This article is the message that comes from the Bible readings set for November 7 according to the Revised Common Lectionary used by many different churches and chapels, and the subject of The Living Word Bible study for November 7:
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17, Jonah 3:1-5, 10 — Trusting God is a test for us
Mark 12:38-44 — Jesus condemns the falsehood of the scribes
Hebrews 9:24-28 — Christ represents us to God in the reality of heaven
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This week we’re thinking about ‘Being Authentic — God loves relationships that are real’.
It would come as a shock to some churches I know, especially the rather formal and solemn ones, but even on a casual reading of the Bible, one cannot help to be struck with the thought that God really doesn’t like religiosity at all. In His word there are constant rebukes to people with titles and tassels who claim to represent God yet are proud, bullying, dismissive of those they consider of low status — and not at all loving. The scribes, or Scripture experts of His day, many of them belonging to the Pharisee party, were notorious for this double-mindedness (although we do see exceptions, like the man who welcomed Jesus’ answer to his question about what the important commandments were, and Jesus told him he was “not far from the kingdom”. Definitely a mark for trying.
The fact is, God is not a fan of religion in the sense of a man-made ordered and structured approach to faith.
He far prefers RELATIONSHIP – of the kind that RESPONDS to His love, RETURNS His love and RELIES on His faithfulness. Because when we come to know Him through Jesus, we discover that He is good. Really good. And really good to us, even when we are not.
Our story begins as usual in the OT. Naomi, a Jewish exile who migrated to Moab during a time of famine, and her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth are on their own — and vulnerable, as unmarried women where in those times. They resolve to trust God, and set out for Bethlehem, where Naomi has relations, not knowing what sort of reception they will find there. The story of Ruth is about two things: {1) trusting God because He is the Faithful One, because he is good; and God’s provision at every turn, including a marriage partner for the young widow Ruth who is by extension a kinsman-redeemer for Naomi also.
They have been working in the fields with the men who are harvesting, and Naomi tells Ruth to lie at his feet while all the men are sleeping — a sign that she is seeking marriage.
(1) So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.
Ruth 4:13-15
The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”
And this child was Obed, the grandfather to the future King David, and of course part of the genealogy of Jesus a millennium later.
Naomi and Ruth, widowed in pagan Moab, decided to trust the Living God and step out in faith. Their courage was richly rewarded.
One who initially did the opposite was the prophet Jonah, called by God to preach repentance to the notoriously pagan and persecuting city of Nineveh. This was like a Christian missionary with a suitcase full of Bibles and a ticket for Tehran or Kabul. “No way,” said Jonah to himself and set off in the opposite direction! But he didn’t get far, because his ship was shipwrecked, he was miraculously saved by some kind of huge fish, and he found himself heading to Nineveh properly this time and God speaking to Him a second time about his call.
(2) Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it….
…The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth…
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened.
Jonah 3:1-3, 5, 10
The two women in the earlier story got very real with God about their plight, and saw God undertake for them far beyond their expectation.
By contrast, Jonah started off being very unreal with God. The story begins with the word of God coming to Jonah. Without any mention of Jonah telling God about his fears and misgivings, he runs away (independence from God is the foundation of sin). But God’s grace brought him back, and after that shaky start the relationship improved. ‘Don’t send me there’ Jonah saw a staggering response to the message he had been given — and saved this great mass of people from destruction.
This is a basic building block of teaching, about God’s grace in making undeserved provision for our lives, and our part in receiving it through honest and open relationship with God.
That openness to God and focus on hearing Him and walking with Him, is a key to being seen by others as authentic. Jesus taught the disciples with reference to people around them they could observe, and learn from. People were coming and going in the temple courts, and many were putting offerings into the temple treasury — some with a impressive rattle of heavy coins. By contrast, there were others like the hard-up widow woman who only had a couple of small coins to give, under the critical gaze of the scribes in their rich robes.
(3) As He taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and… make lengthy prayers.
From Mark 12:38-40
Jesus went on to say that these men would be punished most severely.
Many of the scribes and the Pharisees were ‘acting out’. They were unreal, pretending to love God with a show of piety but giving a mixed message with their hard-heartedness.
Is that something we encounter in church today? There are church traditions which love titles and robes and a certain exclusivity, calling themselves ‘priests’ as opposed to ‘lay people’. Among them are good sincere church leaders with a personal faith in Jesus and His love for people. But the danger is of loving the position and the formalities too much instead of seeking the rebirth and spiritual awakening that comes to us through trusting Jesus. And they disguise their lack of spiritual impartation with complex forms and words… lots of words.
This difference between what is real and what is unreal is sharply drawn in the picture of Christ entering heaven, the true sanctuary of God. All earthly systems of worshipping God, however elaborate, are man-made constructions that imitate some aspect of heavenly worship:
(4) For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.
Hebrews 12:24
And we are reminded that the priest and sacrifice system of the Old Covenant has ended, made obsolete by Christ’s victory over sin on the bloodstained Cross:
(5) Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own…
Hebrews 12:25, 28
Our Father is all about love and relationship, and He seeks those who that will relate to Him openly and honestly. That is both acknowledging the many ways in which we fall short, but at the same time responding to His love and grace which we can know, through Jesus.
God doesn’t like pretence and the acting out of roles that He has not created. Christian clergy that want to be known as priests are essentially denying the new covenant every born-again believer has in Christ Jesus, the Great High Priest of heaven.
The Old Covenant system, of reserved roles, priests making sacrifices and representation on behalf of everyone else has gone, and there is no returning to it. Rituals which allude to it are imitations — and unreal.
What is real is that through Jesus believers all have access into the heavenlies to Jesus, who makes intercession for us to the Father. Better still, we all have the capacity — and the commission — to journey with others and help them come into that new and real relationship for themselves.
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