Matthew 9:12-13 ( NKJV )
When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Where do our forms come from? By this I mean, why do we have the patterns for things like local church that we are accustomed to? For the most part they are developed to contain the last move of God.
In the above scripture Jesus is being challenged because he and his disciples were eating with sinners. The Pharisees were the personification of the law giving God. In the old testament God had instituted the law as a means for man to maintain his connection to the covenant. That was God’s moving among me at that time. The Jewish religion became the form or container designed to hold that move. Part of that move involved separation from anything considered unclean. It evolved into separation from anyone who did not keep the law the way the Pharisees did.
The Pharisees saw the law as a legal system that maintained their spiritual connection to the covenant. In truth it was a system of mercy that connected them to the covenant. Without the law Israel could never have maintained their relationship with God. By the time of Jesus they had forgotten the mercy part entirely but they had allowed the form to become more important than the Holy Spirit himself.
I believe we need to examine our hearts as to why we hold onto the forms we do, particularly in relation to our spiritual life. Sometimes traditions can be good things that keep us in touch with the truths of the Word of God. Sometimes we do things a certain way because principle demands it. Sometimes we have allowed our form to override the anointing of God.
What is God doing today? Is there some type of religious form that is hindering us from going forward in what God wants for us today. We need to be sure we don’t “throw out the baby with the bathwater”, but lets not keep the bathwater when it’s purpose is finished. In the Pharisees day, God was about to change everything. In truth he was about to do what the old testament had predicted since the beginning. He was about to fulfill the Pharisees reason for existence, but because they had become so attached to the form they were comfortable with, they could not accept the new move of God. They missed the day of their visitation and the fulfilling of their destiny.
Let’s make sure we don’t do the same today. Something new is coming. Every Christian can be a part of it. The lost will be swept in by it. Don’t let the form you are comfortable with keep you from the current things of God in your life.
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