Blessed is everyone who fears (reveres) the Lord, who walks in His ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it will be well with you. (Verses1-2)
And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord, your God, being careful to do all His commandments I command you today, the Lord will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and when you go out.
Deuteronomy 28:1-6
I used to think God had to bless me. Why? Because I was such a good little girl. I'm not genetically willful. As the middle child, I'm more inclined to try and make peace. I also crave closure. Open-ended anything makes me a little crazy. That's why I always did long-term school assignments as soon as I received them. Whew! I don't have to think about that anymore! That mentality. It followed then, that as a Christian, if I played by the rules, did the Ten Commandments (which, by the way, is impossible to do without the Holy Spirit), and "didn't smoke, didn't chew and didn't go with boys who do," I'd please God and He'd give me everything I wanted. I was pretty proud of my humility. The way I got it right with God most of the time. I know you see where I'm going with this. Downhill.
Before we live a righteous life, we must be in a love relationship. The fruit of faith comes from knowing our Father, not from knowing His rules. In Matthew 5 Jesus breaks down the rules making them even more difficult than we thought. Adultery, He cautioned, isn't just sleeping with a married woman, it's looking at a woman with lustful eyes! Murder, according to Jesus, is an outcropping of an angry heart. It starts there and there it must be fixed. "Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them...For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Jesus knew our hearts. Unfit and incapable, even the most religious of us, of keeping the law--of gaining righteousness that way. As if it weren't bad enough that we were burdened with keeping holy rules, Jesus went on to make them an impossible matter of our hearts.
That is what the cross was all about. Making me, a frail human made of dust, right enough to live eternally with a holy God. And not only that, empowered to live a life pleasing to Him. When Jesus called the Pharisees "white-washed tombs who look good on the outside but are filled with dead men's bones (Matthew 23)," it was their inner life He judged. Their "hypocrisy and lawlessness." How could those who spent their lives obeying the rules be lawless? Because they were without the Spirit of the Law. Doing the rules for self-righteous gain is to God like kissing His ring when you don't love Him. We wind up being "holy" for ourselves alone. For show. To feel above others. To sleep at night knowing we are just so very good.
Jesus, God's Son, however, knew that being good isn't about creating a false humility so we could walk around with our heads up. The disciples heard the conversation Jesus had with the young rich man (Matthew 19) who wanted to know how he could be saved. He was a really, really, really good young man. Had kept the law since he was young. But there was one more thing he needed to do. Isn't that the way with the law. That loophole. The thing that keeps us from being truly perfect. "Sell everything you have, give it to the poor and come follow Me." Everything. The Pearl of Great Price, God Himself, wants only one thing. Me. All of me. If there is something more valuable in my life than He, it is an idol, even if it's being good. The followers of Jesus had a great question after the young man walked away sorrowful: "If this man can't be saved, who in the world can?" "It's not possible for you to save yourselves. But God can." And with those words, Jesus shifted the paradigm of centuries of frustrated self-righteousness. A few days later, hanging from the cross that bought us out of hell, Jesus declared, "It's finished!" Yes. All that "trying" is over. Then Jesus sent the same Spirit Who raised Him from the dead to live in us. To give us the link between our hearts and His. Binding us to the Father in love. A brand new motive for doing right instead of wrong. I don't want to break the Father's heart nor live as though Christ died in vain. I love my Father God.
And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord, your God, being careful to do all His commandments I command you today, the Lord will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and when you go out.
Deuteronomy 28:1-6
I used to think God had to bless me. Why? Because I was such a good little girl. I'm not genetically willful. As the middle child, I'm more inclined to try and make peace. I also crave closure. Open-ended anything makes me a little crazy. That's why I always did long-term school assignments as soon as I received them. Whew! I don't have to think about that anymore! That mentality. It followed then, that as a Christian, if I played by the rules, did the Ten Commandments (which, by the way, is impossible to do without the Holy Spirit), and "didn't smoke, didn't chew and didn't go with boys who do," I'd please God and He'd give me everything I wanted. I was pretty proud of my humility. The way I got it right with God most of the time. I know you see where I'm going with this. Downhill.
Before we live a righteous life, we must be in a love relationship. The fruit of faith comes from knowing our Father, not from knowing His rules. In Matthew 5 Jesus breaks down the rules making them even more difficult than we thought. Adultery, He cautioned, isn't just sleeping with a married woman, it's looking at a woman with lustful eyes! Murder, according to Jesus, is an outcropping of an angry heart. It starts there and there it must be fixed. "Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them...For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Jesus knew our hearts. Unfit and incapable, even the most religious of us, of keeping the law--of gaining righteousness that way. As if it weren't bad enough that we were burdened with keeping holy rules, Jesus went on to make them an impossible matter of our hearts.
That is what the cross was all about. Making me, a frail human made of dust, right enough to live eternally with a holy God. And not only that, empowered to live a life pleasing to Him. When Jesus called the Pharisees "white-washed tombs who look good on the outside but are filled with dead men's bones (Matthew 23)," it was their inner life He judged. Their "hypocrisy and lawlessness." How could those who spent their lives obeying the rules be lawless? Because they were without the Spirit of the Law. Doing the rules for self-righteous gain is to God like kissing His ring when you don't love Him. We wind up being "holy" for ourselves alone. For show. To feel above others. To sleep at night knowing we are just so very good.
Jesus, God's Son, however, knew that being good isn't about creating a false humility so we could walk around with our heads up. The disciples heard the conversation Jesus had with the young rich man (Matthew 19) who wanted to know how he could be saved. He was a really, really, really good young man. Had kept the law since he was young. But there was one more thing he needed to do. Isn't that the way with the law. That loophole. The thing that keeps us from being truly perfect. "Sell everything you have, give it to the poor and come follow Me." Everything. The Pearl of Great Price, God Himself, wants only one thing. Me. All of me. If there is something more valuable in my life than He, it is an idol, even if it's being good. The followers of Jesus had a great question after the young man walked away sorrowful: "If this man can't be saved, who in the world can?" "It's not possible for you to save yourselves. But God can." And with those words, Jesus shifted the paradigm of centuries of frustrated self-righteousness. A few days later, hanging from the cross that bought us out of hell, Jesus declared, "It's finished!" Yes. All that "trying" is over. Then Jesus sent the same Spirit Who raised Him from the dead to live in us. To give us the link between our hearts and His. Binding us to the Father in love. A brand new motive for doing right instead of wrong. I don't want to break the Father's heart nor live as though Christ died in vain. I love my Father God.
Blessings flow out of that relationship. Father to child. Now, the Father Himself loves me (John 16). The rich young ruler couldn't buy that even with his great wealth. That's why Jesus told him to give it away! I'm family. With the Father's seal on my life. My salvation through Jesus bought and paid for. Peter asked Jesus this question when the man walked away: "Look at us! We have left everything and followed you! What will we get?" The answer, of course, was "eternal life" plus a hundred times more blessings than before! Jesus promised them that whatever they gave up to follow Him would be multiplied in this life and in the next because we know and love Him--the actual Giver of life! The more I know and love Jesus, the more I look like Him instead of the white-washed tomb I used to be. No more dead woman's bones for me! I'm allowing my Father to dig that stuff up and throw it away. Not to make me a perfect Christian specimen to be gazed at in wonder, but to make me genuine and godly from within. So the inside of the tomb looks more beautiful in every way than what you might see on the outside. I'm a work in progress, but I'm His work. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
No comments:
Post a Comment