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30:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. 3 For behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the LORD, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall take possession of it.”
(ESV)
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, 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.”
(ESV)
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
8 For he finds fault with them when he says:1
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
9 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.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
[1] 8:8
(ESV)
Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Jeremiah chapters thirty and thirty one. It's also there in your worship guide. Last week, we looked at Jeremiah's book of Lamentations. This week we're going to look at another book that Jeremiah wrote. Chapters thirty and thirty one actually form a book within the book of Jeremiah.
Joel Brooks:And it's known as the book of consolations. This this was a huge comfort, this book to those who were living in exile. If you read through Daniel, I actually read in Daniel chapter nine, he was one of those exiles. You will find him reading from this book of Jeremiah. When Jeremiah is asked to write a book, which we'll see in a moment that the Lord actually asked him to write this book, that puts him in a in very rarefied air if you will.
Joel Brooks:Because prophets did not normally write books. Prophets like you know, Ezekiel or Isaiah who we've been studying, they they wrote sermons, they preached sermons and then people collected those sermons over time and they they formed these books. But here we will see that God actually asked Jeremiah to write these words down and to put them in a book. This puts him in the same category as Moses. And we'll see in just a moment that there's actually a lot of parallels between what Moses wrote and what Jeremiah wrote.
Joel Brooks:Moses, he recorded the old covenant. Jeremiah in this book writes to us about the new covenant. The covenant that Jesus referred to in or in Luke 22 when he holds up the cup and he says, this is the new covenant in my blood. He's quoting from Jeremiah here. And so what we're gonna do, we're gonna read the first three verses in chapter 30 and then we'll read some more in chapter 31.
Joel Brooks:The word that came to Jeremiah from the lord. Thus says the lord god of Israel. Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. For behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord. And I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall take possession of it.
Joel Brooks:Go to chapter 31 and 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.
Joel Brooks: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. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, you know the Lord for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
Joel Brooks:For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. This is the word of the Lord. If you would pray with me. Father, thank you for these words that you have preserved for us from Jeremiah. Lord, and I pray that they would become much more than just black ink on white pages.
Joel Brooks:These will become Your words written on our hearts by Your Spirit. Lord, my words are lifeless, but Your words are full of life and we need life. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, may Your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:I thought long and hard about the best way to, introduce, such a a glorious passage about the new covenant and I I finally settled on this. I thought I would quote from the famous theologian, Adam Sandler. Adam, you know, known to us as the actor in Happy Gilmore or or Waterboy. He he once he once did a a sketch, a a skit for Saturday Night Live. It was a commercial parody in which he played a man named Romano.
Joel Brooks:He was Italian and he gave tour guides. He was a tour guide for Italy. And so he comes up with this mock commercial. I'm not gonna imitate Adam Sandler imitating somebody with an Italian accent. I'm just gonna just read it.
Joel Brooks:But Romano, he looks at the camera and he says this. Our tours will take you to the most beautiful places on earth. Hike the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. Fish with the nets in Sorrento. But remember, you're still gonna be you on vacation.
Joel Brooks:If you are sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you as before, just in a new place. Does that make sense? There's a lot a vacation can do. It can help you unwind, see some different looking squirrels, but it cannot fix the deeper issues. I want to be very clear about what a vacation can do for you.
Joel Brooks:We could take you on a hike. We cannot turn you into someone who likes hiking. We could take you to the Italian Riviera. We cannot make you feel comfortable in a bathing suit. We can provide you with a wine tasting tour of Tuscany, but we cannot change why you drink or who you become when you drink.
Joel Brooks:I I I love that that skit because all good skits, they they have some nuggets of truth in them. And that skit has a number of nuggets of truth that comes straight from Jeremiah. God has been telling the exiles that He was going to rescue them. He was going to remove them out of Babylon. He was going to bring them back home into Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:However, God is crystal clear that a change of location is not going to actually change who they are. You see the exiles, they desperately wanted to escape from Babylon. They wanted to get back home to Jerusalem. Their lives were miserable in Babylon. They had lost their freedom and even they had lost their identity.
Joel Brooks:I mean, when when you lose the temple and you don't even have a king anymore, who you are are you as a people? And so for them, the solution was to change locations and to go back home. If they could just get out of Babylon, go back home, then everything would be better. But God says this, if you're sad here in Babylon, then you get on a plane and you go to Jerusalem, you'll still be the same sad you from before, just in a new location. Living in exile was not their problem.
Joel Brooks:They were the problem. Their sinful hearts were the problem. They they were a sinful rebellious people, and that does not change with a change of location. All of their misery, all their anxiety, and their loss of identity was not a result of their captivity. It was a result of their sin.
Joel Brooks:The problem was not that they were slaves in Babylon, it's that they were slaves to sin. That's where their captivity was. And sin was a far more brutal master than any Babylonian. Make no mistake, when when sin becomes a part of your life, its goal is total domination. So a restoration, if God were just to restore them to the land without renewing their heart, the cycle would continue.
Joel Brooks:The cycle of sin and judgment. If they were allowed to just leave Babylon, they would essentially they would go home, They rebuild their city. They rebuild their temple. They would try to turn over a new leaf. You know, this time, we promise Lord, we'll be better.
Joel Brooks:Pinky pinky promise. But of course, they would fall into the same sinful habits. They would commit idolatry once again, which would once again bring in God's judgment. And then on and on and on, the cycle would continue. And if you find yourself in that exact same pattern, maybe like Israel, you feel lost.
Joel Brooks:Just like you're kind of wandering around in life, or maybe you feel like you're in bondage. You you do feel the the heavy chains of sin in your life and so you think the key is, well I just gotta try something new. Maybe pursue a new relationship. Maybe I'll start a new house project, renovate the kitchen. Maybe I'll get a new haircut.
Joel Brooks:That's what I need. I mean, some of us we think if we could just change our appearance, maybe put on new clothes, maybe grow a mustache, something like that. We also become a different person. But we don't become different people. We're the same person.
Joel Brooks:And we fall into the same habits of sin again and again. And then the same misery, the same restlessness from before descends upon us. Because the problem is not our circumstances, the problem is our sin. The problem's us. So we're in bondage to sin and sin wants to destroy us.
Joel Brooks:So so we're right in thinking that something needs to change, but it's not our circumstances. We need to change. We're the people who need to change. So in order to break this cycle, need to be given a new heart that actually delights in God more than it delights in sin. And your sin needs to be dealt with once and for all.
Joel Brooks:It can't just be swept under the rug, it needs to be truly atoned for. You need those two things and that's exactly what is promised in Jeremiah 31 in this new covenant. When you read through your Bibles, one of the things that you're going to notice is that God always relates to humanity through a covenant. He did this with Adam. He did this with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses and his people.
Joel Brooks:That's how He relates to them is through a covenant. A covenant, it's like a contract, but it's more. It's like a contract and that it's a binding agreement between two different parties in which each party agrees or promises to do certain things. However, a covenant is more than just a business transaction. That's not the goal of a covenant is business.
Joel Brooks:The purpose of a covenant is to form a strong personal relationship with the other party. So you only enter into a covenant if you really want that party that you're making a covenant with to be a part of your life forever. Today, we enter into contractual agreements all the time, but there's very few covenants. A number of years ago, I had a plumbing issue at our house. One of their pipes burst and so I immediately had to call up a plumber and I went straight to his voicemail and so I'm leaving him this long detailed voicemail like, my gosh, know, there's water's coming in.
Joel Brooks:How soon can you come? And then because I'm always used to talking to my wife on the phone, I ended it with, I love you so much. Bye. I was like, did I really just I did. I just said, I love you so much, bye.
Joel Brooks:I was like, okay, gotta call this guy back. And so I called back, he goes to his voicemail, and I said, hey, it's me. I just called earlier. Sorry about the whole I I love you thing. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I'm sure you're a great guy and everything. Maybe there could be a relationship in the future. I don't know. And I just kept talking. I couldn't shut up.
Joel Brooks:And finally, I just hung up again. I was like, alright. He calls me back. Never mentions the I love you. He just talks about the plumbing issues, says, yes, he could could be there that afternoon.
Joel Brooks:And then he ends by going, and I love you too. And then he just hung up. I did not want to get in a covenant relationship with my plumber. I wanted a contract. I wanted to pay him money and him come and fix a problem.
Joel Brooks:That that was it. That's all I wanted. I didn't want this forever relationship with him. However, when I met Lauren, that's exactly what I wanted. And so we made a covenant with one another that we know as marriage.
Joel Brooks:Marriage is created when a man and a woman, they make a covenant one another, and they do make promises to one another that they will love and be faithful to one another till death do they part and when they make that covenant, they are married. That's the type of covenant that god made with Israel. You you could sum up the covenants that god made with Israel with the simple words that we find in verse 33. I will be their god and they shall be my people. Kinda sounds like a marriage vow.
Joel Brooks:It's it's very simple, powerful, but what more needs to be said? I'll be your god, you will be my people. And that very simple statement, God is letting us know what He wants from us. He wants to enter into a relationship with us. That He will give Himself to us.
Joel Brooks:And in return, He wants us to give ourselves to Him. But He but He wants that intimate relationship which is just astounding that the God of the universe, that's what He wants with us. Is is He wants to give Himself to us and for and for us to freely give ourselves to Him. That language, I will be your God and you will be my people, you actually find that all throughout the Bible. It's used in Leviticus, Ezekiel, Hosea, Zechariah, elsewhere, and Jeremiah, but it's probably best expressed in the song of songs which is our love poem.
Joel Brooks:And we read this, I am my beloved's, and my beloved's is mine. That's what the Lord wants. I am my beloved's, and my beloved's is mine. And when God made the covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, that's what He wanted. In that covenant, He said this, He goes, here, you keep my law, and in return, what I will do is I will dwell among you.
Joel Brooks:I'll in the tabernacle among you. But the point of that covenant was so that they might be together, so that they could live with each other. But before Moses even got down from the mountain with those tablets of stone, Israel had already broken that covenant. They were already before He even got down with it, they're bowing down to a golden calf. That would be like having an affair on your wedding day.
Joel Brooks:People didn't just break the covenant with God when they did this. They broke His heart, but God didn't give up. Remember what we talked about last week? God has this hessid love for his bride. It's the love that is never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always, and forever love.
Joel Brooks:And because of that, even though we had an affair before the ink was even dry, he didn't give up on us. He says, you know what I want us to do? I want us to renew our vows. But this time, the covenant's gonna be different. This time, he says he's gonna deal.
Joel Brooks:He's gonna deal with our hearts. He's gonna deal with our sin once and for all. He can't just sweep our past sins under the rug. He needs to deal with them. He goes, and I'm gonna deal with your sins once and for all, past, future, present.
Joel Brooks:And then I'm going to give you a heart that delights in me more than it delights in sin. And so, let's look at this new covenant that he gives us and what I want us to do is kind of reverse the order and I want us to look at the last line of this covenant first and then we will work our way back. The last line of that covenant, we read, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. In the old covenant, every year, the people would just have to keep making sacrifice after sacrifice for their sins and really, those sacrifices were just a reminder that they kept sinning and sinning and sinning and it was never really covered. I mean, after all, could could the blood of an animal, a goat, or a lamb, could it ever really atone for a human sin?
Joel Brooks:I mean, you could sacrifice all the animals on earth and it would not be enough to atone for the sin of someone who's created in God's image. No. A greater sacrifice would be required. And that leads us to Jesus. On the night that Jesus was betrayed and the the the last night that he had with his disciples, we read in Luke chapter 22, he gathered them together for this final meal.
Joel Brooks:It was a Passover meal. And as he's handing out the bread and wine, we read these words. And he took 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, the cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Joel Brooks:In this moment, Jesus is initiating the new covenant that Jeremiah has promised. But it's not a covenant that's made with the blood of animals. No. Jesus is saying it's gonna be made in my blood. I'm gonna be the sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:This is why we call Jesus the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He's the sacrifice we have always needed. And when Jesus came to this world, what He did was He He lived the perfect life that every one of us were supposed to live. He showed us what being a human was supposed to look like. You wanna know what being an image bearer and reflecting who God is looks like?
Joel Brooks:We look at Jesus. Perfectly faithful to god. In other words, he kept the covenant and he's the only human to have ever kept the covenant. But instead of being rewarded for keeping the covenant, instead of God saying, and now I am giving myself to you and and you will enjoy my presence, he received the opposite. He was forsaken by God.
Joel Brooks:In other words, what he did was even though the blessings of the covenant was due him, he instead decided to receive our judgment as covenant breakers. So he was treated like a covenant breaker and we were treated like a person who kept the covenant in full. He took our sin. We got his righteousness. He took the judgment.
Joel Brooks:We got God's blessing. That's what we know as the gospel. It's the gospel message. It's it's the new covenant right there. And when Jesus does this and becomes a sacrifice for our sins, it doesn't just cover our past.
Joel Brooks:It covers our sins in the present and cover covers our sins in the future. It washes away all of our sins. This is why I mean, this is astounding. I really wish we had time to just come walk through chapter thirty and thirty one. But I want you to notice, go back and read it.
Joel Brooks:Notice how God addresses Israel. He calls Israel virgin Israel. Virgin Israel. Now, we've been in the prophets for a while. I think there's one thing we can agree on about Israel.
Joel Brooks:They've been completely unfaithful. They're not a virgin. I mean, that's kind of the major theme of the prophets. Remember Ezekiel 16? I mean, how many times did Ezekiel use the word prostitute when describing Israel?
Joel Brooks:He said, you're not even like a normal prostitute. You actually pay others to come and sleep with you. Jeremiah in chapter two says, You are like a donkey in heat going after everyone. The language is graphic in how God describes Israel, but Israel just goes after lover after lover after lover. They have been the most unfaithful bride.
Joel Brooks:And yet here, God looks at them and he says, oh, virgin Israel. What that means is in this new covenant, the blood of Jesus, it doesn't just partially cleanse you. I mean, it fully covers all your sins, makes you whiter than snow. There is not a a stain left on your resume. You're a new creature.
Joel Brooks:You're born again. And so through the blood of Jesus, we can become this beautiful virgin bride. All our sins, past, present, and future. And we know that His blood, His death was sufficient for all of that because God raised Jesus from the dead after three days. We know that the wages of sin is death.
Joel Brooks:Paul tells us that. That's the wages, death. After three days, God says, sufficiently paid. And therefore, is no longer required and Jesus is raised from the dead. So so his resurrection proves that our debt is paid in full.
Joel Brooks:It's the new covenant. Now in addition to being forgiven completely, This new covenant also gives us a new heart. Look 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.
Joel Brooks:Let me be clear about the old and the new covenant. Both of them demand obedience to God's law. Old covenant and new covenant. They both demand obedience to God's law. However, they work fundamentally in different ways.
Joel Brooks:The old covenant, it worked from the outside in. The new covenant works from the inside out. So the old covenant, when God gave the law to Moses, he wrote it down on tablets of stone. And then Moses was to to take these stone tablets and he was to read them to the people. And then the people were to hear those words and then they were to start to internalize them.
Joel Brooks:So the word went from the outside in. The only problem was this, their hearts were harder than the tablets of stone. Their hearts were made of a stone that was even harder than what the law was engraved in. And so, yes, some of the law got in there. Some of it is kinda scratched the surface a little bit on their stony hearts.
Joel Brooks:But it didn't produce any real change. So, we have the new covenant. It works from the inside out. God says, well, no longer am I gonna write the law on tablets of stone. I'm gonna write it on your hearts and because your heart is harder than stone, I'm just gonna have to give you a new heart.
Joel Brooks:That's what Ezekiel prophesied about earlier. In chapter 36, Ezekiel says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh. And I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. And I will cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules.
Joel Brooks:Once again, the covenant, the new covenant, the result is still obedience to God's law. So the blood of Jesus provides us with the forgiveness we need. Now the Holy Spirit provides us with the heart we need, a heart that has His law written on it. And what that means for us is this obeying the law of God no longer is this duty, but it's become this delight. The best way I can illustrate this is using an example of music.
Joel Brooks:So I come from a very musical family. I mean, they're often we just At nighttime, our whole family would all grab instruments and we would play together. Everyone in my family, they played multiple instruments. My mom was a church organist. She was also a piano teacher.
Joel Brooks:And that meant all of us, matter what instruments we ended up playing, we had to learn piano. Piano lessons was a non negotiable. Anybody else have that parents make you do that? There you go. They keep saying it's for our good.
Joel Brooks:Anyway, every day, I would I would sit at the piano and I would just kind of chicken peck, you know, the keys like this. I still remember the first song I have, you know, ever learned. It was mister pig. Mr. Pig, can you swim?
Joel Brooks:Yes, sir. When the tide comes in. Easy song. You could play it right now without even a piano lesson. I practiced but I don't have a gift of music.
Joel Brooks:Do you know what I'm talking about? I mean, I have rhythm, I could play drums, I could play rhythm guitar, but I don't have any real musical ability. Certainly not when it came to the piano. Now over hard, like hard work and and over time, I could get a little bit better at the piano but it still wasn't great. And because it was it was just so hard, I eventually just gave it up and now I can't really play anything other than Mr.
Joel Brooks:Pig. My sister, she had the same ability as me. She wasn't naturally talented in this, but she persevered and she became somewhat decent. She actually started to enjoy playing a little bit, and she was able to make some pretty good music. That's the old covenant.
Joel Brooks:It's the old covenant. We're we're we're given this music, the law, which we know is beautiful. I mean, we we know how it's supposed to sound and then we're told to play it, but we have to work really hard to play it. Really, really hard, especially before it ever becomes enjoyable or becomes beautiful because at the start, it's just kind of dutiful. It's just kind of something we're doing.
Joel Brooks:That's the old covenant. The new covenant is my brother in music. My brother has the gift of music. I mean, could just hear a song, sit down, play it. You know anyone like that?
Joel Brooks:Because they are annoying. When it just comes so easily to them. Like it's just, it's easy. I mean, he would put the music out there but he would barely look at it because the song was in him. It was like it was written on his heart.
Joel Brooks:And I would just stand in awe of my brother as he would just play all of these songs. And yet here we are, same instrument, same music, same notes to work with. And yet it was like my brother was born to play it. Just the music came out of him and it filled him with such joy for him to play and he made beautiful music. That's the new covenant.
Joel Brooks:Same music, same notes as before, but this time God gives you the gift of playing. He puts the song in your hearts and it becomes this real joy and it's so much easier than you ever thought possible to do this. And so over time you just keep growing and keep making more and more better music. Now, as Christians, we haven't received the spirit in full yet. So there's still part of this promise still to come.
Joel Brooks:The apostle Paul, he tells us that we have received a deposit of the spirit or a portion of the spirit. But this portion of the spirit is enough to flood our hearts with song. Sure, we're going to because we don't have all of the spirit in us. We're gonna hit a wrong note or two. So we're gonna we're gonna struggle through some practices.
Joel Brooks:But now with the music in our hearts, we just really enjoy playing. And over time, I mean, you're gonna be better than freaking Mozart. I mean, that's that's where the Lord is is taking us and which the law will just sing out of us. As Christians, this is the life we have to look forward to under the new covenant and the life we get to enjoy now to a degree. We have been given a portion of his spirit.
Joel Brooks:The question is this, is this the life you're living? Or are you living a life in which you have fully trusted in the blood of Jesus to cover over all of your sins, where you know you've been washed clean, you're whiter than snow, or do you feel still like there's all these stains on your resume? Are you living a life in which the old sad you is gone and you become a new creation? You become born again, a new person with a new heart. And now it just sings.
Joel Brooks:I'm not saying that following Jesus isn't hard. Of course, following Jesus is hard. He tells us to take up a cross and to follow Him. It's hard but it's no longer dutiful obedience. It's a heart that sings and is filled with joy and delight as we do the hard things in obedience to God.
Joel Brooks:That's that's the new heart he's given us. Do you experience that or you just kinda chicken pecking away the notes? Not singing, but it's just it's just hard. God has promised us that this life in a new covenant when his spirit comes in, fruit happens. We we receive love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control.
Joel Brooks:It's the fruit of the spirit. Is that evident in your life? Once again, are you just kinda chicken pecking away through life? You know the notes should be beautiful, but it's just it's not for you. Right now, through the blood of Jesus, He's offering you forgiveness.
Joel Brooks:Right now, through His Spirit, He's offering you new life and a new heart that sings a song to Him. He is promising right now that he wants to be your God. He will be your God, and you will be his people. Let's pray to him. Lord, I pray that you would put a song in our hearts.
Joel Brooks:Lord, right now, you are offering to remove sin and to give us forgiveness. You're offering to take away our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. You're offering to take away our delight in doing sin and that it give us a a heart that delights way more in obeying you. You're offering to take our deadness and to bring it to life. Lord, I pray for every person here that we would take You up on that offer.
Joel Brooks:Lord, thank You that You love Your bride so much that You have never given up on us. You have pursued us relentlessly with a passion because You will be our God and we will be Your people. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.