If, like me, you spent your teenage years listening to 80’s pop music, you may be familiar with these song lyrics.
‘A good heart these days is hard to find,
True love, the lasting kind.
A good heart these days is hard to find
So please be gentle with this heart of mine’
So sang Fergal Sharkey, former lead vocalist of the Undertones in his 1985 solo hit ‘A good heart’. Though they aren’t likely to earn Sharkey the Nobel Prize for Literature, the words are none the less ones we can relate to as don’t we all desire to be loved with a perfect and everlasting love, all the while conscious of the frailties of our own heart? The only problem is, though, that a good heart, one able to love like that, is indeed hard to find.
The problem is not a new one, not one that is unique to ‘these days’. The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick’ [Jeremiah 17:9] so anyone looking for a good heart is going to have their work cut out. And the problem that we face is all the greater for God. We may be fooled by our looking on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart [1 Samuel 16:7] – he sees us as we really are. He has searched us and known us, discerned our thoughts from afar and is aquatinted with all our ways [Psalm 139:1-3]. And his verdict is that ‘none is righteous, no not one’ [Romans 3:10].
A good heart then, really is hard to find.
The problem becomes all the more pressing when we consider Psalm 24. ‘Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place?’ asks David, the writer of the Psalm. Who is the one worthy to be the ‘King of Glory’ – to be God’s chosen King. The psalmist answers his own question: ‘He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.’
And with these words King David rules himself out of the running for the job. He is not fit to be the King. His hands are not clean. He heart is not pure. Like everybody else, David’s heart was deceitful above all things and desperately sick. His was a heart capable of adultery and murder, something God was all too aware of even as He selected him to be King of Israel in 1 Samuel 16.
A better King than David is therefore needed. Who might that be? Who might God chose? The prophecy of Isaiah gives us a clue when in Chapter 42 we find the first of the so called Servant Songs in which Isaiah speaks of one who was yet to appear on the scene.
‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.’
Here then is somebody who is qualified for the role of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Here is one in whom God truly delights.
Well we know who this is don’t we? This is Jesus, the light of the world, who gave sight to the blind and who set the captives free just as the first of Isaiah’s Servant Songs went on to prophecy. This is Jesus, of whom God spoke at his baptism ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’
Only Jesus has a good heart – his is the only good heart we will ever find. But, we must ask, will he be gentle with these hearts of ours?
The prophecy of Isaiah tells us that he will since it assures us that ‘a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench’. Our frail hearts are indeed safe in Jesus’ hands. Our hearts are not good but God loves us nonetheless. He loves us, not because we are lovely, but because he is loving.
‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins’ [1 John 4:10];
‘…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ [Romans 5:8]
God does not save us because of our good hearts – he saves us so that our hearts might become good.
So what should our hearts be like now? Growing in goodness certainly. Justification, our once and for all being declared righteous by God on account of our sin being dealt with by Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross, together with Christ’s righteousness being counted as ours, is only the beginning. Because what begins with justification continues with sanctification, the gradual and ongoing transformation of our character such that we are transformed into the likeness of Christ, a transformation that will only fully be realised on the day of Jesus’ return.
But there is at least one characteristic that our hearts should display now. In Psalm 51, all too conscious of his adultery with Bathsheba and his having her husband Uriah killed, David asks of God,
‘Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.’ [Psalm 51:2-3].
David acknowledges his sin and expresses repentance and then, in verse 17, he asserts
‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’
Contrition. Perhaps that is what God saw in David when he identified him as the one Samuel should anoint. Perhaps that is what singled David out as a man after God’s own heart. One who humbly acknowledged his weakness and was prepared to plead, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me’ [Psalm 51:10] for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ [James 4:6].
Here then is comfort for the contrite heart. Contrition is the quality that God is looking for our hearts to possess. It is the contrite heart to which salvation comes.
‘For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’ [Isaiah 57:15]
This is a truth echoed by Jesus in the sermon on the mount
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ [Matthew 5:3-4].
A good heart these days is hard to find, but whilst we do not find one in ourselves, we do find one in Jesus. His is a true love of the lasting kind. A good heart these days is hard to find, but Jesus, King Jesus, is one who will be gentle with these contrite hearts of ours.
Related posts:
To read ‘True Love’, click here
To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here
To read ‘on the FALLEN and the FELLED’, click here
To read ‘On NOT leaving your comfort zone’, click here
To read ‘Looking back to move confidently forward’, click here
To read ‘The Resurrection – is it just rhubarb?’, click here
To read ‘Faith and Doubt’, click here
Some musings 