Tag Archives: nullify

Rules Or Righteousness?

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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.

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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 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!’