Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Jeremiah 47-52
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 23:23-33
Jesus: So woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You tithe from your luxuries and your spices, giving away a tenth of your mint, your dill, and your cumin. But you have ignored the essentials of the law: justice, mercy, faithfulness. It is practice of the latter that makes sense of the former. You hypocritical, blind leaders. You spoon a fly from your soup and swallow a camel.Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You remove fine layers of film and dust from the outside of a cup or bowl, but you leave the inside full of greed and covetousness and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee—can’t you see that if you clean the inside of the cup, the outside will be clean too?
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like a grave that has been whitewashed. You look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you are full of moldering bones and decaying rot. You appear, at first blush, to be righteous, selfless, and pure; but on the inside you are polluted, sunk in hypocrisy and confusion and lawlessness.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build monuments to your dead, you mouth pieties over the bodies of prophets, you decorate the graves of your righteous ancestors. And you say, “If we had lived when our forefathers lived, we would have known better—we would not have joined them when they rose up against the prophets.” Even when you are preening, you make plain that you descended from those who murdered our prophets. So why don’t you finish what your forefathers started? You are children of vipers, you belly-dragging snakes. You won’t escape the judgment of hell.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Ouch! Jesus let those Pharisees have it! I’d sure hate to be in their shoes. But have I looked inside to make sure I’m not them? It’s easy for us to point fingers at those hypocrites and talk about how bad they were. But that’s exactly what they did, too. Remember Jesus’ words to them? “You say, ‘If we had lived when our forefathers lived, we would have know better…’” Isn’t that what we say about the Pharisees? If we lived when they lived, we would have known better. We would have followed Jesus. We would have obeyed Him. We would have believed everything He said. Really? Then why don’t we follow His commands now? Why do we have so much trouble listening to His voice now?
Are we so different from the Pharisees? If so, why do so many of us just play at worshiping God? We attend church on Sunday, but forget about Him the rest of the week and do whatever we feel like doing. We think God is pleased with us as long as we give Him that hour on Sunday every once in a while and we have our ticket to heaven. But that’s not what God wants. He wants our total devotion.
We can be such avid sports enthusiasts and build shrines to our favorite teams with rooms filled with paraphernalia. Banners hung on the walls, pillows and blankets and curtains with the team symbols everywhere. We can be such fans we have season tickets and never miss a game. Yet when it comes to God, we find it’s okay to skip devotions or skip church or forget prayers or set aside reading His word. God will understand, right?
Are we so different than those Pharisees? But take a look at the people Jesus criticized. These were the one who took a calculator with them to make sure they gave a tithe, a tenth, of everything to God. When they went to their garden and took out herbs for dinner they weighed them on the scale and set aside a tenth to take to the temple. When they plucked grapes off the vines, the first of every ten grapes when into a separate basket to go to the temple so God would get His tithe. These guys knew the law and lived it. If they accidentally took a wrong turn on the Sabbath and it caused them to approach the limit of their allotted distance for travel on the Sabbath, they would stop where they were and spend the rest of the day on that spot until the Sabbath concluded. Then they would complete their journey.
We might be avid sports fans, but these were avid law fans. They lived every jot and title. Yet Jesus told them they would not escape the judgment of hell. Why? Because they didn’t understand the kingdom of God is about living a relationship with the Almighty, not about keeping a long list of rules. God’s wants our love, and our love is shown through our obedience to His will. He will let us know our position with Him. Just ask Him. The Pharisees knew. Jesus made it pretty clear. If we ask He will let us know.
The question is, will we do something about it. The Pharisees thought they could fix their problem by destroying God’s Son. Of course, their solution didn’t work. The only solution is to come to Him in repentance. Confess who we are and who God is, then turn away from sin and toward Him. Follow the path He lays out for you. That’s the real solution. It works. We never need to hear the woes the Pharisees heard. It just takes listening and doing what God says.
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