29-11-15 HOW TO TOUCH

THE HEART OF GOD

Posted 29-11-15

By John Aldworth

Psalm 131: Surely I have behaved myself and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.

Mark 9:36: And He took a little child and set him in the midst of them and when He had taken Him in his arms He said unto them … (Matt. 18:3): Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Titus 3:5: Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.

Eph. 2:4: But God, who is rich in mercy,  for his great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses in sin hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).

There are two great means by which we grow as believers. One is the great love we should have for the Father and his Son; the other is what we might call knowledge and discernment. In Phil. 1: 9-10 we find both love and discernment combined.

Thus in Phil. 1:9-10 the Apostle Paul prays that our ‘love may abound yet more and more in all knowledge and in all judgement … that ye may approve the things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the Day of Christ’.

As dispensationalists, of course, we rightly emphasise the need to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15). Yet often we fail to emphasise the need for love. Yet here in Philippians, which is a prison epistle and is thus ‘the form of sound words’, Paul says that the vital key to abounding in knowledge and judgement (discernment) is in fact love.

Jesus Himself said (John 15:13): ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’. Think for a moment of the Reformation martyrs. Many who were burnt to death for their Bible belief did not know the revelation of the mystery and ‘right division’, as we know it, would have been a foreign concept to them. Yet they loved Christ with all their heart and laid down their lives for Him as their friend.

So, as Paul prayed would be, let our love abound more and more. For love, you see, is what touches the heart of God. And for this to happen there must be a humbling of ourselves, a major change in attitude, and indeed in some cases even ‘open heart’ surgery. Let us each ask ourselves: Do we need our heart opened so that we can love God? Lydia was a religious woman; she worshipped God but the Lord ‘opened her heart’ to hear the things spoken of Paul.

Perhaps three other pictures drawn in the scriptures will help our understanding. In the first (Psalm 131:2) we find David acknowledging his need for utter dependence on God as he is installed as king of Israel.

Surely I have behaved myself and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.

A weaned child has come off the ‘milk’. Spiritually speaking, weaning describes a believer who has moved from learning about Christ and grace from others to personally experiencing it himself. Secondhand knowledge no longer sustains him; he hears from God direct. What’s more he finds himself utterly dependent on the Lord and his grace – not on any naturally supplied means of support. And with this change comes an overwhelming sense of love. As the Apostle John said (1 John. 4:10, 19):

Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins … We love Him because He first loved us.

The message is that once weaned from our mother, family and the world we should lean on God for our support. In fact for both David and Jesus, David’s antetype, that hope and trust started even earlier. Psalm 22:9-11 records:

But Thou are He who took Me out of the womb; Thou didst make Me hope when I was on my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou are my God from my mother’s belly. Be not far from Me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.

Being weaned then means learning to love and rely on God apart from other support from the earliest age.      

The second picture is of Jesus and is found in Mark 9:36 and Matt. 18:3:

And He took a little child and set him in their midst and when He had taken him in his arms He said unto them: Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Notice that this little child is weaned. He has left his mother’s arms and is found here instead in the arms of Jesus. You know, sometimes worldly people know more Bible truth than believers. I didn’t know that this beautiful picture of God’s love for us was in the Bible until yesterday. But as a pagan journalist long ago in Britain I remember a friend, the night news editor on the Daily Express in Manchester telling me about a keen evangelist who used to ring the Express news desk every night to tell them about ‘the most important story they would ever hear’.

My friend explained: ‘In the end to get rid of him quickly we would tell him that it was ok, we were all safe in the arms of Jesus here at the Express, ring off and then get back to with putting the late edition out’. Amazing how many journos know something of God deep down but keep it hidden all their professional lives.

Jesus told his disciples that unless they became like this little child they would not enter the kingdom. What did He mean? He meant they had to be ‘weaned’ in the biblical sense. That is they must learn they were now cut off from natural support of family or their own ability to earn and survive and must rely totally upon God.

That really was the case for the disciples: They had left mother, father, wives, children, family and business setting out not taking even a sword, change of clothes or a day’s food supply with them. God was to supply all their need.

Did this produce love in these disciples? Yes, it did. The Apostle John – ‘he whom Jesus loved’ – could write, ‘Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God’ (1 John 5:7). Did the Apostle Peter love the Lord? Yes, he was willing to die for Him and three times publicly confessed his love for the Lord. Were these men ‘weaned’ of loving life, parents, family, business or possessions more than the Lord? Yes, they were. Are we so weaned?

Our third picture comes from Matt. 20:30-34:

And behold two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us O Lord, Thou Son of David. … So Jesus had compassion on them and touch their eyes and immediately their eyes received sight and they followed Him.

These blind men touched the heart of Jesus, touched the heart of God. Result: He had compassion on them. Notice what they did. Unlike others these men couldn’t see the Lord but when they heard He was passing by they believed what most didn’t, that He really was Israel’s Messiah, the Son of God, the King of compassion, the Son of David, so they cried out to Him for mercy. 

Friends rather than profess we know it all and can manage our lives fairly well without pleading for God to have mercy on us, thank you very much, we need to put ourselves in their shoes - if indeed they had shoes. They were poor, blind and could not see, they could not work or provide for themselves and Work and Income had yet to come into being. They were weaned off hope in the world, weaned off the family and other support and they were not asking for money. What did they want, Jesus asked?  ‘Lord that our eyes may be opened’, they replied.

And that’s just the prayer we should be praying. That the Lord would open our eyes that we might see how wretchedly poor, blind and naked we really are. That we might understand that in God’s plan for us we are weaned off the world and our own self sufficiency and in all truth are totally dependent on the ‘all sufficient’ grace of the Father and the Son.

Sadly, there few of us that are willing to cry out publicly about our need for Him to have mercy on us. And there are very few today who ‘cry the more’ when others tell us to shut up (Matt. 20:31). Could it be that many are ‘un-weaned’ and that this is the reason many prayers go unanswered and so very few can see, or want to see, the wonders of the mystery and the Father’s grace. Isaiah 28:9 asks:

To whom shall He teach knowledge and to whom shall He make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts.

You see we need to be weaned from the man-made, man-ministered ‘milk’ of tradition. We must cut loose from secondhand truth from yesteryear if we are ever to know the present truth and follow Jesus as the two blind men did. It is for this cause that the Apostle Paul prayed in Eph. 1:18 that the ‘eyes’ of our ‘understanding’ would be ‘enlightened’, or opened, if you prefer. Why? So that we might know the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe.

And when it’s a case of real need, right where the rubber meets the road, we need to know we’ve been weaned off every other source of help and cry out to God the Father to show us his mercy. Asking Him to have compassion on us is the way to touch his heart. And help through grace will be forthcoming as the following verse promises:

Eph. 2:4: But God, who is rich in mercy,  for his great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses in sin hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).