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Published: 21 January 2016

Leon Morris wrote, “Any system that puts its emphasis on rules and regulations all too easily degenerates into observance of requirements that may have been designed to help but became an end in themselves.”  We are returning to our study of Matthew this week and chapter 23 is a chapter of grieving woes.  The presence of irreligious legalism grieved Jesus’ heart.  What I’m learning however is not about the legalistic practices themselves and their rightness or wrongness but rather about the heart and our motives.  This is tricky business.  The Scribes and the Pharisees studied the Law and did their best to apply its good principles.  Their codification of the Law actually helped people figure out how to embrace God’s life.  But, their applications became an end in themselves and the “measuring stick” by which piety was measured.  As bad as that is, what is even worse is thinking we are better!  The legalism in question is actually a symptom of a deeper problem that is very likely present in people that are not classical legalists.  Jesus said little about the various specific practices but went to the heart of the matter—which is, the heart.  The insidious desire for recognition, affirmation and power is a problem deeper than a list of practices.  Jesus warned us of this problem in the Sermon on the Mount and this lesson resurfaced in a number of places throughout the gospels and in the epistles.  Those of us that grew up in fundamentalism can get rather smug over casting off our former restraints but be just as messed up in the heart as those with a list of “don’ts.”  The spirit competition, contempt, presumption and affirmation gratification is the deeper problem of which legalism is a symptom.  This work of grace is going to have to go deeper than the surface and it must touch places we didn’t know were there.  I think the pain will be good because He is a good, good Father and being liberated from the cancers of the darkened heart will be life-giving indeed.  “Search me O Lord and show me me…and thank You for being gentle.”

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Published: 14 January 2016

There are three main things I remember about 1984; I graduated from a tiny Bible College in rural Florida, our first child was born and I read my first book by Francis Schaeffer.  The book was written in 1979 but I didn’t have it until 1984.  The title was, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”  Even though abortion had been legal since 1973 I don’t remember thinking about it very much until I read that book.  I didn’t know anyone who had been to an abortion clinic and I never heard of a Crisis Pregnancy Center.  I grew up in church and I’m sure it was mentioned but it didn’t register with me for some reason.  What struck me about Schaeffer’s book was the way he unveiled the bigger problem.  Abortion, as evil as it is, is actually a symptom of a much bigger problem.  I suppose one of the reasons I don’t remember wrestling with the abortion issue earlier was my upbringing.  I believed human life had value and the taking of it was obviously wrong, who would argue with that?  However, I had a well formed presupposition that God was God and what He said was truth.  The problem, I learned, was that there was a significant presupposition that many people held opposite to that.  Schaeffer referred to it as “humanism---man as the measure of all things.”   Once God is removed, true-truth is removed, absolutes crumble and objective, transcendent reality is jettisoned in favor of a so called social morality.  In other words, society determines what is right and wrong.  Thus, values change with the majority.  Humanism is the presupposition for the acceptance of abortion as a “life-choice.”  We are seeing the effects of this drift today.  A Supreme Court that abandons objective reality redefines “humanity,” “marriage,” and even “gender.”  Culturally, we are drifting further and further from the Judeo-Christian ethic once espoused by the majority of the people in this country.  Valuing human life is right when the majority agrees and when it doesn’t!  Even though we are outnumbered and over half of the Supreme Court has “checked out” from reality, truth remains truth.  The taking of human life is still wrong.  Marriage between a man and woman is still the only right version and men should be men and women should be women as God designed.  How we respond to the culture of humanism is the question.  What kind of people must we become to be salt and light in this madness?  This is the invitation of Jesus…more about that on Sunday.