Today’s reading led me to focus on our New Testament reading. Jesus had crossed over and is now in a port town on the northwest side of the Sea of Gailee. Immediately the people recognize Him and they went throughout the town calling people and bringing them to Jesus so that he may heal them. So much so that even touching a piece of His clothing lead to healing.

But even in the midst of this religious tradition took over. As people are being healed and made well. A little side bar here. We have to understand exactly what healing does. It isn’t simply that people get there limbs back functioning or their eyes opened, or even the flow of blood stopping, or grow back limbs. To be crippled and sick made you an outcast in Israel. You were ceremonially unclean and for the most part the people would believe either “you sinned or your parents”. Other than that if you are obeying the Law of God you should be healthy and prosperous. These paralytics, mute, blind and sick individuals were social outcast. They had nowhere to go, their families often left them, they were unable to work, unable to have families and were left to beg in the city streets. The religious leaders of their day would outright ignore them, thus the apathy that clouds the mind of the pharisees in this section of scripture. How often today are we the same way? But…

So, as many were healed that day, here comes the religous leaders. Instead of giving praise to God, instead of recognizing bones being set straight and families restored and social outcast now being reconciled to their communities, they ask “why don’t your disciples follow tradition”.

Jesus’ response is hilarious. He asks “why do you break the COMMANDMENTS of God”. You see their tradition had so clouded their minds that they believed that their tradition had greater authority than God’s word! And often times today our tradition have more authority than God’s word. Our tradition of what we should watch, or what we should wear, or how we should educate our children, or where we should go to “church” or make-up, or dating or…… you see, Christ has given us a NEW COMMANDMENT. That commandment is “love one another”.

But like the religious leaders our tradition usurps the authority of God’s commandment even to the fact that when we see people accepting the social outcast of our days, and loving the unlovable, and receiving the unreceivable we look and say “how can they do that, don’t they understand our tradition”?

Religious tradition and heritage can be healthy, it just has to be put in the right perspective. God’s word is authoritative, not our traditions. And whenever our tradition usurps the authority of God’s word we should repent and put our traditions in check. This goes for all of us. Lets not be too quick to make our traditions God’s word and ignore the work and power of God in the lives of others, regardless of how “unorthodox” it looks to our tradition. We may end up missing an opportunity to see Jesus working, much like the religious leaders did in Gennesaret.

Healing, Religion, Tradition

 Today’s reading gives us some disturbing details into the life of Jacob and his 12 sons (the deception, killing, Reuben sleeping with his brother’s mother) and then we see three deaths. Yet in spite of that I name this “From Running to Rest”! Why?

Well, Jacob finally finds rest. He can no longer run, his deception, lies, and trickery have finally come to an end, he has been afflicted by YAWEH and now is the time of reconciliation, he must face his past. What a picture of God’s grace.  We see Jacob meeting up with Esau and there is reconciliation, we see him meeting up with Isaac and there is reconciliation and now we see Jacob back in the land of his fathers, the place God has told him to go. We even see a picture of intercession as Jacob buries the false gods of his loved ones and builds an alter to the Most High. Jacob has finally found rest for his feet, his household and his soul!

In our New Testament reading we see another rest. Jesus says “come to me… and I will give you rest”.  What is odd about Jesus’ statement is the paradoxical nature of it. You see He says “take my yoke… for it is easy and light”. Now if you know what a yoke is, niether a picture of rest oreasy and light will ever cross your mind. Seeing a mule or an ox yoked up has never produced a picture of rest in my mind. Not to mention when we think of rest we usually don’t think of  being “controlled” we think of freedom.  A yoke is for the sole purpose of directing and controlling and subduing for the benefit  of the person who has control of the yoke.

However, Jesus says putting on His yoke yields the fruit of rest! Often times we hear “I will come to God when I am ready” (usually that means the commands of Jesus are taxing, hard or laboring) people think they have rest or freedom, yet they have bondage and are constantly running from person to person, thing to thing, drug to drug only to never find “rest”.

Jesus is our rest. In Christ we are even told “we rest from all of our works” (Hebrews 4:10), outside of Christ there is no rest and no freedom once we take on His yoke only then can we rest and we can be assured that wherever He takes us will be for our own good.

But there is one more rest I want to remind us who know Christ about. That is the rest from legalism. Many of us today are busy, we are running, we are working hard to please God, yet we never feel at peace, we never feel secure and we never feel rested. It is always improve, try harder, dig deeper, obey more, and then and only then will God be satisfied, yet we ache with condemnation, a sense of failure, an unworthiness. However, Jesus gives us a different picture. When we come to Christ and yield to Him it produces the fruit of rest (rest embodies, peace, serenity, joy, comfort). We can rest from our effort and trust that God’s wrath has been satisfied and that He loves us because of His Son. To be even more frank apart from resting in Christ, we can’t satisfy the Father, Jesus tells us “unless you become like one of these little ones, you can not enter the Kingdom of God”. So today if you are in Christ find rest in His work, if you are outside of Christ find rest in Christ. Don’t be crippled like Jacob for trying to run. He  walked with a sign of God’s sovereignty until he was buried with his fathers, let experience be the wisdom of fools.

Grace, Rest, Salvation

January 6, 2010 Daily Reading

Today’s OT reading has us with a very concerned Abram and Sarai. Just turn back to Genesis 12:1-9 and you will see exactly what I mean. Abram has left everything to follow this call from God. He has packed up His family has left everything familiar and was told:

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I have read that families did not do this type of thing. To say it was counter-cultural would be a gross understatement. Everything rested on your family. There were no governments or laws to protect you. All you had was your family. At any given moment, someone could come to enslave you, rob you or even wipe your entire family off the face of the earth. So for Abram to leave was to do more than relocate and miss Christmas meals, it was to separate himself from his fathers wealth, his families protection and everything he has ever known. Not to mention he wasn’t a young and naive 18 year old running to New York. He was 75 years old and this is all he has ever known. Add to that he is taking along his wife for this journey only adds to the anxiety he must have felt.

But today’s reading puts us 25 years later. And if you haven’t noticed, Sarai is still barren and this promise seems to be fading at an alarming rate. Abram is 100 years old, Sarai is 90 years old (we find this out later) and there seems to be no significant change to validate this promise that Abram has heard.

Then God comes and reaasures Abram. He revalidates His promises but this time takes it a step further. Upon this reassurance we see Abram beliving God and him being “justified” by faith. This will become one of the most important words in your New Testament and if you read anything about theology this is an issue facing the church today. It was because of Abrams faith that God made Him righteous, yet he produced the fruit of faith by leaving all he knew to follow the call of God.

Shortly after that God then enters into a unilateral covenant thus sealing Abram’s justification (Romans 4) and guaranteeing His promise. In spite of Abram’s righteousness, faith and the covenant being ratified by God Himself. Abram still sins against the Lord. He attempts to give God a child instead of God giving him a child. In spite of this God shows His faithfulness to His own covenant by giving both Abram and Sarai new identities by changing their names and even in their unfaithfulness Abram’s offspring is blessed.

Today how many of us, after being called away from everything we knew and loved and lived for, given new names, new identities still do not trust God? Yet in spite of all of our lack of trust, God is still faithful to bring His promises to pass. Today you and I are aliens in a foregin land. The Gospel has brought us into a new relationship with new identies and a new destination yet often times our circumstances blinds us on the road much like Abraham’s circumstance blinded him. I remember reading Pilgrims Progress and sometimes Christian would turn the wrong way and find himself in some difficult circumstances, yet in spite of that God was bringing Him to the celestial city.

We have to understand that in spite of all we see in our own circumstances and the failure we experience,  God’s unilateral covenant has been ratified in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just like Abraham was justified by faith we too have been justified by faith. Just like Abraham was given a sign/seal of the covenant which was circumcision we too have been given a sign/seal of the covenant and He is the Holy Spirit which produces a new heart. And as with Sarah, God does not need our assistance in bringing His promises to pass, He only wants us to yield to Him. What God began He will complete. Romans 8:28-30 gives us a wonderful promise of God’s faithfulness to His covenant people. We can rest assured that we will be what He wants us to be, though we can make this journey rough for ourselves (you will see that Ishmael will become a problem to the promised seed).

Our new testament reading is also an introduction to a covenant. This covenant is called the “New Covenant”. Jesus in the sermon of the mount is beginning to lay the ground work for this covenant. He is the master builder, a new law giver and is now calling His people to a new moral standard. It is a moral standard built on the motivation of the heart not the letter of the law. We will later come to find out that just like the covenant with Abraham, it will be a gracious covenant. This covenant will be based on faith and upheld by God. There will be fruit requirement as evidence that we are part of this covenant and we see that in what Jesus is calling us to do, just like the fruit of Abraham’s faith was him leaving his father, but just like Abraham it will not be conditional. God will see that all He promised to Abraham come to fruition and Jesus will see that all He promised to His covenant people will come to fruition!

Covenant Faithfulness, Justification, New Covenant