Pleasing God Pt 2: Works of the Law

The Pharisees get a lot of bad rap in the church today. We like to poke fun at them for being so thick-skulled and completely missing what Jesus said to them. We sometimes act like children on a playground, juxtaposing them as the bad guys and Jesus as a sort of good-guy bully putting them in their place. We pray "I thank God that I am not proud like the Pharisee." Ironic?

We miss the fact sometimes that we're just like the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees were trying to gain favor with God. They prided themselves in knowing the law and spent all their time studying the law to make sure they were doing everything just so in order to please God. Since they had it down so well, it caused them to look down upon the others who had not yet arrived according to their standard. How are we any different?

We go to our social club churches and make lists of "dos" and "don'ts" and pay our tithe and don't drink or smoke or chew or hang with those who do. And we think it gives us license to look down on those who don't fit our mold of what the perfect Christian looks like. We're Pharisees. On the outside we may look good, but on the inside we're as rotten as the next guy. We serve God with our lips but our hearts are far from Him. Then we quote that little over-used cliché, "It's not about religion, it's about relationship." But all we have is religion. Anyone who goes on like that is in for quite the surprise when they meet God on judgement day and hear "Depart, worker of lawlessness, I never knew you."

I was a Pharisee. I grew up in a good Christian home. I never did any bad things. I was a good kid! But then Jesus told the Pharisees what was really in the law. And I was guilty. The vilest of sinners on the inside, no matter how prim and perfect things seemed on the outside. I hated someone; I lusted; I twisted truth; I had mental idols; on down the list... Worst of all, I put myself above others simply because their sins showed up on the outside. After all, hypocrisy looks better on me than it does on you.

I think it is very profound that God says in Revelation that He'd rather we be hot or cold, but lukewarmness makes Him sick. I used to puzzle over that. How could God want us to be cold? But then I learned that at least if you're cold you know you're cold. Remember the parable of the sheep and the goats? The goats were lukewarm. They thought they had it down. They thought they and God were tight. But they were really serving themselves. At least if they had been cold they would've recognized when God said they didn't serve Him.

When you boil it all down, true service and true obedience is born out of love. When you spend your time chasing works of the law and good deeds and concern yourself with pleasing God by *doing* something, you are serving and obeying out of fear or out of pride. You are relying on yourself to save you. God says the greatest commandment is to love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind. When you love someone that much you don't have to keep a list of what they like and don't like. You just know, because there is relationship.

Jesus died to give us that relationship. He took away what needed to be done to please God. There is nothing more to do to please God. That doesn't mean we throw all restraint out the window and live like the devil, but I will get to that in a subsequent post. For now, just rest in the thought that it's already been done. He said "It is finished." That is the end. No more working. No more hypocrisy. No more fear.
Think about it.

Priorities: treasures of the heart

Idol-worship. Idolatry. Tricky word. What does it bring to your mind? Not long ago the term "idol worship" would trigger in my mind an image of some sort of pagan worship-- something akin to the Israelite's golden calf on Sinai, or the grand temples we read about in the Bible and other History books, dedicated to all sorts of "gods" made of stone. The first two commandments clearly put the nix on that sort of thing. So I thought I was safe. But is that what idolatry really is? Yes. But no. Certainly, cutting wood or stone into an image and bowing down and paying homage to it is idolatry. But that's not all idolatry is.
Recently I came across a very eye-opening video on this subject:
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This video struck me  pretty deeply because it resonated with something God had been showing me. My idol is not necessarily a physical carved image, and it's not necessarily something I consciously think about being "greater than God" per se. In fact, in our culture more often than not that is not the case. My idols are much subtler than that. People I love, my job, social status, entertainment, leisure, hobbies, sports, money or possessions--literally anything in my life can be my idol.
How can I tell what my idol is? Simple: What's my priorty? Where do I focus my energies and resources? What do I think about or look forward to all the time? Jesus put it quite well in Matthew 6:21, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." So, looking for your treasure? Where's your heart? Looking for your heart? Where's your treasure? They hang out together like kids dating in school-- one is never far from the other.
I became terribly convicted when I realized where my treasure was. I didn't save up my money to support God's work. I didn't look forward with anticipation to "devotions" time. I didn't spend all my time thinking about God and praying. It was all about me. And I realized something: These things I was seeing were the thermometer, not the compass. The places I put my energies and resources were the fruit of the tree of a me-centered life, not the other way around. If I tried to make myself do all the right things I was going to fail. The only way to change the fruit is to change the root-- rather than being me-centered, I must put the focus on God and HIS kingdom, then the fruit I bear will be for HIS glory. How freeing to realize!
Where are your priorities? When was the last time you had to drag yourself away from your Bible to watch TV? Would you rather go boating with friends or serve the needy in the name of Christ? Are you committed to understanding and learning more about God? Or are you busy chasing the temporal? Think about it.