Christian Education Pre-K-12
Richmond Academy

Mankind is ever planning, ever creating and ever building, either to make a name for themselves or for their God. Those who began building the Tower of Babal did so to make a name for themselves. “And they said, Come, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top reaches into the sky; and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the whole earth” {Gen 11:3}.

Ironically, the thing they feared would come upon them did come upon them as the Godhead selected a precise moment and method in which and by which to confound their plans. In response to their self-exalting efforts, “... the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, Behold...this is only the beginning of what they will do; and now nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible to them” {Gen 11:5-6}. What an awesome statement! Then what an awesome judgment: “Come, let Us go down, and there confound (mix up, confuse) their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from that place upon the face of the whole earth; and they gave up building the city” {Gen 11:7-8}.

Forestalled from that particular project, mankind has deviated little from God’s prediction; and Creator God continues to observe as men persist in creating a name for themselves. And at any point He is able to thwart man’s invasion beyond the realms permitted him. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” {Deut 29:29}. Those revelations which are granted to man are given that man may further obey the law of God which is the law of the Spirit of Christ.

Unlike man’s ways, God’s ways are just and true. Unlike man’s heart, God’s heart is pure and compassionate. And until man’s heart is transformed into a heart like God’s, man’s intent, no matter how outwardly “good,” “compassionate” or “beneficial for mankind,” will fall short, somehow ending in futility and destruction. In contemplating some of the moral issues of the day, I am left wondering how long before God once again “confounds” those who seek to build their own kingdoms while denying His sovereignty. Without a transformed and Christ-like heart, man is incapable of doing or being ultimately good. “There is a way which seems right to a man and appears straight before him, but at the end of it are the ways of death” {Prov 24:12}. How often we forget or ignore the final outcome! “One only there is who is good--perfectly and essentially; God. If you would enter into the Life, you must continually keep the commandments” {Matt 19:17}. Continually keeping the commandments of God is possible only through the Spirit of Christ.

In reflecting on the creation of man, I found myself contemplating the question of what part of man’s physical being God created first. I had always pictured that which constitutes the outward structure, bones, muscles, skin, etc. This time, however, I could envision the Lord God beginning by creating a heart and then laying it aside as he fashioned a body within which to place it. Does God not always start with the heart? Is that not His point of emphasis? Is that not the basis of His judgment? Do our desires, motives, words and deeds not issue out of our heart? Is it not the heart that God desires to transform? Is not the heart the site of true Christ-likeness? “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues, and you shall heed my ordinances, and do them” {Ezek 36:26-27}. Only through a transformed heart and spirit can we be transfigured into the image of Christ.

January Newsletter 2002 | Shaking of the Heavens and the Earth | A Truly New Year

Pastor's Journal January 2001 | Beggar or Son? | Heart of the Matter

Biblical Counseling for Leaders

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Last modified: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 .