Ever Praise Music

and the Joyful Harts Music Library​

Spiritual Food for Thought 
Topic 6

"The Letter of the Law and the Subtlety of Sin"

Jesus taught us in Matthew 5:28 that we must look for the subtleties of sin in the depth of our spirit 
and not just concentrate on the letter of the law. 

In the Bible, the stories of Moses, David, Elijah, Solomon, Saul, Job, and Jonah,
teach us that the work that God chose these men to do was as spiritually beneficial to each man,
as the work was spiritually beneficial to the people they served. 

The story of Jonah clearly illustrates this idea. Jonah had as much to learn, 
about the ways that God works and God's plan for His people, as the people of Nineveh.
After second-guessing God, trying to circumvent the process, and being redirected by the strong hand of God, 
Jonah worked with Nineveh to bring them to the place and spirit of repentance. As a result, Nineveh repented,

or turned from their disobedient ways, and pleased God.

This was followed by God working with Jonah's subtlety of heart. 

Quite possibly, the people of distant lands who heard about Nineveh may have only seen the great and glorious result of Jonah's work. The trip to Nineveh and the great awakening of the people of Nineveh might have been all that they heard. It may have been that when the full story was told, after all was said and done between God and Jonah, 
that the people found out about the ship, the whale, and the gourd. The full story teaches us much more about obedience to God and how to be introspective about the condition of our spirit and soul.

Faith is more than just our outward appearance. God taught Jonah to look deeper into his spirit and his motivations.

That is why it is so important to let God steer the ship of our lives and not the people. When the song says
"you don't know my story," it warns us not to assume that what we see is all there is.

It can sometimes take days, months, and years to learn additional details of an event or circumstance.
The old ones were right to say put it in Gods hands.  Observers in the days of Jonah probably got the full story

from the scripture passages about Jonah and the whale. But God knew the whole story all along.
HE is the only one with the whole story; past, present, and future.

Remember: God knows the subtleties of the heart that others cannot see, 
and more importantly, He knows what to do about it. Not us. He knows how to help us to grow.

That is why we sometimes get things a bit messed up. We take action based on what we think we see

in a person's heart and not what God sees. Often, we take preemptive action and create difficult situations
trying to force things to turn out the way we want. 

Presumption sometimes leads to serious mistakes. When headstrong actions and reactions

cause unnecessary problems that we cannot solve alone, we cry out to God for a solution. 
God knows the subtleties of the hearts o His people. He knows the problems we will cause. 
He knows the things we will get wrong.
He allows some of these things, because, He needs for us to learn,  just as Jonah had to learn.

After we reach our epiphany, we are ready to see the glory of the Lord

in the solution to our problems. We realize we couldn't have found the solution without Him.

In Matthew 5:28 Jesus taught us to look for the subtleties of sin in "our own" hearts. 
He did not tell us to go out and look for these subtleties in others. 
So many difficulties begin with our hasty judgment of others. 

Jonah's ministry was a work in progress.

We are God's people. God's people are a work in progress.

We always will be works in progress, until the end.

Read Spiritual Food for Thought Topic 7
"Women's Ministry Experiences"