A NEW COVENANT

Introduction

-{Jeremiah 31}

-Today I want to talk about a theological topic that at first might sound completely boring, but I think that if you are able to grasp what it’s talking about it will help you understand Scripture better in the long run. I want to talk about the subject of covenant. That word doesn’t sound very biblical at first, because we might relate that with being a legal term more than anything. If you’re part of a Home Owners Association, you have the HOA covenants and the like. And there is somewhat of a legal aspect to it, but as I’ll think that we’ll find, it is more relational than anything.

-What in the world is a covenant? A covenant is a binding agreement between two people that outlines the obligations and demands and commitments within the bonds of a relationship. Although it might be easy to overlook the relationship aspect and equate covenant to being similar to a contract, there is a significant difference.

-In describing the nature of the new covenant (that I am emphasizing today) Bruce Shelley in his book entitled Christian Theology in Plain Language, writes:

In modern times we define a host of relations by contracts. These are usually for goods or services and for hard cash. The contract, formal or informal, helps to specify failure in these relationships. The Lord did not establish a contract with Israel or with the church. He created a covenant. There is a difference.

Contracts are broken when one of the parties fails to keep his promise. If, let us say, a patient fails to keep an appointment with a doctor, the doctor is not obligated to call the house and inquire, "Where were you? Why didn’t you show up for your appointment?" He simply goes on to his next patient and has his appointment-secretary take note of the patient who failed to keep the appointment. The patient may find it harder the next time to see the doctor. He broke an informal contract.

According to the Bible, however, the Lord asks: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!" (Isa. 49:15).

The Bible indicates the covenant is more like the ties of a parent to her child than it is a doctor’s appointment. If a child fails to show up for dinner, the parent’s obligation, unlike the doctor’s, isn’t canceled. The parent finds out where the child is and makes sure he’s cared for. One member’s failure does not destroy the relationship. A covenant puts no conditions on faithfulness. It is the unconditional commitment to love and serve.

-Contracts are legal, covenants are relational. And why this is important is because all of God’s dealings with humanity center on covenants. God uses covenants to define the relationship and God uses covenants to move His plan of redemption along and it is covenant that defines that redemption. If you understand covenant, you are able to see how God progressed things through history to get to the point where we are at now.

-Covenant is important in understanding the flow of redemption history in the Bible. You may have heard theological terms used by scholars or Bible teachers such as dispensationalism or covenantalism which are frameworks people use to describe God’s movement of history in relation to humans. I do not ascribe to either of those views. I ascribe more to a view that is called Progressive Covenantalism. Dr. Stephen Wellum describes this view in three summary points:

(1) God’s one plan is revealed through a plurality of covenants culminating in Christ

(2) The covenants are more than a unifying theme of Scripture but are the backbone to the Bible’s redemptive storyline, starting in creation and reaching fulfillment in Christ

(3) God has one people; although there is an Israel-Church distinction due to their respective covenants, we must think of the Israel-Church relationship Christologically (meaning that in Christ Jesus, the church is God’s new creation, comprised of believing Jews and Gentiles), because Jesus is the last Adam and true Israel, the faithful seed of Abraham who inherits the promises by his work.

-That’s a lot to take in, but what it is saying is that throughout history, God made covenants with different people that would eventually lead to the new covenant in Jesus Christ. The new covenant in Jesus Christ is the final covenant that God would make with humanity and it is the fulfillment of what all the other covenants were pointing toward. While there was a covenant with Adam and creation, and a covenant with Noah, and a covenant with Abraham, and a covenant with Israel, and a covenant with David, all of these covenants find their fulfillment in the covenant initiated and mediated by Christ. All those other covenants were types and shadows leading to the ultimate covenant in Jesus Christ who embodied and fulfilled all the other covenants.

-If you want to have a relationship with God that relationship has to be through the new covenant: meaning, you must believe in Jesus Christ who inaugurated, fulfilled, and is the mediator of this covenant. And one of the greatest summaries of the new covenant ironically comes in the Old Testament where God prophesied that He would create and fulfill a new covenant that would open the door for anyone throughout the world to become one of His people by faith. God created this new, final covenant through Jesus Christ that has worldwide and eternal significance. And my prayer today is that if you are not part of this covenant that you would enter into this covenant, and if you are part of this covenant we are going to celebrate its implications this morning through the Lord’s Supper.

Jeremiah 31:31–37 ESV

31 “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, 32 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. 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. 34 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 sin no more.” 35 Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name: 36 “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” 37 Thus says the Lord: “If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the Lord.”

-I want to quickly talk about several characteristics of the new covenant that we have in Jesus Christ, so we fully understand what God has provided for us through this covenant and we are aware of what it is we celebrate when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper

1) The new covenant is imperishable

-As part of God’s covenant with Israel through the Mosaic covenant, they were to follow God’s law if they wanted to be prosperous in the land. But they didn’t do it. God used Jeremiah and other prophets to tell Israel and Judah that they broke God’s law, therefore they broke the covenant that God had with them, so they were going to be driven from the land. Israel was driven out of the land by the Assyrians and Judah was driven out by the Babylonians. And it is here that God emphasizes that the new covenant that He will inaugurate with humanity will be different from this old covenant.

-Whereas this old covenant could be broken by humanity (and was broken by humanity), the new covenant can never be broken. There are two sides to every covenant—God is on one side, a group of humanity is on the other side. In the Mosaic covenant it was God and Israel, and Israel broke the covenant. In the new covenant it is between God and whoever believes in Jesus Christ, and neither side of the covenant can break the covenant.

-How can that be, since we all know that even we believers break God’s laws and commandments? The reason that this is possible is because God made this covenant completely one-sided. The end of v. 34 gives us the key where God says I WILL FORGIVE THEIR INIQUITY AND I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SIN NO MORE. If you are in covenant with God in this new covenant, you are unable to break it because when you break God’s laws and standards, God offers forgiveness.

-And we know that the basis of forgiveness is not on us, but it is what God did through Jesus Christ—his death, burial, and resurrection. When you repent and believe in Jesus Christ you are brought into this new covenant with God and there is nothing you can do to break it. And since God is perfect and never lies and always keeps His promises, God will never break His side of the covenant. Herein lies the basis of our eternal security. If you are truly saved and born again, you will not lose your salvation because God will not break His covenant. He says in our passage that this covenant is imperishable, it cannot be broken....

2) The new covenant is internal

-Israel broke the Mosaic law and all its commands because the law was external to the people. It was words that had no power in them to cause the person to actually fulfill them. Yes, the law is a perfect representation of God’s character and morals and ethics. The law is a good thing in that it gives us the standards of a good God. But the problem with the law and with the Mosaic covenant is that it told you what you should and should not do, but it did not empower you to actually do or not do what it required. If you read a lot of Paul’s writings, this is a point he hits on a lot, and this is why the law and the old covenant cannot save a person.

-But the new covenant is different. In v. 33 God says I WILL PUT MY LAW WITHIN THEM AND I WILL WRITE IT ON THEIR HEARTS. That means the law is no longer merely external words that try to coerce you to do something, but in the new covenant something changes within the person where their heart is enlivened. And we learn in Scripture that God makes all people new who believe in Jesus and gives the Holy Spirit to enable and empower people to obey God because through the new covenant people’s very natures are changed.

-You see, after the fall of mankind, man naturally had a sinful nature. Those under the Mosaic covenant attempted to follow the law without a change in nature, which made it impossible. But in Christ, we are changed on the inside and have the Holy Spirit guiding us, and so now we can live our life in obedience. We don’t need to write out a checklist of dos and don’ts and live under the pressure of legalism, because now we live for God from a heart that is changed and empowered. That doesn’t mean we live sinlessly, but if we do sin it goes against what’s inside of us, and thankfully, like I mentioned before, now forgiveness is available....

3) The new covenant is international

-Under the Mosaic law, a person would have to become a Jew in order to be part of God’s chosen people. God’s people was merely this one nation out of hundreds of nations, and He only dealt with them. This is where God’s covenants and plan of redemption had led to up to that point. God had a chosen lineage through whom He made covenants. God chose Adam and then his son Seth which eventually led to Noah (with whom He made a covenant) whose descendants eventually led to Abraham / Isaac / Jacob (with whom he made covenant) which led to the nation of Israel with whom He made a covenant, and then the line of David with whom He made a covenant.

-God dealt with one lineage to make one people. Anybody outside of Israel was outside of God. However, when Christ came, the doors burst open to let the world in. That was God’s plan all along. God would reclaim the entire world. God says in v. 33 I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. No longer would you need to change your earthly citizenship because now in Christ you can stay in whatever nation you’re in and you can still change your heavenly citizenship. God is in covenant with people in the US, in Canada, in Nigeria, in Brazil, in Japan, and all around the world. That is what the Great Commission is all about, reclaiming the nations for God through Christ.

-And there is something interesting about this international body of believers. God says in v. 34 that people would no longer need to say to their brothers KNOW THE LORD, FOR THEY SHALL ALL KNOW GOD, FROM THE LEAST TO THE GREATEST OF THEM. Why this is amazing is because Israel as a nation was a mixed bag of believers and unbelievers. As the apostle Paul would put it, not everyone who was in Israel was of Israel. An Israelite by birth did not make you an Israelite in spirit. That was the beast of the Old Covenant—the nation was under covenant but the individuals in the nation may not have subscribed to the covenant.

-But here in the new covenant, you are only a part of God’s covenant people if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are the spiritual Israel if you have trusted in Jesus. And that means that there are no unbelievers in the new covenant. God’s covenant people is not a mixed bag. Only those in covenant with God know God. It is those outside of the covenant that we have to tell them to come know God through Jesus Christ. All around the world there are people who know God through Jesus Christ, and we join with them in calling out to a lost world to come into covenant with God and truly get to know God.

4) The new covenant is inexhaustible

-Starting in v. 35 God tells us that this new covenant will never end. In poetic language, God says that He is the one that sustains the fixed order of the universe. If the worlds are turning and the seasons are continuing, it is all the work of God. And this is the point He is making—if somehow He would lose the power the keep the fixed order of creation going, that would be the only way that this new covenant would ever end. In more poetic language, God says that if all the universe could be measured by a human and all the depths of creation could be measured, then God would break the covenant.

-Now, the obvious answer to these things is that it would be impossible for any of this to occur. God will never lose power to sustain and no human could know the expanse of the universe. Since that is the case, this new covenant of God’s will never cease to exist. Once it was put in motion, it could never stop for all of eternity.

-There will never be a time that God changes His mind and decides to go with a different covenant or to change the terms of this one. The new covenant in Jesus Christ is infinite and eternal and once you are a part of it, you will be His child forever, and there is nothing you or anybody else can do to change that.

Conclusion

-I know this was some deep thoughts, but if you are able to grasp what the new covenant entails, the whole Bible will open up to you. You will see in the Old Testament how God created these other covenants to work His way through history to create this new and everlasting covenant.

-Now, covenants would often be celebrated with a feast or covenant meal. Moses and the elders of Israel held such a meal before the Lord at Sinai. And the Lord Jesus Christ instituted such a meal to celebrate and remember the terms and conditions of the covenant. Jesus highlighted what was being given or sacrificed to make this covenant possible. It would be Himself. He would die so others could live.

-But we’re going to do things a little different today. We’re going to first do our invitation before the Lord’s Supper. We want to give Christians a chance to come to the altar to confess and repent so that you get those weights off of you before you partake in the Lord’s Supper. But we also want to give anyone who has never believed in Jesus an opportunity to believe and enter into covenant with our Loving Father through Jesus Christ.