Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34 | Date: November 6, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

We continue then in our doctrine of salvation, and today we look at Jeremiah chapter 31, and we look at the new covenant promise of salvation. The new covenant promise of salvation. And I will read just verses 31 to 34.

“Behold, the 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 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. But 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. I will write it on their hearts. 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.”

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, our hearts go out today to the Kipp family and for Amelia in particular. We ask again your blessing for them. We pray that you will give her sustained health and strength. We pray that you’ll give her and them calmness of mind and heart as they approach tomorrow. And for tomorrow, we pray, Lord, that you will give doctors every wisdom and skill. We pray for a blessed success in this surgical procedure. We pray that we’ll be able to look back and give you thanks for the mercy that you’ve shown. For our time here this morning, we pray that you will meet with us. We are very aware that our time spent in your word will be of no profit unless you attend it and minister to our hearts. We ask that you will. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

You do not have to read very far into the Bible or very long into it before you notice that this concept of covenant is a huge one in scriptures. It is a basic unifying theme. It, in fact, the subject of covenant carries the very Bible story from beginning to end. We have, as you remember, we’ve said this so many times at the very beginning, we have the rebellion against God in the garden and God pronouncing judgment. But in that judgment in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, he makes a promise. He promises that a champion will come, and the implication is, although it’s very cryptic at that point, the implication is this champion will come and defeat the tempter and fix this whole mess that he has brought in.

And then after that promise, we find that that promise is unpacked through the history of the scriptures in a succession of covenants. We come first of all to the Noahic Covenant, and there God promises to Noah a continuation of the created order as the context in which he will fulfill his saving purpose. Some centuries later then, we come to a covenant that God made with Abraham, and God promises to Abraham a land and a seed, and he promises blessing to Abraham, but not only blessing to Abraham, but through Abraham, a blessing to all the families of the earth.

And then some centuries later, we find what the New Testament calls the Old Covenant. We typically refer to it as the Mosaic Covenant or the Sinaitic Covenant, the covenant that God made with Israel through the mediation of Moses on Mount Sinai. And there, God stipulates the obligations that Israel has to define them as the people of God in the world. That, of course, is a covenant that ultimately failed because of Israel’s disobedience. And it seemingly, seemingly at that point, jeopardized the fulfillment of God’s worldwide saving purpose.

But then we come later, some centuries later, to a covenant that God made with David. And in the Davidic covenant, God promises to David an offspring who will reign on his throne and be the Davidic king and bring blessing to Israel and to the entire world. This king will secure all of those blessings. And then some centuries later again, finally, as we read here in Jeremiah chapter 31, God announces that another covenant is coming, a new covenant that he will make, not like the others, but this covenant will overcome the failures of God’s people, his sinful people. And he will, through this covenant, fulfill his saving purposes for the world. And so the storyline of the Bible is carried on the backs, largely, of these covenants. This is how the story of the Bible unfolds.

We could even look in broader categories that the Bible itself, in a literary sense, is divided in these two ways, between one covenant and another: what the Bible calls the Old Covenant, the Sinaitic Covenant, which dominates the Old Testament. And in the Old Testament, we have the writings that were written under the terms of the Old Covenant, made at Sinai. In the New Testament, we have the writings that were written under the terms of the New Covenant, cut in Jesus’ blood. And so this new covenant is a climax in the Bible, not just chronologically, but in that it’s comprehensive and it takes up into it cumulatively all of the centuries of promise that God has made from the beginning, from Genesis chapter three onwards. And this is held out in Jeremiah and in all the prophets, really, as Israel’s last hope.

Now, various terminology is used for this new covenant. It’s called at times, well, here it’s called the new covenant. It’s called the everlasting covenant; it’s called elsewhere in the prophets a covenant of peace. Often the promises of this covenant are articulated without giving it a certain label. But very interestingly, in Isaiah chapter 49 and verse eight, we read that the servant of the Lord will himself be the covenant. The servant of the Lord himself will be the covenant. Now you remember the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah. We have these great sections of Isaiah that were called the Servant Songs. Starting in Isaiah 42 and in various places in the following chapters, we have these passages dealing with the Servant of the Lord. And on one level, the servant of the Lord is Israel, of course, who fails to keep her obligations. And then there’s this idealized servant of the Lord, who, as it turns out in the New Testament, of course, is the Lord Jesus, the servant of the Lord par excellence.

And the New Testament writers speak to that and make that connection very clearly. So this new covenant then is the covenant that the Lord Jesus himself seals with his own blood. He himself tells us that in Matthew chapter 26 verse 28, the words that we recite at the Lord’s table every time: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” So the new covenant now that God promises and announces first in Jeremiah chapter 31 is that covenant which culminates in the New Testament with the death of the Lord Jesus, securing its provisions.

Now if that’s the case, it’s not surprising that Jeremiah 31 verses 31 to 34 that we have read are the longest single quotation, Old Testament quotation, that we find in the New Testament. The New Testament writers are replete with quotations from the Old Testament. But this passage, verses 31 to 34 of Jeremiah 31, is the longest single quote that we find in the New Testament. And in fact, we find it twice in the New Testament: Hebrews chapter eight, and again in Hebrews chapter 10. And then a dozen or so times later, other than that in the New Testament, we find this passage referred to, even though the quotation is not there. This plays a dominant role in shaping the thinking of the New Testament, and in particular, the doctrine of salvation that we’ve been looking at. So while the covenant concept is a major concept in the scriptures, this new covenant stands out as the climax to all of it.

Jeremiah 31 verses 31 to 34, then, are considered, for good reason, the Old Testament passage dealing with the New Covenant. There are various reasons for that. One, it gives it the name explicitly, the New Covenant here. There are other reasons for that. This is the fullest statement of the New Covenant promise that we have in the Old Testament prophets. And in fact, as I mentioned, this is the one that’s most often cited by the New Testament writers as well. So this for good reason is considered the Old Testament passage on the New Covenant.

So let’s look quickly at the context. Like most of the prophets, Jeremiah was a prophet of both judgment and hope. Those are the two notes that we find dominantly in the Old Testament prophets. If you’d like to look back at Jeremiah chapter one, you’ll see that summarized there in verse 10. Jeremiah 1:10: “The Lord said to me, [that is Jeremiah], ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.'”

So the prophet, in a sense, is set over the nations, not because the prophet himself is king over the nations, but because God is king over the nations. And he sends his spokesman, the prophet, and when the prophet coming, speaking for God, says to one nation, “You will be destroyed,” that nation will be destroyed. He speaks for God. And so he comes, he says, to uproot and to tear down and to destroy and overthrow. And this is one of the common notes in the Old Testament prophets, that they announced the judgment on the various kingdoms and so on. But he says here also in Jeremiah 1:10, he’s called him to build and to plant. Just as the prophetic word means the downfall of certain nations, so also the prophetic word will mean the building and the planting of the nation.

And here we have God’s promises to Israel that are so replete in the Old Testament prophets. And when we come to Jeremiah chapters 30 to 33, we have what is commonly called by Old Testament students the book of comfort, or the book of consolation, or sometimes the book of hope. Prior to Israel’s exile to Babylon, Jeremiah had denounced the nation of Israel for their sin of rebelling against God and not keeping the terms of the covenant God made with them at Sinai. He rebuked government officials, he abused the people the same way, and he warned them of unprecedented trouble that would come to the nation because of their disobedience to God’s covenant with them.

But now when we come to Jeremiah chapter 30 and following, chapters 30 to 33, we have what’s called the Book of Comfort, and the outlook here is marked by grace, it is marked by comfort, it’s marked by hope, and the note that’s sounded here in these chapters is that God will restore his people, he’ll raise up a king to David as he has promised, and he will bring salvation to his people. And this, not because Israel has deserved it, not because Israel has been obedient, but he will do this because God in grace has determined to do it. And one of my favorite verses in Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 31 in verse three, where God announces, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” Here’s the reason God will do this for Israel, not because of anything on their side, but because God has said, “I love you.”

And so when we come to chapter 31 verses 31 to 34 that we have read, we have now a summary statement of what God promises he will do in this covenant. Let’s look quickly at the structure of this passage so you can see how it’s divided up. Notice in these verses 31, 32, 33, and 34, notice the phrase “says the Lord” or “declares the Lord,” however your translation will render that. The Hebrew word there means to say, but the way this Hebrew word for speaking is used in the Old Testament, it usually connotes an inspired utterance from God, and so often the translations will render it, instead of “said,” “declared.” It sounds more official to get the connotations of the way the word is used in the Hebrew scriptures.

But notice this expression, “declares the Lord,” or “says the Lord,” in these verses. We have it four times. We have it at the beginning of verse 31, and then again at the end of verse 32. So that brackets the first division of this prophecy. And then we have it again at the beginning of verse 33, and then near the end of verse 34. So that brackets the second major division of the prophecy. And then at the end of verse 34, we have an explanatory clause explaining why God will do this, or how he will do it.

So let’s look at it again. We have three major statements here. Verses 31 and 32, we have the introductory statement, contrasting this covenant with the old: “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.”

And then verses 33 and 34, we start the next section, and here we have the contents or the specific provisions of this covenant: “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. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each one his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.”

And then we have the climactic explanatory clause at the end of verse 34: “For, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” This is the basis of the promises that he made in verses 33 and 34, the explanation of the ground on which God will do those things for them. All right, so in our time left, let’s work our way through these verses.

Introduction: Not Like The Old Covenant

First of all, we have the introduction in verses 31 and 32. And what Jeremiah emphasizes here is that this new covenant will not be like the old one. That’s the major takeaway from the introductory part of this prophecy. Notice verse 31 again: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” So this covenant will not be like the covenant God made with them at Sinai. There will be some fundamental difference between them.

So his reference here now is back to Exodus chapter 19. So let’s look at that, Exodus chapter 19, and let’s see how that covenant is characterized, and then we can see how this one will be different. Exodus chapter 19. You remember the setting? They have come out of Egypt now, they have come to Mount Sinai, and God is entering into covenant with them. Exodus 19, I’ll begin with verse one:

“On the third moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. They set out for Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they camped in the wilderness. And there Israel encamped before the mountain, while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” So Moses came and called the elders and the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.”

Now notice the character of this covenant. It is distinctly an “if you, then I.” If you, then I. So look at verse five: “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.” And then at the end, they agree to the terms: “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” It is distinctly an “if you, then I” kind of covenant. This actually is very familiar in the ancient world. It’s called a suzerain-vassal treaty that we know of in the ancient world from these times, where a powerful king will speak to another smaller king with a smaller kingdom in the area, and he’ll say to them—whether they’ve been conquered or they’re just a neighboring kingdom or whatever—but he will say to them in treaty, in a covenant like this, “I will protect you, I’ll take care of you, but you must pay your taxes, and you will give me so much of the yield from your crops, and so on, and so on, and you’ll not rebel. And if you do that, I’ll be an enemy to your enemies, and you’ll be all right, and I’ll protect you.” It’s an “if-you-then-I” kind of covenant, very much a conditional or bilateral agreement.

Now, we have this not just here at the outset in the covenant at Sinai, but it’s repeated throughout the Pentateuch, characterizing this covenant that was made. For those of you who like to take notes, I’ll just give you a few more quickly. Exodus 23, verses 20 and following: “If you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries” and so on. Leviticus chapter 18 and verse 5 characterizes it famously very crisply: “I am the Lord. If you keep this covenant, you will live by it.”

Leviticus chapter 26 is actually a very famous passage in this regard, where he lists out the covenant curses and the covenant promises. If you follow me, you’ll be blessed. If you disobey the terms of this covenant, you’ll be cursed in so many different kinds of ways. We have it in Deuteronomy 27, verse 26: “Cursed should be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” Then famously at the end of the Pentateuch, in Deuteronomy chapter 30: “This is the commandment that I say, that I command you this day, if you obey the commandments of the Lord, then you shall live and multiply. But if your heart turns away, you shall surely perish.” In that passage in Deuteronomy 30, it’s spelled out at some length. If you obey, your crops will be plentiful, your cattle will multiply, you yourselves will multiply, your enemies will run from you, and I’ll protect you, and I’ll be the enemy of your enemies. If you disobey, I’ll chase you down like one of my enemies, and so on. So it is very much this “if you, then I” kind of covenant.

Now, returning to Jeremiah then, Jeremiah makes the point to stress that this covenant will be very different. Verses 31 and 32: “This is not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them out of the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” It won’t be like that. Then verses 33 and 34, explains specifically how different this new covenant will be. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.” “If you, then I”—that’s not what it says, is it? “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. I will write it on their hearts. 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 iniquities and I will remember their sin no more.”

You see what is missing in this? There is nothing here of “if you.” It is just “I will.” I will. I will put my law in them. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God. I will forgive their sins. I will remember their sins no more. This is fundamentally a very different kind of covenant. Actually, there were covenants like this in the ancient Near East as well. This would be called a royal grant treaty, where a superior king would give a tract of land or something to another neighboring kingdom and just give it to them. Free gratis. This is a royal grant treaty. It’s a unilateral covenant where God just stipulates what he will do.

In other words, then, it is a covenant made of grace. It is a gracious covenant. It’s not dependent on the performance of God’s people. He does not say, “If you obey, I will save you. If you obey, keep my law, I will be your God.” He simply says, “I will do these things for you.” And this is the very meaning of grace in the scriptures. These promises of salvation we can see already, before we work through the rest of it, we can see already these promises of salvation do not result from anything on our side. It is purely of grace. It is something God gives. That’s what Jeremiah emphasized.

The Specific Provisions Of This New Covenant

All right then, let’s look: what are the specific provisions of this new covenant? Just what is it that God says he will do? Verse 33: “I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.” The internalization of God’s law. Now this becomes something that’s of pointed emphasis in the New Testament. In that old covenant, God wrote his law on stones. And that became something of a symbol. It was an objective law that revealed God’s will. It told the people what they must do. It told the people what they must not do. It laid out the terms for the covenant.

But it made no provision for obedience. It just told them what they must do. It’s like when you run the stop sign. There’s a stop sign that says stop, and you didn’t. And somehow that stop sign—or maybe I should have said the speed limit sign—you just didn’t have it in you to go that slow. It told you what the law was, but it made no provision for compliance. It says “do this or get a fine.” And that’s what the old covenant did: “do this or die.” You do this, you’ll enjoy God’s favor. If you fail to do this, you will enjoy God’s curse.

The internalization then of God’s law is what he promises. In that old covenant, there’s no provision for compliance. Verse 32 here, they violated that law. They did not receive the blessing, the promise. The problem was not the covenant itself. There’s no fault with that covenant. It just made no provision. Given the sinfulness of the human heart and the waywardness of the human heart, it made no provision for compliance.

But he says in verse 32, this covenant is not like that one. Under the terms of this covenant, I will work from the inside out. It won’t be just an objective law written on stones. I’ll write my law on their hearts. And in grace, he says, I will transform my people from the inside out so that they will follow me. If you’d like to turn over a few pages where Ezekiel speaks of this covenant, Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 26 and 27: “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

Now notice what he says here. He does not require obedience on threat of judgment. That’s precisely what is missing. He does not require obedience on threat of judgment. That’s the old covenant, and it proved it didn’t work. Rather than requiring obedience on threat of judgment, he ensures obedience by means of moral transformation. “I will write my law on their hearts.” Or in the terms of Ezekiel, “I’ll take out that stony heart that’s hard and unresponsive, and I’ll put in a heart of flesh that is moldable and conforms to my will.”

That old heart is hard and unimpressionable, but by the powerful workings of God’s spirit, he will transform his people from the inside out. In other words, it’s what you hear me say so often: what God requires of us, he will work in us to bring about. That’s what Jeremiah promises. If you’d like Jeremiah chapter 32, just over a page from our text, Jeremiah 32 and verse 40: “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 and that they may not turn from me.” I will put the fear of me in their hearts, working from the inside out to transform their behavior.

And when you come to the New Testament, then, this is dealt with in various categories: the doctrine of regeneration, fundamentally changing who we are by God’s spirit giving us life. This is the doctrine of sanctification. This is the doctrine of perseverance. Ultimately, this is the doctrine of glorification, when God’s work in us will be complete, transforming us entirely to conform to his will. We saw this some weeks ago in Romans chapter 8, verse 15, where we are led by the Spirit. This is the distinction of what it is to be a child of God. We are led by the Spirit. And leading of the Spirit, remember, we saw was not some mystical thing where you get specific guidance on what job you should take or whatever else. The leading of the spirit in Romans chapter eight is exactly this: that there’s a new dominating factor in the life of these people. As before, they were dominated by the flesh, but here they are dominated now by the spirit of God who leads them, transforming them from the inside out. And in this way, Jeremiah says this new covenant differs drastically from the old covenant. The old covenant commanded what to do. The new covenant works in a way that brings about compliance with God’s requirements.

So there’s the first provision of the covenant. Second, verses 33 and 34 emphasize for us the personal knowledge of God. “I will be their God and they shall be my people. 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.”

The Old Covenant then was not a redemptive covenant in that it did not ensure personal reconciliation with God, it didn’t ensure fellowship with God community-wide. And that was the major role of the prophets, where they would come and they had to rebuke the nation for their disobedience and call the nation of Israel to know the Lord. In a sense, they were God’s covenant people. God watched over them. He had made promises to them. But on another level, they did not know the Lord. They were God’s chosen people collectively, but individually, the people had access to God only representatively through a priest who represented them before God in the most holy place.

And you remember the whole layout of the tabernacle. They would come in, and there you have the holy place, and then the most holy place, and divide them, then is this curtain hanging between the two, and only the high priest could go beyond that curtain, and that only once a year after atonement had been made on the altar, and so on, and then he would come and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. But only the high priest—the people could not go into the presence of God beyond the veil. The knowledge of God in the old covenant Israel was only mediated.

In fact, in Hebrews chapter nine, where the writer of the book of Hebrews takes up this passage from Jeremiah, he expounds for us and tells us that was the very purpose of that old covenant worship system with all of its animal sacrifices and taking it beyond the veil into the presence of God. The very point, he says, of all of that: the Holy Spirit thus testifying that the way into the presence of God was not yet. And the whole declaration of the old covenant ceremonial system with its tabernacle and the veil dividing away from the presence of God. The whole point of it, he says, is to say, “Stay back. You don’t have a right into the presence of God. You have no access, you have no right.”

And so Jeremiah says here in Jeremiah 31, that under the terms of this new covenant, things will be very different. Verse 34: “They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest.” We come to the New Testament, we find this, what we’ve seen in this series of studies. For instance, in Romans chapter 5, verse 5, that the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts a sense of God’s love for us as children. Romans chapter 8 and verse 15, we’ve seen the spirit who is called there the spirit of adoption as sons. And here he comes and a part of his, a great part of his ministry is to minister to us a sense of our sonship so that we sense God’s love to us as our father and us as his children.

So he promises under the terms of this new covenant, one, I’ll work from the inside out, transform my people and their behavior and bring them to obey. Second, they’ll all know me from the least of them to the greatest. Every one of them will know me. I will be their God and they will be my people.

The Basis Or The Ground Of This Provision

Now we come to the last part of verse 34. And here we have the basis or the ground of this provision. And notice the conjunction there, “for,” he’s explaining himself now: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” I’ll write my law in their heart. I’ll make it so they all know me, because I will forgive their sins and remember them no more.

The idea here is that sin, sin is the obstacle to these promised blessings. What stands between us and God is nothing other than our sin. And so God says here, I’ll just remove that obstacle. I’ll remove the sin. I’ll forgive them and I’ll remember them no more. As it is, they can’t obey me. They’re sinful people. As it is, they can’t know me. They’re sinful people. And so God says in this new covenant, I’ll remove the sin.

Now notice the language of forgiveness here. “I will forgive their sin and remember them no more.” Forgive. To release, that’s the sense of the terminology. Release them from it, not hold them accountable for it. Sin’s forgiven. And then this remarkable language of God forgetting. The omniscient God forgetting. I will remember their sins no more. Clearly the sense is I will not remember their sins against them anymore.

Come to the New Testament, one of my favorite passages that deals with this in Colossians chapter 2, where the Apostle Paul speaks of forgiveness in terms of the canceling of a debt, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. So sin is pictured as an IOU to God. And here’s this handwriting of an IOU against us. You owe, you owe because of your sin and it must be paid. Colossians chapter two, what we read is God has blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. God will just remove that obstacle and take it away from us. It’s not a debt that they had to pay off first. It’s not a debt that they have to pay off afterwards. “Okay, I’ll take you, but you’ve got to work this off.” It’s not even “do your best and God will make up for you for the rest of it.” It’s just released from the debt altogether.

Under the old covenant, Israel’s sins brought covenant curses. But here Jeremiah says under the terms of this new covenant, sins are just frankly forgiven. Released. We’re not held accountable for it. And this is why the writer to the Hebrews takes up these passages and says that the new covenant is a better covenant with better promises.

Now then, that raises the question, just how can God do this? How can God just remove the sin? And here what comes into view is a whole Bible full of teaching of the righteousness and the holiness of God and all of his demands for his creatures. It is a righteous thing for God to demand righteousness of his creatures, and it is a righteous thing of God to punish all unrighteousness on the part of his creatures. It would be unrighteous for God just to dismiss sin. It must be dealt with. It is a righteous thing to do it. It would be an unrighteous thing—it would be a forsaking of his righteousness—not to do it.

And so then how can God just forgive sin? And the answer the scriptures give us from beginning to end is: God does not just forgive sin. He forgives sin by providing a substitute who does for us all that he requires of us. And that is the terminology that Jesus picks up in Matthew chapter 26 and verse 28 that I mentioned earlier. This is the covenant, taking the cup. This is the inauguration of the covenant that was promised. “This is the covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins.” That here in the shedding of his blood, atonement is made, paying the penalty of sin in the place of his people.

The old covenant had its sacrifices and its whole sacrificial system. It had a substitute victim who was brought and the sins of the people were confessed over the head of the animal. The animal’s throat was slit and it was slaughtered and sacrificed and offered to God to make atonement for the sins of Israel. And yet the book of Hebrews comes along and tells us how. How in the world could an animal ever make atonement for sin? The answer is it can’t, but all of that was symbolic. All of it was prospective of a real provision for sin that would come.

And we come to the New Testament and all of that sacrificial language of the Old Testament is picked up and applied to the death of Jesus. That in his death, he died in behalf of sinners. He died bearing the sin of his people. And in his death, God’s wrath is averted because, precisely because, it has fallen on him in their place. Christ has redeemed us, Paul says. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us. Or in terms of Colossians 2 that I mentioned earlier, he’s forgiven us our trespasses, canceling the record of debt that was against us, taking it out of the way—you remember that last part—taking it out of the way, nailing it to his cross, in graphic terms telling us that here is the substitutional payment for the sins of his people, and by that, these covenanted blessings come to his people.

We have it not just in the New Testament, we have it prophesied in the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 53: “All we like sheep had gone astray. We turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In our place, he secures all of these covenanted blessings, secures this forgiveness of sins. We are freed because he has paid the debt and God has not surrendered his righteousness. He has perfectly upheld his righteous demands, but the debt of our sin was paid in the person of our substitute. Like that jingle we love to quote: “We owed a debt we could not pay. He paid a debt he did not owe.”

The whole ground then, the whole ground of our acceptance before God—you hear me say this all the time—the whole ground of our acceptance before God has nothing to do with us. It has entirely to do with Jesus. Often when—we talked about this last night at dinner—often when people get older, we begin to lose a little self-control. The tongue gets a little loose. You hope we don’t get that way when we get old, you know. I remember talking to a lady one time, talking about her mother, who had gotten that way. And in her weakness, she would say things that were not just embarrassing, but things she shouldn’t be saying. And this lady said, “I just hope that when my mother stands before God, God will remember the good things that she has done in her life.” And I thought, “Is that all you got?”

If I stand before God, what I want is not for him to remember anything about me. I want him to remember what Jesus has done in my place. And here is one who has obeyed perfectly, and here is one who has taken the penalty of my sin, and in him I have everything that God requires of me. Tell me, tell me I don’t deserve glory. I’ll agree with you. That’s the confession we make on the way in, isn’t it? That’s the glory of the gospel, what makes it good news, is that it tells us that Jesus has done everything that God requires of us, and all of these promised blessings in the new covenant become ours through what he has done. And this is why we have that dominant note in the New Testament of exalting, exalting in the cross of Jesus. “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

We can, and you’ve heard this a thousand times, and it bears reminding, we can reduce the difference to this: the difference between Christianity and every other religion in the world is those two little words, “do” versus “done.” We are not people who come to God on the basis of what we do. We come to God on the basis of what Jesus has done in place of sinners. And every time we come to the Lord’s table and we hear those words, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins,” we remind ourselves that is my hope and nothing else. God does not accept us because we have served him well enough. He accepts us freely in Jesus.

Jesus said that on the cross, didn’t he? Remember his sixth word from the cross? “It’s finished.” It’s finished. The work of salvation here is done. The old covenant, it had a remarkable provision called the year of jubilee. Did you think of that when we sang it this morning? That first hymn? In the year of Jubilee, you go into debt, you have to sell yourself into slavery, or you have to sell off your property to get the money to survive, and that makes it harder to survive because you don’t have the property to produce, but you’ve done that now. In the year of Jubilee, the 50th year, all of those debts are released. The land comes back to you, the debts are forgiven, the unpaid part forgiven. And God even warns the people of Israel, “Don’t you say in your heart when this transaction comes, ‘Well, I don’t want to buy the land now because it’s only got six months and then he’ll get it all back and won’t be worth my [while],’ don’t you say that.”

And all of that we find in the flow of the scriptures was pointing us toward the forgiveness that we have in Jesus. Jesus himself picks that up in Isaiah chapter 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me and he’s anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim the acceptable year of God’s favor.” The year of jubilee has come and frank, full forgiveness is here in Jesus. He doesn’t tell us if you work well enough, he’ll have you. He doesn’t tell us that now that he has you, you have to work under this burden of obligation. Try always to live up to it, ever hoping to make the grade, make yourself acceptable. He tells you: come to Jesus and have in him everything, everything that God requires.

We come to the New Testament Gospels. Jesus himself illustrates this in several of his parables. He spoke of a Pharisee and a publican, that model of virtue and that model of vice. And it was that model of vice who, casting himself on divine mercy alone, Jesus says, went to his house justified. He told us this parable of the two debtors. One of them owed a huge debt, unpayable. Other one had a debt that was perhaps manageable, but neither could pay. And so Jesus says the creditor, frankly, forgave them both. He doesn’t say, “I’ll let it go for now, but you’ve got to pay me back. You’ve got to work it off.” Salvation he is teaching us is just full pardon.

He tells us a parable of the prodigal son, a man who had defied his father, disgraced his entire family. And you remember how that goes. He comes home with that speech all prepared for his father. “Father, make me one of your servants. I’ll work this off. I’ll pay you back. Make me one of your servants.” That would have been much more than that boy deserved. The father wouldn’t hear of it. He brings him back, he puts on the family ring, and he puts on the robe, and he welcomes him home. And Jesus is teaching us by all of that, that God does not treat us like a slave master when we come to him through Jesus. He doesn’t say, “I’ll take you, but you better earn this first.” And he doesn’t say, “I’ll take you, but you got to pay it off after, and you got to work it off.” He tells us you’ll have it in Jesus, all that I require of you.

It’s the freeness of salvation. And this new covenant promise of frank forgiveness of sins is what shapes the whole New Testament doctrine of salvation that we’ve been looking at. In sheer grace, God comes to us ahead of time and he tells us of the sufficiency of Jesus. And he assures us that if we come to him by way of Jesus, we will have in Jesus all that he requires of us. This is the biblical teaching of salvation by grace through faith. Rejecting all means of personal merit and resting in Christ alone.

How desperate, how desperate would it be to approach God based on your performance? How do you know when you’ve done well enough? Rather, the gospel encourages us to sing, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, [not the best thing about me], I wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” This is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Naked, come to thee for dress. Helpless, look to thee for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. And it is on this ground, then, of full forgiveness in Christ, that we move forward and live for God, not out of slavish fear, not trying to work it off, but on this ground, we move ahead and work for God freely from our heart, joyful of full acceptance before God in Christ, with our sins forgiven and with God’s law written on our hearts, we move forward.

Let’s pray.