Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Got the rules but missing the heart!

Luke 13:1 - 34

We all have them in our lives, legalist. The movie Santa Clause 2, with Tim Allen is an excellent example of this. The premise is this; Santa Claus has other work he must get done so he clones himself. The “other” Santa reads the rulebook and decides to do everything the book says, which is normally a good thing except his interpretation of what the book says verses the heart of what the book says are two different things. The result, no child is good all are bad; no one deserves presents all deserve coal. This is an excellent example of legalism, no child is going to be perfect, if you stick by the rules; children who do bad things get coal then all deserve coal. Apart from Christ, religion is just like that, all of us deserve hell, we all have sinned and deserve eternal separation from God. With Christ, we have all been extended grace and mercy because of relationship.

Jesus life on earth was devoted to showing people that God was not about a set of rules trying to make us all perfect. He is about a love that gives us the freedom to overcome sin through God’s grace, mercy, and love. Anything or anyone that teaches another Gospel is different than Jesus.

This passage is an example of Jesus overcoming religious by love, dealing with the hypocrisy of religion. The religious of the day kept their lives in line through legalism, don’t blame them too much because we all gravitate to something for security and if our relationship with the Lord is lacking we will gravitate to religion. It can be a religion of family, sports, work, or any number of things. Jesus said the greatest commandments were, “Love God and love people!” The new one that He gave to us before He went back to heaven was, “Share that love with people, everywhere, show them how to be true followers of Me!” In an effort to be religiously obedient to God, the leader of the synagogue wanted to keep the rules as he read them, not necessarily as God had intended. We all have to be careful of this; it is easy to look at life through “me” colored glasses rather than the heart of God. The Lord is for people to know He loves them.

Healing a woman who struggled for 18 years was a love thing! The leader could only see that Jesus violated the rules. We all have our weaknesses; we all see God at times through the “me” glasses. When you do, correct it, fix it, apologize, do whatever it is that you need to do to act in love. If you do, you are less likely to repeat the same type of mistake. Even greater, you will defeat your own religious nature with His love, by doing so you find more of His heart in all that you do.

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