New Covenant

There's an old saying that I'm interested to know if you know how the saying goes. So I'm gonna start it off. I'm gonna ask you to finish it for me if you know how the saying goes, okay? Here it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? This is a saying that sometimes we need a reminder of. And it is to say that if something is working fine and it's been reliable for a long time, don't go messing with it, right? Don't try to give it an upgrade if it's perfectly good the way it is, because in trying to give it an upgrade, you might end up ruining it and you might break it. I know when I touch things, I tend to break them, okay? I don't tend to fix them. I tend to make them worse. I need to remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Today we're looking at the final covenant given by God in the Bible, and it's gonna be in Jeremiah, Book of Jeremiah, chapter 31, verses 31 through 37. Jeremiah 31, 31 through 37. This covenant is known as the New Covenant. And in this covenant, God gives it, in order to fix a problem that occurs with the Old Covenant. And by the Old Covenant, God makes clear in this passage, he's talking about the covenant he gave to Moses, the covenant he made with Israel that he gave to Moses that we saw two weeks ago. But here's the thing, is that the problem was not that there was anything wrong with the covenant. God is not taking something that is broken in fixing it, nor is he trying to fix something that isn't broken. Here's the thing, is that the problem was not with the covenant itself. The problem was with the people that the covenant was made with. The covenant was not broken. People are broken. And what has transpired between the time that God gave the last covenant that we saw last week, the covenant that he gave to David. What transpired between that time and what we find, where we find ourselves in the story today, it goes to show that there's nothing wrong with God's promises. There's nothing wrong with God's covenants, but there is something wrong with humanity. You see, you remember God gave the covenant to David that we looked at last week, that David would have a man reigning over Israel forever. He would have a descendant reigning over Israel forever. After David dies, his son, Solomon, rises to the throne. And after a really good start to his rule, he ends up turning away from the Lord. And as he turns away from the Lord, and he turns his heart to other things, many other things, we see that everything takes a downward spiral. He starts going off in another direction. And from there, after he dies, a line, his line comes after him full of terrible kings. God told Solomon when he turned away from the Lord, that he was going to tear the nation in half, that there would be a northern kingdom, that there would be a southern kingdom, and that his sons would only rule in that southern kingdom of Judah, this line of terrible kings rises to power, kings who have no care or concern for the Lord. Now, you remember that Israel is God's people. It's not King David's people. It's not King Solomon's people. It's no king's people. The king is supposed to be the one who is enforcing God's laws. He's the one who is supposed to be representing God as king on earth to his people, Israel, and putting those laws in place. But now they are turning from him, and the people are following those evil kings. As they turn away from the Lord, the people turn from God with them. In 597 BC, the Babylonians, which is the most power, becoming the most powerful nation on earth at the time, they besiege Jerusalem. And by 586, they completely wipe out Jerusalem and they completely destroy the temple. They kill many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah, and they carry off the rest into exile, into Babylon, and they spread 'em out across the Babylonian Empire. It was their plan to take away their identity, to take them completely away from any identity they have left as the people of Yahweh, and bring them into Babylonian society. Take them out of being the people of God and just making them people of Babylon. They kill many, they carry off the rest as exiles. Now you can imagine, you can only imagine how awful this is. But this is something that God sent prophets like Jeremiah himself, in order to warn the people that would happen if they did not return to him. He warned them that judgment would be coming if they did not return, but he also promised them hope. But through the time which Jeremiah lived through, many people were killed. Many people were sent off into exile. And life as an exile is hard. In fact, if you read the Book of Lamentations, which comes after the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah the prophet is also writing lamentations. And you can feel the depths of his soul, and the pain and agony that the people of Israel are going through as all of these things are happening. It's hard. And life as an exile is hard, because exiles oftentimes are left without hope. It's an uncertain future in a land, a home that's not their own, among a different people that they don't belong to. Not only are they separated from their homeland and their family, their family, whatever was left alive of them, but they also know that they are in exile because they've turned from the Lord. He has sent them the prophets to tell them this. And now they don't know how to turn back to him because they're away from Jerusalem. They're away from the temple where they're supposed to make sacrifices to God. They're away from the priests, and they're away from the people who would know. For many of them, they had forgotten word of God. They had turned from it for so long, they didn't know it anymore. And now they can't find people who do know it. And it's difficult. They're scattered and they're having a hard time knowing how to return to the Lord. But the Lord is faithful, and he always finds a way. He sends prophets, he sends people with his word. And during their time in exile, there were many who continued in disobedience to the Lord, but there were some who turned back to the Lord, or kept their faith in the Lord the whole time. You see, it's not far off. What's happening here in Jeremiah's lifetime is not far off from the human condition and the story that we've seen all throughout the Bible since the beginning of time, right? The story that we've seen is a story in which human beings are in exile. That we are in exile because of our sin. Ever since our first parent sinned, you remember, we were created to be in right relationship with God. We were created to live in his presence. We were created to walk with him. But when our first parents sinned, they were banished from the presence of God. They were banished from the Garden of Eden. And since them, all who came after them, all who were born after them have also sinned and been separated from the presence of God. And we are unable to get ourselves back. We are unable to make up the difference. We are unable to do what we have to do in order to get ourselves back. But there is a way that the Lord has made, and we see it in this New Covenant today. And so humans are in this state of exile. And even when we come to know the Lord, even when we do come back into right relationship with him through faith in Jesus, the apostle, Peter, speaks of followers of Jesus as exiles as well. Why? It's because we still live in a place that is not our home. We still live in a place apart from the immediate presence of God. We still live in a fallen and broken world. We are exiles in the fact that we are citizens of the kingdom of God, but still not living in the immediate presence of God. And so what do we do in this meantime? How do we find hope when we are exiles living in a fallen world? Well, Jeremiah gives us a way for that. It's that we can find our hope in the everlasting New Covenant that God has made with his people. Let's take a look at what it is in Jeremiah 31. It says, "The days are coming", declares the Lord, "when I will make New Covenant with the people of Israel "and with the people of Judah. "It will not be like the covenant "I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand "to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, "though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel "after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds "and write it on their hearts. "I will be their God, and they will be my people. "No longer will they teach their neighbor "or say to one another, "Know the Lord, because they will all know me "from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness, "and will remember their sins no more. This is what the Lord says, "he who appoints the sun to shine by day, "who decrees the moon and the stars to shine by night, "who stirs up the sea so that it's waves roar, "the Lord Almighty is his name. "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the Lord, "will Israel ever cease being a nation before me." This is what the Lord says. "Only if the heavens above can be measured "and the foundations of the earth below be searched out "will I reject all the descendants of Israel "because of all they have done," declares the Lord. I want us to find three ways that exiles can find hope today in this passage. The first one is this. Exiles can find hope in God's faithfulness. We just sang about it a minute ago, God's faithfulness. But do you really remember it? Did you sing it and mean it when you sang about it? Because it can be easy sometimes to forget about God's faithfulness. It can be easy when times are hard to forget about his faithfulness and all the good that he has done, all the ways that he has fulfilled his promises, and just move on and wonder what's gonna happen. But we know as exiles who know the Lord that exiles can find hope in God's faithfulness. You see, this passage, it begins not only with a promise for a New Covenant, but also a reminder of God's faithfulness. It has the reminder of how he took Israel by the hand and led them out of slavery in Egypt. It was something he promised he would do. Remove them from the most powerful nation on earth where they were in captivity, overtake the most powerful king on earth in the Pharaoh at that time. And he would lead them by the hand out of Egypt into their own land. It was a promise he had given. It was a promise he had kept. And he reminds them of it in the very beginning. Why? Because new promises, new promises don't give much hope if the reason you have to make them is just because you couldn't keep the old promises. Picture this. Picture a father who promises his son. He says, son, I'm gonna get you a new baseball bat for your birthday. It's coming. I know you love baseball. I know you've been needing a new bat for some time now. I'm gonna get you a new baseball bat. And his birthday, it comes and it goes, and no baseball bat comes. And so the father says, well, son, you know, I didn't get you that bat so that I could actually get you tickets to the Yankees game. Why ever somebody would wanna do that? I don't know, but I'm gonna get you tickets to the Yankees game, right? And I know you love going to watch baseball, so we're gonna do that instead. And the time for the game comes and it passes, and no Yankees game. And the father says, well, you know what, son? I didn't get you tickets to that Yankees game because I'm gonna get you tickets to the World Series, and we're gonna go together and it's gonna be a great time. You're gonna love it. And by this time, the son is starting to figure out, you know, that the promises, they keep going on and on and they get bigger and better, but it's just him trying to make up for the ones that he couldn't fulfill before. And eventually the son simply no longer believes in his dad. You see, when God gives new promises though, it's not because he can't or hasn't fulfilled the old ones, it's because he is a God of promises. And not only is he a God of promises, but he is a faithful God who keeps his promises. God is not making a New Covenant because he couldn't keep his end of the bargain. He's making new promises because they couldn't keep their end of the bargain. And he said, you know what? I am going to keep it for you. And while the people of Israel kept turning away from the Lord, he was faithful. That's why he says I was a husband to them. I was faithful. I gave them my everything even when they turn away from me. That is the God we serve. He is a faithful God. He makes promises to his people, he fulfills them, and nothing gets in his way ever. He fulfills each and every promise. See, you can't find hope in promises unless the one who made the promises is faithful. When we say that we have our hope in God's promises, what we actually mean is that we have hope in the God of the promise. It's not just that our faith and our hope is in God's promises. It has to be in the God of the promise, because a promise is nothing if it comes from someone who can't keep it, whether they never intend to keep it, or whether they just don't have the power to keep it. They mean nothing if it comes from someone like that. But we have a God who intends to fulfill every promise that he has made. And he has the power to fulfill every single promise that he has made. Our hope lies in the God of promise, in the faithful God who keeps every promise that he makes. Now, a lot of people wonder, God gives some good promises, and here, he gives good promises to unfaithful people. And a lot of people wonder, how can God give me anything good? He promises all these good things. How can he give me anything good when I've done so much wrong? But here's the thing that I want us to remember is that God's faithfulness is not dependent on your faithfulness. God's faithfulness is dependent on God's faithfulness. God's faithfulness is not dependent on who you are or what you have done. God's faithfulness is dependent on who he is and what he does. If it was dependent on our faithfulness, none of us would be here today. If it was dependent on Israel's faithfulness, he wouldn't be giving a New Covenant. God, his faithfulness is dependent on himself. All of us have sinned. All of us fall short. All of us have separated ourselves from God. But those who know the Lord, we know him because of his faithfulness, not because of our own. And church, as the people of God living in exile for a time, living in a world that is not our home, it is that faithfulness. It is God's faithfulness that can bring us through our time in this world where it's not our home. It's God's faithfulness that can bring us through whatever we may face with hope, and even with joy, knowing that God is faithful. When people are standing against us because we belong to the Lord, or because we seek to follow the Lord, and we seek to do what is right in his eyes, we can hold on to his faithfulness. When life is not going the way that we hoped that it was gonna go when we were younger looking forward, we can hold on to God's faithfulness. When we're facing disease and death, whether it's our own or that of a loved one, we can hold on to God's faithfulness and his promises. When we're facing financial trouble, when we're facing depression, when we are facing just whatever it is we may be facing, we are walking through this fallen world, still facing the effects of sin in our lives, living as exiles, citizens of the kingdom, living here in a fallen world. How do we do that? How do we live as God's people in the fallen world? We do it by holding onto the hope in the faithful God, and in his promises. Though people are exiles, we can find hope in God's faithfulness. But the second thing I want you to see, exiles can find hope in God's forgiveness. Exiles can find hope in God's forgiveness. The passage goes on to give the terms of this New Covenant, and it's in these terms where we find great hope. I want you to notice something though. Before we get into the terms, as we go through them, I want you to see that in all of them, this covenant has no demands of the people. The way that we come into the covenant is by faith. As we are in the covenant, it makes no demands of the people. It is simply God obligating himself to do something for his covenant people. Now we have to remember, we come into it by faith, but the Lord is doing the work. And I'm gonna show you that as we go through. Let's take a look at the terms of the covenant. The first one is this. First of all, God's law written on the hearts of the people. That's term one of the covenant, God's law written on the hearts of the people. Take a look at verse 33. "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel "after that time." declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds "and write it on their hearts. "I will be their God, and they will be my people." You know, there's a significant difference in you going and telling someone, "Hey, you, be outgoing." There's a difference between that and someone actually being outgoing, right? There's an external for the first one, and there's an internal for the second one. If you tell someone who is shy to be outgoing, then they might do it. They might give it a shot. They might do it badly. They might do it well and surprise themselves. It may happen, but it's something that they have to conform to. It's not really a part of who they are. It's something that they have to do all the work to make themselves fit into that box. But being outgoing means it's natural to you. It's just what comes out of you. It is the thing that you are. It's your identity. It's who you are. God is promising to conform his New Covenant people, to change them from within rather than just telling them to conform to something outside of themselves. It's no longer this law written on tablets of stone. It's a law written in our hearts. God is conforming us into who he calls us to be. He is doing the inner work in changing us. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have to actively say yes to the Lord. But it does mean that he's changing your desires. It does mean that he is changing your heart. It does mean that he is molding you into his image. But notice, it's a work of God. He says, I will write it on their hearts. I will put it inside of them. And friends, what we, the way that we receive that, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, God puts his spirit inside of us. He puts his spirit inside of us. When we trust in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and begins transforming our hearts by the word of God. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't have to look to the Bible anymore. It doesn't mean that we don't have to look to God's word and read it because it's already gonna be in there. That's not what it's saying. He's saying that as we read it, he will be writing it on the inside. We get into the word of God so that the word of God can get into us. That's the promise that God gives. You take it in. I will write it on your heart as you do. So, let me encourage you. Open the word of God. Drink it deeply inside and let it conform you. Let it transform your mind and conform your heart. Let the spirit of God speak to you from His word, and be changed. When he says, "I will be their God, and they shall be my people", he's saying, they will look like me again. As we were made in the image of God, in the first two weeks of the series that we looked at, made in the image of God, but then sin in the image of God distorted in us. Not lost, but distorted. And God comes in, and he does the work conforming us back into his image. So, the first term of the covenant was that God's law would be written on the people's hearts. The second term of the covenant is that God's nearness to each member of the covenant. Verse 34 starts like this. "No longer will they teach their neighbor "or say to one another, "'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, "from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. The Old Covenant that came through Moses required mediators. No one could go directly to the Lord. They had to go to someone else called a High Priest who would go to the Lord for them. The good news of the New Covenant is that it was going to remove that mediator in a sense. What it was really going to do, we find out, is it was going to give us a new mediator. A mediator who is both fully God and fully man. His name is Jesus Christ. Now, at the time that this covenant is given to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah to give it to the people, they don't know what that looks like yet. They don't know who that mediator is going to be. Yet they can't even comprehend that God would become man, that he would become flesh and he would come in order to save us. But on this side of the cross, we know that that's who it is. No one could go directly to the Lord. They had to go to someone else called a High Priest who would go to the Lord for them. The good news of the New Covenant is that it was going to remove that mediator in a sense. What it was really going to do, we find out, is it was going to give us a new mediator, a mediator who is both fully God and fully man. His name is Jesus Christ. Now, at the time that this covenant is given to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah to give it to the people, they don't know what that looks like yet. They don't know who that mediator is going to be yet. They can't even comprehend that God would become man, that he would become flesh, and he would come in order to save us. But on this side of the cross, we know that that's who it is. We have a mediator who is fully man, but he's also fully God. And we can know him and we can go straight to him. In the Old Covenant, only certain people could enter certain places in the temple. Only certain people called the High Priest could go into the holy of holies, the presence of the Lord to make the sacrifice for the people's sins. Only certain people could go in there. So this would be crazy for this original audience to think of that. But this side of the cross, we know that Jesus is the one who goes before the Father, that he's the one that we can go to. It's important as we read this, to notice that he doesn't say, as he's going in verse 34, that they will not teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the law. That's not what he says. He says they will no longer have to say, "Know the Lord". He's saying that you can know him in the way that the High Priest should know the Lord, anyone can know the Lord in that way. Anyone could know the Lord in that way. The emphasis was not on the law or the word of God not needing to be taught. It's on the fact that none of the covenant people needed any other mediator. You don't need a priest that you go and confess your sins to, and then he goes to the Lord for you. You don't need a priest, a mediator to make a sacrifice for your sin anymore. The mediator is Jesus Christ, and he is the sacrifice for our sin. He has done it. He has done it once and for all, and we can go straight to him, and we can know him because of what he has done. Everyone who puts their faith in Jesus has a right relationship with the Lord, and can go to him. We still need to teach people how to know the Lord though. Those who have not placed their faith in Jesus, we still need to teach people how to know him. We do still teach one another what the word of God says, is what I'm standing here doing now for you. We still teach people those things. But the point here is that once you come into the New Covenant by the blood of Jesus, you need no one else to mediate your relationship. You have direct access to God and you can come to him as Father. The terms of the covenant, God's law written on the people's hearts, God's nearness to each member. And finally, God's forgiveness for the sinner. God's forgiveness for the sinner. End of verse 34, "For I will forgive their wickedness "and will remember their sins no more." I want you to just think about that for a moment. I don't know what you've done. I know what I've done. I don't even remember all of what I've done. I've done so much I don't even remember it all. And I'm sure you're the same. I don't know what it is for you. That my sin would be remembered no more is an unbelievable thought to me. And I want to encourage you, church. Sometimes we hear it so much that we let it become common in our lives, that we let it just become something that we hear, and we just let it kind of go in one ear, out the other ear, and we don't dwell on it. I want you to dwell every single day on the fact that you are a sinner, but the Lord remembers your sin no more. Because although our sins are many. Although our sins are many, his mercy is more, as we just sang a little while ago. That's the God that we serve. He is a God of forgiveness. And forgiveness is both the final term of the covenant, and it's the reason that we can have the first two terms of the covenant that we already gave. It's because we are forgiven of our sins that God can write his law on our hearts. And it's because we are forgiven of our sins that we can be near to God. Because it was our sin that was written on our hearts before and it was our sin that separated us from God. But God forgives our sin in order that we can know him, in order that we can be like him. And it's a true forgiveness, a forgiveness that remembers our sin no more. You know, back in the day, it used to be that if you got in a car wreck, especially if you were at fault, you better believe your insurance rates were gonna go way up, right? You better believe that your insurance was about to get more expensive. Nowadays, for the past decade or so, all the insurance companies have something that they call accident forgiveness, right? You've heard the term on the commercials. Hopefully you have it in your insurance policy, if not, you should give them a call. You should deal with that, it's a good thing. They have accident forgiveness. With accident forgiveness, you can put your mind at ease knowing that if you get in one accident, it's fine. You don't have to worry about it. I mean, it's not fine. Your car is a wreck, but like it's, your insurance is not gonna go up. You don't have to worry about it. They will forgive you. According to the insurance company, they will remember your sin no more until you get in the second accident, right? Then all of a sudden, the first accident matters. The first accident comes back up. You see, what happened wasn't actually accident forgiveness. It was just sweeping the accident under the rug for a little bit, and just putting the rug back on top. But when the second accident comes, that rug gets pulled up, and all the dirt is still there. It all of a sudden gets remembered. God's forgiveness is different. God's forgiveness is true forgiveness. God's forgiveness is not just sweeping our sin under the rug and putting the nice pretty rug back on top. It's not God just turning the other way and not looking back at our sin. It is that he remembers our sin no more. But the question we're left with, and most certainly the original readers would've been wondering, is how is God going to do this? How is a holy and just God going to remember our sin no more? Because everything that we know about God up to this point is that he's both holy and he is just. He says that sin must be punished, and he says he will forgive it. He says that he will by no means clear the guilty, and that he will remember the sins of his people no more. He says that he is just, and that we can approach the throne of grace when we are weak. How is God going to hold on to both being holy and being merciful? How will this just and holy God forgive our sins and remember them no more? The answer is found in the one who fulfills all of the promises and all of the covenants of God. And his name is Jesus Christ. His name is Jesus. God's forgiveness is not like your insurance policy. It is not like your accident forgiveness on your car insurance. While your insurance ignores what you've done one time, and they look the other way one time, they will bring it back up on the next one. It will count against you on the next one. And they ignore it and look away for a time. But God takes sin head on. He doesn't ignore it. He doesn't sweep it under the rug. He doesn't look away from it. He takes your sin head on, and he deals with it on the cross. He deals with it, and he really forgives it and forgets it. So you don't have to worry about it coming back up. You don't have to worry about God's patience running out on you. You don't have to worry about being dropped from the covenant, like you might get dropped from your insurance coverage. And you don't have to worry about the cost of forgiveness going up if you screw it up again. Friend, the cost of your forgiveness was as high as it could possibly be, and it was paid for in full. It was the cost of the blood of the son of God on the cross. There is no higher cost, and it has been paid for. If you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, your sin has been dealt with on the cross. Romans chapter eight, verses one through four. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The hope that the people of God have in Jesus Christ is greater than any hope that you can find in this world, because the price that God paid for you is higher than the price that anything or anyone else in this world can pay, is the price of your sin, is the price of your, the very thing that separated you from God. And the cost was the blood of the son of God. We can find our hope in him. So even though we live as exiles in a world where we still face temptation and we still sin, we find hope in God's forgiveness. It's not to abuse it, it's not to live with an attitude of, I'll live how I want and I have God's forgiveness. No, that's not what he is doing. Remember, he is writing his word on our hearts. He's changing us so that we look like him. He has given us a new and better covenant, which means we should desire to be with him, and to be like him, and walk side by side with him all the more. No, we don't seek to abuse God's forgiveness, but we're able to walk in it. That when those times come, that when we sin, we don't stay falling on the floor, but his grace picks us up and it carries us through, and it continues to conform us and to change us so that we may walk by his spirit. The final thing that I want us to see is that exiles can find hope in God's forever love. For the rest of the Old Testament after this, after Jeremiah gives this in the sixth century BC before Christ, for over five more centuries, the people are waiting for the time where this New Covenant will come into place. This covenant is unique. All the other ones, God gives it, and then he ratifies it soon after. This one, God promises it. But then they have to wait. The good news for you and me, my friend, is that we don't have to wait. That this covenant was ratified by the blood of Jesus 2,000 years ago. And for anyone who will place their faith in him, we can come into this New Covenant, and we can can live in God's eternal, his forever love as his children. We can be his people and he will be our God. He has ultimately shown his eternal love to his people through the cross of Jesus Christ, and we can find our hope in him. See, as exiles in a fallen world, we're left looking for hope. We're left looking for hope in this world. Looking around this world for something to put our hope in only leaves us in exile. Placing our hope in anything else, it only leaves us in exile. But exiles can find hope in the promises of God, and in the God of the promises. Exiles can find hope in the fact that God draws us near to him in the cross, that he is paid the price, and that he welcomes us in by faith. Today, we're gonna be celebrating communion. Communion is a celebration of this New Covenant, and it's a remembrance of what God has done in Jesus Christ in order to bring us into this New Covenant. And so as we take communion, I'm actually going to ask you if you're here today and you've never placed your faith in Jesus, we're actually gonna ask you to refrain from taking communion, because it is a proclamation of our faith in Him. And if that's you today, If you've never placed your faith in Jesus, what I want to ask you, is instead of taking communion, I want you to observe it. And I want you to pray to the Lord, and I want you to ask him, to show you your need for him. And I'm gonna give some directions in a little while, in just a few minutes, of how you can come to know Jesus. But for now, I want you to refrain and I want you to just observe and see your need for Jesus. If you're here today and you are a believer, we wanna invite you to take communion. And I'm gonna invite you to open up the top part of your packet and grab the bread. The night before Jesus went to the cross, the night before he was killed, he took this meal with his disciples. And in Matthew chapter 26, verse 26, it says, "While they were eating, "Jesus took bread and he had given thanks. "And when he had given thanks, he broke it, "and gave it to his disciples saying, 'Take and eat. "'This is my body.'" Church, let's remember the body of Christ broken for us. Let's take and eat. Then he took a cup. And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, "Drink from it, all of you." This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Friends, the blood of Christ has been poured out for us. Let's take a drink to remember. Church, we celebrate that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ is coming again. And we will be with him in on that day forever, in God's forever love. I'm gonna pray now, and what I want us to do is we're gonna respond with a song afterwards. But if you're here today and you've never come to know Jesus, afterwards we're gonna have some prayer partners come along the front, and I'm gonna invite you to come and talk with them. For now, let's go before the Lord as we continue and worship. Lord, God, we are so thankful for all of your goodness to us. We are so thankful that you are a God of faithfulness, that you are a God of forgiveness, and that you are a God of forever love. Lord Jesus, as we sing in response to you this morning, fill our hearts, fill our hearts with worship, and help us to sing to you with all of our might. Help us to walk out of here today living in this covenant, walking with you, Lord. We love you. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.