THE HEART OF GOD AND THE HEART OF MAN
A. A. Bellamy
Acts 13: 21, 22; 8: 9, 10, 18–23; 2 Kings 10: 15
I desire to speak of the heart of God and the heart of man. They are contrasted in Scripture. After the flood, it is said that “Jehovah said in his heart, I will no more henceforth curse the ground on account of Man” (Genesis 8: 21); the curse had been removed and the disposition of God’s heart was to bless, and that in spite of man’s heart—which, as that scripture says, is evil from his youth. The heart of God is disposed towards men in blessing. He “desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”, 1 Timothy 2: 4.
In the first passage God speaks of a man that He had found, a man after His heart. The very nature, the very attributes, of the blessed God Himself have been declared in the Man that He has found after His heart. There would not be
anything for us, dear friends, if God first had not found such a Man. The Man I refer to is Jesus. No one like Him had ever been upon the earth before, and no one since. Divine perfection was there in a Man, in flesh and blood condition—the very condition in which we are, sin apart. The reality of the manhood of Jesus is a wonderful thing to contemplate; He was indeed the Man after God’s heart.
So we have our attention focused upon Christ as the Man after God’s heart. He raised up David, and He raised up Jesus. He raised Him up from among the dead. It is a living Saviour that we present to men. It is a wonderful thing, dear friends, that God should speak to us of this Man after His heart! God is drawing our attention to Christ, and to the fact that His delight is in Him—“This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”, Matthew 17: 5.
Who can measure what God has found in Jesus, and what Jesus has effected for God? How great is the work that He accomplished! He came to do the will of God. We have in the Old Testament through David, “Then said I, Behold, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me—To do thy good pleasure, my God ...”, Psalm 40: 7, 8. Adam was the first man, but he has been superseded by Christ. Christ is the second Man out of heaven. There is no need for a third man. The second Man is the One who came to do the will of God, and He has done it; He has done it. “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it” (John 17: 4); there is no need for another to come. John the baptist, when in prison, doubted for a moment whether Christ was the coming One. He sent a message, “Art thou he that is coming, or are we to wait for another?”,
Luke 7: 19. We are not waiting for another; we are not waiting for a third man. The second Man has already come, and He is the Man after God’s own heart.
In Jesus we see that God’s disposition is to bless. We see that in Jesus here as He was amongst men, in all the pathway of love which He trod—down to the cross and to the grave. Oh how vast is the work that Jesus has accomplished upon the cross! Well has it been said that it is the centre-point of eternity—the cross of Christ. He died for sinners, and before He died He bore the sins in His body on the tree of all who believe on Him. Are we among that number? How serious not to be among the number of those that believe. You may come now within the ranks of those that believe, and we have a prospect before us, a glorious prospect, that the One who was once here in lowly guise will come again in glory. He is going to change society from the top to the bottom—every strata; Christ is going to change everything. “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea”, (Habakkuk 2: 14), and He is the One who will do it. How great He is!
Have you by faith a link with Him? Can you say, ‘He is mine’? Can you say, ‘He is my Saviour, my Lord’? Do you acknowledge His rights over you? They are absolute. No other has prior rights over us because He died for us. So let us seek to carry into practice the acknowledgment of His rights over us.
I turn to my second scripture. This man, Simon, was not a believer in a real sense. Although it says he believed and was baptised he was really an imposter. One is coming of whom the
Lord said, “If another come in his own name, him ye will receive” (John 5: 43)—the antichrist, the man of sin, full of deceit. He will deceive people—that kind of man; and already there have been many who have borne that character, not the antichrist, but, as John says, “many antichrists”, 1 John 2: 18. They are against Christ. They assert their own importance and greatness, as this man did. He said he was “some great one”. Whoever he was is neither here nor there, there is only one Man who is great in God’s estimation and that is Christ, and only He is to be great in our estimation.
Now this man came amongst those who believed and he noticed that power was operating, the power of the Holy Spirit, and he actually exposed himself when he offered money that he also might have that power. Peter (I do not go into all the details) discerned this man, and that his heart was not upright. What a solemn position for anyone to be in—any man or woman or young person—to have a heart that is not upright before God. What could be done for this man? He had heard the gospel; he had moved amongst those who had preached the gospel; it even says that he believed and was baptised; but he was an imposter. Peter says, “Thy heart is not upright before God. Repent ...”. Did he repent? We do not know. Scripture is solemn in what it does not tell us. Some persons come so near to the blessing, and the Spirit of God does not tell us whether they received it or not. One man said, “In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian”, Acts 26: 28. Was he persuaded? We do not know; the Spirit of God just leaves it there—almost persuaded to be a Christian!
I pass on to my third scripture concerning two men. One goes to meet the other, and they both have right hearts. That is a fine thing! “Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? ... It
is”. That is a little picture of what we speak of as ‘fellowship’. Fellowship is the portion of persons whose hearts are right with God first, right vertically; and then right horizontally, “Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?”. It was so with these men. One gave the other his hand. We read in Galatians 2: 9 of “the right hands of fellowship”. Paul had been commissioned by the Lord to carry the glad tidings to the gentiles, and he met James and Cephas and John who were to carry the glad tidings to the circumcision. These three men, we are told, gave Paul and Barnabas “the right hands of fellowship”. O, dear friends, there is such a thing as that, here upon the earth at the present time—the fellowship of God’s Son. How dignified it is! It is also the fellowship of Christ’s death. How exclusive it is! And if it is the fellowship of Christ’s death, then nothing should be admitted within the circle of that fellowship (not even in my heart, nor in anyone’s heart) inconsistent with the death of Christ.
Well, these are searching but encouraging matters; first to see what is in God’s heart towards all men, and, so to speak, to read the heart of God in the Person of Jesus—in the work that He has done, in the service He is rendering from the highest point in the universe at this present time—and then to be warned about a heart that is not upright before God. Peter said to that man, “Repent”. He had said that earlier when he preached in Jerusalem, “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you ... for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”, Acts 2: 38. Jesus is the giver of the Holy Spirit. The Samaritan woman came to that; “Sir”, she said, “give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”, John 4: 15. She came to know Christ as the giver of the Holy Spirit.
Then these two men whose hearts were right, one with the other—not the thickness of a piece of tissue paper between those two brothers! Oh what a state of things that is, thy heart right with my heart. Dear friends, let us see these things, let us commit ourselves to them, let us go in for them. There is nothing like them in the world. There is nothing so worth while as to become a christian. May the Lord bless the word.
Preaching at Bridgetown, Barbados
29 February 1976