Tuesday 23 October 2012

LIP SERVICE

I was talking to Mr. Paleri at the Trinity Church Resource Center last weekend, and our conversation was centered on the following verse from scripture:
The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men Isaiah 29:13
Of course we cannot ignore the place in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus throws the very scripture at the Pharisees and teachers of the law!
Mat 15: 1-9 (extracts only) Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
… Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
…You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
   They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.
The approach of the Pharisees, in acts of religion and devotion, in praying to him, and praising of him, and expressing great love and affection for him, and zeal for his cause and interest were no different from our present ones!  
I admire men and women of God who live a consistent lifestyle of ‘walking their talk’. I myself have become very sensitive to the words I speak (even the songs I sing), for fear of loving God outwardly, with my lips and mouth only!
While the Pharisees’ bodies were presented before him, and their mouths and lips were moving to him, their affections were not set upon him, nor the desires of their souls unto him, nor had they any real concern for his glory! Their worship of God was not according to the prescription of God, and his revealed will; but according to the traditions of the elders, which they preferred to the word of God!
A deep and honest examination of conscience will reveal how ‘far our own hearts are’ from God!

1 comment:

  1. POSTED BY PASTOR 'D' - Please ask your friend Mr. Paleri if he has a book in stock called "The Grace Awakening" by Charles Swindoll. In my opinion, I rate this book as one of the top 5 most important Christian books written in the past 50 years. The book deals with 2 types of Christians: Grace-givers and Grace-killers. The latter are born-again Pharisees, people who spend their time being judgmental about others. But Jesus tells us to judge no one except ourselves. Of course, there are obvious examples of people whose conduct is glaringly and consistently different from their preaching. On the other hand, we are all sinners, and no one is perfect. The Pharisees would have excluded Noah as a drunkard, Abraham as a liar, who had sex with his housemaid, Jacob as a deceiver, David as a murderer and an adulterer, Peter and the other apostles as betrayers, Paul as a murderer, etc. Did these people fail to walk the talk? Yes!

    But God's amazing grace, and the almighty blood of Christ redeems them, and sets them up as the crème de la crème among Christians. Do we know the precise details of other people's lives, heart-attitudes, etc.? I have had to minister to sisters who were forced, at certain times in their lives, to sell their bodies, simply to find money to feed their children and family members! This is why every form of judgmentalism is to me the worst kind of sin. We are all sinners, full of spiritual pride, and have no right to judge others, except, as I said, those who would drag other people into loss of salvation by their consistent sin and false teaching.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your feedback!