When I was a kid there were no stores open in my hometown in
the south on Sundays. There were very
few things you could do or purchase and I recall one family in my neighborhood
who were not allowed to go to movies or do much of anything on Sunday. For a kid it was an awful thing to imagine
being cooped up in the house sitting doing nothing but going to church in the
morning and in the evening. Today,
nearly everything except Chick-fil- A is open on Sunday. As a culture we have changed dramatically in
my lifetime with respect to Sabbath issues.
America is not an analog for Israel but is the church? In this prophecy Amos blasts the nation for
its Sabbath observance. They keep the
commandment with their actions but the Lord knows that their hearts aren't in
it, it is nothing more than an inconvenience and interruption of business. It is for this that they are condemned
here. What is our attitude towards
Sabbath and what should it be?
Jesus pronounces woes on scribes, Pharisees, rabbis, all the
leaders of the people as they have exalted themselves to a place where they are
between the people and God. They have
become the arbiters of truth, the only ones who truly understand and can
interpret the Word. There is a place in
the church for teachers and leaders but not the kind who discourage others from
their own study of the Word. A few years
ago I was going to preach and the Gospel lesson was from one of these
"woes" pronounced by Jesus against the leaders. I looked at a commentary and it said that
Jesus never said these things, it was simply Matthew getting out his hatred of
the leaders who had ostracized him from the community since he was a tax
collector. The passage began with the
words, "Jesus said", so what this commentator was saying to us was
that Jesus didn't say these things, in order to know that the text was lying
you needed some special scholarly knowledge.
Without any apparent sense of irony he had placed himself directly in
the sights of the passage as one who had exalted himself for without him to
guide us we would have thought Jesus said these things. The Word of God is plain in its meaning if we
pray about the meaning and allow Him to enlighten and enliven our minds. We must come with faith to the Word, however,
not the eye of unbelief and doubt.
John saw this vision and knew it was real and
frightening. He knew that this one, this
son of man, was more than a man like himself and fell to his knees in
fear. That is and should be our attitude
towards the things of God, just like Isaiah learned in the temple that day when
God showed up and the angels proclaimed His holiness. The Word of God is that which first speaks of
our ruin for sin in order to reveal His grace in forgiving that sin. In the letter to Ephesus the word begins very
encouragingly, they are dedicated to truth, right interpretation of the Word
matters to this community. The problem
is that their primary interest is in being right and they have lost the love
that characterized them at the beginning.
It is easy to become cold and without love with respect to the Word when
it becomes the Law for us. We must
always allow the Word to be living and active and not something we have
mastered if we are to keep that sense of humility and to keep the Word in the
way that Jesus did.
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