Text: Jeremiah 31:31-37 Title: Deep Change Pt.2 ILLUSTRATION Cheryl Prewitt grew up in a small town in Mississippi where her home life was a nightmare. From an early age she endured poverty and abuse. As a little girl she stayed around the grocery store where her father worked and would often see a kind milkman who made deliveries there. The milkman would always greet Cheryl with the words, Hello Miss America. Someday you ll be Miss America. Cheryl giggled each time she heard those words, and they stuck in her little mind. But Cheryl s life was far from the life of a beauty queen. At age 11 she was in a horrifying car accident that left her with a scarred face, in a body cast and a wheelchair. But the milkman s words Hello Miss America, were lodged in her little brain. So as a teenager she began to enter beauty pageants which she used as a platform to share her faith in Jesus Christ. Cheryl lost five straight times until she finally won her hometown pageant, then Miss Mississippi and then, in 1980, Miss America. Though her pageant days are far behind her, Cheryl still travels around the world as a witness for Christ. She was able to press on through so many failures and setbacks in her life because she was inspired by a vision that the words of a simple milkman planted in her heart and mind. Cheryl Prewitt s story shows how the words of others can plant a dream in our hearts. But we all know that just because we dream something doesn t necessarily mean we can achieve it, no matter how much we want it or how hard we try. But when Almighty God speaks over His people a vision we can take that vision seriously and trust Him that He will bring about His loving purposes in our lives. Open your Bibles once again to Jeremiah 31. In this series we ve learned that Israel has back problems. They have turned their backs to God and not their faces. But God never gives up on us, even when we are living with the consequences of our rebellion. The Lord sends Jeremiah as a prophet in a time of some of the greatest upheaval in the history of the nation of Israel. They are being uprooted from their homeland and carried away into captivity to Babylon. Out of this dark time comes one of the most important promises God ever made to His people. He has plans for them, plans to give them a future and a hope. The Lord tells Jeremiah to write a book which we have recorded here in Jeremiah 30-33, sometimes called The Book of Comfort, where the Lord describes the future and the hope for His people. Read Jeremiah 31:31-34. When we go through hard times in life our prayer is often, Lord, how can I get out of this? But the Lord wants us to ask a different question: Lord, what can I get
out of this? It s not just about the outward circumstances we wish we could change. It s about what God wants us to get out of it spiritually and how we change and grow in our faith in Him. So this glorious promise will be fulfilled immediately when the Jews are allowed to return to their homeland to rebuild their city and the Temple and to restore their worship. But there s a deeper work that God is up to. Remember, they have back problems they are always turning their back to God, not their faces. But God has in mind a New Covenant which will bring about deep change for them and, as we ll see in just a moment, for us. Remember the definition: A covenant is an agreement that establishes a relationship between persons who make commitments to one another. For most of Israel s history God related to His people based on a covenant that He made with Israel through Moses. God obligated Himself to provide for them, protect them and to pardon their sins. Then God gave them the Ten Commandments to obey as their part of the covenant. And this was the agreement that established God s relationship with Israel. But God is not just content with having a relationship with us He envisions that that relationship will bring about deep change in us. So God will enact a new covenant. And that s what it means when God says Jeremiah 31:31-32a - The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers Now this New Covenant was not just about the Jews 2500 years ago. We get in on it too. This New Covenant will actually be fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Jeremiah is showing us the salvation and deep change that is possible through Christ. Now I know that because that s what the NT tells us. Hold your place here and turn to Hebrews 8. The book of Hebrews is very helpful to us as followers of Jesus in understanding the New Covenant that is brought about through the ministry of Jesus. Read Hebrews 8:6-8a. Then notice that the writer of Hebrews quotes our text in Jeremiah 31. So God reveals to Jeremiah the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this new, superior covenant. And here s why it s superior. We started this last week, so let me review. The New Covenant provides for 1. EXTRAVAGANT GRACE
Jeremiah 31:32b They broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the LORD. In the Old Covenant the Lord had bound himself to Israel like a husband to a wife. But His people had been unfaithful to Him. They had committed spiritual adultery by chasing after false gods and idols. And, as John Calvin said, our human hearts are like idol factories and we are incapable of changing ourselves. So God in His extravagant grace makes a new covenant with the ones who broke the old one. This new covenant is based upon God s faithfulness, not ours. And in His grace God will make it possible for us to be faithful to Him. And here s how He does that. He provides for 2. INNER TRANSFORMATION Jeremiah 31:33 - This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the LORD. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. In the Old Covenant God s law was written on stone tablets. In the New Covenant God s law is written on human hearts. When God s Word His revelation of Himself to us is out there we think we can escape and run away from it. But it s different when His will is in here. So God promises to do something in us to put His law (His will) in our minds and engrave it on our hearts. That s what happens when we are saved. The NT calls this regeneration. When God s Holy Spirit comes to live in us as the Spirit of truth He begins to transform us from the inside out. Do you understand that the Christina life is not just about getting you fire insurance from hell so that when you die you get to go to heaven? That is certainly part of eternal life, but it isn t the full picture. God s vision is to bring about deep change in us to make us into the likeness of His Son. We re going to spend eternity loving and worshipping God and He intends to start that now. Ezekiel 36: 27 - I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. So the New Covenant provides for extravagant grace and inner transformation. But it doesn t stop there. The change goes deeper. God provides for an
3. INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP Jeremiah 31:34a - No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, Know the LORD, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest In the Old Covenant through Moses you have priests and teachers who are the gobetween between people and God. So there are these people who bring God s Word to God s people who relate to God through these flawed human beings. A few elite, privileged people got to know God, but the rest only know Him at a distance through others. But the New Covenant changes that. But what happens in the New Covenant is we are reconciled to God through the life and death of Jesus Christ. And when we put our trust in Christ we receive the gift of eternal life. And we get to intimately know God. You have as much of God right now as you want, no matter who you are. It says, from the least of them to the greatest. ILLUSTRATION I m sad to say that I didn t learn this truth when I was first saved. I knew my relationship with God was different that I was going to heaven when I died. But I don t remember anyone telling me that I could really know God or how I could grow to know Him better and better. It wasn t until I was a college student that a friend taught me how to have intimacy with God through prayer and Bible study. Brothers and sisters in Christ, you have the privilege of meeting with Almighty God any time day or night. You have direct access to the presence of God. You can draw near to the throne of God s grace with confidence. Don t neglect that awesome privilege. Jesus said John 17:3 - This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. God made this possible when He enacted the New Covenant. But the change goes even deeper. The New Covenant provides for 4. COMPLETE FORGIVENESS Jeremiah 31:34b - For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
Notice that the sentence begins with the word for. The intimacy we enjoy with God through Christ is possible because of the complete forgiveness He gives to us. Without this forgiveness and cleansing we could not have a relationship with the Lord. So the Lord forgives (pardons) our wickedness. That word describes our inner twistedness. So God in His mercy doesn t hold the sin against us. We are declared not guilty. Now here again, the book of Hebrews helps us understand how the New Covenant through Jesus Christ completes what God started in the Old Covenant. Hebrews 10:11-12 - Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest (Jesus) had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. In the Old Covenant the priests made various sacrifices for the sins of the people. And those sacrifices had to be repeated over and over again because people keep sinning, but also because those sacrifices had no power to bring about change in the hearts of sinners. They can never take away sins. But then God enacts the New Covenant, and in this covenant God will allow His one and only sinless Son to die for our sins as the final and ultimate sacrifice. In the Old Covenant the priest never sat down because his work was never finished. But this priest (Jesus) sat down at the right hand of God because He completed God s work of atonement for our sins. So the Lord can say Jeremiah 31:34b - For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. He remembers our sins no more. Sin means to miss the mark. We give it our best shot to reach God s holy standard and we miss the target every time. We go to the shooting range of righteousness and our target paper has the bullet holes spread everywhere but at the bullseye. That s our sin. And in this new relationship God remembers our sin no more. How can a perfect God ever forget anything? Well that s not exactly what that means. It means that God never acts on it again, because it s already been acted upon when Christ died for our sins. And He never mentions it again. ILLUSTRATION Years ago, I heard the story told by Dr. Gordon Clinard who taught preaching out at Southwestern Seminary for many years. When Gordon was a boy his dad bought a new car. Gordon remembers the day when his dad let him
take the car to school for the first time. Gordon went around and picked up all his buddies. And when school was out he took them all home. As he backed out of the last driveway he wasn t watching carefully and he backed into Mr. Elkins cleaning truck parked across the street. Gordon was so shaken that he didn t know what to do so he just drove home. His dad was sitting on the front porch when Gordon pulled up. His dad noticed the dent in their new car and when he asked Gordon what happened Gordon lied. He said that Mr. Elkins had hit their car with his truck. Mr. Clinard reassured Gordon that he would take care of it, and he went off to see Mr. Elkins. The family was all sitting around the dinner table when Mr. Clinard returned home. He walked through the dining room and went straight to his bedroom and closed the door. He didn t come out the rest of the evening. Gordon knew he had hurt his father. All night Gordon wrestled with his guilty conscience. He couldn t sleep. Finally in the early hours of the morning Gordon could take it no more. He burst out of his room and into his father s room. He threw himself on his dad s chest and said, Dad, I m so sorry I lied to you. Gordon said that his dad reached up with his massive arms and wrapped them around his son and said, I forgive you. When the family met the next morning at the breakfast table Gordon felt like a heavy load had been lifted from his shoulders, but he wondered what his dad would say. Gordon said, You know, to my surprise, my father never mentioned it again. Jeremiah 31:34b - For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. That s true when we come to Christ for salvation. All our past sins are washed away. And after we are saved, when we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse of all our sins. Now there s one more provision you need to see in this New Covenant. It provides for extravagant grace, inner transformation, an intimate relationship, complete forgiveness and then 5. MAXIMUM SECURITY I m sure that there were people in Jeremiah s day who thought that God must be finished with them. Surely we ve crossed the line. But look at what the Lord promises. Read Jeremiah 31:35-37. ILLUSTRATION Did you watch the eclipse last Monday? It was overcast where I was so I didn t get to see it. But not to worry; I m told that they know exactly when the next full eclipse will come our way. On April 8, 2024, the shadow of the moon will once again completely block out the sun across the
United States, this time from Texas to Maine. Isn t it amazing that the laws of the universe work with such precision that astronomers know decades, sometimes centuries, in advance what will happen with the planets and the stars. And God is as faithful as the universe that He designed and created. The only way God s covenant with His people can be broken is if the laws of the universe were to somehow be suspended and interrupted. That s how secure we are in our relationship with Christ. Jesus said John 10:28-29 - I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father s hand. So today, if you ve never been saved, you can have this amazing gift by putting your trust in Christ. Christian, rejoice in the salvation that you have in Christ. Live out the deep change that He has brought about for you in Christ.