Like It Never Even Happened
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
During my senior year of high school I attended a memorable party at my friend Jeff’s house. His parents were out of town, which meant that we had free rein of the house, including the liquor cabinet, although in those days I did not drink. The party was well underway by the time I arrived. I remember walking in and seeing someone lying on the living room floor having an animated conversation during which he flailed his arm and struck a floor lamp, which began to topple over. Therefore my first words upon entering the house were not “Hi! What’s up?” or any sort of greeting but rather “Look out!”
The party never got out of hand, mind you, but I’m sure Jeff spent much of the next day cleaning up and eliminating all traces of the party in preparation for his parents’ return. Nonetheless, his mother, with a keen eye for observation that rivaled Sherlock Holmes, noticed that a bottle of Lysol or Pine-Sol or some kind of cleaner seemed emptier and lighter than she remembered. The jig was up. Despite Jeff’s best effort to make it look like the party never even happened, his mother was on to him.
“Like it never even happened.” If that phrase sounds familiar, it may be that you’ve seen a commercial for ServPro, a clean-up and restoration service. “Like it never even happened” is their tag line. It’s what they promise to do. I think it’s a great line. It’s memorable and it captures exactly what someone whose property has been damaged wants. When a tree falls on your house or when your basement floods, all you want is for everything to be restored as it was, like it never even happened.
That is what God promises to all sinners. In today’s reading, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, God acknowledges the inability of Israel to keep the covenant, and God also determines to do something about it. “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” Forgive and forget. Not only does God forgive the people’s sin; God keeps no record of it. God does not even remember their sin. It’s as if it never even happened.
Today is our fifth and final look at the major covenants of the Old Testament. To briefly review, here is a quick recap of where we’ve been. We began with the covenant with Noah and all of creation, in which God promises never again to destroy the world by flood. In the covenant with Abraham, God promises to make of Abraham a great nation through his descendants. In the Sinai covenant, God promises to be Israel’s God, and they promise to live as God’s people by following God’s law. And as we heard last week, in the covenant with David, God promises David that through his heir David’s kingdom will be established forever.
And that brings us to the new covenant here in Jeremiah. “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” The reference to Israel and Judah reflects the division of Israel into two separate, and to some extent, competing kingdoms after the death of Solomon. The northern kingdom kept the name Israel, while the southern kingdom was known as Judah.
Yet by the time of Jeremiah 31, both kingdoms had been destroyed by invading armies of two different imperial powers. The northern kingdom was wiped out and its people assimilated into the Assyrian Empire. That happened about 130 years before Jeremiah. Then during Jeremiah’s own lifetime, the southern kingdom was defeated by the Babylonian Empire, the temple was destroyed, and many of the people were carried off into exile in Babylon.
If we are unwilling and unable to obey tablets of stone,
then God will write the law directly upon our hearts of stone.
My point in relaying this bit of history is to show that the new covenant comes as a word of hope to a people who live in exile, an exile that they perceived as punishment for having broken the covenant that God had made with them on Mt. Sinai. If you remember from a few weeks back, the Sinai Covenant was conditional. Both God and Israel were required to keep certain conditions. God committed to being Israel’s God, protecting them, blessing them, and guiding them. And the people of Israel committed to living as God’s people by obeying God’s law. This meant worshiping the Lord alone, respecting one another’s person and property, and caring for the vulnerable, such as widows, orphans, and aliens.
While Israel entered into the old covenant with every intention of being faithful, that simply proved impossible. This is the fatal flaw of the law. The law can command us what to do or what not to do, but it can’t make us obey. The law can say “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” but it can’t make us love God, or love God with such passion and sincerity. The law can say “love your neighbor as yourself,” but the law is utterly powerless to make us love that person whom we simply cannot stand. Despite our good intentions, we are incapable of doing what the law commands. We can’t do it, and the law can’t make us do it.
Enter the new covenant. “But 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.” In other words, what we cannot do for ourselves, God will do for us. If we are unwilling and unable to obey tablets of stone, then God will write the law directly upon our hearts of stone.
In the new covenant, it is God who takes all the initiative and assumes all the responsibility. The new covenant is unilateral. It’s not about God doing God’s part and us doing our part. Our role is passive. We do nothing; we merely receive. Remember Jesus’s words to the disciples at the Last Supper, words that we hear whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table: “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
Jesus’s blood is shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins. That’s it. We do nothing other than receive the benefit of what Christ does on our behalf. This is the new covenant.
And this is what it means to know God. To know God is to know that we are sinners who are utterly dependent upon God’s grace AND that God is gracious because God forgives. That is the sum and substance of the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is not limited to professional theologians with lots of fancy initials after their name that testify to their expertise in all things concerning God. The knowledge of God comes from knowing that we are sinners who have been forgiven.
“No 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.” That last part to me is the most remarkable aspect of the new covenant. God doesn’t say, “I forgive you, but don’t let it happen again.” Or “I forgive you, but I can’t ever forget what you’ve done.”
That’s often how we forgive. We forgive, but we remain wary, or we forgive, but we keep a record and a long memory. But that is not how God forgives. God forgives and forgets. That thing you did that you cannot forgive yourself for, let alone imagine that God would ever forgive you for? God says, “What thing?” “I don’t remember that. I don’t recall that at all.”
I’m going to end with a story. I’ve mentioned before that when I was in seminary I spent one summer serving as a chaplain intern at a local hospital. One of the floors that I was assigned to was the neurological step-down unit. These were patients who had suffered minor neurological events or who were recovering from more serious brain injuries.
In the new covenant, it is God who takes all the initiative and assumes all the responsibility.
On my rounds one day I met a young woman—she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. After I introduced myself, we got to talking about her grandmother who had, in effect, raised her and was more of a mother to her than her own mother. Her grandmother being a deeply religious woman, she had not approved of some of her granddaughter’s decisions.
It was then that I noticed a tattoo on her upper right arm. “Can you tell me about that?” I asked. Inked into her arm were the words “I’m forgiven.” There was no artwork to go along with the words. Just the words “I’m forgiven” inked in black letters. She didn’t want to share the story behind the tattoo, and I didn’t pursue it further. I simply asked, “Do you believe it?”
I’ll never forget her answer: “I’m trying.” How hard we struggle at times to accept this free gift of forgiveness that God pours out for us on the cross. We think that forgiveness can’t possibly be so simple. How can a man’s death 2,000 years ago wipe clean the stain of a lifetime of bad decisions, regrettable mistakes, and willful disobedience? Don’t I have to do something? Don’t I need to make an offering, take a remedial class, or pay some sort of penalty? I mean, come on! Doesn’t God know what I’ve done?
As a matter of fact, no. God doesn’t know. Hear again the words of our Lord: “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” Whatever it is that you believe stands between you and God’s forgiveness, as far as God is concerned, it’s over and done with. Actually, it’s like it never even happened.