Does God Want My Herbs? - 18/5/09
By Luke Rowe
‘Does God want my herbs?’ I wonder what you’d say if I ran into you at uni and asked you that question. Perhaps you’d think, ‘Typical arts student…’, or wittily evade the question with a string of philosophical words that I don’t know the meaning of, or even not-so-wittily avoid the question by saying, ‘tip, you’re it’ and then running away. Maybe you’d just be confused. What if I told you that I actually have been thinking about whether God requires my herbs? Well, kind of anyway.
In Matthew 23:23 you’ll find Jesus laying into a group of religious leaders, saying “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin...” This is where herbs come in. Tithing is where you give back to God a tenth of something (in this case by taking it to the temple), like your weekly income, or your profit from harvest, or even what you grow, like herbs. So what’s the problem? To give back a tenth to God was in God’s own law, it applied to everything, so aren’t these Pharisees doing what is right in God’s eyes? The full message of Jesus to them is this: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” The problem for the Pharisees was not that they gave a tenth of their herbs to God; it was that they had forgotten the aspects of God’s law from which everything else flowed. They had forgotten to practice ‘justice and mercy and faithfulness’. They were all about looking righteous and good, keeping rules and regulations.
Now I understand that unless you are particularly fanatical about using gourmet herbs in your cooking or take Bob Marley as your role model a little too seriously, then ‘does God want my herbs?’ is probably not very relevant to you. But how about ‘does God want my uni work?’ Or ‘does God want my money, or my Monday mornings, my sport skills, my conversations, my time?’ How about ‘does God want my life?’ I know you can’t put your Monday mornings in the offering plate at church, but here’s something to think about that gives us a whole lot of perspective:
“For we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich...” How rich was he? He is the creator of the world and everything in it was created for him. Everything! “...though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor...” How poor? God himself comes to earth as the man Jesus, suffers as a human and gives his life to save people like you and me who have not only ignored him, the giver of life, but hated and despised him. “...though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” How rich? He offers freely to us grace, mercy and peace. He has given his people eternal life with God and will make them to stand before the glorious throne of the one true God, to see his face and not be ashamed. We are bought by the blood of Christ, we belong to him. How then should we respond?
Justice, mercy and faithfulness don’t come from keeping rules or simply agreeing with a set of doctrinal statements. They come from living for Christ, humbled and spurred on by his amazing grace. If we belong to Christ then everything we are and everything we have belongs to him.
I’m not saying that you should spend your every waking hour reading the Bible and praying. These are both essential things and we really can’t hope to grow in our relationship with God unless they are central to our day, but living for and glorifying God does not consist of the practice of reading and praying, but rather prayerfully living out God’s word. Our mindset needs to be that we seek to glorify Christ in everything that we do throughout the day, whether it be eating cereal in the morning, going to class, doing an assignment, enjoying the morning sun, sharing the good news of Christ crucified and risen, giving a sermon or talking to a friend over dinner. Our whole lives should be lived for the glory of God, not only the times when we read and pray. “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”2
Does the love of Christ demand a tenth of your time? Half an hour at the end of the day to read your Bible? A Bible study or two?
“Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far too small
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.” 3
Rowe-your-boat is a third year engineering/arts student from Grenfell. He has a very happy wave and enjoys playing guitar and saying ‘heaps’. He also likes hymns and elderly folk, and his favourite herb is basil.
Footnotes
1) Cor 6:19-20,
2) Col 3:17
3) When I Survey The Wondrous Cross – Isaac Watts