move further into Lent, the cross looms ever larger before us. It was on that cross that the love, mercy, and grace of God reached their climax. The Old Testament and Gospel readings for this day vividly hold the cross before us. Our text from Ephesians 2 this 4^th Sunday in Lent gives us a “behind the scenes” glimpse at what motivated God to sacrifice his Son Jesus on the cross for us. In the first 3 verses of Ephesians 2 Paul reminds believers of their former unspiritual condition. It’s not a pretty picture! He describes their former state with phrases like “being dead in transgressions and sins,” “following the ways of the world,” “gratifying the cravings of the sinful nature,” when they were “by nature objects of wrath.” What follows in our text stands in sharp contrast to what used to be. “God’s grace has made the difference.”  But, once we receive this grace from God in Christ what are we to do with it?  We’ll look at this a little further in our message from God’s Word today.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.    

2.                  YouTube videos go viral all the time, but sermons rarely do. Enter Jefferson Bethke, a young poet who posted the video "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." It’s been viewed more than 10 million times in a short manner of time.  The video opens with the phrase "Jesus is greater than Religion.” His poem begins, "What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?"  In a hip style, he continues with such controversial questions for four minutes: "If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?" Mr. Bethke describes religion as no more than "behavior modification" and "a long list of chores." This leads him to conclude, "Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums." And his grand finale: "So know I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it."  We might consider that Bethke risks appearing arrogant by claiming to love Jesus and hate religion, but this is an arrogance that I think I’m as guilty as anyone. To separate Jesus from religion is to create an untrue juxtaposition of two non-mutually exclusive concepts. Jesus didn’t come to abolish religion. He didn’t come to abolish the law as Matthew 5:19 tells us. Jesus came to do what He’s still in the business of doing: to redeem you from your trespasses and sins by keeping the law perfectly in your place. 

3.                  We don’t get to separate ourselves from the Church, as Christians. As someone once said, “to say that you love Jesus but hate religion is like saying you love your best friend but hate his wife.” That relationship won’t last. As Christians we aren’t required to check our brains at the door, but we are to work together to be more loving, compassionate, humble, and gracious in our spirits. We’re called to love one another, and we do so with the power of our Lord Jesus who came to this earth and died for our sins and has redeemed us by His death on the cross. 

4.                  But, here’s the question: What’s religion? Is it hypocrisy? By ‘religion,’ do we really mean the way of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Westboro Baptist Church? Because if so, we’re in trouble.  Is it, like Bethke said, “putting perfume on a casket?” Is it legalism – “behavior modification, like a long list of chores?” Because if so, we’re in a lot of trouble. I’m guessing Bethke doesn’t actually hate religion. In fact, I would bet that he loves it. As we are told in James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” In fact, it sounds similar to where Bethke claims ‘religion’ falls short: “Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor/Tells single moms God doesn’t love them if they’ve ever had a divorce?”  It seems that in much discussion between Christians about Jefferson Bethke’s YouTube video that what he really was protesting is faith without works. Empty speech and selfish thinking. Building monuments to our own greatness and abandoning the widow and the orphan. What we need now is not less religion, but more than ever.

5.                  And this is what leads us to our Epistle lesson from Ephesians chapter 2 today.  Ephesians 2:1–2, “2  As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ²in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.”  Although physically they were alive and active, Paul tells the Ephesian Christians that spiritually they’d been dead. Corpses can’t move. Dead people can’t do anything; they’re totally unable to help themselves. Such was the spiritual condition you too were in before God made you His own through your baptism and the hearing of His Word. If any of the Ephesians questioned Paul’s diagnosis regarding their spiritual bankruptcy, he urged them to take a look at their own lives.  Like their friends and neighbors, the Ephesians had shown the common weaknesses of gentile society much like Jefferson Bethke was critiquing about the Christian church today. They’d been godless, immoral, loveless, lazy, and disobedient. Society is that way, according to Paul, because it follows “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” That “ruler,” of course, is Satan (John 12:31; 14:30). He’s a dangerous foe. Like a roaring lion, he stalks about, seeking victims to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And the Ephesian Gentiles had been easy prey.

6.                  Ephesians 2:3 says, “³All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”  When Paul says, “We also lived among them,” he includes himself and his fellow Jews with the disobedient Gentiles.  God’s law, given to Israel on Mount Sinai, guided and regulated nearly every phase of Jewish life. As such, the law held in check among the Jews many of the coarse outbreaks of sin that were common among the Gentiles. But, whether sins are done in the open or in secret, blatant or subtle, sinful actions and thoughts infect every man, woman, and child since the fall into sin. Sin is an inherited condition. We bring it with us from birth. And it rightly earns us the anger of a holy and just God. With Paul we too need to say, “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

7.                  Ephesians 2:4–5, “⁴But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”  Paul tells us that God raising Christ from the dead signaled the completion of Christ’s saving work and sealed our redemption. It made possible our resurrection from spiritual death.  When he says, “God … made us alive with Christ,” he’s referring to the miracle of conversion. When we could not lift a finger to help ourselves, God through Word and sacrament worked faith in our hearts, creating life where formerly there had been none. In this way he “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.”

8.                  Ephesians 2:8–9, “⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—⁹not by works, so that no one can boast.”  Paul underscores the theme of his message by repeating it: we’re saved by grace! Right now we’re “the saved ones.” There’s no waiting, no trial period, no background check. We possess salvation right now. But, Paul tells us this isn’t our own doing, it’s “through faith.” Faith is the hand that receives all the blessings of God’s grace. It’s a gift given by God, worked in us by the Spirit. The credit, the glory, the praise all belong to God.

9.                  How fitting that Paul should refer to all this as the gift of God. Think of occasions when gifts are given. Seldom does one receive a gift from a total stranger. They usually come from those who know and love us. It’s given freely as an expression of love and friendship. In the same way the gift of salvation is given by God the Father who knows us well and loves us dearly, and it’s given unconditionally.  We must also remember that gifts aren’t earned. Paul was aware that work-righteousness is deeply ingrained in the natural man. This is a condition to which Christians can easily revert if they let down their spiritual guard. While good works do play a part in the Christian’s life, they’re excluded when it comes to our salvation. Paul’s words are emphatic: “And this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works.…” In the area of justification works and faith are opposites. Relying on works would rob God of the glory that is his.

10.              But, notice how Paul doesn’t exclude good works from the life of the Christian. While Paul tells us that our good works are excluded in justification, they’re expected in sanctification, which is living out a holy and God pleasing life. Those works are the Christian’s loving response to God and His grace. We not only say our thanks to God; we live it every day. Here, too, notice the grace of God. He not only enables us to do good works (Heb 11:6), but He also gives us the opportunities for service. And such opportunities for service aren’t confined to spectacular or unusual things. Every day, routine chores also offer ways for glorifying God and serving our neighbor (1 Co 10:31). A Christian’s life should bring glory to God. Our lives are to be reflections of His grace. For remember, God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does and we do all of this because of God’s grace given to us through our Lord Jesus.  Amen.