The Old Covenant... and the New One

Verse for the week: “Clap your hands, all peoples!
    Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
² For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared,
    a great king over all the earth.”  Psalm 47.1-2

Prayer for the week: Dear heavenly Father, preserve your beloved, rebellious children from loving the sound of our own words. Each day, keep the promise of our baptism: pluck us from the soil of ourselves and plant us by the stream of living water who is Christ crucified and raised for our forgiveness, life, and salvation; through the same, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Bible reading for the day: Jeremiah 31.31-34 (Jeremiah prophesied in Jerusalem from 627-580 BC, during the time of Josiah and the last kings of Judah. The Lord used Jeremiah’s mouth to denounce Israel’s and Judah’s apostasy, idolatry, rejection of the law, breaking of the covenant, and dependence on the temple. A now, thirty-one chapters in, the Lord announces that he will do a new thing.)

“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, ³² not 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. ³³ For 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. ³⁴ 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.”

Prayer for the day: Gracious and almighty Father, thank you for the new covenant you write on our hearts in Christ Jesus: forgiveness for covenant breakers like us. Thank you! Complete what you have begun… so that the prescription “know the Lord,” gives way to the description: “we all know you.” In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Hymn: follow this link to a beloved hymn that gives further voice to today’s conversation with the Lord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUfLZNtAtjA&ab_channel=DisciplesNetChurch

“Thy kingdom come…”

What does this mean?  God’s kingdom comes indeed without our praying for it, but we ask in this petition that it may come also to us.

When does this happen?  God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his holy Word and live a godly life on earth now and in heaven forever. (from The Small Catechism, Martin Luther)

Benediction: For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;
    he adorns the humble with salvation.   Psalm 149.4

 

*This is now our congregation’s 99^th year in the Word. In 2025, we are reading from Genesis to Revelation, with a few interludes along the way.