8 May Daily Manna
KEY VERSE: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.” – (Luke 11:44)
TEXT: Luke 11:37-54
To be hypocritical. It is to claim to be a child of God when you know full well that your life does not measure up to His holy standard. It is also to demand from others a level of integrity that is absent from one’s life. Hypocrisy misrepresents God and therefore, seeks to make Him a liar before men.
It was unusual for Jesus to go to a man’s house to condemn him. But this was what He did when invited for dinner by “a certain Pharisee”. His host condemned Him first for not washing His hands and feet which they deemed to have been contaminated by the Lord’s interaction with people they considered unclean.
But in this, He saw an opportunity to speak truth to His host and the gathering of Scribes, Pharisees and lawyers that were present for the dinner. He chided them for their unwillingness to help the poor while insisting on the payment of tithe. He rebuked them for making high demands from the ordinary people, while excusing themselves from such rigour.
Read yesterday’s Daily Manna here
He accused them of making other people unclean through their sullied spiritual lives. He condemned them not just for persecuting prophets of God but rejecting God Himself. He chided them for erroneously interpreting the Scriptures and therefore, misleading and preventing people from coming to Christ. But rather than being contrite and sober, they sought for ways to trap him into making blasphemous statements.
Unlike the Pharisees and Scribes, believers must not hold others to the injunctions of Scriptures while disobeying those same provisions. The best way to influence people positively is to let our lives express what God expects from them.
8 May Daily Manna – THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: If your life were a book, what will others read from it?
THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: 1 Corinthians 1-4
