One of my favorite hymns is one
that we sang this morning, Come Thou Fount. And as I think about
this text today, I think that maybe, maybe Robert Robertson
was thinking of this God and this truth as he wrote this hymn. Listen to the words for a second.
Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing
call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount unfixed upon
it. Mount of thy redeeming love.
Think of it. Even the second line, Here I
raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come, and I hope by
thy good pleasure, safely to a right at home. Jesus sought
me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God, he to rescue
me from danger, interposed his precious blood. Oh, to grace. We don't sing that long enough.
They should change the music so that we can sing. Oh, for
just. Thirty two beats. Oh, to grace, how great a debtor. Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let thy grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, Lord. Take and seal it. Seal it for
thy courts above. As you think about what we sing
in that song, it is the doctrine of God. It is the doctrine of
gospel. It is the doctrine of Christ.
It is the doctrine of man. It is the doctrine of scripture. It's everything that we're taught
in the concepts of who we are, who God is and his majesty and
his justice and most importantly, his mercy. As I'm looking through the Old
Testament in the next few weeks, as we looked at Isaiah chapter
six last week, We cut short for the purpose of the teaching in
Isaiah 6, and we summarize the judgment, if you will, of God
when He says, go and say this to the people. Keep on seeing,
but not perceive. Hearing, but not understanding.
I will make their ears dull and their hearts dull that they might
not repent, lest they repent and I heal them. This is what
I tell you to say to the people. And Isaiah says, for how long
of them? He says, until inhabitants lie waste, until the land is
desolate. And just like the terebinth or
the mighty oak, when it is cut or laid, the stumps that remain,
I will mow that over. And all that remains is a seed,
the holy seed. We see a picture of destruction
because of rebellion, because of idolatry, because of spiritual
adultery. But the people of God in that
same time are still the people of God, for he is true to his
promises, much like Paul argues for the Romans, for the sake
of the Romans, when they say, is God a liar? Would God be a
liar that he's put a partial hardening on Israel? And Paul
argues, certainly not, for I am of Israel and God has given me
sight through blindness. God has given me sight that I
might see the immeasurable riches of the glory of His grace in
Christ, who is the God of heaven, who came to earth and lived as
a man and died and has been raised to life from the dead that I
now proclaim to you. And so we come to Jeremiah and
next week will be in Ezekiel. How do we give justice to this? We don't. But what I want you
to see in this little series is the face of Jesus Christ in
the Old Testament, not through types and shadows, but through
direct and explicit teaching, through direct and absolute proclamation
and declaration of God himself, that he promises an everlasting
covenant of which no hand of man could create. What's the purpose in it? Friends,
we see that every day we're wrought with error in our lives. We have
error in our own hearts and minds when it comes to understanding
the depth of the grace of God. And we battle that by the gospel.
We battle that through the word of God. And even that which we
know today, if it has no application in our lives, is worthless. Having
a bag of seeds that is perfectly ready for planting, but are not
planted in fertile soil are worthless. You cannot eat them. But yet
if we were to plant them in the right heart, God would bring
ten hundred thousand fold fruit. The people of Israel are even
likened as unto, according to Isaiah, a vineyard, a fruitless
vineyard. Church, I do not want us to be
a fruitless people. And as I rode around town this
morning and I went up the hill earlier, I said, oh, God, would
you bring life to all these people who sit in all these vehicles,
who are sitting under all this teaching? Could you bring life
to the congregations of the cities that we represent? Could you
bring life that revive your people again? And he reminded me just
through his word, as we see in Jeremiah, that life comes through
suffering. And that life comes through dying. No other way. As Jesus says,
unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it will not
produce life. In the same way, he tells his disciples, Ah, the
Son of Man must die that I might bring life. Of course, we know
that Peter couldn't handle that. We know that even as we look
at it, we take for granted the reality that God himself came
to propitiate his own justice. Against us. Jeremiah. Sometimes I feel like Jeremiah.
Some of you probably do, too. I know it makes us feel good
when we akin ourselves or when we liken ourselves to a biblical
character. Very few of us would liken ourselves
to the prophet Jonah. But Wednesday night, we did a
very good job of realizing that we're all like Jonah. We all
love to disobey. We all have prejudices and bigotries
in our own hearts against our own selves and our own people.
We all like to do things our own way. We love to be like Abraham,
who did not believe God and decided to put in his hands God's promise. We want to be like David, who
was a man after God's own heart, though he lusted after another
man's life to the point of murder and deceit. We want to be like
Peter, who was so zealous that he was blind to see the truth
of who Christ was, to the point of denying Him, and then just
the same day that he tried to kill for Him? Do we want to be
like David? Not David, but do we want to
be like... Who am I thinking of? You see the point. We could
just come and say, oh, we want to be like Jeremiah. Do we really
want to be like Jeremiah, who, when he gave the word of the
Lord, that they hated him and they took him into captivity
and carried him to Egypt? Made him a slave? Wanted to kill him? Do we want
to be like the apostles of the New Testament? Paul, who had
forsaken all that he was for the sake of Christ. I counted
all his loss for the priceless gain of knowing Christ my Lord.
Friends, in reality, we're all alike. We're all human beings
with the same nature, a nature to live for ourselves and to
devise in our own way a way that is right. Even when we have sound
doctrine, we still like to paste that over the toast of selfishness
and enjoy it for ourselves. Think of it. So as we look at
Jeremiah today, there's several key things that I want you to
pay attention to. First, I want you to see verse 27. It's not
part of what we are doing here, but 27, the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah and God says, Behold, I am the Lord, the God
of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for
me? That's a key text in the entire
book of this of this prophet. Is anything too hard of me? I'm
the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard to keep
that in mind? There are several other places,
about seven or eight, maybe even more times in the writing of
Jeremiah, where the words you see these this trilogy of words,
sword, famine and pestilence or sword, famine and plague. That God is going to bring upon
his people the sword, famine and plagues. But he also says, but they will
be my people. God will be their God. Jeremiah is sort of seen in two
parts. There's part one that has the
theme of judgment. Judgment comes because of disobedience.
He akins Israel or Judah. He akins them to an unfaithful
wife, to a wife who has left their husband. But yet as husband,
he sits patiently and is willing for them to come back. The extreme
of this judgment, he says, as Jeremiah says, I looked and I
saw that there was the earth with that was void of form. And I looked into the heavens
and there was no light like being carried back to the first days
before creation. That God's judgment is going
to be so complete that it will be that extreme, that it will
be as the world was before. He calls his people to repentance. He says, if you turn and you
trust in me, I will not pay you what you have earned. But what
happens is they do not. And he tells Jeremiah finally
toward the end of the first half of this book, he says, stop praying
for them for their time is done. I have sealed them. Remember
the signs he tells them and he goes to the potter and he gets
the wet clay and he shows it. He says, look, this is who you
are. You're like clay in the potter's hands and you're molded.
And you can still be molded. And if you're messed up, he can
ball you up and mold you again into something beautiful. But
they did not listen to the word of God. And he brought them back
a finished pot. And he brought this hard clay
pot that was perfectly created for its intended purpose. And
he says, this is you and this is what God is going to do to
you. And he drops it on the ground and watches it shatter. They
hated him for it. And he tells them, in chapter
18 and 19, he says, it's over. It's time. There is no more room
for repentance. If they try to repent now, it
will have no effect on me. For I'm going to bring judgment
on them. It sort of echoes what the latter part of Isaiah 6 was
last week. Go preach, but they will not hear. I will not let
them hear. But there is a seed that I will be faithful to. Holy
seed. The holy seed is at stone. The
second part of Jeremiah is really interesting because it details
of all the prophets of the Old Testament. It's the only place
you see in scripture where it details specific sermons, specific
details of what the judgment would look like, a personal glimpse,
if you will, into the heart of Jeremiah, the prophet. It's very
interesting. You can you can actually read
these sermons and you can understand and you can hear them as the
people heard them in that day. But Judah had rejected the word
of God. When Jeremiah took the word of God to the king, what
did he do? He didn't receive it, he took it from him and he
tore it up into pieces and burned it. He said, I do not want to
hear the word of the Lord. I don't want you to tell me what
we should be doing. And so because of that, God has
taken and placed him in his judgment. In Jeremiah 31. You can turn
there if you want, but listen to the words of the Lord, verses
31 through 34. It will echo what we're about
to see. 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 I made with their fathers on
the day 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,
and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God,
and they will be My people. And no longer shall each one
teach his neighbor, and each brother say, 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." Friends, even when
we see this prophecy, even when we see the prophets of old giving
the word of the Lord of judgment, there is always hope of redemption. There is always a perfect promise
with God to his people that he will never leave them nor forsake
them. But as I said last week, we need
to keep in mind that a lot of times we take the prophecy to
such a materialistic and humanistic understanding that we miss the
essence of the fullness of the nature of God's person and being. And so as we see this text today,
we need to understand that God brings judgment and closure to
those things that can be shaken in order to provide that which
can never be shaken. Which is not of this world, but
of the world to come. And we need to see all prophecy
in that life. We need to see all prophecy and
the understanding of how Christ, when he says, I came to fulfill
the law. Christ not just fulfills it in
obedience. As we see, he disobeys certain
laws. He fulfills it in obedience and
perfection of his obedience to the Lord. But he also fulfills
it in it spoke of him. that the fullness of the covenant
of God to the people of God is that Christ was coming to establish
and seal an eternal covenant with all the children of God.
And if you want to understand how we feel as Baptists about
the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of the good news of
Jesus Christ, this is good news that God will not leave his own
and that there is nothing that we can do in this life that could
take us away from the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus.
We find ourselves mired in sin. And the word of the Lord comes
to us and we see his holiness in the face of Christ. Second
Corinthians four, Romans chapter three, John chapter one. When
we see the fullness of his glory, we go, woe is me. I'm lost. But God alone. Touches our lips
and heals us of all of our iniquities. Friends, there is hope in the
gospel. But the gospel begins with the necessary justice of
God and the judgment against wickedness. Friends, we do not
live under the hand of a mighty, glorious, gracious God that turns
a blind eye to sin. He never has and he never will. And the sin that we so frivolously
commit as believers is wicked. Not just because it's a sin against
the holiness of God. But it is the sin that Christ
took upon himself. And he suffered the wrath of
God. Because. If we were to try to come up
with a title for the sermon, I cannot do this. But we could we could say the
amazing grace of God. We could say the sustaining grace
of God. Or we could just easily say God's grace to us in Christ. Because a lot of times we think
that God's grace to us is a sustenance in the midst or in the outskirts
of trouble. Let me let me break that down
a little bit easier because I'm confused in my own way. I want to communicate
it this way. Sometimes we believe that God's goodness and grace
means that when there is a cloud of pain before us, that God comes
and in his mighty benevolence blows it away so that it doesn't
fall us. That's true. When we see stories
of how God has put people in right places. Just divine intervention, circumstances
that could not be seen. Something as small as I need
a car and then somebody drives up with a car. Or I don't have
any money and somebody shows up with money. Or I need a job
and somebody calls and goes, hey, I just, somebody mentions
you the other day or the Lord puts you on my heart and I, do
you know anybody? I'll take the job. It happens like that. That
is God's sustaining grace. It's God's sustaining grace.
When you think your child is going to die and you pray and
she's healed. It's God's sustaining grace when a loved one is on
their deathbed and they rise. It's God's sustaining grace.
But it's also God's sustaining grace when the storm blows in
in such a way we cannot see our hand in front of our face and
there's no hope to be found and there's no light in the darkness.
And we don't know from where our next breath will come. And
we pray that God would take away the death and take away the poverty
and take away the depression. And it does not come. God's sustaining
grace is there even more powerful than when it is there, when he
hands us a reprieve. For in my weakness, you are strong. Therefore, Paul says, I will
boast ever more, ever the more in my weakness, so that the strength
of God will be the surpassing absolute glory of my being. I will rejoice. For I can do
all things in Christ who gives me strength. I've been brought
low, Paul says, to the Philippians, and I've had much. I've been
hungry and I've been overfilled. And I choose to have little.
I choose to be nothing. For in my nothingness, God uses
the nothings of the world to bring to nothing the things that
are. God in himself, in his own glory, ejected himself from,
emptied himself from the glory of heaven and became a human
being so that he might empty himself for the sake of those
who were nothing, so that they might be the righteousness of
God. Do you see how the gospel is just absolutely intertwined
in the message of Scripture? I'm the God of all flesh. Is
anything too hard for me? There's no nothing too hard for
God. This this is this is where we
really need to put application on this. I know God is with me. Nothing's too hard for him. So
God fix my life. And life gets harder and we think,
has God fixed my life? Yes, God fixed your life when
he affixed it for glory. When He affixed Himself to the
cross for your sake, He fixed your life. Oh, Lazarus, back from the dead. What a buzzkill! I mean, that's
not a proper place to use that. What a terrible thing! Yeah,
wait! Only by the grace of God could
a man be brought back from the glory of God and not be depressed. He wasn't the only one. Many
were raised to life from the graves the day Christ died. Many through the ministry of
Jesus we see in the Gospels where he raised the dead. For the Apostles
of John, we looked at this last week. Apostles of John the Baptist. And he sent them to say, are
you really the one or should we look for another? It's on the tail end of him going,
behold the Lamb of God. Are you sure? Are you sure you're the one?
And Jesus says, you come here and let me show you something.
And he preaches and he heals the blind and he helps the lame
to walk and he raises people from the grave. And he says,
now you go back and you tell John what you've seen. There's grace in that. Let's look at this. Verse 36
of chapter 32. God has said. You children of Israel and Judah
have done nothing but evil in my sight. You've done nothing
to provoke me to anger by the work of your hands and you aroused
my wrath. You've awakened my judgment.
This is God. Because of the evil of you and
your children, I will take you out. Now, therefore. Verse 36, that's
basically what God just said, you're about to die. Now, therefore. Thus says the Lord, the God of
Israel, concerning this city of which you say it is given
into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine and
by pestilence." Think of that for a minute. Look how God continues
to establish His reign and rule. He is still the God of Israel. He's still the Lord. He is. Now,
let's stay away from Isaiah. He is the king high and lifted
up and the train of his road fills the temple. And God says the city that you
heard me say this about, that now you say the city that is
destroyed, the city that you say it is given into the hand
of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, by pestilence. What
in the world? Understand that this sword, this
famine, this pestilence is the very judgment of God. This is
the Babylonian crisis here for Israel. We talked about the Egyptian
crisis last week or the Assyrian crisis, where Israel sort of
made an alliance with Egypt. And God says that Assyria is
a rod of destruction in my hand. I will use my own enemies to
take the people of my own possession and show them judgment. And God is saying the same thing
here. I gave you over to the hand of Babylon. I brought this
upon you. Don't lose sight of the fact
that your sin and your wickedness, Israel and Judah, you have caused
me to move against you in this way to such a degree. Do not
forget that I am the author of your suffering. Because of sin. Now, let's be
careful. We can create a theology there
that sin brings consequences. But we can also create a theology
there that God brings consequences. We can also create an antithesis
of that through Joe, that God brings suffering even in the
midst of righteousness. And the second part of this,
we understand that what he's about to say in verse 37 is that
though God brings judgment, God also brings mercy. In verse 37, that's what he's
talking about. He says, this is what you say. Now, look, behold,
look, I will gather them. I will gather them to which from
all the countries to which I drove them in my anger. Can you get
the picture? He will have zeal for his father's
house. Remember that prophecy? Remember
Jesus and John? He had zeal for his father's
house. He goes in there and he drives out the money changers.
He beats them with a scourge. He overturns their tables. He
ruins their livelihood. He runs off their animals. God
drives them from his house. If that's not a picture of what
God did to Israel and Judah, there is no picture. But at the
same time when Jesus did that, God did this in the same way. In the same breath. As God has provoked
judgment and disbursement, God has also decreed restoration. I will gather, God will work
against the very judgment that he gave, that he authored. He doesn't just turn Israel over. He just doesn't turn them over
to Babylon and say, you're done. He turns them over to Babylon,
still under the providence of his hand, and then takes and
works against the very judgment that he authored by getting them
out of there, just like Egypt, puts them in slavery and then
goes against the very people that were his rod of correction
and works against his own judgment to show his mercy. This is the
amazing, ineffable wisdom of God. And what I see here when I see
that in verse thirty seven is that it reminds me of Paul's
teaching where he says that you have been transferred out of
the domain of darkness into the light of the kingdom of his son.
So as Israel was in darkness under the hand of judgment in
Babylon, God, in his everlasting mercy, reached into the darkness
and brought them out. Verse thirty eight. An amazing
parallel to the words we just saw in chapter 31. He says this,
and they shall be my people and I will be their God. I often
think about the Church of America, the congregations of America,
And we see so many people professing to be in Christ, professing to
be in the company of Christ, in the body, of the body, born
again, holding fast to the confession of hope in Christ Jesus. But
yet, where are they? Where is God in their life? Where
is Christ in the measure of their affection? But even then, as
Paul teaches Timothy, when we are faithless, he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny himself. God is a redeemer of his own.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We were made
to walk in the newness of life while we were dead in our trespasses
against him. They will be my people and I
will be their God. Do you know what's incredible
about that? They did not choose to come after God. He owned them
from the beginning. He chose them out of nothing.
He made them His. Friends, that is a picture of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And not just a parallel. It is the gospel of Jesus. That
God, Jehovah, Yahweh, He saves His own. God not only saves them, They
are His. He makes them His. They are His
people. He is their God. But He saves
them and secures them. Look, verse 39, I will give them
one heart. I will give them one way. And
they that day, so that they may fear me forever for their own
good and the good of their children after them. So here we see God
doing something, not just saying, you're my people now walk like
that, not just saying, you're my. He gave them opportunity.
He gave Adam and Eve opportunity to obey in their flesh. He gave
Abram opportunity to obey. He gave Moses opportunity to
obey. He gave Israel. He gave David. He gave all the
kings of Judah and Israel. He gave all the saints of old. He gave every human being opportunity
to obey in their flesh. And we cannot do it. We cannot
afford the pleasure of being holy before God, for our parents
are wicked. Therefore, we are wicked. And
even when we affect righteousness to some small degree, it is not
effective to satisfy the judgment of God against us because the
holiness of an eternal God expects and demands an eternal justice.
So the only way that works. is for God himself to do a work
inside of us. And that work is that he gave
his people, he gives his people a new heart. In John 3, Jesus
speaks to the Jew there, Nicodemus, part of the Pharisees of the
Sanhedrin, and he says, you must be born again. You cannot see,
you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven except ye be born again. How does that work? It's the
work of God. I will give them a new heart
and I will give them one way and I will give them one heart
so that they will walk in my statutes. And their goal is awe,
is fear, is reverence, is worship, is affection to the praise of
his glorious grace. And not just for them, but for
generation after generation after generation. Friends, there is
a guarantee for the perpetuity of the church of Jesus Christ.
And though we can be slaughtered by the sword, though we experience
famine, though we experience plague, though we experience
incarceration and eradication, we will not fail. For our God
is a mighty God. How is it that the martyrs of
history, even the days of the apostles. They mocked them. They mocked Jesus. Look at the
king of the Jews. Save yourself. Come down from
there. Oh, now where's your God? Now
where's your father? Look at you, you liar. Look at
you, you fraud. God was justified. God would be justified in just
eradicating every human being. But he's a merciful God and he
takes pleasure in the praise of his glorious grace. He brings us to life. God will
make an everlasting covenant, verse 40, I want to focus on
this. And 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. He recapitulates in some sense. But I want you to see the reality
of an everlasting covenant. I want you to understand that
this is not a covenant of reestablishing a temporal nation. This is not
a decree or a promise of establishing a temple so that they can do
some cool worship. This is not a place where God's
going to put them in a spot where he can meet with them again.
This is an eternal covenant, one that's everlasting from beginning
to end forever. This is a covenant that is that
supersedes all the temporalness of this world. For we do not
lose heart, for this light momentary affliction prepares us for an
eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look to
the things that are unseen, not to the things that are seen,
for the things that are unseen are temporal. Now let's go to
John. And those things are of the world and the love of those
things is not from God, but of the world and the world and everything
in it is passing away. And in Hebrews, we have not come
to this mountain. or to the tempest, or we've come
to the Mount Zion and the gathering of festal, a festal gathering
of angels in celebration of the Lamb of God. We've come to Jesus,
the author and perfecter and the finisher of our faith. We've
come to Christ, who is the temple of the Holy God. And we are the
pillars. Now we're in John's Apocalypse
of that temple. Friends, if the covenant, the
promise of God is not for eternal kingdoms, not of this world,
then there is no hope in this. There's no hope in Christ. Everlasting. How can it be an
everlasting worldly kingdom when God has said he's going to destroy
the world again, he's going to shake it and what can fall will
fall so that what cannot be shaken remains. This everlasting covenant is
not of human design. This is not a covenant made by
human ingenuity. This is not a covenant made by
an understanding of men who got together with God and came up
with this idea. This is a promise of God in his
absolute wisdom before he ever said, let there be light. He
purposed to put light in the hearts of his people so that
they could see the beauty of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And this is forever. It will not fail. It will never
end. It will always be. And God may
give us something today, but he may take it away tomorrow.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. God's everlasting covenant is
not talking about what will pass away. God's everlasting covenant
is not talking about dirt or dowry. But it's eternal life through
Jesus Christ, when Jeremiah spoke the words of God, he was preaching
the gospel of Christ to these people. And whether they saw
it or not is inconsequential. Whether they grasped it, whether
Jeremiah knew it or not, he was a mouth house. You think Balaam's
mule sat around and pondered what came from his mouth? No. We're nothing. God will use nothings to show that he's everything. God promises some things in the
latter portion of this text. He says he will always do good
for us. You know what that means? That means in the midst of a
storm, it's good for us. I don't have time to really open
it up to the way I want you to see it because we've been here
for several years. But when God takes away just
a lifeline, to not even an idol, but to an affection that even
in the midst of suffering, I can go, yeah, I know God's got it,
but I'll smile at that. When He takes that away, it's
for my good. So that when I get closer to
Him, it's what I desire the most. So that my joy may be full. So
that the reward of heaven, so that the treasure of heaven is
purely seen as it is intended to be seen. I don't want to stand
in glory one day and look at Christ. And go, wow, why? Why did I have all this junk
between us for so long? Why did I have all these idols
that I didn't even recognize that I just carried around like
infants? Why did I feed and tend to all these affections for so
long when you? Oh, I've wasted. Wasted. How much dearer this
day would have been, how much greater my crown would have been
at this moment forever had I just been sanctified a little more,
God. The good thing is that it's not
my place to do that. God does it. See, now we can
all breathe a minute because we were making a mental list
of these things. We had to go throw them in the fire. God does all things for our good. It's not just a prophecy of 500
years before Christ. This is a reality of the teaching
of part of the Romans for God causes, causes all things to
work together for good, for those who love him and are called according
to his purpose. Romans 8. He will always do good for us.
In Hebrews, God disciplines those he loves. Discipline is not punitive. It's restorative. It's growing. It's pruning. It's making our
worship full. God promises he will make us
new. He will birth us anew with new
hearts for him. He says that. I will give them
a new heart. I will give them a heart for
me. How does that work? He takes Ezekiel, we'll be there
next week. He takes that stony heart. The heart that can't be,
the heart that can't come to life. And he puts life in it.
And he transforms it. He recreates it to be a life
for him. Not only that, he will seal us.
He will keep us. He will keep us from turning
away. Verse 40, And I will put the
fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. He
will seal us. How does that look for the church?
Well, it looks like that for the church, that we have a strong,
growing desire for fellowship. We have a strong, growing desire
for corporate worship. We have a strong, growing desire
for the word of God. We have a strong, growing desire
for the lost. We have a strong, growing desire
to pray. And when those things wane, we
have a conviction. And if the conviction rests too
long and we become a little stagnant, then what happens is the Lord
will prompt the brother or sister and they will pray for us. And
then the spirit of God will empower them to come and they will say,
oh, we love you. We miss you. We long to see you.
Can we do anything for you? And the child of God goes, oh,
my sibling in Christ has come to take me on. They don't get embarrassed. We
shouldn't be embarrassed. Why are we embarrassed before
each other when there's no condemnation before the Father? And we grow together. Friends,
we are not living a fulfilled life in Christ as the body when
we're not living as the body. Believe it or not, we're not
cyborgs that can just take our arms off and put them in a drawer
until Sunday. The Spirit of God will come to
us and gives us life. Look at the final thing that
God says there. Verse 41. This is a sermon in itself. I will rejoice in doing them
good. There's three phrases in this
thing, and I want to take them one at a time. I will rejoice
in doing them good. What is that saying? That says
that God finds pleasure and happiness in his mercy and goodness toward
his people. Did you hear that? We see that God finds no pleasure
in the destruction of the wicked. God's not sitting there going,
that was great, getting a magnifying glass, burning us like ants.
God finds no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked, but
God rejoices in the doing good for his people. That's why God
could look with the heart of joy at the
cross. and a back of justice at the Christ. My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? Because he who knew no sin became
sin. And poured and drank the fullness
of the wrath of God. And God took pleasure in the
killing of his son because he takes pleasure in the doing good
for his people. That's how. But God doesn't take pleasure
in the justice of the wicked. But it's a necessary justice. God is not maniacal. God is merciful. God's happiness is wrapped up
in his grace. And we too, look at this, we too will be
wrapped up in the joy of His glorious grace. How? And I will plant them in this
land in faithfulness. In this land. This land of an
eternal covenant. He's not talking about dirt people.
He's talking about Christ. He's talking about the kingdom
that never fails. Yeah, for a little tiny while, Israel was set back
on dirt. And they went away again, set
back on dirt. He says, I will plant them in
this land in faithfulness. What does he mean? Faithfulness in
faithfulness is the way in which God will plant. What's that mean? Paul says to Timothy, it is the
what? One who competes that gets the
prize. He said is the one who plants that gets the crop. If
we don't, we can be farmers and have tractors and have land and
have seed. If we don't plant it, it will not come. We don't
have to sit here shuddering in our bones, wondering if God's
going to plant us in the righteousness of his kingdom forever, because
he's faithful to do that. That's what that means. God is
certain to plant us, his people, in the land of eternal covenant. What God plants in his mercy,
he plants in the fullness of his person. The last thing in
verse 41. Look. I will plant him in this land
in faithfulness with all my heart and all my soul." Now listen,
don't think New Testament heart and soul there. The Greeks had
a different view of heart and soul than the Hebrew people.
When the Hebrew people, when you see God in Deuteronomy saying
to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul
and all your strength, It's not separate entities of your being.
It's it's a way of expressing the fullness of your person.
All that you are. Love him. So what God is saying
here with all of my heart and all of my soul, it's not a place
to now devise a plan to understand what God's got a heart and God's
got a soul, God's got hands. And wow. And we write a series
of books and then we become a mega preacher and Next thing we know,
we're making little gods, little Christ's. This means that the fullness
of all that God is. Plants faithfully the fullness
of all his people. It's not half hearted. He's not
he's not possibly he's certainly. With all of his character, he's
putting himself on the line there to say, if I don't plant you,
I'm a liar. The holiness of God is a display
of his intrinsic worthiness, therefore, if God is holy and
God has promised to be merciful to his own, he's merciful to
his own with the complete faithfulness of his character. He is displaying
his own holiness and trustworthiness. He is the truth. He is the life. And so we're certain to have
eternal life in Christ alone. Christ is a certain Savior, not
a possible Savior. When Christ atoned on the cross
of Calvary, he absolutely paid for the sins of a certain people.
Who are they? All the believing ones. All those
not believing are condemned already, for they fail to believe in the
Son of God. John 3. In the final verse, just as I have brought all this
great disaster upon this people, God brought it, so I will bring
upon them all the good that I promised them. And he explains some of
it. Fields shall be brought that you are now sane or desolate.
Fields shall be bought. The land shall be multiplied.
I will restore their fortunes. Now wait a minute. I don't even
want to get into this, but I'll say it. So God is saying He's
going to bring them back to a land. He did. But was that land everlasting? I would do good for you right
now. You will have a land, you will have a time, you have a
place. But more importantly, the fullness of their joy and
their hope was wrapped up in their experience, not being enslaved
anymore, but being free as a people. But that's still temporal. The
everlasting covenant of God for even the day of Jeremiah was
Christ Jesus alone. so that Paul could rightly and
confidently say, it is not the descendants of Abraham who are
Israel, but all who are in Christ Jesus. God brought justice. God brought
discipline. God brought judgment. And God
will bring mercy. I guess the question now stands
for us as we study this old text. Do we glory in our Redeemer?
I've said this a lot lately. Or do we glory in our redemption?
There's a difference. There's a difference. If our
redemption is what we can see, touch, and experience, it will
fade. And if we glory in that, then
when it goes, our joy fades. And we place our faith in something
else. But the Redeemer. When that which
we have today goes away and we say, I thought you said it was
everlasting, and we look and we see, we go, wow, I've seen
nothing yet. It's for certain for me. Is that the way you see Christ?
Is that the way you learn Christ? Is that the way you receive Christ? Be careful. You believe. Christ alone is the eternal covenant
of God for your good and for His glory. Believe the gospel
of Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, we have no word. We don't know how we ought to
pray sometimes, just as Scripture teaches us. Lord, help us to see ever so
clearly, every moment, our need for You, our purpose in You, to praise
You, to worship You in spirit and in truth. Lord, plant the Gospel seed in
our hearts in such a way that we stand in awe As we worship
you for writing on our good hearts that you gave us your law. In your. In your glory. And for sealing us and securing
us and preserving us until the day where we will never be tempted
to sin again. Oh, God, bring that day swiftly. Lord Jesus comes. Father, put us in a place of
urgency as we pray for each other, for the church, for the lost,
for the nations that they may all see Christ. Send us cleansed
but humble into the world. Plan in the hearts and the ears
of these children, Lord, the truth of your glory. that you might bring them up
into righteousness. In Jesus' name we pray.