I want to speak to you this evening from Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 to 34. And our subject is the New Covenant. The New Covenant. Our studies so far in Jeremiah have been, on the whole, depressing and discouraging. It has been a book of judgment, of God cursing His people. Jeremiah is known as rather a gloomy book. He's often called the weeping prophet. And yet, right in the middle of the book, in chapters 30 to 33, there is a bright, glowing, joyful section. Commentators call it the Book of Comfort or the Book of Consolation. A mini section of tremendous joy right in the middle of this lengthy book. And in these chapters, God sets out a most glorious future for his people. He lays out all the blessings they could possibly imagine and more. These are thrilling chapters to read. And it's striking to realize when they were written, when they occur in the book. Chronologically, they occur in the book when the Babylonian army is at the very gates of Jerusalem, when all hope is gone and the city is about to fall. So here comes this book of comfort. In the middle of the shouts of soldiers and the clashing of weapons and the screaming of women and children, you have the gospel of God. And at the heart of these chapters are these four verses. Chapter 31, verses 31 to 34. They are among the most profound, the most hopeful in the whole of the Old Testament. These verses form the longest Old Testament quote in the New Testament. You'll find them in Hebrews chapter 8. Of all the quotations, the hundreds of quotations from the Old Testament in the New, this is the longest. As far as I know, this is the only passage in the Old Testament to use the phrase, New Covenant. And as such, it gives the New Testament its name. For what we call New Testament is literally New Covenant. So the second half of God's revelation, the New Testament, is named after Jeremiah, 31. God comes to the people and says, I will make a new covenant. That's our subject this evening. We want to look at it under three headings. First of all, in verse 32, we have the need for a new covenant. The need for a new covenant. God says it will not be like the covenant that I made with their forefathers." Now, what was wrong with that covenant? Why did it fail? Why did God say, I'm going to make a new covenant and it won't be like that one? Where was the flaw? Where was the weakness? He tells us in verse 32. He says, because they broke my covenant. They broke it. That was its fatal weakness. The fault was not with the covenant itself. The fault was with the people. We read in Hebrews 8 about this covenant, God found fault with the people. The flaw was in them, not in the covenant. They broke it. Of course they broke it. You remember, they broke it within minutes of it being made. Moses was still up on the mountain talking with God, and the people at the bottom of the mountain were building a golden calf and worshipping it and saying, These are your gods, O Israel. The dust in the incised marks of the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments written with the finger of God. The dust was still in the grooves, as it were, when the people broke the covenant. They broke it as soon as they got it. And they have been breaking it ever since, right throughout Israel's history. They broke my covenant. And friends, this is an enormously significant moment in the history of redemption. For this is the moment when the hope of Israel dies and the people realize that they are finished and that God is finished with them. Right from the beginning, the hope had been glowing more and more brightly. God had given a great promise to Abraham of a land and a kingdom and a destiny. And they had been getting closer and closer to it. God delivers them from Egypt. The hope is glowing more brightly. God brings them into the promised land. We're getting near the hope now. He drives out the nations. The hope is getting closer. He gives them a king, a man after his own heart, David. The hope is getting closer. David defeats his enemies. David captures the city of Jerusalem. The hope is getting closer. His son Solomon builds a mighty, glorious temple for the worship of God. We're really close to God's salvation now. Surely it's almost here. God's King, God's reign in God's land over God's people for God's glory. And when they're just on the threshold of the hope, everything starts to go wrong. For Solomon turns away from God. And his descendants become worse and worse. And the nation sinks into a terrible spiral of idolatry. And things get worse and worse. And now, it is shattered forever. All is lost. Grasp, please, the theological significance of the exile. It's not just the external factors. It's not just losing the land. It's what God is saying. He had called Abraham out of the nations to be His. And now He's throwing His people away back to the nations. He's letting them go. He's reversing the call of Abraham. He took Abraham out of the world. And now the book of Jeremiah says God's throwing His people back into the world. I don't want you any longer. You're not my people. Everything is lost. No land, no city, no temple, no worship, no king, nothing. Imagine the exiles. walking on the long journey to Babylon. Imagine the despair that must have filled their hearts as they thought of the promises. God had said to Abraham, I will make you a great nation. They weren't a great nation anymore. The land that I will show you, they didn't have land anymore. I will bless those who bless you. It wasn't doing that. All was lost. And there was no point in trying again. There was no point in saying, let's renew the covenant. Josiah had tried that and it hadn't worked. All was lost. And it's just as this moment arrives that God says, I will make a new covenant. And that would awaken tremendous hope. Here is something new, something fresh, something different. God is going to act in an unexpected way. Hope of man has been finally extinguished. The people are saying, God alone can help us. God says, I will help you. I will make a new covenant. And my friends, This is exactly parallel to the situation in the 21st century in which you and I live. Because human beings, in spite of their boasting, are coming to the end of their rope. Thoughtful people are getting frightened at what humans can do. We have technologies and we're not wise enough or good enough to control them. We can do things with the atom, with the environment, with the computer, with the human body, with the human embryo, which are terrifying in their potential. The pollution of the earth is rapidly getting out of control. I was speaking this week. I was living with a man who is a missionary in China. He says, much of China is an arid, exhausted desert. The people have turned that vast land into a wilderness. Civilization is beginning to unravel. Thoughtful people are beginning to realize it isn't working. And in a situation like that, what you need is lateral thinking. Beloved of business experts, if you've tried five or six ways to solve a problem and nothing works, You have to come at it from a completely new angle. And here it is. The gospel is the ultimate lateral thinking. Note how God emphasizes this again and again in the passage. I will make a new covenant. I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God. I will forgive their wickedness. I will remember their sins no more. I will do it. Here's the hope. What God does. Not what we do. The need for a new covenant. But then secondly, in verses 33 and 34, the blessings of the new covenant. What are they? This is the covenant. that I will make with the house of Israel after that time. Two blessings. First of all, a new nature. A new nature. I will put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts. The people haven't been able to keep the law. They have fallen short. They've broken it. So what does God do? Well, He certainly doesn't do what modern governments do. What do modern governments do when people can't keep the law? They change the law. They change the law. If people can't behave themselves decently in sexual terms, the government changes the law. They bring the law down to the level of what they think the people will do. God, when people can't keep His law, He doesn't change His law. He says, I will put my law. It's the same law. God hasn't changed the law from Old Testament to New Testament. The law in the New Covenant is the same law as in the Old Covenant. I will put my law in their minds. God doesn't change the law. He changes the people. He changes the people. He brings them up to the level where they can obey, where they want to obey, where it's natural for them to obey the law. Here's the Old Testament doctrine of the new birth, of regeneration. That's what God is talking about here. I will put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts so that they love it. and want to keep it and obey it instinctively. Imagine what that promise must have meant to Jeremiah. Preaching for year after year to people with hard hearts. You remember what he says in 17.1. Judah's sin is inscribed with a flint point on the tablets of their hearts. Sin was written in the hearts of the people. Now God says, I am going to change their hearts. I am going to give them new hearts. And on these new hearts, it won't be sin that is written. It will be My law that is written. And in this new nature, they will instinctively, naturally want to obey Me and delight in obeying Me. So that is the first of the blessings of the new covenant, a new nature. The second blessing is a new intimacy. They will all know Me. They will all know Me. Now, they have known God in the past, of course. The promise was, I will be your God and you will be My people. But they'd known God at a distance. They'd known God through others. They'd known God with fear. You remember how they pleaded with Moses. They said to Moses, you go and speak to God for us, but don't let us meet God, or else we will die. They had to go to God through a priest. They brought their sacrifice, and the priest offered the sacrifice, and then the priest went to God on their behalf. There was always something indirect, something second-hand about it. For centuries, God had met with His people through priests and prophets. And they had an intimacy denied to the rest of Israel. And these mediators are described in the Old Testament as teachers Moses was described as a teacher. We read in Deuteronomy 4.14, the Lord directed me to teach you decrees and laws. He taught the people, saying, Know the Lord. The Levites and priests taught the people. 2 Chronicles 17.9, they went round all the towns of Judah and taught the people. They taught the people, saying, Know the Lord. The prophets taught the people. We read in Jeremiah 32-33, I taught them again and again. The people had to come to these teachers, Moses and the Levites and the priests and the prophets. And these teachers taught the people to know the Lord. But that situation is about to change. God says, no longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man as brother saying, Know the Lord. Because they will all know Me from the least to the greatest. A time is coming when you won't need a priest. You won't need a sacrifice. You won't need a prophet. You won't need a mediator. You won't need some other person to go to God on your behalf. You'll be able to go to God directly. Everyone. will be able to go to God directly. Every man, every woman, every believing child will be able to go directly from the least of them to the greatest of them. So here are the wonderful promises of the new covenant, a new nature. I am going to change the people so that they will love my law and a new intimacy. They're all going to be close to me. They're all going to know me from the least of them to the greatest. My dear friends, if we could but grasp and realize these things, we have in the Gospel what our world, our society wants more than anything else. If we could present the Gospel the way it should be presented, think of these two blessings. a new nature. We're living in an era where people are wild after personal change. Go into any bookshop and you'll see shelf after shelf of books about how you can change yourself. I spent some very happy hours in a large bookshop in New Jersey this week and To go into some of those areas of the bookshop, there was one area about health and fitness. I would be embarrassed to tell you how detailed the books are of the particular parts of the body that you can change. You name almost any part of the body and you can get a book on that part of the body. How to have a shape layer elbow, except it wasn't all elbows. You can change whatever you like. Change. Plastic surgery. The TV makeover programs. Change your house. Change your garden. Change your appearance. Change your wardrobe. Change your career. Change your life. Counseling. There's an epidemic of personal dissatisfaction. And we can tell people of the greatest change. There could ever be a new birth that God can make you a whole new person. We're not talking about a little bit of plastic surgery. We're talking about a transformation so profound, so all-embracing, that it's described as being born again. We can go out to people who are dissatisfied with themselves and their lives and their circumstances, and we can say, we have good news for you. There is a loving God who can change you into a beautiful, wonderful, loving, satisfied, holy person. Is that not a great message? What about the other side of it? Personal intimacy. What a lonely world we live in. We hear about these wretched, tragic chat rooms that break your heart. Think of teenagers sitting up in their bedroom with a computer screen, talking to somebody, somebody on the other side of the world. They've never known. They don't know who they are. They could be anybody. And they're so desperately lonely that instead of face-to-face human contact, they are reduced to pressing a little plastic button to get fellowship. You can now buy in Japan personal friends. They're machines. They look like little people. And they're powered by a computer. And if you don't speak to them for two or three hours, they say, Ted, you're not speaking to me. You're neglecting me. And you actually have a conversation with them. They need to be fed. They need to be given things to drink. How pathetic is that? How pathetic that people are so lonely that they're buying mechanical animals and mechanical persons to give themselves the illusion of connection, of friendship. And we can tell them about the best friend there could ever be. God Himself. A friend. And you can know Him. And you can know Him more intimately and more completely than any human friend. And He'll never let you down. He'll never fail you. He's always there. He's always understanding. And He's strong and wise and powerful and kind. And you need never, ever be lonely again with God as your Friend, wherever you are, in whatever circumstances. Isn't that a tremendous message that we have for people who are dissatisfied and lonely? A Christ who can make you a new person and be the friend who never leaves you. The blessings of the new covenant. And that brings us thirdly and lastly, and I hope you're not impatient yet because we have some way to go, to the mediator of the new covenant. The mediator of the new covenant. Verse 34b. You see, we haven't yet reached the heart of the newness. And some of you may have realized that as you've been thinking about what I've been saying. I say that the blessings of the covenant were, first of all, a new nature. But did Old Testament believers not have a new nature? Where old Tess, was Abraham born again? Was Ruth born again? Well, of course they had a new nature. Of course they had a new nature. They couldn't have believed God's promises unless they had a new nature. And we've said that there's a new intimacy with God. And so there is. But would you not say that Abraham was intimate with God? He was called the friend of God? Would you say that you know God better than David did? I don't think I could say that. So, what's the difference? Where does the newness come in? You find it in the little word, for. For. This means because. For. I will forgive their wickedness. and will remember their sins no more. Here is the new element. Sin is going to be dealt with. This was the weakness of the Old Covenant. The elaborate rituals, the repeated sacrifices again and again were a reminder of sin. We are told in Hebrews that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. Something new has to happen. What is the change? If you don't remember anything else this evening, take this away with you. This is the most important part of the sermon. The change, the newness is the second party of the covenant. That is the absolute key. That is the answer. In the new covenant, The Father makes the covenant with His own Son. He makes the covenant with His own Son. The covenant, the Moses covenant, the Sinai covenant, was made between God and the people. We're talking the old covenant here is the covenant made at Sinai. God describes it as that in verse 32. The covenant, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. This covenant that we're talking about is the covenant of grace in many ways older than the Sinai covenant. The covenant made with Abraham. But here the covenant is made between God the Father and God the Son. They're the parties. And God the Son takes our place and acts on our behalf. It isn't between God and us. It's between the Father and the Son. The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 31 asks, with whom was the covenant of grace made? Answer, the covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam and in him with all the elect as his seed. He is the mediator of the new covenant and that is why it is unbreakable. What was wrong with the old covenant? They broke it. They broke it. What's right with the new covenant? He won't break it. He will never break it. That's why it's solid. That's why it's guaranteed. That's why it's bound to be successful. He will never invalidate its terms. And the foundation of the new covenant is the cross. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. All the curses of our covenant breaking fell on Christ and they were absorbed by His sufferings on the cross so that the covenant may endure and we may inherit its blessings. God dealt with sin at Calvary. So God can say, I will forgive their iniquity. because our sin has been paid for. And I will remember their wickedness no more, because sin has been dealt with once for all. And this is the heart of the new covenant. It was made between the Father and the Son. And therefore, it is unbreakable. And therefore, it is everlasting, because He keeps it perfectly and will never Break it. And so all fits into place suddenly. The new nature is Christ Himself formed in us by the working of His Spirit. The new intimacy. They will all know Me in a new way. Of course, Jesus brings us into the presence of the Father. Of course, Jesus leads us to the Father and helps us to know the Father. But friends, there is more than that. God Himself is in our hearts. Christ is in us. And we are in Him. Our union with Christ unites us with God in a way that was never possible before. We are closer to God than was ever possible before. For God is in our hearts and we are joined to God and one with God. The hymn writer put it this way, In Christ the tribes of Adam boast more blessings than their father lost. We're better off now in Christ than we would have been if Adam had never sinned. Augustine, that daring theologian, said, O felix culpa, O happy fault. He's referring to Adam and Eve's sin in the garden. And what he was saying was that we're closer to God now than Adam was. Adam walked in fellowship with God. Adam knew God. Adam saw God. But Adam wasn't in Christ, at least not in his experience. Palmer Robertson writes, Christ achieves in himself the essence of the covenantal principle. And we haven't yet come to the end. There's still a degree of incompleteness. We haven't yet exhausted this passage. And as long as we live on this earth, we can't exhaust this passage. And this passage leads us to heaven and forces us to heaven and opens up heaven for us. Think about it. I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. Well, if you're a Christian, God has done that. But it's not perfectly done. It's not completely done. There are other things still in your mind, aren't there? There are other things still in your heart, aren't there? But the day is coming when there won't be. The day is coming when there will be nothing in your consciousness. Nothing. Nothing. But what is complete? pleasing to God in every way, when every thought you and I think will be perfectly and utterly holy, guided by Scripture in every part, when every action will be dominated by God's Word. And God says, I will forgive their sins and remember their iniquities no more. And God has done that. And when we come to Christ, we're forgiven. But we have to keep coming back for forgiveness, don't we? Every day. Say, Lord, I'm afraid there are more sins. I need forgiven again. I need forgiven again. But friends, the day is coming when you'll never need forgiven again. You'll never commit another sin to all eternity. Never again. Never again will you have to say sorry. Never again will you be ashamed. Never again will you ask for forgiveness, for you'll never commit another sin to all eternity. And they shall all know me. We know God now, praise God, that the day is coming when we shall know Him far more fully and completely. We're living in dark times, in pagan times, but this is a perfect time for the Gospel. For we're convinced that the only hope for people, the only hope for our world, is the grace of God in Christ, the new covenant sealed in His blood, the new nature, the new intimacy, And this is what we're called to do as Christians, to call people to faith in Jesus, to preach Him, to lift Him up. Why has God done this? Why has God done this? The answer is one that fills me with wonder. I've been thinking about it for at least six months. And I haven't got the hang of it yet. And I don't expect I ever will. Verse 3 of this chapter, I have loved you with an everlasting love. And Gerhardus Voss comments on that. Listen to this. A terrific quotation. The best proof that God will never cease to love us lies in the fact that He never began. Try to get your head around that. He never began. I have loved you with an everlasting love. There never was a time, there never was a time when God didn't love us. Never. I can't understand that. But one thing I'm sure, there'll never be a time when He won't love us. And I think I can understand that a bit better. Amen.