Precision vs Accuracy-Selah73-CMAW170

Christian Men at Work Podcast

Diff between precision and accuracy, precision is hitting the target every time and accuracy is hitting the right target. Both important, but precision w'o accuracy is foolish and arguably legalism, diligently following a checklist or set of rules but following the wrong rules. God made the world based on laws and His way of doing things. If you don't know His way of doing things, i.e. accuracy, you can be as precise as you want but what's the point if you're not following His rules. If you think you're not following rules, I would ask you if you put on a mask against your better judgment at some point over the last 2 years. Where there's a vacuum of rules, someone will fill that vacuum. The Devil will gives us all sorts of rules if we don't follow God's rules, or he will tell us that we should make our own rules. I'm concerned about the talk among conservative Christians who are still talking about Donald Trump like he's our savior and that there's going to be a great awakening around what? Freedom? Is that our ultimate goal, freedom? It depends on what your definition is of freedom. Romans 6:16 NKJV says "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?" Romans 2:20 NKJV says "I have been crucified with Christ; " is that freedom, being crucified? it is if you understand the meaning of true freedom. We talk about slavery as the ultimate evil or thing to avoid, but we should strive to be slave to Christ. To me that's a big part of what being Torah observant is all about. Being obedient to our Creator. Jesus said if you love me keep my commandments in John 14:15. 1 John 3:4 says "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." What law is that talking about? It's certainly not talking about man-made laws but God's law. The word Torah means "the law". When we read about slaves in the Old Testament, it was a different situation than what we saw with African-Americans in the earlier part of the U.S. history. People often became slaves, or what was called bondservants by choice, or sometimes because they needed to pay a debt. Ex 21:2-6 says "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. 3 If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5 But if the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever." To me that picture of a man choosing to have an awl driven through his ear to declare being a slave to someone forever, is similar to our choice to be a slave to Christ forever, and give up the world's version of freedom, which can be summed up by the phrase do what you want. You may have heard the phrase "Do what thou wilt" which was a book written by occultist Alister Crowley. That's always been the message of Satan, along with the questioning of what's God wants us to do. Satan said to Eve "Has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree in the garden" and he says similar things to us in various ways, questioning God's law. Well, we should never be OK with not knowing what God expects from us. What does this look like if we pursue what God's will is for us through His Word. Well, for me one of the first implications of this was that me and my family could no longer justify doing celebrating a pagan holiday we call Christmas that God never told us to do. and in fact He said very clearly we should He did not want his people to worship as the pagans did but told us how He wanted us to worship him and gave us specific appointed times when he wanted to meet with us, in Hebrew these are called Moedim. So we stopped participating in Christmas and then Easter and then realized were not obeying the 4th commandment, which in Ex 20:8-11 says "“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Here are some quotes from the Catholic church about this issue: from the Catholic Record, Sept 1, 1923 ". The Bible still teaches that the Sabbath or Saturday should be kept holy. There is no authority in the New Testament for the substitution of Sunday for Saturday. Surely it is an important matter. It stands there in the Bible as one of the Ten Commandments of God. There is no authority in the Bible for abrogating this Commandment, or for transferring its observance to another day of the week.” “For Catholics it is not the slightest difficulty.”…“The Church is above the Bible; and this transference of Sabbath observance from Saturday to Sunday is proof positive of that fact. " Chancellor Albert Smith for Cardinal of Baltimore Archdiocese, letter dated February 10, 1920: "If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath day [which] by God is Saturday. In keeping the Sunday, they are following a law of the Catholic Church." Our Sunday Visitor (February 5, 1950): "Practically everything Protestants regard as essential or important they have received from the Catholic Church... The Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible and observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope." Catholic Priest T. Enright, CSSR, lecture at Hartford, KS, Feb 18, 1884: "I have repeatedly offered $1000 to any one who can furnish any proof from the Bible that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep...The Bible says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” but the Catholic Church says, “No, keep the first day of the week,” and the whole world bows in obedience." So if you consider yourself a Protestant and not a Catholic, I would encourage to ask yourself why you're worshipping on Sunday? The reformation corrected many wrong doctrines of the Catholic church but left many unchanged and this is one of them. And that's just one of the 10 commandments, which are just 10 among all of the Torah. You may have heard phrases like "Jesus nailed the law to the cross" or that "Jesus did away with the law". I won't take the time to counter those arguments here, but I will say that if you are hungry to know the truth about these matters you can start with a few of these youtube channels: The Parable of the Vineyard, ShemaYisrael, Zach Bauer at An American Homestead, or TruthUnedited. But I'll leave you with this. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said "“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill." I've heard many quote this verse to suggest that when Jesus said fulfill He meant to do away with or destroy. If that were true, Jesus would have been saying "I did not come to destroy but to destroy" which obviously makes no sense. In John 14:15 Jesus said "“If you love Me, keep My commandments." Hebrews 13:8 says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." 2 Kings 17:37 says "And the statutes, the ordinances, the law, and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall be careful to observe forever; " Another thing you may have heard is that Jesus blasted the Pharisees because they were following the law. That's the opposite of the truth. The Pharisees had made up all sorts of rules that they considered to be fences, extra rules to make sure that you never broke the Torah, which may have been well intentioned, but they got to a point where they weren't following the Torah they were just following their man-made rules and in so doing they missed the spirit of the law and they were out of relationship with their Creator, so much so that they didn't even recognize the prophesied messiah when He arrived. In the same manner, if we don't follow God's law and meet Him in His appointed times, will we recognize Jesus when He returns? So before I wrap this up let me make an application to our work so this isn't a total departure of the content you're used to receiving. So I want to bring us back to this idea of precision and accuracy. I recently received some correction at my work. It wasn't because I wasn't working hard, but rather I wasn't working entirely on the right things. I was busy being precise, but my accuracy was off, and ultimately I was doing things as I thought they should be done but not as my boss wanted them done, and that is not a sustainable situation because my boss ultimately has a say about whether I continue to work with him or not, and I do not. It's the same with our heavenly father. He gives us freedom to choose, but if we choose not to follow Him and His ways, and not to meet Him when He wants to meet with us, we will not end up spending eternity with Him.