OUR FATHER WHO WANTS WIDOWS AND ORPHANS CARED FOR

Matthew chapter 23 verses 23 - 24 continues with the charges that the Lord Jesus brought against the religious leaders who prescribed and enforced the religious practices at that time;

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

 The indictment that was being brought against the scribes and Pharisees was that they were overtly following the laws of God that were easily seen and could be quantified such as giving to the temple ten percent of everything that they gained  including small herbs that would grow incidentally on their properties.

They made a great deal over these tiny observances but when it came to the heavy matters of law such as the administration of justice, mercy and faith, they were silent. 

The Lord declared that the religious leaders needed to do the small things but without neglecting the more consequential obligations of the law. He gave the metaphor of screening out the gnats while letting camels through to illustrate how the scribes and Pharisees, when formulating a code of righteousness to live by, emphasized the smallest points of law to live under such as tithing herbs while skirting the eternally important  portions of the law that dealt with the postures of their hearts towards God and their fellow human beings.

As  the book of James chapter 1 verse 27 says,

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Because of this distortion of perpective and priority, they did not highlight the religious practices that God considered to be faultless, Jesus called the religious leaders of Israel blind guides because they could not see the spiritual landscape that the laws they were handling were pointing to and yet presumed to lead the laity in spiritual matters.

Have mercy on us O God.

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OUR FATHER WHOSE THRONE IS IN HEAVEN

Matthew chapter 23 verses 16 - 22 says this;

16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.’ 17 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 18 And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.’ 19 Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20 Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21 He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. 22 And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.

The Lord Jesusˋ indictment of the the religious leaders continued and in this passage, those who held the offices and the status of spiritual guides were shown to be unseeing and unwise.

Concerning the protocols of oaths and vows, the scribes and Pharisees had synthesized a pattern of swearing for the people to follow but because they had no understanding of the spiritual infrastructure that facilitated the interactions between the corporeal realm and the spiritual realm, they had prescribed inverted procedures where the people were swearing by the transient sacrifices and by the thin veneer of gold that coated the temple walls.

These formulations derailed the earnest and consequential vows and oaths that the people were trying to make before God because their swearing was being underpinned by items that were not registered as valid enforcers of oaths in the spiritual realm.

The teachings of the religious leaders led people to swear their oaths on the gold that coated the temple walls because, they said, swearing on the temple itself was of no consequence. The Lord Jesus authoritatively illustrated that these teachings were wrong because the gold was not intrinsically sacred or sanctified but rather it was the temple in which God dwelled that was santified and thus oaths needed to be pinned to the temple itself for it was what confered santification to everything else that was in it.

This was also true of the altar which was officially sanctified. The prevailing teaching was that swearing on the altar meant nothing and so it was necessary to swear on the sacrifices that were on the altar. Jesus showed that the altar, which was the instrument of spiritual santification, was what oaths needed to be sworn upon and not the sacrifices that were inately mundane and only gained sanctification by placement on the altar.

The Lord showed that the religious leaders were leading people astray in the matter of having their oaths registered in the spiritual realm and as such, any credit to be gained by swearing an oath and fulfilling it, was lost.

What the scribes and Pharisee had set up was like a fake credit card that people were using to make purchases online. Without their knowledge, the purchases did not go through and when they made payments, they are not recieved and because there is no purchases and there is no payments registered, their credit scores did not improve.

Deutronomy chapter 23 verses 21 - 23 says,; “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin. You shall be careful to do what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth.

As this passage says, there is no obilgation to swear oaths. If a person did undertake to swear an oath, one would incur a risk of failure to fulfill the oath and invite judgement upon themselves but on the other hand, successfully fulfilling oaths in the spirit increased credibility in the spiritual realm. It is this credibility that people are seeking when they make oaths before God and the system devised by the religious leaders deprived the people of this benefit.

Jesus provided a teaching on swearing oaths that would register the oath before God and His recommendation was to swear by heaven because heaven contained the throne of God and swearing by heaven made the one who sits on the throne the enforcer of the oath. This is a fearful position to be in and thus James advises us not to swear in James chapter 5 verse 12 (But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.) but to grow in maturity in the spirit, we must be able to obligate ourselves to tasks and stewardships in the kingdom of God and to have a track record of fulfilling vows made before God increases our standing before the Lord.

So help us O God.

Amen.

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