Matthew 23:1-6 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. 4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.5 “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. 6 And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. At the time when Jesus was teaching this, the people received direction and interpretation of the law from religious leaders.. In fact the events that were taking place while Jesus was on the earth in human form eventually became the beginning of the New Testament. Jesus is telling the people to listen and to obey the interpretations provided by the religious leaders. Jesus also admonished them not to follow the behaviors of the religious leaders as they did not practice what they taught. At that time there was great prestige associated with being a religious leader. They received seats of honor and wore clothing with embellishments that made it apparent to all that they had these honored, well-esteemed positions. There are many things that we are able to learn and apply from this scripture passage. It is important to be taught the word of God so that we may have a clearer understanding of what we read. Another important thing to remember is that religious leaders then and now are flesh and blood people like we are. They face the same obstacles and temptations that we face. At times they falter. We have that in common with them as we sometimes falter. At times people unknowingly begin to worship religious leaders. They listen to the person preach and idolize the person as one who never does wrong. One of the most difficult things about this is that people have almost unattainable expectations of the leader. When the leader does something wrong and people become aware, they pull away from Christ. Our example is Christ. Each day we need to seek to be more like Him. If a leader is found to have committed some great fault, we are to pray for them and continue to seek to be like Christ.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 23:58:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015