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For I know the plans I have for you,declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer 29:11 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, July 28, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees Bible Verse:Matthew 23:1-7 (ESV) "Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. " Message:
In Chapter 22, it seemed like the Pharisees and Christ were making some sort of tentative peace; the Pharisees were pleased with the shellacking Jesus gave the Sadducees, and on a subject that was a key tenet of Pharisee theology: resurrection of the body. They thought Jesus was going to gang up with them against the Sadducees.
This delusion did not last long. In today’s verses, Jesus immediately stands up in the Temple and excoriates the Pharisees. He begins by a denunciation of their hypocrisy.
God is on their tongues but not in their hearts. They preach but do not practice love of God. They serve their own pride. They do what they do, not to be righteous, but because they want to be powerful and admired by men. They want to be in charge, they want to be obeyed. They want what they say to be authoritative. They want to be honored in the community and nation.
We know, from earlier reading, that Christ preaches humility, service, and obedience. So today’s Scripture is his own apologia*, in a sense; he is demonstrating in practical terms why a religion based solely on works, rather than on humility and love in one's heart, has gone wrong. He is laying the groundwork for the Jews to accept the new covenant of faith and grace, abandoning the Pharisees’ belief in salvation through formal compliance with a set of rules.
The hypocrisy He preaches, unfortunately, transferred over into Christianity fairly quickly after His ascension. The epistles are full of warnings about false teachers. Today, it is one of the great criticisms nonbelievers have of “Christianity” and it drives many people away from the Gospel.
Pridefulness among clergy and teachers who just want to be bigwigs, all sorts of false teachings, bishops who protect child-abusers, money-grubbing televangelists — one could fill a page with all of the anti-Christian teaching and behavior masking as Christianity.
But . . . it is not for us to judge them. Christ, who knows the secrets of all hearts, will judge us and them, both. Our concern is that He will also judge us! We should try to profit from bad examples, to see in others where we ourselves go astray. We can seek in our own lives to find the sincerity of belief that will lead us to humility and Godliness, to the true love of Christ. For if we love Him, we will keep His commandments. (John 14:15) Our first concern is to tend our own garden, not cluck over our neighbor’s weeds, so that we might be ready for our Lord Jesus when He comes again.
Meditation : Prayer : May the God of hope fill me and all of us with the joy and peace that comes from believing, so that we may abound in hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit........Amen |
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