14 December 2025

Jeremiah: A New Covenant

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The man that King Nebuchadnezzar left on the throne of Jerusalem after conquering the city – Zedekiah, the younger brother of the previous king Jehoiakim – was, I’m sure, a nice enough guy. He wasn’t quarrelsome, at least. In fact, he hated it when people were mad at him and consequently was careful not to make any decisions of his own. When he issued a royal order you knew it was just the reflection of whatever he had just been told by someone with a stronger personality. Which was pretty much everyone. Once, for instance, a group of his courtiers who had had just about enough of that irritating Jeremiah guy asked if the king would let them take care of the Jeremiah problem. Zedekiah agreed and was careful not to inquire too closely about what they planned. In fact, what they did was throw Jeremiah in a pit filled with sludge and leave him to die there, where he would soon sink out of sight. But one of the king’s servants, an Ethiopian slave named Ebed-melech, went to Zedekiah and told him that he couldn’t just leave Jeremiah, the prophet of God, to die, so he gave Ebed-melech permission to rescue him. So both the murder and the rescue were authorized by the king. I don’t know what they called backbones like Zedekiah’s before the invention of wet noodles.

One thing that a lot of the stronger personalities in Zedekiah’s court told him was that they should rebel against Babylon, that God would be on his side, whatever Jeremiah said. And so, in time, Zedekiah did. King Nebuchadnezzar sent an army down to lay siege to the city. Nebuchadnezzar had had enough of stubborn, rebellious Jerusalem. There would be no quarter this time, no deals. The siege lasted for over a year, and I won’t take time today to describe the unspeakable horror of it – the starvation and the desperation. The book of Lamentations, which according to tradition was written by Jeremiah, describes it in more than adequate detail in chapter 4. All I will say today is that as the siege went on and it became clear that Nebuchadnezzar would be satisfied with nothing less than the utter destruction of the city, the people lost hope. Jeremiah had been right, they said. God had abandoned his people. 

That’s not what I said, Jeremiah replied. I said that God could destroy the temple. I said that God could destroy the city. But God will never abandon his people. We read Jeremiah 31, verses 31-34.

31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says 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. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. 

From the very beginning of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry, some thirty years earlier, he had been calling Israel back to their covenant with God. That covenant was spelled out when God appeared to Moses and the people at Mount Sinai, when God gave the Ten Commandments and promised that if they would worship only him, reject all idols, and live in covenant with each other, he would be their God, and they would be his people. God had been true to his side of the covenant – as Jeremiah put it, God had been a faithful husband to Israel – but Israel had never kept her vows. Now, at the darkest moment in Israel’s history, at the brink of annihilation, God says through Jeremiah, “Let’s start over. The day is coming when I will make a new covenant with you, and it won’t be like the old one, which you never could keep. Instead of waiting for you to follow my laws, I’m going to take the initiative. This covenant won’t be written on tablets of stone; this time I will write it on your hearts.” The old covenant had been framed as a series of commands: Thou shalt … thou shalt not … thou shalt not …. But as Jeremiah described it, the new covenant would be framed instead as promises from God: I will … I will … I will …

And because this new covenant will be carved into the people’s very being, it will no longer be centered in temples or holy cities or priestly hierarchies or sacrificial rituals or traditions. This covenant will be among you and within you – it will be in your identity as a people but it will also be in your identity as individuals. God will speak to all as he had previously only spoken to prophets. No longer shall they …  say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. This covenant will not depend on the people’s ability to keep rules, but on God’s ability to forgive – a much more dependable foundation.

Now I suppose one might wonder, if this sort of covenant was possible, why didn’t God begin with this? Why did he give them the law first? Surely God in his divine wisdom knew that the people wouldn’t be able to keep those laws. I don’t know. All I can suggest is that maybe we are not able to appreciate a covenant of grace and forgiveness until we’ve seen for ourselves that a covenant based on our own efforts is doomed. Maybe the people of Israel had to see the temple fall before they could admit that the temple was not enough. Maybe they had to be forced to accept that every other hope was empty before they could truly trust in God.

That does still seem to be the case with us, by the way. As I said a few weeks ago, we would still prefer to trust in things we can see: denominational structures, bishops, church growth consultants, professional fund-raisers, programs, and campaigns. And it’s not necessarily that those things are bad. What’s bad is that we turn to them first. We still seem to feel the need to try every option on earth before we look to heaven. We still have trouble with the concept of a relationship with God that isn’t founded on our own efforts. But that’s what the new covenant is: a covenant founded entirely on God’s grace. This is what our New Testament teaches. (Testament, after all, is just another word for covenant.) 

If the ministry of Jeremiah teaches us anything, it is that God is our only hope, even when things seem to be going well, and we think we’re handling things ourselves. Empires fall. Nations disintegrate. Temples get torn down. Churches close. Traditions fade or, worse, become meaningless habit. If our hope for salvation is founded on our nation, our culture, our tradition, or even on our religion, we will be disappointed. All those things are temporary, and when they’re gone, only God remains. 

At Christmas time, we like to point out the prophecies in the Old Testament that prefigure Christ. We like to look at Isaiah’s prophecies of a new anointed one, especially. But I don’t think any prophetic words anywhere better describe the miracle that Christ came to bring than Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant, uttered in the shadow of complete destruction. When there was no other hope, Jeremiah said, “Now will you listen? God was never about your temple, or your holy city, or any of those external things. God wants covenant with you. And God will never give up.”

Jesus apparently felt the same about this passage, because when he gathered with his closest friends for the last time, at a Passover meal in Jerusalem, in the shadow of another doomed temple, Jeremiah’s words about a new covenant were on his mind.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

And Jesus looked around the table where his friends sat, enjoying a familiar traditional feast, and said, “Do you remember what Jeremiah said? About a new covenant?”

His friends stopped talking to listen, and Jesus went on.

It’s new, he said, because it’s not like the old covenant. Here at this table, we remember how God saved our ancestors from slavery in Egypt, with a mighty arm and an outstretched hand and gave us Torah. But God wants to save us from all kinds of slavery, including slavery to law. Jeremiah spoke of a covenant that we don’t earn by obedience, but one that is planted within us by God: a covenant of God’s love and grace and forgiveness. Jeremiah promised that God would place the law of his new covenant within us. 

Tonight I tell you that that new covenant starts here. What was it you were singing back on the first day of the week as we came into the city? Hosanna? Say it with me,

Hosanna to the Son of David!
   Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!

That’s the one, Jesus said. And you were right, I am that promised Son of David, but I didn’t come to be another king like David. I came to start something new.

At this, Jesus took a loaf of bread and broke it, handing it around the table. 

You see, he said, every covenant is inaugurated with a sacrifice. I have come to be that sacrifice. Look at this broken bread. This is how my body will be broken for you. In the future when you eat this meal, remember me.

Then Jesus took some wine and, having poured it out, handed it to his friends. He said, This wine that you see, this is my blood, the blood that marks the beginning of a new covenant, poured out for you and for many. In the future, when you drink this wine, remember me.

And all that he said came true. The next day, his body was broken and his blood was poured out. But that was not the end. Nothing is ever the end for God’s love, and so today we proclaim the mystery of our faith:

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

Jeremiah had promised that in the new covenant, God would write his law within our hearts. Fifty days after Christ rose from the dead, at the festival of Pentecost, God sent his Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to become a living law written on our hearts.  

Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here,

and on these gifts of bread and wine.

Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ,

that we may be for the world the body of Christ,

redeemed by his blood.

Work in us to become new creatures,

living examples of a new covenant of freedom.

Promised by your prophets, incarnated by your Son,

maintained by your Spirit. Amen.