In the prophets, God’s judgment upon sin was always accompanied by a message of great hope for those who would come back to Him. In our study of the “new covenant” in Jeremiah 31, let’s look today at what was said about the “hearts” of God’s people.

It was a privilege for Israel — as the family of Abraham, the family God used to bring the Messiah into the world — to be the first to receive the new covenant, the gospel of Christ. But thanks be to God, the invitation is now for all of us.

That which could never have been known about God, it is now possible for us to know. Of course, Jesus did not by His bodily characteristics show us what God looks like. It was the character of God — and God’s will for us — that Christ revealed.

Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). So it is a colossal truth that Paul presents when he says that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). But nothing less than this will suffice for our salvation.

Can God be known? Yes, He can. God has, in Jesus Christ, made it possible for us to know Him (John 1:18; 17:3). Sin robbed us of the truth about God, but in His Son we can regain that knowledge — and knowing our Creator, we may truly live.

The portrayal in Isaiah 53 of Jesus’ silent, lamb-like suffering is part of the depiction of what would happen to the Messiah as He underwent the punishment for our sins. Nothing else like that death has ever taken place in the history of the world.

Jesus not only felt the full range of emotions that are the lot of humanity, but He felt them intensely and vividly. Genuine discipleship to the Son of Man will not turn us into unfeeling, insensitive robots. It will teach us to feel what God feels.

If we live in a “spiritual” climate where pretense is rewarded and honesty is frowned upon, we may conceal the heartache of deep needs that God allows to remain unfulfilled right now and cover up the reality of our continuing struggle with sin.

As we learn to pray, we must learn to want the higher things that relate to God’s rule and His righteousness — and want them for higher reasons than those that usually motivate us. We must seek, above all, the things that redound to His glory.

God is willing (and eager) to lift us to planes higher than we can yet imagine. Our need is for a bigger desire, a greater sense of what can happen if we’re willing to submit to God as He removes from our hearts the things that hold us back.

We must delight in God’s holiness. We are to love Him because He is our Creator, simply for His own sake. Love’s joy has to do with giving, not getting. The moment our main focus shifts from the Beloved to ourselves, true joy begins to disappear.

The sense of rightness and goodness present in moments of real worship ought to tell us that the adoration of God fills a very deep need within us. We have been made such that praising God is as much a joy to experience as it is a duty to fulfill.

After eternity has begun, it will be too late to begin acquiring a taste for the things that make God glad. Now is the time to do that. Now is the time to make sure that what we like most of all is to rejoice at the joy of our Father.

When we turn to God, faithfully obeying the gospel, what we’re seeking salvation from is the wreckage of our own sinful hearts and lives. And the wonder of the gospel is that God can do this. He can rebuild a heart that we have wrecked.

As Christians, the new delight we can have in God is the real thing. It’s what we were made for. It’s all we’ve ever dreamed of and then some. And the main thing about it is that it centers on God Himself. He, in the end, is all we really desire.

In any contest between the head and the heart, the heart will almost always win. Our loves are powerful things; they direct our actions almost irresistibly. So we must constantly work on our desires and diminish the loves that lead us away from God.

We need to see sin for what it is: a worshiping of the wrong god. Not many of us would want to be known as idolaters, but that’s what it comes down to when, at the devil’s urging, we exchange God, our hearts’ true desire, for anything else at all.

When we talk of “hard times,” we should be careful. For all the hardship we face from a shortage of life’s necessities, we face an even greater challenge when we suffer a surplus. If we’re not careful, our character will weaken in times of affluence.