"Yet take heed not to be doing your righteousness in front of men, in order to be gazed at by them, otherwise surely you have no wages with your Father who is in the heavens. Wherever, then, you may be doing alms, you should not be trumpeting in front of you, even as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they should be glorified by men. Verily, I am saying to you, they are collecting their wages!"
Matthews Account 6: 1-2, Concordant New Testament
I still get asked every now and then when I run into someone from my old church days. Where are you going to church? My usual response, not wanting to make waves, is that I am between churches. Not too long ago, I ran into a brother I used to know from my old church who asked where I was attending. When I gave the standard answer, his eyes lit up as he invited me to attend the out of the way congregation he had recently began going to. I was trapped! I assured him that I would look into this church in the future. So, what church is it that you're currently involved with? The place of worship where you feel most close to God. Like it or not, this is how churches brand themselves. That they are the way to a closer relationship with your heavenly Father and His Son. Think of it, whenever you hear of getting closer to God, what is one of the first things you know that you need to do? For me the answer was simple...I need to get into church! For in church we find fellow believers in God. But here's the deal, the church begets Christianity and Christianity begets religious systems. What church did Christ Jesus say that we should attend? We know that Jesus Himself was raised in the Jewish faith and that His custom was to journey into the temple {Lukes Account 4:16-21}. But what church did He say that believers should attend? Like Jesus, my custom growing up was to find myself in Gods house on Sunday mornings. It's just what we did, that was our custom. Despite Jesus attending and teaching in the local synagogue, did He affiliate Himself with the leaders of the church leaders of His day? For that answer I refer you to Jesus' woe to the Pharisees scriptures. So, here we have Jesus in the synagogue as was His custom, yet not by compulsion. Indeed, there's a difference between the two.
And he came to Nazareth, where He was reared, and, according to His custom on the day of the sabbaths, He entered into the synagogue and rose to read. And handed to Him was a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and. opening the scroll, He found the place where it is written, "The spirit of the Lord is on Me, on account of which He anoints Me to bring the evangel to the poor. He has commissioned Me to heal the crushed heart, to herald to captives a pardon, And to the blind the receiving of sight; To dispatch the oppressed with a pardon. To herald an acceptable year of the Lord..." And furling the scroll, giving it back to the deputy, He is seated. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were looking intently at Him. Now He begins to be saying to them that "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears."
Lukes Account 4: 16-21, Concordant New Testament
The key difference we see in Jesus' teaching in the temple is that He spoke to proclaim the gospel, not to uphold the man-made church system. When people ask me these days if I am a Christian I immediately correct them. I'm not a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus. There's a difference. The Christian religion is chock full of traditions, rules and regulations to be followed. It is these requirements which Jesus put to death with Him on the cross {Paul to the Colossians 2:14}. The Jewish Pharisees, the leaders of the religious system of the day, constantly butted heads with Jesus for His refusal to adhere to the laws and traditions of the synagogue. Jesus called out the Jewish leaders for their hypocrisy. The other day I saw a video of a street preacher proclaiming that he was not a Christian, but a follower of Jesus. Amen! Jesus has proclaimed that He is the way to the Father {Johns Account 14:6}. You will not come to know the Father in you simply by sitting in a church. I didn't. The apostle Paul, one of the greatest teachers of the evangel of Christ of all time did not come to his own realization of Christ Jesus from his time spent in the Jewish religious system. By his own account, Paul credits that realization unto the Father Himself {Paul to the Galatians 1:15-16}. For it is God who revealed the Son of God in him as it was for me as well. No amount of church learning had brought me to this knowledge. No Sunday sermon led me to this knowing of Jesus in me.
~Scott~
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