(Isaiah 4-6; Galatians 3)

One of the most egregious deceptions going around in Christendom is that since the faith of both Christians and Muslims is descended from Abraham, we are all co-equal sons of God. This is wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start, but begin we will.

This lie of equivalence is behind the false merging of religions into what we label as Chrislam, i.e., Christian Islam. If we have the same father of our faiths, then we can come together and worship him in a united body. With this source of inspiration, there is no need for separation in our beliefs. That being the case, any differences between the two must mean that there is error in one. If so, that one must be mistaken. That can easily be resolved by simply discounting the radical elements that caused the separation.

Spoiler alert. You will notice as I outline a few of these ideas that the weight of legitimacy always tilts toward Islam. What are a few of the extremist positions that Christianity holds?

Islam believes that Allah is a monolithic, impersonal god; he has no son. Christianity’s belief in Jesus Christ as God, and the Trinity comprised of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are major differences. Of great importance is that Jesus is relational. These problems are easily resolved by dumbing Jesus down to the position that He was simply a wise man, a good teacher, but certainly not God. To accept Islam, who Jesus is must be compromised.

Islam does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. It states that there was a substitute placed on the cross. As a result, He never rose; rather, He faked it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central tenet of Christianity. With no resurrection, we have nothing. As Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14:

“But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

But no worries for Chrislamists. They can set the resurrection aside as a minor point of difference so as to foster unity.

Salvation in Islam comes wholly by works. Adherents must please Allah through their various efforts to be holy in his sight. The primary means for this is through jihad, or holy struggle. Apologists for Islam inevitably say that jihad is only a spiritual effort. The truth is that it includes the killing of unbelievers who offend Allah by not following his strict laws. Muslims have no assurance in their faith as to gaining paradise. They hope that their works tilt the scales so that they please Allah, but even Muhammad stated that he had no promise of heaven. Christianity is based on our trust in Jesus Christ that He is who He says He is. Salvation’s promise is captured in Ephesians 2:8-9:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

You’ll note that there is much boasting in Islam, but again, no worries. To the one who embraces Chrislam, this once more is a tiny area of dispute that can be easily ignored.

These and many more distinctions separate Christianity and Islam. However, they are all disregarded because of the bedrock belief of commonality in our roots. Father Abraham birthed both strains of faith. That must mean that none of these differences are of any account.

Well… there’s a problem with this that Paul gets to the heart of. It has to do with the works of the Law. Scripture states that the faith of Abraham – which came before the Law – was accomplished outside the Law. Galatians 3:5-6 reminds us:

“Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’?”

Paul, then, definitively states in Galatians 6:7:

“Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.”

That’s inconvenient. On one hand, we have Islam that is based completely on works. On the other, we have Christianity, whose foundation is faith alone through the grace of God by Christ alone.

In fact, as Paul says in Galatians 3:10:

“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.'”

It doesn’t matter how holy and righteous one thinks he is in the flesh; if he is under – and remains under – the Law, he is cursed.

A big problem that’s hard to wipe away is that Muslims believe the child of promise born to Abraham was Ishmael. The Bible makes it clear that he was a child of the flesh and not of the Spirit; thus, he is not Abraham’s descendant who was blessed with the promise of being a blessing to all nations. Actually, Ishmael and his descendants reflect this reality from God in Genesis 16:12:

“He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

Strife would always follow him, not peace. Islam is not the “religion of peace,” as so many love to declare. It is the source of hatred and violence throughout much of the world.

Here’s the issue that is conveniently forgotten: God’s promise for the spiritual line of Abraham is described in Exodus 3:15:

“God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

Many other verses show us that it is the people of Israel, descendants of not only Abraham but also Isaac and Jacob who are God’s Chosen People. The phrase “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” is used in Genesis 50:24, Exodus 2:24, Leviticus 26:42, Deuteronomy 1:8, and elsewhere, definitively noting the spiritual line that God chose as His own.

For anyone to declare that Christians and Muslims must coexist through their common faith in the same God is deceived. Christianity is unique. Paul summarized this for us in Galatians 3:13-14:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

Our faith is built on Christ alone. The spiritual line that birthed him is distinct and clearly laid out in Scripture. Anyone claiming otherwise obviously is ignorant of God’s Word or willfully ignores it. He does so at his peril.

We proclaim the Name of Jesus and lift Him high above all others!

[Author Note: Briefly, I want to set the stage for you as to the nature of most of my articles in this season. Each year I read the Bible through completely at least once – that has been my practice since I came to the Lord in 2005. I remain astounded at what God has done in my life because of that discipline!

Each day I read from both the Old and New Testaments. I choose a verse from one of those passages and write my commentary and reflection based on that. In the title of my article, you’ll see the verse I chose. In addition, you’ll see the reading for that day if you’d like to follow along with greater context.]

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Gary W. Ritter is a lay pastor, Bible teacher, and prolific author. His Whirlwind Series comprises three books: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind, and There Is A Time. These books are contained in the collected volume of the Whirlwind Omnibus. Gary has been given the Christian Redemptive Fiction award for three novels: The Tattooed Cat, Alien Revelation, and for his collaboration with Terry James in writing The Minion Protocols, the third book in James’ Second Coming Chronicles.

Earlier this year, Gary released a four-volume set of Awaken Bible Study Notes that comment verse-by-verse through Scripture from a Biblical prophetic lens. He is currently editing a sequel to Alien Revelation called Alien Zombie Plague, which he plans to release later in the fall of 2021. Recently, Gary wrote a novella for the new Kindle Vella platform. That story is called Tribulation Rising: Seal Judgments – The Coming Apocalypse. This seven-part short work can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099Z462WD.

Each day this year, Gary has been writing commentary and reflections based on his reading through the Bible in a year. The intent in all his writings is to bring a strong Christian witness to what people read.

You can see all his books and blog articles and reach him at his website:www.GaryRitter.com or his Facebook Author page: https://www.facebook.com/gritter3390.

You can also see his older video Bible teachings on his Gary Ritter YouTube channel – look for the fish symbol, and more recently on Rumble on his Awaken Bible Prophecy channel: https://rumble.com/c/c-783217.

 

Mark 7:1-23, Hebrews 12:14-15, James 3:6

Summary: It is not the food you eat or religious observation you practice that enables you to claim that you are right with God. Your attitude, behavior, and response to His commands show whether or not your life is defiled before Him.

Worship is supposed to come from a grateful heart and mind, focused on how God’s mercy and grace have taken us off of the road to hell and – by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on our behalf – placed us on the narrow road leading to eternal life. Our submission to Him as Lord and Savior, along with the desire to obey and follow Him, is the hallmark of a life founded on the thanks we owe our gracious LORD for an act of love that He did not have to grant (Romans 5:6-11, 8:31-39).

Music, prayer, and the preaching of the Word in Spirit and truth are all considered acceptable worship before Him. But all too often, worship becomes, in far too many congregations, an excuse for rampant, unchecked emotional fanaticism, disarray, and a lack of reverence that turns off a lot of people and gives the body of Christ a black eye.

On the other side, there is a lack of any kind of reverence and love for God in churches where the spiritual fire went out a long time ago, and the members are going through the motions with no sense of personal interaction with their Lord and Redeemer. Traditions and programs that served a purpose many years ago are still being used lest there be a commotion and outrage over changing or ending it due to the fact that “it’s always been this way.”

Churches have split and even closed because situations like this are not addressed, evaluated, and brought before the LORD to seek His guidance through prayer and the Word and to heed His counsel.

Two major sources of conflict when it comes to worship, outreach, or just because it’s part of the tradition of the church in question are that of celebrating Christmas and Easter. When I was a boy, and up to my young adult years, this was not even on the radar, much less a point of contention. There are godly church members and their respective ministers who see the Christmas season as a celebration of the arrival of Jesus Christ to the earth as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, the promised Messiah of His people, where we celebrate and honor Him with the songs and specials centered on His Majesty.

A lot of brethren believe just as strongly that Christmas is nothing more than a pagan recognition of a fictional character who gives gifts and is nothing more than a symbol of the commercialism that has engulfed the season, and they see no reason to give it any due. There is also a sense from most of these folks to all but cast the celebrants into hell for even recognizing the holiday.

I handled the issue in my home by telling my children about Saint Nicholas and his Christ-like kindness towards the poor and needy of his time. I have always liked the ornament where the Santa figure kneels before the manger, and I believe that it is the best way to balance everything out.

A lot of people get bent out of shape when it comes to the Resurrection season, or Easter. Again, this was not even an issue when I was a child, and I knew that the rabbit was a character of fiction, and we never sang songs about the critter. I quit eating Easter candy when I got horribly sick from chowing down on a hollow chocolate bunny, and that was decades ago. I knew even before I was a Christian that Easter was the time of year where we celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Again, there are people who turn on you like a rabid dog if you even mention the word “Easter” around them, and then corner you as they rattle off a history of Babylonian pagan fertility traditions that make the season one of horrendous secular infiltration, or something like that. I have always wanted to ask these zealots if they put that much time and effort into memorizing Scripture or going out and telling someone about the love of Christ that will not let anyone go if they will but bow to Him and surrender their lives to Him.

If this describes you, please calm down, smile, relax, and live the kind of life that makes people eager to hear about the Savior. Oh, and for those of you who sit and debate deep theological issues and make it a point to pour over the different views of salvation, predestination, election, Puritan teachings, ideas of holiness, and admire the design and structure of the fire engine while the building full of people is burning out of control — get your priorities straight and go rescue the perishing like Jesus commanded. You can teach them these things later.

I speak from many years of experience and some regret, but that has been confessed and thrown away by the LORD as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103). I do not dig up the dead.

Churches over the years have unfortunately split and then either died or ended up as totally ineffective and an embarrassment to the cause of Christ.

No doubt, many of you reading this message have either heard of or know of church members getting all bent out of shape about the type of music the church used, or the color of the carpet, pews, age of the preacher, paying the preacher, the preacher’s family, where the piano should be located, or other urgent, dire spiritual issues that could send people to hell for not obeying, or so they thought.

When I first started preaching in small churches throughout rural Louisiana, I heard about two little congregations that met within ten miles of each other that had split over something they could not even remember. Each had a handful of members that could have swallowed their pride, prayed for forgiveness, come together as one in Christ, and been a representation of what being a follower of the LORD is all about. I do not think they are even in existence anymore, all because of some unknown breach of tradition or argument that did not serve any purpose except to give the devil a reason to smile.

I have presented all of these examples in order to get your mind wrapped around the absurd things people have both practiced and proclaimed in order to justify themselves before God.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were the experts in the trivial and tedious when it came to their conception of what it meant to be right before God. They had been originally formed to practice genuine devotion to the LORD through the teaching of the Scriptures and the doctrines set forth in the Law of Moses. They took it upon themselves to be models of holy living before the people and to be examples to follow, especially after the period of exile in Babylon where they had been sent by God as a national punishment for their idolatrous practices and disobedience to God, which is told of in the books of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The period of exile had forever purged them of ever wanting to worship idols again.

Like any good intention, the ministry of the Pharisees had become a living symbol of religious ritual, fastidious obedience to the Law, and rigid observance of rabbinic interpretations that were on a par with the Scriptures themselves, in particular when it came to Sabbath observations that verged on the ridiculous and absurd.

In Mark 7, we find Jesus and His disciples preparing to sit down and enjoy a meal together, and we can assume that they took time to wash their hands and face before coming to the table after a day of walking, teaching, and preaching. That is common sense and is in line with the hygienic practices set forth in the Law (Exodus 30:19; Leviticus 13:6, 14, 58; 14:9; Numbers 8:7).

The Pharisees noticed this and began asking the LORD why He had washed according to the traditions of the elders (7:3-4), which was not for the purpose of sanitation but was to be seen as an outward show of piety. The Pharisees would meticulously undergo a washing ritual for reasons such as accidentally touching a Gentile, or a woman who was on her menstrual period, or someone who had come into contact with a dead body or had touched some kind of reptile. The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish interpretations of the Law and tradition, had thirty chapters alone on the proper procedure for washing hands. That is nothing more than religious overkill, yet these officials wondered why the Lord Jesus was not following their lead.

Jesus followed no man-made traditions, but only the will of the Father. Man-made rules, rituals, and traditions have no bearing on Him, nor have any place in His work or His Word. He quoted to them the words of the prophet concerning the false worship performed by hypocrites and all who follow their lead (Isaiah 29:13).

Both King David and Isaiah after him declared that God is never interested in any kind of mock worship where sacrifices are burned but the hearts of sinners are not broken by the weight of their wickedness and the need for redemption (Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 40:6, 51:16-17). The same pronouncement against meaningless rituals was made by the prophet Amos during his days (Amos 5:21-28). These religious phonies who stood before the King of Kings, who is worthy of worship and praise, could not see that everything they were doing and saying was meaningless.

This scene prompted rebuke from the LORD, who put their traditions on trial using the Word of God as evidence against them. He quotes from Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16 where God commands that we honor our father and mother, with the punishment for disobedience of this command is to be put to death, as it was seen as abuse and neglect on the part of the children towards their parents who should be cared for in their old age. The tradition of what was known as “Corban” was used by the Pharisees to get around that command by informing Mom and Dad that anything they would have received from the son financially was instead given to God as a gift. It could be written as follows:

“Here’s Mom and Dad in old age, a woman of God and a grand old sage,

The son, who thought he was righteous, in reality was quite obnoxious.

“Money and help? Gee, Mom and Dad, that’s rather odd;

The money I could have used to care for you was given to God.

Sorry I can’t help, I’ve got to go pray, but it was nice to talk to you today.”

He went to offer his pompous words, but God in Heaven of them never heard.

The son said quietly, “Why, can’t they see? There is none holier than me.”

He thought that God he could fool, but all his words were spiritually cool.

The time would come as it always does, when it would be to face God alone.

All his show, all his pomp and words, were selfish prayers never heard.

This pompous Pharisee was shocked to hear that his actions and words caused many tears.

God heard his parents cry and all of the hypocritical lies. He now heard words that caused him fear.

To be in heaven? Sorry, but you are not welcome here. The parents, God welcomed with open arms.

They had eternal life and were forever safe from harm.

The treasures of heaven were theirs to possess.

The moral here is not hard to confess: never put your parents in distress.

Jesus concluded His teachings on defilement and traditions, telling everyone that defilement is produced from the heart of a wicked person, not a particular diet, nor a religious practice (7:18-23).

If you want to be cleansed once and for all from the defilement sin has placed on you, give your life to Jesus Christ today. He will turn no one away who comes to Him for cleansing, forgiveness, and redemption. That’s always Good News.

donaldwhitchard@gmail.com

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Join me for “The Reality City Daily Review” weekday mornings at 10:00 CST on YouTube (USA). It will then be posted on Facebook and on my website. My main area of discussion will be on the basics of the Christian faith but will also deal with prophetic issues and other topics as the Lord impresses upon me to handle.