Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

The Sovereign God of the Bible is very mindful of the limitations of His human creatures—that they are incapable of comprehending a full disclosure of spiritual reality. Therefore, He clearly accommodates those limitations by describing certain essential spiritual truths in terms that humans can grasp. The first idea of the FOCUS VERSE presents the unseen God up there somewhere—as though He were on a cloud or at some high elevation above the earth—and from there He looks down. Jesus confirmed the truth that Father God is in heaven—a dimension of reality not perceived by natural observation. But without a HEART AFTER GOD, even this general idea can be perverted and abused by dirty hearts. In fact, it can actually be encouraging for a person bent on wrongdoing. “After all,” one can reason, “If He’s up there, and I’m down here, maybe I can get away with something right here while He’s busy looking at someone over there.” Remember?—THE NATURAL HEART OF MAN IS DECEITFUL!

I have to believe that the limitations of human ability and capacity to understand the things of God and find relationship with Him, as well as its relative difficulty, are not accidental, but intentional. I also have to believe that God is intentional about not utilizing all his supernatural resources to convince humans in no uncertain terms of His existence, truth, and sovereignty—whether they like it or not. He has chosen rather to cloke His reality in a measure of obscurity, and balance out the whole deal so as to make Himself available only to those who want Him—those who SEEK Him. In this regard, Jesus gives this guarantee: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). David is inspired to speak of this fact when he discloses that this is the main reason for God’s flawless surveilance system—for His monitoring the thinking and behavior of all men all the time—“to see if there are any who understand (enough), any who seek God.” The bottom line is this: GOD ORDAINS SEEKING. And not just casual “whatever” seeking, or “Who can really know?” seeking, but flat out WITH ALL YOUR HEART seeking.

Clearly, the God of the Bible is irritated with people messing around in His presence with lesser heart-level dispositions. Clearly, a HEART AFTER GOD is the internal qualification for worship from His perspective. Worship without it is simply liturgical religious nonsense. That’s what Asaph is inspired to declare in Psalm 50. “But to the wicked God says: ‘What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips. You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you” (Psalm 50:16-17). This truth, along with its popular violation, gets Jesus heated up. At one point He delivers this hot retort—“You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men’” (Matthew 15:7-9).