Pause and recognize value

We humans have a love/hate relationship with principles.  We love the way they wrap a direction into a little nugget of truth, but we struggle to agree on how to actually apply the principle…because you may apply it differently than I would.  Honestly, a lot of our arguments come down to a disagreement on how to live within our society’s principles. 

So, what do we do to cope with this conflict?  Usually…we end up making a ton of rules.  For example: Companies and organizations can boil their mission statement down to two or three sentences, while at the same time, their employee handbook has to be split into separate volumes as they explain the rules and guidelines which are rooted in the mission statement.

Ancient Israel was no different.  God gave them the 10 Commandments, and while they are pretty cut-and-dry (e.g. – Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not lie), there were questions to be asked about some commandments, like – What, exactly, is coveting and at what specific point am I guilty of it?  How do I honor my parents and when does my responsibility to God affect that relationship?

The Sabbath question was especially tricky for them.  Here is the commandment, in its entirety:

Exodus 20:8-11
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.  You must not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates.  For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day.  Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.

The biggest question the Israelites had about this commandment was – I understand why we don’t work on the Sabbath, but what, specifically, constitutes “work” so I don’t violate this commandment?

This “What is work?” question was debated and argued all throughout the Old Testament times.  Various rabbis, scribes, and religious sects all had their own interpretation, and instead of replacing the previous teaching, any new rule/guidance was added on top of existing tradition and teaching.  By the time Jesus began His ministry, the non-work rules included directions around farming: no sowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, or baking.  There were rules against sewing, writing, starting a fire, carrying items, and even limiting how far you walked (no more than about 1/2 of a mile).

And if you didn’t adhere to these rules, you were considered by the religious/political leaders to be a Sabbath-breaker, a sinner, and someone who was inviting the wrath of God into your life.

A continuous point of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees (religious leaders) was Jesus’ refusal to follow their man-made rules.  One Sabbath, Jesus and His disciples were passing through some grainfields.  A few of the disciples were hungry and picked off some grain heads, rubbed them in their hands to remove the chaff, and then ate the grain.  The Pharisees saw this and accused the disciples of breaking the Sabbath.  You can read the full account and Jesus’ rebuke to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:1-8.  We’re picking up the scene with what happened a little later on that same Sabbath day:

Matthew 12:9-10
Moving on from there, [Jesus] entered their [the Pharisees] synagogue.  There He saw a man who had a shriveled hand, and in order to accuse Him they asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

Rabbinic teaching of the time only allowed medical assistance on the Sabbath in extreme cases of life and death.  Obviously, the man with a shriveled hand wasn’t in danger of dying and probably had his condition for some time.  In the Pharisees’ minds, if Jesus were to heal the man properly and not work on the Sabbath, then He should wait until the next day.  However, Jesus didn’t answer their question with a “yes” or a “no”…instead, He called out their hypocrisy.

Matthew 12:11-12
He replied to them, “Who among you, if he had a sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, wouldn’t take hold of it and lift it out?  A person is worth far more than a sheep; so it is lawful to do what is good on the Sabbath.”

Let’s pause right here.  If the Pharisees were willing to help out an animal on the Sabbath, why would they consider helping a person to be an act of sin?  The original point of the fourth commandment was to set aside the Sabbath day to God, imitating His example of resting from His creation labor.  Only through twisted logic and flawed tradition do we end up with a situation where it is considered more holy to leave a person in their suffering than it is to do something that will help them.

Jesus’ point looks at the correlation between value and effort.  The things we value, we make an effort to rescue.  Sheep were an important part of Jewish society, they had both income value and religious sacrificial value.  It’s no surprise that the Pharisees would want to rescue a sheep that fell into a pit, because if they don’t, the sheep would likely panic and die.  The tragedy was that they did not apply this same level of value to other people – so they used their religious piety to avoid putting in the effort.  But, as Jesus pointed out, is it really honoring to God to avoid doing good for others?

After pointing out their duplicity, Jesus shows them the right thing to do:

Matthew 12:13
Then He told the man, “Stretch out your hand.”  So he stretched it out, and it was restored, as good as the other.

It’s easy to look at this situation and comfortably chuckle at how Jesus was able to “stick it” to those stuffy religious leaders.  I’m sure we could all think of some people that need to be “put in their place” regarding the contradiction between their religious words and their heartless actions.  But we need to be careful here…lest we fall into the same trap.

If our car breaks down and we’re on the side of the road, we do everything we can to fix the situation.  We change our plans.  We call for help.  We pay the money we need to in order to have the car restored to working order as soon as possible.  We might gripe about it, but the car has too much transportation value for us to be without it for any length of time.  Suddenly being down a vehicle can cause a pretty big change in your family’s plans, dynamics, or ability to generate income. 

There are a lot of broken down people out there.  There is a need for us to step in and do what is good, even if that person doesn’t fit in with our man-made traditions that have become “Christian society” norms.  People can be restored when we give up our religious hypocrisy and see others as Jesus saw them.

Are people not worth more than our cars?

Keep Pressing,
Ken

Dangerous rules

We like rules.  We like them a lot.  Rules seem to make things easier, right?  Everything boils down to either black or white.  “Do this.  Don’t do that.”  No in between, no grey, no guesswork, and no mess. 

While there are clear-cut areas in life, the unfortunate truth is that most of our lives aren’t lived in black and white – not only are there grey areas, but life comes at us in a full spectrum of colors.  How do we deal with such a variety of circumstances and people?  How would God want us to deal with them?  When faced with difficult questions and situations in our relationship with God and with others, we often start looking for rules to clarify our course of action.

The believers in Colossae were dealing with a “new” teaching that was likely taught as a guideline for interacting with God and others, but it seems that the teachers were also insisting on rules to prove one’s spirituality.  From Paul’s letter we see that the rogue teachers were advocating rules for food, drink, festivals, sabbath days, worship of angels, and visions.  Paul took issue with these performance-based, surface-level-focused teachings primarily because they took the believer’s focus off of Jesus and put the attention on themselves. Paul summed it up this way:

Colossians 2:20-23
If you died with Christ to the elemental forces of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?  Why do you submit to regulations: “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”?

All these regulations refer to what is destroyed by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines.  Although these have a reputation of wisdom by promoting ascetic practices, humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value against fleshly indulgence.

In the centuries since Paul wrote these words, the church has struggled with human commands and doctrines.  Attempting to earn God’s love, people have given in to legalistic, rules-focused teachings.  Teachings such as earning one’s salvation by doing enough good works, or maintaining one’s salvation by doing enough good works, or trying to live under the Mosaic Law are all examples of false teachings based on human ideas and desires.

Others have tried fasting with the intention to force God to decide in their favor.  Some have lived in isolation with the intention to avoid the temptations that could arise when around other people.  People have even gone as far as self-mutilation to try to keep their sinful urges in check.

On the surface, these ideas seem to have merit…but the truth is they’ve all failed to do what God desires to do in our lives.  God desires to make us Christ-like.  Paul was right when he said that the man-made rules have a reputation of wisdom by promoting ascetic practices, humility, and severe treatment of the body, [but] they are not of any value against fleshly indulgence.

These practices don’t get to the heart of the problem – because our ultimate problem isn’t our behavior, it’s our sinful nature.  These practices distract us from the real solution.  So we have to be just as careful as Paul wanted the Colossians to be – watching out for false teachings and ascetic practices.

Warren Wiersbe accurately described the dangers that modern believers must be wary of:

“When we make Jesus Christ and the Christian revelation only part of a total religious system or philosophy, we cease to give Him the preeminence.  When we strive for ‘spiritual perfection’ or ‘spiritual fullness’ by means of formulas, disciplines, or rituals, we go backward instead of forward.  Christian believers must beware of mixing their Christian faith with such alluring things as yoga, transcendental meditation, Oriental mysticism, and the like.  We must also beware of ‘deeper life’ teachers who offer a system for victory and fullness that bypasses devotion to Jesus Christ.  In all things, He must have preeminence!”

If the purpose of the rules, principles, or guidelines we follow are doing anything other than pointing us toward Christ or making us more Christ-like…then they are a waste of time and they will eventually lead us astray.  Our first clue that a particular practice is potentially dangerous is to ask the question “Where is the focus placed, on Jesus or on me?”

Keep Pressing,
Ken 

Shadow vs Substance

There have been many ways that man has tried to relate to God throughout the centuries.  Even though the Jewish people were given God’s law, over time they added layers of additional rules to “help” their people know exactly how to (and how not to) interact with God.

However, these “helps” did not rescue the people from their sins.  They could not rescue themselves.  They needed a Savior.  Talking about Jesus, Paul told the believers in Colossae:

Colossians 2:13-15
And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses.  He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; He triumphed over them by Him.

Now that Jesus has made you alive, how should we worship God? 

The trouble with all these additional, specific rules was that they had become the measuring stick of how “godly” a person was.  The Israelites compared themselves with each other and judged one another’s “spirituality” by how well the 600+ rules were maintained. 

They were getting hung up on the ritual – the action that was supposed to help them look forward to the Messiah – rather than using the ritual to help them recognize the Messiah when He arrived.  Ritual observance and proficiency had become their focus.  It had been that way in Jewish communities for hundreds of years before Jesus came.

However, now that the Colossians believed on Jesus for eternal life, they needed to know that their previous ritual activities no longer held the same level of importance.

Colossians 2:16-17
Therefore don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a sabbath day.  These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is the Messiah.

A shadow can give us an idea of what an object is like, by revealing the outline of the object.  However, a shadow can never tell us the true value of an object.  A ball made of styrofoam and a ball made of gold will cast the same shadow.  Therefore, a shadow is ultimately just a representation of the object, and the only value a shadow has is in how well it represents the substance.  Even then, the true value is found in the object itself.

All the historical rules about food and drink, the yearly festivals and feasts, and special days had come to a close.  Their purpose was fulfilled in Christ’s work on the cross.  It was time for the people to stop staring at the shadow because the substance responsible for the shadow had come into view. 

Going forward, everything they would do to worship God would be Jesus-focused, not activity focused.  They needed to look to the person, not the ritual.

Rituals can be helpful, but only as long as they point us toward Jesus.  We would be wise to do an inventory of our lives and worship service preferences to make sure that we’re keeping our focus on the substance of the Messiah and not getting hung up in the shadows.

Keep Pressing,
Ken