What Glorifies God?

This last Sunday in the high school class we studied the Sabbath healings in Luke (6:6-11, 13:10-17, and 14:1-6). Each time Jesus broke with what was considered the law to get to what was the real law. The law in Exodus 31 states that anyone who worked on the Sabbath must be put to death. Well, what is work exactly? It seems that the goal of the Sabbath was a day where you take a break from everyday chores, rest, spend time with family, and worship God. This required some planning ahead.

Over time, in the interest of not wanting to break the law, they built hedges around it. Hedges were things that were probably okay to do, but it might lead to breaking the law. Hedges can be a great thing that helps keep us from temptation. However, over time those hedges were mistaken for the actual law, so more hedges were built around the hedges, and over time, more hedges. The Pharisees and Sadducees were now following a tradition built around the law instead of the law itself. The hedges were fine, but a hedge that you build cannot be used to judge others. When those hedges become the standard by which all must abide, then you have added to the law and you unrighteously judge others. We must let the Bible speak for itself and not be scared where Christian freedom may take someone. If the Bible does not state, then don’t state it. If the Bible states it, than state it. We can be guilty of letting the wisdom of hedges become the foolishness of legalism.

In the Sabbath healing stories in Luke, the Pharisees were operating out of the hedges, so the question they were asking is, “What is it okay to do?” They just wanted to know what right and what was wrong in a very rigid sense. They wanted hard and fast rules for everything, and while there are some hard and fast rules for some things, there are not for everything. If sin is a cliff you can fall off, then they wanted to know where the cliff was and wanted to avoid it. Some ask this question to know where the cliff is so they can get as close to possible without going over. Jesus came asking a totally different question, “What glorifies God?” It is a completely different way to think about how to live and how to make decisions. Jesus by healing was going to that cliff and bringing people back from it. He knew that healing was glorifying God, and it was an emergency situation. He tore through the Pharisees’ hedge laws in order to uplift God’s true law.

In our personal lives we need to make hedges to protect ourselves from sin that we are tempted by, but we need to allow God’s law to be His law, and know that He is the judge. We need to live by asking the question, “What glorifies God?” This means that sometimes we build hedges where other people run in like fools because the culture, both secular and Christian say it’s okay. There are other times where we break down hedges even when Christian culture says not to, because by doing so we glorify God. Jesus did this all the time, not caring what offense it caused the religious elite.

We have freedom in Christ, and that can be a dangerous thing, but freedom by its nature means we can chose good or ill. The way to make decisions wisely is not to ask, “What is it okay to do?” or “What can we get away with?” but “What glorifies God?” It changes the entire way you think about life, faith, and how to love others.

Posted to Daniel Doss-The Beggar. Yes, the same one of the Daniel Doss band that I went to high school with, and is responsible for the hardest football hit that both of us may have had.