SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

One of the constant joys of my life is getting the speedometer machine that flashes on Sudley Road to go 26! 26! 26!  The speed limit there is 25 miles per hour.  Since it is four lanes and a major thoroughfare people tend to speed there.  They also tend to speed there because there is no place for a police cruiser to sit and clock drivers as they pass.  And so the City has put this Screen there that lights up and tells you your speed.  When you exceed 25 miles per hour it starts flashing.  I like to go twenty five until I get close, and then accelerate that extra mph and get it screaming at me: 26! 26! 26!

Of course the screen just reads 26. There is no exclamation point – I added that.  It just seems like there should be one – it flashes so angrily at a single mile infraction.  I’ve always been that way – taking immense pleasure needling the authority figure who expects everyone else to be perfect – the teacher who had a conniption if you said “bug” instead of “insect,” the dorm-dad obsessed with using only approved forms of ticky-tack on dorm-room walls, the coach whose left eye bulged and twitched if you cut a corner while running laps around the football field.  I’ve got nothing against rules mind you – I’m no anarchist.  I’m a rule keeper.  It’s just the maniacal, glazed-eyed enforcement of human (and thus flawed and often arbitrary) rules that really bugs me and gives me great pleasure in needling.  To quote the great Barney Fife: “Picky! Picky! Picky!”  I read that once, after a particularly rousing speech before parliament, someone criticized Winston Churchill for ending a sentence with a preposition.  “This is a criticism up with which I will not put,” was his reply.  Perfect.

Of course, making the machine go 26! 26! 26! is sinful.  It isn’t sinful simply because I am exceeding the law by 1 mile per hour – but because I do so willfully, and in a spirit of perversity, disrespect, and rebellion.  If my car’s speedometer were calibrated a little differently, and it told me I was going 25 mph, when I was really going 27 mph I would not be sinning.  But I know the law, and am breaking it for my own pleasure.  Christians are to obey the law and respect authority (Romans 13.1-7, I Peter 2.13-17).  A 1 mile per hour infraction may seem a small thing – but the intent behind it is large – and the word of God judges the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4.12-13).  It isn’t what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out – out of his thoughts, out of his heart (Matthew 15.17-20).

In the passage cited above Jesus chides the Pharisees for screaming 26! 26! 26! when his disciples didn’t wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders.  Jesus says that we are not punished for simply coloring outside the lines now and then – but for evil in our hearts which translates itself into action.  If the disciples had been washing or not washing their hands out of spite that would be sin – in the same way binding as doctrine the commandments of men is sin (Matthew 15.9).  The intent of thought and heart make all the difference.  God knows them both fully (Hebrews 4.13).

So let us keep it at 25 or under as best we can when the posted limit is 25. And let us be thankful for God’s grace which covers our sins.

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