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Obedience in Mediocrity vs. Sacrifice in Action

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Hosea 6:6 NET

6 For I delight in faithfulness, not simply in sacrifice;
I delight in acknowledging God, not simply in whole burnt offerings.

I’ve been learning this in an unhappily repetitive way lately. It’s come in the form of eager children and eager adults. People tend to really like to please you or really get your approval when it comes to doing things that they enjoy.

The bummer is when we have to do something for others that we don’t really enjoy, we aren’t so eager to serve them!

Take me and my timecard at work, for instance. (I’m throwing myself under the bus here, because the more I think of other people teaching me this, I realize I need to see how I am doing this myself!) It’s easy for me to come up with all kinds of cool new ways of doing stuff, of innovating new processes and thinking about how we can improve our systems.

But I can’t fill out my timecard.

It’s simple! It’s easy! It’s something I need to do FAITHFULLY!

But day in and day out, it’s easier for me to sacrifice and do all kinds of things that are above and beyond the call of duty than it is to be faithful in the little things that my work needs me to do and just fill out my ^&%#@! timecard.

This is where Hosea was. The Jewish people went out of their way to improve their burnt offerings and their festivals and their sacrifices. They probably had banners that said, “Torah 2.0: Commitment, Caring, and Charisma” or some such thing.

But they sucked at the tiny tasks that required daily faithfulness.

It’s just not exciting to do the small and simple things.
It’s just not exciting to go after a mediocre calling of being close to God in secret.
It’s just not exciting to walk in simple obedience to God without having an amazing sacrifice to show for it.

The thing is, God loves ME more than any sacrifice I bring. He knows me inside and out, with my twisted motives, my lazy-butt motivations and my desire for attention and glamour. I might as well come clean and not try to impress Him with any fancy sacrifices but just do the simple & mediocre things He calls me to do.

Because God’s mediocrity is greater than man’s excitement.

You Say That To All The Deities

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Hosea 2:11

 I will put an end to all her celebration:
her annual religious festivals,
monthly new moon celebrations,
and weekly Sabbath festivities –
all her appointed festivals.

Look at what is on this list–It’s all of the religious things that Israel was doing!

Somebody might say, “Wait, didn’t God ask them to do all of these religious things?” Yep, He did, but they were all for the reason of drawing closer to the one true God and they were doing these things for every deity on their list! They went all over looking for spiritual beings and the sacrifices or activities that would please them!

God is Jealous

There are a lot of people that don’t like the idea that God is a jealous God. The idea of being jealous or selfish seems controlling, limiting.

Honestly, I think people don’t like the idea of being controlled because they haven’t had somebody stick up for them. If you’ve been oppressed–and I mean really oppressed–and then you’ve had somebody step in and stick up for you, you appreciate jealousy.

Nobody likes to be the damsel in distress, but that’s what we are. Even our Christian books teach us how to be the manly-man hero and save our families/communities/churches that are the ones in distress. We are the ones that need to be saved, not the saviors. We are the ones that need spiritual acts done to us by our Lord, not the ones that need to do spiritual acts for our Lord.

May we end our religious hobbies and let our savior do what He is mighty to do–Save!

Righteousness and Rightness from God

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Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it

The model of rightness, of what people aught to be, was shown through the Law. It WASN’T the Law, but it was shown through the Law. It was never intended to make people righteous, but it was to show what righteousness was. Now Jesus has come to show what righteousness is. Righteousness is now shown to us as a living, breathing, walking person.

The Law and the prophets bore witness to Jesus’ coming and that the righteousness of God would be revealed in a way that it would actually change people, but it wasn’t in a new set of rules or a new Law. The life that Jesus lived was the righteousness of God. Once He died, the Holy Spirit, the spiritual form of righteousness on display, came to be in all who would believe what Jesus said.

Righteousness is a tricky word. It’s hard to know what it means outside of religious use. Righteousness is like true. If a board isn’t warped, it’s true–it’s righteous. If an instrument is in tune it’s righteous. I saw one dictionary define it as “how it ought to be.” That is pretty good. (That is a righteous definition of righteous!)

Look at Romans 3:21 again in light of that.

Romans 3:21 But now the way things ought to be according to God has been shown and made visible and tangible apart from a list of rules, although all of the rules in the Old Testament and all of the Prophets point to this way things ought to be.

Romans 1 and the Created Laws

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Back in v. 5 Paul talks about the “obedience of faith” which hints at obedience not coming from the Law. When Paul quotes Habakkuk, it’s kind of out of context for what Habakkuk is talking about, but it still holds true. Judgment was coming on Israel because of their lack of faith in God. They were turning to idols for help. The ones that turned to the Lord for help were some of the remnant that survived. In the same way, the ones that turn to God who gives grace will also survive.

There are a lot of ways that the traditions of the Pharisees became a created thing. I feel like I’ve written about this before…?

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
(Romans 1:25 ESV)

Isn’t this exactly what we do when we make up a law like “close your eyes when you pray” or “make it to church on time?” I see a lot of those rules as I have kids and I hear them correct each other for different things. Like hearing a kid say “Don’t say God! That’s a bad word!” and correcting them to know that “God” is a very very good word, and that’s why you save it for special things.

Customs are what they are, and there is a time and a place for following them, but they should never ever replace faith in God. We do not pray before we eat because we have to, but because it’s a socially acceptable time to just bust out into corporate prayer during the day. Sometimes people get sooo uncomfortable when people eat without praying. I don’t want my kids to be those people.
The obedience that comes from faith is one that is thankful, with or without a recited prayer before a meal. The obedience that comes from faith is one that sings songs of worship whether or not anyone else starts the song. The obedience that comes from faith is one that gives not to fulfill a budget but to fulfill a mandate, or even an inner stirring of God that says “Make this happen!”
There are a lot of moments when Jesus deliberately broke a custom or a traditional teaching just to crack the rock-hard hearts of the religious people. Most of His healing was on the Sabbath, which got all kinds of panties in a wad. I was really good at breaking customs when I was working cross-culturally, because I could just do what was normal for me and shake a custom.

What has become more difficult is to shake customs in my home-culture, because those truly call for a Spirit-led action.

Punishment Without Shame

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I was reading John 19 about Jesus and Pilate and followed a reference from a friend to Deut 25.

Deut. 25:3 but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes.

Punishment under Levitical law was not intended to degrade one person in the eyes of another. Rules like this were in place to deliberately keep someone from being degraded. A notion of punishment without degradation seems so foreign to us. In our law system, the degradation begins with the mug-shot on the web version of the newspaper. then comments and mockery are allowed toward the person. There were 4 people arrested for dealing & making meth yesterday in Evansville. As usual, they looked absolutely miserable. When I saw the article there were already 4 comments under the article about how the people looked.

It seems really foundational to understand that God never desired shame to be carried along with punishment.