Nu Thang
Do you ever wish we had audio recordings of certain scriptures? Well, I do. I would love to listen to the tone that Jesus used in many places when He was talking with people, especially the Pharisees. I believe that many times that what we would hear many times would be anger and aggravation. Matthew 15 would be one of those passages where you would hear Jesus’ anger and aggravation in his voice. As happened many times, the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus. They raised a question about why His disciples did not wash their hands when they ate according to the “tradition of the elders.” This “tradition of the elders” was their own set of laws that added to the laws of Moses to ensure that they did not break Moses’ laws. At the time of Jesus there were approximately 500 such traditions recorded. Jesus did not obey this or any of these traditions. When asked why they did not obey this tradition, rather than respond Jesus immediately shot back His own question to them. “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? What had happened to them can easily happen to us- Tradition had become a trap! By following tradition the Pharisees had missed Jesus and His message.
Tradition can be good. Repeating something that God has ordained and is being effective in His kingdom is good. But when tradition becomes what we follow rather than Jesus, it is time to let go of our tradition. We cannot risk missing Jesus’ mission and purpose for the sake of tradition. Holding on to tradition for the sake of tradition causes our worship to become empty and our lives void of the power of God. If we were to look in our closets, attics, garages, etc. we would probably find many things that we are holding onto that really serve no purpose. We hold onto things for various reasons- sentimental value, anticipated future use/value. But really most of that stuff is just taking up space that could be used for something else. When we moved in August we had a chance to go through our stuff as we packed and pull out the stuff that we had accumulated. We had a yard sale and took a lot of stuff to Goodwill. We realized that over the years we had accumulated a lot of stuff that was no longer useful and by getting rid of the clutter it was easier to move and make room for other more useful things.
When Jesus healed the man in Mark 1, the crowd was amazed and they asked, “What is this? A new teaching with authority!” Never be afraid of what is new . . . Never lose your pioneering spirit . . . Never lose your edge! As DC Talk said several years ago, “God is doing a NU THANG!”
