Matter of the Heart
My main thrust in ministry since coming to this Church has been growing the church. Growing the church like Jesus did through friendship evangelism and discipleship. Jesus gave us the most effective example of how the church should multiply by training the laypeople. He gave us the very best evangelical doctrine of church growth ever devised. Churches that have gone back to the basics and followed Jesus example have become the most successful at church growth. However, before we strife for church evangelical outreach and discipleship, let’s get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. What is the condition of the matter of your heart? Where does your true devotion lie?
Churches and church membership are caught up in a very secular society, which doesn’t feel that going to church, living a godly life, or living for God are relevant concerns. We are busy living the American dream, enjoying life and attempting to stay ahead of our bills to bother with the church, the bible and God. We have better things to do than commit our lives, time or money to such an old-fashioned way of thinking. Believing in God is fine but spending time to find out about God, is that really necessary? Go to church on Sunday, are you serious? I believe in God, that’s enough for me.
Can you see the way in which the world is portraying Christianity? Christianity, to the world, is a private matter between you and God. The world feels everyone should deal with God in their own way and their own time. Just look at television programming! Look at the so-called prime time Christian series that Hollywood is allowing us to view. Promised Land, Touched by an Angel, It’s a Miracle and others. There is much talk concerning God’s forgiveness, God’s will, God’s love, heaven, angels and such other Christian topics. I am still waiting! I am still watching! I am still wishing for one of these shows to share the real crux of the matter, where does Jesus fit into all this worldly Christianity? What about Jesus, the Son of God, Calvary Hill, or salvation through the blood of Jesus? Give me any inclination that Jesus is still as important as God loves me
The world is attempting to desensitize the most important fact of the Christian message and that fact is Jesus. This isn’t a new way of thinking it is the same old lie Satan has been implanting in the minds of men for ages. It’s the same lie that the Sanhedrin used to crucify Jesus on Calvary Hill. It’s the same lie, which the Crusades used to kill pagan’s centuries before us. It’s the same lie which nations use to go to war with each other for their religious pursuits. Jesus isn’t important; it’s the way we perceive God, now that’s important! The bottom line is, we are not taking Jesus serious enough to spend quality time with him in our lives. We are not serious enough to keep the Sabbath holy.
Did you catch what I just said? I feel we finally hit the nail on the head. Could it be some of us don’t take Jesus serious? We don’t spend enough time with Jesus and we don’t keep the Sabbath holy. How can we commit to something that we can’t take serious? We would be wise not to depend on NBC or CBS for our spiritual food. We are just like the rest of the world; we deal with Jesus on our own time! That’s if we deal with the issue of Jesus at all. We have more important things to concern ourselves than with Jesus. We have our all-important places of employment, we have all our debts, we have to spend time with our loved ones, we have all the yardwork and then there are the home improvements. We need time to get away on vacation and time for entertainment. We then need to work more and more overtime to pay for all the luxuries of life we busy ourselves about. Where could we ever find time to fit Jesus into the equation of our lives? Isn’t it enough just to believe in Jesus? Do we really have to commit to a Christian lifestyle and servanthood is really out of the question? Serving is really out of the question, it is not really realistic, I couldn’t possibly fit another thing into my busy schedule. After all isn’t that the kind of conservative fanatical right jargon I read about in the newspaper and hear about on the talk shows?
Again folks, the bottom line is, on whom are you depending? From the very beginning of time God has posed that very question to every person who ever lived. On whom are you depending? Do you rely on God for your spiritual, physical and mental needs? Or are you attempting to do it on your own? Do you rely on God for your needs or do you try to do it by yourself? As long as things are going good, the people of this generation wouldn’t think of God except as a novel concept. But what happens if trouble comes along, well then God is the first person they are willing to pass the buck too. This isn’t anything new; people have been passing the buck for centuries.
In Genesis, Adam and Eve had everything they ever wanted. All they had to do was kick back and enjoy the good life. Everything in paradise was great until the human spirit wanted more, equally to God. What are some of the old sayings: too much knowledge perverts, curiosity killed the cat, etc. The knowledge of good and evil was much more than the human mind could comprehend. Instead of relying on God for their knowledge, they took matters into their own hands and ate the forbidden fruit. After all, it looked pleasing to the eye. Isn’t that why are president was in so much trouble?
After falling into temptation, instead of taking personal responsible for their sin, they tried to pass the buck and blame society, their environment, and the snake. They blamed everything but their lack of judgement in this situation.
All through the bible we find examples of people trying to do it on their own, failing to rely on God. God destroyed the entire world with the flood because they rejected God. They wouldn’t rely on God to be their provider of everything. God rebuilt the world through one man, Noah. He took God serious enough.
God built a nation out of his people and gave them the kingdom of Israel. He drove out stronger nations than Israel to give them the land. All to soon, they wanted to be like the rest of the world and wanted a king to rule over them. After all, wouldn’t it be easier to rely on a king they could see then a God they couldn’t see? Couldn’t we rely on ourselves than a God whom we can’t see?
Brother John has a RV and a boat, if I work a couple of hours overtime each week, I could have a RV and a boat. What would it hurt? King David fell into the trap of temptation, lust. He had an affair with another man’s wife. He compounded the sin by having the husband killed and then married the widow. The one thing he did do right in the whole sorted affair was at the end he owned up to the sin. He asked forgiveness for that sin. It was after all this in which God said that Davis was a man after his own heart.
Throughout the entire bible we find that the real issue of people failing God is: will I rely on God for all my needs or will I rely on myself to take care of my needs? Still today we are failing miserably at serving God by relying on our own ingenuity to secure our needs. We go as far as to fabricate deductive intellectual reasoning why we will not rely on God. “Well, God gave us minds to figure out ways to fend for ourselves”, we might reason. Or we might think, “God gave us physical ability and strength for getting what we need”. We cannot wait for a God we can’t see to supply our needs. We run ahead and dive into what we think we should have and when we should have it. We finagle what we can. We store up and hoard what we can. We attempt to plan for the future that we can’t even control. We work hard at being free from worries and troubles. The thing is it’s all based on what we can do for ourselves without trusting in the God who wants to help us. Ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for yourself.
Did our stubbornness come as a surprise to God? NO! Did our faithlessness come as a surprise to God? NO! Did our self-reliance unexpectantly take God by surprise? NO! God knew how rebellious his people would be before he could build a nation out of them. They needed to rely on him for all their daily provisions to sustain their lives. God provided all that they needed when they needed those provisions.
I will not brag about myself because I find out daily just how little faith that is contained within me. However, until you work contract for a living, you live daily at the mercy of the job market. You find out just how much faith you have in God to supply your needs. I have worked contract for most of my 20+ years in the Mechanical Design field. This means that I usually work for companies for an unspecified time for a specific amount of money. You work for that company until they decide that they don’t need your services any longer. The problem with this is that that time could be any day in which you walk through their doors on a moment’s notice. We have lived off of the faith that God will supply our needs and our basic necessities when we need them. Life has been a real adventure and very trying at times. Even after God has supplied our needs time after time, I still find myself attempting to rely on my own ingenuity.
Read Exodus 16:4-35, God fed his people everyday but the Sabbath. The day before he allowed them to collect twice the amount of manna so they could rest on his day, the Sabbath. Some tried to store up on other days and found that it had spoiled over night. Others went out on the Sabbath only to find there was nothing to collect. God was true to his word and he provided for their every need. God provided just how much they needed when they needed the supplies. He was their provider – Jehovah Jireh.
This was a difficult lesson for God’s people in the wilderness and is still a hard lesson for God’s people today, trusting in God for our everyday provisions. Let’s speak in more specific terms instead of generalizations. They were just like us; frustrated, anxious, worried, scared and many other human emotions. The hardest task we face in our living the Christ centered life is trusting in God, surrendering our will and giving in to our self-reliant tendencies. This is what the Sabbath was all about. Don’t store up the manna except on the day before the Sabbath. God, still today is saying to us, ‘I will supply all your needs even on the Sabbath, just trust me.’ ‘Just give me that one day, honor me and rest.’
The fourth commandment is remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son and daughter, nor your manservant and your maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11).
Unfortunately, our tendencies as humans lead us to a legalistic approach that shape our religious culture. We would rather follow the letter of the law then the spirit of the law. It isn’t what you don’t do, such as working, not enjoying yourself at the park, not eating out or not buying anything on Sunday. Also, it isn’t what you do; like going to church, reading the bible, spending time in prayer. It has to do with on whom are you relying to provide both your deepest and daily needs. Many people, Christian people, never miss a Sunday service but fret and worry about their financial affairs and retirement plans. They run after those things that give them short-term pleasure. They let the world decide what is important in their lives and what should make them the happiest.
The important focus here is not what you have but on what you don’t have, Faith that your God is true to his word. He promises he will provide for your basic needs when you need those needs to be met. To set aside one day of the week for rest, this is God’s method of reminding us to live a life of trusting in him for our daily provision. The Sabbath is to be kept holy by God’s people by proper observance of that day. Proper observance is not legal observation of that day with do’s and don’ts. Keeping the Sabbath day holy is recognizing everything that is important in life is depending on him the provider – Jehovah Jireh. Nothing else in life matters if God is not the source of everything.
If you were to die penniless, never marring, having no children, friendless, having no reputation, being a nameless individual, you would have lost nothing if you relied on the Lord your God for all your needs. Jesus is all you need! Philippians 3:8 states, ‘I count everything – even the greatest achievements of my life – as loss compared to the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’.
This is the meat of the Sabbath – letting go of those worries, those troubles, those fears and problems – letting go of your self-gratification and self-reliance. The Sabbath is like God’s salvation; we can do nothing to obtain his forgiveness. To make the Sabbath holy we give up on trying to control our surroundings and give the control to the Lord who knows what is the best for us. When you truly begin to observe the Sabbath – the reckless abandoning of self-reliance – you will find that God has been seeking you with the same degree of self-abandon. You are the lost sheep that he has been seeking and he is willing to set everything aside at all costs – even his son – to find you and bring you home. There is a God who considers everything loss for the privilege of knowing you. Who bids you to consider everything a loss for the privilege of knowing him?
You then keep the Sabbath holy when you find a passion for knowing and serving your God. You trust in him for your entire daily needs, you’re personal comforts, your employment, your family, and your home. Your one pursuit in life is not in the material, nor neither relational, nor mental but your one pursuit in life is God. You have found the heart of the Sabbath when on Sunday morning or any other day of the week your heart reels with delight in the Lord. Give up on being the one in control of your life or you will fail. Quit trying to be the one on whose effort your happiness and contentment lie or you will fail. Take a break from yourself and give the control of your life to God so you won’t fail. Love, peace and joy can be a reality in your life when you stop serving your self-reliance and start serving God. We were created to rely on God not to be self-reliant. Reliance on God is where we will find true satisfaction, contentment and liberty. Jehovah Jireh – God is our provider.
So the statement is true, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. What is the matter of your heart?
