August 30, 2009
13th Sunday After Pentecost

Rules to Live By

What are those statues and ordinances that order our lives?

"But take care and watched yourselves closely, so as to neither forget the things that your eyes have seen nor let them slip from your mind all the days of your life. Make them know to your children and your children's children."

Psalm 119:97 Oh how I love your law. It is my meditation all day long.

But what happens when we go too far? Human traditions become law - "do not add to what i have commanded."

"Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders?"

"You abandon the commandment of God and hold fast to human traditions."

Applying the Word

1. Hearing and doing.
1. From James - "Religion that is pure is this."
2. Think you got it - that you grasp all the law and obey every rule but you don't. Is it what God really wants?
   
3. When does serving the law overshadow serving God?
1. Surface rightousness verses heart rightousness. Are we serving God to "look good" to others and appease an angry wrathful God or are we serving out of gratitude and love for the grace we have received through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
2. We can hear the law and the order we must live by. Can we connecting the hearing into doing?
   
2. Following the law comes through a relationship.
1. "Surely this is a wise and discerning people."
2. The role of a relationship in truly knowing what our loved ones want and need. Do we have a deep relationship with God enough to know the intent of the law?
3. "Welcome with meakness the implanted Word."
3. From within...
1. It is a call to look inside, deep inside.
   
2. "Things that come out are what defile."