‘The Root of the Matter’

We seem to be facing countless public enquiries these days as we live in a blame culture and everyone wants to blame everyone else. These enquiries are supposed to go to ‘the root of the matter’ but they seldom do. It may surprise you to know that the phrase, ‘the root of the matter’ was first used in the Bible, in the book of Job. Job who says to his accusers, ‘If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment’, Job 19.28, ESV. Job. 19.28. There it is – the ‘root of the matter’. So, as we look at a world around us that is full of crime, war, murder, drug abuse, drunken-ness, anger and hatred we ask ourselves, what is ‘the root of the matter’? Why are things so wrong with this world.

Mankind has, since the beginning of time, tried to find out what is wrong with this world, but it puts forth all sorts of theories and it apportions blame where there is none. God tells us that the root of the matter is that, ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none that is righteous, no not one. There is none that seeks after God’. It was sin – disobedience to God – that separated the first couple – Adam and Eve – from God. Their consciences drove them to hide from Him. Of course, that explanation – sin – is unacceptable to a world that rejects God. ‘It’s not nature, it’s nurture’ they say. We do wrong because of the way we were brought up, the examples we were shown, the problem is poverty and exclusion etc. Blame the parents, blame society, blame the education system, blame racism – blame everything and everyone except yourself. It’s not your fault. But God says it is our fault. The root of the matter is that we are all born with sinful natures and those sinful natures reveal themselves in sinful desires, sinful actions, sinful attitudes. This is true all over the world – regardless of which continent people live on, which language they speak, which culture forms them, which religion they follow. ‘The heart [of mankind] is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’, Jeremiah 17.9.

What is the answer to this? God must change the heart. And He is able and willing to do so. ‘I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules’, Ezekiel 36.26/27. It is no good trying to turn over a new leaf. There has to be a radical change in your heart that only God can do. ‘You must be born again’, John 3. When this takes place in our hearts, we become children of God, we are ‘in Christ’ who is our Saviour, our sins are forgiven and we are given a new nature, a nature that wants to please God, fears displeasing Him, and begins to live for Him and not for ourselves. And ‘if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come’, 2 Corinthians 5.17. The root of the matter is, sinners need God to change them!