Greeting Members and Friends
It time once again for our weekly Sunday School preview so thanks for joining me and welcome back. The Summer Quarter entitled “Justice in the New Testament” focuses on ways God demonstrates His justice and ways His people should follow His example. The June unit is entitled “God is Just and Merciful” and has four sessions from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. This Sunday’s lesson is entitled “Jesus Teaches About Justice” or “More than Lip Service”.
This lesson is about placing the traditions, laws and rules of man before the commandments of God. When faced with the choice between civil or human law and God’s divine or moral law, we must always choose God’s law. Increasingly, the laws people are enacting reflect the will of man and not the will of God. People are allowing their own preferences and feelings to displace any obligation to uphold Biblical principles when crafting new law. When the scribes and pharisees called Jesus out for allowing His disciples to eat with unwashed hands that violated the traditions of the elders, he called them out for violating God’s law on how they treated their parents.
Jesus didn’t deny his disciples were transgressing the tradition of the elders which they placed a high priority on. But a transgression of a tradition of elders is not a sin. While some traditions are good and well-intended, they don’t have the force or weight of divine law and are not subject to divine judgement. Only man’s judgement applies to a manmade law or tradition. Jesus on the other hand pointed out to His accusers that they crafted a tradition that allowed them to break a God-given law to avoid honoring their parents. This tradition allowed them to take resources needed by their parents and set them aside if they claimed they were for a sacrifice or devoted to God. They got around God’s law by coming up with a law or tradition of their own making. He said that they talked a good talk, but did not walk what they talked.
Laws that allow perverted sexual relations, that put profits before people and the environment, enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor and needy, that disproportionally impact or target a group of people are laws that disregard God’s imperative to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. And just to take this where it rightfully belongs, the spirit or heart of a law is even more important than the letter of the law. If we show up for church on Sunday, we might be able to say we remembered the sabbath day. But the way in which we did it could very easily violate the spirit of the law if we didn’t want to come, got there late, didn’t participate, had our mind our other people, places and things, placed our change and left overs in the treasury of God and came out of a sense of obligation whether than one of worship and gratitude.
God isn’t impressed by what we say or the motions we go through just so we can say we did something. God looks at the total reason why and how we do what we do to determine if it was worthy of His praise and glory. Well, that’s all for this week’s preview. Be sure to join us in Sunday School this week for a fuller discussion of this lesson and the general topic of Justice in the New Testament. So, until then
Grace and peace
Pastor Jordan
