What Is Written In Your Heart?

Jeremiah 31:31-34

For ages many cultures have regarded the heart as the source of where our feelings of love comes from.  When we love something very much we say our “heart is filled with love” for that person or thing. We say that he or she is “in our heart”.  We could also say that something we love is “written in our heart”. In our Scripture passage today the prophet Jeremiah speaks of something being written in our heart.  Let’s take a look at what he is talking about today.

The Lord God spoke to His people through the words of the prophets, and in our passage Jeremiah is speaking forth the Word of God to the people of Judah.  When God brought His people out from Egypt many hundreds of years prior to this time, He made a covenant with them, giving them His laws, and blessing them with the Land of Promise, (vs. 32).   He loved and cherished them just like a husband does for his wife. How did the people respond to this covenant that God made with them? They consistently broke this covenant, ignoring His laws, and running after other false gods, worshipping them.

What was God going to do?  As Jeremiah tells us, since the people kept breaking God’s old covenant, God says He is going to replace it with a new covenant (vs. 31).  Jeremiah tells the people that with this new covenant, God will write it upon our hearts, rather than the tablets of stone He used before. The people of Judah had been continually disobedient to the Lord.  Their sins had been engraved on their hearts (Jeremiah 17:1), as their desire and main love was to disobey God.

This new covenant would be different.  This covenant’s foundation is Jesus Christ and His sacrificial death for our sins.  He is the foundation of this new covenant (Hebrews 8:6). When we give our lives over to God, the Holy Spirit gives us the desire to obey Him. Rather than having our chief love being a desire to run from God, our love would be for Him, having it written on our heart.

The people failed to keep the old, Mosaic covenant.  God promised here, in this passage, a new covenant which brings the blessing of salvation to any who accept it.  Here we can have a personal relationship with God, with His laws written permanently on our heart.

One blessing that we have from the Lord God is that when He forgives us our sin, He remembers the wrongs no more (vs. 34).  As Psalm 103:12 says, when God forgives our sins, He removes them as far as the east is from the west. When we travel north eventually we get to the end of north, and then start heading south.  That is never the case when we head either east or west. You can never stop going east or stop going west. They never meet. That’s how far God separates our sin from us. He buries them in the bottom of the deepest sea (Micah 7:19).  God never uses past, forgiven sins to punish His people.

The prophet Jeremiah looked forward to when this covenant would happen, when Jesus would establish the new covenant.  This covenant is now in effect, since the death of Jesus for our sins, and His resurrection. We can now have a personal relationship with God.  Do you have a personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ? Is His Words written in your heart today? If not, do not let another day pass without asking Him to forgive your sins and come into your heart as your personal Savior.