Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Jeremiah 12-16
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 15:13-20
Jesus: Every plant planted by someone other than My heavenly Father will be plucked up by the roots. So let them be. They are blind guides. What happens when one blind person leads another? Both of them fall into a ditch.
Peter: Explain that riddle to us.
Jesus: Do you still not see? Don’t you understand that whatever you take in through your mouth makes its way to your stomach and eventually out of the bowels of your body? But the things that come out of your mouth—your curses, your fears, your denunciations—these come from your heart, and it is the stirrings of your heart that can make you unclean. For your heart harbors evil thoughts—fantasies of murder, adultery, and whoring; fantasies of stealing, lying, and slandering. These make you unclean—not eating with a hand you’ve not ritually purified with a splash of water and a prayer.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Don’t you just want to shake the disciples sometimes? They seem so dense when we look back and listen to the questions they have for Jesus. Explain your riddle. Tell us what your parable means. Why do you make your sermons so hard to understand. And Jesus spends time slowly going over what He’s just told the crowd. He puts things in terms kindergarteners can understand. Still they ask their questions and we sit back and shake our heads at them.
But…should we be so quick to chastise them for their ignorance? We live on this side of the cross. We have heard Jesus’ explanation of all those parables. We know the answers to the questions the disciples raised. We have centuries of writings from the apostles, early disciples, and theologians that tell us the meaning of Jesus’ words. These guys heard these words for the first time with no other background except His words.
So we have all this knowledge about this information Jesus shares with the people who listened to Him talk about those rituals and the difference between what went into a person and what came out of a person. Which one makes you clean? The rituals didn’t do it Jesus says. He made it pretty clear to the folks who listened to Him. We know that on this side of the cross. We know that what you eat or drink doesn’t make you righteous. Neither does the physical act of washing a certain way, sitting in certain places, following certain practices. None of these outward acts makes one righteous.
We know these things from the lessons Jesus gives the crowds on the hillsides of Judea and the interpretations He gives to His disciples as they ask for deeper explanations of His stories. So, if we know all these things, why do we continue to do the very things Jesus preaches against? Why do we keep acting like going to church makes us okay? Why do we act like putting a few dollars in an offering plate buys our ticket into heaven? When every other day except Sunday we look like, talk like, and act like every other person around us?
Why can’t we understand on this side of the cross that Jesus expects us to live the way He lived? Why can’t we see that just walking through religious activities isn’t good enough to make you right with God? Why can’t we read His word and see that He wants more from us?
I’ve mentioned before the survey the Barna Group did several years ago that compared those who call themselves Christian with those who are unchurched. The difference between the two groups in his study – those who call themselves Christian didn’t curse as much. Every other marker was statistically the same – lying, cheating, adultery, pornography, petty theft, embezzlement, you name the vice and those who call themselves Christian are involved in it. We just don’t curse as often. Hmmm!!
Is that how God wants us to live? Is that why He died on the cross, for us to live the same way everyone else does? I don’t think so. Jesus calls us to a higher standard. He calls us to a higher plane of life. He calls us to live a righteous, holy life. And He gave us His holy Spirit to live in us with His resurrection power to help us do just that. He cleanses us from all unrighteousness, John tells us, so that we can choose not to fall prey to the wiles of Satan, our adversary.
We are not strong enough to stand against him, but Jesus in us is. He has resurrection power and has already defeated sin and death. And His resurrection power in us can keep us if we focus on His Spirit in us, God’s indwelling presence that He sent to live in us. That’s the message He had for the disciples. What lives inside us determines whether we are clean or unclean, good or evil, obedient or disobedient. The one who has control of our mind determines which we focus on. Do we give control to God or do we keep it for ourselves?
Jesus said, it’s what’s inside that counts. How’s your heart?
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