relents

This week we begin worship with:

Joel 2:12-13

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,

    “return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

    and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

Return to the Lord your God,

    for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;

    and he relents over disaster.

Last week we came to understand that God cannot change (James 1:17). Yet this week we are told that God “relents” (nāḥam). The word is passive and has been translated “repenteth Him of evil” (KJV). God is not changing we are. 

So, the course of our destiny changes as we turn from our wickedness and into the arms our gracious Lord!

will

 This week we begin worship with:

Numbers 23:19

God is not man, that he should lie,

    or a son of man, that he should change his mind.

Has he said, and will he not do it?

    Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

When quizzed one might stumble to start a sentence with "God can't . . .".  But this verse calls out two things that are so deep in God's character that we do go past "won't" to "can't".

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

God is not simply truthful, God is truth, out of which a lie cannot come.

1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

James 1:17 
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

God is not simply unchanging, God is light, light so pervasive, He cannot produce a shadow.  No part of creation, no part of us, escapes His celestial light and that cannot change.

answered

 This week we begin worship with:

Matthew 4:3-4

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command

these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man

shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of

God.’”

When Satan demanded proof for His divinity, Jesus instead responded with His humanity.  Instead of using His divinity to end a 40-day fast, Jesus refused.

When Satan demanded proof of the Father's power and asked Jesus to test the Father's ability to save Him from a fall, Jesus refused to put the Father to the test.

When Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship.  Jesus refused to alter His relationship with the Father.

These are not vague statements.  They are rigid, prepared, fixed, immovable, non-negotiable.

May we be as prepared and determined and direct in response to our next temptation.

within

This week we begin worship with:

Jeremiah 31:33

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,

declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their

hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

To understand this verse we must read:

2 Corinthians 3:3

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

God by indwelling of the Holy Spirit moves the law from external to internal and from “don’t” to “do”.

Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

When Jesus explained the Law, He used the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  May His concluding words ring in our ears “You go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37b).