God's New Covenant: New Heart

We live in a world where our words and our commitments mean very little anymore. This can be seen most clearly in how we view the covenants that we make. Many of us think we don't make covenants very much anymore, but historically, the longest-lasting and most important covenant that human beings make with one another is the covenant of marriage. It's meant to be a binding covenant, and it's meant to last until death. But consider the world today. One of the shortest marriages on record occurred in 2012 in the state of Dubai, where the groom literally signed the marriage certificate, left that courtroom and entered another courtroom in the same floor in the same building to file for divorce. And why? Because the father of the bride refused to allow the groom to force the bride to give up her job. Who can we trust if not our spouse? And even here in Western America, the marriage covenant is not really considered anything sacred anymore. In 2013, Kim Kardashian married Chris Humphries for a grand total of 72 days before a divorce was filed. And why was it filed? Well, they couldn't decide which state to live in. A $10 million wedding, a fairy tale story, and a divorce. Who can we trust? These realities, and there are many more stories like that, they're not meant to make us feel arrogant or overconfident or judgmental, but they're evidence that we no longer take the ideal of commitment, of faithfulness seriously. Rather, we're living in a world that's me-centric. I get what I want, and if you're not going to give me what I want, you know where the door is. You know how to get away. So with examples like this, in abundance, we can be forgiven for asking, can we not, is there anyone whose word we can trust? And in our text this morning, we wanna see that although it's only a few verses, we are gonna see that God is the only one that we can trust to be faithful to what he says. In Jeremiah 31, which is where we're going to turn to in a moment, one of the most beautiful promises in the Old Testament is found there. But to get into the real depth of the meaning of these short four verses we're gonna look at, we are gonna have to dig deep. It's kind of like the old gold prospectors back in the day when America was still a new country. You kind of would go panning for gold in the river. And sometimes if you were willing to sit there for a long time, some gold flakes may make it into your pan and you may feel rich. But to get the real treasure, you had to lift up your pick and your spade and dive right into the mountain. We're gonna do that this morning. We're gonna dive deep into the mountain of scripture. So turn with me to our passage this morning in Jeremiah 31, it's page 659. If it's your first time in a church building and it's your first time opening a Bible, we encourage you to take this Bible. The treasure inside is the only way you'll find true life. So we'd love for you to take this, to read it, and to listen to the words of hope and words of life, the treasure that's found therein. Jeremiah 31, we're gonna read from verse 29. In those days, they shall no longer say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, but everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. 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, 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. 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. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 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. I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. So Jeremiah is a prophet preaching at the time in Israel when. If they did not repent in the very near future and turn away from worshiping false gods, punishment would come from the invaders of the north. Jerusalem would fall. It was his duty to warn the people of this in the hope and desire that they would repent and turn back to worshiping the Lord. In chapters 30 and 31 of this book, it's called the Book of Consolation, those two chapters, they're promising that a remnant of Israel, that is the people who survived the coming exile because they're not going to repent, the Lord will restore them and bring about a new covenant because the old one had been broken. And this new covenant will be better than the previous. So on to our first point this morning. We must know the narrative of the covenants. We have to know the narrative, the storyline, the plotline of the covenants. And as we delve into our mountain with our picks and our spades, let me give you a definition of a covenant. A covenant is a relationship with a non-relative involving obligations and established by a sacred oath. A covenant is a relationship with a non-relative involving obligations and established by a sacred oath. As mentioned a moment ago, our best example of this type of agreement is the marriage vows we make. We covenant to spend our lives with a non-relative whom we are obligated to love, to sacrifice for, in sickness and in health, till death parts us. And we make that oath in front of a body of witnesses who promise to hold us accountable to that covenant. So why are the covenants important? Well, let me give you two illustrations to explain why we need to understand and to know and to cherish the plot structure, the covenants. If you've ever been in a doctor's office, you're scared enough as it is, I guess, and then there's this little weird, creepy skeleton thing on a metal noose. and you see all the bones of the body, and it's really, really creepy and weird. The covenants act as the spine of scripture. They're the structure of how God has chosen to reveal himself. Just like we need the vertebrae on our spine to help us stand up straight, God has given us the covenants as a structure to how to understand how he has revealed himself in scripture. So they're vital for the structure of scripture. but they also reveal God's progressive plan of salvation. Americans typically like hiking, for the most part. Brits, not so much. But no doubt you've been on a mountain where you feel like you're getting to the point of the summit, and you think, yes, we're almost there, and you put your step onto the peak, and then you realize there's another one right in front of you. And so, begrudgingly, you trudge on, and you think, OK, now I'm getting to the top, and you put your foot on the peak again, and there's another one in front of you. And if you're like a Brit, you'll Brit camp there and say, stuff it. The covenants are like that. They're released progressively. God shows our need for a new covenant progressively. He reveals himself progressively. There's a deliberate plan of salvation. And this should encourage us as Christians because God acts inside our timeline. He acts inside history. He's chosen to reveal himself inside our historical timeline as human beings. And more than that, by making covenants with his people, he's shown that he wants to be a relational God. He wants to enter into relationship with his people. Now we see throughout history, just look at your Bible and you'll see that there are two key parts to human history. Man constantly is faithful to be unfaithful. God is constantly faithful to be faithful. And in fact, because God acts inside our history, he's putting his reputation on the line, so to speak. Either he is faithful to do as he's promised, or he's a liar. He's saying, you can look at history and you can see that I have acted. You can trust me because of that. So therefore, when we study the covenants, there are three things that we can learn about God just from studying the covenants, and that is that he acts in history. Our God is active. He's alive and he continually works inside history. He's a personal God. He wants a relationship with his people. And he has always planned to bring about the salvation of his people. So the narrative we're going to look at this morning, there are six covenants in scripture. We're not going to look at all six. I'm sure you're glad to hear, although that number itself is disputed. We're going to look at three this morning. And the first one is that God promises a people. In Genesis chapter 12, God appeared to a guy called Abram or Avram, if you're Keith, in a dream and made a promise that he would be faithful to bring about a great nation, one that would bless the world through this guy, Abram. So God promises the people in Genesis 12, but then God prepares a redemption. Let's turn to Genesis 15, that's on page 10 of the Pew Bibles, if you're using a Pew Bible, where God confirms the promise of Genesis 12 that there would be a great people with a covenant. He makes a covenant with Abraham to say, I am going to do this, and here is my oath, my sacred oath, that I will do it. And we'll read from verse five. God took Abram outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars, if you're able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a goat three years old, and a ram three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all of these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve. and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried at a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had set and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. And let's stop there. Now, what's going on here? It's very weird. Let's imagine for a moment that Charlottesville decided to unite behind the banner of a king. I'm British, let's be a king. And we decide we're going to attack the city-state of Richmond. Because why not? We go to war, we attack the Richmondians, I guess, and we're victorious. Because that's inevitable. The king of Richmond will come out, he will bend his knee to our king of Charlottesville, and he will make a treaty saying, I will submit to you, my people will serve your people. You are the victor, you're the conqueror. The ceremony we've just read about, that's the treaty of the ancient world. It's a sacred oath, it's a covenant. These animals are sliced in half and they create a walkway. And so the two parties, the two kings will walk through this walkway together, And the symbolism is really clear. I mean, you can picture it. You can smell the blood. You can smell the death and see the blood seeping into the ground. The symbolism is very clear. If you break the oath, this is going to happen to you. If you break the oath, I, the conquering king, am going to come back here and I'm going to crush you. The punishment for breaking the covenant is to be torn in half. Now, did you see what happened in Genesis 15? Abram prepared the covenant. He drew up the treaty, so to speak. But God was the only one who walked through the walkway. God was declaring, therefore, that although Abram and his descendants would break the covenant of obedience and fealty and loyalty to the Lord, the Lord would take upon himself the obligations to be punished, to be torn, to be destroyed, to be killed. So God prepared a redemption. And in the immediate context of Abram's story, that applied to Israel. These human descendants in Genesis 15 we saw would be in a land that wasn't theirs for 400 years before God would lead them out by his hand. He also speaks about that in Jeremiah as leading them out by his hand. We just read that a moment ago as well. But there's obviously a much bigger picture going on than simply Israel being freed from Egypt, isn't there? Just turn your eyes to the meal we're going to share in a moment. The emblems of the Lord's Supper bear witness to the faithfulness of God all those years ago to Abram. That although God has never broken a promise, he did not break any covenant with any of his people, he, in Jesus, went to the cross to be crushed for our sinfulness. Now just glance at the title of Genesis chapter 17. Some translations say the covenant of circumcision, some say the sign of circumcision. As Keith's been teaching us over the last few weeks in Romans, time matters. The structure of scripture matters. That's why the covenants are so important, because they create the vital structure by which we see how God chooses to reveal himself. And so God acts in history in our timeline. And the covenant sign of circumcision, because circumcision is the sign, it comes after the covenant is made in Genesis 15. As Paul has argued and as Keith has explained, through Romans, circumcision does not make you a believer. Faith in God, to be faithful, makes you a believer. Abraham wasn't obedient to God and declared righteous because he was circumcised. No, God declared him righteous, then made the covenant and then gave him the sign of the covenant. Christian, that's a good reminder to us that salvation rests entirely on God. Nothing you or I bring to the table makes us any more desirable for salvation. We come in rags, guilty and ready for judgment, but He declares you righteous. And He proved that by taking the punishment that you deserved. This is your salvation, and it is certain because we have nothing to do with it. So God promises a people, God prepares a redemption, and then God proclaims a nation. We find the simplest breakdown of the law in the Ten Commandments, don't we? The Ten Commandments, the covenant with Moses turns a mob of slaves running away from Egypt into a nation of servants of the Lord, the Lord Most High. Now this covenant, I mean, we know that it sets clear obligations on both the people of Israel and on the Lord. They take upon themselves obligations. If they obey the law, God will, he will protect them, he'll prosper them, and he'll provide for them. They will succeed as a nation. If they break the law and are disobedient to the covenant, God promises to punish them. Yet even within the law itself, there are clear signs that the law is not something by which people are going to be saved. Just listen to Deuteronomy 10. You can read this later in the week for your own quiet time. The law itself says, circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. That's familiar language to us in Jeremiah 31, we read a moment ago. The covenant law of Moses required a lot of obedience on the outside. But God always expects faith to be something that happens to the heart. Faith is a changed heart, not simply obedience to rules. But in this covenant, the covenant with Moses, they had to circumcise their own heart. They had to do it themselves. And they couldn't, could they? Just listen again in Deuteronomy to what God required as part of this covenant. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command to you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. The covenant with Moses was to invade every single part of your life. And parents were responsible for training up their children and passing on the covenant obligation to their children. They were to train their children so they'd be obedient and uphold the covenant, the law. So therefore this covenant with Moses is an ethnic national community of God followers. The nation of Israel had a purpose. They were to glorify God and invite other people into covenant relationship with him. For Israel, therefore, the family was meant to be a covenant community within a wider covenant community. There were rules and there were spiritual obligations that allowed you to pass the covenant from father to son. And the sign of that was circumcision. That's the pattern of the law. But the law was to act as a teacher to Israel and to the world because they could not obey it. They could not circumcise their own heart. Any true and honest Jew would hold the law in his hand and he would say, I have not done all of this. I'm guilty. I cannot do all of it. So they're crying out. At this point, we're standing on the Sinai of the Mosaic covenant, of the covenant mountain range. And we're eagerly looking, we're trying to get to that peak, to the next covenant, because we cannot stand under the weight of the law. So we have to know the narrative of the new covenant. Second point, we have to know the need for the new covenant. We have to know the narrative of the covenants, we need to know the need of the new covenant. Let's go back to Jeremiah 31. I think that's page 659. And let's remind ourselves of our verses. Jeremiah 31. And we'll read from verse 31. 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, 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. Remember, in our definition of a covenant, it's a personal relationship between two parties, two non-relatives. We just read in verse 32 that the Lord calls himself the husband of Israel. That's a personal relationship. And Israel, unlike all the very fine husbands in the room today, Israel had a perfect husband. One who provided for her, one who protected her, one who prospered her, one who pursued her. Despite that, she left him for other gods, false gods. who did not know or love her. And because of the covenant, the law, the covenant obligations, God was left with no alternative. Israel had decided he had to punish this nation because they had broken the law. And that's the message that Jeremiah is preaching right up until the Babylonians cross and break through the wall and lead the people into exile. But also just note this emphasis on the Lord being the husband of Israel. That reinforces the nature of this covenant being one that is passed from father to son, mother to daughter. It's a family relationship, it's a family covenant. This covenant, the law of Moses, requires a family-led model of discipleship and teaching of the covenant. It's a personal relationship between Israel and God, but it's enforced by the family. However, we know that the covenant could be broken. Because of the nature of the law, it could be broken. That meant that there was very little security for you under the law. The terms were so long as you and the nation obeyed the law, God would bless Israel. But if and when the law was broken, you would expect punishment. And if you remained unrepentant, you would lose everything. All the blessings, all the land, All security, the God had promised you would lose it all because you were disobedient. Let's go back to verses 29 and 30 to see the full weight of what the law really meant for an Israelite. Verse 29, in those days, they shall no longer say the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set in age, but everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth should be set in age. Have you ever eaten anything really, really sour? You might be thinking of Sour Patch Kids. You might be thinking of a lemon. When you bite into that lemon and the sour taste hits your taste buds, your face scrunches up and you look a little bit confused, a little bit weird. You don't bite into that lemon and look at your child and expect your child to make a funny face, although they may be doing so anyway. The point is, only the person who eats the sour stuff reacts to the sour stuff. The imagery here, therefore, in this idiom, this metaphor, is that although the parents eat the sour stuff, in other words, although the parents commit the sin, the children are the ones who have to pay the penalty for it. They're gonna pay the punishment of the parents' sin. Although the forefathers of the Israelites committed the sin, and at times they received some punishment, the effect of all of that sin combined meant that the children, their children, The next generation would spend their childhood in exile, away from the promised land, away from the temple of the Lord. They bore the punishment, the wrath, that their parents' sin had brought about. Under the law, therefore, the nation as a whole was responsible, even though there may be some true believers in the nation. Therefore, even if you in your home, 22A, were faithful and you taught your children as much as you could about the covenant, they were faithful to obey the covenant, 22B disobeyed, the whole nation would be responsible if it was unrepentant, sinners and covenant members. And in fact, we know by the narrative of Scripture, the storyline, the plot of Scripture, that it wasn't simply that the law could be broken, but that it was broken. If you're in any doubt that Israel made a very, very bad spouse, just read through Exodus 32 later on this week as well. Right as Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, the tagline of the New Covenant, the Israelites were building and crafting a golden calf and worshiping it and saying, this is the God who took us out of Egypt by the hand. This golden calf that we have made in the image of a calf. Just glance at one and two kings, first and second kings. You'll struggle to find a number of kings who actually tried to obey the covenant, but you'll find many kings who tried to outdo themselves in being evil and disobeying the covenant. Israel failed to keep the covenant. And in fact, they actively, deliberately, almost at times it seems systematically tried to break the covenant. Perhaps you're here this morning and you're a child of a believer and you're not a believer yourself. Perhaps you're here this morning and this is your first time in a church building. We are so thankful you're here. We love you, we're so glad you're here. And it's because of the fact that we love you that we have to speak truth to you. So long as you remain outside of saving faith in Christ, you are guilty just as Israel was guilty. Under the law, we can take the Ten Commandments again, they act as the standard of morality under the Mosaic Covenant, under the covenant law with Moses and Israel. And if you're not a Christian, you don't believe Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus can save you, the law isn't a bad place to go to figure out how you get to God. It's a good way to see how your morality stands up to God's standard. So let's have a little look. God commands that we have no other gods But him, we worship no other gods but him. Well, not everyone worships. I mean, we know that. Just look at your bank account or your calendar. We worship something or someone. It might be sport. Could be the food we eat, good or bad. It might be our spouse. It might be a concept or an ideology or a political party. It might be sex or power or money, even your job. It might even be good things like your kids. Or your education, in fact, it might even be your own sense of morality, you worship. The point is, everyone worships something, and if you are not worshiping the Lord. You've already broken this first commandment. Another commandment that the Lord gives us to honor your father and your mother. We don't need to delve much into this one, I'm sure. We all know that we've been rude, abrasive, insulting, and unthankful to our parents very often. Because after all, the closer we as sinful people are to others, the more our sinful nature will come out and hurt them. Another commandment is that we must not steal. Can you honestly sit there and say you've never stolen anything? Never lifted something from your siblings or your parents? If you're my generation, can you honestly say that you've never watched a movie online or downloaded a song without paying for it? That's theft. By God's own standard, we have failed almost all of the 10 commandments very, very often. We're guilty. And God must punish sin. If you don't repent from your sin, you will stand before the Holy God and you will be found guilty and you'll be banished from his presence forever. Yet he invites you in. Look at his promises in Genesis 15. Look at the promises of Jeremiah 31. He wants a personal covenant relationship with you, and he went to the cross sending Christ his son to die, to earn that, to win that for you if you repent. So will you repent? Or will you remain outside the community of faith, looking in, even though you attend church every Sunday for the rest of your life, if you have not entered a covenant with the Lord, you're on the outside of the community of faith and you're looking in. You know that there's something different, but you remain at war with him. The old covenant is not enough to save you, is it? You can't obey those commandments, can you? You can't circumcise your own heart. We need a new covenant. We need God to be faithful to his covenant with Abram and his promises in Jeremiah. We need him to be faithful and to make a new covenant with us. If you would take your bulletin and flick back a few pages to our corporate reading. We read from Luke 22 this morning in our corporate reading. Go halfway down, and we'll start at verse 19 and read together. He took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. And he gave it to them, saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup is poured out for you. is the new covenant in my blood. Did you hear that in verse 20? This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Shortly after this meal, Jesus hid with his disciples. He was put on trial. Found guilty by sinful men. Nailed to a cross where he died. Torn apart. He died your death. He paid your debt. He bore the weight of your punishment. He fulfilled the promise, the covenant oath that God made to Abram all those centuries ago in Genesis 15. And he obeyed the law perfectly, the Mosaic law. He was the perfect fulfiller of that law so that he could stand in your place as a fully innocent human being. And yet also fully God obeying the covenant promise. The new covenant came in Christ as God promised Jeremiah. The highest peak in the covenant mountain range was not the law with Moses, it was the cross of Calvary, where the Son of God made flesh, died for you and for me. Friend, if you're not a Christian, you are not safe. Repent and turn from your sin. Place your trust in Christ as the Lord of your life and the Savior of your soul. That is your only hope. We want you to join us in the community of faith. And Christians, we're in the community of faith. Praise God. Hallelujah. That's an amazing thing for us. And that's not something that we've done anything to deserve. But we have to ask ourselves difficult questions as well. The Lord said he took Israel by the hand out of the land of Egypt. Whose hand do we take? When we're tempted to sin, when we're facing temptation or trial, whose hand do we take? The Lord personally led them from the depth of slavery into the promised land. So whose hand do we take instead of our Savior? Do you find greater security in the hand of Christ? or in your savings, your bank account? When financial hardship comes, and it often does, do we place all your hope in your bank account? That is where your security lies? Or do you trust the Lord as a provider? Do you find greater love in the hand of Christ, your Savior, who bought you with his blood, or in the hand of your spouse? Now, don't get me wrong, your spouse is a gift from God, but they are not someone that can replace the love of God in your life. Your spouse cannot save you from yourself, from your sinful heart. More often than not, they can reveal it, but they can't save you from it. Do you find greater hope for the future in the hand of Christ who promises to return or in the lives of your children? Now again, children are a gift from God, but they are not a way for you to live your life again. And as we all know, children typically will make decisions that we wish they wouldn't make. So is Christ in control of your family or are you? Do you find a greater sense of self-worth in the hand of Christ who bought you personally with his own blood or in your education? Here may no degree no accolade, no trophy can prove your worth more than the blood that was spilled for you on the covenant mountain of Calvary. Question, whose hand do you take? You see, we too need Christ because we can't obey the law. Everyone has failed to live by God's standard. Everyone has failed to live as he called us to live. And we all need the new covenant because without Christ, We all stand before a holy God, utterly condemned, totally guilty, ready for judgment. But because of Genesis 15, we can know that the law was designed to be temporary. Remember that the Lord walked through the animals. That means he knew there would need to be a sacrifice. and a sacrifice that a sinful human being couldn't give, only God could, and only a man could obey the law of Moses perfectly. Therefore, Jesus being both fully God and fully man was the required person for the new covenant. Therefore, it's clear for us that the law was given to show us not God's plan had failed, but to show us that we need a new covenant. It was for our benefit, not God's. It was to show us that the law couldn't save us. From the very start of the new covenant mountain range, of the covenant mountain range, it was clear that Christ was going to be the pinnacle. It was going to be the highest peak. God had always planned that. He was always the plan. We have to know the narrative of the covenants. We need to know our need for the new covenant. And finally, we need to know the nature of the new covenant. Let's read our verses in Jeremiah 31 again. Let's start at verse 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. That little phrase, I will be their God and they shall be my people, that is the covenant tideline. That is the mantra of Israel, of the covenants. We see that here in the Old Testament. We also see it in Revelation, when Christ returns. Verse 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. There are five key aspects of the New Covenant we're going to see here. The nature of the New Covenant. The first is, A, is that the New Covenant is new. It's pretty simple, right? Paul spoke of the law, the covenant with Moses, as a fading glory. Let me read to you from 2 Corinthians. Now, if the ministry of death death, that's the law, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end. The covenant law with Moses was being brought to an end. Will not the ministry of this spirit have even more glory? And later on in verse 10, he says, indeed, in this case, what once had glory, that's the law, it once had glory, has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it, that's Christ. The new covenant far surpasses the law in glory. The new covenant brought in by the death and resurrection of Jesus abolished the law because Jesus fulfilled it in its entirety. And so those of us who are believers in Christ, we're no longer under the law of Moses because Jesus fulfilled it. We're under the new covenant whose glory outshines the law. And that means that we are the true inheritors of the covenant with Abraham. It means that we are the true Israel, inheritors of the promise of Abraham. It's we, not the Jews by birth, who get to call ourselves children of Abraham. Not the nation of Israel, but we believers, we have inherited the promise of Abraham through Jesus. So the new covenant is new, B. The new covenant is internal. The law required outwards obedience. You had to circumcise your own heart. Under the new covenant, we are not under obedience to the law of Moses. When Christ gave us salvation, we're freed from the obligations of that old law and instead brought into relationship with him. And just as the new covenant will be written in our heart, we have new obligations. The new covenant brings new obligations. And that doesn't mean, therefore, that we're free to do whatever we want. We're free to sin. That's a heresy, just in case you're wondering. We're not free to sin as we want. We're under the law of Christ. Now hear me, I'm not saying that our obedience to the law of Christ is an add to or can take away from our salvation. That is not what I'm saying. That's also a heresy. But under Christ's law, we must not simply avoid the action of sin, we must root out the heart of sin. Rather than merely avoiding committing adultery, we have to sever the roots of lust in our heart. Rather than merely not committing murder, we have to put to death the sinful hatred that can lead to murder, that resides in all of our hearts. Rather than just not being jealous of someone's possessions, We're to give thanks to God that he has chosen to bless that person that way and to bless us the way in which he's chosen to bless us. The heart of the new covenant involves a new heart. That's a nice sentence, you're welcome. The heart of the new covenant involves a new heart. Sin cannot live in our deeds, that's the Mosaic law, but it cannot live in our hearts either. That's the law of Christ. And therefore we're obedient to Christ, not because the law forces us under penalty of death, but because the example of Christ shows us that death was already paid and we get to obey the way we were designed to live. It's a privilege because even though we will fail, we're not afraid of the punishment. We're thankful that he bore it for us. The new covenant is new. The new covenant is internal. The new covenant is written by God's own hand on your heart. God has sealed his people. Not by physical marks and the boys in the room, but by taking a scalpel and inscribing his law on your heart. He circumcises your heart. Israelites couldn't circumcise their own heart. They couldn't obey. But God said, since you can't do it, I will do it. Rather than tablets of stone leading to a stone-hearted rebellion, we have hearts of flesh bringing about a living obedience. Christian, if you're under any doubt this morning, whether or not you're God's, let the words of Jeremiah soak through your soul like a refreshing river. God has claimed you. He has written his law upon your heart. When he looks at you, though you remain a sinner, though at times you're the ones pushing him away, he sees the mark that he himself gave you, and he calls you his child. You're his, you're bought, purchased by the blood of Christ, and he will not let you go. You bear the permanent mark that tells you that you're his possession. It's kind of like a wedding ring. No matter who else claims to be your spouse, it's only the person who personally gave it to you, put it on your finger with a sacred oath that has the title, the right to claim to be your spouse. God has entered into a covenant with you. He has personally inscribed his unerasable, indelible mark upon your heart. You are his. Be comforted. It's internal, it's new, it's written by His hand on our hearts, and it's for all people. Unlike the Mosaic law, the new covenant is for all believers. So just a brief word about what that means for us in America. We're not Israel in the sense of an ethnic people. America is not a nation of believers. You might be surprised to hear that. The phrase the house of Israel in our text can be a little confusing, but remember that the law was given to a nation and therefore that it was given to people who were in covenant obedience, who lived right beside people who were in covenant disobedience. They obeyed the law and they disobeyed the law. The church under Jesus is only for those who are in the new covenant. No matter what you think about Israel, the New Covenant community is the church, not the Israeli state, not the American state, not even the British state. And we have a king or queen. The church alone is the New Covenant community. Because it's filled with believers that God has marked off as his own by himself. This also means that because the New Covenant sign is internal. We cannot give it to someone else. parents, we cannot give our children salvation. Under the law, you circumcised your son, he was under the covenant. You cannot circumcise your child's heart. The best we can do is to raise little moral pagans. Only the personal hand of the sovereign Lord can enter into a covenant with your child. So parents, hear me and hear the words of Jeremiah. The new covenant means that no matter how sheltered you try to protect your children. Or try to make your home, you will never, you cannot and you will not shelter them into heaven. No matter how much you try to protect them from the evil in the world, your children will still sin and are still guilty because their hearts are idol factories. And they are responsible for their own sin. It's a good thing they're not responsible for your sin, but they're responsible for their own sin. You cannot stand before God and cling on to your children. You can only stand before God and cling on to Christ. The best way, therefore, to love your children is to pray for them and to model godliness. Show them that a life with Christ is the most desirable thing in the world and pray that the sovereign Lord would enter into a personal, eternal covenant relationship with them. Know this, parents. Hear this. It is not your responsibility to have godly children. It is your responsibility to ensure that your children have godly parents. It is not your responsibility to have godly children. It is your responsibility to ensure that your children have godly parents. And children, we're all children. You cannot inherit your parents' salvation. Sure, you can learn about their morality. You can begrudgingly, unwillingly obey some of their rules some of the time. But you're not a Christian because they're a Christian. That means you're not responsible for your parents' sin. That's a good thing. But it means that you are responsible for your own sin. You need to personally repent and believe in Christ, whether your parents have done so or not. On that day, you cannot stand before God and point to them and say, they were believers. Your only hope is to stand before God and point to Christ and say, he called me. member of Jefferson Park Baptist Church. Simply because you bear the title of member of this church does not make you a Christian. We may treat you as a believer because you're a member, we believe that your profession is true, but we do not grant salvation by membership. And so you cannot stand before God on that final day and repeat Keith's sermons word for word. Your only hope is to stand before God and cry out Christ is my Lord and my Savior. And there's a weird phrase that we're, in verse 34, that we don't tell each other to know the Lord. And unlike the law, the covenant with Moses, we're not to tell fellow believers to know the Lord, because we all know the Lord. If you're a believer, you do know the Lord. You are in a personal covenant relationship with the Lord. In Israel, there were unbelievers who were being told by believers to remember the Lord, to know the Lord, to come into covenant obedience with the Lord. Effectively, they were evangelizing other members within the covenant. Rather, we, because we are in the covenant, we are unshakably, eternally in the covenant, if our hearts are circumcised by the Lord's own hand, we're to tell each other to remember the covenant. Don't not know the Lord for the first time, but remember that time when he called you, when he inscribed his law upon your heart, remember. So that in those moments of doubt, which will and which do come, we can be encouraged that our salvation is not taken from us because we sin, which we do. And this makes us all a church of priests. That's why we're not Catholic. Everyone who is in the new covenant has a priestly obligation to minister to each other the grace of Christ, to remember the covenant, to cling to the covenant, to know and to trust and to love the covenant. And finally, the new covenant completely deals with sin. Let's just read the last half of verse 34 together. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Unbeliever, those words could be the treasure of life for you this morning. Your sins can be forgiven and God will forget them because of Jesus. But you do need to realize you need a savior, that you are a sinner. If you don't repent and accept this offer of grace, then you will be outside the covenant community. He's a God of relationship, and even right now, this morning, he is seeking to enter into a covenant with you. an eternal, lasting covenant, humble your heart. Turn from your sinful, rebellious life and submit to him. He can, and he will, and he wants to save you. Speak to someone else after this service. Come and speak to me. If you came with someone else, they would be so thrilled to have that conversation with you. If your child speak to your parents, they will be delighted to talk to you about what it means to become a member of the New Covenant community in Christ. Christian, if you have come to a saving faith in Christ, then you are in the New Covenant. You have the law of Christ established in your heart. Your sins are completely, utterly, totally, eternally forgiven. Just let that sink in. all those things that you regret 20 years ago, to all those things you regret 20 minutes ago, he's paid the penalty for them. You are free from their hold over your life. And so on that day when we stand before God at the final marriage ceremony in history, Christ to the church will appear before him innocent. Not because we deserve it or because we were in any way innocent, but because of the new covenant whose mediator is Jesus. And he stands at the throne of heaven and he points to your heart and he says, this one is mine. He bears my mark. That means we'll enter into the wedding feast of the lamb as part of the eternal bride of Christ for the eternal marriage with the true king. Yes, there may be discipline, That's only so that on that great day, when we enter into that wedding feast with Christ, we'll be pure and spotless. For him. And by him. And in that. In that hope, think about all the days of your life. The new covenant is the final peak of the covenant mountain range. It's a marriage that will last. Our groom is one that we can trust to be true to his word. He is faithful even to the cross. He's faithful even to that final day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we acknowledge in our hearts that we are Too often willing to follow other gods. Too often, we're willing to turn our backs and our hearts away from the covenant that you have made with us through Christ. Father, for that, we repent and we ask your forgiveness. We acknowledge our guilt. We praise you that because of Christ, our guilt does not mean that you no longer love us, that you no longer are intending to save us and to continue to save us and to bring us into that marriage feast with Christ at the final day, but that because of Christ, even though we fail, He has taken our punishment. And we can know that you are faithful to your word to bring about a new covenant, to bring about a a hope in our hearts and in our lives that we are safe and secure in the hand of Christ because he will hold us fast. Help us to become more and more obedient to the covenant that we might bring greater glory to you. We might spread the advancement of Christ's kingdom and invite others into this glorious covenant commitment and covenant community that others might come to know and love Christ as their own personal Lord and savior. Amen.