Today's Reading: Luke 6: 1-11
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read Luke 6: 1-11
Bible Study
Today's passage tells us about Jesus' healing of a man on Sabbath. Traditionally speaking no one can work during Sabbath. Those who worked on Sabbath should be stoned to death according to Moses' Law(Exodus 23:12, 31:12-17). If you are listening to my podcast now, I suggest you to go online to this blog and click the link in today's blog to DAY 41 of my Devotion on Fire 2 blog that I wrote on January 10 talking on the same issue from Mark 2:27. the title is "Follow Jesus to do out of the box ministries":
http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/2013/01/day-41-follow-jesus-to-out-of-box.html
http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/2013/01/day-41-follow-jesus-to-out-of-box.html
N.T. Wright says:
The healing of the man with the withered hand - rams the point home. What counts is that God, the creator, is honoured in what is done. Is this action, Jesus asks, going to save life or to destroy it? On this occasion Jesus didn't do anything that either official Jewish law or the unofficial codes of the Pharisees would have deemed illegal. He didn't even touch the man. Telling him to stretch out his hand could hardly be counted as 'work', and hence be forbidden. But it was enough that Jesus was doing things which indicated that he regarded himself as being able to act with sovereign freedom in respect of the ancestral laws and traditions. Luke is preparing us for what is to come next: the way in which Jesus began to shape the growing community of his followers, to turn them into God's New Israel, the people who would live in God's New Age. This people, defined by their loyalty to Jesus as the true King, the true 'son of man', would already celebrate the new 'week' that was dawning. They would no longer be bound by the sabbath law, part of the old creation that was drawing towards a close.
So, are you part of this new community that Jesus is Lord or do you still insist on some traditional practices that are not important anymore?
Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Are you free from bondage of tradition?
What I received today from Jesus is a challenge to all of us to have a self-examination of what are those things we consider as tradition and cannot be changed?
Well, tradition is good in a way to guard people from getting into all kinds of crazy ways and ideas. But, tradition is bad and can be a bondage if people insist on doing something that is not important anymore. Like not doing anything on Sabbath. The Israelites nowadays are still following this tradition of not doing anything on Sabbath. They even cannot push the button on a lift to their own floor. So, they have to ask someone to push the button for them to the floor they want to go because pushing a button means working. But, I don't think people will stone to death any Israelite who does not follow the Sabbath law anymore.
For the past 16 years since I became the Rector of Richmond Emmanuel Church I have taken away quite a number of so called Anglican tradition and put in new things according to the new transformation and liturgical development of global Anglican communion. But, many people are still thinking of the Anglican Tradition they had been in Hong Kong and other places and they do not know that may be those churches have changed too. I was nearly stoned to "death" a few times because I was accused of not following the Anglican Tradition. It good to know that the Rector has the authority to change and arrange the worship style in any Anglican Church with the Bishop's approval and I got my bishop's approval for those changes before I become a bishop.
So, are you free from bondage of tradition? Is Jesus your Lord or tradition, Anglicanism your Lord?
Dear Lord Jesus,
Lead us to be able to free from bondage of our tradition to truly follow you as our Lord, Savior and King. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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