Tag Archives: tradition

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 BOOK OF ACTS – ASSUMING IS LYING!

Bible Study, ,

ASSUMING IS LYING!

“When the seven days of their purification were nearly up, some Jews from around Ephesus spotted him in the Temple. At once they turned the place upside-down. They grabbed Paul and started yelling at the tops of their lungs, ‘Help! You Israelites, help! This is the man who is going all over the world telling lies against us and our religion and this place. He’s even brought Greeks in here and defiled this holy place.’ (What happened was that they had seen Paul and Trophimus, the Ephesian Greek, walking together in the city and had just assumed that he had taken him to the Temple and shown him around).”  Acts 21:27-29 (The Message).

Well now, here’s an interesting situation! Seeing Paul in the city with a Greek was a far cry from seeing him in the temple with the same man. They assumed that Paul had taken him into the temple, and acted like hooligans on their assumption.

Assuming without listening is a dangerous thing to do. By assuming, these men were doing exactly what they were accusing Paul of doing — telling lies! Because they had not listened to Paul’s message in Ephesus and had even possibly been part of the riot there, seeing the whole city was in an uproar, they had certainly not grasped the truth of his preaching or his credibility as a servant of God.

They assumed that Paul was trying to discredit the Jews and their God; they assumed that he was trying to turn the Gentiles against the Jews; they assumed that he had turned against their God himself, and of course they assumed that he was a dangerous man and needed to be eliminated. From where did these assumptions come? From the “father of lies” of course! Anyone is open to these kinds of assumptions if he does not have a heart for the truth.

These Jews were in the grip of both tradition and religion that had turned them into bigots and potential murderers. It was they, not Paul, who were misrepresenting the God they were supposed to be worshipping. It was their agenda, not God’s, they were fighting for because, if they had understood the God who had revealed Himself to them through their history with Him and His law, they would have known Him to be a God of mercy and compassion who had a heart for all people, including the Gentiles.

Their own Scriptures foretold a time when Messiah would come and change everything; when the nations would stream to Jerusalem to be part of the universal worship of God.

“In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Micah 4:1-2 (NIV).

If these men, who were so zealous for their religion, had done more listening and less assuming, they would have recognised that they were uniquely privileged to be a part of a new era of God’s grace.

The tragedy is that people get hurt when we assume without verifying our facts. Our assumptions are often based on our inborn desire to be one up on other people. How often do we assume things that are to the detriment to ourselves and the advantage of other people?

If we are to be true followers of Jesus, we must cultivate a generous and honest heart that assumes nothing but gives people, even those we don’t like, the benefit of the doubt. To take the trouble to be sure of our facts will offset a whole lot of pain, for other people as well as ourselves, and contribute to peace instead of conflict, which is the life we are called to live.

Complete In Him

Bible Study, , , ,

COMPLETE IN HIM

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority (Col. 2: 8-10).

There is a vast chasm between what Paul called ‘the elemental spiritual forces of this world’ and the Lord Jesus Christ ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2: 3). While this may sound grand and hifalutin, in actual fact it’s very simple.

Satan has filled the minds of people with lies about God so that they are afraid of Him, suspicious of Him or they just downright hate Him because they do not know who He is and what He is like and are enslaved to the philosophies and traditions of the demonic realm.

God sent Jesus into the world to be His representative and to show the world what He is like. He was born as a human baby, grew up as a human child in a human family and for three years He lived in a fishbowl for all the world to see what God thinks and how He behaves towards people. Jesus loved them, healed them, taught them, fed them, set them free from demonic oppression, and then died for them to forgive their sin and rose again to set them free from the fear of death. What more could He have done to show them what God thought and felt about them?

What are the elemental spiritual forces in the world? There are many and varied false ideas and teachings about God, the world, mankind, who we are and why we are here and where we are going but, in the end, they all come from one source, the god of this world, the devil. Why? Because he hates God, is opposed to Him and will do everything in his power to keep people from believing in Him.

Jesus, on the other hand, is the embodiment of truth because He is God in the flesh. Through Jesus, the Son, God the Father made it possible for us to see Him.

Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered, ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?’ (John 14:8-10a).

Philosophies spawned by the demonic forces that influence the way people think and what they believe tend to drag people towards self-destruction, conflict and alienation from one another, and destruction and depletion of the resources which God placed in the world to sustain us. We make our own rules instead of following God’s ways, and the result is chaos and ruin. We only need to look at nature and society to see the result of our ‘wisdom’.

God’s wisdom is embodied in Jesus. Wherever He went, He left behind a trail of happy, healed and reconnected people. He brought joy to those who believed what He taught and followed His way. He claimed to be the embodiment of truth. When people are generous, loving and caring instead of selfish, greedy and heartless, they are at peace within themselves and at peace with one another. In other words, Jesus’s way works!

‘Wisdom and knowledge’ – what are these? Knowledge is knowing how a new gadget works and wisdom is putting it into practice. When we read the maker’s manual, we find out how the gadget works, and when we do what the manual tells us to do, the thing will work. It’s as simple as that! Jesus is God’s ‘manual’. Through His life here on earth as a human being, He showed us how God intended us to live to be safe, happy and free. Then He invited us: ‘Follow me.’

When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ (John 8: 12).

The most amazing thing of all is that those who follow Jesus are ‘in Him’, and we have the potential to be everything that He was because He is ‘in us’. Everything that God the Father is, is in Him. Everything that He is, is in us. Paul urges us, then, to become who we are, sons and daughters of the living God!

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.

 

 

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!’