An Example of Religion

An Example of Religion

6/4/13




You hear of the concept of Religion in almost a daily setting.  One will also hear that there is a difference between having a Religion and having a relationship with God, or I hope that you hear this conceptual difference.  There are plenty of examples within the Bible to support the difference and it would seem that the tabernacle leaders of the day would have caught on to God’s message with the appearance of Jesus’ humanly character.  But as the story goes these people chose to accept old religious practices over the relationship aspect of God’s heart, and look what their actions led to.

When one reads about the times of Jesus it cannot be ignored that there were different classes of society.  And these different classes made up the different markets within the society.  Businesses, merchants, bankers, tax collectors, priests, etc all made up what we would call the aristocracy group of today’s definitions.  Ever since I could have a grasp on the words of the Bible I have found it fascinating that man would vault himself into a priestly aristocracy level and then execute the ways of God through this human acknowledgment.  However, we humans did this and we have thrived in our own embellishing ideas that priests, high priests, archbishops, kings and presidents all should fall within this category.

The high priest and priest during Jesus’ day were literally terrified of Him in every capacity.  They would sit and listen to His words and then cowardly ask Him devious questions in order to try and rile the people against Him.  They had no intentions of actually listening to what He had to say and then applying those concepts, words, and ways into their lives, which meant that there would be no way that the priests would ever speak about these concepts to their congregations.  The priests had no choice but to listen to what Jesus because Jesus was free to speak to others but the priests made it very clear that when they had the opportunity they would seek revenge, in the name of God, against Him.

So this means that the priests and high priests had no concept of the true bloodline of Jesus, nor did they contemplate what their actions would accomplish in the years to come.  It seems ironic that the ones who initiated the capture, torture, and death of our savior would ever recognize that this plan had already been authorized thousands of years before the priest’s personal and egotistical, gloating times in life.  The Bible never mentions it but one must wonder if the priests ever came to the realization of what actually transpired with the death and resurrection of Christ.  In short, the priests did not comprehend that the bloodline of Christ is actually Holy and flowed through human veins as a sign of restoration between God and man.  And with that said, they also denied the ability of God to create a child within a human being in order to seal this restoration process and to set it into motion according to life itself.  In other words they placed God into their own little box and confined His actions to the human level.

This really should not come as a surprise to anyone since the actions of the priests were strictly in concordance with human thinking.  It is not normal for one to have been conceived from a spiritual origin and ten walk amongst the people of the world, then go and claim concepts that totally go against everything that you have been taught and believe.  The priest did only what was natural and that was to choose Religion over relationship and it was interesting to see how they responded to their own actions.

It was easy for the priest to see the tedious and methodical laws that they had established over the people to be used in their line of questioning when Jesus performed deeds that did not follow them directly.  They failed to see that the life of Jesus was fulfilling what the prophets had said was coming down the line and that these leaders should be rejoicing instead of scowling at the truth.  Their religious concepts had overtaken their spiritual eyes enough to blind them from God’s message to the world.  They had allowed the spirit of religion engrain itself into their beliefs that it focused their eyes on laws instead of the truth, which is a sure sign of death no matter what the laws are directed towards.

This also meant that the priests and high priests of Jesus’ day did not hear what Jesus was teaching about Kingdom and what it means and why it is important for us to understand this concept.  Continually, the priests had their spies out walking with Jesus, but only relying upon their words of gossip rather than sitting and learning what Jesus was teaching.    This type of informational gathering to secure up one’s place of authority was not only witnessed during this time in history but it has continued this course even till today.  Essentially when people operate in this manner they are compartmentalizing the subject that they are trying to defeat into a box small enough that they can control, or want to control and we all know that if one side of the party tries to control the other side by placing them into a categorical box, there will never be any relationship that will develop.

How can we as humans have the audacity to say what God can and cannot do?  We cannot even begin to comprehend how big God is.  The priests and high priest of that day was doing just that where it concerned Jesus.  And you know what Jesus’ response to them was?  He continued His ways of trying to get them to understand what His mission in life was and why He was here on earth.  But they all continued to put up their boxes of religion in order to protect their pride and their ideologies that they had forced upon the people.  Today, the Church has been famous or infamous if you choose to incorporate the same tactics towards God today and on the people who differ from what they believe is law.

Our enemy has countered Jesus’ sacrifice with creating so many denominations and religious beliefs that it is almost impossible for a person who is wanting to know about God to ascertain what really the truth is.  I am frustrated to find that even some of the people who claim to attend church services on a regular basis do not spend the time studying the Word of God long enough to understand what God is trying to say to His people.  We have ignored and played around with God long enough that we have placed the religious frailties as our gospel and have embraced its beliefs in order to suffice our guilt long enough to attend other worldly audiences.  Our actions as individuals and as nations has placed us into the same category as the priests and high priests during Jesus’ time.  Our lack of responsibility to live by the Word of God and through the Word of God has been set aside for a respectable life of comfort on a pew.

The only thing that we can do while sitting on a pew is to point our fingers at the ones who are bringing in the people that Jesus commanded us to reach out to.  It is the action of the tabernacle or temple, which is you, to be the willing participant in the advancement of God’s Kingdom.  The longer we sit and proclaim Christianity as the high priests did, we will allow the world and its spirit to tie our spiritual hands and feet together so that we have no effective method of going into the world and spreading the message of Kingdom.  And this lack of action by the church will in turn inhibit the only true cure for the cancer that is eating away our insides.

Stop being the high priests that Jesus encountered and become the high priests that God desires for us to be.  It is easy to sit and mock the world from our pews, but while we do this we raise our arms out to the world and then even show them which string to use to bind us to our chairs.  All we have to do is to stand up and God will see this notion as a sign of willingness to conquer the forces that surround us.  He will break the ropes that keep us in a seated position and then restore us back to the strong spiritual being that we really are.







DLB