Matthew 23 Commentary
The teaching isn’t wrong; the teacher is. The character and personality of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees are under scrutiny. It is all good religious talk but no action at all!
You all have a single teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God. The Message Bible. We have the responsibility of listening to the LORD through the Holy Scripture. Love it, live it, proclaim it, and pass it on.
There is one important lesson for the teachers of the Word today. Our hearts are flawed; we should never want others to be like us. Let Christ be the only model in the house. Point your students to the scripture; Jesus whom the Law and the Prophets point to. You should never use yourself as an example.
The church should have the shape of the scripture and the dynamics of the leadership of the Holy Spirit – that too is as revealed in the scripture.
Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? An individual could be the gold. No one is great until the LORD of the temple makes them great. It doesn’t matter what an individual does. Greatness only comes from the LORD!
The importance we attach to ourselves, the thoughts of importance, and imagined importance are all vanity. Greatness comes only from the LORD God.
Works of righteousness won’t count for much!
Not too long from this point, the LORD Jesus would face death by crucifixion. But it would be for the healing of our wounds! Isaiah 53. But the Jerusalem must worry! She has frustrated God’s grand plan of salvation; there is no more escape or option.
Life isn’t always a choice between ice cream flavors. The choices we make have eternal consequences. Walk the talk – the scripture talk and find your way to the Father. Jesus Christ has longed to gather you to Himself as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. Be willing.
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LOVING SCRIPTURE 