Jubilee Community Church
Sunday Service
  • Pure
  • You Are My King (Amazing Love)
  • I Just Love You
  • Do It Again
  • God I'm Just Grateful
  • Come Jesus Come
  • What A God
  • Goodness Of God
  • Evidence
  • The Stand

  • God's Promise Written on the Heart

    Text: Jeremiah 31:31–34; Luke 22:14–20; Hebrews 8:6–13

    Introduction

    Turn with me this morning to Jeremiah 31. If you've been in church very long, you've heard the phrase "New Covenant" — we say it every time we take the Lord's Supper. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." But I want us to slow down this morning and really understand what that word covenant means, why we needed a new one, and what it means for you sitting here today.
    Because here's the truth: everything about your relationship with God — your forgiveness, your assurance, your access to His presence — rests on this one word. Covenant.
    Jeremiah 31:31–34 (ESV):"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 remember their sin no more."
    This is one of the most staggering promises in all the Old Testament. Written 600 years before Jesus was born, this is God announcing, in advance, that the Old Covenant — the Law given at Sinai — was not going to be God's final word.

    I. The Old Covenant Could Not Fix the Heart Problem

    The Hebrew word for covenant is berith (בְּרִית) — a binding agreement, sealed by blood, between two parties. At Sinai, God entered into berith with Israel. He gave them the Law. He said, "Obey, and you will be My people."
    But notice what verse 32 says: "my covenant that they broke." The problem was never the Law itself. Paul tells us in Romans 7:12, "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." The problem was the people. The Law could tell them what was right. It could not make them righteous. It was written on tablets of stone — external. It regulated behavior but could not change the heart.
    That's the whole argument of Hebrews 8. Look at verse 7: "For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second." The fault wasn't in the covenant — it was in verse 8, "he finds fault with them."
    Friend, this is still the human condition. You can put a list of rules in front of any of us — even good rules, even God's rules — and we will find a way to break them. Not because the rules are bad, but because something inside us is broken. Jeremiah himself said it in chapter 17:9 — "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
    We didn't need better rules. We needed a new heart.

    II. The New Covenant Promise: Three Things God Would Do

    Look back at Jeremiah 31:33–34. God promises three specific things.
    1. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts."
    Not on stone. On flesh. The Hebrew word for "write" here is kathab — the same word used for engraving the Law on the tablets at Sinai. But now the tablet is the human heart. This is an internal transformation, not an external code. Ezekiel 36:26 says it even more vividly: "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."
    This is regeneration. This is what happens when a person is born again.
    2. "They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest."
    Under the Old Covenant, knowledge of God came largely through priests, prophets, and teachers mediating His word to the people. Under the New Covenant, every believer has direct access to God — not because we're all prophets, but because the Holy Spirit Himself takes up residence in every believer. 1 John 2:27 says "the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you." That doesn't mean we don't need teaching — it means every believer, from the newest convert to the most seasoned saint, has the same Spirit and the same access.
    3. "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
    This is the foundation everything else rests on. Not "I will overlook" — "I will forgive." Not "I will forget it happened" as if God has amnesia — but "I will remember it no more" against you. It will never again be brought up as a charge against your account.

    III. How the New Covenant Was Sealed: The Blood of Christ

    Now here's where it gets personal. Jeremiah tells us the New Covenant is coming — but he doesn't tell us how it would be established. For that, we go to the Upper Room.
    Luke 22:20 (ESV): "And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'"
    Every covenant in Scripture was ratified by blood. When God cut covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, animals were split in half. At Sinai, Moses took the blood of the covenant and threw it on the people (Exodus 24:8). Blood sealed the agreement — it said, "This is binding, this is costly, this is life-for-life."
    So when Jesus lifts that cup and says "this is the new covenant in my blood," He is saying: I am the sacrifice that ratifies what Jeremiah promised 600 years ago. His blood doesn't just cover sin the way the blood of bulls and goats did, temporarily, year after year. Hebrews 10:14 says, "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."
    This is why Hebrews 8:6 calls Jesus's ministry "a better covenant, enacted on better promises." Not better because the old was defective in itself — but better because it actually accomplishes what the old could only point toward. The Old Covenant said, "Do this and live." The New Covenant says, "It is finished — now live."

    IV. What This Means for You This Morning

    Let me bring this home.
    If you are in Christ, the Law of God is not a burden hanging over you — it's a desire written within you. You don't obey God to get His acceptance. You obey Him because He has already given you a new heart that wants to know Him. That doesn't mean you'll be perfect. It means the direction of your life has changed — from running from God to running to Him.
    If you are in Christ, you don't need a priest, a pastor, or anyone else to get you into God's presence. I love shepherding you, but I am not the mediator between you and God — Jesus is (1 Timothy 2:5). You can go straight to Him, right now, in prayer.
    If you are in Christ, your sin is not remembered against you anymore. Not the sin from twenty years ago. Not the sin from this past week. Hebrews 10:17, quoting Jeremiah, says it again: "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." If God says He doesn't remember it, why are you still carrying it?
    And if you're here this morning and you've never entered into this covenant — hear me: it is not entered by birth, by baptism, by church membership, or by trying hard to keep the rules. It is entered the same way every covenant in Scripture required — through the shed blood of the covenant Mediator, received by faith. Jesus said "this cup... is poured out for you." That "for you" is not generic. It's an invitation with your name on it.

    Conclusion

    Jeremiah stood in the ruins of a broken covenant and a broken nation, and God gave him a promise: I am not done. I will make a new covenant. I will change the heart. I will forgive completely.
    600 years later, in an upper room, on the night before He died, Jesus picked up a cup and said: This is it. This is what Jeremiah saw coming. This is my blood, poured out for you.
    That covenant is still open this morning. The question is not whether God will forgive — He has already promised to remember your sin no more. The question is whether you will come to the cup He is offering.
    Let's pray.
Jubilee Community Church
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