Saturday, June 16, 2012

Have you ever felt it necessary to insult your dinner host? Luke 11-12

Have you ever been invited to someone's house for lunch and found it necessary to insult them?  Would you?  Let's suppose a pastor or priest invited you to have lunch in his (her) home.   Let's suppose that they also invited other pastors and priest, so that the majority of those in attendance were men (and women) of the Cloth.   How would you act?   I would assume with much respect and much caution so as to not offend them or harm self.   Now imagine, however, that these same "godly" people did something at this lunch in their attitude or actions or comments that was against truth and was in the face of righteousness.   What would you do then?  Would you correct them?  All of them?   Now suppose they really didn't say something that "unrighteous" but just marginally annoying.  Would you use that as an opportunity to TEACH them or INSTRUCT them?  I would dare say most of us would not.  Yet, here in Luke 11:42 and beyond, Christ is invited to the home of a Pharisee (big time teacher of God's Word) and is criticized for not washing his hands.   Christ uses it to refer to them as "hypocrites".    Wow!   He uses the situation to correct false doctrine.  He uses the situation to reveal their inner heart.   He uses the situation to teach truth.   I am not sure if I could do that.  But, I know that correcting false doctrine is a matter of standing up to it first.  You have to spot it.  You have to use situations to teach it.   Since we are not Christ we should be careful walking into someones home and correcting their foolish traditions.   As I write this I am in a Starbucks on a Saturday morning (surprise here).   My wife has sneezed several times and has received several, hearty "bless you" statements from a fellow patron.  As she emphatically and religiously said, "Bless you," I thought, should I ask if she really means a "blessing" because the sneeze has invoke some kind of spiritual battle going on in my wife's life (the real reason for the tradition of blessing someone who sneezes), or should I let it go?   I let it go.  The lady left.  But, did I miss an opportunity to teach some truth about who God is and how real blessings are given? Christ used this opportunity to stand for truth as he saw any variance from truth as dangerous and corrupt. 

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