This week we're going to be really looking in Jeremiah, but I'm calling this the New Covenant part two. And when I thought about this last week, I thought I want to preach this for Easter Sunday. So last week we looked about at the context of the New Covenant in terms of its priestly work. And today I want to just go through what Jeremiah talks about in the New Covenant. And I'm doing Jeremiah. Hebrews has a couple of differences, but they're not major enough, but I'm doing it because Hebrews is quoting the full New Covenant passage, which is found in Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 34. So when I think about this topic, my mind instantly goes to the Reformed world of Baptists and Paedobaptists, where I can think of fewer topics that are discussed more often than the New Covenant. And this is because the new covenant for one reason or another has become the bullseye for the arguments and debates about baptism and who is in the covenant covenant membership. Sadly though, Jeremiah, even though he might legitimately be used to touch on the question of baptism in an after the fact way, it has to be admitted by everybody that this passage has nothing to do with baptism, just nothing whatsoever. And that's why when I argue for believers baptism, I refuse to use Jeremiah's new covenant. Now, that said, people do use it in that discussion. And today we're looking at the new covenant. And so there's going to be some overlapping questions that also surround that debate. But because Jeremiah doesn't have baptism in his mind, neither will we. I don't want to answer modern questions today. I want to answer ancient questions, questions about the text, what Jeremiah actually meant. Only when we do that can we understand what he's actually talking about. So questions will include things like this. Who is the new covenant given to? That's a really, really important question as it concerns us today. What kind of people does it say that they will be? If we're under the new covenant, what does it tell us that we are like? Now while baptism in our own context might be related to those kinds of questions, in the original context of Jeremiah and Hebrews, better questions would then follow like, how do these people get this way? Or what does it mean for their lives? So that's what we'll be looking at as we go through this text this morning. I think I'm pretty much going to go straight through this thing, starting with the very first question that I think arises in the passage. And that question is, when is Jeremiah's new covenant? So the text again is Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. And then again, it's in Hebrews 8, verses 8 through 12. And the passage is a prophecy. It begins, behold, the days are coming. So that answers the when of the new covenant. When it says the days, OK, this is an eschatological time frame. And so when are these days? Well, there's about 600 years between Jeremiah and the time of Hebrews. And in that period of time, this passage is used only one other time as far as we know of, as far as the time frame is concerned. And that was by the Jews at Qumran by the Dead Sea, who were living 100 or 200 years before Jesus. And they wrote down that they said, we are living in the new covenant. You can read that in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Problem is, according to Hebrews and the New Testament, that was not possible. If we remember the way Hebrews began the book, it said, in these last days, God has spoken to us by his son. So this is talking about Jesus in the flesh. And that didn't happen in the days of Qumran. Because of Jesus coming, the main thing that you have to know about the when of the new covenant is that what was future for Jeremiah is now past for us. The days are no longer coming when God will make a new covenant. The days are past. He's done it. If this is true, then it means that this new covenant is for Christians in a way that the other covenants of the Bible are not. We are under this covenant, not under the Moses covenant, not under the Abraham covenant, this covenant. And therefore, to understand it is of paramount importance for our lives because this establishes our relationship with God. So the next thing that arises in the text is the maker of the covenant. It says declares the Lord Yahweh when I will establish a new covenant. So the question might seem like a silly one. Who is Yahweh? Obviously, he's the God of Israel, but the God of Israel is triune. He is not a Unitarian Monad. If you are in covenant with God, then you are in covenant with three persons. So how might that work? Well, speaking just according to the persons and kind of generally, the father is the one who plans such things as covenants. The spirit is the one who seals these things upon his people. And the son is the one who particularly is given a people as an inheritance. And that's covenant language. And I think this is actually a point that is missed in this discussion. And I think it's really important. The father gives the son a people of his choosing in the Old Testament. And it's part of an eternal covenant promise that they had in eternity past. And the giving to the son is understood by Jeremiah throughout his book to be a marriage. All right. So, for example, the marriage language occurs in the new covenant passage in Jeremiah, my covenant, which they broke, although I was their husband. And so as such, it is the Son who has a special relationship with Israel, even as it is Christ and not the Father who takes a bride in the New Testament. I actually grew up hearing that, oh, it's the father who marries Israel in the Old Testament and the son who marries the church. That's the dispensational belief and that's just absolutely wrong. It's Jesus who has this special relationship with both. And we're going to see a little bit later how important it is to get that because there's a relationship between Israel and the church that is just absolutely vital to understand. So that's who the God is that's making the covenant. Now the way that Christ takes his bride in the new covenant is by such language as this, okay? He gives himself up for her. That's the famous, you know, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church passage and gave himself up for her. Well, what is that? That's an offering and it's a sacrifice and it's by his blood. And so it's through his death. Closer related to the New Covenant is the death then and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And to see how, we want to understand that the way that covenants are made, okay? So the Bible tells us, it uses a special word for the making of a covenant in the Old Testament. And the word is literally to cut. And it's the language of a sacrifice. The word is kerat. in Jeremiah 31, 31. And this becomes the actual word for covenant in Hebrews or to make or to establish. But in the old covenants, they're cut. And how do you cut a covenant in the Old Testament? Well, you do it through cutting of an animal to his death and so that the blood comes out. So it's very literal. You're literally cutting the covenant in blood. Now, in the New Covenant, it isn't the blood of animals, but it's the blood of the Lamb of God when He dies on the cross. That's when it's literally cut. Now, this is exactly why Hebrews tells us to remember when we take the Lord's Supper that this is the New Covenant in my blood, okay? So we're remembering the cutting of the covenant at the supper. Now, when a covenant is cut or established or made, that means that it has gone into effect. And so that goes back to the time frame. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the blessings have gone into effect. So let's think about Abraham for a moment. God cut a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. Now, one of the blessings of that covenant with Abraham was that he would have a son. And through that son, he would inherit the world. Problem is, Abraham does not actually have a son in Genesis 15 when the covenant is cut. That doesn't take place for a couple of more chapters. And so it took time for the blessing to be realized. So let's go back to the time frame again. The prophecy where Jeremiah occurs takes place in a larger context. So in the law today, or in the gospel today, we read Jeremiah 31, starting in verse 27 and going all the way to the end of the chapter. And that time frame, that context, has three specific things that God says he will do in the future. And they all start with, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. So if you look at Jeremiah 31, 27, that begins a section where God says he's going to plant his people in the land. And then he started in verse 31, and this begins a section where he's going to make a new covenant. And then you go in verse 38, and he says he's going to rebuild and make Jerusalem a permanent city. All right. So the first section tells us that Jeremiah, in Jeremiah's future, God's going to plant the people in the promised land. And you have to remember when they are in, Jeremiah is speaking, the people are in Babylon, they're in exile. When you read Jeremiah and the prophets and the rest of the Old Testament, you see that they've been brought back into the promised land after Jeremiah. So that's what Zechariah and Malachi and books like that are about. So that first little section of being replanted in the land has been fulfilled, but it's not part of the new covenant per se. What it does is it allows the new covenant to come into being because Jesus will die in the promised land. That last section is a promise to rebuild Jerusalem so that it will last forever. Now, when you think about that, obviously, they were rebuilding a temple during the period of the New Testament and they were worshiping in that temple. And when they returned from exile, this temple lasted for a few hundred years, but then it was destroyed in 70 AD. And so that promise has yet to be brought to completeness. So that second temple was a type, but it's not the reality. However, we have to see that this is part of the promise of the New Covenant, okay? So the rebuilding of Jerusalem is part of the promise of the New Covenant. But it's the New Covenant that will bring about the permanent Jerusalem. And that promise is being presently fulfilled, the promise of Jerusalem, in a permanent way, in a literal way, but spiritually speaking. And by the way, some people think that literal can only mean physical. Have you ever thought about this? I think literal can mean spiritual. Why? Because heaven is a spiritual place, but guess what? It's a literal place. Right? So it's being fulfilled literally in the church, which is his temple, and then in the future in the new city, Jerusalem. All right? Now that takes us back to the middle context, which is our section today. So that gets us to this question of who receives the covenant, the new covenant. This is where the big question of baptism really surrounds this question. It's clear from the unfolding of these three parts of the passage that those things take place chronologically. First, they're brought into the land. Then the new covenant is cut, then New Jerusalem will be fully and completely restored. So the new covenant, they're brought back and the passage says, I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Now, it might seem evident who that is talking about. For example, some think, well, that's literally talking about the biological Jews, the house of Israel and the house of Judah, right? Others think that, no, well, this is talking about Christians and their infant children. So the question I want to ask is, what is it talking about? Well, first you have to see that Hebrews isn't applying this to the nation. If you say, well, Jeremiah is talking about literally the Jewish nation, you have to understand that Hebrews is applying this, but it's not applying it to the nation. It's applying it to the church. And so somehow, Hebrews has interpreted the house of Israel and the house of Judah as the church. There's no other explanation for how he could apply the new covenant to the church unless that's what he's doing. So how can he possibly do that? Well, we have to remember that covenants are always mediated through covenant heads. So we're going to do this two ways. We're going to look at a covenant head, and then we're going to look at that head's people, all right? When God made a covenant with the world, he made it through Noah, who represented the world. When God made a covenant with Israel, he made it with Abram, who represented his people. And that just goes on and on and on. We have seen that Jesus is the one making the new covenant with his bride. We saw that he did this with his blood. But to have blood means that you are a human being. Gods don't bleed, but the God-man bled. It is his humanity that then becomes important for what we're going to say. Jesus' death is the climax of three and a half years of a priestly ministry that Jesus acted out to perfection. He didn't break a single law his entire life. His whole life is obedient. Let me explain to you how Matthew is a good example of Jesus' life set up to be Israel's life, okay? Because Jesus is, what we're going to say in a moment, the true Israel. Matthew starts off saying Jesus is born of Jewish kingly stock, gives the genealogy. Then it tells us that when he's two years old, the king tries to kill him. So he goes down to Egypt. And then he returns from Egypt by going through the waters of a river in his baptism. And then he goes into a wilderness to be tempted for a period of 40. But he obeys and does not fall into temptation. Then Jesus goes up onto a mountain and gives the law, just like Moses went to the mountain and received the law. And then Jesus comes back down the mountain and never disobeys God through the rest of the gospel of Matthew, even to the point of death on a cross. So the point he's doing, and the way he tells the story, is he's saying that Jesus is true Israel. Now the prophecy is given to the house of Israel, right? And so Jesus is the embodiment of what it means to be Israel. If Jesus, then, is true Israel, then he is the true recipient of the new covenant. Do you see that? I will make a covenant with the house of Israel. How? Through true Israel, through Jesus. So the new covenant is therefore that eternal covenant that the Father and the Son and the Spirit had made and now it's coming to fruition in history in the life of Jesus. Jesus is being given the covenant of grace because of his perfect works that fulfill the old covenant. Friends, if you want to know what Israel and Judah means, don't look across the pond to what's going on with the presidents and the military and all of the things that are happening over in the state of Israel look to Jesus because he is true Israel and you will never be able to understand what he actually did for you if you don't understand that he is Israel the new covenant just won't make any sense to you so he makes a covenant with Israel and Jesus is Israel alright so that prophecy came true Now remember that in the Old Testament, second of all, we move to the recipients then, the house of Israel is called a vine. This is found in Isaiah chapter 5, for example. But in the New Testament, who is the vine? Jesus is the vine. When he says, I am the vine, he's saying, I am Israel. But then he says something really amazing. He says, any who are branches in the vine have abundant life. The idea is that to be in the vine is to be part of the vine, to be grafted in. And so Christians have their life in Christ, we say. Or to put that another way, they have their life in true Israel. And so the church is actually what is being predicted in Jeremiah, by extension, through the body of Christ. So let's look a little bit more carefully at how. I use a different metaphor than the vine. And this comes up earlier in Jeremiah. The prophet lumps two houses, the two houses of Israel and Judah with all the other nations. Listen to this prophecy, or to this condemnation. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh. Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert, who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. Now if you were reading that as a Jew, that's not going to make you happy. There's a reason why Jeremiah lived a life of persecution, okay? You need to understand that this is found in the Old Testament. And I want to make us move ahead to Jeremiah 31 verse 33 and one of the promises of the New Covenant. The New Covenant says, I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. Now, Jeremiah had said that Israel has an uncircumcised heart. The New Covenant says, I will write my law on their heart. So that is the language of having a circumcised heart or a new covenant being made with you. Now that goes back earlier in Jeremiah, he said, circumcise yourself to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my wrath go forth like fire and burn with no one to quench it, because the evil of your deeds Jeremiah says circumcise your heart that goes back to Deuteronomy Moses told the people circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn There's a problem when they say this the problem is brought out by Moses as well. He says to this day The Lord has not given you a heart to understand her eyes to see her ears to hear in other words It isn't possible for a man to circumcise his own heart. You can't do it. I God refused to do that in the days of the early Jews in order that the new covenant promises could come true for us today. And in fact, Moses sees this as well. I'll never forget when a friend gave me this little three verses about Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 10, 15. Circumcise your heart. Deuteronomy 29, 4. The Lord hasn't given you a circumcised heart. Deuteronomy 30, verse 6. The Lord your God will circumcise your heart for you. Okay? It's a great little progression in the book of Deuteronomy. And that is a new covenant prophecy. Last week I said the only time that the phrase New Covenant is ever used is in Jeremiah, but there's a whole lot of other places that the New Covenant is predicted. Ezekiel's one of them. He calls it a covenant of peace. He says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean from all your uncleanness. And from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart. That's Jeremiah's language, right? And a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh Now if you take all of this and come to the New Testament and suddenly you start seeing the fulfillment of these things in the church Listen to the language of being a Jew in Romans chapter 2 the end of Romans 2 No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. Where would Paul get that idea? He gets it from Jeremiah, okay? He didn't make it up. Nor is circumcision outward and physical. Where does he get that? He gets it from Jeremiah and Moses. No, a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise, literally his Judah-ness, is not from man but from God. So this is what Jeremiah is driving at. This is what Ezekiel is looking forward to. This is what Moses is looking forward to. But Paul is talking about Gentiles being true Jews. That was in accordance with the prophecies. Here's another one. Isaiah puts it this way. In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. Guess what's between Egypt and Assyria? Well highway, there's only one place you can go to make a highway there. He says They will be a blessing on the earth Whom the Lord of hosts has blessed saying blessed be Egypt my people and Assyria the work of my hands and Israel my inheritance That goes all the way back to the covenant promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and We've only looked at the prophecy of the new heart and circumcision, but you know what? This idea, just this one idea, can help us understand why it is that the New Testament uses all kinds of Israel language to describe the church. You know what it calls us? It calls us true Jews in Romans 2. the circumcision in Philippians, the Israel of God in Galatians, the temple of God all over the place, Abraham's children in Romans, the New Jerusalem we're called in Revelation, the bride, even the bride is a Jewish Israel idea of Ephesians, a kingdom of priests in Peter, and even the word church comes from the Old Testament. Israel was called the church. So when Jeremiah says that God is going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, you have to understand this relationship between Israel and the church that comes by being in Christ, who is the true Israel. The first stage of the prophecy was with the nation of Israel when they're brought back to the land. The second stage comes once the Gentiles are grafted into the vine, which is no longer the nation, but is true Israel, the Lord Jesus. The nation is a type of Christ. It's always been that way. And that's why Hebrews can take a prophecy that to some seems like it's just talking about a nation and it applies it to the church of Jesus. The New Testament everywhere sees the church as the eschatological fulfillment of the national people. Now that doesn't mean that biological Jews cease to be any more than Italians or Chinese or Swedish people cease to be. It does mean that in Christ, we are all one nation. There is no Jew or Greek. And you know, our world is just I could go on for this for a long time because I really bothers me. We are not. We've done this in our country, haven't we? We're African-Americans. We're Indian-Americans, Native Americans. And we do this in the church. We segregate ourselves into these little places and peoples. And we're Christians. There is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, no slave, no free. We're Christians. We're in Christ. He is our life. Okay? So that's who the New Covenant is made with. Now let's look and see the meat of the New Covenant or what it is like. What are its promises? So the rest of the prophecy takes place first negatively and then positively. It starts off by saying something that it is not, and then it says three things of what it is. So we'll look at the negative statement first. This is Jeremiah 31, 32. It will not be 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, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. When does this refer to? It says they broke my covenant. Well, there's two episodes that it could refer to. The first is the golden calf with Aaron. You remember that story? Moses goes up. He's on top of the mountain. He's getting the covenant. Meanwhile, the people down at the bottom building a golden calf. When he comes down, he is ticked off and he throws the tablets to the ground, thereby showing that they have rebelled against God and broken the covenant. Another episode is that it could refer to the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea when the spies refused to enter the land. So which one is it? Well, scholars have argued that the Golden Calf episode was actually marked by a reprieve. It's forgiveness, I talked about this last week, but it's forgiveness through a new covenant, okay? Not the Mosaic Covenant, which doesn't offer forgiveness, but the Levitical Covenant, which allows for them to have sacrifices and be forgiven. Because there's a reprieve, then that doesn't make a whole lot of sense that that's when Moses or Jeremiah is talking about, okay? But the Kadesh episode was the final straw for that generation, if you remember. Because at this time, they said, we're not going into the land. In fact, what we want to do is appoint a leader who will take us back to Egypt. And God says, fine, then none of you will enter the promised land. That was it. That's the last straw. That's the great rebellion. And they were disinherited that generation from receiving the land. So someone has kind of said of these two, the golden calf episode does not involve so much a rejection of God as his power and faithfulness. and his power and faithfulness as it does an attempt by the people to shape God in their own image. Much more is at stake in the spy story where the people repudiate the power and faithfulness of God to fulfill his promises, his covenantal promises. In seeking another leader to return to Egypt, they've renounced God and his covenant with his people. So the covenant is broken there in the wilderness. They did not continue in it is the way Hebrews puts it. And the question now becomes, how did they break the covenant? Well, the answer is twofold, and the order is important. And Hebrews is what talks about this. First, they did not have faith. If you remember chapters 2 and 3 in Hebrews, what's it talking about? It's talking about how the people did not have faith to enter the promised land. That's the Kadesh Barnea episode. Second, they didn't obey God. They refused to do what he said. And so to return to what we said earlier, they didn't have circumcised hearts. They didn't really want to obey him. Somehow, then that becomes the opposite of the new covenant and what it will be like. Somehow the new covenant will not be like this. All right, that's the negative view of the old covenant. Let's go to the positive view. It begins, For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares Yahweh. And the way it's put is now in a positive form rather than a negative one. So there's three positive statements here and each is followed by an effect. So you have a statement and an effect. The first one involves the law and its effect. The second involves teaching the law and its effect, and the third involves breaking the law and its effect. Simple thing to notice, law is involved in the New Covenant. It isn't that the New Covenant is without law, not outlaw, but without law, okay? I would argue that all covenants, by definition, involve law because that's the stipulations of the covenant. The law is what you have to do in order to keep a covenant. The relationship of the people to the law is what's different in the new covenant than it was in the old. In the old covenant, your relationship to the law kept you in the covenant. In the new covenant, it's Christ's relationship to the law that keeps a person in the covenant. So let's think about this. The first thing we find in the New Covenant is something we've already discussed a little. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. Hebrews takes Jeremiah's law and makes it plural. Maybe it does that to tell you that he's actually talking about the commandments of the law. But of course, that begs the question, what laws is he going to write on your heart? Well, that's a difficult question to answer. Last week, we saw that Hebrews has in mind ceremonial law. But would God write ceremonial laws on the hearts of Christians when he says himself that ceremonial laws like washings and animal sacrifices are done away with? All right, well, elsewhere, like 2 Corinthians 3, it seems that it's the Ten Commandments are in mind. In that passage, it talks about the Corinthians. They're actually letters written by Christ, not on stone, but on flesh, reminding us about the moral Ten Commandments. But some want to make the same point even about the moral law. They go, we're not under law, we're under grace. Why would God write those laws on our hearts now? That would seem to defeat the whole point of not being under the law. Have you ever heard these things before? Okay, well here's my answer to which laws. First, very simply put, it says that God will write the laws on our hearts, and you can't get away from that. A Messianic Jewish blogger I found, I was reading some site on this and I was reading the notes, the comments below, and one guy wrote this, I thought it was pretty insightful, anyone claiming to be in covenant with God under the New Covenant has the Torah written on their hearts and minds. We cannot accept the Torah being written on our heart and mind while summarily rejecting the Torah as nailed to the cross. Well, whether that blogger understands how the Torah has been nailed to the cross is one thing, but the point he's making is correct. The New Covenant Christians keep the law in some way. Now, as it regards moral law, I don't see how you can read Second Corinthians three and come away with an answer that doesn't at least include the Ten Commandments. The ten are now written on our hearts. And we'll look at what that means in a moment. Second, I want you to think about even the civil and the ceremonial law and how they apply in the church. OK, what are you talking about, Pastor? Well, They're kept differently in the church than the nation did. Nevertheless, they're still kept in the church. Paul applies this strange law. He goes, don't muzzle the ox while it's treading the grain. He applies that to paying your pastor. Well, that's a strange thing to do if we're not under the civil law in any sense. Or how about Paul taking the ceremonial law and saying, maybe with the most well-known of all these verses, offer your bodies as living sacrifices. So you see, it isn't that law ceases, it's that our stance towards the law is different as Christians. Our stance is now understood through the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. The law demands obedience and Jesus obeyed the law. The law promises life where there's obedience and Jesus was raised from the dead as justification that he's the great law keeper. by his death God pardons lawbreakers because he's pleased with the Son of God and therefore the law no longer condemns us because Jesus put the work of condemnation to death on a cross and Now we're free to obey the law not out of guilt or fear of punishment or God's gonna break his covenant with us But we're free to obey it for another reason What might it mean to have the law written on your heart and how would this be a new thing? Now enter into thoughts with me for a minute. Okay, I Will write the law on their heart Well, some people say well that must mean that nobody in the Old Testament had the law written on their heart Because this is a new new covenant Problem is, remember Josiah, King Josiah. This is what he said, or it said of him, he turned to the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his mind, according to all the law of Moses. Or how about David, who over and over in the Psalms says that the law is in his heart. Oh, I love your law, God. Well, if they had the law written on their heart, then what could possibly be the difference in the New Covenant? I see three of them. First is how it's not different. If someone in the Old Testament had the law written on their heart, then that doesn't mean people in the Old Covenant didn't have the law written on their heart. That's the first thing you need to get out of your mind. They were regenerated by God. They were justified by faith. They loved God's law. So what are the differences then? Well, the first one would be, it could be that the people in the covenant are different. Okay. No longer is God keeping the writing of the law within the bounds of the nation of Israel and the elect that are within her. He's extending this now to Gentiles. Now, very importantly, the Apostle Paul does say something about the law in relation to Gentiles. So I see a problem with your thinking there, Doug. He says that the Gentiles do what the law requires, even though they don't have the law. And it shows that they are a law for themselves. And then he adds that they show that work of the law is written on their hearts while their consciences are bearing witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse them and then defend them. So what does it mean for Gentiles now under the new covenant to have the law written on their heart? Paul already says that. Well, Paul doesn't exactly say that. He says the work of the law is on their heart, not the law itself. What's the work of the law? The work of the law is to condemn a person and to show that person what they should be doing, but they're not. That's why he gives people a conscience. All men know God's moral law, but this is different from personally deeply longing to do and obey the law. Gentiles know it and they do it because they can't live with the dirty conscience that God gives them. But do they love God's law? Well, Gentiles do if they're in the new covenant. So a second difference would be the place where the law was kept. In the Old Covenant, where was the law kept? Literally, it was kept on tablets of stone inside the most holy place in a tabernacle that was filled with wood and gold. In the New Covenant, the law is now kept on a person's heart. Isn't that fascinating? This gets at the heart of the New Covenant calling believers God's temple. We are His temple, and the Holy Spirit has put the law in our hearts. Okay, so that would be a change. A third difference is the number of people within the covenant that want to keep the law. I think this might be the biggest and most important change. If this is correct, and frankly, this is where Baptist and infant Baptist disagree, is this point, I believe it's incredibly significant. God seems to be saying that he will write the law on the heart of everyone who's in the new covenant. To see this better, we have to go to the second blessing of the new covenant. In the baptism debate, a main question is whether or not people who have never professed faith in Christ will have the blessings of the new covenant. And they're mainly talking about infants. Something is said at the end of this promise that might help us. It says, I will be their God, and they will be my people. You go, well, I just normally pass over that. What does that matter? Well, listen to this. This is rich Old Testament covenantal language, and Jeremiah is drawing upon it. It means many things when you do a study of it. Sometimes for God to be their God and them to be his people, sometimes it means just what it says here. It means you'll have a heart to know that he is the Lord. Part of what this meant was also to repent when you broke God's law. Jeremiah says in another place, I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord. They will be my people and I will be their God for they will return to me with their whole heart. That's repentance. I don't know unbelievers who do a lot of that. When God becomes a person's God in the new covenant, even when they disobey him, they always return to him. Yet when God becomes your God, you must obey him. Jeremiah said earlier in his book, this command I give them, obey my voice and I will be your God and you will be my people. It says in that same place, they did not obey or incline their ear, but they walked by their own counsel and their own evil hearts. They didn't want to obey God, even though they were in covenant with him. And that's exactly why Jeremiah and Ezekiel say of the new covenant, I will give them one heart and a new spirit, removing the heart of stone, so that they might walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them, and they will be my people and I will be their God. There's more being part of being part of being their God meant that they had been delivered from slavery. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you will know that I am the Lord who brought you out from under the burden of the Egyptians. This deliverance was not only from slavery, but to a land. Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and my indignation. I will bring them back to this place and they will be my God and they will be my people. That deliverance included deliverance from sin, you shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers and you will be my people and I will be your God and I will deliver you from all your uncleanness. I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem and they will be my people and I will be their God in faithfulness and in righteousness. So God delivers and he saves and he's to be obeyed because he's king. God said that he dwelt among them as their king. Now there's one more curious prophecy with being the God and being the people. Listen to this. I love this one in Leviticus of all places. I will make my dwelling among you and my soul shall not abhor you and I will walk among you. I will walk among you. I will walk among you. and will be your God and you will be my people." We can see that something in the New Covenant includes the Lord walking around in their midst. It's talking about the Lord Jesus. He will be their God through His New Covenant. That's the first one. The second one, so that's just the law. Now we're looking to the law and teaching. What does it mean to know the Lord? In the Old Covenant, you clearly had some that were in covenant with God who were not elect. who died and went to hell. How else can you understand Jesus calling the Pharisees children of the devil? I don't think children of the devil go to heaven unless they repent, like maybe Nicodemus did. The question in the baptism debate is whether or not this is also true in the New Covenant. Are there people that are children of the devil in the New Covenant? Well, certainly the language of the first promise leads us in the direction that today things are different. It's not a mixed group. Maybe the second promise can shed some more light on that question. The statement is they shall not teach. Each one is neighbor and each one is brother saying, no, the Lord. OK, focus here is on teaching for a moment. On the Old Covenant, you had mediators that taught the people. You had Moses teaching the people the law. You had Ezra teaching the people the law. You even have laws that command the fathers to teach their children the law. You go, well, that's what's different. Now in the New Covenant, no one will teach anybody anything. No, of course, that's silly. I'm teaching you right now, I hope, OK? It's not merely teaching you and helping you grow in knowledge and sanctification. This is a more basic knowledge. Okay. Then that the content is teaching them to actually know the Lord. What does that mean? The declaration is that they will no longer teach people to know the Lord. This will now be done immediately by the Holy Spirit who will teach them. He will circumcise your heart and write the commandments on living tablets of flesh. The promises, if they will, that they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. All of them is an important word, and that seems to me to differ in the new covenant than the old. Knowing the Lord also has a rich Old Testament background and Jeremiah's drawing on it. What does it mean to know the Lord in the Old Testament? Well, first, like the laws in your heart, it means to obey him. They bend their tongue like a bow. Falsehood and not truth has grown strong in their land. They proceed from evil to evil. They do not know me, declares the Lord. And there's many of these and these are all in Jeremiah, in fact, for my people are foolish. They do not know me. They are stupid children. They have no understanding. They are wise and doing evil. But how do but how to do good, they do not know or heaping oppression upon oppression and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the Lord. Or do you think that you are a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy. Then it was well. Is not this to know me, declares the Lord. So to know God is to obey him. But before that can happen, and this is just the things that are said about these phrases are amazing to me. Listen to this one. Before you can obey him, Christ has to be revealed to you. That's part of what it means to know him. This actually found in the Old Testament. Samuel did not yet know the Lord because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And that's talking about the person of Jesus in the context. So there's something objective about that knowledge. That is when a person, this knowledge comes from the outside and not starting on the inside. It's not just something you feel in your heart. It's something that happened. Jesus was out walking around and everybody could see him. Hey, do you know Jesus? Yeah, he's that guy right over there. They knew him. That's different in the Old Testament. You had to trust what Samuel said about him because you couldn't see him. He didn't come to you, but Jesus came to the world in the in the New Testament. He was embodied. He was physical. He was incarnated. He had followers. He had disciples. He had enemies. He had friends. Now, today's no longer walking around, and that's why we have to tell people about it. That's why celebrating things like a death, burial and resurrection can be so helpful. The New Testament roots those events in the physical world, the tangible, the historical. And people can only come to an inward knowledge of the Lord Jesus if they first recognize his outward coming, like Samuel did with the angel and the disciples did with Jesus. He has to be revealed to people, and he's the one who reveals himself. He comes to us. In the new covenant, necessarily, the external comes to the internal. The new covenant isn't just about knowing that there was a guy named Jesus. It's about that coming to a personal knowledge of what it means to trust him. OK, there's more prophecies. The Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship and sacrifice and perform offerings to him. Why would Egyptians do that? Because they want to. Because they know him. We've seen how Jesus takes a bride. In the Old Testament prophecies, to know the Lord is to be married to him. I will betroth you in faithfulness to me and you will know the Lord. Isn't that interesting? This is an intimate knowledge like a man has with a wife. That's not just head knowledge. To know the Lord means you have been called and equipped by him. This is in Isaiah. For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I call you by name. I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord and there's no other besides me. There's no God. I equip you, though you do not know me. Andrew once asked Jesus, how do you know me? And Jesus answered before Philip called you. When you were under the fig tree, I saw you. When you're called like this, you follow. I am the good shepherd in my own. Know me and they know my voice. Can you hear the language of the new covenant in Jesus words there? They know me. Are you hearing his voice even now? Well, people who are called and equipped and married to the Lord recognize his authority over them. Pharaoh didn't listen to this. Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. And moreover, I will not let Israel go. He didn't recognize Christ's authority, therefore he would not obey. So God did a mighty work in Pharaoh's presence. And then he let the people go. The people know the Lord because they recognize his mighty works. There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel, judges says. It's not the greatest work of all the resurrection of Jesus listen to Hosea and knowing the Lord After two days, he will revive us on the third day. He will raise us up that we may live before him Let us know let us press on to know the Lord His going out as sure as the dawn. He will come to us as showers as spring rains that water the earth. I In the infant in the covenant debate, sometimes people will say, yes, but there's an already not yet of the covenant. And I totally agree with that. There is not all of the elect are in the covenant yet. Because some of them haven't believed in some of them, frankly, haven't even been born. You're not in the new covenant until you believe in Christ. That's why you're not to look to election for your assurance. You're to look to Jesus for your assurance. But that isn't exactly the claim being made by infant Baptists. They want to say that infants, whether they are elect or not, are in the covenant prior to faith through baptism. Now, I just don't see any way of reading the language of what it means to know the Lord in the Old Testament or to be His people and for Him to be your God in the Old Testament that allows you to come to that conclusion. To know the Lord is to be saved by the Lord. Now there isn't that objective knowledge of Jesus that he was a person, but the true knowledge is the fear of the Lord, isn't it? And this is probably the main reason why Baptists love this passage so much when it comes to the question of baptism, even though it really has nothing to do with baptism. One last thing about this covenant, the last thing promised in the new covenant is truly amazing. Remember earlier I said remembering is part of covenants. This week I had a great reminder from Desiring God Ministries that of the Somebody that somebody had just posted it and decided to read it I was talking about why people grumble and complain and get angry and hold grudges and get bitter and other things as Christians Why do we do that? Because we forget This is the blood of the Covenant do this in remembrance of me How can people who have tasted of this good salvation, who know the cost of their own sin to the father and son and spirit, who recognize their horrible depravity and their rebellion against God, how can any of us for a single moment act like this? The answer in that piece was because we forget. We must remember. Now I want you to contrast that with what God does in the new covenant. We must remember. This is so great. I will remember their sins no more. The declaration is that he will be merciful towards our iniquities. The promise is that he will remember our sins no more. That's because Jesus has mediated a better covenant. His sacrifice takes away sin once for all. In the old covenant, God kept remembering their sins. That's why they had to have sacrifices over and over and over and over. No animal, no matter pure or spotless, is capable of substituting for your sin and mine. But the Lamb of God is. Where sins were once only covered, the sacrifices had to keep being repeated. But where there is one sacrifice of Christ, there is no more remembrance of sin. Do you believe that that is true when you sin against him? Of course, it isn't that God literally forgets and somehow loses his omniscience or something. It's that he doesn't hold our sin against us anymore. Nothing we can do can ever sever his great love for us in Christ. For the Father is perfectly satisfied, not in your obedience, but in the Son's obedience. And the Spirit has united you to the Son in such a perfect union that God looks upon the Son and only sees the righteousness of Christ in you. Now, how is that not good news? But in order for that to be true, you have to be in Christ and you have to be in the new covenant. Beloved, trust in the Lord Jesus today. Confess him before men. Bow before him as king. Repent of your dark secret sins of those things you've been refusing to bring before his throne. Come to know the gracious benefits of Christ, dead and risen. If he does not die, the covenant is not cut. And if he is not raised, then the covenant has no life. It is a dead covenant. Come to see the beauty of the new covenant. May the risen Lord shine upon your hearts and give you the warmth and the love of God, the Father, the God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit today. Father, would you please seal the words of your new covenant from Jeremiah upon our hearts? Let us see what it is that you do to your people and for your people through this covenant. Please give us hearts to want to know you, to obey you, to repent when we disobey you. to love you, to worship you, and help us to see the beauty of the things you've given to us in your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.