There’s always more. When it comes to God’s Word, even glancing at a verse can lead to unexpected riches and eye-opening discoveries.
If you think that getting lost online is a major problem today, try the Bible. When you study it, you’ll find way more than you anticipated, but you won’t get lost!
Last week, we used Romans 10:9-10 to see how we might understand the meaning of the word “heart” in the Bible.
“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” – Romans 10:9-10
The apostle Paul presents the mouth and the heart as two instruments by which we receive salvation in Jesus Christ. It’s obvious what the word “mouth” means, but what’s the heart?
Is it our feelings, particularly our strong emotions? Or does it refer to our wants, interests and desires? The heart includes all these but directs them toward what’s important. It describes our capacity to evaluate and prioritize. We hold in our hearts that which we regard as of crucial significance.
This is how Christians treat Jesus. Our salvation depends on our recognition of His rulership and His resurrection. Jesus is Lord! How do we know? Because God raised Him from the dead!
The Father has magnified His Son; the question now lies with us. Will we? If we make Jesus our top priority and communicate our commitment to Him, God saves us. This is the essence of the gospel.
It’s also a source of spiritual trouble.
“The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.’” – Isaiah 29:13
Hundreds of years before God allowed the Babylonian Empire to capture the Jewish people and destroy His temple, He sent Isaiah the prophet to warn the nation about hypocrisy. Going through the motions, the Jews met the outward standards of what God expected of them, but their hearts weren’t in it. Conformity could fool the priests but not the Lord and He called them on it.
Yet the people didn’t heed Isaiah’s admonitions. Soon before the coming judgment, God dispatched Jeremiah who in one of his prayers uttered this:
“You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts.” – Jeremiah 12:2
The hypocrisy that Isaiah confronted had become permanent by the time of Jeremiah. By habit the nation kept God at a distance. And why not? From the standpoint of the average citizen, what they were doing worked. Far from suffering judgment, the people enjoyed prosperity.
So the Lord sketched out the scene for Ezekiel who prophesied during the Babylonian captivity:
“My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.” – Ezekiel 33:31
No one listened, no one repented. When Jesus arrived, He challenged those who felt good about their inside track with God.
“You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8’These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’” – Matthew 15:7-9
It’s sad, isn’t it? Centuries of corrections leveled by prophets and Jesus Himself failed to motivate God’s people. So comfortable were they with their religious way of life that they never noticed how it blocked them from a vital connection with the living God.
Furthermore, it blinded them to the condition of their souls. Deep down, people didn’t know who they were. They bought into their public persona but refused to recognize what dwelt within. Their words praised God but their hearts cared about other things. The Lord wasn’t their priority.
Like the prophets before Him, Jesus disrupts spiritual complacency because He seeks authenticity.
He accepts our words when they’re reinforced by the values of our heart. Our praise is genuine only when we acknowledge the Lord’s supremacy. This is how salvation works: we declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in His resurrection. And thus it is with the Christian life; we integrate our words and our hearts, unlike the hypocrites:
“Do not eat the food of a begrudging host, do not crave his delicacies; 7for he is the kind of person who is always thinking about the cost. ‘Eat and drink,’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you.” – Proverbs 23:6-7
Want to honor the Lord and bless others? Let your heart match your words. That’s the grace of authenticity.
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