I don’t want your religion – I want your heart!
Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Chris Simmonds:
What did I like about today’s passage?
I love it when the Bible seems to score an own goal.
Israel means ‘God contends’ and Jacob is understood to have acquired this new name due to his wrestling match with the Angel of God.
Fitting then, that Israel’s scriptures themselves so often read like an open, honest tussle between competing ideas. It often seems, however, that it’s in the tension between such competing values that wisdom is to be found.
In today’s reading we find just such a self-critique. For those of us who followed this reading plan through Leviticus (well done!), you’ll be familiar with the huge number of very specific instructions around appropriate sacrifices to make, for all manner of different situations.
Yet here, God seems to be throwing a total curveball – ‘I’m not interested in your sacrifices and religious trappings’ – “If I were hungry I would not mention it to you.” Boom.
It’s not of course that God is rubbishing the elaborate rites and rituals of his people, but rather is warning they are the vehicle not the destination – that above all what he wants is our genuine gratitude, humble obedience, and simple trust (Ps.50:14-15).
Psalm 51 almost reads like a response – “you desire honesty from the heart, so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being” (Ps 51:6) God wants our honesty, our naked vulnerability, our inner ‘yes’ of total unblushing surrender – and with that, he can transform us and the world we touch.
What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
These Psalms reveal a God who just wants us, as we are - our broken, vulnerable selves - “The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit” (51:17). He wants us to lay down all egoic pretence and rest in his sufficiency, stand in his grace and acceptance. “Create in me a clean heart oh God. Renew a right spirit within me” (51:10)
What am I going to do differently as a result?
Customs and rituals can be helpful at a societal level to embed certain values in culture, to get everyone ‘on the same page’. But on an individual level they must be infused with meaning and significance or they will just be empty shells. I am going to meditate on the key verses that have jumped out at me, allowing God’s Spirit to embed them deeper within me.
Who am I going to share this with?
I’m going to pray and ask God to put someone on my heart who particularly needs to hear these deep truths today and share it with them (as well as whoever’s reading this!)