tassels – Moment to Moment (Bible blog)

Lead your heart

Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout their generations they are to make tassels for the corners of their garments, and put a blue cord on the tassel at each corner.

These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the Lord’s commands and obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.

This way you will remember and obey all my commands and be holy to your God.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:38-41)

Last year at my church, we talked about not following our hearts, but rather leading our hearts to follow God.

That’s not a new idea.

Moses told the Israelites the same thing. “Don’t just follow your hearts, setting them on the things you see, and so prostitute yourself. Lead your hearts to follow God and his ways.”

Why? Because God had first loved them. He had saved them from slavery in Egypt and made them his people.

And so now, they were to be holy to him.

In the same way, God first loved us, setting us free from slavery to Satan’s kingdom.

We are God’s beloved people now, and we are to be holy to him, not prostituting ourselves to sin again.

But how do we lead our hearts?

God gave the Israelites one way.

He told them to make a tassel with a blue cord attached to each corner of their garments. Every time they put on their clothes, they were to remember to lead their hearts to follow God.

We don’t need to do that, but it is good to find ways to remind ourselves whose we are and who we are to follow.

Recently, someone at my church moved into a new apartment, and he showed me a picture of its cornerstone. It says, “The LORD our God is one LORD.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Every time he walks into his apartment building, that can be his “tassel.”

My “tassel” is a prayer I pray every morning from Revelation 4:11.

Our Lord and God,
you are worthy to receive
glory and honor and power,
because you have created all things,
and by your will
they exist and were created.

By your will, you created me, and I have breath for another day. Be glorified in my life.

What’s your tassel? If you don’t have one, find one!

Following our own hearts

“Just follow your heart!”

How often have we heard that said to us? How often do we say it to others?

I suppose that there is some truth to it.

When our hearts are aligned with Christ’s, they will often lead us in the right direction.

The problem is, however, that so many times our hearts are not aligned with Christ’s. As a result, our hearts often end up leading us into bad decisions, trouble, and heartache.

That is why God told the Israelites,

“Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout their generations they are to make tassels for the corners of their garments, and put a blue cord on the tassel at each corner.

These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the Lord’s commands and obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.

This way you will remember and obey all my commands and be holy to your God.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God.” (Numbers 15:39-41)

Here God clearly tells the Israelites that by following their own hearts and eyes, they could quickly fall into prostituting themselves spiritually if they did not have God’s commands and ways at the center of their thinking.

The tassels were merely a physical reminder of this.

The tassels were also a reminder of who their God was, and just why he deserved their loyalty: he had proved his love for them through his deliverance of them from Egypt.

It wasn’t that God capriciously made up rules for them to follow. He truly was looking out for their good.

When we forget these things, and just “follow our hearts,” it leads to the defiant sins that provide the immediate background to this command.

So let us not merely “follow our hearts.”

Let us follow the heart of the one who loved us and gave himself up for us on the cross. (Galatians 2:20)