From Sorrow to Joy! From Jeremiah to Jesus!

From Sorrow to Joy! From Jeremiah to Jesus! Sermon Transcript March 20, 2016 New Covenant Joy! They Will Be My People Jeremiah 31:31-34 This message from the Bible was addressed originally to the people of Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church on March 20, 2016 at 511 Maple Street, Wethersfield, CT, 06109 by Pastor Ryan Warner. This is a transcription that bears the strength and weaknesses of oral delivery. It is not meant to be a polished essay. An audio copy of the sermon on CD is available by request at (860) 563-8286. An audio version of this sermon may also be found on the church website at www.wethefc.com. 1

Sermon Text Jeremiah 31:31-34 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. 2

Who am I? Like all of us, there are many different and sometimes competing roles that I play in day to day life. I am a husband, a father, and a son. I am a man, a Christian, a youth pastor, and a member of the Evangelical Free Church. I am an American, a sports junkie and a video game enthusiast I am a youth pastor after all. At various points in my life I have also been a student, a grandson, an athlete, a coach, a musician and, depending on your perspective, either a government spy or a professional irrigation snitch, but that last one is a story for another time. As much as I am sure you all are enjoying getting to know various tidbits about my life, I am more broadly trusting that you can relate to the complexity of daily living out so many roles that each in some way contribute to our understanding of who we are. This is worth considering this morning in light of our continued exploration of the New Covenant in Jeremiah chapter 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, 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 shall 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, 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. Jeremiah 31:31-34 This morning we re going to lean into one statement within this new covenant, a common refrain throughout Scripture, a promise of God. God says through Jeremiah, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Not only can this refrain be found throughout the entirety of Scripture, it is spoken multiple times in the surrounding chapters of Jeremiah, in further declaration of this new covenant. In the following chapter Jeremiah paints a broader picture, declaring And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. Jeremiah 32:38-40 Who are the people of God? I don t know about you, but that sounds mighty appealing to me. It sounds like rest, like peace, like strength, like fulfillment. God will forever do good to us, and we will forever 3

turn towards His goodness. Assuming, of course, that I am one of God s people. If not, this doesn t hold much meaning for me at all. So the very natural and appropriate question becomes, exactly who are God s people? To whom was God referring in this covenant? Further, what does refrain tell us about who God is and what God is doing in the world? Secondly, and I would suggest just as significantly, if we are God s people, what kind of people are we? Is this another role we play in life that joins in and competes with all the others? If so, what is the function, the purpose of this role? Or is it something else entirely. Simply put, if I am counted among the people of God, what does this tell me about who I am to be? The apostle Peter speaks into these questions in his first epistle. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 Peter s declaration invites into the fullness of God s story, using language of the Israelite people of the Old Testament to speak to a new people, a different people, in the New Testament. Who have the people of God been? If you recall the wonderful video illustration from two weeks ago, God has made a series of covenants with a certain people group throughout history and up to this point in Jeremiah, each time the people have failed to live up to their end of the deal. Of particular interest to us in our conversation about the people of God is the covenant God makes with Abraham, where God first sets apart a people to Himself. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:1-3 Here God pulls Abraham aside and says that from his descendents will be formed a people, a great nation. And this people would be set apart for the purpose of blessing the rest of the human race. God would be made known through his people. Outsiders would see these people, how they lived, who they worshiped, and they would say, There is God! God is with these people! And while Abraham responds by trusting God, ultimately his descendents do not. This covenant, like the others in the Old Testament, is broken, not by God, but by his people. 4

And so when we are introduced to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, one of the first things we are told is that he is from the line of Abraham. We re told this so explicitly, so promptly, because it is so meaningful. We re being told that Jesus can fulfill the people s end of the covenant God made with Abraham. Through Jesus all people can be receive God s blessing. The Messiah would bring salvation to all. This brings us to our celebration today of Palm Sunday. It s the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the culmination of his ministry, a mere week before he was crucified. John s gospel describes it succinctly, beginning with verses 12 and 13 of chapter 12. The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel! John 12:12-13 A little while ago we sang Hosanna while our children paraded through the sanctuary with palm fronds, also known as any mother s favorite Sunday of the year because those kids are just so cute! It s also one of the rare times of the year we use the word hosanna. Right now in our Student Ministries, we are talking about some of these Christian terms, church catchphrases, if you will, that we sometimes use in church and nowhere else. Times like this can make church feel especially foreign and confusing. Even many of us who have been in church for years and years can nod or sing along, pretty sure that at some point we knew what that word meant. I mean, it has something to do with Jesus, certainly. In truth, the cry hosanna has much to do with Jesus being a descendent of Abraham and David, fulfilling the old covenants. If I may for a few minutes borrow from a sermon given by John Piper a number of years ago, our English word "hosanna" comes from a Greek word "hosanna" which comes from a Hebrew phrase hoshiya na. And that Hebrew phrase is found one solitary place in the whole Old Testament, Psalm 118:25, where it means, "Save, please!" It is a cry to God for help. Like when somebody pushes you off the diving board before you can swim and you come up hollering: "Help, save me... Hoshiya na!" But something happened to that phrase. The meaning changed over the years. In the psalm it was immediately followed by the exclamation: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" The cry for help, was answered almost before it came out of the psalmist's mouth. And over the centuries the phrase stopped being a cry for help in the ordinary language of the Jews. Instead it became a shout of hope and exultation. It used to mean, "Save, please!" But gradually, it came to mean, "Salvation! Salvation! Salvation has come!" It used to be what you would say when you fell off the diving board. But it came to be what you would say when you see the lifeguard coming to save you! It is the bubbling over of a heart that sees hope and joy and salvation on the way and can't keep it 5

in. So "Hosanna!" means, "Hooray for salvation! It's coming! It's here! Salvation! Salvation!" Picture a Super Bowl game, and yet again your beloved Patriots are in the game, and not to bring up any bad memories, but they are again facing the New York Giants. The Patriots are up by four, but the Giants have the ball near the Patriots end zone. There s only two seconds left on the clock, so the Giants have one final play to try to win the game. The Giants send all their receivers into the end zone on the left side of the field and Eli Manning, bless his heart, fakes a pass that way, spins around, and runs for the right corner of the end zone. The only hope for the Patriots is defensive back Malcolm Butler, already the hero of one Super Bowl, dashing across the field trying to make the tackle. As you re watching on TV you can see all of this unfolding, and suddenly every Patriots fan in the room is on their feet. Half of them are shouting, Get him! Get him! It s the old hosanna. The other half are yelling, You got him! You got him! That s the new hosanna. The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence. This promise, made initially with Abraham, to bring blessing to all, to make God known to all through his descendents, is being fulfilled in Jesus. In Jesus we know God. In Jesus we are blessed by God. In Jesus we can enter a new covenant with God. In Jesus, we can be the people of God. Who are we now? For when we first repent and trust Jesus as Lord, God forgives us, immediately, of all our sins. And God gives us Jesus perfectly clean record. It doesn t mean that we don t sin anymore. It means that our sins don t get to decide who we are God does. Our sin no longer has the power to call the shots in our lives. The coming of salvation in Jesus says that what Jesus did for us when he died is the most important thing now. We are defined by who Jesus says we are. And Jesus claims us. In Ephesians we are called the adopted sons and daughters of the King! We are told that we received the Holy Spirit upon trusting Christ as a guarantee of our coming inheritance the inheritance due to the sons and daughters of the King all that belongs to Him is ours! What a beautiful picture, adoption! We are now members of God s family! Once, we were not a people, but now we are God s people. Before we had not received mercy, but now we have received mercy! Each one of us plays a number of roles every day in our lives. Yet as a member of the body of Christ, each role flows out of the center that is my status as a son of the Father through Christ. Husband, father, and pastor are roles that I fill, but they are not who I am. I am an adopted son of the King. This is what defines me, what forms my identity. And as much as this is true for each of us individually, it is even more so for us 6

corporately. As much as this is an I it is even more so a we. As members of Christ s church, whatever we do is to be grounded in and shaped by our relationship with our Father. And why does God adopt those who trust in him? What was the purpose of the covenant with Abraham but to be a blessing the nations. God was to be made known through the descendents of Abraham and now God is made known through Christ and Christ in us. As God s people we live in partnership with God covenant. We represent Christ to the world. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, we are Christ s ambassadors in the world. This is such a helpful image for us, particularly when we are prone to lament the secularization of society. Friends, there is a hidden blessing when our culture isn t nominally Christian we are reminded of what is true, that we are ambassadors for Christ in a foreign land. Christopher Wright has said, It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission God s mission. If Christ is to be known, he will be known through His people. People who care for orphans and widows. People who care for God s creation. People who proclaim the good news of Christ crucified and resurrected. People who walk in God s ways. People who praise and pray and worship the King! The Church is the presence of Christ on earth. Where are we going? Week after week we continue to see how in Christ, God initiates the new covenant proclaimed by Jeremiah, a relationship with God available to all who seek him. In Christ we, the church, are now the people of God. As the people of God, we live grounded in our secure identity in Him, and we partner with God every day to make Him known in a broken and desperate world. So today, may you go out and love one another with the confidence of a son of the King. May you proclaim the good news with the confidence of a daughter of the King. May you invite someone to a Good Friday or Easter service, knowing that your security is not found in their response, but in who Christ says you are His. And may we together look forward to our promised inheritance, the completion of God s Kingdom upon Christ s return as we see near the end of the book of Revelation. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. Revelation 21:1-3 by Pastor Ryan Warner - All rights reserved 7

Sermon Title: New Covenant Joy! They Will Be My People Sermon Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34 Sermon Date: March 20, 2016 Getting To Know Me Questions 1. What are some of the roles you play in everyday life? How do they complement one another? How do they conflict? 2. What role are you most likely to allow to define you - to give you your identity - outside of Christ? Why? 3. Share what you learned from the sermon this week. Diving Into The Word 4. Read Genesis 12:1-3. Discuss how this passage informs us of God s mission in the world. What does this tell us about how God goes about his mission? 5. Read 1 Peter 2:9-10. In what ways do you see this passage connecting you with the Old Testament nation of Israel? In what ways is this something new? 6. Read Matthew 21:1-11. What stands out to you most in this passage? In what ways can you relate to the people shouting, Hosanna!? 7. Read 2 Corinthians 5:18-21. What is one practical way you, individually, can live as Christ s ambassador this week? What about as a group? 8. Read Revelation 21:1-3. Discuss what you most appreciate about being called one of God s people. Taking It Home 9. Who are you inviting to church with you on Easter? 8