Mat 6:16-18; Walking with God and Living with Meaning.

Thursday September 12, 2024

You and I engage with the reality of meaning, without the ritual. In our subject currently, the Lord is teaching on worship of God the Father by each of us personally. He mentions three things; giving, praying, and fasting. All of them, to the religious Jews, had become mostly ritual.

Luk 18:11-12

"The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.'

And so, we find all three, praying, giving, and fasting; of which the Pharisee in the parable is very proud. 

Can we not do this in the church, even though most of us do not tithe or fast? 

If I see the Christian life as ritual (I go to church, I say and do the right things, I give, I read the Bible, attend Bible study because I am supposed to), I am in a ritual and that is even worse or more behind the OT rituals. 

God has given us a real, personal, relationship with Him; in secret (invisible) by faith and obedience. A daily commitment of faith in that relationship will bring with it supernatural actions of God in and around your life (Phi 2:12-13). It is not something for impressing people, but for the reward of walking every day with the real God in a real way. 

Fasting is not commanded, but Jesus does not condemn it, but does condemn doing it in the wrong way (for pride). Fasting is the voluntary self-denial of food for a period of time for spiritual reasons, or in order to achieve a spiritual goal. 

Mat 6:16-18. 

We need to differentiate between a ritual and its meaning. God never gives a ritual that does not contain an essential meaning. 

There is a meaning to every ritual given by God. It is the meaning that they and we need to find. All ritual has a reality in the Old Testament. 

For example: The Day of Atonement (Lev 16) = redemption of all sin and the joy of forgiveness and the worship of God for His sacrifice of the lamb. 

The Day of Atonement contained the only commanded fast. This fast, like others that were done for personal reasons, enhanced each life in seeking the Lord, seeing and concentrating on the events of the day and remembering. 

Take away the rituals and the meaning of them remains - redemption, the joy of forgiveness, the worship of God for His love in giving His Son as a sacrifice for all our sins, and being able to concentrate on, understand, and remember its amazing significance. (Mat 5:17)

What is reality? Gen 1:1

As then it is now, people are unwilling to prioritize God over things and self (not profound, but simple and truly the foundation of the issue), Psa 105:1-5. 

You must live in the reality of relationship with God (not ritual / religion). When God removes the ritual, meaning or reality becomes life. 

Thinking to yourself, what would fasting mean if the ritual was removed? What would remain? Self-discipline.

Why has meaning come now, in the age of the church?  

If reality is God, then sin is the barrier to it; to Him. 

Taking the Day of Atonement as our example, redemption, the meaning of that ritual, removed the barrier of sin: scape goat, blood sprinkled on mercy seat (propitiation). Rom 3:25 (LXX uses hilesterion for the lid on the ark of the covenant.)  The same mercy seat is referred to in Heb 9:5, which the writer than lead us to Heb 9:11-14.

Without Christ’s sacrifice there is no way to live with God in reality. The grace of God gave them a shadow, but now is the reality, without sin. 

Now the reality of life with God, personal, intimate, secret, full, experienced, supernaturally manifested by God within us, is gifted to us by God through faith in Christ. 

Engage with God as a person. In the reality of your relationship with Him. 

Supernatural things have happened to you: baptism of the Holy Spirit, election, predestination, adoption, sealing, imputed righteousness (things on God’s side and your side). 

New things have come: you are new wineskins for new wine. 

Mar 2:14-28. 

New wine is the New Covenant. 

Walk fully engaged with the Lord every day, waiting for His supernatural messages, works, helps, signs, etc. 

Do not live your life in a ritual Christianity. Find the very person of God. 

In times of privation and suffering, do not be surprised (1Pe 4:12) but ask yourself, pray to the Father, “How do I see more of God in this? What is His commandment? Do I believe? 

Over time the chick in the nest becomes the soaring eagle who flies wing to wing with her Lord.