A DEVOTIONAL GUIDE FOR “THE TEN
TIMELESS VALUES FOR DISCIPLESHIP”
“Is not this
the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the
yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share bread with the hungry and bring
the homeless poor into your home;”
Isaiah 58:6-7
“What does
the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
At the heart of every religion is worship. If God is God, He is worthy to be
worshiped. Nowhere is this truer than
with Israel. At the heart of their
corporate life as the people of God was a dedicated practice of worship. Through their system of sacrifice they
expressed thanksgiving, praise, and contrition and as a result experienced a
right relationship with God. In Israel,
worship went back to their understanding of not only an almighty God, but also
a just God. If God had blessed you, you
should bless God in return. If you did
wrong against God, payment must be made to put it right. All because they understood God as just.
Over time, one of Israel’s critical mistakes in their relationship with
God was the worship became a substitute for ethics. As long as you kept the feast and festivals,
carried out the right rituals, and offered the right sacrifices, it didn’t
really matter how you lived. In the
midst of their blindness to their own actions or idolatry, exploitation of the
poor, and other acts of injustice, the prophets began to preach a repeated
message; God is more concerned with justice than with worship. In fact, they taught that to live out justice
and kindness was in itself an act of worship that honored God more than ritual. When Israel cried out to God in complaint
that they were worshiping as prescribed, but not being blessed, God spoke
through Isaiah that the worship he desired was for them to live justly. Micah’s famous pronouncement to the people
was that the only thing God required to be in right relationship with Him was,
“to do justice and love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.”
This idea carried over into life of the early church. James wrote to the church, “religion that is
pure and undefiled before God is to care for orphans and widows in their distress
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27) John Wesley in beginning the Methodist
movement put a great emphasis on personal holiness and the practice of
spiritual disciplines towards that end, but always added that, “there is no holiness
but social holiness”. Hence the
Methodist movement was at the heart of justice issues among the poor and imprisoned
the sick and mistreated. While worship
is a critical part of what we do in the church, we cannot forget that what
honors God most is how we are “doing justice and loving kindness” in our
community.
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