Tuesday Reading: Matthew 15:1-9
Key Verse: Matthew 15:8
8 "This people draws near to Me with their mouth, and honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
Devotion:
It is amazing how we bend the rules as we go along and how we justify those changes is always proven in some manner so that we can look good in our new law... But just how much of God’s law do we leave behind when we do that? The Jews had already made changes to God’s law and Jesus was trying to open their eyes to those changes. The change He picked on at this stage was the commandment to honour our parents. All we need to do is to look around us nowadays and we see just how far man has wandered from that single law. The honour that children had towards their parents only a couple of hundred years ago seems to have all but disappeared from society today; instead it is replaced with rebellion.
We may not think of that as such a big issue until we start to study just how far that has penetrated through society as a whole and not just between us and our parents. You may think of this as something that has only happened in the last few decades rather than centuries but to see the rotten core that runs through people of all ages makes you realise that the rot set in before we saw it happening. That is what Christ was trying to make people see back then as well. When we grow weak in our hearts the inevitable happens slowly but surely in the background... We need to remain firm in Christ’s grip and remain strong in His law otherwise our hearts become weak and we then contribute towards the downturn without realising it.
This is not something that started a short while back but something that has been there right from the beginning and Satan has picked up on that and used it against us and against God in every way that he can. As Christ put it, we need to start to make sure our hearts are right first and then things will fall into place. As long as our hearts are in it to start with then we will continue on in the right direction but as soon as we lose heart, we lose our way too. God has given us His Word for a reason, not for us to change it at our will but to follow it and burn it in our hearts...
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you follow the rules?
How do you really treat others?
