Tag Archives: love mercy

WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE?

Christian life, Christian Life, ,

Micah 6:6-8 NLT
[6] “What can we bring to the Lord? Should we bring him burnt offerings? Should we bow before God Most High with offerings of yearling calves? [7] Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins? [8] No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is RIGHT , to love MERCY , and to WALK HUMBLY with your God.”

Unlike every other man-made religion, God’s Word leaves us in no doubt about His requirements for those who choose to worship Him…three simple instructions for a life that pleases Him.

Religion, as Micah describes, has many demands, do…do..do… Trouble is that carrying out rituals does not impact the soul. What use is it if we wash our bodies, eat the right food, light candles, wave our arms, bow down in front of a block of wood or stone or do whatever our so-called god demands? How do those activities impact the root cause of our soul’s distress?

The real God, the God of the Bible, gives us a different set of doings that measure up to who He is. First, He wants us to treat other people in the right way, just as He treats us. “Loving” is His way in His realm.

Romans 14:17 NLT
[17] “For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 13:9-10 NLT
[9] “For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” [10] Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.”

By doing what is right, God means that what we do to other people must be for their benefit, not ours. So, His first requirement is to put others before ourselves.

Philippians 2:3-4 NLT
[3]” Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. [4] Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.”

How difficult is that?

The second requirement is to love mercy? Again, it’s our attitude towards others that counts. Why should we treat others with mercy? Mercy means that we don’t do or give to others what they deserve, or what we think they deserve, because God has been merciful to us.

What if God had treated us only with justice! No one would survive. We will view others differently if we look at ourselves first. Did we deserve mercy from God? No! Did we receive mercy? Yes! Why?

Psalms 103:8-14 NLT
[8] “The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. [9] He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. [10] He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. [11] For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. [12] He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. [13] The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. [14] For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.”

It’s who God is that determines what He does. If we treat others lovingly, not harshly or judgmentally, we must do so because that’s how He treats us. Revenge is not His way of putting things right. Mercy is, because…

James 2:13 NLT
[13]”There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.”

What God requires, then, is for us to respond to His goodness to us by being good to other people. This makes the way we live in community with other people, in our families, in our church families, and in the wider community, of great significance. Living this way is like dropping a pebble into a pond. The ripples spread outwards, affecting the people around us.

Again, the trouble us that we are not like God! We must change inside.

God’s third requirement reveals the core attitude of our hearts, rebellion or obedience. You see, it is impossible for us to care about others if we do not submit to God’s authority over us. Once again, it’s the issue of our hearts. We either live by God’s will or self-will.

We are all selfish from birth. Without supernatural intervention, we will always clash with others. However, unlike false gods who are aloof and inactive, the real God is fully involved in people’s lives. He has already intervened to deal with the root cause of our failure to love others…sin…enslavement to self above others that defies God’s requirements and gratifies our sinful appetites at the expense of others.

God’s intervention takes care of everything sin has done. He paid man’s debt for sin; He cancelled the demand for payment; He forgave our sin and reversed His verdict of “guilty” to “not guilty”; He reinstated us as sons; and…most important of all, He gave us His own nature and confirmed our new status by giving us His Holy Spirit.

Wow! What other god has done that?

When we believe what God has done, He confirms all of these changes by giving us His peace.

Romans 5:1 NLT
[1] “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT
[17] “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

Now we can view God’s seemingly impossible requirements from a different perspective. We are now in His realm, not opposing His rule. We have His nature, not the nature of His enemy, the devil. We have His Spirit who gives us power to obey, not the selfish demands that drive us.

Now we are free to walk humbly with our God, to follow Jesus, to be led by His Spirit and to love others because the Spirit Himself equips us with God’s love to love.

1 John 4:13, 16, 19 NLT
[13] “And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us…
[16] We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them…
[19] We love each other because he loved us first.”

Romans 5:5 NLT
[5] “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

So we see that, where do…do..do…never works, faith in the one who has done it all for us makes fulfilling all God’s requirements for pleasing Him infinitely possible.

Micah give’s the blueprint for what God wants, Jesus provides the model by being the perfect man, and the Holy Spirit, through God’s Word, is restoring in us the image of His Son. All we must do is believe, submit, and obey, and God is even doing that for us by His power.

Philippians 1:6 NLT
[6] “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

THE SPIRIT OF TORAH

Christian Life, ,

THE SPIRIT OF TORAH

Unlike the other rabbis with s’mikhah (authority) who were permitted to make new interpretations of Torah, but who focused primarily on behaviour and actions, Jesus turned His hearers’ attention to the spirit of Torah, what He called ‘the more important matters of the law.’ (Matt. 23: 23). The Greek word translated “more important” has the connotation of “weight”, i.e., that which is heavy, which carries weight or is profound.

What is this “weight” of which Jesus spoke? To understand its meaning, we must go back to the Torah and look at its use there. Moses used the same word, “weight” (Hebrew kabod), when he asked God to show him His glory – kabod – Ex. 33:18. What was he asking? He was asking God to show him what was heaviest, weightiest, or profoundest in Him – in His character as God.

This is how God responded:

And the LORD said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass by in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ (Ex. 33:19)

It seems, then, that the weightiest part of God’s character is His goodness (functionality) expressed in His mercy and compassion. This was confirmed by the prophet Micah who 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)

All the things that Micah has mentioned were requirements within the Torah but taken to the extreme. But at the same time, all of these were useless without the “weightier things” of Torah.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6: 8)

In Matt. 23, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their attention to detail but the absolute neglect of their heart attitude of mercy. They did the right thing as far as Halakhah was concerned but they missed the point of Yahweh’s Torah completely. Whatever Halakhah demanded was to be fulfilled in the spirit of Torah – justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These “religious” Jews were so intent on gaining a reputation for their “piety” that they were completely phoney before God.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill, and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. (Matt. 23:23-24)

What was Jesus saying? Wherever the prescriptions of Halakhah came into conflict with the weightier matters of Torah, i.e., justice, mercy, and faithfulness, Halakhah must give way.

Jesus’s many altercations with the religious leaders raged around the issue of mercy versus Halakhah. His call to Matthew to be a disciple and the subsequent banquet Matthew gave for Jesus with the disreputable element of society as his honoured guests, provoked a protest from the Pharisees.

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’

On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy that need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.’ (Matt. 9:10-13)

A few days later the Pharisees went on the attack again. While Jesus and His disciples walked through a field of grain on the Sabbath, the men picked a few heads of grain and rubbed them in their hands because they were hungry. Always on the warpath, the Pharisees protested.

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, ‘Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.’ He answered, ‘Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread – which is not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests . . . If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’, you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’ (Matt. 12:1-4; 7-8)

It is obvious that they had not learned the lesson. As far as Jesus was concerned, wherever mercy and Halakhah clashed, mercy took precedence, even when it came to the simple matter of hunger over what was lawful according to Torah. Every requirement of Torah had to be fulfilled in the spirit of Torah for it to be what God intended.

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.