Jesus tells us over and over not to be afraid.
Fear of the unknown can drive us to do many things to feel safe, not the least of which is to surround ourselves with unnecessary structure and rules and people to tell us the right things to do so that we never need make a mistake. Or if we do err, it is someone else’s fault because we have transferred personal responsibility. And once we have surrounded ourselves with this high towering structure that we can see and touch, we no longer need have faith. Because, as scripture tells us, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of which is not seen. We have an example of what can happen when we desire a king that we can touch - this is what happened to Israel. God wanted to be their king but the people wanted a king like all the other nations. Someone to go to battle for them. Someone to protect them. This grieved God’s heart. But he gave it to them. He didn’t come up with the idea, but he went along with it. That’s not the ideal.
Inserting ourselves into structures led by kings that we have asked for, which God has given us, is not his ideal for us. But this is what we choose because we are afraid of being unsafe. We choose the good instead of the best, in the name of safety, when all along we have been safe because we are in the hand of God. We choose to put mediators and messengers and vessels between us and God. We choose Moses instead of Jesus. We choose the law instead of the Law Fulfiller. We choose a veil, a curtain, to shield us from God’s glory, when God himself has torn that curtain so we might go directly by way of Jesus to him.
We expect God to be safe, when in fact he is not safe at all. God is good, but he is not safe. If he were safe, we would not need faith. Yet our spirits are safe in his presence, because of Jesus. Not because of a man or a church. But because of our faith in Jesus.
Worshiping God is not a matter of going to a certain place or doing a certain thing. That is how God operated before Jesus was sent. Jesus fulfilled all of the going and doing. It is left to us to believe and follow and worship in spirit. It is not our job to follow rules, but to follow Jesus.
Exodus 20:
18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Jeremiah 31:
31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to [d] them, [e] ”
declares the LORD.33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”35 This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:John 4
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
John 6
63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[e] and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”
Tags: faith, god, Jesus, new testament, old testament, scripture, sin, spirit, worship
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