We know that doing rituals does not lead to Godly living if they aren’t done for our Lord. Our doing or works has to come from our faith. Paul goes on and on and on some more about this, and rightly so. But what we think and know, our faith, isn’t enough, it has to be followed with doing or it is as empty as the doing without faith. We have many people in our church today who say their heart is right, but they don’t live it. The Jews had in their church those who felt their doing proved something, although they had no faith. So what is worse? Law with no gospel or gospel with no law? Both aren’t right.
The NT scripture talks so strongly against ceremonial law, but surely it can not be that God wants us to use that talk as explaining over and over that we have Christ in our heart, following God with what we do will just naturally come with no effort on our part, that it cancels including God in our daily living. It doesn't just flow from our being without effort on our part, even if we love the Lord. Sounds good, doesn't work. God's ways always work.
God blessed the Sabbath. Not some other day of the week. He gave an order to keep that day. Jesus pointed out that the law of love was superior even to that when he healed on the Sabbath and plucked grain when they were hungry. But the Sabbath is to be kept.
Constantine, the Roman emperor who said he was Christian, settled the controversy about Saturday or Sunday to be used for rest. He wasn’t trying to follow God when he did that, he wanted to satisfy his pagan subjects and he was so anti-Semitic he said that anything the Jews did he wanted no one to have anything to do with. A lot of the Jews, by that time, did not have Christ, but they had our Father God. The pagans used the day of the sun to worship, and Constantine never gave up some of his pagan ways. Do we really want to follow Constantine, or should we follow God.
The NT scripture talks so strongly against ceremonial law, but surely it can not be that God wants us to use that talk as explaining over and over that we have Christ in our heart, following God with what we do will just naturally come with no effort on our part, that it cancels including God in our daily living. It doesn't just flow from our being without effort on our part, even if we love the Lord. Sounds good, doesn't work. God's ways always work.
God blessed the Sabbath. Not some other day of the week. He gave an order to keep that day. Jesus pointed out that the law of love was superior even to that when he healed on the Sabbath and plucked grain when they were hungry. But the Sabbath is to be kept.
Constantine, the Roman emperor who said he was Christian, settled the controversy about Saturday or Sunday to be used for rest. He wasn’t trying to follow God when he did that, he wanted to satisfy his pagan subjects and he was so anti-Semitic he said that anything the Jews did he wanted no one to have anything to do with. A lot of the Jews, by that time, did not have Christ, but they had our Father God. The pagans used the day of the sun to worship, and Constantine never gave up some of his pagan ways. Do we really want to follow Constantine, or should we follow God.