Fashion Shows

A Future for God's People
Turn to Me and Be Saved

Matthew 23:2-12 (The Message)

Religious Fashion Shows

 ^1-3 Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. "The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God's Law. You won't go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer.  ^4-7"Instead of giving you God's Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called 'Doctor' and 'Reverend.'
 ^8-10"Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of 'Father'; you have only one Father, and he's in heaven. And don't let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
 ^11-12"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.

For Reflection
Oh boy!  This is tough.  How do you tell the difference between fashionable, temporal, fads in faith and worship and those things that are real Christian tenets and values?  Even if the religious leaders follow their own theology with consistent action, can you be sure that it is right in the eyes of God?

Christ freed us from inappropriate rules, but He also left us with responsibilities filled with dilemma and uncertainty.  Matthew tells us that Jesus is the constant and the rock of certainty.  He is the only teacher.  In the cacophony of dos and dont's from hundreds of scholars, preachers, and self-proclaimed moralists, what can you know for sure?

Perhaps we can know little for sure.  The Christ event made the truth knowable.  We know that God loves us.  We know the law that Moses delivered.  We know that love trumps rules.  We know that God intends us to serve him.  How comfortable are you with just being yourself?  I suppose we should pray, study the word and do what we do with confidence in the hope that God will make what we do count.

Pray
that what you do will count in the lives of others and in the Kingdom of God.  Pray that you will spend time to study the word of God.  Pray that you will be willing to face your days accepting the fact that you are part of God's mysterious plan.