Father’s message is very clear: although we have turned away from him, he is doing everything it takes to bring us home. Even when he pictures us as a wife who has turned to other lovers, his message is that he is seeking us, calling us home, paying the ransom price of our captivity, all so that he can have us sinful creatures back as his beloved and adopted children.
However, his present work is very clearly taking things I/we already know in our heads and addressing the WoLVeS that keep these things from invading our hearts.[1]
And so, he got me up early this morning to spend more time in his word and has been ministering Scriptures to me that I know require more than meditation; they also require praying from the new heart Jesus gave me.[2]
Here are the wonders of his gift of grace today, all communicating the same message: Our sin does not cause him to turn off his love for us, but engages his grace that will do whatever it takes to have us back, even if we are the only ones who come home.
Return, O faithless children,
declares the LORD;
for
I am your master;
I will take you, one from a city and two from
a family,
and
I will bring you to Zion.[3]
We are “faithless children”; he will bring us home to Zion.
Those whom I love, I reprove
and discipline,
so be zealous and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and
knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in to him and
eat with him,
and he with me.[4]
The Laodicean church is so lukewarm that Jesus is about to spew it out of his mouth. However, while calling the whole church to be “zealous and repent”, he makes his invitation in the singular so that, even if only one person comes home, that person is assured of intimate and personal fellowship with their Savior no matter what anyone else does with the offer.
“You adulterous people! Do
you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore
whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”[5]
First, we have a clear picture that God is, once again, dealing with his faithless people who have turned from love-relationship with him to an adulterous friendship with the world. The point is, look again at what God is telling his people is his response to such sinful disdain from his own people.
Submit yourselves therefore
to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God, and he
will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts,
you double-minded.
Be wretched and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned
to mourning
and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he
will exalt you.[6]
God’s message to his adulterous bride is, “Come home!” Why he would want his adulterous people to come home is obviously beyond us. But there it is. If we will resist the devil’s advances and draw near to our God instead, what will we find God doing in response to our sinful wanderings? We will find him drawing near to us to be with us.
What is God’s intention in getting his adulterous people to humbly confess their poverty of spirit, to mourn the sinfulness of their adulterous hearts, to meekly admit they cannot fix what is wrong with them, and to once again hunger and thirst for the righteousness of love-relationship with him?[7] It is to bring our hearts home so he can exalt us, or lift us up, or restore us to our gracious place as his treasured possession, his chosen people, his holy nation, his beloved children.
And one more picture: when the prodigal son returns home, will he find his Father hiding away somewhere in grudging reluctance to see his child’s face? Or will he find this unthinkable thing of his Father running down the road to welcome him home?[8]
Which brought me to this:
All we like sheep have gone
astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.[9]
This is why God can relentlessly seek out his adulterous-hearted children. It is because, although every one of us has gone astray, the ransom price of our iniquity has been laid on Jesus. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[10]
And so, because Jesus has fully paid the ransom price for all our idolatries and adulteries, God can keep calling us home, healing our wounds, replacing our lies with his truth, renewing our vows, and utterly demolishing our strongholds, all so that he can have our faithless little lives back for his very own in order that he may, “rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”[11]
As I was looking up the
references for these verses that were pouring into my mind, I found this one
that was like an added gem to the treasure I was seeking:
“I have gone astray like a lost sheep;
seek your servant,
for I do not forget your
commandments.”[12]
God says that, when his beloved children go astray like lost sheep, his response is to seek and to save the lost.[13] This cry from the Psalms is our humble acknowledgement of need where we know that we have no hope unless he seeks for us and brings us home.
Obviously, Father is still graciously seeking his faithless children to bring us home to himself in a way that fills our hearts with the good news of great joy that is our right in the gospel.[14] Confessing to God that we know we have gone astray, and asking him to seek us and find us because we have not forgotten his words and want them to dwell in us richly, will attach our hearts to his grace that is already attached to us in wonders beyond our wildest imaginings.
And it is that grace that will lead us home.
© 2019 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1] Recently we discovered (or it found us) Dr Marcus Warner’s
resources aimed at “Understanding the Wounded Heart”. In his book by
that name, and a series of video messages on the topic, he explains things in a
model that makes so much sense of what heart-wounds do to us. He identifies
that our enemies are the world, the devil, our flesh, and the combined work of
the three. And then he shows how the world Wounds us, the devil Lies
to us, our flesh makes Vows to handle these lies, and the combined work
creates Strongholds we can’t break on our own. To abbreviate the
fourfold description of wounds, lies, vows and strongholds (WLVS), we now
think of them as WoLVeS that are out to destroy us sheep. We are beginning to
see the necessity of gaining our freedom from these WoLVeS in order to follow Jesus
from the new hearts he has given us.
[2] I am indebted to Jim Wilder and his resource, “The Life Model:
Living From the Heart Jesus Gave you”, for the emphasis on what it means
that God has given us a new heart and put a new Spirit within us (Ezekiel
36:26; Ephesians 4:20-24). Scripture is clear that God has done this; God works
relentlessly to lead us into our new hearts where we can seek him and find him
as promised throughout his word.
[3] Jeremiah 3:14
[4] Revelation 3:19-20
[5] James 4:4
[6] James 4:7-10
[7] The Beatitudinal Journey of Matthew 5:1-12 is often woven into
whatever new things I am learning.
[8] Luke 15:11-32 (the context includes two similar parables in Luke
15:1-10).
[9] Isaiah 53:6
[10] II Corinthians 5:21
[11] Zephaniah 3:17
[12] Psalm 119:176
[13] Luke 19:10
[14] Luke 2:10-11; Romans 1:16-17
No comments:
Post a Comment