The Word Written On Our Hearts
This is a time when people celebrate the Word that was made flesh. So there is no better time than to see what it means to have the Word dwelling with us. We say that we are people of the New Covenant and rightly so. We even call our Scriptures “The New Covenant.” The New Covenant vs, the Hebrew Scriptures which we call “ The Old Covenant,” which consists of the first five books called the Torah, or the law, even though most of it is historical, and most of it is all about covenants and then there are the Prophets, and what is called the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs ect.) all of which is called the Tanakh. We are going to take a closer look at the New Covenant in all of God’s Word. Let’s begin with Jeremiah,who first mentions the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:33,
“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.”
We must note that this New Covenant is with the house of Israel, not the church.
Hebrews 8:10 tells us this, “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.”
Yes, it is the same in the New Testament as in the old. There are many Scriptures that tell us that God is going to write His Word on our hearts. First let’s say this, we need to know what it means to have God’s Word written on our hearts. It simply means this, you now live by the Word of God. We see here in Mark 12: 30-31 That Yeshua quotes Deuteronomy 6:4-7, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
We are to love God with all of our heart. The only way to do this is to live and keep the Word of God out of a love for God. It’s our great love and devotion to God that makes us live out His every Word. His Word not only becomes our moral compass, but our world view on life. It’s not memorizing some verses that make us feel good or picking and choosing what we will live by. NO! All of God’s Word must be written on our hearts if we are the people of the New Covenant
Ezekiel 11:19 tells us this, “ I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”
Proverbs has a few words to say so let’s look at Proverbs 3:3, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”
And again in 6:20-21, “My son, keep your father’s command
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck.”
And once again in 7:1-3, “My son, keep my words
and store up my commands within you. Keep my commands and you will live;
guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Psalm 119:10-11 also tells us thus, “ I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
We see that writing God’s Word on our hearts is not a new thing, because as Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
And Yeshua tells us in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements.”
So you can see why God wants to write His Word on our hearts. Lastly we want to look at 2 Corinthians 3:2-18, “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all people, revealing yourselves, that you are a letter of Messiah, 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. Such is the confidence we have toward God through Messiah. Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness excel in glory. For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory. Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and we are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not stare at the end of what was fading away. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Messiah. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts; but whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
There you have it. The New Covenant is a covenant of the Messiah, which now we, through the Holy Spirit, can live out God’s Word in our hearts. This is what the people of old did not have. They did not have salvation through Messiah, nor did they have the Holy Spirit poured out upon them. Does this mean that we do not need the Old Testament? No, we absolutely need the Old Testament for it is our foundation on which we are being built into a spiritual house. God is One and so is His Word. This is the same Word that came down in the flesh to bring us salvation. He is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. Today, begin writing God’s Word in your heart by keeping His Word and living His Word and speaking His Word from, “In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth” to “The grace of the Lord Yeshua be with all. Amen” and everything in between.
Tweet this!