Matthew 23:13-24
Let’s remember to pray for Jim and Marty.
“Notice what you notice.” It’s hard for me to relate to a lot of what Jesus is talking about in these verses. Swearing by the temple or the gold in the temple, by the altar or the gift on the altar… For the most part, we don’t hear people saying that they swear by this or that. Most common is “I swear on my mother’s grave.” Or in the courtroom, “Do you swear…?” So that paragraph is a bit lost on us unless we do some serious Old Testament research.
However, I have strained (scooped) many a gnat or fly out of my drinks and have never intentionally swallowed one!! And never have I ignored a beetle or a cricket in my drink and figured I would just drink it rather than scooping it out. That all sounds preposterous!! But what Jesus is saying is that the scribes and Pharisees were so fastidious in their small points of the Law (or their additions to the Law), but were ignoring items that were more problematic for them to deal with – things like equal justice for all or mercy instead of harsh judgment.
I don’t know where we (or I) stand on matters like this. But the one example that constantly hits me is our U.S. evangelical focus on abortion and same sex issues. Don’t get me wrong – I am on the same side of these issues as the larger evangelical community. But for that larger community there seems to be altogether too little focus on the poor, the orphans and the widows – or the “stranger in our midst”. Especially the stranger in our midst – so many billions in other countries or waiting at our border, hoping for a better life. I don’t mean to get political, but world poverty has been an issue on my heart for more than 50 years, since I first saw real, ravaging poverty in slum villages in Vietnam. We have so much, they have so little. I do believe that we in the USA are …straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (v. 24).
Slava Bohu!