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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. Monday, August 1, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Woe to You! Bible Verse:Matthew 23:13-24 (ESV) "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. 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. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” " Message:
The tone of Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees is clear: they are hypocrites and they are headed for hell. The specifics, on the other hand, are difficult to follow and need some explanation.
1) There were a considerable number of people in the Mediterranean from polytheistic cultures who were called by God. They had “ears to hear”; they were thirsty for monotheism, and Judaism was the only developed monotheistic religion. Judaism was, in fact, the religion of the one true God prior to Christ.
These Gentiles would go to synagogues to learn and worship. One must think that God loved this characteristic of Judaism. It effectively created a Gentile population ready to receive Christ. The problem is that the Pharisees would work on these people to convince them to be circumcised and join the Pharisees in their false, rigid adherence to a body of manmade rules. In effect, they would take a person who was seeking God and divert him into a cult of hypocrisy.
2) The confusing business about swearing on an altar as opposed to swearing on the gift that is on an altar is something we have seen before. (Matthew 5:33-37) First off, it shows just how minutely legalistic the Pharisees’ religion was. They taught that a person who swore by the Temple did not make a binding oath, whereas a person who swore by the gold of the Temple did make a binding oath!
He descended into hell
“He descended into hell”
The legalism of this — that is, teaching that righteousness before God depended on such tiny and meaningless details — was false and unholy, in and of itself. But even worse, it was abused to break the law of Moses. Pharisee merchants would swear an oath that something was genuine, but leave some tiny technical detail out in order to cheat people! They might swear “by the Temple” that something was solid silver, when it was silver-plated copper, and laugh up their sleeve because the oath was worthless. They were not only stealing by fraud, but also using the law of Moses to help them do it.
3) Jews were obligated to give a tithe of all crops to the Temple. The Pharisees were so incredibly meticulous about following this law to the letter that, if they grew a small herb garden with a mint plant in it, they would break off a stem of mint as part of their sacrifice. Having complied with such meaningless minutiae of their rules, they neglected the great duties of justice, mercy, and faith.
A parallel to modern times will flesh out this criticism. Imagine a deacon in a local church who makes $873.70 in his paycheck, carefully counting out pennies so that he puts precisely $87.37 in the collection plate on Sunday. He then goes home, peers over the backyard fence to lust over his neighbor’s teenage daughter sunning in her swimsuit, gets into a shouting match with another neighbor and calls him a “god-damned idiot”, and thinks up a way to hide a mechanical defect in a car he wants to sell. That is what Jesus is talking about, in the “tithe mint and dill and cumin” criticism.
Jesus used the metaphor “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” This is a hyperbole, i.e., an intentionally overstated metaphor. If it doesn’t quite make sense, replace “a camel” with “a rat” — think of a person eating a bowl of soup, who strains out a tiny insect but ignores a dead rat in the bottom of the bowl.
Meditation : Prayer : God of mercy, swift to help: as my lips pour forth your praise, fill my heart with the peace you give to those who wait for your salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord........Amen |
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