So if you'll remember in our last lesson, we left off in the prophets talking about first it was the line of David and the king to come, the one who would sit on David's throne eternally. We also spoke about a covenant of redemption, of God's eternal working amongst the three persons of the Godhead to make a plan for a people for this God, for God to have a people for which he could rule, which he could make a covenant with, which he could separate out unto himself. So where we're at now in the progress of the Old Testament is we're at the end. Maybe you're familiar with phrases like major prophets and minor prophets. So we're in a major prophet today in the book of Jeremiah. And leading up to this point in Israel's history, we see a lot of failure. So with David and through Solomon, the kingdom splitting, the kings who were raised up by God to judge the nations, to rule the nations, we see king after king after king that they went their own way. They disobeyed God. They led the people to worship other gods. They even prohibited the people from worshiping the one true God as he is described in the scriptures. So we have that failure. So it's a sort of divergent lines of God's standard that does not change and a line departing away of God's covenant people who have broken the covenant. But within that, we've talked previously about this messianic figure to come, the seed of the woman to come, of this narrowing in on who exactly we expect this person to be. So you have this situation where there's this groaning of the creation that God has created that's in a fallen world. There's this groaning of people in their inner man for one who can keep the covenant. We have, in Jeremiah chapter 31, a wonderful reflection of in the midst of Israel's destruction, and they're being taken away by foreign powers, and they're following after other gods, of disobeying God's word knowingly, of striving, you know, with their lips to say one thing and their hearts go another way. We have the prophet Jeremiah, and he makes these bold declarations of saying, thus says the Lord, here's what he's about to do for his people. Before we get to Jeremiah, though, I want to read a few verses from Deuteronomy chapter 29. So if you have your Bible, you can turn there to Deuteronomy chapter 29, and this is to set up what is a new covenant described in the book of Jeremiah. So you have in Jeremiah described that God will take these people who have broken this covenant and He'll create a new covenant. But the new covenant isn't really new. So we saw with the covenant of redemption that it is an old eternity past sort of covenant. That that was God's plan all along was to send his son to redeem the people. To send his son on that great mission to cause the people to walk closely to him. So in Deuteronomy we have Moses in his farewell addresses to Israel and he's explaining, I'm about to leave this earth, I'm going to be with God, let me tell you again, remind you again, here's this great covenant God, here's what he's done for you, here's what he's about to do for you and for those after you. So Deuteronomy 29, I'll read verses two through six and then verse 14 through 15. So it says, And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and all his servants and all his land, the great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders. Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear. Those words are significant for what we'll read in Jeremiah. In verse 5 he says, I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, your sandal has not worn out on your foot. You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the Lord your God. Jumping down to verse 14. Now not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath, but with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today. So hold that in your mind as we go to Jeremiah chapter 31. Jeremiah chapter 31. I'll read verses 31 through 34. It says, Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand and bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Verse 34, they will not teach again, each man his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will not remember. So I hope you can see some similar language between those two passages, that as far back as Moses, hundreds of years before Jeremiah, that same continuing desire of God to have a covenant people stands. That God declared before, he declared then through Jeremiah, and he declared centuries after through Christ that this is my plan, this is what I'm going to do for you. So within this text, we have four main ideas of here's God's declaration of what he's going to do. The first one is the renewal of a broken covenant. So God says he's going to make a new covenant that's unlike the old covenant. But in some ways it is a renewal of the covenant, just a newer and better and greater covenant through a better way. That in verses 31 through 32, it's clear that they broke the covenant. That God says, I have kept my end. I was a husband to you, even though you did not keep yours. He makes a declaration of a future event of, I will establish, I will cut a new covenant with you, my people. There's the covenant with Israel that he describes that it's unlike the one he made with their fathers. So it's a renewal of a new covenant. It's God sort of wiping the slate clean and making this new and established better covenant. We also have in this text the internalization of the law, the law written on the heart. So we spoke at length in the Mosaic Covenant about the law and the purpose of it. And even in all of the covenants, we've pointed out the positive laws that God gives in addition to the natural law that all of us have on our hearts. the commands that God gives that he expects his people to follow, God says it will no longer be external. It won't any longer be outside of you, but in God's mysterious workings and however he works in this new covenant, he's going to write it on the heart. So we can ask ourselves, what law is he going to write on the heart? We've referred at times in this series to the moral law or sort of the underlying law that all of us know because we're created in the image of God, but that's been suppressed by the fall. God reveals that to us in the Ten Commandments. He reveals that to us more fully expressed in the laws given to Israel, the ceremonial and judicial laws. But he reveals that finally in Christ and his perfect life, that he exemplifies what a life lived under God is like. So God is going to write this law in a way that people will know that they don't have to be taught one to another, but they can sit and they can know that there is a God and he should be worshipped, that he should be loved with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. that in addition to that, they should love one another, they should love people as they love themselves. That that love should extend out, not just to follow exterior wooden set of rules, but to follow this new law on their heart given to them by God. If you can imagine In Moses, when God gave the Ten Commandments, it's as if in some ways he used his finger and wrote in stone. So that stone that he wrote on, it was meant to be a permanent law, something established. Well, in the same way God gives the image in Jeremiah of writing with his finger on stony hearts that he makes fleshly, he writes with his finger the law on their hearts. Throughout the generations, all of Israel's failure was necessary. It was not a surprise to God. God knew that these people would fail because the problem was not with the world out there. The problem was not with people and nations other than Israel. It was with Israel themselves. It was their evil and corrupt nature that even though they had these laws, that they could not keep them. It was to prove to them for years and years and years, generations and generations and generations, ruler after ruler after ruler, failure after failure, that they needed something different, they needed something better. So God writing the law on the heart, it's like this. It's as if the Lord, the covenant God, writes the law on the heart. And this law-shaped heart is produced, and that leads to a law-shaped life. So the problem was not with the law that God gave. The law was not insufficient. The law could bring the people to know God and who He was, but because there was nothing else than the law, it led people to death. But in the new covenant, in this new covenant, God is going to create, he's going to write with his people that there will be a sense in which this law is now a good thing, that it stands and it leads and it guides us as his people. So the old covenant had a certain law and a certain God and a certain method of being taught as generations carried on, parents taught their children. But this new covenant that Jeremiah describes is the same law and the same God, but a new teacher and a new method. He talks about putting the spirit within people to lead and guide and direct them. He says, they shall have no need to be taught. So what that could mean is that there's no need for lessons like this, that I've heard people say, all I need is my Bible and prayer and I'll be just fine. And in some ways, that's true, that God's given us these means of grace for us to walk closely with him, that many of us are blessed to have the scriptures in our own language. But what he means is that there's no way in which, you know, it's this hierarchy of, you know, the priest or the prophet has to teach the leaders of the house, the house has to teach the children, but God says, in this new covenant I will establish, all shall know me. So particularly related to heart cry, there's this idea in which we know tribes, we know people, we know primitive sort of works that we're a part of, that we're blessed to know of and help with, that there are believers there who don't even have a full book of the Bible in their language. But because the gospel has been preached to them verbally, clearly, They know their God. They can walk with Him. They spend time in prayer. They have these sort of internalized instincts, if you will, these inclinations of the heart that God has put there, that they need training, they need teaching, they need instruction formally, biblically, according to God's Word. But they don't have to have all of these things. That's not what makes them Christian. What makes them Christian is that God has converted them. He's regenerated them. He's done what he's described here and written the law in their heart so that with sin, with stumbling, with failure, they can still know him and walk closely with him. Lastly, we see the importance of God says, they will all know me. So this is a distinct emphasis that we haven't seen as much before, that God talks about having a people unto himself, of him being their God and vice versa, that he is going to set apart a distinct people for himself. But in some ways, we can look at Israel and we can realize that they don't really know their God. So they probably know about Him. They can read the laws. They can listen to the priests. They can sort of talk to their parents and say, well, tell me about this great exodus event that everybody's talking about. But in reality, there's no real knowledge of God. There's no fear of God present internally in them. There's no knowledge of God that affects every area of their life. It's mostly a wooden set of external principles. So in God writing the law in their heart, God changing their heart, that God says, they will all know me. So what I want to do in this section is to read a set of verses for us to consider what it means to know this incomprehensible God. So as Christians in the new covenant, as people who are in Christ, who look back on this and we're in a better system, if you will, our journey and our destination is not what God can do for us. It's not the benefits of being saved from hell or going one day to heaven or seeing the new heavens and the new earth. It's not prosperity. It's not wealth. It's not protection. It's not the end of suffering now. But it is something much better than all of those things combined. It's better than every earthly promise that we know of. It's the journey, the destination, the goal, the end of Christianity is to know God himself. So listen to these verses. I'll read them quickly, so don't try to turn there, just listen. Psalm 113, who is like the Lord our God who dwells on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? Jeremiah 9, knowledge of God is an intimate acquaintance with his character and actions, and God has done it all for us to know him in this way. So that's the verse in Jeremiah, that was my own description. It was the verse in Jeremiah that says, let not a strong man boast in his strength, a wise man in wisdom, but him who boasts, boasts in me that he knows me, understands me, declares the Lord. So we have to ask ourselves, do we really know this God? Do we want Him for Him? Or do we just want Him to have what He can do for us, to forgive our sins? Going on to read about the incomprehensibility of God. Psalm 145 verse 3, great is the Lord and highly to be praised and great is His unsearchableness. Jeremiah 23, am I a God who is near, declares the Lord, and not a God who is far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him, declares the Lord? Do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord? Psalm 139, how precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I am awake, I am still with you. Job 5, eight through nine. But as for me, I would seek God and I would place my cost before God. Who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number. Job 11, Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. Job 36, Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him. The number of His years is unsearchable. Behold, these are the fringes of His ways, and how faint a word we hear of Him! But His mighty thunder, who can understand? So it's this idea that I read these verses to make this point. It's that sometimes we can read the Old Testament, and I do this, where you read a story about Abraham or Moses, and you think, man, they walked so closely with God. They saw him almost face to face. He spoke to them directly. And you can think, wow, I wish that I lived back then so that I could have that experience. But in reality, we have the greater access to God, and it's because of what Christ has done for us in the New Covenant. That the Old Covenant, it was, you know, God visited Abraham just a couple of times in his life. God saw, or Moses saw God, but it wasn't, you know, face to face. It was, you know, as he was walking past, his glory was shielded. The people hid themselves from the glory of Moses' face shining before the people. But in the New Covenant, we have this promise that they will all know Him, that we will all know God, that there is this real and intimate and almost indescribable sense in which we can know facts about God. We can read His Word and ask, what does this teach about God? But there's this greater reality that God uses his spirit, he uses his word, he uses his church, he uses preaching and teaching and prayer. All of these things combine for us to know God as we know a friend, as he's a husband to a bride, as he's a father to the children. So don't ever get caught up thinking that some saint who lived before you, before Christ, knew God better. We have that open access and Christ has purchased that with his blood. Going back to Jeremiah, we have two more brief points of aspects of this new covenant that God will create. We have, thirdly, forgiveness in the New Covenant. So the repeated sacrifice of the blood of bulls and goats, that sacrifice is heaped up and heaped up, rivers of blood spilled through the straits, through the canals, that it didn't have a final and lasting effect. But that in the New Covenant, there is a cleansing offer, there is a cleanness, a holiness offered through the one-time sacrifice of Christ. that in the old covenant we can think of it as sin, of hardening of the heart, of condemnation, of sacrifice. But in this new covenant, there is sin. Yes, we still sin, even as believers. But there is no condemnation. There is a renewal and a cleansing of the conscience. There is a sacrifice, once and for all, delivered to God's saints. Lastly, there's a permanence of this new covenant. So God argues in verses 35 through 37, he sort of describes himself and says, if I can create the world, if I can do these great things, if I can raise up mountains and cast down valleys, do you think this new covenant is too big a thing for me? This establishes the permanence of this covenant. So it's not something with a man in the Old Testament who will die and who the covenant will sort of end or will be carried on by descendants who will fail. But because Christ is the one who came, that Christ did die. But we saw in the last lesson the proof of God's acceptance of his delight in that sacrifice was that Christ was raised again, that he lives, he rules and reigns now at God's right hand, that this covenant is once and for all, this sacrifice is once and for all, and it's given to his church. It's a permanent structure. It's the Old Testament saints looking forward to Christ, New Testament looking back to Christ's sacrifice, looking forward to him coming again. So after all these lessons that we've gone through together, we've marched our way through the Old Testament. We've gone from Genesis to Exodus to 1 and 2 Samuel to the prophets. And finally, the shadows and the types and the sort of guesses at what we've seen in the past, we're going to look forward in the next lesson to Christ. So we'll have the new covenant laid out in two parts. In the first lesson, we'll have Christ and his person and work, how he fulfills the new covenant, how he fulfills the expectation of this expected Messiah to come, of the seed of Adam, of Abraham. And then in the next one, the lesson 11, we'll talk about the benefits of what does it mean that I'm in the new covenant? What blessings are offered to me as a member of this, as being under Christ? And then as a reminder, in the last lesson, we'll answer questions that you have. So please comment down below. If you're on our website, you can write in and give questions, give, you know, I wasn't really clear on this point. What did you mean? And we'll answer those in our final episode. So thank you for watching and God bless.