Time with Jesus: Luke 5:33-6:11
A Series on the Life of Christ According to Luke
Why do we fast? Why do we set aside the sabbath? What is the purpose of our worship and our time in prayer? Ultimately these practices exist to help us encounter God. When Jesus walked on the earth the practices needed to encounter God differed—God was present with us! This doesn’t mean that the practices are bad. Jesus isn’t saying that we shouldn’t fast or that we shouldn’t set aside the Sabbath, but rather that if you do those things and you miss out on the presence of God then they are worthless.
If we are to walk with Jesus we must ask ourselves whether our practices draw us closer to God or further away. Are we thinking about our faith primarily as a system of abstract principles or primarily as a relationship with a living God? I’m not saying that theology is not important—it absolutely is important—but that good theology cannot be the point of our faith. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—Good theology is no more a hindrance to our faith than the skeleton is a hindrance to the movement of the body but a skeleton by itself is dead.
Walking with Jesus means slowly turning everything we do in life into an opportunity to meet with Jesus and live in the presence of God. This means that sometimes even things that aren’t inherently wrong or evil will need to be given up because they distract us from his presence. The Law and commands of God are designed to tune our love to the presence and communion of God but the love of God is so much broader than laws and commands. What are the ways that we need to grow beyond the commands and into the love of God? How can we lean into the presence of God to teach us his love?
Jesus is making all things new. Amen.