Bible Commentaries
Hebrews 8

Verse 10

God's Law in Man's Heart

A Sermon

(No. 2506)

Intended for Reading on Lord's-Day, February 28th, 1897,

Delivered By

C. H. SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

On Lord's-day Evening, June 28th, 1885.

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." Hebrews 8:10 .

WHEN God gave to Israel his law, the law of the first covenant, it was such a holy law that it ought to have been kept by the people. It was a just and righteous law, concerning which God said, "Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord." The law of the ten commandments is strictly just; it is such a law as a man might make for himself if he studied his own best interests, and had wisdom enough to frame it aright. It is a perfect law, in which the interests of God and man are both studied; it is not a partial law, but impartial, complete, and covering all the circumstances of life. You could not take away one command out of the ten without spoiling both tables of the law, and you could not add another command without being guilty of making a superfluity. The law is holy, and just, and good; it is like the God who made it, it is a perfect law. Then, surely, it ought to have been kept. When men revolt against unjust laws, they are to be commended; but when a law is admitted to be perfect, then disobedience to it is an act of exceeding guilt. And, dear friends, after the giving of the law, did not God affix to it those terrible penalties which should have prevented men from disobeying his commands? "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them" "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." It was the capital sentence that was to be pronounced upon the disobedient; there could be no heavier punishment than that. God had, as it were, drawn his sword against sin; and if man had been a reasonable being, he ought at once to have started back from committing an act which he might be sure would make God his foe. But, alas! notwithstanding all these solemn sanctions of the ancient covenant, men did not keep it. The promise, "This do, and thou shalt live," never produced any doing that was worthy to be rewarded with life; and the threatening, "Do this, and thou shalt die," never kept any man back from daringly venturing into the wrong road which leadeth unto death. The fact is, that the covenant of works, if it be looked upon as a way of safety, is a total failure. No man ever persevered in it unto the end, and no man ever attained unto life by keeping it. Nor can we, now that we are fallen, ever hope to be better than our unfallen covenant-head, Adam; nor may we, who are already lost and condemned by our sinful works, dream for a moment that we shall be able to save ourselves by our works. You see, dear friends, the first covenant was in these terms, "You do right, and God will reward you for it. If you deserve life, God will give it to you." Now, as you all know right well, that covenant was broken all to pieces; it was unable to stand by reason of the weakness of our flesh and the corruptness of our nature. So God set aside that first covenant, he put it away as an outworn and useless thing; and he brought in a new covenant, the covenant of grace; and in our text we see what is the tenor of it: "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." This is one of the most glorious promises that ever fell from the lips of infinite love. God said not, "I will come again, as I came on Sinai, and thunder at them." No, but, "I will come in gentleness and mercy, and find a way into their hearts." He said not, "I will take two great tables of stone, and with my finger write out my law before their eyes." No, but, "I will put my finger upon their hearts, and there will I write my law." He said not, "I will give promises and threatenings that shall be the safeguard of this new covenant;" but, "I will with my Spirit graciously operate upon their minds and their hearts, and so I will sweetly influence them to serve me, not for reward, nor from any servile motive, but because they know me, and they love me, and they feel it to be their delight to walk in the way of my commandments." O dear sirs may you all be shares in the blessings of that new covenant! May God say this of you, and do this to you; and if so, we shall meet in the glory-land, to sing unto the grace of that eternal God who has wrought so wondrously with us, and in us, and for us! I. First, then, I am to speak upon THE MEANING OF THIS BLESSING: "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." Did you, dear friend, ever have truth truly written on your heart? If so, I will tell you how you felt; you abhorred yourself, and you said, "Who can stand before this terrible law? Who can ever hope to keep these commandments?" You looked to the flames that Moses saw on Sinai and you shrank and trembled almost unto despair, and you entreared that these terrible words should not be spoken to you any more. Yet was it good for you thus to be made to know the law, not in the letter of it only, but in its cutting crushining, killing spirit for it worketh death to self-righteousness and death to all carnal boastings. When the law comes, sin revives, and we die; that is all that can come of it by itself. Yet is it necessary that there should be such a death as that, and that there should be such a revival of sin that we may know the truth about it, and under the force of that truth may be driven to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the end of the Iaw for righteousness to every one that believeth." So, then, writing the law in our heart means, first, making us know what the law really is. I know that there is some sort of a conscience in most men; I am afraid it is a very small rushlight in some, and that it is almost blown out by their evil habits. They can even make themselves think that they are doing right, when they are as wrong as wrong can be; but in a child of God there is a burning and a shining light which reveals the truth concerning sin. There is within him a something that cannot be silenced; this is that principle or power which John Bunyan calls in his Holy War, "Mr. Conscience the Recorder of Mansoul." You know that, when the city of Mansoul rebelled against the great King Shaddai, and came under the sway of Diabolus, they shut Mr. Recorder Conscience up in a dark room, for they did not want to let him see what was being done. Yet, notwithstanding, when the old gentleman had his fits, he used to sorely trouble the inhabitants of the guilty town, so they kept him under lock and key as much as possible. But when Mr. Recorder Conscience gets full liberty, and lifts his brow into the sunlight, ah! sirs, then are we guided in a very different way from that of ungodly men who follow their own evil course. Then does the Lord say, "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." The law is there to censure or to cheer; it is there to let us hear its voice say, "This is the way, walk ye in it;" or it is there to say, "Stay where you are, go no farther;" or, "Return, thou backsliding daughter, and seek mercy of the Lord." There is a further writing of the law in the heart when the man of God is made to appropriate that law, not only to approve of it, but to approve of it for himself. There are many people who approve of laws as far as they keep their fellow-men in check, but they do not want laws for themselves. "Oh!" says such a person, "of course, everybody ought to be honest; my servants ought not to peculate, they ought not to rob me, they ought to give me a good day's work for their wage." When the argument is turned round, and the question is about giving a good day's wage for the work, then they talk about political economy, which means that it is absolutely necessary that men should be dishonest. That is the pith and marrow of that political science, that every man will be selfish, and that there is no hope that people will be otherwise. A man speaks that which is not true, and sees no evil in it; but if another should say anything against his character, that is a very different matter, it is quite unpardonable. He may walk through the earth, and devour men's characters as much as he pleases; that, of course, is mere criticism, such as we ought all to expect: but if he is touched, and there is a word spoken against him, it is cruel and unkind, and ought to be put down at once. When God writes the law in a man's heart, he takes the law more to himself than he applies it to anybody else and his cry is not, "See how my neighbors sin," but, "See how I sin his clamor is not against his brother's, fault, but against his own fault. No longer does he look out for motes in other men s eyes, but he is most concerned about the beam which he is quite is in his own eye, he and prays the Lord to remove it. There is an old Latin proverb which says that "things that are written remain;" and I quote that proverb here believing that it is intended in the text to teach us that, when God's law is written in our hearts, it is retained there. The lawyer always says, "You had better be careful what you say, but when you go to law, never write anything, hold back from the use of pen and ink, for that which is written remains." When God writes his law in our hearts, he writes that which will never be blotted out. Once let him take the pen is hand. and begin to write. "Holiness unto the Lord" right across a man's heart, and the devil himself can never remove that sacred line. So it is meant, in our text as a part of the covenant, that God will write "holiness" so deeply upon the nature of his chosen people that they may sooner cease to be than cease to be holy. He will so put his law right into their hearts that you must tear their hearts out before you can tear out their conformity to the mind of God. Is not this a wonderful method of writing the law in the heart? This is sanctification indeed. May God work it in each one of you! and he will if you are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ; for if you trust in Christ, you are in the covenant, and being in the covenant, this is the promise concerning you, "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to thom a God, and they shall be to me a people." II. Now, for a few minutes, I am going to speak upon THE MEANS BY WHICH THIS BLESSING IS GIVEN, the pens that God uses when he writes upon human hearts, for I want you to notice this interesting process. Again, the law is written in the heart by repentance working hatred of sin. Burnt children, you know, are afraid of the fire. Oh, what a horror I have had of sin ever since the day when I felt its power over my soul! It was enough to drive me mad when I felt the guilt of sin; it would have done so, I sometimes think, if I had continued much longer in that terrible condition. O sin, sin, I have had enough of thee! Thou didst never bring me more than a moment's seeming joy, and with it there came a deep and awful bitterness which burns within me to this day! And now, being set free from sin, can I go back to it? Some of you, my brethren and sisters, came to Christ with such difficulty that you were saved, as it were, by the skin of your teeth. You were like Jonah, you had to come up from the bottom of the mountains, and out of the very belly of hell you cried unto God. Well, that experience has made sin so bitter to you that you will not go back to it. The law has been written in your heart with the steel pen of repentance, and God has made sin to be a horrible evil to you. Again, God writes his law the more fully in the heart of his people as they increase in knowledge. The more we know of God, of this life, of the life to Come, of heaven and hell, of the person of Christ, of the atonement, and of every other subject that is taught us in the Scriptures, the more we see the evil of sin, and the more we see the delights of holiness. Why, at the very first moment of his conversion, man is afraid of sin because of what he has seen of it; but as he begins to perceive how sin put the Christ to death, how sin digged the pit of hell, how sin brought all the plagues and curses upon the human family, and will continue to curse generations yet unborn, then the man says, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Trained and educated in the school of Christ, the more he knows, the more he delights in the law and the will of God. He cannot bear to hear an ill word from others, or himself have an evil thought without being grieved and troubled. I have seen men who have professed to be Christians do many questionable things, and yet never feel that they were doing any wrong; but as for the true Christian, who lives near to God, and who has been acting perfectly right as far as other people could judge, when he gets home, he begins blaming himself for something he did not do. As far as you can see, he has said and done the right thing; but he says, "No, I did not say it as earnestly as I ought to have said it; I did not do it as I ought to have done it." As for myself, I know that, when I live nearest to God, I am most conscious of sin; and I believe that, in proportion as you get away from God, you win begin to think that you are perfect; but if you live in the light of the Lord, sin will be a daily plague to you, and you will be crying for the precious blood to wash you and It is the man who is spiritually blind who talks about his holiness, but it is the one whose eyes have been opened of God, the really holy man whom God has brought near to himself, who still cries out, "Holier! Holier! Higher."

"Nearer, my God, to thee, Nearer to thee! E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me. Still all my song shall be. Nearer, my God, to thee! Nearer to thee!"

And, once more, communing with Christ is the best way of getting the law written in the heart. He who is with Christ from morning to noon, and from noon to dewy eve, and who can say at night,

"Sprinkled afresh with pardoning blood, I lay me down to rest, As in the embraces of my God, Or on my Savior's breast,"

he is the man who will have the law of God written in his heart. How can he sin whose garments smell of the myrrh and aloes and cassia of communion with Christ? How can he come out of the ivory palaces of fellowship with his Lord, and then go and live as others do, and sin against his God? III. I have but a minute or two in which to speak upon THE GREAT GRACE WHICH IS CONTAINED IN THIS BLESSING. I do not know a greater gift than this that even God can bestow, save the gift of his only-begotten Son: "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." The great grace of this blessing lies here. First, God does what man would not and could not do. Man would not keep the law, he refused to obey it; so God comes, in the splendor of his grace, and changes his will, renews his heart, alters his affections, so that, what man would not do, God does. Man has also become so fallen that he cannot keep the law. Sooner might the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than h that is accustomed to do evil learn to do well; but what man cannot do, by reason of the perversity of the flesh, God performs within him, working in him to will and to do of his good pleasure. Oh, what amazing grace is this, which while it forgives our want of will, also removes our want of power! See, dear friends, how different is the Lord's way of working and ours. If you knock down a man who is living an evil life, and put him in chains, you can make him honest by force; or if you set him free, and hem him round with Acts of Parliament, you may make him sober if he cannot get anything to drink, you may make him wonderfully quiet if you put a gag in his mouth; but that is not God's way of acting. He who put man in the Garden of Eden, and never put any palisades around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but left man a free agent, does just the same in the operations of his grace. He leaves his people to the influences that are within them, and yet they go right, because they are so changed and renewed by his grace that they delight to do that which once they loathed to do. I admire the grace of God in acting thus. We should have taken the watch to pieces, and broken half the wheels, and made new ones, or something of the kind. But God knows how to leave the man just as much a man as he was before his conversion, and yet to make him so entirely a new man that old things have passed away, and all things have become new. This is the only way of salvation that I know of for any of you. First, you must be washed in the fountain filled with blood; and next, you must have the law of God written in your inward parts. Then shall you be safe beyond fear of ruin. "They shall be mine," saith the Lord of hosts, "in that day when I make up my jewels." Oh, blessed plan of salvation! May it be accepted by every man and woman here! And it can only be so by the work of the Spirit of God leading you to a simple trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Trust Christ to save you, and he will do it, as surely as he is the Christ of God. God help you to trust him now! Amen.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" 551, 489, 649.

Jeremiah 31:27-37 . Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and replant, saith the Lord. In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: evey man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. 35-37. Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: if those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD. "Now Israel still standeth as a people separate from all others, and there is still before the literal seed of Israel a great and glorious future; but as for the spiritual Israel, who worship God in the Spirit, and have no confidence in the flesh, God will sooner blot out the sun and moon than cast away his people, or any one of them. They shall all be his people, and he shall be their God; he will preserve them, and he will keep his covenant with them for ever and for ever, blessed be his holy name, the name of Jehovah, the God of the covenant which cannot be broken!