🦁 Epiphany 4-3
Readings: Psalm 111; Deuteronomy 13:1-5; Matthew 8:28-9:1.
Reflection
Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 111, Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses 1 to 5, and Matthew Chapter eight, verses 28 to Chapter nine, verse one. In today's readings, we are continuing on the theme that we've had the last couple of days of being true to God. So in Deuteronomy today, we're talking about a false prophet. And you'll see several references throughout the Bible. This is an Old Testament reference. Of course, there's the New Testament references in Revelation. Another is about the false prophet, the anti-Christ, etc., etc.. And it's very important. And God's making a big point here as we don't listen to them. And they can be very convincing when pick examples. Over the years, I'm sure you know some you've heard some things, scenes and things. I mean, obviously the cult activities are kind of a big one. These cults loosely based on some form of Bible type things that we've seen over the years. But there is a lot of folks out there who take and try to, whether it's their personal gain or just getting us off the track of Satan, not wanting us to remain true to God, coming along and trying to get us to change things. Now, one of the kind of difficult parts of that, though, is a lot of people use this statement as staying true to God. That means that we don't change our interpretation of things as time goes on. So there are things in the in the when you take the Bible, literally, there are things in the Bible that you sit there and go, We're not doing that anymore.
And we've changed. We're we're now preaching, I believe, in a god of unending compassion and love and grace. God loves everyone. God forgives everyone.
Doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want. It just means that God is there and God loves all of us. That's why when you read in John, everybody knows John 316. The rest of it is not to judge the world or condemn the world, but to save it. So, you know, there's a little different vibe there. So again, when we're going through and looking at things, how do we avoid this world? My personal belief, what I practice when I see different things coming along, quoting scripture, you know, trying to bring themselves into something. You know, we should you know, Christians should be this way. Is it an act of love? Well, that kind of, you know, filters out quite a few things. There's a lot of things out there that are being touted up that are not acts of love. This is not God's love. This is not loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving your neighbor as yourself does not include acts of violence. That does not mean that we're going to put down a group of people. It means that we love and understand. We don't have to agree with it. We don't have to do it. But we love them. And it's a real difficult thing for us to wrap our minds around because we kind of have this different version of qualified love. I was raised that way in the churches that I grew up in as a child, as God loves us as long as we earned it or deserved it. And I now have come to know that that's not the way it works. God loves us.
So when I'm looking, how do I look at something as a false prophet or someone who is espousing something that is not true to the way God wants us to be? Well, a big one for me and filtering that out is, is this an act of love or is this an act of exclusion? Is it an act? Is bringing hatred towards a group or a person?
And that's for me, a very good way that I start off filtering things. The other thing is it's really important for us to understand what God's writing and what God's saying in the Bible. Being involved in a study group, learning more about the background of things in the Bible makes a very big difference in how we are able to stay true to what God wants. A lot of things in the Bible are literary. So these were oral traditions written down over thousands of years by different people at different times in the language of the day. Then they were brought into other languages and over time, different translations. So none of us are reading original Hebrew, original Greek. We don't do that. So and even the copies that we have of Scripture aren't the originals. They're later. So they've been translated and reworked by other people we know. And looking at translations, especially the ones that the Friars did, where they had the copy guys who sat in the rooms and copy. There are things that are crossed out. There's notes in the side. All kinds of things that go on. So it's good to know that and to understand how things got to where they are today. But again, it goes back to, in my mind, is this an act of love? Am I being loving towards someone? Am I helping them improve their life, their situation in life? However you want to want to phrase it. So that's something to look out when you're doing things. Is look out, you know, is this the or is this something God would do? Is this something. Is this love? Is this is this understanding? Is this compassion?
