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1.1.23 Jeremiah 31 Wes Andrews · HBCWestminster

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Watching Jubilee, I have a year and a half here. Watching Jubilee this Christmas season though was just, it was magical. As seasons change and like different stages of life come, you start to view the holidays different. And watching it through her eyes was great. We had presents under the tree for weeks. But when she realized there were things.
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End of those wrappings. It was game over. I mean, she was like the Tasmanian devil. Just from one thing to the next, ripping it, just looking for that next new thing. And so it would be my gifts, Brittany's gifts.
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Other gifts that we then had to rewrap to give to people. It was great. She was just looking for that new thing. And even got more excited, more often than not, with the box in which the gift came than the gift, which as a dad buying presents is a little disheartening, as I'm sure a lot of you know. But as I thought about that this week, I do that all the time.
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I go from one new thing to the next new thing looking for that thrill and so often will throw out the new thing for something newer, even if that newer thing is just the box in which it came. And so today, as we approach God's word and walk into 2023 together, we're going to remind ourselves of what we already know, which is something we need to do often. We are prone to forget. We're going to look at the new covenant.
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as explained for the first time in Jeremiah 31.31. So we will be in Jeremiah 31.31 today. We began this service by taking communion, the symbol of the new covenant we have with God, won by Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Twice a month, we as a church take communion in remembrance of what Christ has done because we know how easy it is to forget. Well, church, as we walk into this new year, we're gonna take a moment and reflect.
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on the greatest gift God has given us. Let me pray and then we'll begin. Oh, great God in highest heaven, occupy our lowly hearts. Own it all and reign supreme. God, as we review what you have done and we anticipate our future with you, help us, Lord, not to get distracted by anything else. Not to fixate on the box instead of the gift.
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but to look at what you have done and to praise your name for it. For you are worthy. We love you, Lord. We pray this in your name. Amen. Well, in order for us to appreciate the new covenant, we really need to remember what the world was like before Christ came. Israel was enslaved in Egypt with no hope of salvation, trapped in their condition, helpless, hopeless, until God mightily
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wondrously came down and rescued them. These are the 10 plagues that we examine in the book of Exodus. There was no question as to who did the saving. God saved his people, took them out of the land of Egypt, brought them to Mount Sinai, and proposed a covenant with them. Mount Sinai, God offered a covenant. A covenant is a legal agreement between two parties. It's an agreement of protection and service.
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And the summary of this agreement, we know well, it's called the Ten Commandments. These commandments, I'm sorry, this covenant said that God would be Israel's God and they would be his people. It outlined rules for Israel to follow in order to be his people, blessings that would come if they obeyed, and punishments which would follow when they did not. He also gave a way to renew their relationship with him by repenting and sacrificing when that covenant was broken.
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Well, what a deal. Can you imagine Israel at this time and place? Enslaved months before. Saw God act mightily, wondrously against the strongest military on the planet at the time. Brings his people out and then says, I want to further my relationship with you. Well, as you can imagine, they accepted the terms of the covenant. They were thrilled to be in relationship with God.
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So God moved in. He chose a single location where he could be found, the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle, seated on the Ark of the Covenant, which was his throne. God was in the midst of his people, but his neighborly proximity to them was not enough to enable them to keep their side of the covenant. Being God's next-door neighbor did not inspire Israel towards right living. Although he was close,
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He was still foreign. He was far off. Because although God was in the midst of the people, not just anyone could approach God. His holiness demanded separation, lest his holiness consume the sinful one who approached. So he set up divisions and restrictions to keep the people separate from him because of the intensity of his holiness. When God was on Mount Sinai giving Moses the law, he said no one is even allowed to come on the mountain because his holiness was so intense.
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Only one man, the high priest, one time a year, the day of atonement, could enter into the presence of God. And he only did so after a ritual cleaning and then would tie a rope around his waist and a bell to that rope so that when he passed beyond the veil to go and offer and do his duties in the Holy of Holies, the men on the other side of the veil would hold the rope.
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and could pull him out if they heard the bell stop ringing because that meant the guy had fallen dead in the presence of God because he approached God with an unclean heart. Talk about intensity. So intense was God's holiness that this ritual cleaning was not enough. When the people learned about this separation, they were thankful. When Moses came back in Exodus 34 from being on the mountain with God, his face shone because he was in the presence of God and they asked him to veil it.
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They're like, that's too much for us. Moses was like a glow stick being in the presence of God and that was too much for them. So the holiness scared the people and rightfully so. God created barriers between them so that they would not be consumed. He was in their midst, but he was still far off. This is foreshadowing. God provided mediators. People wanted to access God, but their sin made it impossible.
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Day after day, year after year, Israel discovered they were unable and unwilling to follow the rules God had made. So year after year, they would offer sacrifices for their disobedience. Israel relied on a group of men in their midst to mediate their communication and relationship with God. They had priests who would go and offer sacrifices on their behalf. They were the ones through whom they were informed about God. They were the go-between between God and man.
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But the priests were not great representatives because they were sinful as well. They needed to make sacrifices for themselves. How effective can the one performing the sacrifice be if the one performing the sacrifice also needs someone to sacrifice for him? They were easily corrupted. This position of power and prestige of the priesthood was in Israel. The first high priest had his...
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two sons, the heir apparent to the role of high priest, consumed because they offered God strange fire. They thought they could do it themselves. They thought more of themselves than they were. How can the people really know God when they must go through another sinful man to have communion with him? This is foreshadowing again. God provided sacrifices. The people could not approach God because of their sin.
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The priests could not approach God because of their sin, so God established a system by which they could approach him. But these sacrifices served as constant reminders of their failing. They broke their side of the covenant, the law, and they needed to make amends. Year after year, the priests would offer sacrifices as reminders of how their payment was insufficient. The exchange of an animal for their sin was never good enough. They continued to fail.
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and so continually had to go and petition God to pass over their sins. How discouraging and deflating this must have been. No matter how hard they tried, they could never enter the presence of God because of their sin. The consequences of their sin was ever looming. The best they could do was kick the can down the road and rely on the future mercy of God. Their sacrifices were a constant reminder of their broken relationship with God, their inability to really know God, and their sinfulness.
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They longed for a day when they could be right with God and approach his presence, but the consequences of their sin made that impossible. Foreshadowing. This was life under the old covenant. Israel was unwilling and unable to know God. Israel was forced to follow law after law to avoid judgment, but was too weak to follow the law because their flesh was so strong.
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Even the heroes of the Old Testament were riddled with sin and scandal and looked forward to a day when God would fix their broken relationship with him. The longer Israel existed, the more evident their sin became. They could not please God because their obedience was not enough. They were not obedient enough. So they began to trust and to look at other things. Church, I don't know about you, but this pattern sounds a lot like me before I knew Christ.
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I tried to be good, but I wasn't good enough. So I knew that following these laws would continue to add to guilt. Who wants to fall short and feel guilty anyway? Like Israel, I wanted to avoid judgment. So I would put my trust in other things. The more they tried to avoid judgment, the further away they moved from pleasing God.
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Because God wanted their hearts to motivate their actions, but their hearts were far from him and their actions were self-serving. Israel moved so far from God that they stopped trusting God and began to trust in things that never had any saving power. No sooner had the proverbial ink of the covenant been signed than did Israel start to look at the next thing. Think of the present Israel was given. They had access to God, veiled, but access. They had the ability to know God.
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Corrupt through priesthood, but still ability. And they had a way to continue in relationship with God. Continually offering sacrifices, but relationship still. And they looked at this covenant and decided that the box in which it came was a better deal. So they chose to start trusting in something else. They trusted in the ark of the covenant instead of trusting in the God who sat upon it. So God allowed the ark to be taken away in battle and captured to show that they misplaced their trust.
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They trusted in men and established kings instead of trusting God to be their king. So God allowed those kings to split the kingdom and abuse and tax the people. They trusted in the long suffering of God. Since God had always come to their rescue, they would be fine as long as they did a little repenting before things got too bad. So God allowed other nations to come and carry them away. They trusted in their heritage. Since they were God's people, he would surely keep them safe no matter what they did.
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So God allowed his people to be taken away into captivity. They trusted in their proximity to God and exchanged the tabernacle for the temple, but then started to trust in the temple of the God instead of the one who indwelled it. They thought, since God lives in the temple, he will not let his people be destroyed. As long as we are close to God in his city, we will be safe. Well, God is in the habit of correcting bad theology.
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So for Israel, God raised up the prophet Jeremiah to tell his people of his coming correction. Jeremiah prophesied for years that punishment was coming, and in 586 BC, he allowed the unthinkable to occur. He allowed the Babylonians to destroy his temple, ransack his city, Jerusalem, and carry off his people into captivity. The people were in total shock and disbelief. How could God allow this to happen? They felt lost and abandoned and rejected.
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And maybe this sounded like you, church. Maybe you trusted in something that was close to God, but not God himself. Maybe it was your history of church attendance or your proximity to those who have relationship with God or the fact that God has not yet acted against you. Well, God is in the habit of correcting bad theology because bad theology leads away from him. God, Israel needed a light back to God.
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And so it was against this unthinkably dark backdrop of punishment and hopelessness that God revealed to Jeremiah the greatest promise in all of Scripture. He told him about the new covenant. Jeremiah 31, verse 31, God declared, 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.
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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 will 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.
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From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Wow, what a promise. The three major parts of the new covenant discuss the three major issues of the old one. Sin meant man could not approach God. Sin meant man had no real mediator between God and man. And the consequences of sin were ominous.
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and looming. They were a constant presence with no permanent solution. So God gives us verse 33 when he says, first I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. God put his law within us. This declaration is a play on the Mosaic law which was written on stone tablets and given to Moses. The old covenant which was a list of do's and don'ts with blessings and punishments attached to actions.
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was entirely exterior. And the results was that obedience was largely exterior as well. The new covenant, however, is where the knowledge of God is internalized. Now God promises to put that law in the hearts of his people. They will be motivated by a desire to honor God, not avoid judgment. The cold and exterior is exchanged for the warm and intimate. How did God accomplish this? The cost was paid by the Son of God on the cross.
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And that sealed the Holy Spirit coming and indwelling, enabling us to obey out of joy, not out of fear. For those who have been saved, we have God himself within. Think of the contrast. God in the midst of the people, in the middle, and yet foreign and far off. And now, God indwells. We have God, very God, empowering us. We can obey.
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We can please God. We can approach God. Our hearts are no longer far from him. Our obedience is not to avoid judgment, but an act of worship. What a joy. Second, he says in verse 34, I will be their God. They will be my people. God promises an intimate relationship with him. In the old covenant, the one seeking God had to go through ritual and priest. The role of priest was necessary because of the guilt of sin.
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In the old covenant, there was a certain time when a person needed to go commune with God and a specific location where that communication could occur. No one could just approach God. They had to be taught how to approach him. But in the new covenant, from the least to the greatest, anyone can approach God. No education or training or ceremony necessary. God provided access to him by becoming our kinsman redeemer.
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Jesus is the high priest through which we have access to God and he makes the way open and available to all. We do not need to go through a purification ceremony because Christ is our purification. We do not need to offer sacrifices because Christ was our sacrifice. We do not need to go to a place where God resides, the temple, because the Holy Spirit indwells us. God resides within. We do not need to wait for the sun to rise and the priest to wake up and the temple doors to open because Christ is our mediator and he never sleeps.
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Church, we have free and equal access to God through our great high priest and the work that he has accomplished. And by the power of the Spirit, what a blessing. And finally, in verse 35, he promises that he will remember your sins no more. Imagine the magnitude of this declaration to a people who continually, annually had to offer sacrifice.
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The God of the universe announces that the thing which keeps us from him, our sins, will be totally and forever gone. The destructive power of sin and the cosmic consequences we suffer because of it will be completely done. God is not saying that he will forget our sins as if there is something that our omniscient God does not or cannot know. No, he states that he will remember them no more.
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One of my Old Testament professors is a Hebrew scholar, and he translates the phrase this way, I will obliterate their sins. It's not that God has forgotten them, it's that they are gone. This reminds me of the Death Star from the movie Star Wars. The Death Star was a moon-shaped, moon-sized station with the power to destroy planets. It was dark and ominous and looming.
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In a new hope, the climax of the final battle sees the protagonist, Luke Skywalker, shooting two photon torpedoes into the reactor core and the Death Star explodes into a million pieces. It was obliterated. Not one piece of that space station was salvageable. And on the movie screen, it looked like stardust. Its power and gravitas were gone.
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And this is what happened to my sins when Christ died for them on the cross. Sin's power and gravitas were obliterated. Romans 8, one through four puts this reality in the positive. It says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful
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and for sin. He condemns sin to the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. God remembers my sins past, present, and future no more because Christ obliterated them on the cross. Church, this is the Trinitarian covenant in which we live. This salvation, we have Christ in us.
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We have the Spirit in us. We have the Son mediating for us. And we have the Father declaring us righteous. Think of how the Israelites longed for access and relationship to God that we have. What a privileged position in salvation history. They needed a priest to go on their behalf to approach God. And not anyone could go into his presence.
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We do not need a priest. Jesus has torn the veil when he died on the cross, symbolizing our ability to come to him freely. They had a list of do's and don'ts, which they followed out of fear of breaking relationship with God. Their disobedience could lead to excommunication from the covenant community. Christ kept those rules perfectly for us, and now we get to obey, not out of fear, but out of joy in service to our king. They continually, annually, had to offer sacrifices for their sins.
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Each year, the Passover land was offered, and they understood that their sins were still looming. They were kicking the can down the road, as it were. They knew that the cost of their sins and that the sacrifice did not atone for them. Christ suffered for us as the ultimate Passover lamb, and by doing so, obliterated our sin and enabled God to be just and to justify for those who believe. Christ accomplished that for us. We have God in us.
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working for us and declaring us right with him. Wow, what a promise. What fools we would be to exchange this gift for the box in which it came. So what is a reasonable response to knowing what we have now in Christ? The author of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 10, outlines for us three...
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reasonable responses for us to follow in this new covenant. We'll go Hebrews chapter 10 starting in verse 19. I'll begin reading in 15 just for context. He says,
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There is forgiveness of these. There is no longer any offering for sin. Verse 19, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus and by the new and living way which he has opened through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, first reality, let us draw near.
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with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Our first reasonable response is to draw near to God. In the old covenant, not everyone had access to the presence of God, but we in the new covenant, sealed by Christ, can approach God. The veil has been torn. We can come into his presence with confidence knowing that we will not be undone because of our sin.
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The boldness of our approach comes not from ourselves, but from the confidence we have in the substitutionary death of Jesus. If it feels as if you cannot approach God, this is the evil conscience the author of Hebrews is talking of. The devil may try to remind you of the things which should keep you away from God. He may remind you and bring up those past things of which you are now ashamed. But remember, Christ has obliterated your sins. You can.
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drawn near to God. Our reasonable response is this. Spend time with God. Bask in his presence. It's not a chore or a job to go in the presence of God, but a privilege. It's said that President Roosevelt's children often played games in the White House like hide-and-go-seek. While many people lined up with a certain amount of reverence to go and view the White House, these children were running around from room to room, hiding and laughing and jumping out.
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Those voyeurs came with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance because they were strangers to the White House, but the Roosevelt children lived in it. The time they spent in the house changed the way in which they interacted with the house. If God seems cold and distant to you, it's because you are a visitor to him. Go to him. Go into his presence daily and your view of him will change. Live in his presence and your relationship with him.
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will change. Draw near to God because you can. If you need help with knowing how to do this, we announced these different church Bible reading plans. Pastor Sam has put them together. It's a list of Bible reading plans for your convenience to help you in this first step of just spending time with God. Walk through one of those. Begin the video series with Pastor Davey or do the Read Scripture app.
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That's a great way to start walking into the presence of God. Second, in verse 23, the author writes, Yes and amen. We need not waver because God is faithful. He kept his covenant with Israel even when they could not keep it. He kept his covenant with Israel even when they abandoned it. God stayed faithful even when Israel gave her trust to another.
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God then promised to send one to do what Israel could never do, keep his law perfect, and through this one establish the new covenant. Our confession is how God established this covenant. Jesus Christ and him crucified. Why should we hold this confession loosely? Hold it tightly. Proclaim it boldly. We confess that God, very God, became man. That's what last week was, Christmas. Our celebration of the first advent.
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We confess that he lived a perfect life, that he was crucified in my place, that God raised him from the dead, and we eagerly await his second advent because we see that his sacrifice was sufficient. No longer do we need to go time after time to sacrifice. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, and he washed it white as snow. Our third response.
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Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting the meeting together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawn near. We need to encourage one another to love and good works. We do not do good works to gain God's approval, but as acts of worship. We are not providing evidence to God. We're trying to work off a payment for our salvation. We obey out of love.
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not out of fear of missing out. We encourage one another to live rightly, to do good, because left to our own devices, church, we forget. We need to encourage one another to act in love and good works because our flesh is strong. Although we have been saved, we still sin. And this is the rub that many people have with the church. It's full of people who claim Christ and yet still sin. Yes, it is.
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We're all sinners struggling to fight sin in our own hearts as we eagerly await the Lord coming. For those of you who think that you do not need the church because it is full of sinners, remember, we are warriors in the army of God behind enemy lines. Fighting the battle by yourself will only lead to discouragement and failure because the enemy is powerful. If you were alone on a battlefield and suffered a wound, how discouraging would it be to suffer that alone?
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What joy would fill your heart to see a comrade come, bandage that wound, and help you along. When we gather, we do so to remind one another that we are not alone in this fight of sin. The church is not a place where the perfect gather to show off their perfection to one another. It's a place where the wounded gather to bandage up one another, remind one another of the reason for which we are fighting, and to encourage one another to keep going. You are not alone in this fight.
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So why act like it? What benefit do you gain by trying to run your race alone? God in his infinite wisdom gave us one another for our own encouragement. So go, gather therefore, and be encouraged. And if you do not need encouragement right now, then go be encouraging to another. I love a good box as much as the next kid. And I too have played with many a box instead of the thing that the box contained.
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Just this week, I built a fort with Jubilee out of a box and slid down the stairs in a box and made armor and weapons, and the utility of a box is almost endless. But what a tragedy it would be if I were, 13 years ago, had to walk up to my now wife, got down on one knee, and presented her with a box containing a ring, and for her to look at the ring and then be fixated on the box. I probably wouldn't be here, I'll tell you that right now.
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Church, as we walk into 2023, let us embrace the gift that God has given us and not be distracted by anything else. Let us draw near to God in full assurance that Christ has won our salvation. We can draw near to God, so let's do it. Let's boldly cling to the confession that Christ's payment was enough, and let's encourage one another to live for Christ by gathering together and worshiping corporately as we await his return.
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The new covenant is a glorious gift. Let's not neglect it. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you. Thank you as we look back to last week for your coming. Thank you for accomplishing what you accomplished by instituting this new covenant promised thousands of years ago and sealed by your work on the cross. And thank you, Lord, as we look forward to your second coming. God, that you are patient with us.
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Help us, Lord, to draw near to you. Help us to boldly proclaim what you have done for us and help us to encourage one another, Lord, to run to you because we are so weak and we forget so easily. May your name be praised in 2023 as we walk forward. We love you, Lord. In your name, amen.