Excess Baggage Part 3 Series

Projectionist: Start with LifewithGod-HighDefMP4.mp4

We’re so glad you are joining with us today whether in the auditorium or on line. You couldn’t have picked a better time to join us because we are in the third part of a series entitled Excess Baggage.

We all know how unmanageable excess baggage can be physically when we are dealing with actual baggage, or emotionally when we are dealing with the junk we carry into our lives from the past. Where we have focused our attention in this series is excess baggage in the spiritual area of life—those things that we add to our belief systems that seem to make sense when we are packing them, but are unnecessary, uncalled for needless extras that we smuggle into our faith from past experiences or maybe from bad teaching or more than likely from a habit or reason that maybe at one time made a lot of sense, but then became an add on that now just makes our lives burdensome.

You may have heard the story of the family gathering, where the momma was in the kitchen preparing dinner for the family. Her young daughter was watching her with rapt attention and helping where she could. As the mom prepared the ham for the occasion, she began by cutting off the ends of the ham. The daughter, curious asked her mother why she cut off the ends of the ham, to which her mother replied, “Well, honey, I do that because my mother did it.”

“Why momma?” her daughter persisted. “I don’t know honey, but grandma is setting the table, why don’t you go into the dining room and ask her?”

The little girl cheerfully left her seat, went into the dining room and inquired of her grandmother, “Grandma, why did you cut off the ends of your ham?” To which the grandmother replied, “Well, Sally, I cut off the ends of my ham because that is what my mother always did.”

“But why?” Sally persisted. “Well honey, I don’t really know. My mother, your great-grandmother is sitting in the living room, why don’t we both go in and ask her?”

The pair, arriving in the living room asked great-grandma their burning question, “Great grandma, why do we cut off the ends of the ham before cooking it?” To which great-grandma now responded, “Well, honey, the reason I cut off the ends of my ham before I cooked it was so that it would fit in my pan! I don’t know why your mother does it.”

A lot of our cherished traditions are like that ham story. At one time there may have been a purpose for it, and it may have been a good reason. But we continue to carry these once meaningful practices into our current situations and over the years these purposeful and meaningful practices from the past have built up into excess spiritual baggage in our present, making our Christian lives unwieldy (that means not easily handled, managed or used) to us and unnecessarily complicated to those who are considering Christ.

In the church the struggle began when Gentiles, non-Jewish people, with no background in the Jewish laws or traditions began coming to the faith. Certain Christians wanted to make sure those who were placing their faith in Christ were schooled in and adhered to the Old Testament Laws.

The issue was first broached when Peter was called by God to go and present the message of Christ to a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Peter was understandably uncomfortable with that—it went totally against everything he believed. But, despite being uncomfortable with it, he was obedient to the call and God did a marvelous work despite the fact that those in the audience didn’t have a clue about what the Jewish Scriptures taught; despite the fact that they didn’t even know let alone conform to the Law of Moses.

The perceived problem grew when non-Jewish people at Antioch began putting their faith not in the Jewish Scriptures, not in “The Bible,” (he Bible didn’t exist until late in the fourth century and early in the fifth when a monk by the name of Jerome put what we know as the Old and New Testament in one volume known as the Vulgate. These early Gentile believers didn’t have any Sacred Writings, they were putting their faith in the resurrected Christ!

This created a problem for those who grew up cutting off the ends of their proverbial ham. “We’ve always done it this way and if they want to join us, they need to do it this way!” And we saw that the decision of the church leaders—James, the brother of Jesus, Peter, Paul and the other Apostles agreed that with Christ we had entered a new era of faith and the Old Testament Laws were no longer binding upon the people of God.