Our scripture this morning is from Jeremiah 31, excuse me, reading verses 31 through 34. Give your careful attention to the reading and hearing of God's word this morning. 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'll 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, 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. And all God's people said. Amen. We did skip a song. That's my bad, my apologies. But we do worship and glorify the King of Kings this morning. Okay, as we come to God's word, let's begin with the word of prayer. Father, thank you for your kindness. Thank you that you are faithful and patient with us, that you love us, that you have revealed yourself to us. We thank you for your word and for what it means and for the clarity with which your spirit brings to it, that we may understand your word to us. Father, I pray that you would fill us with your spirit, sanctify us this morning, that you would draw our eyes to Christ this morning, that you would encourage us this morning, and that you would convict us of sin and cause us to lean wholly on the name of Jesus for our salvation. Father, thank you, we praise you, bless us as we come to your word this morning, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. As already mentioned, today marks the beginning of the Advent season, the four weeks before Christmas, which we set apart as a special season to orient our minds and hearts around the glories of the incarnation, to bring our affections in line with the glories of the incarnation of the Son of God and all that means for us and for the world. Historically, the church has used this season as a time to reflect on the promises of the Old Testament. Those promises that foretold and foreshadowed the approach of the Messiah, the coming king, who would save his people from their sins. And we have good reason to do this, don't we? What happened 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem really did change the world forever. It is worth dedicating part of the year, part of every year, to meditating on this reality. That's why we take this season, these four weeks before Christmas every year to turn our hearts and our minds to this truth. And so what Steve and I want to do over the next four weeks is to tag team in this part of our service and consider this remarkable portion of Jeremiah and tease out the ways in which it is inextricably bound to the incarnation of the Son of God. To put it one way, it is a Christmas covenant. A covenant that foreshadows and is fulfilled in the incarnation of the Son of God. Next week, Lord willing, Steve will unpack for us the meaning of a covenant, what a covenant is, and what distinguishes this covenant here in Jeremiah 31 that God makes with all of the other covenants found in the Old Testament. But this morning, I want to take a step back and pull back the curtain a little and get a glimpse of the grand narrative, the story that God has been telling from the beginning. The story that defines who we are and what we are for and how our very salvation hinges on the fulfillment of these words from Jeremiah. John begins his gospel this way. He says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. Genesis records, in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. And to crown it all, he created man in his own image. Male and female, he created them and placed them in the middle of that rich and abundant garden, giving them the task of being fruitful and multiplying and subduing the earth. And then bringing everything back to the Lord in praise and in worship. And in that garden full to overflowing with yeses, every tree of the garden you may eat. In a garden full of yeses, there was one no, one tree. One thou shalt not, one do not eat, one command to teach the man obedience and faith, to teach him wisdom and patience, to grow him up in maturity so that he might handle the knowledge of good and evil with understanding and grace, so that he might wield his God-given authority over creation with kingly wisdom and power and righteousness. But that perfect world of obedience and maturity was not to be, at least not in the beginning. according to the sovereign purposes of almighty God so that the fullness of his character, the fullness of his perfect nature might be clearly seen and perceived by all that he had made so that his sons and daughters might see and know the manifold perfections of all his attributes as the triune majesty. He allowed man to fall. He created man with the freedom to walk away from himself, to walk away from the light, to walk into the darkness, into sin and misery. And that is exactly what man did. In pride, from a self-absorbed desire to stand on equal footing with God, in effect to call himself God, Adam took the forbidden fruit from the tree and ate. And in that moment, he willingly and knowingly set himself against the majesty and the authority of God and took up arms against his sovereignty. In effect, he declared himself to be an opposing army, consigning all of his offspring to be born into that enemy camp. And despite Adam's own subsequent remorse, the consequences of his actions remained. Every son and daughter of man from that time forward till the end of the world would be born already postured against the holiness of God, in defiance of the rule and the reign of God, in support of our own little petty kingdoms that we would set up. For their sin, the man and the woman were cast out of the garden, out of the presence of God, and into the wilderness where they would encounter the fruit of their disobedience, thorns, thistles, pain, and death. But as they ventured into the newly cursed world, they went armed with a promise. A promise to teach them faith, to teach them trust, to teach them patience and humility. It was the promise of a child. That child, that offspring, that seed would be born of a woman and would war against the deceiving serpent and would crush his head. For the father and the son and the spirit were not content to abandon mankind to the curse. Despite the justice inherent in the punishment of separation and exile, the triune God still purposed to fashion for himself vessels of mercy to receive all of the overflowing and abundant grace and love that he desired to give. After leaving the garden, Eve bore two sons to Adam. And if there was any hope that one of these could be that offspring that God had promised that would break the curse, that hope was was quickly dismissed. It soon died away, for Cain killed Abel and then fled and outcast forever. Neither would crush the head of the serpent. They would be crushed by sin and death. Adam and Eve bore other sons and daughters, who bore other sons and daughters, who bore other sons and daughters, and each in their turn also died, succumbing to the curse. Each generation discovered afresh the meaning of that curse, their lives ending in physical in separation from God, a picture of the spiritual death that had already separated them from the presence of God, having been kicked out of the garden. A handful, however, believed the promise, like Enoch, who walked with God. A handful looked to God in faith, but they were few and far between. The heart of man, having been conceived in sin and born in sin, was utterly deceitful and desperately wicked. That wickedness grew like a fungus spreading over the whole face of the earth, corrupting all of the works of man, twisting man's purpose away from subduing the world for the glory of God and towards serving their own selfish purposes and desires and lusts. Genesis 6-5 says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. Noah alone of all the men of his generation found favor in the eyes of the Lord for he was a righteous man. Genesis tells us, who like his great grandfather Enoch walked with God, believed God, put his faith in God. When Noah, whose name means rest, When Noah was born, Lamech, his father, prophesied, Genesis 529, out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. And indeed, it was through Noah that God brought rest and relief from the utter wickedness that had come to dominate every aspect of human life. Noah built an ark which would carry the seeds of a new world, a world cleansed by the deluge of water, water that would submerge all that God had made, all that man had corrupted and purged the wickedness of man away. Through Noah, through the man named rest, the world would begin again. Noah had sons and daughters and each in their turn also died. The heart of man was still wicked and the promised offspring, that promised rest from the curse had still not come. Then one day the triune God came to Abram of the land of Ur and said this, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him in faith, believing the promises of God, he journeyed West to an unknown land and having no idea where he was going. And when he and all his household arrived, the Lord told this old and childless man, he said, look toward the heaven and number the stars. If you are able to number them, so shall your offspring be. Then he made a covenant with Abram, taking upon himself the curse of breaking faith with Abraham. signifying that this was a promise that would never be broken, could never be broken. In fact, it was a covenant God was making with himself. He said, I will surely bless you. I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. And then out of the barren womb of Sarah, God brought a child, Isaac, the son of their old age. But even though this child was a miracle, even though he was the fulfillment of one of the promises God had made, Abraham, as he was later called, knew that Isaac was not the promised offspring. Isaac would not possess the gate of his enemies. Isaac would not be the one in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Isaac would not outnumber the stars of heaven or the sands of the sea. Abraham knew that God spoke of another offspring, the child he had been promising from the garden, the seed of the woman, the anointed seed who would come and crush the head of the dragon and bring ultimate and final rest from sin. What Abraham realized and believed was that out of all of the families of earth, the Lord had picked him and his one-time barren wife to carry the hope of the promise for generations to come. This is what made the birth of Isaac so special. It was special and it was a wonderful fulfillment of God's Word. It was through the bloodline of Isaac through the bloodline of a child of promise that the promised offspring, the greater offspring, would arise and possess the gate of his enemies. The family of Abraham would be a people set apart. They would dwell in the promises of God, marked out from all of the tribes and nations of the earth as God's special possession, but for a very specific reason. That reason was this, through this small, insignificant, and often stiff-necked people, the Messiah would be born. The Messiah would come. Abraham, by faith, saw the shadows of this coming king, this promised seed, this promised offspring, and longed to see his day arrive, longed to see that offspring come. He would be a human child, born of a woman, born of the family of Isaac, Even here in the opening pages of God's word, the incarnation is actively and eagerly anticipated. God set apart the family of Abraham by means of a special physical external sign, and that was the circumcision of the flesh. The foreskin of every male child on the eighth day would be cut off as a sign that this child belonged to the family of Abraham. that would distinguish them as God's chosen people, chosen to be the tribe through whom God would reveal himself to the nations, through whom the promised seed would one day come. Down through the centuries, broken men and women just like Abraham trusted God in the midst of their frailty and looked ahead to that better country, to the city that has true bedrock and eternal foundations whose designer and builder is God. A handful of faithful Hebrews believed the promises, looked forward to the coming Messiah, and kept their eyes on the horizon in anticipation. However, despite these relatively few children of faith, the descendants of Abraham largely forgot their God and despised his commandments. Even when their lips mouthed the right words of ceremony, their hearts were far from him. They performed sacrifices and offerings like clockwork, but forgot about steadfast love, about mercy and justice, and the fear of God that leads to wisdom. They put their faith and their trust in outward signs and symbols and ceremonies, failing to understand that those things ultimately found true significance only in the fact that they pointed to something greater, that they were the shadow of some other substance, something only the heart of obedience and faith could understand. Their sin and rampant idolatry earned the righteous and holy wrath of justice. Prophet after prophet warning them of the coming judgment was dismissed, ignored, eventually killed, martyred. And so God raised up the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And when the time was ripe, that judgment fell and it fell hard. The ruins of Jerusalem smoldered. The temple was destroyed. The walls were broken. The inhabitants were either killed or taken away in exile. and the glory cloud of the presence of the Lord departed, never to return again to that place. But even then, in the midst of the rubble, the Lord raised up Jeremiah the prophet to proclaim good news to the people who had survived the sword and found shelter in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31 verse three, the Lord says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, the Lord said. Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. And again, I will build you and you shall be built. Oh, virgin Israel. These are astonishing words. When you think about it, the people of Israel had been just exiled in judgment, their city destroyed for playing the harlot with every nation. Jeremiah just spent 30 chapters talking about how Israel was playing the harlot was, was, adulterating themselves with every low and abominable idol. And here God calls them virgin Israel. And this is the crucial point, what the circumcision of the flesh could not accomplish. All it did was separate them out from other nations, externally. What the circumcision of the flesh could not accomplish, what no merely outward sign or ritual can ever accomplish, God alone would do by the power of his Holy Spirit. His people had played the whore. They were vile and unclean, but by God's power, he is promising here to make them whole, to make them virgins once again. But how in the world is this transformation going to come about? The Lord goes on in verse 13, I will turn your mourning into joy. I will comfort you and give you gladness for sorrow. And again, further down in verse 17, there is hope for your future, declares the Lord. Your children shall come back to their own country. And 70 years later, the children of those Jews in Jerusalem at that time, their children did come back. They returned from Babylon. Cyrus made a decree and sent the people of Israel back to Jerusalem. But it wasn't to the complete and transformative joy that God had promised. Coming back from Babylon did nothing to change the heart of man. It did nothing to cleanse them from their sin and guilt. It did nothing to bring them rest from the curse. And so if that physical return from exile was what God was speaking of here ultimately, If that was the full extent of the great hope that he had promised, simply that they would come back from Babylon to build up the city of Jerusalem again, if that is what he meant by calling them virgin Israel, pure and blameless Israel, then his word had finally failed. But something deeper and far, far better was going on behind the scenes. Just like the birth of Isaac pointed to the birth of a better offspring, someone else who would come, a child who would be born. So too, the return from Babylon to Jerusalem pointed to a greater return, a return from our exile in the wilderness of sin and death to the restoration of fellowship with God in the Garden of Eden. Jeremiah is looking forward to the same thing that Adam looked forward to, that Noah looked forward to, that Abraham looked forward to and beheld by faith, that final and lasting reconciliation between God and man. But this would require a far greater outpouring of wrath than was found in the destruction of Jerusalem. Greater even than Noah's flood. Remember, those things came as a consequence of sin. Those things came to bring judgment upon man's sin. But something greater was needed, for the full weight of the curse would need to be dealt with. That means inside, not just outside. That means the heart of death, the heart of sin, the heart of rebellion needs to be dealt with. The wages of sin is death and so death itself must be conquered. But this is what Jeremiah foresaw, for it is only through the death of death that harlots can be made virgins again. That harlots can die and be resurrected into pure and blameless sons and daughters. It is only through the triumph over sin that Mourning can be turned into joy. This is how Jeremiah, have you ever thought about this? Jeremiah is sitting in the middle of the ash sheep in Jerusalem watching his city burn around him and he says, great is thy faithfulness. Oh Lord to me. This is how he's able to sit there and say that God's faithfulness is great and everlasting and that the steadfast love of God had not come to an end. That's faith. That's eyes on something beyond the external circumstances. His eyes were fixed on that future hope that he apprehended with eyes of faith, confident in the things unseen. The few that heard the words of Jeremiah and looked to God in faith understood that it was the promised offspring of Abraham who would achieve this much greater return from exile. They also understood that he had still not yet arrived, but His time was coming soon. It was there on the horizon. It was coming. God had not abandoned them. And this is the meaning of Jeremiah 31. Hear these words again. 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. 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, 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. The former covenant, the one made on Mount Sinai was made to those who were circumcised in the flesh, who were externally marked as a particular ethnic tribe called to obey in particular external and ceremonial ways whose obedience would be blessed with particular earthly blessings. But that inherently transient covenant, temporal covenant, was conditioned on the continued faithfulness of the people. And it was a covenant that those people failed to keep almost immediately with the golden calf and the refusal to go into the promised land. They failed to keep it and they brought upon their own heads all of the curses that God had promised would come and that they agreed to They said amen to those curses should they disobey. The external sign of circumcision symbolized an external setting apart from the world, a physically distinct people group set apart to be God's representatives, to be a light to the Gentile nations, to be the carriers of the deeper promises of God, to be the conduit through which that greater promise would one day come. But outward circumcision, though it set them apart, it did nothing to change their hearts. It could not, for the cutting away of mere flesh can do nothing to replace the heart of stone with the heart of faith. And so when the former covenant had run its course, when it had accomplished its purpose by exposing in exquisite detail all the dark crevices of the sinful human heart, when it had put on clear display the need of something much stronger than mere outward signs and symbols, but rather something internal and lasting, God promised the coming of a new covenant. One in which every last member, be he rich or poor, slave or free, young or old, male or female, every member would know the Lord. They would all have God's law written on their hearts. They would all stand forgiven before the throne. Their sins remembered no more because God himself would make it so. He would take the harlot and make her as clean and pure as a virgin. through the removal of guilt and the atonement of sin. He would take the valley of dry bones and cause them to stand, a vast army alive, their veins pulsing with resurrected righteousness. No longer would it be one ethnic nation set apart from another, but rather a nation of faith set apart from unbelief. A nation set apart by the circumcision, not of the flesh, but of the heart. A nation formed from every family, tribe, people, and language. A nation set apart to serve the Lord and His anointed forever and made able to do so by the power of God. The triune God with a fixed purpose from before time began had always been looking beyond the restoration of a tiny, stiff-necked, earthly nation to their former temporary and transient glory. That by itself was too small a thing to bring cosmic glory to the Most High. Rather, he was intent on coming back to the promises made to Adam, to Noah, and to Abraham. Just as Isaiah had prophesied, a child would be born, a son given, and the government of all things, the government of all nations and all peoples would be placed on his shoulder. This son would inaugurate a new covenant, a covenant not like the one made with the people of Israel all the way back at Mount Sinai. This would be a covenant that could not be broken, in which only those who knew the Lord could be members. And they would be a people purchased from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, by the redemptive power of God himself. Here at last, here at last would be a covenant not conditioned on what frail, weak, sinful man could or could not do. And so we come back to Abraham and to the offspring God promised him, to the offspring Abraham be held by faith and not by sight. The son he looked forward to even after Isaac was born. The offspring who would one day come and truly possess the gate of his enemies. The one child in whom everyone else would be blessed. Abraham rejoiced that he would get to see the day of his offspring and he did see it and he was glad. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. A virgin would bear a son, and his name would be called Jesus, for he would save his people from their sins. The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the incarnation of this new covenant. the incarnation of the new promise made by God to us, his people. Jesus Christ is the promised hope of salvation, the promised hope of a return to the garden, the promised hope of final and complete reconciliation with the Father, the promised hope of the indwelling Holy Spirit who would write the law of God on our hearts and cause us to walk in his statutes. The coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh is the turning point of all human history. It is God's first step toward the cross where all our sins would be forgiven and the empty tomb where the sting of death would be removed forever. This was the plan of God from before time began when the father and the son and the spirit dwelled in perfect unity and love. This was his plan to create for himself vessels of mercy from every tribe, people, tongue and nation to make known to them the riches of his grace and the fullness of his divine nature. This was the plan of the father to glorify the son, to magnify his name above every other name, making his name alone that name which could and would save a sinful human race from their sins. This was the plan of the son to willingly lay down his life in obedience to the father and to glorify the name of the father by winning for himself a people from every family on earth and presenting them to the father as a bridegroom presents his bride spotless and blameless and righteous forever and ever. This was the plan of the, of the spirit to take the living power of Christ's righteousness and his resurrection and bring it into that Valley of dry bones. the graves and the tombs of this world and make alive those bodies of death, those enemies of God, those who at one time stood defiantly shaking their fists at the heavens and instead causing them now to stand with hearts and arms and voice lifted in praise. Just as Israel stood at the foot of Mount Sinai after passing through the Red Sea and and they heard the promise of God to make them a people for his own possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, conditioned on their obedience to the word. So now we stand at the base of Mount Zion, the heavenly mountain, and hear the very same promise that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the people for his own possession. Only this time, the promises of God are conditioned not on our obedience, but on the perfect and complete obedience of Christ. This promise therefore is not ours by works, by our ability to earn them, but by faith, believing in the faithfulness of Jesus, believing in the sufficiency of his atoning work on the cross, believing in his redemptive power to transform my life here now and to bring me through his Holy Spirit from one degree of glory to another. And just as Israel in the old covenant was physically and ethnically set apart through the outward sign of circumcision, the circumcision of the flesh, so too we are set apart as the particular people of Jesus in the new covenant by the circumcision of the heart. That old nation was a living picture and testimony of the nation we are now a part of, the true people of God, set apart by faith where outward ethnicities no longer matter. Paul goes so far as to say that we, the children of faith, the true children of Abraham, from every tribe, nation, tongue, and family, we are the true Jew. Romans 2, 28 through 29, for no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. It doesn't matter if you come through the bloodline of Abraham. It doesn't matter what family you are a part of ethnically, racially, as part of this world. No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the law, by the letter. It is not external things that set us apart. It is the internal working of the Holy Spirit that sets us apart. We are the true people of God. Those who have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you will, turn over to Colossians 2, tying this all together. I'm going to start in verse 8, Colossians 2. Paul says these words. He says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition. according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. For in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority." The Judaizers were fighting against Paul, insisting on the notion that salvation depended on going back to the Mosaic law, back to observance of ceremonial laws, obeying all of the ceremonial rights such as physical circumcision. That meant if you were a Gentile, if you were a Greek, or if you were a Scythian, or if you were a Latvian, or whatever you were, in order to truly come to Christ, in order to truly be a child of Jesus, you needed to come back to the Mosaic laws and be circumcised again. You needed that outward sign. But Paul is adamant. He says, do not listen to those who would draw you back to mere physical observances and rights, to human traditions and the laws. Don't go back to the old covenant. Why? Why would you go back to that? Where salvation is dependent on your obedience. Where salvation is dependent on your works. Back to a do this and live or don't do this and receive the consequences. Why would you go back to that? He says further down that all of that, they were but shadows of things to come, shadows cast by the substance that is Christ. And if we have Christ, what need have we of the shadow? Why would we come back to the shadow when we have Christ right there? They were just pointers and signposts pointing to Jesus in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, to whom we have been united by faith. And just so there is no confusion concerning the old ceremonies of the Mosaic Log, Paul goes on in verse 11, revealing precisely what Jeremiah was talking about in the New Covenant, one in which the members were not defined by external rites and ceremonies, but by the internal workings of the Holy Spirit. Paul says, in him also you were circumcised. Yes, you were circumcised, it's true. But it's a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ. What physical circumcision accomplished in the Old Covenant was a mere shadow or picture of what the spiritual circumcision of Christ now accomplishes in the lives of those who belong to Jesus by faith. It is no longer just the foreskin that is removed, in other words. It is now the entire body of the flesh, the old man, the old you that was born in sin, born in rebellion against God, the old you that was part of that camp outside of the Garden of Eden. standing defiantly against God. That man has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives. He is dead. He is gone. He no longer defines you at all. It is Christ that now lives in you. Christ who defines you. Christ who is your identity. And the life you now live, you live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave his life for you. And what is more, internal spiritual circumcision, the cutting away not of mere skin but of the heart of stone with which each of us are born, Paul says that is what baptism is all about. This is what baptism now signifies, verse 11 again. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism. in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. But we need to be very, very clear about what Paul is saying and not saying. The baptism Paul refers to here cannot be the baptism we are about to witness in a few minutes. That would be coming back to yet another merely physical ceremony, to something our own hands could accomplish, a physical ceremony that cannot in itself change the heart of man. Rather, what Paul talks about here is what this physical ceremony that we're about to witness, what that points to, what that is a picture of, what, why it is about to do in getting baptized this morning is give testimony to the fact that he has already been buried with Jesus in baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit, and already raised to new life through faith in the powerful working of God. What Wyatt in just a few minutes is about to demonstrate through the ceremony of baptism is that he has already been made a member of the new covenant, not by the washing of water, but by the washing of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was accomplished by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What we are about to do in obedience to Jesus command is to draw a picture before your eyes of that reality. The heart that wants to be baptized, that wants to declare publicly faith in Jesus Christ, that heart has already been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit. It has already been buried with Jesus in baptism and raised to new life with him by faith. That old man has already been destroyed on the cross. What we are about to do is to point to what God has already done. The very thing Paul goes on to describe in verse 13, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him, in Christ on the cross. This is the greater hope that Jeremiah was looking forward to. This is the power of the new covenant, a covenant that we in ourselves can do nothing to inaugurate, a relationship that we in our own strength can do nothing to enter. It is a covenant that begins and ends with the incarnate Jesus and that vast multitude who by faith are found in him, who God has made alive together with him, whose sins have been eternally and everlastingly forgiven. in him. The record of those sins and their debt has finally and for all time been canceled along with all of its legal demands. This is the story that your baptism declares. This is the great hope that was anticipated in the story of Noah. Just as he and his family were saved from being destroyed in the floodwaters of God's holy justice, so too we are saved from being destroyed by those same floodwaters by the fullness of the wrath that our own wickedness deserved. Only this time, it's not an ark made of wood. It's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is your ark. Pastor John, in the Titanic, in the waters, Jesus Christ is your ark. turn to him and in him the floodwaters of the wrath of God cannot destroy us for Jesus took the fullness of that wrath upon himself, casting our old identities, our old hearts of stone to the bottom of the sea and bringing us up through to new life. baptism, water baptism, is a picture of that reality, that deeper internal working of the Holy Spirit. Not as Peter says in 1 Peter 3.21, not the removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. Because Jesus conquered death and all the powers and principalities of death, we who have been united to him by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, we stand before the Father perfectly righteous. He made him who knew no sin to be sin, that we who knew no righteousness could become the very righteousness of God. This is what the baptism of regeneration has accomplished. And it is the baptism of regeneration, which is the work of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit alone in our lives that has saved you from your sins. And that is the story that we are about to tell this morning in the water behind me. That's the message we're about to declare. That's the sermon we're about to preach in picture form. Which brings us full circle to Advent. Why we are going through this passage at this point of the year, brings us full circle to Advent and the celebration of the incarnation of Jesus. For this is why the word of God, Jesus Christ, took on flesh and dwelt among us, so that he might take that human body and mount a Roman cross and die in your place. So that his human body might receive all of the just and holy wrath that you deserved. So that his human blood might be poured out to redeem you from the darkness of all of your iniquity. making full atonement for your sin. He has done this for you, what you could never do for yourself. He took your sin and gave you his own righteousness. That means you have been washed clean, Christian. You stand before the Father clean. You are who once a whore and a harlot and a disobeyer of God's law, you are now pure and righteous. A virgin bride adorned for her bridegroom. He tasted death and drank it to the dregs so that when your temporal finite and broken body finally expires, which it will, you might stand before the Father and hear him say of you, behold, this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased. This is what it means to be members of the new covenant. This is what the incarnation of Jesus has accomplished. This is where Bo stands this very minute hearing the words, well done, good and faithful servant. This is where each of us are headed, in Christ, if we with the shepherds run to the manger and find the incarnate God of all creation wrapped in swaddling clothes. All of this, the great and glorious story and narrative of the redemption and reconciliation of mankind through the cosmic magnification of Jesus Christ, all of it had been cloaked in shadow and symbol for thousands of years. And then one starry night in Bethlehem with the heavens descending and singing praises to the most high, it came into brilliant and thrilling focus. The word of God, the eternal son, the one by whom, through whom and for whom all things were made. The seed promised in the garden mere minutes after the man's fatal act of disobedience. The son of Noah born to bring rest from the painful toil of our hands. the offspring of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, the center and hope of every promise ever made by the father, the whole point of every covenant ever enough instituted, he was born. He had come, Emmanuel, God with us. The exhortation is simple. As we enter this season of Advent, as we begin by celebrating the baptism of our brother Wyatt this morning, to Jesus. Look to Jesus. You who know him, look to Jesus. You who do not yet know him, look to Jesus. See in him the fulfillment of the promises made to Adam and Abraham. See in him the one who conquered the serpent on the cross and in the empty grave. See in him the one who took the curse upon himself and brought us rest from all the painful toil of our hands. He will possess the gate of his enemies. He will build his kingdom and in him all the families of the earth will be blessed, amen? Father, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that your word is true. Thank you that you have promised something and have fulfilled that promise, that you have remembered your word, that you have remembered your desire to bless us with life. and that you have made a way possible for us to enter into that life. Father, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for his atoning work on the cross. Thank you for his resurrection from the dead, conquering death, removing the sting from death, that in him, by faith, by looking to him, by trusting him, by throwing ourselves at his feet, by acknowledging that he alone is the way, the truth, and the life, by honoring no other name above his as a name that brings salvation. Father, thank you for doing this work in us, and I pray that we would call upon the name of Jesus, that we would see him. I pray for this season of Advent, that we would look to him, that we would remind ourselves daily and hourly of why it is that we're running around getting decorations and celebrations underway. Father, continue this work of great sanctification in us, that as we celebrate, as we look to him, your spirit would continue to convict our hearts and draw us up from one level of glory to the next. Father, I thank you for Wyatt and for his testimony and for the declaration of faith we are about to hear and witness and celebrate with and what that baptism points to. The great hope of the cross, the great hope of the empty tomb. that we might remember that this is how we have life as well, that we are buried with Christ in baptism and raised together with him in newness of life. So Father, be with us, bless our worship, be honored and glorified with it, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.