Bible Reading: Numbers 18-20; Mark 7:1-13
“He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Mark 7:6 KJV
Most times in life we try to be nice by following set down traditions of men just to please society thereby living a hypocritical life. God’s truth in scriptures is simply the real truth that is settled in heaven and on earth (Psalm 119:89).
The Jewish leaders accused Jesus’ disciples of being ritually unclean, but His reply was that they (the Jewish leaders) were spiritually unclean. They were hypocrites who followed their traditions rather than God’s law. When people fake their religious devotion or when they bend God’s word to justify the way they want to live, then it becomes a matter of hypocrisy. Jesus hates hypocrisy. That’s why when believers sink into hypocrisy, they will never be counted as righteous by Jesus Christ.
Observing tradition does not justify anyone before God or make a person better than the one who does not. Fulfilling God’s will on God’s terms is what justifies. But none of us is able to do that. That’s why God in His mercy became human in Christ to do it for us. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” – Romans 8:3-4 (KJV). By perfectly fulfilling the Law and the will of God, offering to God the perfect sacrifice for human sin when He suffered and died on the cross and made atonement for all. And by sending His Spirit to work faith in us through the Gospel, adopting us as His own and brought us into His kingdom of grace, through forgiveness of sin and reconciling us to Himself. “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” – 2 Corinthians 5:19 (KJV)
Prayer: Father thank you for reconciling me to Yourself and guide me with your Holy Spirit so I can serve You without hypocrisy in Jesus name.
Pastor Alfred Samuel