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A brief bit of encouragement for you day from God’s Word.
Well, good morning. I trust you've had a good weekend and getting off to a good start this week. Did you have a good Lord's Day meeting together with God's people? I hope that the ministry of the Word yesterday was a blessing to you and furthered your walk with the Lord.
One of the things that you and I can do individually on our own is spend some time in God's Word each day. And I hope you're doing that and one of the ways that I try to encourage that is by giving a Bible reading plan.
If you're following that plan, then today you read in Luke chapter 11 or you will read Luke chapter 11 and 12 and this passage begins with another encounter of Jesus with the Pharisees and it starts off pretty well.
In other words, the Pharisee invites Jesus to dinner and Jesus goes. So it seems like a seems like a very hospitable thing to do and part of this Pharisee to have Jesus come to his place for a meal and his disciples and so they go and attend this meal but it isn't long before the Pharisee shows his colors.
He's right away, you know at the meal looking askance at Jesus and his disciples because they haven't washed properly before before they ate and the Pharisee the Pharisee notes this and he's looking at them like there's something wrong with these people.
You know kind of the idea that if Jesus were really a good godly man, then he would follow all the the routines and the rituals that we Pharisees have that fulfill God's law. Well, Jesus uses this opportunity to confront the Pharisees once again and as you go through the Gospels, there are many occasions where he does this where Jesus confronts the Pharisees and they get a lot of criticism and it's easy for us with this historical distance of a couple thousand years between us to to kind of you know have a sort of a snobbish attitude toward the Pharisees like yeah, yeah, those guys are really those guys are really bad.
But really I think what we need to do when we see these encounters is ask ourselves. Is there some way in which I'm like Pharisees? I mean you look at look at what Jesus how Jesus criticizes them in this passage.
They are concerned about outward appearances. They keep up a good look. They keep up a good show of purity, holiness, but within they're harboring all kinds of sin. They're covering it up. Not the least of which would be their spiritual pride I suppose but concerned about outward appearances while covering over inward sin.
Meticulous, very meticulous about some aspects of obedience to God's Word, God's law. Like they were tithing of the mint and the cumin and the little minutiae things of life, but they were overlooking as he says here in verse 42, they were passing over justice and the love of God.
Which is the more important thing? I mean the greatest command is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself and yet they were passing over justice and the love of God while being very meticulous to tithe the these herbs that they were growing.
Now, how about us? Are we meticulous about some aspects of obedience, but careless about others? Do we get really picky about some things but give ourselves a pass over much more important things? And what about this matter of loving places of honor?
Now, we say well, that's not me. You know, I think I'm a pretty humble person, you know. I don't try to get my way up to the front of the line or anything like that. But this was their passion, living for recognition.
So while you may not and I may not have the desire to be first in line, how do we feel when we do something that we think we ought to be recognized for but we're not? But we're not. You see that there's the rub.
There's the rub. Because that gets to the motive, that gets to the heart of why we're doing what we're doing. If I feel slighted, if I feel, you know, overlooked or neglected because I've done something, you know, to serve the Lord in the church or done something for somebody else and I don't get the proper recognition for it, I'm not honored for it in the way I think I ought to be, then I have to ask myself the question, if I'm really upset about that, I have to ask myself the question, was I doing it just for the recognition?
Am I really no better than a Pharisee? See, these are things to seriously consider. And the last thing he points out and criticizes them is that they were really dead inside and didn't even know it. They were dead inside and didn't know it.
They were going through all kinds of ritualistic religious expressions, but inside they were really spiritually dead. And it's a sad thing when a person who gives himself to a religion and all kinds of religious practices, thinking that they are meriting favor with God and yet within they're spiritually dead.
Oh my friend, if you think that, if you think that behaving in a particular way, you know, going to church and, you know, with regularity or, you know, giving money to the church or, you know, certain things you do, if you think you're doing those things is earning you brownie points with God, so that he will let you into his heaven, then really you're spiritually dead.
You need Christ. It is by faith alone, in Christ alone, the salvation comes and it requires this new birth from above. And so I trust that we're not like these Pharisees, that we really have life within and the life that we have within shows itself outwardly with a genuineness and a sincerity that's not marked by pride, spiritual pride, love of place, love of honor and really quite hypocritical.
So I trust we'll take this warning from Jesus today as he interacts with the Pharisees and realize that that interaction is just as relevant for us in our world today. Father, deliver us from Phariseeism, we pray.
I pray that we would be truly regenerated, loving you, living for you, that our heart and our lives would match. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Well, have a great Monday. Get your week off to a good start.
God bless you in it.