FBC Daily Devotional – March 9, 2021

Well, a good Tuesday to you. I hope your week has started off on a good note and got a lot accomplished yesterday and moving forward in the course of this week. I'm appreciating the little warmer weather and the teasing of spring that's on its way.

I hope you are as well. Well, in our reading today, we read end of Matthew chapter 22 on into chapter 23, and one thing I just want to mention very quickly at the end of chapter 22 is that it's one thing to ask a question out of curiosity that may seem to challenge.

Sincere Questions and Testing Questions

It's another thing altogether to ask a question to challenge. The one kind is motivated by a sincere desire to learn. I just don't understand. Can you explain? That kind of a thing. But the other is more a way of trying to make the teacher or the one that you're asking a question of, to make them look bad and to try to put them in a bad light, so as you can somehow reject the teacher or reject the one who's being asked the question.

You know, Jesus encountered this, and to the first kind of people, to the people who had sincere questions and desires to learn, Jesus was eager to teach them. You remember, for example, Jesus told the parable of the sower and the seeds, the soils, and those who were hearing him, they didn't get what he was saying.

And Jesus' disciples said to him, can you explain this to us? And he said, you don't get it? Okay. And then he took the time to explain it to them. So he was eager to help on the one hand. But the other kind of questions that were brought up to kind of trap him and to make him look bad so that people would have an excuse to reject him, Jesus was pretty effective at shutting them down.

So for example, the last verse of chapter 22, it says, no one was able to answer him.

A word.

So he replied to a challenging or testing, you know, we want to reject you kind of question. He replied to that with a question. No one was able to answer him his question. And then it says, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

He kept putting them in their place, he kept shutting them down. So I just wanted to mention that almost in passing. What I really wanted to emphasize is what comes out in the Jesus talking about the scribes and the Pharisees that sit on Moses's seat as he goes on into chapter, as we read on in chapter 23.

The Burden of Extra-Biblical Rules

And what we need to be aware of here is the kind of religion that is all about meticulous.

Doing.

That is, adding seemingly endless rules and regulations that go beyond the clear commands.

Of Scripture.

This is what the scribes and the Pharisees were doing. You see this in verse 4, when Jesus says, they tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders. So what the Pharisees, the scribes did was they took the law of the Old Testament and they extrapolated on all the different laws of the Old Testament and added layers to them and added further things to them.

It was kind of like the mentality that says, okay, well here's the cliff, the law puts a fence up here so you don't fall off the cliff. Well, it would be better if we put a fence 15 feet farther back so you don't even get near the edge where the fence is.

And then someone comes along later and says, yeah, you know, that's good, but there have been people who have, they've gone over that fence and then they ended up going over the.

Other fence.

So maybe we need to put another fence another 15 feet back and so on and so forth. And so they keep adding fences further and further away from the edge of the cliff. Fences that God didn't put up. Fences that people put up.

So it's one thing to establish some helpful personal boundaries, some personal fences. That is, rules that I establish for myself because I may struggle in a particular area of the Christian life or of morality or ethics or whatever, and God's law says this, and I realize that because of my weaknesses and my inclinations and so forth, I need to do this.

And I establish a rule for myself to aid in my personal battle with sin and perhaps or perhaps to encourage my spiritual growth. So it's one thing to do that. The problem comes in though when I impose those rules and boundaries that I establish for myself, I impose those on other people and suggest that those are God's requirements.

So for example, you know, I know of people that have determined that for their spiritual benefit they're not going to have a television in their home. Or maybe if they have a television, they're not going to have cable in their home or direct TV or dish or whatever.

They're not going to have any of that. And so they eliminate it from their home. Well, that's fine. Wonderful. And man, if that helps you and if that curbs you and all the rest, great, wonderful. But then the problem comes when they start looking at other Christians, other believers who do have a television in their home and do have one of those dishes up on their roof or whatever, and they consider those Christians to be less spiritual and weak and engaging in sin because they have a TV in their home.

Well, there's the problem. And usually my observation after years of ministry and especially rubbing shoulders with a lot of people who are like this, usually that kind of rule, those kinds of rules become a source of spiritual pride.

And that was true with the Pharisees and the scribes, because Jesus goes on to say in verse five and following that they do all their deeds to be seen by others. They want everybody else to know how spiritual they are, how godly they are, because we do thus and so or we don't do thus and so.

So look, what God says is taboo, it's taboo. What God says to do, we need to do. But beyond that, in application sometimes of those commands, those prohibitions or those demands of our life, in application where there is room for personal differences and personal preferences in those applications, we need to beware, we need to be careful, and we need to be charitable with others.

Do what we need to do, add what we need to add for our own sake, for our own protection, for our own boundaries, for our own growth and so forth. But God help us not to have the kind of spirit that the Pharisees had, where they demanded that everybody else had to live the way they live and do what they do and don't do what.

They do.

We want to avoid that kind of a spirit. Jesus makes that pretty clear here in Matthew chapter 23. All right, Father in Heaven, help us. Help us not to become so spiritually proud and arrogant that we think everybody has to cross every T and dot every I the way that we do.

Help us with that, Lord. We're all inclined to fall into that trap. Deliver us from it, we pray, and we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, well, have a good rest of your Tuesday. I trust that the Lord will bless you richly for the remainder of the day. Have a good day.