New Covenant

Jer 31

On this 3rd day of Advent our theme is Joy. And I’m so glad. I thought I might do a topical sermon on joy but in God’s good timing our next passage in Jeremiah was that famous passage in Jeremiah 31 that speaks for the first time in the Bible of a New Covenant. A Covenant that would surpass and fulfill all the other Covenants that had come before. And this of course is the New Covenant that Jesus our Lord and Savior speaks of when He spoke of giving of His body and giving of His blood so that we might live.

So the coming together of this passage on the New Covenant and the theme of joy made my sermon topic an easy one to arrive at: Our joy in the New Covenant that we have with God through Jesus Christ.

In our walk with the Lord there is the joy of things past, joy of things that are, and joy of things that are yet to be. And the New Covenant is a joy of something that IS. It is in effect now and its power can be seen here and now in the world, and therefore we have a joy in the New Covenant that is not just a looking forward to something, but is a joy that we who are disciples of Christ have every waking moment of our Earthly lives.

Covenant is not a common word, or as popular a concept as it once was in our culture. Marriage is one of the few remaining examples of covenant that we still have, at least for now. One of the ways that we can understand better this New Covenant that the Lord reveals through Jeremiah in prophetic form, is by looking at marriage. So please bear with me for a bit as we reflect on that.

I know that marriage is supposed to be super easy and just fun all the time, but for some strange reason Laura and I have occasionally had troubles in our marriage. It’s highly unusual, I know, and I know that probably no one else here can relate to that, but it’s just the facts.

One thing that was difficult for us as a couple, and something that I had at times a blind spot towards, was the concept of mental load. This can be a tough one for some men, and it was for me. Laura makes a lot of the decisions and takes a lot of the initiative in our domestic life. Everything from meal planning to vacations and a good deal in between- she handled those things. Still does, for the most part. I took the position that my role was to be as helpful as possible in all these ways, so if she had a task or role I could play my job was to do so cheerfully in service to the greater good. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and certainly my intentions were good, but what I did not realize for a long time was that my being helpful did nothing to alleviate her mental load. And what she wanted from me was more initiative and more taking upon myself tasks and projects without being told what to do. This was a hard earned realization. I have attempted, with varying degrees of success and failure, to take more initiative and to not rely so much on Laura’s ideas all the time but to try and have some ideas and plans of my own that we can implement, to try and make it not all be on her for the family to have things to do and to eat, etc.

So now that I do that perfectly we have no more problems in our marriage. Follow me for more tips!

Now my point here is that when 2 sinners get married and join together their lives and become one flesh, there is going to be trouble and there has to be a sharing of that trouble, and a sharing of the mental load that comes with having a family together.

But what is the mental load of being united, as Israel was, with the Lord God, who is perfectly holy, perfectly loving, and you, Israel, are naturally sinful, naturally stubborn, naturally violent, naturally greedy, and every aspect of you is broken and prideful in some way? And the Lord’s presence, His character, requires of you that you would reflect God’s character, as you were originally made to reflect, and that you would be selfless, pure, honorable, compassionate, humble, and in this way be a Godly person. And you cannot do it. You just can’t. You cannot ever measure up to and be the man or woman of God that God calls you to be. You are in a Covenant and you are always and forever unable to fulfill even the most basic obligations of your side of the Covenant.

What level of mental load is this? Jeremiah’s entire corpus of material in this book and Lamentations, is a study in despair at how our sin weighs us down and destroys us, even we who are striving to follow God and be good people. All the prophets and the histories are replete with the people of God breaking under the mental load of trying to follow God and failing spectacularly at it.

And the marriage breaks. The Covenant is broken. Israel is unfaithful, and she goes after other gods who offer power and wealth and sex and all the dark desires in the human heart, and the marriage is broken.

But imagine if Laura said to me during one of our difficult times the following: You don’t need to bear any mental load anymore. And you don’t need to DO anything at all anymore. You don’t need to worry about anything anymore. I will do all the things. I will care for everything in the family and in the marriage myself. And I will not resent it nor will I be destroyed by it because I am strong enough to do everything myself. And I will still love you and we will still be married. I will just carry it all. And even if you don’t lift a finger the rest of your life to do anything for the family I will still love you while doing all of the work.

Now of course in real life, that would be a serious cause for alarm. Because of course the analogy breaks down with 2 humans. Laura can’t handle everything herself. Nor would it be right for her to not expect anything at all from me! Although, imagine if Laura was a superwoman and really could just do it all, and was doing it all, and was simultaneously not resenting any of it and still treating me with kindness and respect. What would my reaction be? Well, I would be astonished, grateful, and I would want to repay her kindness in turn by becoming a better person- more like her!- and to be a better husband. And if it was all true by some miracle then how much joy would I have that I didn’t have to worry about anything, that this remarkable one in a billion woman was literally capable to do it all herself and I could try and help her but whether or not I failed or succeeded I knew the marriage would remain strong because she was just that powerful and she just loved me that much.

And I would have no mental load at all because she would have all of it. My only job, really, is to not leave her. To stay with her. I can’t mess it up by failing. I can only mess it up by leaving.

This is the New Covenant. This is a Covenant that does not depend on you, there is no mental load for you in this Covenant. Your personal failures and sins cannot derail this gift from God. All you need to do is not leave the Lord. You stay in the marriage, as it were.

What does it mean, then, for us to ‘stay in the marriage’? How does one do that in this extended analogy of marriage and the New Covenant? Well, to stay in the marriage you believe in your spouse:

Romans 10:9–10 “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

And that is sufficient, although it must be mentioned that to declare Jesus is Lord means to make Him Lord, which means to repent of your sins...to know that you are a sinner. In my marriage analogy if I don’t acknowledge or understand that Laura is carrying all the load of the marriage and if I delude myself into thinking that I am still doing some of the work then I am not accepting the reality of the situation, I am deluding myself. I am taking advantage of her kindness, not accepting it gratefully. Paul talks about this in the 2nd chapter of Romans:

Romans 2:4 “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

So to be in the New Covenant you repent and believe. And that is it. That is your job, that is what you do. That is what anyone can do at any time and any moment and any place in the world. You do not need a special rite, you don’t need a Roman Catholic priest OR a Protestant pastor, if you want to be a signatory, a member of the New Covenant that is in the spilled blood of Jesus Christ all you need to do is repent and believe. And that is the moment of salvation. And that is also the moment when you will understand that Jesus is not JUST the means of being saved...He is also the destination of our salvation. He did not just say “I am The Way”. He also said I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. And in another place He says I am the Light of the whole World. He does not just give us light, He IS light!

Larry Crabb, the well known Christian writer and counselor wrote a book called “The Pressure Is Off” that is a reflection, among other things, on this reality of our new relationship, or Covenant with God through Christ after the Cross. The theme can well be seen in the title- “The pressure is off”. To live for Christ is to lay down our cares and anxieties before the throne of Christ and to give Him our burdens.

What is it that makes this Covenant “new”? Well, what was the Old Covenant? Well, there were 4 of them. SLIDE - we can see how Christ fulfills each of these covenants.

Noah- when our hearts are not full of sin, there is no impetus to destroy the world

Abraham- Your offspring will be a light to every nation- Jesus- salvation comes from the Jews.

Moses- This is the covenant we think of most often- the covenant of fulfilling God’s Laws and if we do that then He will ensure that we live in a blessed land. The Lord will change our hearts such that we will naturally follow the Laws of God, to the point where we don’t even need instructors or teachers to tell us how to do it!

David- there will be an offspring of David who reigns forever (2 samuel 7) and this is fulfilled in the eternal and never ending reign of Christ.

Is it that the Lord no longer cares whether or not you are holy? Is it that sin no longer matters to God? No. Not at all. But in this description of the New Covenant who is it that makes us good and holy? Not us. We don’t figure into the New Covenant at all in terms of OUR work.

Jeremiah 31:33 “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.”

The Lord says I will simply make it so. I will make for myself a people who are holy and who are mine. I will do this, and they, my people, will NOT be responsible for upholding any part of this New Covenant. It is not something for you to worry about, upholding this Covenant, when you come to Church and worship Jesus part of what you are doing is letting go of your mental load. The mental load for what? For everything- everything that is important anyway. For your life, your death, your relationship with the Lord, and your salvation. We hand it over to Jesus, who is able to carry these burdens and overcome them.

This is a precious and holy Covenant, and its precious and holy nature can be seen both by how foundational it is, and how it is only mentioned a few times in the Bible.

Now you might think that if something is very important and foundational then it might be talked about a lot. And sometimes that is true, especially when it comes to ethics and specific things that we humans need a lot of reminders about. So, for example, there are many reminders in the Bible to treat the poor with dignity or to be humble in nature, etc.

But the New Covenant is only mentioned 8 times in the Bible. It is prophesied once in the Old Testament, one and one time only, here in Jeremiah 31. Then it is established and proclaimed in Luke 22:20

Luke 22:20 ESV

And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Then there are only 6 more mentions in the Bible. Twice Paul refers to the New Covenant, both times in letters to the church in Corinth. One time he is quoting Jesus’ words at Passover, at the Last Supper. And the other time he is basically saying that he and his fellow ministers are no one particularly special. That it is not their work that will change people, but rather the work of the Holy Spirit, which is, of course, the heart of the New Covenant.

And then the author of Hebrews uses the term 4 times as he unpacks the signficance of the New Covenant theologically for the whole Church. One of those instances is simply quoting Jeremiah for the Hebrews author quotes a significant part of Jeremiah 31. And we will get to that in due time.

But that is it. That is all the times that it is mentioned in the Bible, and a couple of those are simply quoting other passages in the Bible where it is mentioned. Of course, we could expand this a bit, because in Mark and Matthew’s Gospel Jesus does talk about the “blood of the Covenant” at the Last Supper and it is clear from the larger context that He is referencing Jeremiah 31, but He doesn’t specifically say the New Covenant so I am being somewhat legalistic here.

Regardless, it is not mentioned many times. But that makes it carry all the more weight. It is a holy and sacred institution, the New Covenant, and the Bible says everything that needs to be said about it, but it does not cheapen it through repetition.

(Sometimes people make the argument, usually with regard to matters of sexuality in the argument, that because the Bible does not mention it many times, it can’t be that important. And of course that is a fallacious argument, because sometimes the opposite is true, that something is not spoken of much because it is either so foundational OR made so clear the first time, nothing more needs to be said. So, for example, when people say that Jesus spoke a lot more about taking care of the poor than He did about adultery, say, or homosexuality, that is true. So they imply that it isn’t that important to God. But it’s interesting that the things our culture still holds to be evil, such as bestiality, they would not make the same argument, even thought bestiality is mentioned even less than those other practices)