Many churches use lectionaries, a set series of readings for every Sunday in the Church Year. These get revised from time to time, and some denominations make adjustments to these. But in many cases, congregations that follow a lectionary are hearing the same Bible passages read in their worship services across denominational lines. That means Christians are hearing the same message from God’s Word and contemplating it together.

For the most part in my ministry I used a three-year lectionary, which meant there were different Bible lessons read every week for three years before they started being repeated. The Old Testament Lesson for the Fifth Sunday in Lent in the second year of that lectionary, which is also the Old Testament Lesson assigned to Reformation Day, is Jeremiah 31:31-34.  It speaks of God’s New Covenant, fulfilled in the coming of Jesus to live without sin and offer His perfection as payment for our sins. That is why God will, for those who put their faith in Jesus, “forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” That teaching was restored to the Church through the Reformation, so this was and is an appropriate reading for that celebration.

But this reading is also a good fit for the season of Lent. Our focus during this penitential season is to remember that it was our sin and disobedience that demanded the awful payment that Jesus willingly made for us and the whole world.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 “The time is 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 forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.  No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man 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 wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

When God speaks of His people here, He says His law will be in our hearts and minds. That only happens when we spend time in His Word. We can’t meditate on it if we don’t read it and know it. And we dare not assume that we have reached the point where “they will all know me, from the least to the greatest,” as though there were no need for us to tell others about our Savior. The world does not know the Lord and His goodness and mercy. That is why panic and evil are so widespread all around us.

You and I know better. We have seen the love of God in the face of Jesus. We are confident of forgiveness, life and everlasting salvation, not because we have tried hard or done well, but all for Jesus’ sake. It is God’s covenant with us, based on what He has done for us. Live with that confidence.