Tag Archives: commands of God

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – JESUS IN A DISTURBING DISGUISE

Bible Study, ,

JESUS IN A DISTURBING DISGUISE

9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” Mark 7:9-13

If you want to, there’s always a way around God’s commands so that you will not be inconvenienced or that you will be able to do what you want. In this instance, Jesus was saying that the Pharisees made disobedience look “holy” by giving to God what should have been used to take care of needy parents. I say “you” on purpose because it is easy to dump guilt on other people and not look at ourselves and ask whether we are doing the same thing!

In what ways do we weasel out of doing God’s commands by redefining truth to suit ourselves? There is something very subtle about “religious” thinking that we have to be careful about. Jesus makes it clear here that it is more important to take care of parents than to “give to God”. God sets as much store on looking after other people’s needs as He does on honouring and worshipping Him. To do the one and neglect the other is equally unacceptable to Him. According to John in his first letter, the two are so closely intertwined that we cannot do the one without the other.

We express our love and obedience to God by doing practical acts of caring like clothing and feeding the poor. From Jesus’ perspective, whatever we do for the least of people, we are doing for Him. Mother Teresa called the poorest of the poor “Jesus in a disturbing disguise.”

How would we respond to people differently if we were aware that they were representatives of Jesus in disturbing disguises? How clearly do we see His face behind the person who draws out contempt in us?

We have been encouraged to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence in our everyday lives and in our fluctuating circumstances, but we also need to focus on seeing His face in the faces of the people around us, especially in those with whom we can find no connection. This calls for grace beyond us and a serious intention that engages our will and our determination to deny ourselves and to take up our cross daily.

The Legends Of Christmas And Easter – Truth Or Tradition

Apologetics, ,

THE LEGENDS OF CHRISTMAS AND EASTER

TRUTH OR TRADITION

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions . . . Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down (Mark 7: 8; 13).

Is it possible to cancel the truth of God’s Word by our traditions?

Jesus had a bone to pick with the Pharisees. They changed God’s instructions to suit themselves, included their alterations in their interpretation of the Torah, and held people accountable for obeying or not obeying what they prescribed as law.

God’s instructed His people to honour their parents. The religious leaders overwrote that instruction with another. They gave the money they should have used to support their parents, to the temple, declaring that it was “corban”, devoted to God, meaning that they were obliged to give it to God. They may have looked “holy”, but they deliberately disobeyed God to impress people. They cancelled God’s command by setting up their own.

Yes, it is possible to override God’s instructions by our tradition, even in the name of our faith in Jesus.

A glaring example of this practice is the way the church copies the world in its celebration of Christmas and Easter, as though God ordered and sanctioned these festivals. How can we find out for ourselves whether these practices are Biblical, and rooted in the truth of Scripture? God commanded His people to:

. . . Hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil (1 Thess. 5: 21).

As God-honouring and Christ-honouring people, it is our duty to test everything we believe and practise since we are Jesus’ chosen witnesses to the truth of what He came to do and to teach. Luke, in the Book of Acts, singled out the Bereans for a word of affirmation:

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17: 11).

It is a tragic fact that believers in Jesus rely more on what their denomination or so-called “teachers” tell them than on the truth of the Word of God which they ought to study for themselves. Like the religious leaders in Jesus’s day, we fail to search for the evidence that will prove or disprove whether preachers and teachers are disseminating the truth.

God instructed His people to celebrate seven feasts which He called “appointed feasts” which they were to celebrate at a particular time each year. The feasts presented in picture form what Messiah would do when He came, in order and in two parts.

The first four feasts depicted what He would do when He came the first time – He would deliver them from slavery (Passover), remove sin (Unleavened Bread), rise from the dead as the first-fruits of the resurrection (Firstfruits) and send the Holy Spirit to gather in the harvest (Pentecost).

He will fulfil the last three feasts when He returns – Trumpets (Yom Teruah – the Feast of Trumpets) will precede the Day of Judgment (Yom Kippur) and finally the Feast of Tabernacles when He comes to make us His dwelling place forever.

As Gentile believers in Jesus, God has not commanded us to celebrate the feasts. The Jews rehearsed the work of Messiah each year as they anticipated His coming and work.  However, our faith is rooted in Jesus whom God sent into a Hebrew home, who grew up in Hebrew society and spoke the Hebrew language. We cannot disconnect what He did and taught from its Hebrew roots.

Jesus gave us two ordinances to celebrate and remember His death and resurrection, both of which arise from the Hebrew culture which God taught to His people. We celebrate Jesus’ death by taking part in what we call “The Lord’s Supper”, a communal meal in which His body eats bread and drinks wine to remember His broken body and shed blood for our salvation. The Lord’s Supper fulfils the Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread.

Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast – as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5: 7-8).  

The ordinance of baptism is a ceremonial washing which identifies the believer with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who were all active in our salvation. Baptism commemorates and identifies us with Jesus’ resurrection and signifies that we have died with Him and risen to a new life.

Don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into His death? We were, therefore, buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Rom. 6: 3-4).

When we celebrate the Lord’s resurrection through baptism, we recognise that Jesus fulfilled the Feast of Firstfruits. His resurrection guarantees that those who believe in Him will also rise to new life. We have risen from spiritual death to new life now as we live for Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. We will also rise with Him from physical death, never to die again when He returns to establish His kingdom of earth.

Our first consideration, therefore, is that Jesus is the Messiah and that He came to fulfil God’s plan, outlined in the feasts of the Lord in the Old Testament, and not in the traditions which are practised by the world today.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

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Rules Or Righteousness?

Bible Study, ,

RULES OR RIGHTEOUSNESS?

And He continued, ‘You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father and mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father and mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God) – then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.’ (Mark 7: 9-13).

On the warpath! Just as much as the Pharisees were after Jesus for violating their beloved rules, so Jesus was after them for choosing their rules over what was right. One thing they did not realise – that the best way to serve God was to obey His instructions and to do the right thing when it came to the needs of people.

What were the religious leaders advocating? They knew that it was their responsibility and the responsibility of every Israelite, according to the Torah, to take care of the needs of their aging parents. However, they sidestepped Moses’ instruction by dedicating to God what should have been used to support their parents. They made a religious issue out of what should have been simple obedience to God’s command.

What did it mean to honour their father and mother? They were to give back to their parents in their old age what their parents had invested in them in their childhood. When their father and mother were no longer able to care for themselves, wasn’t it the right thing to do to take care of their parents, to ensure that they were provided for and made comfortable when they could no longer provide for themselves?

People matter to God. He is concerned about His people doing the right thing – taking care of the needs of others when they cannot take care of their own needs – and it starts right at home. By withholding from their parents what was their due in order to “give” to God (and most probably in the most ostentatious way possible, to be noticed), they were not serving God; they were heaping judgment on their own heads.

Again Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, ‘Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them (Mark 7: 14-16).

Now here’s the difference between religion and reality. Man-made religions concentrate on the outside – doing this, doing that – eating or not eating certain foods, using this hand and not that hand, facing this way and not that way when they pray, washing in special water or sprinkling “holy” water on their heads, or “doing” whatever is prescribed by their religion, as though what is slapped on the outside can change what is on the inside.

Jesus put in in a nutshell. It’s not what you put in but what comes out that makes a person unclean. You can wash your body as much as you like with whatever kind of water you like – it will make not one iota of difference to the sin in your heart. You can eat whatever you like, wear whatever you choose, go wherever you please, but you will remain the same person inside. You cannot change your heart from the outside. You have a past which remains until your heart has been made clean, and that will never happen by washing or scrubbing the outside.

The prophet Micah asked the question:

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Micah 6: 6-7).

No, dear reader. No amount of observing rituals, obeying rules or practising religion will clear the debt you owe to your Maker for the sin of your soul. Giving Him your money when He told you to take care of the needy will not wash away your guilt. Not even giving to the needy will do it. Grooming the outside will not cleanse the inside. Your heart is defiled and nothing you can say or do will make your filthy past clean. Even if you were to change from this moment on and live a life of perfect obedience to God, you would still have a past you cannot change.

Do not be fooled by the traditions you have adhered to that have replaced the Word of God. It is God’s Word and not the traditions of men that will endure forever. Go back to the simplicity of Jesus’ call: “Follow me!” Stick with Him and He will show you the way to the Father.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com