Thank you. Greatly appreciate it. You’ve hit on something here, something much more profound than we all realize.

The Lord Jesus had already arranged things in such a way that it would not be possibly to use His model for the gaining of wealth. We must remember, however, that though He was always in the process of reform through His teachings, that He wanted people to be free, and that He must therefore reveal why people were not free, there was one principle area with regard to this in which the enemy went, as they say, ballistic. I will get to it at the end of this comment.

The people had become infected with all manner of spiritual disease. This is what sin does. And because we as humans often lack the necessary ability or control to always effectively fight against sin or resist temptation, and because the enemy had gained much power and control, the Lord had to reveal all the things by which we become infected and also the sinister methods the enemy uses. The devil is a deceiver. He does his best work anonymously. He much prefers that people never acknowledge his existence or that they believe he does not exist. It allows him to do his work much easier and be more effective at it.

The only way the Lord could combat this for the sake of His people, since they had become so deceived and blind (going back centuries), was to introduce a series of surface directives which essentially say, “Do this, don’t do that.” The only way this could work is if the point was driven home strongly enough regarding the consequences of each. Thus the Torah was essentially in this sense the Lord attempting to reveal why humanity falls into sin and how not to fall into sin. He was outing the devil’s process for infecting humans and warning His people how not to get infected. It all depended on ceasing incorrect behaviors and trusting Him that He knew what He was doing.

Since we have a free will because we were made like Him, in His image, the Lord will never force people to do anything, because (1) It doesn’t work, (2) It is counter-productive, and (3) people will only rebel against it because He made us to be free. But “free” people with a freedom mentality cannot possibly be free when compromised by sin which came by the way of the enemy’s temptation. So the Lord has to “respect us” in that sense and present choices with the consequences revealed in advance. He says, “If you do this, this will happen. If it is a bad thing there will be a bad result. If it is a good thing there will be a good result.” He then listed a great many of the good and bad things. So He said, “Do the good thing and you will have good results. Do not do the bad thing and you will not have bad results.” That’s what it boils down to.

But by the time the Lord became one of us and walked among us almost fifteen centuries after the Torah, the Law, though it remained perfect, had been compromised through the additions and subtractions of religious hard core doofuses who had long since lost contact with God and simply started winging it using their natural minds which had become infected by sin. There were still those who insisted that this adopted casuistic approach was wrong but they were outvoted and lost authority. The good guys at that time were acting in a sense like prophets but were not prophets. The prophetic Word had ceased in the mid-to-late 400s BC.

This means the people were often duly obeying their religious leaders but did not realize their “religion” had been compromised. They were doing what they were told would help them but kept sinking farther away from God. They were obeying the wrong people with wrong teachings and because these authoritarians were in charge they did not have much choice and there was no comparative to reveal them for what they really were. Sound familiar?

That is, until the Lord showed up. When He did, HE BEGAN REVEALING ALL THE GARBAGE IN ORDER TO SET PEOPLE FREE. The religious leaders thus obviously hated Him for it. The big unnamed thing I mentioned earlier, though, was the one that really set them off. They had often tried to get Him but never could. However, when the time came for Him to lay down His life and become vulnerable, He did it in context with revealing the fact that in their heart, the evil religious people who had gained control were principally MONEY GRUBBERS. They were lovers of money. The Sadducees and Pharisees both were lovers of money. It was when the Lord exposed and attacked their vile money practices when He cleaned out the temple a few days before He was crucified that they said, “Enough!” They knew their entire faux kingdom was about to come down if they didn’t get Him.

Of course it came down anyway forty years later when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in 70AD, but by that time the Lord Jesus had introduced the means for those among His people who believed in Him to overcome sin, recognize the enemy, gain strength to resist temptation, get filled with His Spirit and gain anointing to preach the Gospel, and no longer fall for the enemy’s garbage especially his false religions and corrupt belief systems.

So again, the Lord arranged things in His new Community that there would be no possibility of the same “gaining wealth through religion” as practiced by the bad guys. This does not mean we cannot be blessed. It only means that He will never allow His real people to use His Gospel as a mere means to make money. He will ALWAYS take care of His people, however, and bless us accordingly and even abundantly. He has made all manner of blessings available.

Thanks again for your insight. Blessings to you.

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