ALL – Psalm 106:32-48
ALL – Proverbs 27:10
OT – Ezekiel 18:1-19:14
NT – Hebrews 9:1-12
Interesting passage for the day: For the old system dealt only with certain rituals—what foods to eat and drink, rules for washing themselves, and rules about this and that. The people had to keep these rules to tide them over until Christ came with God’s new and better way. – Hebrews 9:10, The Living Bible
Thought: When you look at the Old Testament laws, it really is pretty amazing to think that you don’t actually have to love God in order to obey them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that anyone could obey them perfectly—whether she loved God or not. But the laws themselves are rules about men’s actions and behaviors. They’re all outward, and anyone can follow them as much as he wants to or is compelled to.
Would it make a difference to have a heart that wanted to follow God’s laws? Sure, and the laws are sometimes accompanied by purpose statements where God says, “Here’s the law, and you need to follow it because...” Follow the law because you love Me. Follow the law because you’ll show your concern for your parents. When the laws are joined to purpose statements like these, it’s obvious that God was never calling people to a heartless religion. But at the end of the day, laws are still laws, rules are still rules, and it’s all too easy for them to usurp the focus of humanity’s religious devotion to God.
Now we’ve been set free from rules. We Christians are still called to live good, upright and moral lives. But we’re called to such lives not by rules, but by love—Christ’s love within us, compelling us to love God and one another wholeheartedly, with every cell of our bodies. And we’re free to live by love rather than by rules because God first loved us and sent His Son to die for our sins, so that we need never face their penalty.
Love begets love, not rules. Even though they sometimes look the same.
Question: Are you living by love, by rules, or by both? Take a moment and ask yourself whether you would live differently if rules weren’t a part of the equation? How would you live differently? In what ways would your life look exactly the same?
To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
New is Usually Different
ALL – Psalm 36:1-12
ALL – Proverbs 10:1-2
OT – Leviticus 4:1-5:19
NT – Mark 2:13-3:6
The unexpected can be annoying—perhaps even offensive.
But when Jesus came, He didn’t apologize for His unexpected new ways. In fact, He defended them. When the Pharisees implied that His disciples ought to be fasting along with theirs and John’s (the Baptist), Jesus said,
It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before. You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins. – Mark 2:21-22
The old and the new often don’t work well together. Everything about Jesus was new, and new is usually different. Jesus was surprising. Jesus was unconventional. Jesus was different. Why? Because Jesus was new and brought a new reality with Him from heaven.
As Christians, we have to be careful how we apply this lesson. We want to be new like Jesus—there’s no question about that. But to some people, “new like Jesus” means that we must shake up the traditional ways of the church at every opportunity. “New like Jesus” can be used to justify people’s whims to be different, unconventional, even slightly rebellious against church practices and traditions. That’s not what being new like Jesus is about. We must remember that Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. For Christians, there is much about following Jesus that should be tradition by now. Why? Because we can never become newer than Jesus. He is the Father’s final word.
On the other hand, our behavior and teachings will always be new to the world around us, because people perpetually follow the world’s tradition of sinning against God. That is the tradition we must aim most passionately to break as we stand with Jesus in the newness of the covenant He sealed with His blood. We are not to differ from Jesus’ followers, but from the world and its patterns. New is usually different. Let’s aim to be different in Jesus’ way—not from Jesus and His followers, but from those who oppose Him.
What is new in your life because Jesus lives in you?
To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.
ALL – Proverbs 10:1-2
OT – Leviticus 4:1-5:19
NT – Mark 2:13-3:6
The unexpected can be annoying—perhaps even offensive.
But when Jesus came, He didn’t apologize for His unexpected new ways. In fact, He defended them. When the Pharisees implied that His disciples ought to be fasting along with theirs and John’s (the Baptist), Jesus said,
It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before. You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins. – Mark 2:21-22
The old and the new often don’t work well together. Everything about Jesus was new, and new is usually different. Jesus was surprising. Jesus was unconventional. Jesus was different. Why? Because Jesus was new and brought a new reality with Him from heaven.
As Christians, we have to be careful how we apply this lesson. We want to be new like Jesus—there’s no question about that. But to some people, “new like Jesus” means that we must shake up the traditional ways of the church at every opportunity. “New like Jesus” can be used to justify people’s whims to be different, unconventional, even slightly rebellious against church practices and traditions. That’s not what being new like Jesus is about. We must remember that Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. For Christians, there is much about following Jesus that should be tradition by now. Why? Because we can never become newer than Jesus. He is the Father’s final word.
On the other hand, our behavior and teachings will always be new to the world around us, because people perpetually follow the world’s tradition of sinning against God. That is the tradition we must aim most passionately to break as we stand with Jesus in the newness of the covenant He sealed with His blood. We are not to differ from Jesus’ followers, but from the world and its patterns. New is usually different. Let’s aim to be different in Jesus’ way—not from Jesus and His followers, but from those who oppose Him.
What is new in your life because Jesus lives in you?
To review the Bible reading plan options, please visit http://tinyurl.com/yj2o7jz.
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