Please stand with me as we read our recent memory Scripture together!
John 1:1-4 NIV
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
“Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”
And then we have our memory refresher verse which says …
2 Timothy 2:15
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth.”
You may be seated. What wonderful Scriptures. Don’t you love the words of God Himself found in the Bible? We have now memorized a total of 21 Scriptures containing 49 verses. As I look back at these Scriptures it reminds me of a person who adores someone much greater than themselves and how they cling to their every word.
Is that how we are with God and His Holy Word? We should be enraptured by the Lord. We should cling to His every word. In His Word is life. The Word enables us to recognize the truth.
Our God is a relationship God! Throughout the OT He pursued His people with great intent! “I will be your God and you will be My people.” That was His great heartbeat! (Exodus 6:7, Jeremiah 7:23, 11:4 and 30:22, Ezekiel 36:28)
Take a look at Matthew 7:21-23 NIV (Please open your Bibles and follow along)
Take a look at Matthew 7:23 NIV
“Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
Our God continues to be a relationship God, but even more personal now.
What are the two greatest commandments?
Matthew 22:37-40
“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Love is a relationship word. Love is not just a feeling but an action as well.
Love requires a response. You can’t truly love someone and wish them harm. You can’t truly love someone and just ignore them as if they didn’t exist.
Love is a motivator.
We don’t obey God’s commands so that He will love us. He already proved His love for us by sending His only begotten, His One and Only Son, to show us the Father, to shed His blood for us, to die on a cross for us, to rise from the dead in triumph over sin and now to be our Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5) and our Advocate (1 John 2:1). And … He will come again for all of His children to take us to be with Him.
No, we don’t obey God’s commands so that He will love us or so that we will be saved; we obey His commands out of an overflowing gratitude for His great salvation. If we don’t obey His commands and we don’t love Him because disobedience is rebellion, rebellion is sin and sin brings death. Faith without works is dead, useless, unable to save. (James 2:20)
Face it! God love us and wants a relationship with us.
How is that relationship established? By Grace through Faith. Believing.
You can’t read the Gospel of John with out being smacked in the face over and over again!
In the NASB the word “believe” is used 81 times just in the Gospel of John. Eighty-one Times!!!
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 4:53 NASB
“So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives’; and he himself believed and his whole household.”
John 6:35-36 NASB
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.”
John 8:24 NASB
“Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
OK. God is a relationship God. He desires a relationship with us but God won’t force an unwanted relationship upon us.
Sometimes we speak of Jesus as being our “personal Savior” and that can be confusing to someone who does not know what you’re talking about.
It’s not like, “He’s my Savior and you can’t have Him so leave Him alone!”
That would be ridiculous.
He is my personal Savior in this manner. I can go directly to God!
The Bible says that I can approach Him as a father. Romans 8:14-16
We are actually filled with Christ! Galatians 2:20 How much closer can you get?
OK. So how does this love function?
We become “Love Driven”
But even that is almost as misnomer. Our love for God, our passion for God draws us like a great electromagnet draws steel.
Our love for God draws us:
To pursue Him
To pursue holiness of heart and life every moment of every day
To become more like Him
To know His Word
To please Him
To do His will
To love others as we love ourselves
To live out our faith in works which He has prepared in advance for us to do
(Ephesians 2:10)
Our love for God draws us:
To prayer
To worship Him
To gathering together with other believers
To confess our love for the Lord to believers and non-believer alike
To remember Him faithfully in the Lord’s Supper
To endure whatever comes our way if it is His will for us and for His glory
To flee from evil and the evil one
To forgive without reservation
To love our enemies
To lay our lives down for Him
All of this and much more is done out of a love driven or love drawn obedience; by obeying the two great commandments to their fullest.
In the OT the Lord displayed and great and unfailing love for Israel. He was constantly guiding them and calling them back to Himself when they would rebel against Him.
The Lord gave them the Law. The Law was specific. There were moral laws. There were laws for the governing of the nation, also known as civil laws.
There were laws for worship which were also known as ceremonial laws.
These laws were beneficial to the nation as long as their hearts were faithful to the Lord but otherwise they just became religious motions; motions that eventually became detestable in the sight of the Lord.
You remember (I hope) the message from January 1st when we talked about the Ten Lepers and from there went into the sacrificial ritual that was prescribed for the leper who was healed in the OT. It is found in Leviticus 14.
You can see from reading that Scripture that the Lord was very specific about the ceremonial rituals.
Now, the Pharisees of Jesus’ time had taken the moral law and just went to town on writing other laws in order to close loopholes which they perceived some might try to take in order to circumvent the law as given to Moses. This is what Jesus referred to repeatedly as, “your tradition”, “the tradition of the elders” and the “traditions of men”.
Perhaps the most notorious was their safe guarding of the fourth commandment regarding keeping the Sabbath holy.
Let me give you an example.
If I were a Jew before the time of Christ or even now I might come home before the beginning of the Sabbath and toss my wallet on the table. Once the Sabbath had started I would not be allowed to move my wallet because it is used for transacting business (muktzah). As a result the table also becomes muktzah and cannot be moved. However, if my Bible was on the table before I tossed my wallet onto the table then the table is not muktzah and I would then be able to move the table on the Sabbath.
This is not an extreme version as to where tradition or ritual can take a simple law of God in an attempt to protect the original law.
This Jewish law was actually in place at the time of Jesus and so we almost have a clash of civilizations; a total reorientation of how we intersect with God.
Not that God was changing but Jesus was revealing the true heart of the Father and reorienting the thinking and beliefs of the Jews.
Many of the Jews at the time of Christ had completely lost sight of their intended relationship with God in an effort to “keep the rules” or follow the rituals.
You see, for many Jews their religion had become a set of actions that could be accomplished externally with no internal spiritual transformation. It was a life of ritual without relationship.
Now, here’s an amazing thing. There are absolutely NO rituals prescribed in the New Testament!
There is salvation by belief/faith/grace that is evidenced by works of love and compassion for fellow believer and the unsaved but not prescribed rituals for such.
There is baptism as a testimony of the inner work of grace but no prescribed ritual of how it should be done or where it should be done; only that we baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” and to teach those who come to faith in Christ to observe all that Jesus commanded.
Matthew 18:19-20a
There is the Lord’s Supper which is to be done “in remembrance of Me”.
(Luke 22 & 1 Corinthians 11) Jesus simply gave thanks for the bread and the cup, broke the bread and passed it for all to partake, passed the cup for all to partake and said, “do this in remembrance of Me”.
Other than that there is no ritual for the Lord’s Supper in the Holy Bible.
There is prayer in the Bible and an example of prayer is even recorded by Jesus for His disciples. We also see prayers not only by Jesus but by the prophets in the OT and the apostles in the NT but we are never prescribed ritual prayers. We are to pray “at all times,” “in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18). We are to pray to the Father as modeled in the prayer Jesus gave as an example to the disciples and we are to pray in the authority of Jesus’ name and according to His will.
Never in the NT are we given a ritual prayer.
As I was researching this message I came across this verse:
Romans 8:26 AMP
“In the same way the Spirit [comes to us and] helps us in our weakness. We do not know what prayer to offer or how to offer it as we should, but the Spirit Himself [knows our need and at the right time] intercedes on our behalf with sighs and groanings too deep for words.”
God, the Holy Spirit, praying for us! Can you believe it?
That is marvelous beyond comprehension! What a God we serve! Glory to His name!!!
So, why are we talking about our personal relationship with God and about the rituals in the OT and about the fact that there are no rituals described in the NT?
Well, one of the rituals that much of the church of Jesus Christ practices is Lent.
Do we participate in Lent? Lent has taken on various forms over the centuries with different focuses.
Should we participate in Lent?
First we need to look at rituals.
Does the ritual conflict with the teaching of God’s Holy Word?
Fasting is certainly modeled and encouraged throughout the Bible! So, we should fast, right?
Abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesdays and Fridays during the Lenten season? Not in the Bible but not sinful either.
What is the purpose of the Lenten ritual?
To remind us of the suffering of Christ …
To draw us closer to Christ …
To prepare our hearts to celebrate the Sunday designated as Resurrection Sunday …
These are not only good things but very good things.
So, if these are very good things why don’t we observe Lent?
It is our hope and prayer as your co-pastors that each one of us would seek a closer relationship with the Lord every single day. That we would know Him better through His Word and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 2:15
It is our hope and prayer that each of us would automatically go to fasting and prayer when we feel the pull of sin in our lives and that we would be constantly searching our hearts to see if there is any wickedness hidden there.
It is our hope and prayer that we would celebrate with amazement the incarnation, the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus every day and especially on the Sabbath when we come together for worship.
You see, the Lenten observation is not sinful it is only a time specifically set aside when we are called to do what we should be doing on a daily basis, week after week, month after month and year after year.
However, here are the dangers involved with rituals.
When rituals are done hoping to gain favor with God by performing the actions without having the relationship with God. We will never be justified by actions without knowing Christ.
Take a look at Matthew 7:21-23 NIV
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.
“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and in Your name drive out demons and in Your name perform many miracles?’
“Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
If a ritual becomes so complex that I spend more time thinking, “Am I doing this right?” instead of, “Is this according to Your will and pleasing in Your sight?” then it is better if you stop and ask the Lord to correct your fast or your prayer or whatever He is calling you to do.
Now, we know that the church is compared to a marriage in the Bible. Just imagine every day taking a little card out of your pocket and reading, “Honey, I love you. You are the best. My life is blessed because you are in it and I would be lost without you.” Sounds good, huh? But, the rest of the day you don’t speak to your spouse, you don’t acknowledge that they exist.
The ritual wouldn’t cut it. Your marriage would be cold at best and would probably fall apart.
Relationship. Loving God and loving others according to His plans and purposes.
What a tender, merciful, loving Savior we have. He sees our need and He invites us to Himself.
Matthew 11:28-30 NIV
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Closing thoughts and invitation if the Holy Spirit leads.
Communion
