Note: I have developed a set of slides on PowerPoint 10 to go along with this sermon. If anyone is interested in having the .pptx file I will send it to you by Email. Send your request to me at sam@srmccormick.net with the subject Hedges of Protection Slides and I will send the PowerPoint file directly.
LAWS WRITTEN ON HEARTS
Hebrews 8:6-12, Jeremiah 31:31-34
*LAWS WRITTEN ON THE HEART
Introduction: Many people would say that from an economic and spiritual perspective the times we now live in are not very good times. Compared to the conditions in some of the world’s most dysfunctional, corrupt, and poverty-ridden countries, as well as areas where moral decadence and depravity appear to be even more rampant than in our country, that proposition seems questionable if not blatantly wrong. But compared to our own past experience in the United States, from an economic and spiritual view it is hard to disagree that in the United States, morality and political conditions have deteriorated in recent decades. But in one sense we are living in the best of times – a time that Jeremiah foresaw from 500 years away. Jeremiah foretold a new covenant in the distant future, which would usher in times far better than those of his own time. Jeremiah saw a new covenant.
*A New Covenant (auto)
I. What is a covenant?
Various transactions between God and man, or between man and man. Some covenants are a compact wherein a party binds himself to fulfill certain conditions, and for doing so is promised certain advantages.
*Covenants
Some covenants are promises in pairs, each making unconditional promises to the other (e.g. marriage covenant)
The Hebrew word used by Jeremiah was beri^yth, pronounced ber-eeth' which means “cutting.”
*God’s covenant with Abraham
The use of the word “cutting” comes from a covenant God made with Abraham to bring his family into the land of promise. Abraham was told to bring a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. He was to cut the animals in half, except the birds, and arrange them with the halves facing each other, the blood running down to meet in a kind of trench between the halves. The covenanters would walk through the trench in the blood as a symbol that they would unfailingly fulfill their promise, as if they were saying, “May it be done to me as these animals if I do not keep this covenant.”
*Click for “Blood walk”
The story in Genesis 15 describes this kind of covenant, but it does not say Abraham walked through the blood, only that he prepared the animals. The scriptures say:
“…when the sun had set, it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.”
God himself was the covenanter, and it was God who passed through the blood, as if to say, “May it be to me [God] as these animals if I do not give you the land I have promised, and bring your descendants into it.” This was a tradition for sealing covenants from ancient times, not just with Hebrews, but in other cultures as well.
This practice shows that to the ancient peoples, covenants were serious business. Breaking a covenant was a heinous sin. If someone covenanted to murder a person, it was less of a sin to murder than to break the covenant. Covenant-breaking was the height of sin.
II. How is a covenant related to law?
In Hebrews 8:9, quoting from Jeremiah, the writer says the fathers “did not continue in my covenant.” He follows immediately by saying God would make a new covenant, and:
“I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts.”
The fathers did not keep the first covenant (meaning they broke the commandments in the law).
*God’s covenant with Israel
A. The Old Covenant:
Exo 24:3 Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!"
Exo 24:7 Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!"
Anyone who violated the commandments in the law were under a curse.
Deu 27:26 “Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” And all the people shall say, “Amen.”
In the Israel covenant, their relationship with God depended on Israel keeping the law—the only alternative being the curse.
Thus, the central feature of the old covenant was the law.
*What happened? (auto)
B. What happened?
In summary, two things:
(1) The law spawned schools of rabbis who taught every convoluted contortion of the law as if those tortuous contortions were the law, and used it as the vehicle to say “We will teach you to ‘Know the Lord’ by learning all that we have decided the law means.”
These were contained first in what was called “Oral law,” and later in the Talmud with its two parts, the Mishna and the Gemara—both attempting to explain the Law of Moses, and considered by many to be itself equally binding as the law as originally given.
(2) Israel broke the covenant they had made with God.
*How is the new covenant different? (not animated)
III. How is the new covenant and its law different from the old?
Jeremiah had said “I will make a new covenant not like the one I made with their fathers.”
How is it different?
A. He says, “This is the covenant” (new):
• I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts
• I will be their God, and they shall be my people
• They shall not teach, each one his neighbor, saying “Know the Lord.”
• They shall all know me
• I will be merciful toward their iniquities
Aren’t these also potential features of the law of Moses, though?
It was possible for Israel to have the laws in the Torah in their minds and written on their hearts.
That was in fact God’s desire and intention.
• Deut 6: 6 – “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.”
• Psa 19:8 “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”
• Psa 119:11“Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
It was possible for one to teach another, “Know the Lord,” in purity and simplicity, to the extent he had revealed himself at the time, but “knowing the Lord” was not achieved by being schooled in the rabbis’ interpretations, interpolations, extrapolations, inferences, and expansions upon the Law. They were God’s people and he was their God in a national context, and he was merciful to them (as he took them to himself after their forays into idol-worship and alliances with heathen nations).
But while there were exceptions, on the whole Israel did not have God’s laws implanted within their affections, and they did not know God.
*What is new about the new covenant? (auto)
1. Laws will be written on the heart. Ultimately, the only way to know the Lord and to internalize his laws is to know them in their purity and simplicity, and not as a catalog of the interpretations of others, and not as ritual sacrificing of slain animals that can never remove sin.
2. A better high priest comes as part of the covenant
One who can identify with our weaknesses intercedes before the throne of heaven, and is himself the sacrifice for our sins.
3. The blood of Jesus, the sinless one has cleansed the heavenly things
Heb 9:23 – “it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”
Heb 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
By this blood, a place has been made in heaven for us.
4. Every man will not teach his neighbor, saying “Know the Lord.” The word Talmud is from a root word meaning “teach.” The Lord cannot be known through incessant teaching about the law and scores of interpretations about what it means like the people of Jeremiah’s time were subjected to.
5. The way to know the Lord is to know Jesus. The Lord told Jeremiah, “They shall know ME.” Jesus would be the revealer of God.
Jesus said, John 14:7 “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
*Is there a law in the new covenant?
IV. Is there a law in the new covenant?
Or are Christians, unlike Israel, beyond a need for law?
Has God’s providence outgrown the need for law?
A. Rom 6:14 Paul says, we are “not under law, but under grace.”
And John wrote “Law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John 1:17
May we do as we please, then if we are not under law?
B. Yet there are references to law as an important feature of the new covenant.
1. God had said to Jeremiah, referring to the time we are living in:
“I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts.”
Was God saying he would write nothing? No.
1 Jn 3:4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness (“transgression of the law” in KJV).
If there is no law, there is no sin, and no way to “practice lawlessness.”
*There is law in the new covenant (auto)
• Heb 6:10 “I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts.”
• Gal 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ.” Fulfill it!
• Rom 13:8 “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” (Meaning that love is a debt never fully discharged)
• Jas 1:25 “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.”
• Jas 2:8 “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well.”
• Rom 7:22 “ I delight in the law of God in the inner man.”
• Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set you free Jesus from the law of sin and death.
With all these references to law in the gospel era, and the truth that sin is the transgression of the law, why does Paul say we are not under law but under grace?
Grace is not the absence of law.
Grace is the willingness of God to forgive our transgressions with no merit on our part.
THAT is the grace we are under – not the absence of any law at all.
Paul means we are under grace, not law, as the means of our salvation.
*Are we under law now?
V. Are we under law today? If so, what is that law? (auto)
Is that law, which Paul says it is sin to transgress:
• The whole New Testament?
• The words of Jesus only?
• Collected commands we strain out of the words of Jesus and the New Testament writers?
• Interpretations and traditions of the most highly regarded teachers of our day and past generations of church leaders?
• Biblical examples of what the earliest Christians did?
• The sense of right and wrong that comes naturally to living as humans?
• God’s handwriting on our hearts as a supplement?
I need to say here that when God said he would write his laws on hearts, he did not give us any reason to think that those were additional laws not revealed elsewhere. Nor did he suggest that we each have our own personally laws tailored to us.
David cherished the law of God not because it was his personal appendix to the law everyone else had.
He loved the same law that all Israel had, and that you and I can read today.
Is the law we are living under so elusive to identify? There is evidence that it is, for throughout Christendom, there are scores, or more likely hundreds of versions offered of what such law requires to be pleasing to God.
But if we are to rightly identify it, it must be the same as that law God told Jeremiah he would write on our hearts.
VI. Conclusion
Let me offer my understanding of this.
The New Testament makes it clear that the law we are under can be summarized and expressed comprehensively in few words.
Some passages we have already noticed:
“Love one another, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Gal 6:2
“Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Rom 13:8
"you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Rom 13:9
Plainly, the law of the new covenant can be, and is in scripture, expressed in a nutshell.
*Love the Lord your God with all your heart (auto)
I offer this:
The law is love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
That is the law. You cannot do either without doing the other.
Every other commandment is amplification of this law. Jesus taught that it was that way under the law of Moses, and that it is that way in the new age.
• This is the perfect law of liberty (the law that liberates).
• It is the law we fulfill when we love another.
• It is the law we fulfill by bearing one another’s burdens.
• It is what James called the “royal law,” you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Everything else is not additional law, but guidance in fulfilling this law.
Matt 25:31-46 shows how the Son of man when he comes in glory will divide the sheep from the goats – those who ministered to the sick, hungry, thirsty, in prison, or a stranger are on his right and are invited in to the prepared kingdom; those who did not minister are on his left, and were cast into outer darkness. He does not here directly command these things. He gives guidance on how our actions exhibit obedience to the law, “love your neighbor as yourself.” In this parable Jesus guides us into the way of fulfilling the law.
The attitudes of mind and heart that Jesus spelled out in the beatitudes, and the explanatory commands he gave in the rest of the sermon, all guide us into that law. In the sermon, he showed how six different things they had heard from old times were to understood, and in each case, he gave his own clarifying commandments – not new, additional decrees, statutes, and strictures - but how loving God and our neighbor guided each subject he mentioned into the new covenant law.
There, I suggest, is our law. The rest is guidance in fulfilling it.
Nor do I say that the Biblical guidance in fulfilling the law may be cast aside, for to do so derails us from the law itself. ALL of the guidance from Jesus and the New Testament writers guide us toward that law.
A story about my Daddy…
His mind was mostly gone, but with his family gathered, in a moment of clarity, he said,
“We need to live our lives according to the word of God.”
“We need to be an influence for good in our communities.”
It was not the first time I had heard him say these things. They coincide with the first and second great commandments.
Someone might say, “As a rule for living, that is lacking detail, and specifics.”
But with little formal education, Daddy was active in the church all his life, serving for a time as elder, managed a business, was a city councilman, mayor pro tem, on the Board of Directors of a local bank – his life intersected in many places with others. At each of those intersections the specifics were found as he lived his principles – the law of Christ – by honoring God and loving his neighbor.
His mind was practically gone, but this law was in still in his mind and written on his heart.
*The gospel is the good news story (auto)
The gospel, in addition to being the greatest story ever told, is something that is to be obeyed.
2 Thess 1:7-8 “…the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”
1 Pet 4:17 “it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
Jesus’ story must be believed, for without faith it is impossible to please God.
The gospel message offers the assurance of the eternal salvation of the souls of those who turn away from sin and confess Jesus Christ as Lord, and the act of baptism marks the believer’s rebirth into the family of God, where you may enjoy the full assurance of God’s promise of everlasting glory.
*Black slide
