Mark Sorensen So woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees. You hypocrites! You tithe from your luxuries and your spices, giving away a tenth of your mint, your dill, and your cumin. But you have ignored the essentials of the law: justice, mercy, faithfulness. It is practice of the latter that makes sense of the former. You hypocritical, blind leaders. You spoon a fly from your soup and swallow a camel. -Matthew 23:23-24 (VOICE)
Many of the Woes that Jesus had to give in regards to the Pharisees and their teaching dealt with their leading people into a wrong relationship with God. Here, Jesus is speaking directly into the heart of the Pharisees and addressing a sin that they were involved in. It was that of losing God in the midst of the details.
In this Woe, Jesus speaks to tithing. 10% is the magic number and, apparently, the Pharisees were spot on in their obedience of giving at the alter. But what about the lesser known laws. The laws that talk about impurity. Did you know that in Jesus day you would actually strain your wine for fear of a gnats? Gnats are tiny insects that breed during the fermenting process. So, to steer clear of impurities, they would strain their wine. Once again, the Pharisees were spot on in this area of the law. But there’s one problem: their motives and heart. They went to such great pains to ritually tithe their 10% and strain the gnats out of their wines, yet Jesus is saying they are swallowing a camel size problem: they are lacking the very thing God says to care about:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. -Micah 6:8
Micah gives us beautiful insight as to the heart of God and what God’s passions are: justice, mercy, and humility. To be a Christian is to live a life that gives glory to the very one Worthy. It also involves an important second step: seeing the world through God’s eyes and caring about the very things God cares about. But wait. We mustn’t stop there.
Giving God glory + seeing through His eyes = a life lived with action to bring about His change.
The Pharisees were half way there. Through the eyes of those watching, they seemed to have it together. However, it was empty religion, void of the power and change that comes in living out faith rooted in God’s heart and passions.
A couple questions I am asking myself today: “How am I going through the details and motions, YET, lacking the heart and passion that God has called me to live my life and see others through? How might I see injustice today and what can I do to bring God’s heart and place it in the midst of the wrong I encounter today? Where can I show mercy? How can I walk with humility?”
Pouring my day through this filter can only bring about one thing: God’s heart.
