Harden Not Your Heart.

To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Hebrews 4:7
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Why should I confess and repent of a certain sin if I know I will do it again, isn’t that hypocrisy? 

We have all either made this argument or heard it made.

The main problem with this argument is that it assumes at least two things. It assumes we have a lot of years left to change our habits and/or it assumes that it is our self in charge of our salvation and we can pick and choose when to repent, most preferably the day or hour before we die.

 But the reality of the situation is this, we never stay the same person as we are now. The daily decisions we make and the consequences of those decisions changes who we are as a person, for better or for worse.

If we willfully choose the path of sin we automatically begin to harden our heart. The rooster that crows in our heart today may not be there in the future. In fact, if we harden our heart to resist the cries of the Holy Spirit we may just be so successful that we may never hear that Spirit again. We may also be so hardened that we don’t even care, or we may think because we don’t hear the cries of the Holy Spirit anymore that all is well with us. We may even believe God knows we are just poor humans and sinful in nature therefore He will overlook our transgressions and by his Grace pull us into his kingdom. But Psalm 50 has some different words for us. 

These things you have done,
 and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.
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Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 
Hebrews 4:7

What is Man?

What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Psalm 8:4

To help us with this question let’s look to the Bible itself. 

The Bible is the unique Word of God. It features 66 books written by ~40 different authors, encompassing many different styles and genres, and spanning over 1500 years.

 These writers came from different countries and wrote in different languages, yet they all come together clearly and coherently in an extraordinary book called The Holy Bible. From the broad beginnings of time and the universe, to mankind with all his struggles, and then sharply focusing down to the person of Jesus. 

These writers of history and prophecy ranged from poets to philosophers, from war heroes to humble fishermen, from kings to the prophets that warned them; each author retaining his individuality and voice. 

It’s interesting that the God of the universe would choose to have His story told this way. This tells us that the God in whose image we are made, celebrates our individual uniqueness. He works not over and around us but through us. How incredible this is to know, that each and every individual is special, and loved in an unique and personal way. It’s astounding when we realize how much worth God embeds in us from the moment we are molded in our mother’s womb.

Knowing this makes life so much more personal and meaningful. We have a God that does not love us superficially, but intrinsically and intimately, on scale that is equal to the vastness of the universe.

 Yet, we who inhabit earth, made in His image, hold the balance of power. We can thwart His Fatherly Love and decide to spend eternity away from the very Creator that gave us the unique will and right to choose.

Yes, we are wonderfully and fearfully made, each individual so unique and special, and we can feel deep in our hearts that we are destined for something much greater than what we experience in our daily life. Let us choose wisely, my friends. 

Baptism and Marriage. Part Six.

The Concept. 

The concept of Baptism is quite strange. We make a lifetime commitment to the divine Creator and invite him into our heart so he can dwell there. We ask him to be a very part of our being, our thoughts and actions. We ask him to walk with us through life’s biggest challenges and fears, and then finally through the dark vale of death itself. 

That sounds like a deal no one would refuse. But many of us do. One reason is we would not feel comfortable having God with us when we visit certain places or do certain things.

Another reason can be that we have the wrong idea of God, we envision him as non-personal and aloof. We think that after our death God will examine our lives and makes a judgement on whether we deserve heaven or hell. Almost as if the sole requirement of our getting to heaven is having our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds.

I don’t believe God works that way. I think we can look at the concept of marriage here to illustrate the point. When we marry our spouse we may think we know each other, but in all reality we know very little. We make a huge leap of faith that we will live happily ever after. We think our whirlwind love will always be there in it’s burning intensity, but we find something different, something much deeper and substantial. We find a love that delights in giving, rather than taking, and one that flourishes in times of sickness, hurt and need, instead of only anticipated happy times.

The way we find this love is we let go of old ingrained selfish habits and cultivate new caring ones, ones that consider the needs and feelings of our loved one. Once we start bettering and are conscious of our love and commitment deepening, we try harder. As we do this, our relationship comes ever closer and closer to what God had originally intended for marriage: two people becoming one flesh

This kind of love is obviously not present at the time of marriage. This is a love that has been tested and purified by the refining ovens of life. A love that comes out of the remains of its first fiery burst, and then slowly but surely turns into the love of understanding and appreciating of our life’s partner. 

The same holds true for baptism. We know very little about God till we start a relationship with him. As He reveals himself more and more we begin to understand his love. This causes us to love him more, causing him to reveal himself more. It’s an ever deepening cycle of trust and love and understanding. God accepts us fully when we enter a relationship with him, and the judgmental image that we have of God as we were growing up turns into a image of Love, a God that only has our best interests in mind. 

To sum things up, we don’t live out our life with the one we love and then at the end decide if we are worthy and then propose marriage. That would make no sense at all. It works this way, we take the leap of faith, marry, and then gradually mold into one flesh.

The same concept applies to Baptism. When we get baptized and accept Jesus as our personal saviour our name is entered into the Book of Life.  Then, as we learn more about Jesus and His love for us, our understanding and love for Him grows. 

But here’s the disclaimer. Baptism without faithfulness, through hardheartedness, totally voids the contract. Not that this is God’s will, but ours.

P.S. When I started this blog on Baptism and Marriage I had no idea that it would go beyond the first instalment. As I started writing and thinking the similarities became so obvious that each begged the next post. To help us understand the concept of Baptism it helps to look at the institution of Marriage. The clues and practical experiences are all there. 

Thank you for being on this journey with me.

Louie Vetter

Baptism and Marriage. Part Five.

Forgiveness.

In marriage, if one partner strays and worships false gods, or in the language of marriage, worships someone or something other than the wedding partner, great harm and complete loss of trust occurs. 

Both marriage partners need to sit down and evaluate where this is going. Is there a use continuing this commitment? Will there be forgiveness, even if the offending partner is truly remorseful that the offence took place? 

God suggests there is. In fact, in the story of Hosea he commands his prophet to marry a prostitute. To take her home and marry her. To clean her up and clothe her. To marry on trust, and if the trust is broken, to start all over again. That would be so hard for us to do, but such is the love of God. He will beg and plead and do everything in his power to make us love Him. If only we will set aside our idols and objects of worship and come and follow Him, He will wash us and make us pure again and white as the falling snow.

But His love also respects us. If we stiffneckedly refuse Him and continue walking the path of our own choosing and worship the objects we desire, He will let us. He loves us too much to put us into bondage in order to prevent us from carrying out our ways.

And in marriage we can relate. We can love our partner with the deepest love possible, but if our spouse were to stray, there is nothing we can do except to unconditionally forgive, and then beg and plead and hope that our love would repent and return to its first love. And if reconciliation is not to be, we have to respect that wish as well.

Baptism and Marriage, Part Four.

Faithfulness. 

Human nature is so that the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence.

 Imagine this scenario, we get married but still harbour memories from previous acquaintances or new people we meet. Or even worse, if we’d have pictures or gifts from these acquaintances on display on the walls or placed around our home. 

Now imagine if one were to go and pursue these lusts to their logical end with an adulterous act. The hurt and harm that would inflict on a marriage would be so immense that it would take severe repentance and authentic remorse to even begin to build the former trust. 

The wrongdoing of this straying or drifting is so starkly clear and obvious in marriage, and is no less important in our baptism, even though we tend to think God is so loving and understanding that will overlook spiritual adultery. Remember, Jesus said that even looking at a woman lustfully is already committing adultery in our heart. 

With these scenarios we can clearly see and feel the significance of the first two commandments.

The first, “You shall have no other Gods before me.”

And the second, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness..., You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.

Baptism and Marriage. Part Three.

I think we can all agree that marriage and the marriage vows are sacred and holy, and carry a commitment to love, cherish, and obey one another.

When we think of sacredness and holiness we often think of a church or temple. 

Think of how we conduct ourself when we enter into one of those buildings. We speak in a softer tone of voice, we won’t speak certain words or talk of certain topics. We act in a more respectable and responsible way than we normally would. We are kinder, gentler and more considerate to the people around us. Now imagine if our body is a temple to the living God, and guess what, it is! Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? 

Well, if we think of this way, that changes things a little bit. And so it should. For if we don’t treat our body as a temple, chances are that the Holy Spirit won’t like the atmosphere we produce and very predictably, will move out. And without the presence of the Holy Spirit influencing us, our temple will turn into a house of shame rather quickly and our baptism is desacralized.

 As with baptism so with marriage, when we treat our vows with anything less than sacredness, we may soon start to find ourself estranged from the one we promised to love, cherish and obey.

Baptism and Marriage. Part Two.

Here are some more thoughts on the similarities between baptism and marriage.

We cannot get married to our loved one by ourselves, we need an ordained representative to create the bond, almost as a free gift with no work on our part, except to say I do. 

And the same goes with baptism, we cannot get baptized by ourselves, we need an ordained representative. 

Once committed to God we receive the Holy Spirit that comes to live in our bodily house, and then we are in a very real sense in a marriage with the Third Person of the Trinity or in other words with God himself. 

We can see here that this bond is also a free gift with no work on our part, except to affirm. But that bond doesn’t assure us salvation. Because just as in marriage, we have some work to do. Let me illustrate.

In marriage, as soon as the bond is set, work begins. Though in all fairness it’s not really work as much as it is a working out of your love towards your partner. Labour of love, if you will. Not that we have to do it but we want to do it. To not do it would be to deny or quell our love, and effectively our marriage commitment to our partner. That would be marriage in name only, which throws up the question where our heart lies. “For where your treasure lies, your heart lies also.” Matthew 6:21

So it is in our baptism, except it’s not us working but a letting of the Spirit work in us.

‘Do not quench the Spirit,’ writes Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. 

The Spirit will then naturally produce fruit.  “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.” Galatians 5:22

Again, these fruits are the natural out-workings of the unquenched Spirit. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Baptism and Marriage.

Baptism is often likened to marriage and it’s easy to see why. Like marriage, baptism vows are pledging allegiance and faithfulness to God till death do us part, but the difference is that death, instead of parting us eternally, binds us eternally. 

Both marriage and baptism vows are like signing a contract where we promise to commit ourselves totally and faithfully to our partner.

We can easily see and understand how cheating and indifference can hurt our partner and our marriage, but for some reason we don’t draw the same conclusions with our baptism. We seem to fall into a rut where we think that if we don’t commit major sins against God that everything will be alright and God with his Holy grace will overlook our minor daily transgressions. Well, good luck with that! Revelation 3:16 writes to the Laodiceans  “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

These are harsh and terrifying words, and again, if that would be going on in an earthly marriage where one partner would go lukewarm and indifferent it would be quite clear to see. Lack of interest and care in the one’s partner would be a terrible drain on a marriage and would probably be harder to put up with than a separation or divorce.

Yet that is how we tend to treat our baptism. We generally don’t put enough energy and devotion into our relationship with God and seem to think our name will still be written into the book of life on that terrible day of judgement. 

Baptism is a beautiful thing. It guarantees us a place in heaven if taken seriously and righteously, but only if we uphold and don’t break the terms of the contract.

1. Do you now acknowledge the teachings of Jesus, which have been laid before you, as being the truth and the true foundation to salvation?
2. Do you believe in and agree with the twelve articles of our Christian Faith, and will you witness to them? 
3. Do you desire the prayer of intercession of the church so that God may forgive and remit the sins committed by you either knowingly or in ignorance?
4. Do you desire to yield, to give and to sacrifice yourself to the Lord God in the covenant of Christian baptism?
5. Do you sufficiently understand the Word of God and acknowledge it as the only path to eternal life?
6. Do you truly and heartily repent of the sins which you committed either knowingly or in ignorance against God and do you desire to henceforth fear God, never more willingly to sin against God, and rather to suffer death than willfully sin against God?
7. Do you believe that your sins have been forgiven and remitted by God through Christ and the prayer of intercession of his people?
8. Do you desire to accept brotherly discipline and admonition and also to apply the same to others when needed?
9. Do you desire to yield, to give and to sacrifice yourself, body and soul with all that you have to the Lord God in heaven, and to yield in obedience to Christ and his church?
10. Do you desire to establish a covenant with God and with all his people and to be baptized on confession of your faith?