~~SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH~~~When Jesus was on the earth, - TopicsExpress

~~SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH~~~When Jesus was on the earth, religion was very rampant, as it is today. There was a group of corrupt religious leaders called the Pharisees who had taken the word of God, passed down from Moses and the prophets (the Torah), and written a commentary on it interpreting what the scriptures said (called the Talmud). Then they wrote another commentary on that commentary called the “Mishnah”. The Mishnah was a list of hundreds rules to meet in order to insure that you were obeying the word of God. These were created by man and had little basis in the actual scripture. For example, one of the 10 Commandments (from the Torah) was, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”. The Pharisees had made literally hundreds of rules in the Mishnah that detailed to the n-th degree what you had to do in order to keep that commandment. There was a rule that you couldn’t walk through a field on the Sabbath because your sandal might clip a grain of wheat, and if it did you would be harvesting grain. If you were harvesting, you had worked on the Sabbath and sinned. Another example is that you could not spit on the ground on the Sabbath because your spit would create mud and this was making mortar. If you created mortar you were working on the Sabbath and therefore sinning. Jesus hated this! He hated the way the Pharisees used the people’s love for God (or fear of God) to control them, limit their freedom, and empty them of the relationship with God that was intended. When you practice religion, your relationship with God is degraded to a mathematical formula. Do this, then do this, don’t do that, and presto. . . you are right in the eyes of God. This is TOTALLY missing the point!