Friday after the Eighth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on July 26, 2024 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 23:23-36 (NKJV)
23:23 “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!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? 34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”
Devotion
“You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”
There is a danger that ever lurks for the faithful preacher: Pastors always want to see their people grow in the faith. It becomes a temptation to go looking for measurable results, to focus on “changed lives.” The ends do not justify the means! If it is preached that one must tithe, or quit whatever bad habit, or manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit in some visible way, the end result may well be what Jesus says of the Pharisees: polished on the outside, but unchanged and awful on the inside.
The Law shows us our guilt. The Gospel shows us God’s grace in Christ. The result is gratitude. Where the gratitude is not apparent, the solution is not to demand the ponying up of more gratitude. The solution is to go back to Law and Gospel, to fill in whatever is missing. Then, genuinely repentant and trusting in Christ, we may be cleansed inwardly as well as outwardly. The good works which follow are then an expression both of what Christ expects of us, and of gratitude for what Christ has done for us.
Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the Spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
