Two Rules to Live by

TWO RULES TO LIVE BY

 

God gave 10 commandments to Moses on the mountain (Exod 20:1-17), which were multiplied to 613 rules that religious Jews were expected to keep. These were enforced by the Pharisees during the time that Jesus lived on the earth. These were reduced to only 2 by Jesus, which He repeated several times in His teaching, as recorded in the 4 gospel accounts. They were simply, 1/ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength”, and 2/ “Love your neighbor as yourself”. These are simple rules, but there is a lot more involved in keeping them than most people realize! I am slowly coming to understand what is involved since watching the “Agape Road” teaching by Bob Mumford on his DVD’s. I first read his book by that title, and then listened to the audio CD’s series given at a large seminar about 10 years ago, and am now enjoying the teaching much more by seeing Bob deliver the teaching in the original setting. I enjoy reading about the way Jesus replied to the Pharisees, who were the most religious crowd of Jews who were always trying to point out how Jesus didn’t keep some of their religious traditions. One example of this is recorded by Matthew in his gospel (Matt 22:34-40), and then in the next chapter he records what Jesus thought of these “religious” leaders. He uses some very uncomplimentary names for these guys, like “hypocrites”, “blind fools”, and “whitewashed tombs”! Not the type of descriptive words you would expect to hear from the “gentle Jesus”, that some people consider Him to be

 

I often wonder how He would describe the “religious leaders” of the church today that most people believe to be the Church that Jesus said He would build. When you compare the church we see in the book of Acts with what we call the “church” today, you are hard pressed to see any resemblance. This has caused me to use the terms “Biblical Church” and “unbiblical church” to describe the two very different organizations! Actually the Biblical Church that Jesus has been building for the past 2000 years is an “organism” because it is a living thing. An organization is not a living thing, but simply a group of people who are joined together to accomplish certain worthy goals, similar to the Kiwanis Club, or some other service club. We must always remember that the True Church is composed only of people who have been “born again” by the Holy Spirit, and are “New Creatures in Christ” as described by Paul in (2 Cor 5:17)!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                               20/04/12