condemned

Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence. (Colossians 2:16-23, NRSV)

Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but He did not come to make us follow the rules made by man either.

Jesus came to show us how to live into the law and into the lives that God wants us to.

If you eat food used in idol worship, then that is not someone elses concern. Although I would like to know where you are getting food used in idol worship…

The Body is held together by Christ, and we are all apart of one another because of Him.

And we are all there because of Him, not because of the rules we keep, or the things we do.

Jesus is the reason we are not condemned. There for let Him judge others. Love them, as He loved you!

worship I seek

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.  Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:1-10, NRSV)

We do not fast so that people will notice.

We do not fast so God will notice.

We need to do what God needs for us to do in His world:

to loose the bonds of injustice

to undo the thongs of the yoke

to let the oppressed go free

to break every yoke

to share your bread with the hungry

to bring the homeless poor into your house

when you see the naked to cover them

not to hide yourself from your own kin

And when we do all this:

God’s light shall break forth like the dawn

God’s healing shall spring up quickly

God our vindicator shall go before you

and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard

 

what are you doing?

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 1:10-20, NRSV)

Your worship is not what I want!

Because you do not seem to understand, we need to start over and have no assemblies with burnt offerings or smelly things.

You need to wash and make yourselves clean.

You need to remove the evil from your doings.

You need to cease to look out for yourselves.

You need to learn to look out for others.

You need to seek justice for all, not just those you want to.

You need to rescue all the oppressed, not just those you want to.

You need to defend all orphaned, not just those you want to.

You need to plead for all widows, not just those you want to.

These are the things I desire says the Lord.

Stop doing evil, and start living for me!

perish

The Lord said:
Because these people draw near with their mouths
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote;
so I will again do
amazing things with this people,
shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the LORD,
whose deeds are in the dark,
and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”
You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Shall the thing made say of its maker,
“He did not make me”;
or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,
“He has no understanding”?
(Isaiah 29:13-16, NRSV)

“If the cross is not foolishness to the lost world then we have misrepresented the cross.”

If our religion or following makes sense to those who do not get it, then we are following after our own hearts.

If the wisdom of the world matches up to the wisdom we follow we may want to reevaluate where we are and what we are doing.

You see our wisdom is not God’s wisdom. Our wisdom will fade and perish, but God’s wisdom will stand for all time.

We need to help people see His wisdom and follow after that.

Are you practicing?

School books with apple on desk

It is that time of year that parents rejoice and some youth don’t like. It is back to school.

As if learning is something we only do from Kindergarten through college graduation! If that were only true, the only time we stop learning is when we are dead! And even then I bet we will learn something in the great wonderful eternity we get to spend with God.

So back to school and back to learning new things, deepening our faith and growing closer to God.

The council has been reading a book called Frog’s Without Legs Can’t Hear, Nurturing Disciples in Home and Congregation this year. It starts by asking, “Are we forming faith?”

And that is a great question to ask.

In the last chapter we read as a council there was a story about a woman who was in a coffee shop wearing a cross and the young person waiting on her told her he liked her cross, and then asked her if she was practicing?

And that is a great question.

You see faith is something we are given by God, but is something we are constantly learning about and forming and growing into. And faith is something more than just a belief. It is something that needs to be practiced.

St. Francis of Assisi is attributed with saying, but didn’t actually say, but really meant something to the effect, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.” You see our lives should be lived in such a way that the good news of Jesus just flows out of everything we do.

So is your life forming faith?

And are you practicing?

What is unclean…

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:14-23, NRSV)

The picture intrigued me.

Mostly because the food the three a the bottom are eating looks like bacon, and I love bacon…

But this is an interesting verse. First the lesson is Mark 7:14-23. Yet does your Bible have a vers 16? It is a scriptural gloss from chapter 4 possibly and so is not present now in our translations.

But even more interesting to me is the (Thus he declared all foods clean.) Did He really?

He, being Jesus, said that what you eat goes through your body and then goes out as waste. He didn’t say all food was clean. Because it is not food that makes one unclean anyhow.

All forms of evil resides inside of each and every one of us. We have the capacity to be evil, and look out only for ourselves.

But that is where love comes in. We need not worry about what goes in us, but what comes out of us. That should be love.

What makes you unclean is already in you. If you can only follow after the examples of Jesus and follow where He is leading, then what makes you clean will be in you aswell, and that is then what will come out.

Where is your heart?

150830 Where is your heartNow when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, NRSV)

Have you ever done something because you knew someone else would be watching and you wanted to make sure they saw what you did?

We do things all the time so others will see us. We want others to see that we do good things, so they think we are good people.

It is like giving lip service. Lip service is where we say good things about people or do things for them in front of them, but then behind their backs we do all sorts of mean and nasty things, or say what we really think about them which is far from being nice.

Which is what Jesus says about the pharisees here. They give lip service to God, as if we can ever go behind God’s back!

But they say things and do things in public so that people will see them and think they are following God, when their hearts are only looking for the notoriety, or the lifting up of being such a good follower. Their hearts are far from God.

And how many of us are there?

Why do you come to worship?

Why do you put money in the offering?

Why do we do the things we do for God?

Is it because we love Him and are moved by Him, or this is the right thing to do to impress the right people?

Only you can answer these questions for yourselves, but know that God knows your motives.

Jesus said give so your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. Because it is about loving an awesome God and being led to do His will, not for our own gain, but so that His kingdom is built.

So don’t do anything because it will be seen by others and you will get the glory. Do all things so that God is given the glory!

my refuge

When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
I was stupid and ignorant;
I was like a brute beast toward you.
Nevertheless I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me with honor.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;
you put an end to those who are false to you.
But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,
to tell of all your works.
(Psalm 73:21-28, NRSV)

I love this picture.

God holding us in the palm of His hand.

It is our place of refuge.

And from this place we can shout to the tops of the mountains all the wonderful works God has done!

don’t lose

But recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting. Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet “in a very little while, the one who is coming will come and will not delay; but my righteous one will live by faith. My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back.” But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved. (Hebrews 10:32-39, NRSV)

“knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting”

We all know that even if everything here is taken from us, we still possess something better and longer lasting that anything here.

We can not lose faith.

We can not lose trust.

We can not lose our belief or hope in God!

No matter what happens this will see us through.

So don’t lose the faith, and know you have something better and longer lasting than anything we could get here.

who is with us…

Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life. (1 John 2:18-25, NRSV)

Our job while we are here is to share the love of God with everyone. Some will seem to get it, but according to 1 John they won’t.

They will walk away because they are full of the devil. If you deny Jesus or the Father you can not be a part of the body.

But how do we deny God, Jesus, or the Father?

Out right saying they don’t exist is denying, but is denying not following where they lead?

Is denying not doing what God is leading you to do, when it doesn’t fit your idea of what following God is?

So who is with God, and who is denying God may not be clear, only to God.

So love everyone, even when it seems they might be walking away from God.

Only God truly knows their heart!