They Signed a Covenant—God Wrote a Better One

Man’s Promises

In the book of Nehemiah, which we have been preaching through as part of our series at GraceLife, Restore/Rebuild, we see Nehemiah, the leaders, the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the people make a covenant (really just an agreement or a promise) in chapter 10. They take oaths and sign their names on a promise to keep all the law, including some new additions.

These promises are mostly practical things, that on the surface are not all that bad. However, they attach obligations and oaths and a curse to this agreement mixing it all together with the Covenant (Old Covenant). As time goes on, Israel departs further and further, adding more traditions to the law. We call these traditions that were added the fence laws.

The people likely had good motivations, but rather than continue to look to God’s promises, they begin to trust their own. This goes about as well as it always had, just as they recounted in the chapter before (chapter 9). They once again fail to look to the one who has promised something better in the Messiah.

Nehemiah and the other leaders certainly knew these promises, but they grew frustrated as they didn’t see it in their lifetime. So, they relied on their own word and signed a pledge to obey God’s commands and even more.

The people of Israel could not see that God’s promises were about a future king that would come in the right time, not because of their faithfulness, but to save them out of their sin and unfaithfulness.

They didn’t need new promises and more devotion, they needed God’s promises of a new heart, a new covenant, they needed new birth. Not external obedience, they needed wholistic transformation from the heart.

What are the promises or prophecies that these men knew? What did they speak of?

Let’s explore those promises.

Old Testament Promises / Prophecies

Jeremiah 31:31-34

31 “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, 32 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. 33 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. 34 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.”

God will be the one that makes the New Covenant, not man. He will write his law on the hearts of his people.

Ezekiel 36:25–27

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 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.

God will not just write his law on the hearts of his people under this New Covenant, he will actually remove the old heart of stone and give a new heart of flesh. He will put his Spirit within and cause his people to obey.

Deuteronomy 30:6

And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

No longer will God’s people be marked in the flesh with circumcision, but by a circumcision of the new heart. This new heart will enable his people to love God will all their heart and soul.

New Testament Fulfillments

Hebrews 10:16 - (Fulfilling Jeremiah 31:31-34)

“This is the covenant that I will make with them
    after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
    and write them on their minds,”

The writer of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah. The only change here is that the author says that God will put his laws (plural). So, what are those laws now written on the new heart?

1 John 3:23 - (Fulfilling Jeremiah 31:31-34)

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

These laws, now encoded on the believer’s heart, are to believe in Jesus Christ and to love one another. God has written this on your heart if you have heard and believed the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

John 3:5–8 - (Fulfilling Ezekiel 36:25–27)

5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

The Old Covenant was all external, but the New is all about the heart. Jesus promises that under the New believers would be born again of the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:3, 6 - (Fulfilling Jeremiah 31:31-34 & Ezekiel 36:25–27)

3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Under the New the Holy Spirit writes on the tablets of your new heart. It is a work of the Spirit not the letter.

2 Corinthians 5:17 - (Fulfilling Ezekiel 36:25–27)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Paul says anyone in Christ is a new creation, the old is gone, and the new has come. The word heart is not mentioned but it is clear that transformation has occurred.

Hebrews 10:22 - (Fulfilling Ezekiel 36:25–27)

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

The author of Hebrews picks up this thread as well, while basing it firmly in the better promises of the better covenant, inaugurated in the blood of our better sacrifice, the better High Priest—Jesus. He has washed your heart with his blood.

Colossians 2:11 - (Fulfilling Deuteronomy 30:6)

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,

Paul draws on the prophecy of Moses that under the New Covenant God would circumcise hearts not the body of the flesh.

1 John 4:7-12 - (Fulfilling Deuteronomy 30:6)

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

The transformation that occurs in the heart means that believers can truly love God and one another. Why? Not because you promised to, but because God has loved you first. God is love. He loved you first. This is true of you, you can love him just as he said you would.

What We Have Is Better

From Genesis 3 on the promise of a Messiah was the hope of God’s people. While we might expect God to answer his promises in Genesis 4, he doesn’t. His timing is not our own. He is also not slow, as Peter says in 2 Peter 3:9, concerning his promises.

The Old Testament builds the anticipation of something better. And while his people wait, they are told to keep looking to the coming promise, by believing God and his promise, they were counted as righteous.

But praise be to God, we have something better. We can rest in promises fulfilled. Jesus has come and done what the law and our promises could never do. He lived perfectly, died, was buried, and rose again. He is now seated at the right hand of the Father as the King of Kings—the vindicated and victorious savior of his people.

Romans 8:3-4

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.