Sidestepping God

And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!  Mark 7:9 (NIV)

They had come to prove to themselves and to the world that this Man Jesus, could not be from God.  He and His renegade Disciples were stepping over the boundaries at every turn.  They were not following what the church people knew to be Godly conduct.  Yet Jesus is not to be fooled.  Any other person would have to stand and dispute with them using the same tactics, texts and religious jargon to debate with them, but not the Son of God.

Jesus was walking around in a body like ours.  God had done something miraculous that only He could possibly perform in sending us His Son.  But this Son of His Father was not entirely like us.  His heritage was different.  He was connected to a powerful Family and had Spirit and blood flowing through Him which moved Him to higher purposes.  It gave Him “other” power and qualities.  He was Man, but a Man tapped into the Divine.  He did not need to stoop to a lowly debate.  When He saw duplicity, and He sees everything, He exposed it for what it was.  He could not tolerate it and spoke out against this offense to His Father.

So Jesus turned on them.  He wanted to show them and us, that before we point the accusing finger at another child of God, we had better make sure there is no deceit to be found within ourselves first.  Unfortunately where we find most often this holier-than-thou attitude is within religious circles.  It is here where we surround ourselves with the all-important work of lifting up God, where we least expect to find selfish or worldly minded ways popping up.  But we are humans and we were born with it in our nature.

The moment one of us takes our eyes off Jesus for whatever reason, even if that reason is to dedicate ourselves to the work of God, we leave a window open in our soul.  Some dark and mysterious force is sure to be waiting for that window of opportunity and slips in without our knowing.  It is these forces which work in connection with our tainted souls and the evil world we live in, to deceive our very selves.  Without even realizing it, our intentions become compromised and we set off to do the work of the Lord, but for motives of our own or other influenced sources.

Jesus speaks out against this affront to God, and attacks the Pharisees.  They had let themselves fall to such a despicable thing as to look away from God to assert their preferred ways.  However, in being human we have the tendency to be Pharisees in this respect as well.  So we should take the Lord seriously as He tries to weed the deceit and fallen tendencies from us.  The Pharisees did not take kindly to Jesus poking a finger at them and in the end they had Him killed.  We too most certainly will not like to include ourselves and think that we might have let this same attitude grow up unawares within us.  We will resist the idea that our form of worship and our ways might be sidestepping the will of God.

But it is time that we went to our knees instead of smart at the insinuation.  It would be far more beneficial in the long run to pull a little closer while we have the chance.  Only there in His Presence and in the full light of His righteousness, will we be able to see any duplicity hidden within us.

Dear Lord, You could not stand to see men fool themselves and turn to anything other than the Father in honesty.  We too, who would be His children, would not like to find that happen with us.  We love You and would like to open our hearts today.  If we are sincere enough, You may come into our hearts with the full light of the Spirit of God.  In that light, no sidestepping will go unnoticed. Come, please come today.

Amen