Hello again!
This is what God gave me today in His word:
And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:6-8)
We’re presented here with one thing Jesus, rather self-evidently, hates: lip-worship. He hates when people praise Him only with their mouths and not with their actions. These are the people who prefer holding to the “traditions of men,” then to hold to what God wants. i.e. Those who, as a tradition, go to Church, yet don’t experience any change in the way they live their lives. Those who read their bibles every day, yet, as James put it, after looking in the mirror and seeing how dirty they are, walk away unchanged. Those who are ‘fake’, or merely external, Christians. It’s the same as if we were trying to love God with what we say, instead of what we do:
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth. (1 John 3:18)
Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning going to Church or reading the Bible! Those are very good things, and should be done regularly. But you’re wasting your time if you go to a Church, listen for an hour, then leave unchanged. Likewise you’re wasting your time if you read the Bible, but don’t do what it tells you to do, or just plain out read it with a closed mind… To put it another way: the Bible is useless to you, as is Church, as is meeting with other believers, if you don’t grow by it.
The point being this: either we must ‘do all things to the Lord’, by growing as Christians in doing them, or not do them at all.
You are Loved!
Joshua Cleveland
