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Tonight is a sacred night. Tonight we gather to meditate on the love of our Savior Jesus, all that he underwent to rescue us from our sins, the profound ways in which he expressed that love to us as he prepared to die on our behalf, and the gift of forgiveness that he poured out then and continues to pour out now through bread and wine. At long last, our journey to the cross nears its conclusion. The prophet Jeremiah has been our guide on our Lenten journey to this point. He's shown us what it looks like to shed tears in trying times, to cling to God's truth when no one else does, and to trust in God's promises, no matter our circumstances. His life and his ministry were full of momentous events, preaching against injustice and idolatry, proclaiming judgment and destruction, confronting false prophets, declaring hope in the darkness, being brought low, and then lifted up again and pointing us toward the coming king. And as this king draws ever closer to his goal, the closing days, the closing hours of this holy week are also full of momentous events. Jesus washing the disciples' feet, giving them this new command to love one another, instituting the Lord's Supper at the Last Supper, offering up agonizing prayer from the Garden of Gethsemane, suffering betrayal at the hands of a friend and arrest at the hands of his enemies, giving himself into the hands of the Father. As we consider the depth of his love for us, we turn once again to Jeremiah to guide us to Jesus, whose tears in Gethsemane poured out for us, who spoke truth to his disciples in his final hours, who trusted in his father all the way to death and beyond. And tonight, Jeremiah's words for us are some of the most significant he ever wrote. In chapter 31, at the grand conclusion of this three-chapter stint, just brimming with hope, Jeremiah says that God is planning something huge and it's on its way. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. The days are coming. Jeremiah, who's past and present, were so often demoralizing, looks to the future, to coming days where a new beginning, a new hope would be unveiled. As a prophet of God, Jeremiah had the privilege of seeing much that would happen in the future. For forty years he prophesied the coming judgment of God at the hands of the Babylonians, and they had come and conquered and burned and destroyed Judah just as he had said. But Jeremiah would also point ahead to future events beyond this defining event of his life. Jeremiah has much to say about what is still to come. You know, when people ask me what my favorite movie is, I tend to say Return of the King. But if there's a knock against that film, it's the way that it seems to end over and over again. It'll fade to black. And then Peter Jackson gives us another scene. And then another one. And then another one. And so on. The end of the book of Jeremiah feels a little bit like that. Chapter 45 ends, and it kind of feels like a fitting conclusion, bringing to a close the journey of Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch. But then Jeremiah has six chapters of oracles proclaiming judgment on the nations: Egypt and Philistia and Moab and Ammon and Edom and Syria. And then it culminates with the judgment of Babylon. God will judge his instrument of judgment. Jeremiah himself won't live to see it, but he sees in it advance, nevertheless. And then as all of this comes to a close, chapter 52 is tacked on, a historical conclusion that recounts the destruction of Jerusalem, the state of the people in exile, and a little glimmer of hope as Jehoiachin is released from prison and welcome to the king's table. In all of this, Jeremiah is looking to the future. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord. And tonight, I tell you, the days are coming. The days of Jesus' betrayal and arrest, of his trial before Caiaphas and Herod and Pontius Pilate, of his scourging, his suffering, his death, the days of his rest in the tomb, and then his victory over death in the grave. In Holy Week, also it feels like there are multiple endings, a few of them not so happy. But like the complimentary, layered closures of Jeremiah's book, each momentous event this week has a purpose, a salvific purpose for you. The days are coming. Don't miss what God is doing for you in these coming days. Of course, Jeremiah doesn't leave us in complete suspense. He tells us what's coming. 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. A new covenant. This is big news, and it is tremendous news. And no one was in a better position to understand that than Jeremiah, because what Jeremiah witnessed his entire life, what he both warned about and mourned, was the collapse of the old covenant. God had cut a covenant with his people at Mount Sinai, and it had come with conditions. It called upon them to be faithful to him, to worship no other gods, to treat each other with love and justice. And they had done the complete opposite for centuries. And in Jeremiah's day it had all come to a head. The bulk of Jeremiah's book has been about how Israel and Judah could not keep the conditions of the covenant and how that meant destruction was coming. The old covenant had failed. Or at least the people had failed to keep the old covenant. The way Hebrews put it for us tonight, if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. But now Jeremiah declares there is a second covenant. And the days are coming when God will make it with his people. And it comes to us through Christ. Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, Hebrews says. And Jeremiah, a prophet of the old covenant, would wholeheartedly agree. In fact, Jeremiah serves as the de facto author of about half of Hebrews chapter 8, because half of Hebrews chapter 8 is just Jeremiah 31, word for word. Through Jesus, the days that were coming, days that Jeremiah had anticipated 600 years earlier, had arrived. Of course, this new covenant, it's really the same faithful God keeping his promises in a new and perfect way. It was God's plan and purpose all along. In Jesus, God is both renewing earlier promises and also amplifying and intensifying them. And now the parameters are wholly different. God changes the if you to I will. And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. His blood of the covenant, the new covenant. Behold, the days are coming. Behold, the days are here. The cup Jesus shared with his disciples that night, the cup he shares with us tonight, is the cup of the new covenant. The fulfillment of God's promise through Jeremiah. It is the consummate realization of God's plan from time immemorial. And tonight, it's for you. The cup of the new covenant is shared with you. As you receive it in a few moments, take to heart Jesus' words. This is his true blood shed for you. And take to heart Jeremiah's words. And this cup is contained the hopes and dreams of whole generations of God's people, people who have grasped onto the promises of God that find their completion in the one who pours out his grace on us tonight. And this cup is the very stuff of the new covenant cut for your sake. And this new covenant, announced by Jeremiah at the very moment the collapse of the old covenant is affecting Israel's destruction, moves us from the law to the gospel, altering the terms of the agreement entirely, tilting them wholesale in the direction of God's grace. Because what do both Jeremiah and Jesus say? For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Drink of it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins. The old covenant accentuated and spotlighted sin. The new covenant forgives it, removes it. The new covenant removes every problem with the first covenant. It removes every problem, period. The forgiveness of our sins is why Jesus gave us his body and blood in with and under bread and wine. It's why he went to the Mount of Olives after singing a hymn with his disciples that night. It's why he went there to be betrayed and arrested and shackled, to be mocked and beaten and condemned, to be crucified. Because there was another cup of which Jesus would drink for us as part of the new covenant. And I'm not talking about the various cups of the Passover that people can get so interested in. I'm talking about another cup that the prophet Jeremiah mentioned. Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me, Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and be crazed, because of the sword that I'm sending among them. All the nations of the earth are given to drink of the cup of God's wrath, because that's what every human being who has ever lived deserves, with one exception. And in Gethsemane we find that exception praying. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. In a very real way, this too is the cup of the new covenant, the cup of God's wrath that Jesus willingly and obediently went to the cross to drink down for our sake, that our sins would be forgiven, that we would be set free from the constrictions of the old covenant, that we would be spared the wrath of God forever. Because Jesus went to the cross, my brothers and sisters, because he swallowed the cup of the wine of wrath, you are forgiven. Because Jesus forfeited everything for you, you have everything from him. Righteousness and freedom and peace. Jeremiah, God's weeping prophet, was given the privilege of proclaiming this gospel to a fallen nation. And tonight it is my privilege to proclaim it to you. The days have come. You are the recipients of God's new covenant. And it comes with the complete expunging of your every offense, full pardon for every broken commandment, total forgiveness for every idol fashioned by the hands and hearts of men. This covenant has been engraved not on stone, but on your hearts, not sealed by the blood of bulls and goats, but by the blood of the Son of God. And tonight, once again, is poured out for you afresh. So receive it with joy. Come forward and participate in the covenant of God's grace. Receive his free gifts, purchased and won for you by the suffering and death of Jesus. And look ahead, as Jeremiah did, to the days that are to come. For the table and the garden and the cross will lead to a tomb as empty and obsolete as the old covenant. In Jesus' name.