SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/7/2022 9:08 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Confrontation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 15:3-9
Message of the verses: “3 And He answered and said to them, "And why do you yourselves
transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 "For
God said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER,’ and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR
MOTHER, LET HIM BE PUT TO DEATH.’ 5 "But you say, ‘Whoever shall say to his
father or mother, "Anything of mine you might have been helped by has been
given to God," 6 he is not to honor his father or his mother.’ And thus
you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 “You hypocrites,
rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, 8 ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR
LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. 9 ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS
DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF
MEN.’"”
As we look at this passage we find first of all that
Jesus did not answer the Pharisees’ question, but later on he did explain it to
the people in verse eleven, and then in verses 17-18 He will explain the answer
to His disciples. This question was irrelevant
and so Jesus asked them a more important question found in the second part of
Matthew 10:3 "And why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God
for the sake of your tradition?
In
the same way that the Pharisees mentioned failure to wash one’s hand ceremonially
before eating as an example of the disciples failure to wash their hands that way
which was breaking their tradition. Jesus mentioned the Pharisees’ overturning the
fifth commandment, honor your father and mother which is seen in Exodus 20:12, as
an example as their breaking the command of God, which as we learned in our
last lesson was not as important to them as the breaking of their
traditions. Jesus also reminded God’s
penalty of breaking this commandment: He
who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death as seen in Exodus
21:17.
John
MacArthur writes “Bound up in honoring father and mother is the responsibility
to show them respect and love and to help meet their needs. One tradition taught that ‘a son is bound to
support his father even if he has to beg for him.’ But another tradition had come to supersede
that one as well as the fifth commandment.
It taught that whoever shall say to his father or mother, ‘Anything of
mine you might have been helped by has been given to God,’ he is not to honor
his father or his mother.’”
One thing for sure and that is that the Pharisees
knew the Ten Commandments by heart and could easily quote them to anyone who
asked them to do so. The Scribes and the
Pharisees were the most educated men of all Jewish men and they were considered
the supreme authorities on Scripture as well as tradition. Know this about them one cannot possibly have
failed to see that this tradition directly violated God’s commandment to honor
one’s father and mother. The result was
that they knowingly replaced God’s specific command with their own
contradicting tradition. I guess if one
says something long enough they will begin to believe it even though it is not
true. I suppose that Satan was really
the one behind all of these traditions that violated the Word of God after all
he said the following to Eve in a conversation that he had with here found in
Genesis 3:1-5 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field
which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God
said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?" 2 The woman said
to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3
but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has
said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’" 4 The
serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 “For God knows that
in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.’” This is called “The
Lie” and Satan has not changed his way of doing thing since then as he tries to
get people to doubt God and His Word. He
used the same tactics on Jesus but when it came to the Second Adam He did not
fall for Satan’s lies and answered him with Scripture, the same way He is
answering to Satan’s cronies, the Scribes and Pharisees.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I have been going over my Spiritual Diaries
on the Spiritual Armor and putting them on my other blog, and the one that I
just finished today was the sixth lesson on the Sword of the Spirit which is
the Word of God, and this fits in well with what I am learning here in this
section of Matthew chapter 15.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue learning and growing in my knowledge
of the Word of God in order to defeat the devil’s lies that he gives me as I go
through this life on planet earth.
7/7/2022 9:41 AM
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