September 2

Day 172: Probably

We humans get things so fouled up when we lose sight of God's words, and replace them with our own.

Sometime after the feeding of the 5,000 came the lesser remembered miraculous feeding of another 4,000. In between these two episodes (Matthew 15) Jesus found Himself in dialogues with religious authorities.

This time, they asked Him, "Why don't your disciples wash their hands before they eat?" This followed their primary question, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?"

Jesus doesn't hold back. He has no problem telling them that they "...break the commandment of God for the sake of [their] traditions." (And consider this dialogue ended.)

Jesus exposes the example of how the religious leaders violated the fourth commandment in not honoring their parents, and teaching other to do the same. The "blind leading the blind," He says.

Because, in their minds, the traditions they had devised circumvented the commandments of God. They created loopholes that did not otherwise exist in the Law.

Thus, they had grown accustomed to valuing actions that God does not value, and not valuing what God does in fact value.

And with Jesus, they were keeping score. Hoping Jesus could be proven to have fallen short.

Albert Einstein once said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

A short time after all this, Jesus again makes it painful for these same religious leaders looking on. He miraculously feeds 4,000 households of people.

Out in a desolate place. With no hand washing facilities anywhere nearby. Nobody brought sanitizer. None of the Moms even had handy wipes in their purses.

And it's assumed that both Jesus and His disciples didn't get around to washing their hands before they served this meal to the crowd, or even before they themselves ate.

We all get the point. We can all be guilty of giving higher (misplaced) values to man-made ideas and things and actions. And we can all be guilty of trying to circumvent God's will in the process.

That's not the question at hand. The question is, "What do we (each of us) value above God's will, while somehow thinking that we are right smack dab in the middle of God's will?

Is there a religious action we think more highly of than Jesus does? Is there an attitude we choose to carry and nurture that is actually contrary to what Jesus would have us carry and nurture?

As a loophole, do we ever find ourselves ignoring something God desires in us, by replacing it with something else? Or, do we esteem one gospel-centered action in order to ignore another, like a counter-balance?

Probably.

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau