Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…I know some of you are reading this now, because when you saw the title, your first thought was, “That can’t be right…is that what he meant to say?” But rest assured, it is exactly what I mean to say. When Christ came as our Redeemer, the last thing He intended to do was start a new religion. In fact, a great deal of His time on this earth was spent trying to straighten out the religion He was born into. But He did come to carry this very specific message: The Kingdom has come! If you want to be part of God’s Kingdom, follow Me!
The Jewish religious leaders (the Pharisees) added 613 additional “man-made” laws (Mitzvot) that were intended to help the people successfully follow the Ten Commandments. The aim and concern of the Pharisees was not only strict obedience to the Law of Moses, but also obedience to their additional laws. Consequently, those “legal blinders” kept them from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah that was prophesized throughout the Torah. (This is a term that can be confusing. In its most narrow sense, it can refer to the first five books of the Bible – also referred to as the Pentateuch, but it can also refer to the entire Jewish Bible, or the Old Testament.)
The contention that developed between the keepers of the Law and Jesus stemmed from the fact that He did not adhere to their man-made laws, nor to the Jewish traditions. He healed on the Sabbath; He associated and ate with tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners; He and His disciples did not adhere to ceremonial washing or fasting, and Jesus claimed that His authority came from God, causing the Pharisees to accuse Him more than once of blasphemy.
The Jewish religion of Jesus’ day was indicative of religions today. Regardless of whether it is Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism or New Age religion, they all have one common element: it is about “works”, meaning it’s about trying to earn God’s favor and acceptance by doing “this”, or not doing “that”. In other words, it’s about our performance.
Christianity, however, is different from every other religion or philosophy in that it is not about works; Christianity is about a relationship between God and His Proudest Creation. In the Garden of Eden, He communed with the first man and woman; He was their friend, and He provided for, and satisfied, all of their needs.
It is important to note here that God created us not only for a here-and-now relationship, but for an eternal relationship. As we are told in Ephesians 1:4-5,10 “Long ago, even before He created the world (and Man), God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy (sin free, set aside for a sacred purpose) and without fault in His eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and this gave Him great pleasure. And this is His plan: At just the right time He will bing everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.”
That passage is very important for two reasons. First it shows God’s unconditional, unending and unfailing love for us, and it also shows that His plan, even before He created Man, was to provide a Redeemer to do for us what He knew we were going to be incapable of doing for ourselves. Sin (living to please “self” rather than God) proved to be the dilemma of Mankind, and Romans 5:6 is the report card concerning our best effort at overcoming that dilemma. “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time, and died for us sinners.” Wow! That is quite an indictment! And what was just the right time? When we were utterly helpless to overcome our sin-nature!
God saw what sin did to His first paradise and to His Proudest Creation. Therefore, He set the bar very high for entering into eternity with Him. He said in Leviticus 20:26: “You must be holy because I, the Lord, am holy.” I have set you apart from all other people to be My very own.” In other words, if you are stained with sin, you will not be allowed to enter into His presence. “And why is that?” you ask. Because sin spreads, contaminates, kills and destroys. Remember, the world you are living in right now began as paradise, but when sin entered the picture, the picture became contaminated. That is not going to happen in the New Jerusalem. “As we are told in Revelation 21:27, “Nothing evil will be allowed to enter…but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” (Meaning those who are in Christ.)
The message of Christianity is very simple; “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He came to die on the cross, shedding His blood as payment for your sins”? If you believe this and accept what He did for you, you will be saved! The key words here are “If you believe.” This is the difference-maker with Christianity. It is not our works that make us worthy and acceptable in His sight; we are worthy and acceptable in His sight because we believed and accepted His Gift of Grace.
Christianity is about our relationship with God/Jesus. In the Old Testament, God declared people righteous because of their faith, meaning they believed in Him and the truth of His Word. Genesis 15:6 tells us, “Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord declared him righteous because of his faith.” Jesus told His disciples, “If you follow My teachings, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Notice that Jesus was very specific about what teachings to follow; He said, “My teachings!” Therefore, the question becomes, “What did Jesus teach?” Well…He taught about love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, compassion, and acceptance. He also taught about the Father, and He taught about service to our fellow man. When our minds and our hearts are filled with these qualities, we are pleasing to God and worthy of his bountiful blessings.
Unfortunately, some Christian religions have fallen into the trap that snared the Jewish religion of Jesus’ day. (Ref. to paragraph 2.) God called Moses to the top of Mt. Sinai to give him the Ten Commandments. Bear in mind, the reason for giving these commandments was three-fold. The first reason was for civil law. If the Israelites followed these commandments in the wilderness, that would prove to be the blueprint for establishing civil order rather than civil disobedience. The second reason was to reveal His standard. This is the behavior He expects from His people. If they followed these commandments, they would be in line with His will, and would not reap the consequences of yielding to their sin-nature. (That same nature is referred to by our culture as “human nature”.) The third reason for the commandments was to prove to Man that he could not live according to the Ten Commandments through his own effort.
Since the Ten Commandments present the ultimate challenge to our sin-nature (or human-nature), many Christian religions have developed around a church doctrine. A doctrine is the written body of teachings, usually by a religious group, that are accepted by the group. That in itself is not necessarily bad, unless the church teaching begins to convolute the original teachings of God. I only mention this because since the earliest compilation of Biblical teachings, there has always been a person, or a group of people, who have taken God’s message and spun it in a way that promoted a particular agenda or point of view. That practice was certainly prevalent in the early days of the church, and both Jesus and Apostle Paul had to contend with that matter.
Our culture today has drifted so far away from the teachings of God/Jesus, that many churches have begun spinning the truth of God’s Word to make it more appealing to the masses. False doctrines are plentiful. Some of the New Age presentations include the Prosperity Message, or the message of a loving god who in the end will welcome everyone into Heaven; the message that we have all the power we need within us to achieve all of our dreams, or the message that if we are good, kind, compassionate and giving, God will reward us with eternal life. All of that might sound good, and it might feel warm and fuzzy, but unfortunately these are all false doctrines. (Meaning to be in conflict with God’s Word.)
“God said, ‘Let Us make people in Our image to be like Ourselves. (us and ourselves are referring to the Trinity) So God created people in His own image; He patterned them after Himself, male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27) At the end of the sixth day of creation, God presented His Proudest Creation: Man. He gave to Man something He did not give to the other animals created before us. He gave us a brain for rational thinking. “So, why did He do that?” you may ask. Because the only way we could enter into that all-important relationship was to choose to do so. We are the only animal equipped for rational, logical thinking; all other animals live by instinct. God proclaimed this to be very good.
Then God spoke through prophets, and gave His Word to Man so we could come to know Him. He revealed what He thinks, what He thinks about us, what His plans are for us, what His standard is, and what He expects from us. He also revealed His promises, then told us how to receive those promises. God knew that before we could enter into a relationship with Him, we would have to come to know Him. This was all part of His salvation plan that was in place before He created the world and Man. He knew that His Proudest Creation would need a Savior to save him from himself. Therefore, His Gift of Grace (Jesus as the sacrificial lamb to pay the penalty for our sins) would be THE answer to this dilemma. No other religion or philosophy can make such an offering. To be in Christ is to be part of that eternal relationship that includes God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and all other Christ-followers. Thank You, Jesus, for saving me!
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May God Bless You…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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