We'll take your copy of God's word with me and open up to the book of Jeremiah, the book of Jeremiah. These are wonderful Sundays and we pray as elders and in other meetings I'm in for God to save people so we can baptize them. Selfishly, it's so wonderful. This is a great day. I was at least 30% happier than normal on most Sundays actually in various meetings and in praying by myself. So it's worth something there too. Well, as elders, we meet twice a month and we meet for a couple hours a time. Sometimes we go longer than we planned, but we're pretty disciplined about getting out of there so that we can get home with our families and be predictable for our wives and children. But a couple hours, twice a month, we meet. And if those meetings are mysterious to you, yes, we make some decisions and we oversee the church together. But the main things we give ourselves to, certainly in the seasons where we're loving our work the most, is study and prayer. To the study of the Word of God and to prayer. And we study because we intend to grow in the knowledge of the Word of God, and we intend to grow in our leadership of our congregation according to the Word of God. And sometimes when we're studying something, it's to strengthen ourself in something we're already settled in, and sometimes it's to gain more clarity and understanding, and often we're confirmed and comforted in what we what we find in our study, and sometimes we're a little surprised by how we're seeing things anew or what we think we need to do as a church. And even as Christians, as we read the scriptures, we read the Bible and we find that we need to make this course correction or that, and that's all just a part of the normal Christian life. Well, that too is a part of healthy church life. Elders who would give themselves to the Bible week in, week out, and then be willing to come up and say, hey, I think we need a little bit of a course correction here. Which brings us to the topic of this morning's sermon and next week's sermon. The topic of baptism. One of the two ordinances of the church. Baptism in the Lord's Supper and the sign of entry into the New Covenant community. Baptism. And we don't believe we've understood it wrongly. I should say that upfront. We don't believe we've had this thing somehow upside down. But we do believe as elders, and we have become convinced that we have not led you completely in all that baptism is supposed to mean for the church. That we as a church could get more clear on the meaning of baptism and God's purpose for baptism in the local church. church, to be more consistent and refined in our understanding. And in a way, this isn't unlike what we do with all kinds of topics and doctrines in the life of the church. Sometimes it means we have to tinker with how we go about this or that practice as a church family. So we believe we need to clarify our understanding of what the sign is doing in God's plan and refine our practice a bit. And we believe that God will bless our hard work as elders over the space of what was about a year, about a year ago, and our hard work as a church family over the next two weeks in this. And on the other side of this series, I'll do a blog post and do some writing and we'll have some chance for engagement. That's all I'll say for now, how about that? And we'll get into some specifics later. In fact, some of the changes we intend, we've already been about. This testimony here is new-ish. a public testimony, and I'm gonna ground it and explain why we do this. There are some other things we've been doing, which maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, and I'll explain some of those as well. So in some ways, if you're newer here, you might say, well, that's obvious, or maybe you came from a church where what we're gonna lead you in is how it always was, and you're thankful it's that way because it's obvious to you. In any case, every church around the ordinances will develop some habits and patterns, and it's important for any elder team in church to take a fresh look at those from time to time. Well, if you're visiting with us, I just want you to know that we don't normally crack open the Bible and shake something up at the church. Our normal pattern is to work through books of the Bible and to pick up where we left off. And frankly, that's doing all kinds of things in the life of our church and in the lives of our individual members as we go, but that's our normal practice. And so just a heads up, but these are good weeks to be with us. No better weeks than when we're focusing on the sign of the new covenant and baptism. So let me tell you where we're going over the next two weeks. This week, today, we're focusing on this text from Jeremiah 31 I've had you open up to, and I'm eager to preach this passage. And this passage focuses on the invisible realities to which baptism points. The invisible realities to which baptism points. And for this sermon, I want us to get a little more clear on some things that perhaps have been obvious to us, but I want them to be very sharp in our vision and imagination as a church, and to keep them sharp. in our vision and imagination as a church, both individually and how it applies and corporately as a church and how we think about ourselves. Next week, we're going to focus on the visible realities which baptism involves. The visible realities baptism calls us to and the visible realities that baptism is intended to It is, after all, a visible sign for a visible people. And we'll reflect on how baptism and its visible entailments apply to us individually and to the church. I pray this fills you up. I pray that it's strengthening for you personally. And I pray that it's strengthening for us as a church. Now, next week, toward the end of the sermon, I'll address various groups. I'll address members. I'll address non-members who should be members. I'll address people who aren't baptized who should get baptized. I'll address parents. I'll address young people, and I'll kind of make my way around the room like that, and hopefully, I think I've even got an end section. I've mapped it out already with something like, 10 FAQs just to get like a lightning round on things that might be stirring in your mind. So if you've got a question through one or the other sermons, feel free to scratch it in the margin of your Bible or your notes, and you can email me when we're all done or come up and ask me after a sermon, but I'll also see if I can't anticipate a bunch of those before the two-part series is over. Before I read this passage, Let me hold out to you a familiar sign, a familiar symbol, that of a wedding ring. I've got one on my finger right here. It used to be easier to get off. I can still get it. I can still take it off my finger if I need to. I don't often need to. I do tend to fidget. A ring, a wedding ring. A ring does not make you married, does it? But a ring is not insignificant. A ring doesn't have no function, which is a good thing for me that it doesn't make you married because I lost my first one, not whitewater rafting in my first year of marriage, but canoeing with a friend in the second year of marriage. He got in the canoe and it tipped over and the wedding ring was gone. It's gone forever. But I replaced that wedding ring, and this ring right here on my hand says all the same things. And it was a little weird to be without it for a time. The wedding ring, and your wedding ring, if the Lord has blessed you with marriage, is a public statement. It's a sign, it says something to others and it says something to your spouse. As I'll say at weddings, the wedding ring has been for years an outward sign of the inward and spiritual bond in marriage. It is a visible reminder to you, to your spouse and to everyone around you that you are taken and your love for each other is to be obvious, tangible, clear, pure, beautiful, and unbreakable. That's what your wedding ring symbolizes. Don't forget it. Your relationship with that person that you said those vows to transforms every relationship that you have. You could say that the wedding ring is a kind of visual shorthand for the whole wedding ceremony package and all that goes into making a marriage. Well, what is baptism shorthand for? We turn today to Jeremiah 31. Let's read it. This is God's word for us 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 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 sins no more. Out with the old, in with the new. A familiar turn, a phrase. We just celebrated my son's one-year birthday. I'm gonna have to stop calling him a baby pretty soon. He's walking around and doing all kinds of things. He's a toddler. I suppose that'd be the best thing to call him at this point. But he got some new things. And he's gonna get more new things next year. He's gonna get some new things. unless I buy him some used things, which I've done before, but that would have been too expensive to get new. Between here and the time he leaves our house, sometimes new means brand new, right off the shelf. Sometimes newer means better. Sometimes newer means cheaper. And sometimes the stuff it takes to make a certain product got more expensive to ship around the world or to procure. And so the new and improved model, if you stare at it closely enough and study it closely enough, you actually want the year before. New doesn't always mean better. I just upgraded my operating system to Big Sur. And, you know, there's the normal Mac pitch, and I'm sure there's all kinds of things happening under the hood. It took me about three minutes to get over the changes. Maybe the techies in the room will know there's more to it. I know there's more to it. I can admit as much. But I was over the changes in about three minutes. So sometimes something that's new is hyped up. Sometimes something's new because it's catching up with the competition. So it's hard to even call it new. I mean, it's new, but not completely. This has been around. My friends have had that feature on their phone or whatever. And sometimes things are new and they're absolutely needed and they're anticipated and they are new. Lord willing, soon enough, we'll have a COVID vaccine and we'll be able to call that a new vaccine. We'll know what that means. Well, what's new about the new covenant? He says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. What is new about the new covenant? That's the question in the main that I want us to ponder together this morning. Now, the first thing that's new about the new covenant is a new solution, a new solution. It says, you'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It's not like the covenant I made on the day of their fathers, on the day 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. Already, if you're new to the scriptures, you're realizing there's a bit of context that would be necessary to understand what's happening here. This promise comes to us in the context of the Bible's story. And you can't, none of us can well understand the solution of the good news of the gospel that comes to us in the New Testament and that is pictured in baptism, apart from understanding the bad news or the problem that is given to us, outlined for us in the Old Testament. One we'd never admit unless we were cornered to admit it by the scriptures themselves. And that problem is the problem of sin. Scripture teaches us that God made us in his image to bring him glory, and we would obey him and enjoy a relationship with him. But it wasn't just three chapters into the Bible that Adam takes the fruit and eats, taking his wife's leadership, and both of them are deceived by the serpent. Not to trust in the goodness of the word of God, but to trust in themselves and to say, God, I got this, I'll have your gifts. You can go somewhere else. Well, that plunged us into sin and into death. And the effects of sin remain with us, and all of us know these effects personally. We know the guilt that sin brings. All of us have guilt and shame for sin. We know the corruption that sin brings to every single human being. We are all guilty in Adam at birth, and we are all corrupted in our natures because of Adam at birth. We're born sinning, desiring, and worshiping objects and things that God has made instead of the living God himself. We're born guilty, corrupted, and alienated. We all know alienation. We're alienated between us and God. We're alienated between one another. There's even alienation between us and the ground as it's hard to work and life in this world is toilsome. And there's even alienation within our own selves, as we don't even know ourselves truly. Some of us are presenting one thing entirely that is different than what is on the inside. We are fractured, broken, sinful, guilty, corrupted, and alienated people. And all of this is terribly sad. And this is what the new covenant is promised to solve. This is what the new covenant is promised to solve. We see in this little section here of the first few verses that there were two problems that manifested themselves throughout the story of the Old Testament. We have a problem with the people. God made a covenant with them and they broke it. He was their husband. He loved them and pursued them, but they broke the covenant. They were unfaithful to God. They were stubborn. There's a stubbornness of heart that is quoted as a theme in the book of Jeremiah. In Deuteronomy chapter 29, we read these words that, beware lest there be in any among you a man or a woman, clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve other gods of the nations. Beware lest there be any among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit One who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself and his heart, he says, I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. The stubbornness of my heart. We read that again in Psalm 81. I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels. And this is one way to get at the human problem. A stubbornness of heart. It isn't just that we're sinners and need to be told. It's that we're sinners and when we're told, we dig in. Do you know that feeling? Dig in. I know I'm wrong and I'm not admitting it. That will come out the best, the clearest in your closest relationships. And we all know that to some extent. Even a great extent. Well, some dozen times, Jeremiah quotes, picks up this very language from Deuteronomy. I'll just skip across several of them so you can hear it. In Jeremiah 3, 17, at that time, Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord and all the nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem. And they shall no more stubbornly follow in their evil hearts. That's the problem. He speaks about them walking in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, going backward and not forward in Jeremiah 7. In Jeremiah 11, they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart. Or Jeremiah 13, the evil people who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and go after other gods. There are several more that sound just like this. It's a drumbeat across the book. Here in the story of the Bible, we have arrived at a point where the stubbornness of the human heart is on full display. And it's not like he hasn't given us a chance. For God has made a promise in Genesis 3.15 to crush the head of the serpent and redeem a people for himself. That becomes clear when he comes to Abraham and takes Abraham out from among the nations. Abraham was not seeking God and promises him. Nations will come from him and a people, and God will be their God and they will be his people. And God delivers his people from Egyptian slavery through incredible miraculous events and power. And he delivers them as if on wings of an eagle. He takes them by the hand, it says here. Isn't that beautiful? I led them out by the hand. I led them out from Egypt. and he delivered them to the foot of the mountain at Sinai, and he gave them his law, his gracious law, so that they might worship him and know what it is to obey him and live in his blessing. But no sooner did he give the law were they worshiping other gods and making for themselves idols." There is a problem in the human heart, and you can bless a sinner as much as you want, God can, and address them with what sin is and what obedience is, and they will dig in with stubborn rebellion, and that is the story. In that old covenant established with Israel at Sinai, there were blessings and there were cursings. And for obedience, there would be blessing, and for disobedience, there would be cursing. And you think, well, that'd be super obvious because I would just choose the blessing and I would obey, but it's not like that. And that's part of the point. As you give Israel that covenant, You take a group of humanity out and you give them God's blessings, and God's ways, and God's name, and God's commands, and these miraculous deliverances, and you just set the clock, and you watch, and you have degeneration, and it degrades, and you have depravity, and you have false worship. There is a problem with the human heart. and it is in every human heart, and it manifests itself in profound stubbornness. If you have not found yourself to be profoundly stubborn, and you think yourself pretty good, it would only take the right circumstances for this to be drawn out. And that is no doubt why we have such a long Old Testament. It's in order that God might prove to us our great We need a better solution, and the new covenant is that solution. The new covenant will provide for us the resources that we need to be the people God wants us to be. The old covenant did not provide those resources. The old covenant provided laws that were written on tablets, not on the heart, which we'll get to. The new covenant offers a real solution. Before we move on, just a few clarifications. Is God learning things in the course of the story? God has tried some old things and now he will try a new thing and I promise this time it'll work. No. There is one plan of God. And he is revealing to us our need. The old covenant established with Israel at Sinai is a tutor. It is intended in part to teach us, yes, about God's character, but also about our uncleanness, and our sin. And it is effective at that. No, this new covenant has been a part of God's plan all along. There are deliberate inadequacies built into the old covenant. This is a part of God's plan. The old covenant is, if you will, God's best sales pitch for the new covenant. God is not trying through the Bible to talk us into a need, to needing something we don't need. Through the Bible, he is taking pains to talk us into seeing the need that we actually have. And that's why we have the Old Testament story that we have. So is God learning here? No, that's not the case. He's not trying something new that he hasn't tried. Does God change? Was God legalistic in the old covenant, in the Old Testament? Whereas he gets a big heart now and he's gonna like us now, but he was kind of mean back then and he's gracious and merciful on this side. No, that's not the case. He came to Abraham in mercy and grace. He led his people out of Egypt before he established his law covenant at Sinai. Even before he gives the 10 commandments, he reminds them that he has redeemed them and he is their rock. He's led them tenderly just right here on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. Our God is a gracious God, and He has been gracious from beginning to end. No, He's not learning anything as He goes, and no, He isn't changing either. So what's new about the new covenant? The new covenant brings about a new solution. Now, the heart of that new solution is a new heart. It's a new heart, verse 33. The law that the Lord gave to his people at Sinai was written on tablets. And that's where it stayed. Oh, they heard it preached. And I believe there was regeneration in the Old Testament. But that covenant was not able to bring about the transformation of life that God desires and God intends. That law stayed on stone. But here we see that God will take his law and he will put it within his people and he will write it personally on their hearts. This is a beautiful, beautiful thing. This is what God has always planned for. It is what he wants for us. Think of Deuteronomy chapter 30, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and that you may live. Going all the way back to early in the story of the Bible, God is promising to circumcise our hearts A circumcision was the cutting of the foreskin of the male children. We'll get a little bit around to this stuff later in the sermon. But what does he mean circumcise your hearts? He'll do that. Well, it's the circumcision of the male children entering that covenant was a sign, a picture of the cutting that God would have to do, the surgery that he would have to do on the heart of every human person that would come to know him. And God promised all the way back then that he would circumcise the hearts of his people so that they would love him. And he said that through Moses. This inward change is what God has always wanted. And it's what he will do. Ezekiel chapter 36 is another place in our Bibles that speaks about the new covenant and does so in these terms. 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 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. In other words, there is coming a day when the Lord himself will bring about a complete healing of our spiritual problem. We'll get to forgiveness. God brings us forgiveness and we should emphasize that. But he means to change us and that's a part of the good news because that's what he wants. of people who love him and know him. And the new covenant that is to come that is promised through Jeremiah is a new covenant with a new solution to our great problem. It is a new covenant with a new provision, a provision of the spirit and a new heart, a new person. Praise God for that. Look with me to Jeremiah 30 verse 17. I just want to point something out to you here. We're anchored in one passage, but there are other passages that speak to this. In Jeremiah 30 verse 12, the Lord says, for thus says the Lord, your hurt is incurable and your wound is grievous. It's verse 12. That's a verdict, isn't it? Your spiritual sickness is incurable. You feel like your spiritual sickness is incurable? Well, the Bible says so. You feel like there's nothing you can do about it? Bible says so. Now look at verse 17. He makes this promise. I will restore health to you and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord. Back to Jeremiah 31. He will have for himself a people that are spiritually healed. He will give us a new heart. That is a promise that comes with the new covenant. And this itself leads to a new relationship. This people that has a new heart and a new love for God has a new relationship to God. The second half of verse 33. and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Oh, we've heard that before. We were in Genesis a year ago as a church family when God came to Abraham and said, I will make for you, make you an everlasting possession and I will be your God. He said in Exodus to his people, I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. And here in Jeremiah, he says, you will be my people and I will be your God. In other words, this isn't just about raw rote obedience, making a people who will do everything I say. It is making for himself a people who will keep his word because they love him and know him and treasure him because he is glorious and he is the one they were made to know. He is the one you were made to know. And through the new covenant promised here in this ancient book, there is a way to know God and to have a relationship with him. You can come to church and know the answers and sincerely assent to the answers and not know the God who is the answer. You through the gospel can know the God who is the answer. Through the new covenant, God brings about a new relationship with his people. My people, I will be their God. I have five kids now and have for a year and will for maybe 10 more years, then I'll have four and then we'll start ticking down. They'll always be my kids. And I want a relationship with every one of them. And as a dad, I feel jealous for time with them. And I want time with each of them. So I'll drive them to things, just one of them at a time. And last night we were at a scout thing last night and we stopped by Spinks on the way home to get whatever Carson wants. Part of that is just because, you know, it's nice to have a soda on Saturday night that you might not drag into your house, but we'll sit there and drink a cream soda in the parking lot and talk about whatever comes up. Trying to find little ways to invest in a relationship and big ways to invest in a relationship, but I never feel like I have the time. I never feel like I know each of them as well as I want to know them. Isn't it wonderful to know that God's intentions are more sincere, consistent, wholehearted than ours as parents? Isn't it good to know that he lacks no time for us? That he doesn't have to split his attention. He doesn't have to go away to work and then come home. He's all into us. I will be their God and they will be my people. And there's no want of attention or intention or commitment on God's part. He's better than our best dads. And he sure is better than our worst dads. And he sure is better than the best dads on their worst moments. And I have mine. Let's point our kids to the father who wants to be their God. Well, this new relationship isn't just an individual thing. It's not that God just wants a relationship with us, you and me. It's that he wants a relationship with us. Don't miss this. I will be their God and they will be my people. God is establishing a relationship, not with people merely, but with a people, his church, his people, a new community. The new covenant points us to a new solution that at the heart of which is a new heart that leads to a new relationship and gives birth to a new community. And isn't this what the world needs to see? We have such a hard time getting along. And for a lot of really great reasons, it's not the new creation yet, but in the church, we have a new community of people that get along great because they know a great God. Let's talk a little bit about what's new about this new community. This is where I want us to get more clear as a church. Some of this might be obvious, but I want to sharpen your vision as to what the new covenant is and therefore what baptism points to. What's new about this new community? I want to point you to the word all here in verse 34. No longer shall each one teach his neighbor Here's what that means. It means that everyone in the new covenant, because the new covenant is effective. Jesus' blood is perfect. Everyone in the new covenant knows God personally. which is to say the church is not a mixed community of believers and unbelievers. There may be outsiders with us on Sunday morning. There could be outsiders with us on our roles as we keep them humanly speaking. But in the new covenant community that God has created, which is itself invisible, everyone is regenerate. Everyone knows the Lord. And this is different than ancient Israel. Ancient Israel was a theocracy and a theological community. It was a political entity. You were born into it. And so you were circumcised at birth. And that sign of that covenant pointed forward with a sermon, if you will, through the sign that you should have your heart circumcised. But you were born into that covenant community and you weren't necessarily the Lords. Not every Jew is a true Jew. Not all Israel was true Israel. You could be an unbeliever. And that's why in Israel you had to say to each other, hey neighbor, know the Lord. Hey neighbor, know the Lord. Do you know the Lord? I know the Lord. And that's how Israel was. It was a mixed community of believers and unbelievers. This community is different. 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. This covenant, is a covenant in which everyone knows the Lord. And that makes it different from the old covenant. You could enter the old covenant, but that whole sacrificial system, you could obey it perfectly and not have faith. And as it is, it wouldn't take all your sins away. But this covenant, this blood is effective, perfectly effective. And you enter it not by birth, but you enter it by new birth. And the sign of this covenant follows faith. which is how you come into it. If you do a little word search across the New Testament, you'll find baptism in a dozen places. You won't be able to count the number of times you find the word faith. You enter the new covenant community. You enter the new covenant. You lay hold of all of these blessings by faith. By faith, you're saved. By grace, you're saved through faith. Baptism is shorthand for that faith and all the blessings that brings on you and what your faith is in, the Lord Jesus who died and rose again. But we enter this new covenant community by faith. So in this new covenant community, everyone knows the Lord, all. Well, there's a second way in which this new covenant community is new and distinct from ancient Israel. Not just that it's an international people, a community you enter by faith, not by circumcision and not because you were born into it. Not only does everyone here know the Lord personally, but we know in this community, the Lord directly. Now follow me here. I want you to turn to Jeremiah 31, 29 through 30. So just a few verses before. There's a somewhat obscure verse here and I want to point it out to you. It helps, it raises a question that the new covenant answers. In those days, Scripture says, they shall no longer say, and Jeremiah here picks up a proverb everyone knows. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. That's a weird little proverb, isn't it? What does it mean? If you eat sour grapes, you pucker up, right? That's another way to say it. Well, back then, the dad can eat sour grapes and the kid puckers up. Sins followed and guilt followed. In this new covenant community, we all stand before the Lord directly in salvation. So in the old covenant community Israel, you had priests, prophets, and kings, and those priests would mediate your relationship with God. You had a human mediator between you and God. In the new covenant community, the Lord Jesus Christ is our mediator. And you and I go before God directly and confidently in prayer. We go before the throne of grace in prayer on our own and together. And that's special. That's special. We don't go to a place, Jerusalem, to a temple and have our relationship with God mediated through a priest. The structure, in other words, of the New Covenant community is different. We relate with God, you and me, personally and directly. I wanna read for you something that Don Carson has written on this very important distinction which we're trying to sharpen together. He says, in short, Jeremiah understood that the New Covenant would bring some new dramatic changes the tribal nature of the people God would end, and the new covenant would bring with it a new emphasis on the distribution of the knowledge of God down to the level of each member of the covenant community. Knowledge of God would no longer be mediated through specially endowed leaders for all of God's covenant people would know him from the least to the greatest. Jeremiah is not concerned to say there would be no teachers under the new covenant, but to remove from leaders that distinctive mediatorial role that made the knowledge of God among the people at large, a secondary knowledge, a mediated knowledge. You and I, in other words, had a personal knowledge of God And that is in part because of the blessing of the new covenant. I hope that's getting clearer for you now. It is one reason, although there is a more important reason which we'll get to next week and which I've actually preached on before. But it's one reason we don't make a whole lot of the baptizer in baptism. I mean, there are other reasons that I won't even, well, that I don't plan to get to, but I could next week, like how baptizers and a focus on the who baptized me became a problem in the Corinthian church. In fact, we don't find any emphasis on it at all, except when it went wrong in the Corinthian church. But there can be something that goes a little sideways or even a little wrong that can set our imagination on the wrong trajectory when we make too much of the man who baptizes us. And so you'll notice we've kept it rotating. I mean, there's a reason I put Brad with Craig today. So Brad will baptize Craig Burgess a little later in the morning. I told Abe I wouldn't have Abe baptize Craig. Although with water, we're a little more buoyant. So in any case, the person is not the point. And we want at Heritage to de-emphasize personality and person, not that that's even been a problem, but I mean to emphasize that and to make that explicit. It is not important to me who baptizes you as it concerns that individual, except that they're a representative of our church and can be trusted with the process and that moment to get it right for all of our sake. The main characters in the room are the one being baptized and then the congregation at large who are witnesses to what God has done. So that's a point of clarification for us that I hope is helpful. Finally, what is the basis for all of this new covenant work and blessing? I mean, in the old covenant, we had a sacrificial system and priests and all the rest. Well, we had that for a reason because of our guilt and corruption and alienation, and this was God's system for bringing us together. Well, what's the new system for bringing us together? How's God gonna bring all of these greater blessings to us? He'll do it through a new sacrifice. A new sacrifice. And this is the basis for the new covenant. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. No more. This doesn't mean that God forgets your sins. He doesn't have a memory. Scripture says that, track with me here. If there's something you remember that God doesn't, he's not God. That language, that imagery helps us to understand just how much God does not consider it against us anymore. Through the new covenant, through the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ, a perfect spotless lamb, a righteous sufferer for us, The son of God himself, suffering in the place of his people, God takes away all of our sins and he removes them as far as the East is from the West. And so if you're in Christ, you know the full forgiveness of sins. So friend, repent of your sins as you sin, but don't live under the burden of guilt that Jesus suffered in order to take away from you. He did not suffer to take away from you the sins he was happy for you not to feel guilty about, but to leave you guilty and condemned for the rest. He suffered to take away your guilt. He suffered so that God could say, I forgive your iniquity and I remember your sins no more. And that is the basis of the New Covenant. And this New Covenant is the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus. We celebrated the Lord's Supper just a week ago. This is the blood of the New Covenant. Jesus was indicating that that New Covenant people, he was creating right now with the people, the disciples that he had around the table before him. And praise God for that. Well, friends, those are five new covenant blessings. We've got a bit left in the sermon. But you can't have one without the others, and you shouldn't want one without the others. Don't want a relief from your guilt and forgiveness without a relationship with God. Don't want a relationship with God without being united to his people, his people. He's jealous for his people. And don't want transformation without a relationship with God. Ponder these five. Blessings. They're blessings indeed. So that's a little bit on what's new about the new covenant. Let's ask a second question as we close things up. How does baptism symbolize the new covenant? How does baptism symbolize the new covenant? I'll answer that in a few ways. The baptism symbolizes the new covenant as a sign, as a sign. Think of a road sign. We've had different signs that pointed to different things. The sign of the rainbow in the sky pointed to God's promise not to judge the earth like that. There'll be seed time and harvest until the end of the age. And so we're living in that age now. The sign of circumcision pointed to the need for the hearts of the people to be circumcised. The sign of the Passover reminded the people of God of how the angel of death passed over their homes when he delivered them from the exodus. And the sign of baptism has a particular function. It points to particular things. The sign of baptism does not save, but by it God points us and our faith to the one who does save. Friends, to get sharp here for all of us, we do not trust in our baptism. If you wonder if you're saved, don't focus on your baptism and your sincerity in that moment. Focus on the Lord Jesus and his cross and God's sincere promise to take your sins away. That's the way the New Testament talks to us and assures us. Don't trust in your baptism. It's a sign, but it's an important sign and it has important functions in God's plan. So how does baptism symbolize the new covenant? Well, first, we want to say it's a sign. Second, we want to say it's a sign, a symbol of what Jesus did for us. It's a symbol of his death, and it's a symbol of his resurrection. His death, his burial, and his resurrection. In his death, Jesus was judged. And this is here to sharpen a little bit our understanding of baptism and why we do the things that we do. We go under the water for a reason. Because plunging under the water pictures a violent act. Baptism is a violent image. And that's why Jesus could speak of his coming death as a baptism. You think, where's the water? It's a plunging. It's an immersion. It's an act of violence. It's a killing. Jesus was crucified and killed and plunged under. And he rose victorious from the grave. And that's what we see when somebody comes up. So baptism pictures for us what Jesus did for us. It also pictures what Jesus does to us. For we are, as Romans 6 teaches us, united to Jesus Christ. We have died with him and we are raised to new life. As Jesus was crucified and judged for sin, when you're joined to Jesus by faith, that judgment counts as yours. So where's your guilt gone? God didn't just forget about it or ignore it or decide he can Do something else with it. He judged it perfectly in his son. And when you're united to Jesus by faith, you die with Jesus and you're raised to new life. That's what baptism pictures. It also pictures our union or helps us understand our union with the church. For we are not only baptized into Christ, but we are baptized into the body of Christ. As we are united to Jesus, so we're united one to another. And baptism is really when brother or sister takes on true deep biblical meaning. It's also a sign of what Jesus does in us, for he circumcises our hearts. And I want to end the sermon here by reading for you a few verses from the book of Colossians. And there's a reason why we're not Presbyterians. I thank God for all my plenty of Presbyterian friends and faithful gospel preaching Presbyterian churches. but their understanding of baptism sees it as largely in parallel with circumcision so that you baptize children born into covenant families and into the church. And we believe that is a mistaken understanding. Listen carefully to how Paul relates circumcision and baptism in Colossians 2. In him, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Having been buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead." Here's what that means. Circumcision, the cutting of male flesh in the old covenant, pointed to the day when God would fulfill his promise to cut the human heart, to do surgery on your heart and replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Baptism doesn't replace circumcision, it fulfills it. You see, baptism pictures that surgery. You've been killed and you've been raised to new life because you're joined to Jesus who himself was killed. and raised to life. He was cut. He was circumcised in his flesh. And when your faith is in the Lord Jesus today, you have a new heart. So I'm gonna pray now, and then we're gonna sing a song, and then we're gonna watch a brother be baptized, and then we're gonna sing the doxology. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for this glorious sign. We thank you for your glorious plans for your church and we pray that you would help our church to grow in its clarity and in our consistent application of this beautiful covenant sign. And now as we baptize our brother Craig, we pray that he would know because of the testimony of these witnesses before him who have heard his testimony and celebrate it with him, that he does in fact know you and that he would take comfort in knowing that this moment is part of what you have given to him to assure him that he's yours and that he is ours. In Christ's name we pray, amen.