"You have charged us to keep your commandments carefully.” Psalm 119:4
One must be very careful not to get caught up in being a law (commandment) follower that they lose sight of God’s grace, forgiveness and love. Believe me it’s easy to do, follow the law, and think that it is good enough.
The Pharisee’s painted the perfect picture of what NOT to do and Jesus points them in out in Matthew 23.
He begins by saying, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the Scriptures. So practice and obey whatever they say to you but DON’T follow their example. For they DON’T practice what they teach. They crush you with impossible religious demands and never lift a finger to help ease the burden.”
They only obey God’s word to make themselves look good.
Everything they do is a show
They exalt themselves
They thrive on attention and being called “Rabbi”
They love to sit at the head table
They tithe even the tiniest part of their income, yet ignore justice, mercy, and faith.
They only clean up the outside of themselves all while the inside is filthy full of greed, self-indulgence, hypocrisy and lawlessness.
They act spiritual in hopes of covering up their own sin
The Pharisees based their faith on the law instead of on Jesus Christ. They completely missed the mark because they were so full of SELF.
We can very easily become the same way if we are not careful. We can speak all spiritual, yet never put God’s word into practice. We can show up at church only for show and politics, we can cover up our filth on the inside by making sure the outside of us is clean, we can even confess we love Jesus and call ourselves Christians, yet still live like the world.
It is easy to say those things do not describe us, yet if we really stopped and asked the Lord to evaluate us and to reveal our purpose for worshiping Him we would be surprised at what He reveals to us.
God calls us to action-He called His Son to action and Jesus set the perfect example for us to follow. He not only obeyed the law, He lived it out and fulfilled it.
We are commanded to keep His law carefully, however we are commanded to live out, apply, put into action, and practice it as well. Our obedience means nothing if it is not put into action and if it is done without love it is pointless.
To me, the reason the Pharisees were such miserable people is because privately they realized every second just how sinful they were and that made them bitter, thus acting in the manner in which they did. They even went so far as to make sure everyone else felt the way they did, thus forcing impossible religious demands that could never be met.
Oh, the sweetness of Christ’s love and the covering of His blood.
Prayer: Jesus thank You for coming down and showing us the right example in which to follow. Most of all thank You for taking the burden and sin upon Yourself and making it possible to be found perfect in the sight of God because of Your blood. Amen
