Today’s
Scripture Reading [March 14, 2010]
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for
ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in. [Matthew 23:13. KJV]
In Matthew 23, Jesus was speaking to His disciples and to the
crowds. It is very interesting to realize that Jesus was very harsh
in His words which He has directed particularly towards scribes and
Pharisees. These scribes and Pharisees were the religious leaders
in the Jewish synagogue and they were among the most religiously
conservative during the biblical era. They were like present day
church leaders such as pastors, deacons or elders. In just one
sermon, He called them hypocrites seven time! (Matthew 23:13-29)
and they were no difference from vipers (Matthew 23:33)!. Hypocrisy
must be one of the most abominable behaviours that God really
hates!
So, what is hypocrite? The word “hypocrite” comes from the Greek
“hupokrites (hoop-ok-ree-tace) and it means an actor under an
assumed character. A true hypocrite is actually someone who
pretends to be something he or she is not, and really has no
intention of becoming one. Honestly, we are all hypocrites at some
point in our life whether in office or at home, whether we are
conscious or not.
Chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew has very valuable lessons for
all of us to learn. These lessons are:
(a) Do not blindly follow what other people do, especially those
who are in leadership positions. As we all know, many people will
do something with ulterior motives, perhaps pretending to be
helpful or showing compassion but only to later benefit themselves
only. Quite unknowingly or quite unsuspectedly, some leaders can
become our role-model but remember, Jesus is our only Role-Model
and as Psalm 118:8 has warned us to put our trust only in God and
not man.
(b) When we do things, especially when helping others, we must do
it out of the love for God and our sole motive for doing them is to
glorify God. God, though is an unseen, can see through our motives.
We cannot hide from Him (Ezekiel 28:3; Hebrews 4:13).
(c) We must refrain from coveting grand titles and honour in order
to boast our ego or to increase our standing in society. Jesus has
spoken against His disciples from calling themselves ‘Rabbi’ nor be
addressed ‘master’ by others, and He even tell us that the most
appropriate title of us as children of God is the title of
‘servant’ because they are the greatest people in the eyes of God
(Matthew 23:11). The real test of a person’s humility is through
his sincere and honest servitude wholly dedicated for His
glory.
(d) We must not use the name of God to induce fear into people or
take advantage of people, especially helpless women, widows,
children and orphans (Matthew 23:14). We have read in newspaper how
some religious leaders induced fear by using the name of their
‘gods’ and force the victims into submission for their evil gains.
Apostle Paul has also given similar warning to us in 2 Timothy 3:6
which tells us that such people can creep into houses, and lead
captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers
lusts.
(e) We must not be greedy and we must avoid self-indulgence. We
have too often heard of sermons by religious leaders telling us to
make godly sacrifices and live simply but we are now witnessing
'high-class' church building with millions of dollars spent just
only for the digital screens and all the electronic gadgets that
can even outdo many commercial entertainment theatres and concert
halls. No music, whether with mono-speakers or with
surround-speakers, can turn people to Christ. We all turn to God
only by the Word of God; by the sacrificial death of Jesus and by
the Holy Spirit. We must avoid to being guilty of having the wrong
focus, stressing big buildings, coveting large crowds, just
accepting people into the church without challenging them to true
repentence and without emphasizing a conversion of inner self
(Romans 12:2).
(f) The blue-print of our success must not confine to achieving big
‘numbers’. Report after report, we read about this or that church
has now achieved so many thousand membership. In Matthew 23:15,
Jesus was fully aware that some scribes and Pharisees though have
put the efforts to convert sinners to become believers of the True
God but in the end they were the very people stumbled these
converts whom they had converted them in the first place and made
them twice as deserving for hell. I am not against mass evangelism
but we must all be careful not to let the blue-print of our success
solely be rested on number and nothing else. A well-known
evangelist commented once that of the so many thousands who came
and responded to his altar-call to seemingly surrender their lives
to Jesus, he wondered how many would keep to their faith after few
years.
We must examine ourselves frequently where we are in our
relationship with our Holy God. We must seek His Word and to learn
of Him especially His way of life. This is the very basic necessity
more essential than food and water. We must remember of those
commitments that Jesus demand of us, to pick up the cross and
follow Him all the way to Calvary. We must watch out for false
prophets and false-Christ that come up brimming over with a wide
smile on their face, soft voice and the sweetest of words which
sound so convincing but with full of spiritual poison. These
false-prophets and false-Christs are in abundance and they are
going to misuse the name of Jesus in these final days of
lawlessness. They will come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ferocious wolves. We need to walk with our eyes
wide open and we need to get help from the Holy Spirit and through
Him, we can recognize these false-prophets and false-Christs by
their fruit (Matthew 7:15; 20). We must be thankful, always, to our
Lord Jesus because He has provided us the inspired Word of God, the
Bible. If we are His true disciple, we must faithfully read His
Word daily, hold on to His teaching and He will reveal the truth to
us and the truth will set us free (John 8:31-32).
If you want to
read the previous messages, you can go to the
following:
http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?t=32764&page=10
All comments are
welcome but no abusive language or any insults especially to other
religious faiths. Thanks and God Bless
Psalm-23