Rules or Relationship

Psalm 119:18 New International Version (NIV) "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law." Often we want to know what God's laws and decrees are. The Christian life would be so much easier if we just had a list of rules to follow, right? However, as I'm reading Psalm 119, I am struck by how the writer repeatedly asks God to teach him. Verse 2 says, "Blessed are those who keep His statutes and seek Him with all their heart." So it's not just a matter of knowing and keeping the rules, it is a matter of seeking the Father. In verse 5, the Psalmist cries out, "Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees." It doesn't matter how good I may be or how many rules I know, I will never perfectly live out all of God's law. The Bible says that the law was given so we would recognize our need for a Savior. Over and over the Psalmist says he seeks God with all of his heart. He repeatedly asks God to teach him his decrees. He speaks of meditating on God's word and hiding it in his heart. This means thinking, investigating, memorizing and wrestling in prayer over God's word as we seek to really understand it and apply it to our lives. Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." That goes so much deeper than memorizing a list of dos and don'ts. We can outwardly keep the rules but have evil thoughts and intents. Jesus dealt with this in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. He said that lustful thoughts are akin to adultery and hatred to murder. In Jesus' day there was a group that prided themselves on knowing and following all of the Old Testament law. They even made up rules of their own to add to it. In Matthew chapter 15, Jesus calls them hypocrites and says, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." They followed the "letter of the law" but not the spirit of it. Jesus also refers to them as whitewashed tombs that looked good on the outside but inside were filled with dead men's bones. The Pharisees obviously thought that they were superior to others and they failed to love others as they should. Jesus said that the whole law can be summed up in two commands:"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:37 and 39. Sounds simple, but is it? It's so easy to fall into a rule-following mode and forget to work on our relationship with God. When that happens we have a tendency to start to think that we are better or more worthy than someone else, just as the Pharisees did. Philip Yancey writes in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, "Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters,thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace." Grace is defined as the unmerited favor of God. We can never be good enough to earn God's favor. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death but that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus. How amazing that the God of the Universe loves us so much that He provided the way for us to become His children. When we realize our need for a Savior and accept the free gift of salvation, He rescues us from the domain of darkness and transfers us into the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:3). That is only the beginning, though. Like the Psalmist we need to not only read God's words and know the statutes and decrees, we need to seek Him wholeheartedly and ask Him to teach us what it truly means to follow them. The more we seek God and learn of Him, the more we will desire to live for Him and for others. In Jeremiah 33:3 God tells us, "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Let's call to Him expectantly!