Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
Matthew 13:51-52 (NIV)
51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied. 52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
When Jesus showed up something “new” started. The “old” law was not bad. In fact, it was very good! But the religious leaders had focused on it so much that they made God into, as Brennan Manning says, “an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper whose favor could be won only by the scrupulous observance of laws”. However, the “new” work of Jesus was to reorient hearts and minds to the truth of God’s love and mercy. God wants a loving relationship, not a scorecard. For us, the danger can be similar. If in wanting to be good and do what is right, we make Jesus into a means rather than the end then we have fallen into the same trap as the Jewish leaders of Jesus’s day. Let us ask Jesus to reorient our hearts so that having a loving relationship with Him would be our greatest treasure of all.