Chicken soup: It's in there!

     Today I listened to a good preacher, preaching on the cleansing of the temple.  Three times a year in Jewish Law the people would go up to Jerusalem and the temple and present themselves to God.  They of course would bring their sacrifice ( one without blemish) and the Priest would perform the rite of sacrifice and atonement for that particular individual or families sins for the year.  The temple had and inner court and an outer court. The outer court was reserved for  "gentiles"  or those outside Jewish law. It was there they could also offer sacrifice to God.  Of course Jesus being a Jew and following the law, he came upon the temple and was seized with a zealousness and rage because of the money changers and merchandise being sold in the house of God.  He cleansed his fathers house.  "My father's house is a house of prayer and you make it a den of theives and robbers!"  In other words sin was present in the house of God.
     The same goes for us today.  We are steeped in our sins from birth.  We cannot help it, or avoid it, it is what it is!
      We are like chicken soup everything, necks, gizzards, fat and grisle are in their.  Though it makes the soup taste good....we strain it out later for our benefit of not eating anything yucky!  
     So we when we are before our God he sees our true self our sins that are ever before him and he requires we also like the temple be cleansed before he will have anything to do with us.  We are his temple, the place he longs to dwell in now.  And he can, provided we do it his way!   Anything that is our way and not Christ is essentially against Christ or Anti- Christ.....Get that...?  Our way is not God's way.  So turning ourselves away from our way is  basically a repentance and a doorway for God to enter in and start a cleansing process that can last and should last for our entire lives.  The things that stick to us over the course of time that we have involved ourself with, drugs, alcohols, sex, and lieing and so many other "self" things can and do get God's attention. He wants us better and put together in a healthy lifestyle.
    So we do not have to be in the "Court of the Gentiles" forever out of the reach of God but can enter into his rest and receive of him his blessings and benefits of a good life, here and now.  Yum. Chicken soup! free from Yuck! 
   

Skin deep, bone deep, "The Law"

      Pardner! This here town ain't big enough for you n' me.  I'm the Sherrif here and your breakin the law!  The old west themes of rough and ready sherrifs, Wyatt Earp vs. the Clantons... the O.K. corral and right vs might.  Law prevails.
   
     Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor, a law unto himself reversing the role, the Sherrif of Nottingham who is himself a law unto himself and is unjust and corrupt.

"Off with her head," says King Henry the Vlll, as he merrily executes his 1st wife in defiance of the Pope and makes the Church his own The Church of England. Self rule over God's.

Judge Roy Bean of the old west rules with a rope, hanging those he deems unfit and law breaking. Justifying his actions with swift and cruel justice.

The United States is a Democracy and the largest in the modern world, a country where "the rule of law" is held high.  Ingrained from birth we obey laws until the day we die some ambigous, some we don't even know exist. Speed in your car get a ticket, park in the wrong place pay a fine.  Emminent Domain....here's a foggy one.. you can lose your home to a large corporation if it's in the interest of 'progress' or a highway going thru.


     Skin deep and bone deep are the laws we live with daily. So how come the invisible ones the ancient ones go unheeded?  Ones that set morality in the heart, are they moveable, shiftable at our convienence?  Are they  the ones to shift at a moment's notice for our own self interest?  Do they infact convict anymore to influence the course of individuals lives to stay a true course?  Wall Street, big banking, Enron, mortgage and hedge fund managers all stuffed with people who were tempted to stray with the delusions of not getting caught. Morals that slid into "off limits zones of conduct but nevertheless they went anyway.  Thousands  were affected by those who used sub par standards to lend money to those who could not afford it.  This country bankrupted and millions left without jobs, income and homes.   Did they suffer?  You bet. Is the average person stung wary and maybe a little scared? Yes.  Can we even trust elected officials anymore to carry out what once was an honorable position to hold? Elected office was designed to represent the common  people.
     Only a few short years ago this country went all out for hope....in a man many thought would change things only to have suffered setback after setback with partisan squabbling all played out in the nations media outlets.  End runs around congress were made and necessary because men would not give to one another. Our legislators or" law makers" stuck in neutral for years to frustrate one another's agendas.  While those who work 9-5 faithfully  toil daily day after day hoping that things like the ones mentioned don't rock the boat of their lives.
      Law exists Pauls says to  "show the strength of sin", in otherwords it magnifies our weakness in doing the right thing.  Blood of goats and bulls could never cover transgression of the law.  Only grace as it is poured out from Christ covers us, redeems us and makes things "right".

     In all of 6,000 years of law one event stands paramount above all others............Forgiveness of our law breaking (sin) and of going our own way.....
 
      13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who  obey the law who will be declared righteous. 




     1415 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, 


                    (The Gentiles)  or anyone who takes a stand morally  were not under the law..................but were a law unto themselves..........
   

CROSSROADS

                               “Stand at the crossroads and look;
                                                ask for the ancient paths,
                                ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
             
                                and you will find rest for your soul. 
                                                

                               “Set up road signs;
                                                put up guideposts.
                                Take note of the highway,
                                                the road that you take

     There comes a point I believe in all of our lives that we stand at the crossroads, two points in time and place where we make a crucial decision. This decision is almost always a hard one.  A hard one because most of the time we are in a place of being comfortable and maybe unwilling to change but perhaps there is a deeper calling or yearning inside that forces this decision.  
  Take for example the movie Castaway.   After being castaway for 5 or more years Tom Hanks ( the actor) portraying that man who is lost, seeks meaning and a deeper sense of life after suffering immense loss.  Unable to return to his love or his former life he returns a fed-ex package he had held with him on that deserted island and finds the address and places it on the door step and leaves.  Ironically on the package are two depicted angel wings. Driving away the scene shifts upward and a vista of plains and of roads crossing and then long nothingness.  Unable to decide which way to go he gets out of his car and stands at the crossroads trying to decide which way to go, and then he meets some stranger a woman, casually talks and then watches her drive away and on the back bumper there shown are angel wings!  First on the package, second at the farm he delivered the package to and third on the truck these wings appeared to him.
    Needless to say he has found that the decision may be divine or so implied and heads in the direction of the stranger and we leave the movie with a sense of completeness.
     Oh! if only life's decisions were as easy at that!  In Christ I think we all get a chance to stand at some crossroad and ask the question, which way now? And why?  If we are those who trust in a God that showed himself incarnate and then rose from the dead for us then we can also believe that he can lead us in the paths he wants us to travel on.  The lines of scripture above tell us to "seek the ancient paths where the good way is." and walk in it.  The Israelites often marked their way with stones and they were not to be removed so that passing generations would see the way their ancestors came.  It was for a reason.    The times God had shown himself faithful to the nation and people he had chosen for himself  they then responded with the only thanksgiving they could with landmarks to remind them of former things.  Because they could forget.  
   It would always point to the way they had come. 
     Today we can be led of the Holy Spirit and sometimes it is not so easy to follow, either because we are settled (Or Not) and change comes harder than no change at all.   
       If we stay were we are we run the risk of stagnation like a slow pool of water with little or no movement.  Things grow and not necessarily good things.  I think God keeps up moving.  Think Caleb  and Joshua, old men who never stopped until they literally passed on at ages above 100 years but were still vigorous.  That's what I want too.
     So I stand at the crossroads like Tom Hanks, and I wait... to see which way to go. Go, I must.