St Mark’s Lenten Thoughts, Tuesday in the First Week of Lent

Lent Week One—Tuesday

Psalm 48, Deuteronomy 9:4-12, Hebrews 3:1-11, John 2: 13-22

After giving Moses the ten commandments, God orders Moses to return to the Israelite camp because: “They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten image,” v. 12. The writer of Hebrews uses this story to encourage Christians not to return to their former religious practices. To not turn aside from “the way” established by Jesus. Speaking of the former Israelites the author writes, “They always err and are led astray in their hearts and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them.“ v. 10

These two passages teach us that God has a “way”, a method, or manner in which God wants humans to live in relation to Him. Both passages highlight the same problem. The Old Testament folks created a physical idol to supplant God. The New Testament folks were in danger of replacing God’s gift of salvation through Christ with their former religious practices. Failing to recognize and acknowledge God as the ultimate concern in our lives seems to be the point where we get off track and lose sight of “the way”. There are many things that we do or leave undone that we call sin but at their core, the DNA of sin if you will, is the failure to give God the preeminent place in our hearts and lives. This Lenten season may the old hymn “Come Thou fount of Every Blessing” be our prayer:

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart,

O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

-Jason Waltman