Daily Archives: March 5, 2013

Religious Frauds!

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RELIGIOUS FRAUDS

“‘I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing every nickel and dime you get, but manage to find loopholes for getting around basic matters of justice and God’s love. Careful bookkeeping is commendable but basics are required.'” Luke 11:42 (The Message).

Jesus’ perspective on what is important to God is very different from ours. Every man-made religion considers what we do more important than what we are. The gods of human imagination always require rule-keeping and rituals as the way to gain the god’s favour and get what we want.

Does it really matter who or what we worship as long as we worship something? It is in the basic nature of humans to worship and to pray. We are incomplete without allegiance to a higher power. To many people, sincerity is the most important ingredient in our worship. “It doesn’t matter who you worship, as long as you are sincere.” they say.

This is flawed thinking because every action in life has consequences. It does matter who or what we worship because we become like the thing we worship. What we embrace as the source of our life we embrace as what we value and where we end.

The tragedy about the gods of human imagination is that they inevitably reflect the worst of human nature; cruel, heartless, demanding, unpredictable and unstable. Worst of all is that they do not exist but are the deception of demons to entice us to worship Satan.

Whether people bow down to idols of wood or stone or some invisible ‘god’ some human being told them to worship, the outcome is the same – behaviour that says one thing but hearts that are still rotten to the core.

What is God’s remedy for this terrible dead end? A heart transplant. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you…” Ezekiel 36:26,27a (NIV). Can God make good on His word? Yes! The evidence of a changed heart is a changed disposition.

Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees was that their religion was a cover-up for greed and wickedness and the people thought they were ‘holy’! They lived double lives, hypocrites playing to the crowd, but underneath they were worse than the tax-collectors, prostitutes and ‘sinners’ whom they despised.

Jesus was more comfortable with the outcasts because they had no reason to pretend. God cannot do anything for ‘holy’ people, those whose religious cloak keeps Him out. He is near to those who know they cannot pretend with Him. He can change the hearts of those who know their need but He can do nothing for those who think they are okay. No matter what the barrier is between us and the only true God, only one thing will give us access to Him – to admit that we were deceived and to believe what He says.

Reactions to Jesus

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REACTIONS TO JESUS

“Jesus delivered a man from a demon that had kept him speechless. The demon gone, the man started talking a blue streak, taking the crowd by complete surprise. But some from the crowd were cynical. ‘Black magic,’ they said. ‘Some devil trick He’s pulled from His sleeve.’ Others were sceptical, waiting around for Him to prove Himself with a spectacular miracle.” Luke 11:14-16 (The Message)

Why was it that people reacted to Jesus’ miracles of mercy by attributing them to demons? Is the human mind so warped that good is so unrecognisable that it must be interpreted as something the devil does? Was this influence of the religious leaders of His day, that they were perverted enough to refuse to acknowledge the work of God in healing and restoring broken people?

Perhaps experiencing the goodness of God was foreign to them and they could not accept the character of the God Jesus was revealing. They kept asking for more ‘signs’ instead of seeing God in the ones Jesus was doing all the time. Because of their unbelief, no amount of signs would convince them that God is good.

What about us? What does it take to make us aware of the goodness of God in the ordinary events of my life? Part of the repentance that must be on-going in our lives is to change our minds about who is in charge of the circumstances of our lives. That does not mean that God makes bad things happen. It does mean that God uses every experience, good or bad, to reveal Himself to us and to reshape our reactions and our character to be more like Jesus.

It’s entirely up to us to choose how we will view our everyday experiences – whether we see them as devil-inspired and spend our time rebuking him(!) or whether we recognise the hand of  God working in all things for our good and conforming us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28,29).

In this process of becoming a disciple, we am learning to think God’s thoughts instead of our own. The Apostle Paul calls it ‘renewing my mind’. We become what we think. If we think that the devil is pushing us around, we will be fearful, sceptical and insecure, but if we know that God is in charge, working everything for our good, we will have peace and security in Him. Stress will be exchanged for rest and trust for unbelief.

Goodness is the world has only one source, the God who is good. Evil in the world is not from God but is a tool in His hand to do His work in His children and to reveal His glory against the dark backdrop of sin on the canvas He is painting.

Pharisee Phoniness

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PHARISEE PHONINESS

“By this time the crowd, unwieldy and stepping on each other’s toes, numbered into thousands. But Jesus’ primary concern was His disciples. He said to them, ‘Watch yourselves carefully so that you don’t get contaminated with the Pharisees’ yeast, Pharisee phoniness. You can’t keep yourself hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.'” Luke 12:1-3 (The Message).

It’s amazing how comfortable Jesus was in the company of tax collectors and ‘sinners’. He ate with them, symbolising that He had no issues with them. He spent time with them in preference to the religious ones. You never read long accusations against them from His mouth and yet…He had so much to say against the Pharisees.

He hated Pharisaic attitudes so much that He spent time warning His disciples against them. ‘Don’t even keep company with people like that,’ He said, “because you will be contaminated with their ‘yeast’.’ Why?

Is it possible that God is far less fazed by the obvious sins that we find so heinous, sins like adultery, lying, stealing, murder, etc., than He is by the two-facedness of the Pharisees? Why did Jesus hate their hypocrisy? The people He hobnobbed with had no need to be told how bad they were. They knew it and they welcomed Him because He accepted them and offered them hope.

A comment I wrote in my Bible long ago says it all. ‘Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.’ Isn’t that the difference between the ‘sinners’ and the Pharisees, no sense of need?

Sinners, for example, like Zaccheus, grasped the forgiveness Jesus offered and received new life from Him. The Pharisees covered up their wickedness with a veneer of religion and pursued their greedy lives thinking that no-one knew what was behind their masks.

Jesus warned that the rot could not be covered up forever. Sooner or later they would be found out and exposed for who they really were. Imagine the shame of such exposure, especially because they were supposed to be representatives of God to the people.

God is never fooled by the face we show to the world. I quote from a message from Bill Johnson of Bethel Church, Redding, CA. ‘Jesus loves to offend the mind in order to expose the heart.’ God’s desire is to expose our darkness by turning on the light of His truth. The problem is that, like the Pharisees, we prefer the darkness because our deeds are evil. Our ‘darkness’ infects our world like the Pharisees’ darkness infected theirs.

Instead of scuttling under the rocks like bugs in the light, Jesus yearns for us to come clean so that we can walk in the light with Him. Our masks may hide our true faces for a while but sooner or later they will slip and then…?

Monuments To Murderers

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MONUMENTS TO MURDERERS

“’You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’ What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay.’” Luke 11:47-51 (The Message).

This is a serious charge against Jesus’ generation. He was holding them accountable for every murder their ancestors committed. By memorialising murdered prophets, they were sharing in their guilt, according to Jesus. Why was that? Although they were distancing themselves from their ancestors’ actions as a show of their disapproval, in actual fact, in their hearts they were just as guilty because they hated the truth and anyone who preached the truth.

Jesus was spot on because down the line they would do to Him what their ancestors had done to the prophets. But they would not just dispose of God’s prophets sent to tell the truth and warn them of the consequences of breaking God’s laws; they would kill the Son of God who came to show and tell them the truth about the Father and to rescue them from their self-destructive ways.

Jesus told a parable about seeds and soil. Two kinds of ground don’t even give the seed a chance to take root, the hard ground and the shallow ground. What is it that makes our hearts as hard as a pathway? Perhaps among many reasons for hard hearts is the persistent refusal to take God seriously. This takes us right back to the devil’s lie in the Garden of Eden. He duped the first pair into believing that they could make their own rules and get away with it.

And we still believe the same lie! God’s people chose to reject God’s way and make their own way. They worshipped idols and oppressed their fellow-Israelites and God let them face the consequences of their choices. And they did not learn!

Jesus came in person from the Father to show His people what the Father is like and what His government is like, and they rejected Him because they still wanted their own way even though it destroyed them. No wonder He called them ‘hopeless’!

But what about us? How do we fit into this damning accusation? If we refuse to take Jesus seriously, we retain the same guilt as the religious leaders of His day who yelled, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ together with the crowd who bayed for His blood.

Every person who hears the truth but refuses to believe it will carry the same guilt and pay the same price as those who murdered the prophets and who demanded Jesus’ death. It is impossible to destroy the truth. Truth is eternal because God is eternal and God is truth. Truth will destroy those who reject it. God takes no pleasure in destroying anyone but He cannot deny Himself. The choice is ours.

Light Up Your World

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LIGHT UP YOUR WORLD

“’No one lights a lamp, and then hides it in a drawer. It’s put on a lamp stand so those entering the room have light to see where they’re going. Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life a well-lighted room.’” Luke 11:33-36 (The Message).

As a Jew, Jesus would have used the words, ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ from the understanding that they would be interpreted functionally, not literally. The ‘eye’ represented a person’s perspective on life. To have an ‘eye of light’ indicated that the person had a heart that was one (echad) with God with an unselfish and generous disposition. To have a dark or evil eye meant that the person was selfish and greedy, unable to see beyond his own nose.

People who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and have responded to His invitation to take His yoke, follow and learn from Him, have been relocated from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of light. They have had a change of master and a change of disposition. They are no longer ruled by greed. They have become generous givers, not only of their resources but also in attitude towards other people.

Jesus used this as the test of a person’s true response to Him. When Zaccheus received Him, his first action was to overturn his old life by being generous to the poor and by making restitution for his dishonesty. This, to Jesus, was evidence of a truly changed life.

That kind of life cannot be lived in secret. Just as there is no value in putting a light under a bed, there is no value in hiding your new life. A changed and generous disposition is intended to be a witness to God’s grace, setting the person free from the greed that brings judgment and replacing it with the joy of giving.

In his letter, James made a case for the futility of faith without good works. Good works in themselves cannot save, firstly because anything ‘good’ we try to do comes from polluted hearts, and secondly, because God is not impressed by our best self-effort. But when our sins have been removed and our hearts changed by God’s power, we are free to express the new life in us by a changed attitude to other people. We can now see them through God’s eyes and feel their need in our hearts.

God’s way of involving us in His government of mercy is to meet the needs of others through us. He provides for us through others so that, in turn, we can give away to those in need. In this way we create a current of resources which keeps circulating as long as we keep giving. What we hoard stops the flow of that current and shuts down the joy that comes from doing life God’s way. ‘Keep the current flowing,’ said Jesus, ‘and your life will be lit up with God’s presence and joy.’