LIKE BUTTUH
Key Scripture: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God… Micah 6:8 (AMPC)
The story in Exodus where Moses comes to Pharaoh time and time and time again and each time Pharaoh hardens his heart, until it finally starts to say that “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” That story REALLY used to bother me. And the explanation that Pharaoh was hardening his own heart for a long time, so God just “finished the process” did NOT make me feel any better! It made me scared that I could get to a point where God thought I was beyond hope and would just finish me off as well!
But then I heard it explained this way…
The sun shines on all the earth, and it has different effects on different things.
The sun will melt butter.
But it will harden concrete.
When something is really good, we say its “like butter” though we usually say its “like buttuh”… with the softer ending. Maybe this is why.
God is like the sun, shining into each of our hearts. He doesn’t DO anything to change our hearts… our hearts either soften or harden as a RESPONSE to Him.
The makeup of butter is obviously VERY different than that of concrete… how you make one is NOT how you make the other.
And the same is true with our hearts.
If we look at Pharaoh, his heart was full of pride. He believed HE was god, therefore HE was the one determining what was right and what was wrong. And every time the REAL God showed him that he (Pharaoh) WASN’T god, instead of humbling himself, Pharaoh hardened himself against that knowledge. He stiffened his neck, stuck out his chin and tried harder and harder to prove HE was the one in control… not God. This ended horribly, not only for him, but for everyone around him!
Oh, how often we do this as well!!! We think we know what is best, so we do what we want, (or what we THINK we want,) and then when things end horribly, we blame GOD for our lives being so messed up!
This is literally the oldest sin in the book. We want to be like God, (and not in the right way, by being “the image of God” as He already created us to be,) but, thinking WE have the “knowledge of good and evil,” thinking WE know what’s right or wrong for us, we grab ahold of what WE see as “good” and take it and eat it.
God wants us to seek Him in humility, to hear whether HE thinks whatever it is we want is good or evil, so He can walk through the decision WITH us.
And, just like Pharaoh, (and countless other horrible warnings throughout the Bible!) if we CHOOSE to walk AWAY from God instead of walking humbly WITH Him, then God WILL allow our hearts to harden.
He isn’t a bully. He doesn’t FORCE us to love and follow Him.
As a loving Father, He warns us of the consequences of not walking with Him. The further away we get, the more WE are hardening our hearts… even to the point where even hearing about God makes our hearts even harder, like the mocker in Psalm 1.
But there is hope!!!
I don’t know of anywhere in the Bible where anyone has humbly turned to God and God said, “Nope. You’re too evil. No grace for you! Be gone!”
Even Manasseh - one of THE most wicked kings ever - who even burned his sons alive in the fires to other gods! - when he truly humbled himself before the Lord, God returned him to his kingdom.
I believe the key ingredient we need in our heart is humility.
Without humility, we have only pride… and when the light of God shines like the sun on a heart full of pride, it hardens. Like concrete.
Humility is what softens our hearts to the core… so when the light of God shines like the sun on our heart full of humility, our hearts melt. With a soft ending. Like buttuh…
SCRIPTURES
Micah 6:8 ~ He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God… (AMPC)
Exodus 9:12 ~ But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not listen to them, just as the Lord had predicted to Moses. (NET)
Click here for a great commentary on this from BibleProject.com!
Proverbs 19:3 ~ People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord. (NLT)
Genesis 3:5 ~ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (ESV)
Genesis 1:27 ~ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (NKJV)
Romans 1:21-32 ~ Therefore God gave them up to vile impurity… For this reason God gave them over… And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind… (NASB)
Psalms 1 ~ Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers… (NIV)
2 Chronicles 33:12-13 ~ In his distress he (Manasseh) sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God. (NIV)