I love some traditions. We all need them to keep rooted in our past, to remember where we came from and who we are. I also love doing things for people and for the Lord, it brings great joy to my heart to bless others. Traditions and work can be a trap, if done with the wrong motive they can be at war with God’s plan for our lives.
One of the key challenges the Pharisees faced was; their tradition got in the way of serving the Lord. Ironic isn’t it that these men who were the teachers of the nation of Israel would miss, God in the flesh, because of their traditions. Every law that God gave, every word that He inspired for scripture, was given for the purpose of drawing mankind to Himself. Rather than using these things as a tool to reveal God’s heart, often the Pharisees would use them to push men away from God or belittle them. In Matthew 23 and Luke 11 Jesus pushes the Pharisees, we need to understand that He loved them but they were so caught in their traditions and their works mentality that they were missing the Father’s heart.
Our faith is about relationship. God sent His Son to die on a cross so that we could have relationship with Him. The law that God gave to the nation of Israel was a shadow of things to come. The sacrifice of animals was a symbol of what Jesus would do on the cross. Simple acts of obedience; like the animal sacrifices were not meant in themselves to be an end, instead they were intended to reveal the heart. It was costly to make the sacrifices required however it wasn’t so much about the animal as it was revealing the heart of the person offering the sacrifice. If someone was giving arrogantly or begrudgingly that was revealed in the way they gave their sacrifice. There are sacrifices and other things that we do today for the Lord but they are not salvation essential, we do them because we love.
The prophet Micah in the Old Testament saw the problem with the hearts of the people being corrupt as they were giving their sacrifices. He challenged the people,
“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
Traditions are good. They help us to remember what is important from the past so, hopefully, we will not make the same mistakes as those who have gone on before us. We are to do the “work” of the Gospel but it is all about relationship and motivation that makes it right not merely the “work” itself.
The people were worshipping God out of wrong motive, rote, and tradition rather than a loving heart. Micah’s challenge is to know God’s heart, live God’s heart, and to act with God’s heart.
In the church today we are facing many challenges that have not been faced by people in a long time. We have people coming to our churches that have no background of faith at all. Their moral code is very different. They don’t have the same understanding of right and wrong as we have. Thirty years ago, many that are coming to the church today would have been turned away because they did not fit our mold. Today, it is my hope that we can overcome and welcome people. They need to see Jesus in our lives so they will want to grow and walk away from their sin into the arms of Jesus. Paul wrote, “How can they hear unless a preacher be sent?” They are coming to us. It seems we don’t need to be sent. By our seeing people as Jesus sees them, giving them the opportunity to see Jesus in us, many, for the first tim, will come to freedom in Him, if we will have the Father’s heart.
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