Sitting in Moses' Seat - Part 2

Psalm 70 / Matthew 23:16-22

Blind Guides

Who are you guiding? - More than you know

Necessarily Blind

Matthew 23:13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

Willingly Blind

2 Peter 3:3–5 “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,”

Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

Deuteronomy 30:15–18 “15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.”

Oaths, Herbs, and Camels

Oaths

if....it is nothing; he is not bound by his oath

practicing deceit; seeking excuse not to live up to their word

See Matthew 5:33-37

Herbs & Camels

Jesus did not tell them their tithing was wrong.

John 4:22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”

A false dichotomy; either or instead of both and: Cross Christians vs Kingdom Christians

pin-holing the Word instead of reading priority FROM the Word AND extreme imbalance to the exclusion of else

Colossians 1:18 “And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

Acts 20:27 “for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”

What Can We Do?

Accept Responsibility

Make our word our bond

Diligently study the scriptures for both content and context

I am reminded of the traditional court oath: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We are called to live by God’s Word and Direction, by all of it, and nothing else besides. May God make haste to help us to get that right.