Life or Death is What You Set Your Heart Upon

by Thomas Denegre

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How we identify ourselves in life is not done through our performance, but by whom we are through God. What we believe in our heart can bring us either life or death, "for the heart is the wellspring of life."  (Proverbs 4:20)

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Take for example a young man named Jacob. Raised as a Christian he sought his identity through his performance lifestyle. Whether it was through sports, religion, or the party scene; popularity was his idol.  Drugs and alcohol gripped him early in life.  In college he lost two sports scholarships when he flunked a drug test, and then things spiraled downward. As the old saying goes, he was looking for love in all the wrong places.  He found short success as a martial arts fighter, but that too failed from drug addiction.  Down to 119 pounds his parents found him living in their backyard shed. As Jesus once said, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.” John 10:10 

We find a similar destructive path during the reign of Jeroboam II.  The nation of Israel was prosperous, but the people no longer trusted, loved, nor depended on God. Idols took over their hearts. They went into a moral and spiritual decay. Materialism and secularism captured their hearts allowing the full force of their sins to be manifested.  If you didn’t know any better, you think the list of sins was from today’s newspapers such as; killing, sexual immorality, lying, drunkenness, perversion, perjury, deceit, swearing, falsehoods, and deceptions. What grieved the heart of God more than anything else was idolatry as they placed their hearts on something else besides God. 

At this time God spoke to his prophet Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman named Gomer.  The short story is that Hosea fell madly in love with Gomer and had two children.  While Hosea prophesied to Israel to return to God, Gomer was left to her own devices by seeking a better life and a new lover.  Betrayed by his wife, Hosea felt his heart being ripped away by her rejection and distrust.  Similarly, God felt the pains of rejection from his chosen bride, the nation of Israel. While God can be jealous, he is also filled with justice, mercy, and an unstoppable love. He also has a long-term plan. 

While humans will naturally want to seek retaliation when they are betrayed, consider what God said through Isaiah. 

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,  

Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.  

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,  

So are My ways higher than your ways  

And My thoughts than your thoughts.’  Isaiah 55:8-9 

Hosea never stopped loving Gomer and neither did God stop loving Israel; despite the betrayal.  Both were consumed with the love of their bride.  Hosea eventually finds Gomer being sold at a slave auction. Clearly, a life of sin put a great downfall on Gomer. Filled with love and compassion, Hosea purchased Gomer for the cheap price of fifteen shekels. In a merciful act of love, Hosea restores Gomer to be his bride, his beloved, and his wife. This is the way of God too. 

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Going back to Jacob’s fallen life, his parents had great love and concern for him, so they placed him in a Christian based recovery program. One day Jacob woke up to find 30 men laying hands on him.   Just as Gomer was purchased for a price and delivered from bondage, so too was Jacob.  The love and the movement of the Holy Spirit touched Jacob’s heart. It was his first experience to taste the authentic love of God.  Later, he humbled himself, opened his heart, and truly surrender his life to Jesus.  As Jesus once said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) 

Just as the relentless love of Hosea rescued Gomer, the divine radical love of Jesus poured mercy and healing into Jacob to transform and restore his life.  To complete the final statement, Jesus said, “I came to bring life and bring it abundantly.” John 10:10 

Jacob now preaches at recovery centers to spread the authentic hope and love of Jesus.  Being the hero of his own story, Jacob carries the identity as a son of God and through love carries the authority of Jesus through his right of inheritance.  As Jesus once said, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt: 6:9-10) 

By restoring Jacob to be in life union with Jesus, (John 15:7) God not only blesses Jacob to go to heaven, but more importantly to live in that heaven now by living with intimacy and affection with the Lord. Jacob has become a divine instrument of God’s love and affection. For it is written, “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” (Proverbs 11:25) 

“Therefore, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16). 

Unfinished Business

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

John 21:15-19

Easter is the annual apex of Christian joy. Gathered with the largest crowds we’ll see this year, we shout, “He is risen!” and “He is risen indeed!” We sing praise before celebrating with feasting and fun for the little ones and then …

We go back to work. Back to the same old routine. Back to our unfinished business.

The story of Peter isn’t that different. Easter came. Jesus rose. Peter rejoiced. And when all the excitement died down, Peter went back to work. Back to his unfinished business.

Peter was a fisherman, but his unfinished business wasn’t fishing. He cast his net racked by guilt. In the hour of trial, when the Lord’s life was on the line, Peter denied knowing Jesus thrice.

Peter wasn’t expecting the Lord to come to his workplace that day. Jesus came anyway. He called to Peter from the shore, and Peter swam to him. Then, on the shore, Jesus and Peter talked about this unfinished business. 

It’s tempting to think Peter was right: that the unfinished business was the shame of his denial, that the Lord had to remove that by giving Peter the opportunity to thrice proclaim his love. But the truth is that guilt was removed by the cross. Those things that weighed Peter down came not from the reality of his standing before his Lord, but from his misperception thereof.

The unfinished business the Lord had in mind wasn’t finished on the shore that day. The true unfinished business was the feeding of the lambs, which symbolized Peter’s role in building up the church, caring for the body of believers, and spreading the good news of God’s grace.

Our unfinished business is much the same. Easter behind us, we must realize that the guilt of our sin is gone and that the Lord has work for us to do. It’s the same work he had for Peter: build up the Lord’s church, care for the body of believers, and spread the good news of God’s grace. 

He pledges allegiance

“After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.”  John 13:21

Jesus was not a naive guy.  Not in the least.

On the contrary, he “knew all people. (John 2:24 ESV)”  So I find it fascinating, how troubled Jesus became at the notion one of his friends would betray him.

Let’s be completely honest with ourselves: betrayal is well within our capabilities, isn’t it?  We’re pretty good at pledging allegiance – we do it with great gusto – but in the heat of the moment, it can be elusive.  Jesus himself foretold that, amid end-times chaos, believers would be betrayed “even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends. (Luke 21:16)”  And when at the Last Supper he revealed to his disciples that one of them would hand him over to his enemies, each tacitly confessed his inner frailty as “one by one they said to him, ‘Surely not I?’ (Matthew 26:22)”  [Note the question mark of self-doubt.]

Sometime after Judas left that evening, Jesus said to his remaining disciples, “I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I call you friends.... (John 15:15)”  And to Jesus, the commitment of friendship is far more than a lofty ideal; his allegiance lasts infinitely longer than a pledge.  His best for his friends means restored oneness – our oneness with the Father through the Son and our oneness with each other through him, as well.

Anything short of restoration and unity is troubling.  Separation from God is troubling; relational brokenness is troubling.

And so unnecessary!  For Jesus has already finished his atoning work; restoration is complete.  Salvation and forgiveness and reunion await humble hearts.  It is his promise, his commitment.

So he sends us, his friends, into the world around us to share our stories ... to point to the peace we find in him ... to relieve troubled hearts.

To see the daily reading, John 13:18-30, click here.

Faithful even in judgment

“When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests ... and the Levites ... took their places to praise the Lord....  With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord: ‘He is good; his love to Israel endures forever.’  And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.  But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud ... while many others shouted for joy.”  Ezra 3:10-13

When God judges, there are consequences.  When God forgives, there is restoration.

How many times have we experienced restoration ourselves?  More to the point, how many times do we need to test and prove God’s faithfulness to restore?

Israel had been in exile for over 50 years when God moved in the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia, to build a temple for him.  Obeying the God of his captives, Cyrus extended an open invitation to any of the Jews scattered throughout his realm to “go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel ...”  (Now, there’s a mission trip for you!)

Having first built an altar for worship and sacrifice, the volunteers then got to work on the temple.  And when its foundation was laid, there erupted great ... emotion.  All shouted praises to God, but it then quickly became a matter divergent perspectives.  To the younger folks, the completed foundation was hope strengthened, vision sharpened, for they who had never known a temple for the God of Israel could now see it becoming a new reality.  But those who had been around to see Solomon’s temple, long since destroyed, now “wept aloud.”

Why?  Why the weeping in the presence of promise and hope fulfilled?  Was it nostalgia, a wistful yearning for days gone by, a fond embrace of what they once knew?  Was it pent-up pain released in these aged souls born into freedom, that bright light then dimmed by oppression and captivity?

Or did these broken, now-wise souls agonize over the rebellion that brought judgment to Israel and Judah in the first place?  If only they had honored God’s law and kept their ways pure!  What could have been had they not hardened their hearts to his voice!  If only they had not tried to reduce God to a knock-off brand in a Devil Wears Prada world.  And compartmentalizing their God in the name of social relevance?  What were they thinking?

Restoration didn’t need to be, for judgment didn’t need to happen.  The temple didn’t have to be razed, nor its foundation destroyed.  As God said through his prophet, Isaiah, long before the exile:  “To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’  All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations – a people who continually provoke me to my very face ... (Isaiah 65:1b-3a)”  Had they only listened!

Today’s temples look a lot like you and me, for every believer is “a temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:19)”  And we temples are built on an immovable rock, “for no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:11)”  We will not be razed; our foundation will not be destroyed.  Which is encouraging, because we stand out in a culture where people still pursue their imaginations and provoke God to his face.

Amid the chaos and confusion, above the shriek and the shrill, may our world hear unmistakably the clear, assuring voice of God calling from and through his temples, “Here am I, here am I.”

[Read today's lesson, Ezra 3:7-13, in NIV or The Message.]