Sunday, 3/8/2015

“I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?” 

~ C.S. Lewis 

DEUTERONOMY 5-7

Moses reviews the commandments and gives warnings and instructions to the objective and mission of the Israelites.

4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.^a 5Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

MARK 12:1-27 

13Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax^b to Caesar or not? 15Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.”16They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

17Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. 

JOURNAL

Again Jesus is quick to separate the worldly and the spiritual.  The Pharisees speak truth when they affirm all that Jesus represents...he is not swayed by people and their position, he always speaks truth.  His response is also true in calling them out for their motives.  Jesus does not mix words.  In this statement Jesus is also making it clear that his intention is not to overturn the political environment.  His objective is not to create a worldly kingdom.  Which is why he says...give back to Caesar what is his.  

I often am compelled to think too often in terms of what is right and wrong in this world.  My objective often easily shifts to righting wrongs and longing to make the world...my version of Heaven.  At it's core, I am not trusting God but desiring to force things into becoming what I want.  If I think back to Jesus and all the power he possessed.  He could have changed the world.  He could have called down angels, took power, righted all wrongs, eliminated illness and firmly and without question established his kingdom on earth.  Yet he didn't!  That speaks directly to my own trite desires and wishes and truly how flawed they are...

If I go back to God's commandment of the Israelites...to love God with everything and all that I am.  It does not say to first make sure everyone else is obeying God and loving him.  The beauty of God's commands is that it always starts first with our own hearts...then it extends only to others out of a desire to see them accept God's love...not out of a desire to benefit from God's changing their heart.

1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

 (2 Timothy 4:1-5)