Christian people have a lot of difficulty with Biblical law and sometimes take shortcuts in trying understand it. One of the most common approaches is to divide the law into types. Thomas Aquinas divided the law into three types: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. Something like this is widely accepted by Christian people, allowing that the moral law continues, but the others have passed away.

Then, there is the approach of one denomination which holds that even the Ten Commandments were abolished and that nine of them had been reinstated in the New Testament. Of course, you will search the New Testament in vain for any reference to reinstatement of any law. I think what they mean by that is that you can find references in the New Testament that indicate laws that still exist. But the laws are still laid out in the Old Testament.

One day, I came upon a speech by a Supreme Court justice of these United States, and it helped me understand some things about Biblical law that I had not got quite straight. The title of his speech was A Theory of Constitution Interpretation. And it seems to me that the big problem Christians have with Biblical law is not so much the application of law, but the interpretation of law. He began his speech with a question:

What is the object of the Court? This is a matter of interest to not only judges and lawyers, but any intelligent American citizen, philosopher or not. What do you think your judges are doing when they interpret the Constitution? It's sad to tell you after 200 years, there is not agreement on this rather fundamental question: What is the object of the enterprise?

Unless you’ve just arrived from another planet and are not yet up to speed, you probably have some notion about what Jesus Christ was like. I would guess you even have some visual images of him from paintings, magazines, and so on. (All of which wrong, didn’t you know?) But I’m not really talking about visual impressions, I’m talking about your ideas of his character, his personality, what he was like. You pick these up along the way from many, many sources.

And all these sources come together to form a Jesus of the imagination—something you have put together in your own mind as a model. And then when you sit down with a Bible, and you actually read the Gospel accounts, your imaginary Jesus is going to encounter the real man, and some adjustments are surely going to have to take place. Because, every once in a while, Jesus would do something that, to people standing by and observing, seemed out of character. Sometimes it even seemed downright offensive.

There is one incident like this that is recorded by Matthew. Jesus has been trying to get away from the crowds. He goes away into the desert and winds up having to feed the 5,000-plus people who followed him out there. Since that didn’t work he tries leaving the country and goes off to the seacoast around Tyre and Sidon. His encounter with a woman of this region can seem rude and dismissive, but reveals a great lesson in faith. We’ll find this meeting in Matthew, chapter 15.

Even when Jesus went to the desert to be alone, he could not get away from the crowds. There’s nothing particular unusual about that, I suppose. If you had a little girl with a terrible disease, who was not expected to live, how far would you carry her to reach a man who had the power to make her whole and heal her completely? You’d climb every mountain; ford every stream, as the song goes. You would do whatever it took to bring her to the feet of the Master–Jesus.

Jesus the man was, after all, a man of some feeling. He could be firm–maybe even hard–when he needed to be, but he was also capable of great compassion toward those who were sick and hurting. On a particular occasion, he had gone out into a desert place. John the Baptist had been murdered. Jesus heard of this, was deeply moved by it, and wanted to be alone. But when the people heard where he was, they followed him–on foot–out of all the surrounding cities. When this tremendous multitude (numbering more than 5,000 by the time they all got out there) came to Jesus he was moved with compassion, and began to heal the sick among them.

Even though Jesus went out there to be alone, he did not want to send them away–even when his disciples suggested the crowd leave to get something to eat. The sheer joy of healing the suffering and the sick had bound him to this crowd. Those healed did not want to go away, and he did not want them to. I think I understand that. When you have shared something very special with someone, you want to prolong that experience. So when the crowd grew hungry, Jesus took matters into his own hands, displaying to us a very down-to-earth truth. We'll find this in Matthew, chapter 14.

What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? Is it a great city with jeweled foundations and streets of gold; a marvelous city with gates made from a single pearl; a land with a river of pure water running through it, lined with fruit trees; a land of milk and honey where we will never grow old? Or is the Kingdom of Heaven a time of Christ’s rule over the world for 1,000 years—when he breaks the nations with a rod of iron and establishes a time of peace and harmony on the earth? Or is the Kingdom of Heaven the church—here and now?

I think you might be surprised if you stood outside a church on Sunday morning and began to ask people this question: What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? I think you’d be surprised at the variety of answers you would receive. Some people are so used to arguing the case for their particular doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven that they haven’t really given a lot of thought to what Jesus and the Bible might say on the subject.

The expression Kingdom of Heaven or it’s synonym Kingdom of God is not used in only one sense in the Bible. Bear in mind that the word translated kingdom really represents a reign or rule. The word kingdom means more than that and suggests a complex, structured government whereas the simple rule of one God over one man is the Kingdom of God in that sense—the rule of God. And in the sense that a man is filled with and ruled by the Holy Spirit, one could say that the Kingdom of Heaven was within him. But no matter what interpretation you place on the Kingdom of Heaven you are going to run into a passage of scripture that does not follow it. So, what we want to do is ask Jesus the question we started with: What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? His answer will not fit any of the stereotypes of the Kingdom with which we are so familiar. We’ll find his answer in the form of a parable—a riddle, if you will—in Matthew 13.

Periodically, it seems, society gets a new rash of atheists. I think rash may be a good metaphor. Like many irritants, though, it may serve a useful purpose in that it gets us off our posteriors and on our feet.

All religions indeed cannot be true, but that hardly forecloses the question: Why and how have religions become to universal in human society? It is an important question, and one not so easily dismissed. And how could a God who is good create a world with so much evil? How can one look to the Bible for guidance when it prescribes things like slavery and the stoning of children?

One of these new atheists says to tell a Christian that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

What bothers me about this line of argument is not merely that it is wrong about what the Bible says, but that it is being made by scholars who have to know that they are presenting a one-sided view of the Bible. They should be aware that the Bible doesn't say that. Christian preachers and Muslim imams may, but not God and not the Bible. So what does the Bible say about these things?

Why would anyone who claims to worship God even consider committing murder? Don’t say they haven’t. Men and women—Jews and Christians—have been guilty of murder most foul. The Pharisees did their level best to kill Jesus…and finally succeeded. Other Jewish leaders later tried to kill Stephen…and succeeded. In fact, the most severe persecution of Christians in the very earliest times came, not from Rome, but from Jews.

And while the Jews, in later years, would suffer greatly at the hands of the Romans, the time would come when they were in far greater danger from Christians as Christians murdered Jews in some kind of bizarre, terrible payback in the generations that followed. In Lebanon, Muslims kill Christians and Christians kill Muslims. In Ireland, Protestants killed Catholics and Catholics killed Protestants. In Palestine, Jews kill Muslims and Muslims kill Jews.

What’s wrong with this picture? All these people claimed to worship the same God. They may use different names, but they’re talking about the same God. All these groups claim to worship the God of Abraham (by whatever name), but what we need to understand is that it was that same God who wrote, with his own finger, Thou shalt not kill. Why, then, down through history and to the present day, do we kill each other with such regularity?

Is religion hard or easy? Is it complicated or simple? If you listen to some teachers, you would think that there is nothing to it at all. All you have to do is give your hand to the preacher and your heart to the Lord and it’s a done deal. After that, just go to church from time to time and the rest doesn’t matter very much.

But most of us know intuitively that there is something wrong with that picture—it just doesn’t feel right. Surely there has got to be more to it than that. Surely, after we’re saved, we can’t just go back and live our live just as we’ve always lived it. On the other hand, there are those who make religion nearly impossible. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were a case in point. They had a terribly long list of things you had to do, things you couldn’t do. In fact, they had taken a day—the Sabbath day—that God had intended to be liberating and turned it into a burden. Matthew connects one of Jesus’ great promises to a conflict on just this point. It also helps us with this question of religion being hard or easy.

Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.