The First Footprints - Week 1

This week we study the background and upbringing of Paul. We learned that his name was Saul and that as a child he grew up in a home where they followed the Jewish law to the letter. We learned that his father was a pharisee who at that time was a Jewish man who stood for a strict religious life. The Jewish parents considered children the utmost blessing from God. So although he grew up in a strict home, he also enjoyed the utmost devotion of his father to his godly upbringing. As a 13 year old boy, Saul could not even get out of bed in the morning without remembering to whom he belonged. As he tied on the cubes with passages from the Torah on his arm and forehead, he was reminded of his binding relationship to his Creator. The law of the Lord was his life.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.

This passage got me thinking...do we do this? Do we talk about it when we sit and walk and lie down and get up? Or do we put God into a situational box and only talk about him when we need something? I think often that is the case. It's easy to go about a whole day and not have a conversation or hear a word about God. How do we change this? How do we make this a part of our everyday life? How do we teach this to our kids?

The Jewish people had all these laws they had to follow that were supposed to remind them about God constantly. I am so thankful that we have been freed from these laws but at the same time I think we have become so scared of tradition and rituals that we are missing out on some good reminders. Rituals aren't bad if we can remember why we do them. What makes them wrong is that they so often become just something we do or something we "have" to do to receive God's grace. Where is the balance? Or is there no balance and we have to find different ways to remind us of our Heavenly Father on a daily basis.

We have a responsibility to make an invisible God, visible. So how do we do this? Beth gave us some suggestions in the Group Session 1.

1. By learning to recognize Him ourselves (John 14:19-23; 5:17)
2. By exerting primary influence while you can (Prov. 4:1-4, 20-21)
3. By personally demonstrating the relevance of God's Word (Prov. 3:5-6)
4. By seizing opportunities to teach about God (Deut. 6:4-9)
5. By growing with them (1 Cor. 13:11)
6. By dedicating them to God (Prov. 22:6) - God's promise, His truths can not be turned off.

As we continued on in the week we saw how strict Saul's life was and how he was an exceptional student. We saw him go to Jerusalem where he was taught by Gamaliel, a very esteemed rabbi. None of his childhood was a waste. Galatians 1:15-16 tells us that he was set apart by God for his service at birth. So all this training had a purpose. Saul became the perfect Pharisee. He became the model for Isaiah 29:13: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is...rules taught by men."

Saul's time in Jerusalem came to an end as he headed back to Tarsus just as John and Jesus came onto the scene. Jesus came and exposed the Pharisees for what they really were and by doing so brought on their anger and just as they hoped the Lamb of God was nailed to a cross.

But the Lord was not finished.

I want to quote what was written in the last paragraphs of this weeks studies because it rings true.

The very thing He finished we can't seem to leave alone and the very thing He hasn't finished, we try to halt. The work of Calvary is finished. No more payment for sin is necessary. He did it all by Himself on the Cross. we can't earn it. We can't add to it. It is finished. Yet we try to add our good works to his Salvation.

However, the work He is doing on everyone who has accepted Christ as saviour is not finished. Salvation is finished. Sanctification is not. Completion is not. Philippians 1:6 promises that "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Yet we wish He'd stop picking on us the moment we are saved and let us be the boss. Like the Pharisees, we wish He'd stop interfering...sometimes more effort is required to keep rolling the stone back over the tomb than simply to cooperate with the work He seeks to finish in us.

Do we just want the cross without the resurrection? Are we trying to stuff the living, working Christ back into the tomb so He'll just save us, and then let us alone? Or do we want to know "the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings"?