October 29 I Tuesday

Jeremiah 18-19

2 Timothy 3

“Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, Your justice like the great deep.”  —Psalm 36:5-6

How do we find the heart of God in Scripture? From Genesis all the way to Revelation, the heart of God and His love for mankind is ever-present. Even with the fall of Adam and Eve, if we were to understand the story as simply mankind’s failure to obey God, which leads to God banishing them forever, we are not finding the heart of God through the events.

When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit and violated God’s command, they became aware of their nakedness and tried to cover themselves in fig leaves but “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). We can notice two things from this about the heart of God. Firstly, this was an act of personal love. When God made them clothing, an animal had to die to clothe the nakedness of Adam and Eve. This is incredibly significant because right from the Garden of Eden onwards, the shedding of blood is the means by which guilty people can be covered. The first occurrence of death was the consequence of their sin, an embryo of what was going to come to full form in the cross of Christ.

Secondly, Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden was a demonstration of God’s love through His justice. “And the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever’” (Genesis 3:22). God’s banishment was not simply because of judgment but for Adam and Eve’s protection––so they would not eat of the second tree in the garden, the tree of life, and live forever in their sinful condition.

From the beginning of the Bible, we find the heart of God with His love and protection. God has an ultimate plan to one day redeem His people, give them the right to the tree of life and spend eternity with them. We encounter this truth in the very last chapter of the Bible: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city’” (Revelation 22:13-14).

    Some passages in Scripture may be hard to grapple with, but when we see them through the heart of God, we understand it as His love for us. May we read the Word of God with this new perspective and find His heart behind every chapter.

Prayer: Almighty God, thank You for Your love and protection. Guide me as I read Your Word in knowing, understanding and experiencing more of Your heart in my life. Praise You!