SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/3/2022 7:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Confrontation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
15:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Then some
Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Why do Your disciples
transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when
they eat bread.’”
I mentioned in our last SD that it was more or less
an introduction to what we will be looking at in the first twenty verses of
Matthew chapter 17, and so this begins the first sub-point from that section of
Scripture.
If
a person was just looking at these two verses they might think that what the
disciples were doing was totally wrong, that is not washing their hands before
they eat, something that their mothers should have taught them when they were
little. However we will see that this is
not at all what the Pharisees were talking about.
Now
as we look at the first word “Then” MacArthur states “Then is indefinite and
does not precisely indicate the time sequence between the healings and the
approach of the Pharisees and scribes.”
Now it is entirely possible this took place several days after the
healings that we looked at from the last verses of chapter 14. From John’s gospel, 6:4 “Now the Passover,
the feast of the Jews, was near.” This
means that many Jews were traveling through Galilee on their way to Jerusalem
for the feast. Now this is the third
Passover of Jesus’ ministry, which means in a year from that time He will be
crucified for our sins, so Jesus ministry is two thirds over now at this point.
The
Scribes and Pharisees would not normally carry on their work in Galilee, so it
is likely their fellow religionists there had requested help as they confronted
Jesus. It is possible that they
channeled their request through the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish council. MacArthur writes “Jerusalem was the location
of the temple and of the most eminent schools of Judaism, and therefore this delegation
doubtlessly carried heavy ecclesiastical weight. And because these Pharisees and scribes had
prestige and learning superior to that of their counterparts in Galilee, Jesus
treated them with greater severity.”
The
problem that we see here, and in the end it will be a large problem for the
leaders of Jerusalem, and also all of the Jews who were living in Jerusalem,
and that is that what the Jewish religious leaders were teaching was their
traditions, which in most cases did not go along with what the Old Testament
Bible taught. I have mentioned that in
one of MacArthur’s sermons that he called this religious system that was going
on during this time period as being a cult.
I believe it is fair to say that a cult is a false religion that does
not hold to the truth of who Jesus is or what He has done, and since they will
be the ones who take part in His crucifixion then that fits into what they are
teaching as a cult. Their system of
religion is external and superficial, because it could be outwardly practiced
with great zeal and diligence no matter what the condition of the heart or soul. Their system was a religion of ceremony and
tradition that the most hardened unbeliever could follow, no matter what shape
their heart was in, for their system was false.
Their system was a system that covered up sin and not exposing and
cleansing it, with appearing righteous, not being righteous. It was even before Jesus unequivocally
proclaimed the truth in the Sermon on the Mount as seen in Matt. 5:20, the
Jewish leaders sensed that His kind of righteousness and theirs were
diametrically opposed and as mentioned before this conflict will end up in the
crucifixion of our Lord.
7/3/2022 8:24 AM
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