20 January 2014 - all in

20 January 2014 - all in

“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”

We can't be half-way Christians.  We need to be all in.  It isn't enough to talk the talk.  We have to live it.  It isn't enough to pick and choose.  We need to accept the entire truth wholeheartedly.

We can't be like Saul who says “I did indeed obey the LORD", and proceeds to qualify that statement with how he did no such thing: 

But from the spoil the men took sheep and oxen,
the best of what had been banned,
to sacrifice to the LORD their God in Gilgal.”

He glosses over his disobedience with some spiritual rationale.  But it is not God's rationale.  Obedience needs to come before sacrifice.  Obedience is the only valid framework for spiritual acts.

“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your burnt offerings are before me always.

People ask why the disciples of Jesus do not fast.  The sacrifice of fasting can be good, but only when it issues from obedience.  Sometimes it is not appropriate.  When the bridegroom is with us we cannot fast.  Sacrifice can be twisted to our own ends if we do it for other reasons than obedience.  It can become something which builds pride rather than destroying it.

Saul risks tainting the nation by not destroying the Amalekites completely.  It is precisely what Jesus warns about when he tells us that new wine must be kept in new wineskins.  We not only count on Jesus for the substance of new life but also for the entire framework into which it fits.  His paradigm is new.  It will not fit into older externalities.  Only the paradigm of the life he of obedience which he lives can give shape to the grace he pours out.

He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”

This is how obedience and sacrifice come together in Jesus.  He is completely given over to the Father's will.  He doesn't hold on to anything for his own sake.  He humbles himself taking human form and obediently accepts even death on the cross (cr. Phi. 2).  Because he does this his name is exulted above every name.  Therefore in his name we are allowed to share both his obedience and his unreserved offering of himself.  As we read in Hebrews chapter 13:

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.

This gives context to our attempts to hold on to things from our lives before we become Christians.  It gives context to the apparent goods which the secular world can supply.  It gives context to ecumenism.  The context it gives doesn't mean there is nothing useful in these sources.  It does mean that the framework for judging must be obedience and prior commitment to the truth of revelation.

If we are obedient, if we are upright, we will see God show his "saving power".  This is the deepest desire of our hearts.