Verse of the day: Matthew 23:13-14 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for you neither
go in yourselves, neither suffer you them that are entering to go in. 14
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses,
and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore you shall receive the greater
damnation.
Jesus
was not afraid to call out hypocrisy when He saw it. He observed that those who
were supposed to know the truth of God’s Word were corrupt in that they were
false teachers who wanted the glory that belonged to Jesus for themselves. They
had the Old Testament prophesies of the coming Messiah; yet, when He came, they
were more interested in pointing people to themselves and their traditions,
which puffed them up. Rather than point people to the One who came to give them
eternal life, they put the people on the path to eternal condemnation (Lk
11:52). We must be so careful that we not impose our own “religiosity” upon
others as a condition of being saved. There were those who later falsely taught
that circumcision was required, along with belief in Christ, for salvation
(Acts 15; Gal 3:1-3). I have, all too often, seen that a false idea has been
given about when we can come to Jesus for salvation. Too many have led people
astray by giving them the idea that they had to “straighten out” their lives
BEFORE they called upon Jesus. That, my friends, is putting the “cart before
the horse”. If we could straighten out our own lives, we would have no need for
a Savior. Jesus came to do what we could not do; it is in Him that we are
justified (declared not guilty) before our Heavenly Father. It is in Jesus,
with the Holy Spirit working in us, that He will make our lives right. By our
very hypocrisy and desire to make ourselves better than others, by a show of
our religion, we push people away from Christ, rather than to Him. God is not
interested in our religion; He is interested in a relationship. When we falsely
impose our religious preferences, traditions, and convictions on others as a
requirement for receiving eternal life or having a relationship with Jesus, we
repel those that would otherwise come to Jesus. In verse 14, Jesus goes on to
condemn the religious leaders for their hypocrisy in using their “religiosity”
for dishonest, personal, gain. They put on the façade of being religious, by
their lengthy prayers, in order to deceive the widows and the poor. Oh how
often the Gospel message has been misused for personal gain by those pushing a
false gospel. Oh how often the Gospel has been used, by false teachers, to gain
a large following from which they can take advantage of, for their own
prosperity, and promising through their fake, religious, behavior, that these
followers can also prosper if they give all they have to these false teachers,
who will someday stand before God to give account. Let us not forget that not
everyone who calls Jesus Lord or performs in His Name will be accepted by the
Lord, because He never knew them (Mt 7:15-23). As followers of Jesus, the message
that we carry to the world is that Jesus died for our sins, and He will freely
give us eternal life, if we call upon Him by faith. We must confess that we are
sinners and need a Savior. Only when we come to Jesus believing who He is,
confessing our sins and ready to repent of our ways, will we receive eternal
life, and begin the journey of being changed, from the inside out, by the work
of the Word and the Holy Spirit working in us, and through us. As born again
believers, we are to be a blessing to those around us, especially the poor, the
widow, the orphan, and all those in need. We are always to be ready to be used
by God for His glory and the benefit of those He puts in our path. Our times of
prayer are to be personal, and when we pray in public it should be a genuine desire
to speak to the Lord and not a “look at how great I pray, and how religious I
am” session. Some of the most honest and heartfelt prayers I have heard in my
lifetime came from people who were not eloquent in speech, but simply spoke to
the Lord from their heart. The bottom line is that we are not to use our life
as a Christian to steer others away from Jesus, robbing the Lord of glory due
to Him, but share a true Gospel with others, putting our own preferences and
convictions aside and sharing God’s truth in love. We are to avoid using false
teachings for our personal gain, robbing those that are already struggling; for
when we rob the poor and the less fortunate by deceit, we also rob those whom
Jesus died for, and someday we will give account to our God for how we served
Him. Let us be true ambassadors for Jesus (2 Cor 5:20).
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