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February 14
OUT
OF THE STONE AGE
by Ray Prinzing
"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh,
and I will give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26).
"I will put My laws
into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to
them a God, and they shall be to Me a people." (Hebrew 13:10).
Thus that which was written in the tables of stone must give way to
that which is now written in heart and mind. There are plenty
of people who still carry all their "tables of stone," living in THE
STONE AGE. Laws and standards, tenets of traditional creed by which
they measure and brand all else as false, judging most freely, and
using their "tables of stone" to throw at, to beat, coerce others
who do not follow their prescribed course. But God has a
people which follow the promptings of the Spirit, because THE VOICE
IS WITHIN, writing His laws in their heart and mind, and they are
living a life which redounds to His glory, in freedom, joy, and
peace.
He has to remove our
stony heart just as much as we need to be loosed from the "tables of
stone," that it might be a living, pulsating, vibrant expression of
truth. We are not left without a law, but no more is it
engraven upon stone, as a letter that killeth, but it is a new
ministration of the "Spirit which giveth life."
Many have rebelled
against the restraints of the law, have cast it aside, to become
lawless. They caught a glimpse of the freedom of the new, without
possessing the SPIRIT OF THE NEW, thus use these truths for an
occasion to the flesh. Jesus is our transition from the old
into the new - not to abandon the old, He fulfilled it, and He will
fulfill it in us, for "the righteousness of the law shall be
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit." (Romans 8:4). The indwelling Spirit of God leads to a
path of holiness far more exacting than the first covenant on tables
of stone, yet it is wrought in freedom because it is HIS LIFE living
the requirements in us.
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