Category: Daily Devotionals

Jesus’ method of disciple making is both overt and subtle. It is overt in that it  is clearly  deliberate and structured. It is subtle in that it happens largely without either the disciples or the reader realizing what is happening. A casual reader of Matthew’s Gospel might think that Jesus is simply “doing His thing” in going from place to place, doing some teaching here and there and engaging in ministry as opportunity allowed. But a more purposeful reading reveals that Jesus has been going about His ministry with a very clear intention. His modus operandi is simply to teach and demonstrate the Kingdom of God to His disciples through real-world ministry in day-to-day circumstance. He is developing those who follow Him into mature disciples who will be capable of making more disciples. 

Jesus’ last ‘lesson’ ended with the disciples confessing that He is truly the Son of God (14:33). From there, Jesus lands at Gennesaret (14:34) and begins the next ‘lesson’. He shows them what the Son of God has come to do, He heals the sick who are brought to Him, overcomes the religious charges brought against Him by using common sense and Scripture, and teaches the people the ways of the Kingdom. In turn, the disciples ask Him to explain what His teaching means in greater detail. That is clearly not the result Jesus expected – He exclaims, “Are you still so dull?” Nevertheless He does explain. But He knows the lesson is not complete with teaching alone. A more visceral lesson is needed.

Matthew records, “Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.” Tyre and Sidon were Canaanite cities in Phoenicia. Tyre was founded some 700 years prior to Abraham, and both Tyre and Sidon had been freed from Egyptian control by the Romans within the prior 100 years of Jesus’ visit. So these were deeply Gentile places that saw very little Jewish traffic. Just as He reached out to the Samaritan woman (John 4) and responded to the Roman centurion (Matt 8), He now goes to minister in the heart of Gentile country. 

For a Jewish man – a rabbi no less – to visit such an “unclean” place would be highly offensive. “The Mosaic law had no specific prohibition to this effect, but the entire law with all its regulations had such a prohibition as a result. The man who acted otherwise was going contrary, not to one item of the law, but to the law in its entirety. This was thoroughly understood in Judaism.” In fact, Peter said so much in Acts 10:28. Introducing himself to Cornelius, he said, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.” 

If this was anyone other than Jesus, one might think such a trip to Gentile land was extreme passive-aggressive behavior in retaliation for the accusation of uncleanness the Pharisees had made. But it is Jesus, and He does not act out in childish manners. 

He is deliberately teaching His disciples that those made in God’s image must be reached, regardless of our own prejudices. Nothing reinforces that lesson as well as full immersion in another culture! 

Truth overcomes prejudice by mere light of evidence, and there is no better way to make a good cause prevail than to make it as plain, and commonly, and thoroughly known as we can.

Richard Baxter

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Sometimes the most profound work Christ does in us is the most obvious, physical and practical thing.  

Jesus said, “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and   then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’ ” 

The Christian knows that we have a spiritual enemy. The book of 1Peter notes this, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” But that does not mean that the evil thoughts that so often cross our minds are from him. Jesus made it clear that our evil thoughts and the actions that precipitate out of them are not from the devil. They are from our own heart. From our heart springs the evil that is hatred that ultimately causes murder. From our heart comes the evil that is lust that ultimately causes adultery and sexual immorality. That all springs from us, not from the devil or those around us. The evil that is greed resulting in theft is inherently part of us. That evil that seeks to deceive others through lies and slander is ours, and ours alone. It is this evil that Christ says causes our uncleanness before our maker.

James wrote, “[…] each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.”  It is our own evil desire that drags us away from God. It is not the enemy’s lies that is at the root of the problem, but our choice to think on them, to believe them and to act on them. Acts of evil may be initially prompted by the lie that comes from outside us, but they are only part of the noise swirling around us until they are accepted, adopted, nourished and raised by the evil within our hearts. We may not want to believe that part of us is so intensely unredeemable. But it is so and we know it to be so, because God does not lie. That is why Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” 

What then can do? One might think that there is no hope for those who have such wickedness in their core. But thankfully, God has a solution. The solution is not to blame an outside source, but to obtain a new heart. 

Getting a new physical heart is not exactly an easy procedure. It requires that someone else dies, so that you can live. Then, you must die to yourself (in having your defective physical heart removed from your body) before the new heart can be implanted. It is a procedure done at great cost, and not a little pain. 

Getting a new spiritual heart is not any easier. Fortunately, the Lord promises us exactly that. To those who return to Him, He said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.”

God sees hearts as we see faces.

George Herbert

APPLICATION: Worship

In Psalm 51, David worshipped God, crying out, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!” Praise the Lord that He answers such prayer!  

Having given clear teaching on the nature of what makes a person ‘unclean’,
Photo by Fran Jacquier on Unsplash Jesus was asked to explain His parable. It is an uninformed question, because what Jesus said was not hard to understand. But a question is a starting point, and every teacher knows that you have to start where people are at, not where we wish they would be. So Jesus graciously answers it all the same, “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’ ”

The religious leadership of the day had accused Him of not following tradition by insisting that His followers wash their hands before they eat. In response, Jesus taught that uncleanness is not caused by what goes into someone’s mouth, but what comes out of it. It was not a difficult concept. The leadership was focused on the physical. To them, hand washing was important at least partially because others could see that you were ‘staying clean’. Jesus was trying to lift their eyes off the material plain to the spiritual. The far more important matter was not that their hands were washed (human tradition having to do with physical bodies), but that they were spiritually clean in God’s sight. For God’s gaze looks past what we look like on the outside and how we act for the benefit of others. He is looking at who we really are on the inside and how we act for His glory. As the Lord had said to the prophet Samuel, “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Jesus knew that. The Word recorded how David had prayed even though all Israel thought very highly of him, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. […] Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” David knew that while his body was clean and public perception of him was clean, his heart was desperately wicked. He needed to be clean in God’s eyes. The Pharisees should’ve known that. Especially because there was also Scriptural precedent for this exact issue. When King Hezekiah had called all Israel to celebrate the Passover there were many who were ‘unclean’ on the outside but yet forgiven by the Lord; “Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking God—the Lord, the God of his fathers—even if he is not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary.” And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.”

The disciple of God Most High must know this; being ‘clean’ is much more a matter of the heart than a matter of the hands!

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

King David (from Ps 24:4-5)

APPLICATION: Intentionality

We all know to regularly wash our hands. How often do we regularly wash our hearts?

Although Peter would eventually become the leader of the early church, in his younger   days he was a bit of a hothead. What follows Jesus’ teaching about uncleanness is a textbook example of Peter’s “engage-mouth-then-think” personality, “Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.””  Jesus’ response captures His reaction perfectly,  “Are you still so dull?”  

To the reader who picks up at that point, Christ’s reaction is a bit unnerving; He accuses His disciples of being ‘dull’. The Greek word He uses denotes the lacking of ability to understand meaning or importance. Effectively, Jesus is calling Peter immature (at best) or mentally challenged (at worst). It is a very unflattering comment. But Jesus’ frustration is understandable. His disciples – the few that have made it their mission in life to be Christ-followers – have not thought through the teaching He just did. One might not have such a high expectation of the crowd or the curious, but one does rightly have this expectation of the disciple. This isn’t just an option for them. It is their responsibility. They know that and Jesus knows that. Jesus is just letting it be known that He takes a pretty dim view of having to spoon-feed His disciples. 

It is the responsibility of the spiritual leader to teach truth. They are accountable to the Lord to do so. As Jesus has just made clear (“Leave them; they are blind guides.”), spiritual leadership will be judged for both what they do (the quality of their leading) and/or do not do (the fulfillment or abdication of duty). This is the leader’s lot. It is a place of high privilege, and with it, high responsibility. To that point James said, “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” Jesus knew that the Pharisees who criticized Him knew that, because the scroll of Ezekiel made it clear: those who hear from God cannot avoid their calling or the responsibility that comes with it. They would’ve read it many times over the decades. 

But the disciple also has a responsibility. It is the responsibility to apply the truth they are taught to their lives. A disciple cannot legitimately be called a disciple and sit though the teaching they are given and ignore it. To do that is to consciously and deliberately choose to set the calling to discipleship aside and become a mere bystander. It is to no longer walk in truth. If the teacher is judged for abdication of duty, then the disciple is too. 

The best way to fulfill our responsibility as disciples is to think through what was taught (that is, to verify that that what was said is God’s truth), and then to think through the personal application. Obviously, that is best done while the thought is still fresh in one’s mind – immediately upon hearing the preacher/teacher, as the Bereans did in Paul’s day. We are wise to follow their example; “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

APPLICATION: Intentionality

To apply wisdom gained takes not only determination, but a good deal of spiritual and mental/emotional strength. Without margin in your life to gain such strength, you will not be able to apply what you learn. Therefore the first step in any concrete action plan to better yourself is to ensure you have the margin to follow through. 

This is the truth: When we follow someone, we wind up in the same place  they do. If a  CEO leads their company down the wrong path, all the shareholders find themselves impoverished. If a religious leader goes astray and gets shipwrecked, those who follow also find themselves shipwrecked. The only way to avoid such disaster is not to follow those who are in error, and the best way to do that is to avoid those who do not hold to God’s truth.  

Jesus has taught the crowds the truth of God’s Word and the truth of His Kingdom. Some among the crowds believed Him, and some did not. The religious leadership of the day – the Pharisees and teachers of the law – championed the cause of those who did not believe. As the religious leadership of the day and lifelong students of the Scripture, they believed they were right and this upstart rabbi called Jesus was wrong. 

Jesus has some sound advice for those who might be reluctant to leave such error, “Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

Jesus is not saying that religious leadership does not deserve to hear the Good News of the kingdom of God. He knows they have heard it – they even heard it straight from His own lips. But in rejecting the truth, they forfeit the privilege of leading those who do hear it. Jesus is making it very clear – a Christ-follower should not follow those who deny the truth of God. Such people will only lead others to disaster. 

In our day we constantly hear of ‘Christian’ leaders who are in disagreement with the revealed truth of the Bible. Some believe they have an enlightened approach. They call themselves ‘progressive Christians’ who no longer believe that the Biblical teaching on sexual purity is applicable in modern times. Some constantly preach that God’s favor is demonstrated by wealth. They teach that the Gospel is meant to enrich us with financial resources and that God’s favor is demonstrated by financial ‘success’. And, as in Christ’s day, some exalt human tradition to be equal with Scripture. Their theology and philosophy of ministry include extra-Biblical mandates based on tradition such as purgatory, praying to non-divinity and salvation by works. But none of that is truth, because none of that is revealed in God’s Word. Christ would have us know that such people are blind to the truth. They may not be physically blind, but they have chosen to be spiritually blind by the deliberate overlooking of God’s revealed truth. 

We must leave such people to themselves. They are headed to shipwreck, and they will destroy the fruitfulness of all who follow them. 

Spiritual sight is actually fairly easy to gain and keep. Read the Scripture, study the Scripture and apply the Scripture. If you read it you will be immune to those who preach what it does not say. If you study it you will be immune to those who take it out of context. If you apply it, you will know and be able to follow God’s leading in every matter of life. In this way you can keep your life free from spiritual error. 

It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

APPLICATION: Worship

To follow God, we must set our eyes and hearts on Him. To do so is to worship Him.

Too many people have found total devastation in making an unwise  financial investment.  One day you are comfortable and well off. The next, you are bankrupt and bereft. It is a deeply unsettlingly experience that has long-term implications. It is something we all seek to avoid, but to avoid it we must monitor our situation and make wise and careful choices. If we realize our investments are headed in the wrong direction, we must do all we can to exit them before they are completely worthless. This is common sense. 

It therefore ought also to be common sense that if we hold to an idea, doctrine or teaching that we later realize is not godly, that we abandon it too. All the more so, because ideas and doctrines and teachings are what we build our lives on. They have a far greater impact than money. A fortune can be regained. The years of your life cannot. 

When He was told the Pharisees were offended by His words, Jesus said, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.” That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, until you consider that He earlier told the parable of the weeds. Jesus is making it clear that He considered the Pharisees and what they taught to be ‘weeds’ in His Kingdom. 

As Leon Morris puts it, “He [Jesus] proceeds to a horticultural metaphor to bring out his total rejection of their position, and speaks of the fate of plants that the heavenly Father did not plant. Whether the plant refers to the teacher or the teaching, Jesus is saying that the heavenly Father […] has revealed truths; his word may denote the truths themselves or the people to whom the truths have been revealed. Either way the point is that what God has made known is the significant thing. What God has not made known and what people like the Pharisees teach so confidently and authoritatively has no future. Because it is not divine truth it will not last. In due course it will be rooted up, another horticultural metaphor, this one speaking of plants torn up by the roots. This signifies final and complete destruction. In this way Jesus makes clear his contempt for the teachers who so confidently claimed to know the ways of God, but who had not been “planted” by the God to whom they so brazenly appealed. So far from being reliable expositors of the kingdom of God, the Pharisees were not even in the kingdom.”

That which is not of God does not survive to His everlasting Kingdom. We see that all around us. Almost everything we set our eyes to is temporary – it all dies, falls and rots away. But that which is of God – the things He created – live on as the earth and sky persist- perpetually made new by the seasons, cycles and storms of life. 

As God’s Word persists, God’s truth also persists. A life that eternally matters must produce fruit that lasts, and fruit that lasts cannot be based on temporary ideas or false foundations. This is true wealth; That we build our lives on God’s truth, not human teaching or false doctrine.

Those who invest in God’s righteousness, invest in eternity. What wonderful encouragement for those of us who live surrounded by corruption!

Tokunboh Adeyemo

APPLICATION: Intentionality

How are you managing that which belongs to God? 

Jesus has made another statement that clearly reveals the Pharisees as having   misinterpreted God’s Word. “Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” 

How could the Pharisees not be offended? They had studied God’s Word as their career. They had dedicated their whole lives to a cause they deeply believed in – that God’s ancient Word was better understood through the established tradition of hundreds of years of Jewish religious leadership. Then, along comes this upstart Rabbi, who is telling them to their faces that they have it wrong. In doing so, he is not just insulting them, but all those upon whom their careers stood. Jesus is effectively saying that Jewish leadership has been wrong for generations. As one commentator put it, “…what was so intolerable to these self-appointed leaders of the people was the fact that Jesus took this leadership from them and here taught the people the direct opposite of what they had taught.” 

Would we not similarly be offended? If a visiting minister were to come to our church and teach the congregation the exact opposite point to the last sermon series, it would be profoundly embarrassing for church leadership. More than embarrassing, it would be profoundly offensive. 

Ironically, the disciples are likely offending Jesus even in making that observation. Of course He is aware. Jesus is God the Son – He was not unaware of what He was doing. He deliberately said what He said, where He said it and purposefully said it to whom He knew was listening. 

Recall that the Pharisees in question were the ‘big guns’ from Jerusalem who had been called in by the locals to help deal with this young upstart, who seemed to have a solid rebuttal for every argument leadership brought to him. Knowing they think they are wise in their own eyes, Jesus has deliberately punched a huge hole in their worldview. Confronted by them about the importance of washing one’s hands prior to eating, Jesus deliberately uses the fifth commandment to demonstrate their hypocrisy. Then He brings to them a charge made by Isaiah – someone they no doubt studied at great length but never applied what he wrote to themselves. To top it off, in a single sentence He does the very thing the Pharisees prided themselves on being able to do, but were not doing at all; He teaches the crowd the profound truth of the spiritual nature of Mosaic law. 

Our sense of offence is a lot like our sense of pain. It is there to alert us to something that – should we not take immediate corrective action – will truly hurt us. Except where our sense of pain alerts us to outside threats, a sense of offence alerts us to an internal threat. Offence is a call to examine why we feel offended. 

As every painful impulse, it is a call to move from our present position. As every emotional impulse, it is a call to prayer. How much more then, when it is the Lord’s own Word that offends us? 

Be offended with God, and you will be offended with everyone who crosses your path.

Elizabeth Elliot

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Someone once said that if God never does anything that upsets, frustrates and confuses you, then you are not looking at Him – you are looking at a mirror. 

Fifteen hundred years before Jesus, the Lord had said to Aaron, “You must  distinguish  between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses.” Then, after giving Moses a lengthy list of instructions on what was clean to eat and touch and what was not, the Lord said through Moses, “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.”  In fact, Leviticus 10 and 11 (where the above quotes are found) use the Hebrew word for “unclean” almost three dozen times. Clearly, understanding what was ‘clean’ and what was ‘unclean’ is an important aspect of following God Most High.

It also sounds a lot like legalism, which Jesus denounces in His argument with the religious leadership. Helpfully however, Jesus tells the crowd how to rightly understand God’s original instructions to Moses: “Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’ ”” 

As He had done before with various aspects of the Jewish Law, Jesus takes what was formerly thought to be a strictly physical commandment and interprets it as a moral and spiritual commandment as well. Jesus is not saying that Moses was wrong, or that God was changing His mind as to what was physically fit for consumption and touch and what was not. Rather, Jesus is applying the terms ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ to the whole person – including mind and soul – and not just their physical body.  

As an ancient physical commandment given to a people who did not have refrigeration or a modern understanding of how disease and illness propagate, the commands to avoid ‘unclean’ aquatic and land creatures are helpful. Anyone who has suffered food poisoning knows that unclean meat has a high probability of making you sick. Very sick. Knowing how to avoid that is helpful. But the spiritual ideal of knowing the difference between holy and unholy is far more helpful. 

This is what the Father had said to Moses, “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean.” Jesus knows that what the unclean meat does to you physically is but a shadow of what being unclean spiritually does to your mind and soul. It is one thing to be violently ill for a few days. If you are healthy, you can recover. It is quite another to be spiritually or mentally blinded, oppressed in spirit or in spiritual shackles on account of unclean thoughts, words and actions. No matter how physically well you otherwise are, you cannot recover from that until you are released and/or healed, and you cannot do that by yourself. Humankind has no remedy for sin-caused soul-sickness. Nothing we can do and no amount of time we can wait can wash that sin away from us. 

Only the blood of Jesus does that.

The man who thinks he can know the Word of God by mere intellectual study is greatly deceived. Spiritual truth is spiritually discerned.

Samuel Chadwick

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Is there anything ‘unclean’ in your life?

Jesus has charged the religious leadership with the spiritual crimes of  hypocrisy and  heartless worship. But there is one more charge He quotes from Isaiah 29:13, “Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” This is the most devastating of indictments. Jesus charges the religious leadership with legalism. Legalism is the reduction of God’s glory, for it takes worshipful living and reduces it to following a large and odious collection of rules. It trades the freedom and abundant life of following God for a restrictive and narrow life of being right in the eyes of one’s peers. Rather than multiply God’s glory or even add to it, it reduces God’s glory. 

When our hearts are conflicted, we often try to live the Christ life under our own power. Refusing to acknowledge our brokenness and come to God in repentance, we tell ourselves we’ll just do it better. Effectively, we try to worship God half-heartedly. The end result is legalism. We are no longer following God out of our desperate love for Him. We are doing something because we desperately want Him to love us. But such behavior cannot bring about the Lord’s favor, and woe to us if we teach that it can. 

Christ came to establish God’s Kingdom, and to do that He was anointed to, “…preach good news to the poor, […] proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Legalism does the exact opposite. It is not good news to know there are many restrictive laws you have to follow. As a system set up to ultimately appease human leadership instead of God, legalism is anything but freedom. It blinds the people to the wonder and joy of simply hearing and obeying God, and because it is not of God, it lacks His power to release anyone from their bonds. In that respect, legalism leads into slavery instead of away from it. Instead of freedom on account of our experience of love for Him, we find bondage on account of our fear of other people. 

In some ways legalism is worse than no relationship with God at all, for it inoculates against expecting God to be anything more than a demanding tyrant. The Bible does not reveal God as that. It reveals God as a loving Father and a gracious King. A Father does not place unreasonable demands on His children, and a gracious King does not burden His people unnecessarily. In fact, the whole of the Jewish history was one of God being gracious, kind and longsuffering to the patriarchs, and delivering Israel from the tyranny of Egyptian slavery. God is wonderful, and wonderful to all who follow Him. 

We do well to remember the most important thing; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” If we struggle with half-heartedness, we must give our half-heart to God rather than fall into legalism. He can heal us. Proverbs says, “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways,” and the Psalmist prophetically wrote, “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart.” So let it be. Amen.

Legalism never produces genuine holiness. It only creates fear and encourages hypocrisy.

Tokunboh Adeyemo

APPLICATION: Worship

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom – freedom to worship Him, and freedom to obey Him unreservedly.

When Jesus called the religious leadership “hypocrites”, He was rightly  pointing to the  fact that they accused Him of breaking with human tradition, while at the same time committing and teaching treason against God on account of tradition. “Whereas the priestly Sadducees taught that the written Torah was the only source of revelation, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in the Law: men must use their reason in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems.” To this end the Pharisees were closely tied to their traditional interpretation and application. Ironically, that tradition itself was a fairly recent development, because the Pharisees only emerged as a group some 160 years prior in Jewish history. Their “tradition” wasn’t that old. But the Jewish leadership had long been misapplying God’s law by means of cultural misinterpretation. In fact, Jesus’ accusations against them tie their behavior back to seven hundred years prior. Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13, “The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”” 

God’s charge through Isaiah hundreds of years earlier was that of sedition. Obviously sedition is far more serious than mere hypocrisy, but the two are closely linked. For to come into the King’s presence and say the right things but not believe your own words is  – at best – wickedly deceitful. Will God not truly know your heart? Then how could anyone approach him with words that claim to seek His face only to lie to His face? It is tantamount to treason, for all crimes begin in the heart long before they get acted upon, and treason begins when one no longer acts as one believes. From Christ’s viewpoint, such behaviour was a real tradition of Jewish religious leadership, and it couldn’t be interpreted as right any more than tradition can make sedition right. 

Without a heart set on glorifying God, our worship is in vain. 

You cannot worship what you do not love. You can love partially and worship partially, but you cannot worship wholeheartedly through acting out what you do not hold in your heart as true. The rest of the congregation might believe you are sincere, but you and God will know it is only a play. Like a spy pretending to be in the King’s service, your voice and actions say one thing, but your heart says another. 

Such a heart condition is not cause for worship. It is cause for humility. It is cause for repentance. It is cause for heartfelt prayer and much soul-seraching. But it is not cause for worship until the Holy Spirit finishes His work of rooting out the lies you have come to believe about who God is and who you are. 

Yet the disciple in such a position has hope, because they know there will be cause for worship once they’ve made a fresh commitment to honour God for who His Word says He is. 

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.

Job (from Job 19:25-26)

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

As long as we breath, there is a path back to the true worship we were created for. PTL, He forgives, redeems and restores!