How God Kept His Promise in Christ Jesus

Jeremiah 31

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
March 2, 2025
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes

We’re walking through the promises of God. Here’s a riddle: What is new and never gets old? God’s covenant with His people.

Here’s the context of today’s passage in Jeremiah. A prophet who lived in 600BC, Jeremiah’s mission was to call out people to turn back to God or there would be consequences.

A prophet is not necessarily one who engages future-telling, but one who proclaims God’s world and his message is often future-oriented.

Jeremiah was faithful to preach the word of God, although in Jeremiah 7:27 God told the prophet, “You will preach, but people will no listen.” Sure enough, from what we know in scriptures, Jeremiah did not have a single convert, in forty years!

That must have been a daunting task. Can you imagine if I showed up at church, Sunday after Sunday and no one listened to my message from God’s word? Inconceivable.

Jeremiah is knowing as “the weeping prophet.” This stigma was not due to he being a soft-hearted, even-tempered, emotionally-expressive man. What we know is that Jeremian witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 and this is when he wrote the book of Lamentations.

A few chapters before our assigned chapter we read Jeremiah 29:11, a Bible verse that many of us have committed to memory. It talks about God having a plan and a purpose for our lives and his plan is to bring good and not evil upon us. This message was to the people of God in exile. Daniel was a contemporary of Jeremiah and he was deported. Jeremiah was the last one to be deported to Egypt.

A prominent message from Jeremiah is that faithfulness and obedience to God is success.

We here or in worship service, in-person or online, because we respond to God’s grace, He is worthy of our love, devotion, faithfulness.

I. We need a new covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-32, Hebrews 8:13

“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.  

In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.  Heb. 8:13

J.R Tolken coined the word “eucatastrophy,” a good tragedy or something equally good coming from something bad that has occurred.

In the Adamic covenant we reviewed the fall of man, the worst event in history and immediately after this we read that “out of the woman will come a new seed that will crush his head and he will bruise his heal- a picture of Christ being the redeemer and the victorious one.

The Noahic covenant featured a rainbow, with the bow pointing upwards as if the arrow was pointing toward God himself and it was as God’s son took the blow for us.

The Abramic covenant declared, “out of you will come a great nation.”

The Mosaic covenant gave us a picture of God and his people and used the metaphor of a wedding or a marriage. It is a call to radical holiness.

The Davidic covenant revealed there is a king who is coming to reign in power.

We know there is a difference between a covenant and a contract. God keeps the covenant; we tend to break contracts.

How is it that there are great covenants and what does this mean? Each story points to Christ the sinless who became our perfect sacrifice.

The Scripture says, “I was the husband and they were the unfaithful spouse.” When the prophets talked about sin, they referred to spiritual adultery.

Then God calls the prophet Hosea and says to him: I want your life and your marriage to be your message- remain faithful to an unfaithful wife.

I am faithful and my people are not. We need a new covenant, not one of law, but one of grace.

However, we have a disposition to want to negotiate with God and get credit for all the good we do, how we endeavor to keep God’s law. Martin Luther, the reformer said, “The law is the default mode of the human heart.”

The new covenant is a gospel of grace. We’re saved eternally and one way we know that we are saved is our perseverance, our obedience, a passion for God, yes at times we’ll wane, however your perseverance persists.

We turn our relationship to god as a contract. We do this in prayer.

The non’s leave the church, you don’t leave faith, you cannot deconstruct faith.

Once save always saved: your perseverance, your obedience, a passion, yes, you will wane, your perseverance proves that you are saved.

II. We need a new heart, Jeremiah 31:33a-34, Ezequel 36:26-27

“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 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.”

“And 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

A new heart is possible as we are born again through faith in Christ.

Sin is not bad behavior up against good behavior, sin is condition of the heart. We cannot rescue ourselves; we need a heart transplant.

Salvation is no longer a blood line from Judaism, where one has to be Jewish to be a chosen person of God. The Pharisees complained to Christ, “We are children of Abraham, descendants from the right lineage.” Jesus responded, unless your come to God through me, you are not a part of the family of God, the Scriptures point toward me.

The book of Romans states that salvation is not through the law, then the epistles reiterate this reality. Romans says, “Those who live by faith are considered righteous.”

Ezequiel said, “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all you uncleaning less and from all your idols, I will clean you.”

Think about it, Abraham, Moses, David, as devoted as they were at times, they never experience a new heart. Abraham pointed toward the stars; Moses was told he would not go into the promised land. David was an adulterer and a murderer.

Why did God use and continues to use sinful people to carry out his message? Because that all that God has, you and I.

III. We need a new relationship, Jeremiah 36:33-34, Hebrews. 7:22, Galatians 3:7-9, Habakkuk 2:13

13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify[a] the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts
that peoples labor merely for fire,
and nations weary themselves for nothing?

Jesus is the perfect Israelite, the sinless sacrifice for our sins, the one who lives out God’s commands for us.

This new relationship involves a mutual claim: They are my people; it is a claim of possession.

This new relationship involves a mutual knowledge: We can know him through his word.

The church is an incubator to learn, grow, know about God

A vertical invasion took place. The vertical invasion of Jesus into our world, into our lives brought forth a new relationship with him.

We are unable to keep the old covenant, Jesus is the New Adam. He is better than Noah and he invited us to a new relationship with him. Hallelujah to the king of kings and the Lord of Lords.