Daily Lesson for February 3, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Galatians chapter 4 verse 17b:

"They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. "

When I was just out of college I worked in the tour industry in New York City.  It didn't take very long to learn that one of the tricks to the industry was to take good care of the gatekeepers who controlled access to all the tour destinations. A miracle could happen and the line your tour group was in could really get moving after just a little TLC with the gatekeepers.

But what happens to the gatekeepers when the gates are actually removed?  They doubled down, collude, and come up with some kind of extortion racket -- at least that's what they do in New York City. 

And that's what they did in the first century also. Jesus came with a message of inclusion for all people. In a dramatic symbol at Jesus' death, the curtain of the Temple was torn opening the Holy of Holies to all who might come in. In Fanny Crosby's words, He "opened the life gates that all may go in."

But that didn't set well with the gatekeepers -- also known as the set apart, the professionally religious, the ethnically pure, and the racially superior, and anyone else who believed they were God's VIPs.  So they set up an extortion racket: "Want to get in?  You gotta get circumcised."

But the Apostle Paul saw it for what it all was: "They shut you out, because they want to be made much of."

The gates to the kingdom of God are open and everyone is welcome: Jews and Gentiles, and sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes, and blacks and whites and Latinos, and straights and gays, and really whoever shows up is welcome to come in. And anybody who says you have to change or do something or confirm to some kind of law or custom or human standard is running a racket. They're gatekeepers to a city where the gates are commanded to remain wide open.