Hey everyone.
Along with my study on Acts, I have been reading a book called Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It has been great to learn more about God's attributes. Something he said gave me an idea for continued study. Packer suggested that when we read about God's wisdom, we are seeing God's mind. When we read about God's power, we are seeing his arm, and when we read about God's love we are seeing his heart. It made me wonder what other body parts God has. So interspersed with my study of Acts, I am also now looking at the scriptures and what they have to say about God's anatomy.
I started with God's heart. God's heart is mentioned a few times in the scriptures and I will share a few of the things that I learned with you.
I Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22 tells us that David was a man after God's own heart. This tells two things. First, God has a heart. Second, we can have a heart like His. So as we look at His heart, we can appreciate God for who He is, and also be challenged to work on our own hearts.
Gen 6:6 is the first mention of God's heart. It says, "The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled." That is what is says in the NIV (2011). Personally I prefer the translation in the NIV translated in 1973 where it says that God's "heart was filled with pain." It helped me to understand that God is an emotional entity and that He feels things very deeply. (It would be interesting to study out God's emotions. Just off the top of my head I can think of examples where God expresses anger, jealousy, joy and sadness.) We need to think about this passage and see what was causing God such pain. It is pretty clear that the cause of God's pain was sin. As we look at God's heart, this will come up again.
In Isaiah 15:5 and 16:11, God says, "My heart cries out for Moab," and "My heart laments for Moab like a harp." So twice, God expresses that he feels sadness in his heart for Moab. To understand this we need to have some understanding of who Moab is; so I will give you a brief history of Moab. We see the original Moab in Gen. 19:30-38. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his daughters are living in a cave. The daughters get Lot drunk and have sex with him. The offspring of these incestuous relationships are Moab and Ben-Ammi. Gen. 19:37 tells us that the Moabites are the descendants of this Moab.
The Moabites appear again in Numbers 22 through 25. It is Balak, the king of Moab, that summons Balaam and his talking donkey to curse Moses and the Israelites. Balaam refuses to curse them, telling Balak that he can only do what God tells him to do, and instead blesses Israel. So we see early on that Moab stands in opposition to God's people. In Judges 3, the Moabites have conquered Israel and are oppressing them until God sends Ehud to rescue them. (It is an interesting story, in which Ehud stabs Eglon, king of Moab, with and 18 inch sword, but Eglon is so fat that Ehud loses his sword inside and the fat closes over it.) In Judges 10:6 it says that the Israelites had served the gods of Moab. So the Moabites had been a thorn in Israel's side throughout much of the period of the judges. (The positive I find on Moab's ledger is that Ruth was a Moabite.) In I Kings 11:7 Solomon builds a high place for Chemosh, a Moabite god, for one of his wives. Based on what I have read, there is not a lot known about Chemosh. The name may mean "Destroyer" or "Fish God," but archaeology seems to indicate that Chemosh did have a taste for blood. So by the time of Isaiah, Moab had opposed or hindered Israel for about 700 years.
Back in Isaiah 16 we see that even though God's heart cries for Moab, He has reached the point where He can no longer tolerate their sin. Seven hundred years is a long time to tolerate something. God has shown abundant patience. In Isaiah 16:14 He says, "But now the Lord says: "Within three years, as a servant bound by contract would count them, Moab's splendor and all her many people will be despised, and her survivors will be very few and feeble." As much as God's heart is filled with compassion, He will deal with sin, just as He had during the time of Noah. We have to take our sin seriously, because He does.
I will conclude this post with Isaiah 40:11. Since Moab's story is a bit of a downer, this can pick us up a little bit. Isaiah 40 says:
He tends his flock like a shephard:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
For those of us who are of His flock, He carries us close to His heart. Imagine yourself in His embrace. Perhaps you can feel the vibration of His heartbeat. Take comfort and know that you are near His heart.
More to come.
Tom
