Soft hearts

I’ve been studying the Old Testament so much lately I’m starting to forget that God made a New Covenant with us. It’s so easy to overlook the fact that the apostles and early church fathers and were Jews and that their entire religious belief system was built on the Mosaic Law.  The dichotomy between the Ten Commandments and the age of grace seems at first glance to be clearly divided as the waters of the Red Sea crossing. But even as Moses is breaking the first two tablets of stone, God is using the law to prepare our own hearts to receive the grace and mercy that will one day take the form of His very own Son, Jesus.

Paul conveys this beautifully in chapter 3 of Corinthians: “You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men: clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, writing not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.” Paul summarizes this great truth in a few sentences. “And we have such trust through Christ towards God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter of the law but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Another incredible scripture-prophecy is recorded by the prophet Jeremiah 600 years before God would give us the New Covenant “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and 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 lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Jeremiah 31:31

What a skillfull surgeon God is as He carefully circumcises our hearts. The process starts with  sinners taking the first step of faith and believing that Jesus is God’s solution to our sin problem. Then the Holy Spirit begins to cut away the dead flesh and the calluses that have grown around our hearts. The love of God will soften and restore any yielded heart through the oil and the wine. As our hearts become more pliable they are ready to give God’s love to others who are desperately searching for it. Although God’s plan did not happen overnight but took thousands of years to perfect as He began to prepare the world for the birth of His Son. In fact the entire world had to be at just the right point in history for the arrival of the Messiah.

Are you ready for the Savior? Are you ready for God’s solution to sin? Jesus was born into poverty in a stable only to suffer and die in agony on a Roman cross. We glimpse the humanity of Jesus as He pleaded with the Father that if there be any other way to redeem the world let it be but He ended saying “not My will but Your will be done.” What the law could not complete, the Son of God accomplished while hanging lifeless from a crude device used to execute criminals. Jesus’ death redeemed all mankind in a moment as He said “It is finished” and His resurrection brought forth brand new life! Picture an ugly caterpillar going into a cocoon and in the twinkling of an eye emerges as a beautiful butterfly.  

But just like that caterpillar bursting out of a dark cocoon we to need to have the calluses and scars removed from our hearts. Then as the scales begin to fall from our eyes we can have compassion for others around us who do not yet know the One True and Living God. The more we love the more our hearts will continue to soften, allowing every aspect of our lives to be available to the Holy Spirit for His use.  You won’t have to thump people over the head with the bible by preaching the “Letter of the Law” instead people will see the love of Christ in you and through the actions that flow from your life. Surrendering to the Spirit, being a vessel that God can fill is what Jesus came to model for us all. Remember we are His workmanship created for good works in Christ!

 

The world's only hope

There is so much distraction here in the living world. The chaos that exists in the urban realm continually pounds on us, sapping our will to survive. Progress is an ongoing process and, man in general, has many accomplishments to be proud of, yet we have also left many scars on the world we touch. Our world leaders not only make decisions to drop bombs on one group of people and, from the same planes, drop pallets of food to help the starving. We continue to develop weapons of mass destruction and then prohibit and demonize other nations that pursue the same path. In the meantime, our world’s population continues to grow pushing upwards of seven billion and real possibilities of food and water shortages are on the horizon.

It’s in this day to day struggle that humans try to find some degree of peace in their lives. The pressure of providing for our families is really quite overwhelming to many moms and dads across the globe. It used to be that the family could survive on one income however, today the family unit usually has to have both parents working. This leads many families to become estranged and dysfunctional, increasing the distance between each member of the family. The days of eating family meals sitting at the dining room table are over. In the 1960’s, we left the dining room for TV trays but those are even becoming nonexistent. A covered porch where people would sit and relax, just waiting for an opportunity to catch up on conversation with a neighbor, is but a distant memory.

It’s in the midst of this chaotic fog that human beings desperately try and find peace. We grasp at the first thing that comes along and offers us even a quick moment of solitude. We are so busy trying to find some way of paying our bills that we have no energy or time to talk to each other and our relationships suffer. Even if we do manage to find a thin slice of time to breathe deeply, sigh and let our hair down, we usually end up sitting in front of a flickering TV screen in a mindless moment of escape from the demands of our lives.

We are presently not living up to the quality of life our Creator had originally designed for us. We were designed to live in a world where the lion would lay down with the lamb. To walk in the coolness of the morning with our God, to take time for our loved ones and enjoy each other’s company. The earth, in the beginning, did not grow weeds, thorns or thistles. It was watered by an immense water canopy that protected us from the harshness of the sun’s radiation. As the earth continues to be mistreated by its inhabitants and speeds down a path ultimately leading to destruction, humanity has some hard choices to make.

As I have been reading through Deuteronomy, it’s very clear that God wants the nation of Israel to not only remember Him but to follow His way of doing things. Even as the very Ten Commandments were being etched into the first two tablets of stone, the Israelites, camped at the base of the mountain, were casting an image of a calf to worship. This worship most likely included unbridled sex, alcohol consumption and excess of all kinds. The sight of this mess was too much for Moses and he breaks the first two tablets of stone. He then falls on his face crying out to God to forgive them for their disobedience.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the world is caught up in now? A hurting generation of relationally starved people is bent on reaching out to any pleasurable diversion available. Even portions of the Christian community are walling themselves up into islands of religious activities that look very much like the world that they insist they are not part of. So what is the solution to life? Well, simply put its Jesus Christ.

All other religions focus on bettering yourself in some way, finding peace within your soul or walking a rigid path of self exclusion and denial; Jesus was born to redeem the earth. He alone paid the debt that all humanity owed. He came to the earth modeling love and taught us how to treat one another. Jesus just loved people and He continues to love us even to the point of death on a cross. He showed us that people are the only commodity on the earth that is worth our time and effort. Relationships are the only thing that will continue on the other side of the veil of death. And most importantly is our relationship with God Himself.

Shema

As all men grow older, and near the end of their lives, there seems to be a tendency for them to desire to leave a legacy. Something for friends and relatives to remember them by and, in the case of God’s chosen leader Moses, there is no exception. The greatest accomplishment of Moses is undoubtedly receiving God’s law, the two tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments, from the top of Mount Horeb in Midian.

God lays out His plan for a righteous relationship with His people as He gives Moses instructions on how they are to live in His presence and morally how to treat one another. However while Moses is away receiving the Ten Commandments, His brother Aaron is busy back at the Israelite camp smelting down the Egyptian gold to produce an idol for them to worship. When Moses returns from His encounter with God, he finds the Israelite camp worshipping an image of a golden calf. You can imagine his anger and frustration as he hurls the law to the ground breaking the first two tablets of stone.

Years later as Moses is nearing his own death, the scriptures records his legacy as he pours out his heart to all Israel. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is known as the Shema, a section of scripture that frames the entire scope of Jewish theology. It is so revered by certain sects of the Jewish faith that this scroll is literally pinned to their doorposts and some even go so far as to tie this scripture to their hands and foreheads.

 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

I have to admit I have personally taken these verses literally and have written them on areas of my house and objects that make up the architecture of my home. But did God literally mean that we should bind scriptures to our homes, our hands and foreheads or was He implying something else? Was God teaching the Israelites that salvation can only come from God and there is literally no way for anyone man to keep the Ten Commandments?

God wants us to remember Him and what He has accomplished for us. If we look back at the Exodus from Egypt, we discover that the blood of the Passover lamb when spread on the doorposts and lentils of the house spared the firstborn male from certain death by allowing the angel of death to “pass over” the redeemed house. Likewise Jesus too became our “Passover Lamb”, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as He hung and died upon the cross. The night before His death He also instructed us to commemorate and remember that He bought us with a price. By applying His blood to the doorposts of our own heart, we too become His purchased possession and will one day live again with Him!

The blessing of the Shema is that the Lord God is One and that salvation is from Him alone. Even the meaning of the Greek name Jesus or, in Hebrew Jeshua, literally means God is salvation. The Shema is both a blessing and a reminder that God was inviting His people to enjoy a relationship with Him and to walk all the days of their lives in a relationship with Him. God was trying to convey the benefits of sinking His word deep within their minds, their hearts and their souls. God loves us all and desires that we choose to come to Him out of love rather than compulsion.

In closing, I have decided to read the middle section of this great blessing again letting it sink deep within our hearts soul and minds. “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be frontlets between your eyes, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  Thank you God for loving us enough to send your own Son to heal and save us from a debt we could never pay. Could there ever be a better blessing than that?