Today’s reading is Revelation 3:1-4:11.

Okay, okay, for those who come to the blog everyday, you know this was actually yesterday’s reading. However, I spent the morning getting our Suburban fixed and for some reason couldn’t access the places network even though it said I was on it. Then when I was finally about to be able to go to my office and put up the posts, Ryan, my seven year old, wiped out on his bike and I had to get him to the ER for stitches. He’s good, just swollen. 

Anyway, I wanted to get all the Revelation posts up. I know I’m writing this a day late, but I have scheduled it to show the proper day for when it should have been posted just so it will be in order.

God is Worthy

Remember that we learned Revelation has a message that is to be kept (Revelation 1:3). The message in Revelation 4 is pretty clear. God is worthy of honor. Just as the elders, creatures, angels, and hosts of heaven honored, glorified, and worshipped God. I need to do the same. 

I shouldn’t wait until Sunday to meet with the congregation to worship and glorify God. I need to do this on my own repeatedly, continually, and consistently. I need to prostrate my spirit before God and declare His great worthiness, holiness, justice, mercy, love, etc. 

He was, is and is to come. He created all things. He runs the universe. He saved us through His Son Jesus. He is the great God who is worthy of praise and glory. I must give it to Him today.

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC

P.S. What did you get out of today’s reading?

Interestingly, I hear all kinds of accusations about the Pharisees. Today, evangelicals and ecumenicalists are free with pointing the finger at all those awful, rotten Pharisees out there. Of course, the Pharisee accusation usually means LEGALIST. I find that interesting when we read Matthew 23. This is the most in depth rebuke of the Pharisees and yet not once does Jesus rebuke them for being legalists. Notice instead what he does actually rebuke them for.

1. Not practicing what they preach.

In Matthew 23:3-4, Jesus said the folks should do what the Pharisees taught. But not do what they did because they didn’t practice what they preached. Further, they would lay all kinds of burdens on the shoulders of other people but wouldn’t lift the finger to lift these burdens themselves. Now don’t read into this. Jesus didn’t rebuke them for laying heavy burdens on anyone. He rebuked them for not lifting the heavy burdens themselves.

2. They were self-seeking.

According to Matthew 23:5-15, Jesus says the Pharisees weren’t doing what they did out of humble service to God so that He might be glorified. They were doing things so others might see them and praise them for being so spiritual. Again, Jesus didn’t rebuke them for being legalistic about what they taught or practiced but for their motivation behind what they did and taught. This self-seeking led to some pretty awful results. First, their self-seeking caused them to lead a double life. On the one hand, they were taking advantage of widows. On the other, they were making long prayers for a pretense. The second negative consequence was their self-seeking caused them to make followers of themselves instead of followers of God. Thus, when they found a proselyte, the person did not get in a right relationship with God but became twice the child of hell as the Pharisees.

3. They were dishonest.

Perhaps Matthew 23:16-22 is where some folks find legalism. Certainly, they are drawing a bunch of lines on when to actually keep their word. But Jesus is not rebuking them for their lines. He is rebuking them for their dishonesty. He wants them to simply tell the truth, not make up rules about when they have to tell the truth. Further, notice that this issue of line drawing is not about adding burdens of greater weight about telling the truth but about trying to figure out how to get out of the real height of honesty God demands. I find it interesting that so many want to ridicule the Pharisees for making serving God harder, when here they were trying to get out of what God had commanded.

4. Disobeying the weightier matters of the law.

In Matthew 23:23-24, Jesus rebuked them for attending to minor details while they disregarded the more important parts of the law. I find this one intriguing too because many like to use the figures of speech used in these verses to claim Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for legalism. This is odd since they are actually trying to avoid keeping the law here. We should notice something pointed in these verses. Jesus did not rebuke them for keeping minor details. In fact, he says they should have done that. Rather, He rebuked them because they did not keep the weightier matters. He did not rebuke them for straining the gnats. He rebuked them for swallowing the camels. But what was Jesus’ overall complaint for them? It was not that they were getting too legalistic with God’s law. It was that they were not legalistic enough. They weren’t keeping the Law well enough.

5. Hypocrisy

In Matthew 23:25-32, Jesus got down to the major rebuke against the Pharisees. I know we expect it to finally be legalism. But, it’s not. It’s hypocrisy. In actuality, we already saw this building in the other rebukes, but now Jesus just spells it out, repeatedly calling them hypocrites. They simply worked on the outside and not on the inside. This doesn’t mean the outside doesn’t matter. Rather, Jesus explains if we get the heart right, then the outside will follow. The Pharisees, however, since they were self-seeking were only focused on whatever would make them look good, not would actually let them be good. Sadly, this hypocrisy led to one major consequence. When real men of God came in their midst, they persecuted and even killed them.

As Jesus ended this discussion, He pointed out the Pharisees would be judged. But He never mentioned legalism. In fact, I’m actually still waiting for a rebuke in the entire New Testament where the Pharisees were actually condemned or rebuked because they were legalists. Seems to me that is merely a modern statement because so many people today want to get away from being held accountable by a real system of law. They seemingly want to make Christianity a kind of free for all that says we are all allowed to do whatever we want in the name of Jesus and no one has the right to draw any lines. After all, look at how Jesus rebuked those pesky Pharisees for their legalism. Yet, I keep trying to find the passage where Jesus actually rebuked them for that. 

Can you find it? If you do, let me know. Until then…

Keep reading and keep the faith,

ELC

I Corinthians 10:31 says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (ESV). 

I have heard others and I have often just come to this verse and said, “See, everything we do has to glorify God.” While that is the final logical point of the verse, just making the statement actually misses Paul’s point in context. 

From I Corinthians 8 to this point, Paul has been discussing issues of conscience and liberty. He had been trying to wade through the issues of eating meats and especially meats offered to idols. Through those chapters we learned that knowledge puffs up and love edifies. We learned that we should take care not to offend the conscience of our brethren. Further, we even learned we should take care with our actions because of the conscience of unbelievers (cf. I Corinthians 10:28). 

Within this context, Paul is not just making the statement that everything we do should glorify God. Rather, he is saying that as we consider how to pursue our liberties and how to preserve our conscience and the conscience of others, the determining factor is which choice will glorify God. It will glorify God if I eat and give thanks to Him. However, it will not glorify God even if I give thanks, if it causes a brother or sister to stumble. It will not glorify God if it causes an outsider to believe I pay homage to an idol. I may have the liberty to eat whatever I want in the strictest sense, but I must not simply consider my hunger and my culinary tastes. I must consider whether God will be glorified by pursuing this liberty.

Finally, as Paul continued, he pointed out that glorifying God meant not giving offense to either the Jews or the Greeks. In other words, don’t pursue your Christian liberties in a way that causes Jews or Greeks to judge you as immoral or ungodly. Don’t invite a Jew into your home and set pork chops before him (especially if you are a Jewish Christian, they will view you as a traitor to God and will not listen to a thing you have to say about Jesus). Don’t eat something a Gentile gives you if he makes a point to let you know it was sacrificed to some idol. He may think you honor that idol and will not learn the idol is no god at all. Don’t give offense to the church of God. In other words, don’t cause your brothers and sisters who are not as knowledgeable to stumble. 

Then he concludes, that instead of seeking his own advantage, he is seeking the salvation of others. This actually gets us back to yesterday’s theme. What glorifies God the most? The salvation of the lost. 

Thus, the point about glorifying God whether we eat or drink or whatever we do is that we must not seek our own advantage, but serve others so they can be saved and God glorified. Yes, once we recognize that point, we get to the usual statement that this means everything we do must glorify God, but it is important to actually notice the logic that gets us there. Because only then do we actually learn what Paul wants us to do to glorify God. He wants us to be all things to all people that by all means we might save some.

Keep the faith and keep reading,

ELC