SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/8/2022 10:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Condemnation”
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.’’”
John MacArthur writes “Anything of mine translates doron, which means gift. Mark uses the more technical term korban (7:11), which refers to a gift or
sacrifice specifically offered to God.
Sometime in the past, a tradition had developed that allowed a person to
call all his possessions korban, thereby
dedicating them to God. And because
Scripture taught that a vow to God must not be violated (Num. 30:2), those
possessions could not be used for anything but service to God. Therefore, if a man’s father or mother asked
for financial assistance, he could tell them, Anything of mine you might have
been helped by has been given to God.
The Greek text of the next phrase is more emphatic than the English
suggests. He is not to honor might
better be rendered, ‘He must not honor.’
The vow did not simply allow withholding help from father or…mother but
actually forbade it.” I wonder if these
scribes and Pharisees would use the money that they were to give to their
parents for themselves to finance something that they believed was for God.
I
think that MacArthur agrees with this statement that I just made. “Except for what may have been actually given
to the temple or synagogue, however, the korban
possessions remained in the person’s hands.
And when he decided to use them for his own purposes, tradition
permitted him to do so simply by saying korban
over them again. In other words, the
tradition was not designed to serve either God or the family but the selfish
interests of the person making the hypocritical vow. To avoid giving up his possessions in order
to support his parents, he could declare those possessions sacred and unusable,
but as soon as he wanted to use them for himself, he could just as easily
reverse the vow. The covert purpose of
that tradition was to invalidate the word of God by circumventing the fifth commandment.” I guess these guys would make good politicians
in our day and age.
We
can see that Jesus was angered by the callous selfishness of that tradition as
Jesus said to them You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, “This
people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.” Now I want to quote Isaiah 29:13 “Then the
Lord said, "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me
with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their
reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.” In
the KJV it does not use “learned by rote” but says “by the precept of men, and
for a change I can understand the KJV better than the NASB. So getting back to our verse in Matthew we
can see that what Isaiah said of the people of his own day applied to the hypocrites
of Jesus’ day as well, and to those of our own day as I mentioned that there
are many, many hypocrites in politics today in our country and other countries
around the world today.
Spiritual meaning for my life
today: I have never liked even
hearing the word hypocrite as it makes me just not feel good as it actually
sounds bad to me. I surely never want
that name to be applied to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To continue
to learn and use what I learn to fight in the battles that go on in my life.
7/8/2022
10:45 AM
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