Written On Hearts

Written on Hearts

“I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the LORD. “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the LORD. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Jeremiah 31:31-33

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

If you bought a new car and it just wouldn’t start, you might read through the manual and go through all the steps to get the car going. But if there was no gas in the tank, the car still wouldn’t start!

The people of Israel had God’s instruction manual—the Ten Commandments. But there was no gas in their tank to obey. They knew what to do, but they didn’t have the power or the want-to inside to obey. The Ten Commandments were just a list of external rules.

That’s why God promised he would make a new covenant with his people someday. It would be better than the old one that he’d made at Mount Sinai, because in the new covenant, God would put his Spirit inside his people. Rather than being written on tablets of stone like they were at Mount Sinai, the new covenant would be written by God on the hearts of his people. In this way, he gave us a love for his will and his ways. God deals with the power of sin by writing his law on our hearts so that we hate sin from the inside. His desire is for us to love his will and walk in his ways because we want to, not just because it’s his law.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

Look around the room. What needs power to make it operate?

How and when did God give believers power to obey?

In what ways is it better to live under the new covenant instead of the old one?