Whole Heart Devotion

Sunday, April 10, 2011, 7:03 a.m. – When I awoke this morning, the song, “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” or “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” was playing in my mind. Then, as I sat down to have my quiet time with the Lord in prayer and in the reading of His Word, the Lord brought to mind a song he gave me to write this past April 6, 2011.

Gracious Father / An original work / April 6, 2011

How great are You Father; how great are You, Lord.
My heart so adores You; Your mercy outpour.
Your love and your kindness; Your gracious reward
Are treasures from heaven that we can’t afford.
So, freely they’re given and humbly received
When we bow before You on penitent knee.

O gracious Redeemer; my Master and King,
To You I owe everything - my offerings I bring
With whole heart devotion, to honor and praise
My loving companion and friend for always.
It’s You I serve only, to walk in Your ways,
So I have your promise for all of my days.

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Hebrews 6-10, looking for and expecting that the Lord had a passage in mind that went with the words of this song, since this is the song he gave me this morning to go along with my quiet time with Him. So, when I got to Hebrews 10:19-39, I saw the immediate connection with the words of this song.

A Call to Persevere
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

32 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. 34 You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. 36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For in just a very little while,

“He who is coming will come and will not delay.
38 But my righteous one will live by faith.
And if he shrinks back,
I will not be pleased with him.”

39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

My Understanding: In prayerfully considering the words to this song, which I believe the Lord Jesus gave to me, as he poured the words into my mind and heart, with little to no effort on my part at all, I realized how these words went so well with this passage of scripture and how they paralleled each other in thought and in meaning. I saw three basic categories or subjects in both the song’s lyrics and in this passage of scripture, which are: 1) What the Father and the Son did for us in providing salvation for us from sin, 2) How we receive the gift of God’s grace into our hearts and lives, and 3) How our salvation is to be lived out in our daily Christian lives in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Father.

The Provision

Jesus Christ is God, the second person of our one and only true and triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is one with God, he is God, and he created all things, as well as he holds all things together. Yet, he humbled himself, he left the glory of heaven and all that was associated with his place of honor in heaven as God the Son, and he came to earth, took on human flesh, was tempted as we are tempted, yet without sin, and he suffered physical and emotional pain, as we suffer, so that he could become our great high priest and our perfect Lamb sacrifice to take away all our sins. Then, he died a horrible death on the cross, taking upon himself all our sin, which was the worst pain of all, crucifying our sin along with him, burying our sin with him, as well, and yet leaving our sin in the grave when he rose from the dead, triumphing over death, hell, Satan and sin – the penalty of sin and the control of sin over our lives on a day-to-day basis.

The Reception

There is nothing we can do to earn God’s grace, which is why the song states that we can’t afford these heavenly treasures. We cannot buy them with money, with good works, with religious rituals and practices, and/or with church attendance, etc. Ephesians 2:8-10 says:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Notice the order of this passage of scripture. We are first of all saved by grace, i.e. by what Jesus Christ did for us in dying on the cross for our sins so that we could be free from the penalty of and the control of sin over our lives, and so we could be free to walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, serving him only (the opposite of serving sin and self) in full obedience. Secondly, we are saved through faith. Notice that both grace and faith are not from ourselves, i.e. they are not initiated by us and neither are they accomplished by our own flesh and good works, but both grace and faith are a gift from God.

Many people stop there and exclude this next part, though. Works are not excluded from our salvation altogether, though. Once we are in Christ Jesus through faith in Jesus Christ – in who he was and is and in what he did for us in dying for our sins and in rising from the dead, triumphing over our sins – we become God’s workmanship, we become new creations (newly birthed) in Christ Jesus to do “good works”, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So, we are not saved by our own flesh good works, but good works are a byproduct of our relationship with Jesus Christ as Christ now does his work in us and through us.

We know that God’s grace is the provision of Christ’s death and resurrection to purchase our salvation so that we could go free. But, what is faith? We know it is a gift from God, so this is not something we can do in our own flesh. Yet, as we study scripture, and as we examine this passage in Hebrews 10, we learn that faith entails a whole lot more than an emotional experience at an altar or an intellectual assent to what Jesus did for us on the cross. The books of James and I John give us a really good picture of the true meaning of faith, i.e. if we say we have faith, but it is not evidenced by how we live our lives, then true faith does not exist within us, i.e. true faith reveals itself through our heart response to God daily.

Another aspect of true faith is repentance. Many people like to leave repentance out of the message of salvation, too, yet this passage in Hebrews is clear that if we have received the knowledge of the truth of salvation, and yet we deliberately keep on sinning (living a sinful lifestyle) without any regard for the fact that Jesus Christ died so that we could go free, not just from the penalty of sin, but free from the control of sin over our daily lives, then no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment. The reason for this is that, if we receive the message of salvation and yet deliberately keep on living a sinful lifestyle without regard for what Jesus did for us, i.e. perhaps because someone has fed us a lie that repentance is not necessary for salvation, then we are guilty of:

• Trampling the Son of God under foot
• Treating as an unholy thing the blood of Christ (the new covenant) that made us holy, and
• Insulting the Spirit of Grace

The Consecration

This passage in Hebrews begins with the word “therefore,” which means “for this reason,” and the word “since,” which means “in view of the fact,” that Jesus Christ provided the means of our salvation through his shed blood on the cross and through his resurrection, so that we could enter into the Most Holy Place, i.e. directly into God’s presence without having to go through a human priest any longer, the following should be true of our lives, i.e. these are the things we should put into practice, not in our own flesh, but with the working of God’s grace in and through our lives as we cooperate with him and submit to his Lordship. For true faith means that we yield ownership and authority over our lives to Jesus Christ, and we now allow him to work in us and through us for his purposes and for his glory.

We should draw near to God – we should spend time with him each and every day in prayer and in his word, sitting at his feet, learning from him, and then obeying what he teaches us. We should hold unswervingly to the hope we profess – true faith is faith that endures to the end. We are to encourage one another, especially in light of the coming Day of Judgment, and we are to stimulate and help motivate others to do good deeds and to show love to one another, allowing the Holy Spirit of God to work in and through them to accomplish his good purposes and will for their lives.

We ought to also not give up meeting together – this does not mean we have to meet on a Saturday or a Sunday morning (a specific time) at a building called “a church” (a specific place), for the early church met daily, from house to house and out in public places (the temple courts). God no longer dwells in buildings built by human hands. A building, even though it may be called “a church,” is not the church, and a “sanctuary” inside a building is not the sanctuary of God where we meet God, and a church building is not God’s house. We, the people of God, are God’s sanctuary. We are his temple (church) and our hearts are where the Holy of Holies now dwells, which is what this passage of Hebrews is telling us. Now we can go directly to the throne of grace at any time and no matter where we are located at the time. So, when believers in Jesus Christ meet together in the name of the Lord for the purposes of the teaching of the Word, for fellowship, for prayer and/or for the breaking of bread (communion with God), we are doing what this passage exhorts us to do when it tells us to not give up meeting together with other believers in Jesus Christ.

Lastly, and this is very important, we must stand strong in our faith in Jesus Christ, even in the face of severe persecution, or suffering for our faith, and we must not hold on to the things of this world, which are going to pass away, for we have far better and lasting possessions (our treasures) in heaven. We must persevere, i.e. we must persist and continue in our faith, so that when we have done the will of God, we will receive what was promised. We need to understand what that just said. We don’t receive the promise of salvation through some outward confession of Christ, through some prayer we prayed at an altar, etc. if these prayers and confessions are not followed by genuine faith that continues and that does the will of God. In other words faith is equal to repentance and to obedience. We cannot and should not separate them, as many try to do. If we say we have faith, and yet we shrink back away from what we have professed and we live to please our flesh instead of live to please God, then we will be destroyed. Only those with true and persistent faith will be saved. So, if you are relying on the hope of heaven but you are continuing in a sinful lifestyle, thinking you have your ticket to heaven, then please repent of your sin today, and turn your heart to God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in full faith and obedience.