| The country music singer Randy Travis hit his peak stardom during my childhood. Some of the earliest musical recordings I owned were Randy Travis cassettes. In early 1995, Travis released a semi-autobiographical song entitled The Box. The song tells the story of a father who loved his family but didn’t really know how to say it. After the father died, the son found a box of family memorabilia: love letters, vacation mementos, Father’s Day gifts, and the like. The tag of the song says, “We all thought his heart was made of solid rock; that was long before we found the box.”
In many people’s lives, the Bible is like the titular box. Unlike the father in the song, God has no trouble expressing His love for us. He has revealed it over and over again – in the design of creation (Matthew 5:45), in the act of revealing Himself (Acts 17:26–28), and most spectacularly in the vicarious offering of His Son (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). Unfortunately, many people have never opened the Bible to find the many proofs of God’s magnificent love. The Bible sits on the proverbial shelf, gathering dust, all while the heart of its owner grows colder and colder for want the warmth it offers. We may understand this in the life of the unbeliever, who has not made any confession of faith or any claim to a relationship with the Father. Yet, too often we find the same Bible reading habits in the lives of so-called believers. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. His God-given task involved the frequent denunciation of the people’s sins and rebellions against God. Jeremiah’s fellow countrymen prided themselves on their access to YHWH’s temple and their identity as “God’s chosen people.” In one prophecy against the people, the LORD said through Jeremiah, “Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” (9:24; emphasis added). Dear reader, will you claim to know God without ever opening His “box”? Or will you make it your overriding passion and pursuit in life to “know and be known” by Him (1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9)? You can start right now by opening His Word. Clay Leonard
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Commentary for the Sermon on the Mount
