Tag Archives: Judaisers

THE BOOK OF ACTS – DADDY DIDN’T TELL ME TO DO THAT

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DADDY DIDN’T TELL ME TO DO THAT

“They had a story to tell too. ’And just look at what’s been happening here — thousands upon thousands of God-fearing Jews have become believers in Jesus! But there’s also a problem because they are more zealous than ever in observing the laws of Moses. They’ve been told that you advise believing Jews who live surrounded by Gentiles to go light on Moses, telling them that they don’t need to circumcise their children or keep up the old traditions. This isn’t sitting well with them.” Acts 21:20-21 (The Message).

Tradition versus truth; culture versus Christ! This issue is as old as the church itself and older. It was the struggle Jesus had with His religious opponents then, and it continues to this day.

The Judaisers were a sect of Christianity which insisted on obedience to the Mosaic Law as a condition for salvation. They not only adhered to it themselves but they also imposed it on Gentile believers. The sign of their compliance was circumcision. Gentiles had to submit to circumcision first before they could be a part of the church.

Paul quickly recognised the danger in this practice. He wrote a heated letter to the church in Galatia which was being harassed by these false teachers, exposing the error and implications of this teaching. To add anything to the work of Jesus on the cross was to nullify the grace of God and plunge people back into slavery to the law which was unable to deliver them from the power of their sinful natures.

Tradition can be a powerful weapon in the devil’s arsenal if it is believed above the Word of God. Take, for example, the so-called “Christian” festivals of Christmas and Easter. The very names of these seasons have deep roots in paganism and the occult. If anyone mentions this truth, the heckles of many Christians rise, and they fiercely defend what they are doing because they believe they are celebrating the birth and death of Jesus.

But the church is doing exactly what God hated and opposed in His own people. In both kingdoms, Judah and Israel, the people worshipped God, so they thought, by doing it their way, mixing their pagan practices with the God who had revealed Himself to them. What was the fruit of this mixture? Social injustice, oppression of the poor and wicked living. They even went as far as burning their children to the god, Molech in the name of worship.

We only have to look at the fruit of these “Christian celebrations” to identify their root — wasteful use of God’s resources, drunkenness, gluttony, debt, carnage on the roads, loneliness, suicide, greed, discontent and so much more. The fruit always exposes the root.

If we have embraced Jesus and bowed to Him as Lord, we don’t need a day or a season to remember either His birth or His death. Who He is and what He did is woven into the very fabric of our lives. He told us how and when to remember His death — through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26 (NIV).

Jesus told the Pharisees, ‘You nullify the word of God by your tradition.’ It is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that gives us access to the Father and to the grace that accepts us because of Him. Any effort on our part to win the favour of God by obeying laws or trying to impress Him by our “goodness”, cancels His grace, puts us back into slavery, and separates us from Him again.

Slavish adherence to traditions like Christmas and Easter are only the tip of the iceberg. How many other traditions have crept into the church from the world that have nothing to do with what Jesus came to do and to tell. How much religion is there in our belief systems that occupy us and distract us from the true worship of God?

James puts it in a nutshell: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27 (NIV).

We must never fall for any lie that overrides God’s Word and sets human wisdom or tradition above what He has said. His Word is our standard. Let’s follow our Master who told the devil, ‘Daddy didn’t tell me to do that!’

THE BOOK OF ACTS – FOLLOW JESUS

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FOLLOW JESUS

“The apostles and leaders called a special meeting to consider the matter. The arguments went on and on, back and forth, getting more and more heated. Then Peter took the floor. ‘Friends, you well know that from early on God made it quite plain that He wanted the pagans to hear the Message of this good news and embrace it — and not in any second-hand or roundabout way, but first-hand straight from my mouth. And God, who can’t be fooled by any pretense on our part but always knows a person’s thoughts, gave them the Holy Spirit exactly as He treated us, beginning at the very centre of who they were, cleaning up their lives as they trusted and believed Him.

“‘So why are you trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don’t we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as He did those from beyond our nation? So what are we arguing about?'” Acts 15:6-11 (The Message).

Thank God, someone had the good sense to examine the simple facts instead of formulating doctrines based on reason and not truth!

We don’t know what they were arguing about but, whatever it was, it got them nowhere until Peter came up with his story. It is dangerous to make experience the criterion for a doctrine; for example, we know that Scripture is full of stories of miracles that God did then, but we cannot say that God no longer does miracles today simple because He may not have done a miracle for us.

At the same time, when we match our experience with Scripture, we know that we stand on solid ground, because God confirms His word to us through experience.

Peter had the wisdom to match his experience with God’s Word to realise that the answer to their dilemma was right there for them. God Himself had supplied the answer by giving the Gentiles the gift of the Holy Spirit in the same way He had fallen on them so that they would be in no doubt about their salvation. This was God’s confirmation that salvation comes by faith alone and not by any additions to faith with which the Pharisees wanted to burden the Gentiles.

They themselves had not fully understood the complete and final work of Jesus on the cross; otherwise they would not have made this such an issue that it warranted a church council to settle it. In spite of the fact that it was settled there in Jerusalem in unity, the Judaisers continued to dog the footsteps of the apostles as they carried the gospel across the Gentile world.

It is still very much alive today and still robbing many people of the truth of Jesus’ simple invitation, ‘Follow me!’ He did not come to set up a new religion and He certainly did not burden His followers with the rules and rituals that we see in so many denominations today.

For example, for whole groups of people, the church is a building — not the people who are the temple in which God dwells by His Spirit, and is treated with superstitious reverence as though bricks, stones and mortar are somehow holy. Priests and ministers are the professionals and the laity subject to them and their superior knowledge and wisdom. Where do we find this in God’s Word? All God’s people together are a royal priesthood.

I suspect that many sections of the church are still enslaved to the old covenant with its rules and rigmarole; altars, sacred garments, dietary laws, symbols, etc., and have never stepped into the freedom of God’s grace, resting in Christ alone for His gift of righteousness which no amount of effort on our part can earn.

What a tragedy that the spirit of the Pharisees is still very much alive in the church and doing what the Pharisees tried to do to Jesus — kill the truth!

Daddy Didn’t Tell Me To Do That

Bible Study, , ,

DADDY DIDN’T TELL ME TO DO THAT

“They had a story to tell too. ‘And just look at what’s been happening here — thousands upon thousands of God-fearing Jews have become believers in Jesus! But there’s also a problem because they are more zealous than ever in observing the laws of Moses. They’ve been told that you advise believing Jews who live surrounded by Gentiles to go light on Moses, telling them that they don’t need to circumcise their children or keep up the old traditions. This isn’t sitting well with them.'” Acts 21:20-21 (The Message).

Tradition versus truth; culture versus Christ. This issue is as old as the church itself and older. It was the struggle Jesus had with His religious opponents then, and it continues to this day.

The Judaisers were a sect of Christianity which insisted on obedience to the Mosaic law as a condition for salvation. They not only adhered to it themselves but they also imposed it on Gentile believers. The sign of their compliance was circumcision. Gentiles had to submit to circumcision first before they could be a part of the church.

Paul quickly recognised the danger in this practice. He wrote a heated letter to the church in Galatia which was being harrassed by these false teachers, exposing the error and implications of this teaching. To add anything to the work of Jesus on the cross was to nullify the grace of God and plunge people back into slavery to the law which was unable to deliver them from the power of their sinful natures.

Tradition can a powerful weapon in the devil’s arsenal if it believed above the Word of God. Take, for example, the so-called “Christian” festivals of Christmas and Easter. The very names of these seasons have deep roots in pagansim and the occult. If anyone mentions this truth, the heckles of many Christians rise, and they fiercely defend what they are doing because they believe they are celebrating the birth and death of Jesus.

But the church is doing exactly what God hated and opposed in His own people. In both kingdoms, Judah and Israel, the people worshipped God, so they thought, by doing it their way, mixing their pagan practices with the God who had revealed Himself to them. What was the fruit of this mixture? Social injustice, oppression of the poor and wicked living. They even went as far as burning their children to the god, Molech in the name of wroship.

We only have to look at the fruit of these “Christain celebrations” to identify their root — wasteful use of God’s resources, drunkenness, gluttony, debt, carnage on the roads, loneliness, suicide, greed, discontent and so much more. The fruit always exposes the root.

If we have embraced Jesus and bowed to Him as Lord, we don’t need a day or a season to remember either His birth or His death. Who He is and what He did is woven into the very fabric of our lives. He told us how and when to remember His death — through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26 (NIV).

Jesus told the Pharisees, ‘You nullify the word of God by your tradition.’ It is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that gives us access to the Father and to the grace that accepts us because of Him. Any effort on our part to win the favour of God by obeying laws or trying to impress Him by our “goodness”, cancels His grace, puts us back into slavery, and separates us from Him again.

Slavish adherence to traditions like Christmas and Easter are only the tip of the iceberg. How many other traditions have crept into the church from the world that have nothing to do with what Jesus came to do and to tell. How much religion is there is our belief systems that occupy us and distract us from the true worship of God.

James puts it in a nutshell: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27 (NIV).

We must never fall for any lie that overrides God’s Word and sets human wisdom or tradition above what He has said. His Word is our standard. Let’s follow our Master who told the devil, ‘Daddy didn’t tell me to do that!’