Articles - Bulletin
Hey, Watch This
“Hey, Watch This”
We’ve all heard someone say it. We have probably said it ourselves. It’s not confined to a rednecks last words. All kinds of people say it. “Hey, watch this.”
Most of the time when someone says “hey, watch this,” it’s right as they’re about to do something daring or somewhat dangerous. They decide to push the limit of safety with the intent of getting a thrill out of cheating injury and amusing others in the process.
It seems like man has always been pushing the limits that they perceive around them. In one sense this pushing the limits has resulted in good things like the advancement of technology and exploration. On the other hand countless people have been injured and killed just trying to get that much closer to the edge.
In one sense people had done the same thing spiritually. Maybe not in the sense of seeking a thrill and showing off but rather in the sense of seeing how close they can get to the edge without falling off. They look at God’s instruction or word and adopt a legalistic mindset and instead of running away from things that would endanger their soul and relationship with God they stay real close to the edge. In their minds they rationalize they’re still in the right, can’t technically say they’re in sin or wrong but the attitude is almost the same as “watch this”, I’m going to do this and still be technically right.
How do you answer such a mindset and attitude? I don’t know if everyone has had moments in their lives when they too had this attitude but I certainly did. I wanted to argue the legality and technical definitions because I wanted to engage and indulge in certain things.
In Matthew 4 when Jesus is being tempted by Satan, He’s told by Satan to throw himself down because if he was truly the Son of God He’d be rescued according to Psalm 91. Satan of course was taking the spirit of the psalm and using it literal. Jesus’s response is a quote from Deuteronomy 16 when He said “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Jesus spent most of His ministry teaching and dealing with the Scribes and Pharisees who took that familiar approach with God’s law. They took such a legalistic approach to it, they too used God’s law to do just enough to be “okay” and yet still live and do as they wanted to. Jesus pointed out very clearly that how they approached, used, and viewed the law was not only wrong but sinful and he even tells the crowd in Matthew 5 “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
When you really think about who Jesus was talking about that was a pretty shocking statement. Hearing it themselves didn’t humble the Pharisees but rather further bolstered their pride and arrogance, because of their hardness of heart, and it led them to fall even further by putting Jesus to death.
What about today? Some of us have been there before in our lives and there are still those among us bolstering this same attitude and argument. Topics like attendance during the collective worship, social drinking and how many drinks is okay, modesty, events like dances and prom that even our society admits it is ungodly, etc.
You have to really ask yourself are you seeking to draw closer to God and glorify Him in everything you do or are you going to make your stand right on the edge of falling away because you want to test the limits of God’s patience and forgiveness and be technically right?
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. (Rom 7:21)
--E
