Good Morning,
It is good to be
able to sit at my desk and write this morning. I’m sorry for the delay in our
journey but it seems that while I wasn’t looking that life picked up and kept
on moving. I wanted to share with everyone who reads these articles some very
good news we received last week. As many of you know our little Emma had
surgery a little over a year ago to help correct a minor heart condition. This
past Friday we had our checkup with the cardiologist and he was very pleased
with her results and told us to not come back for five years. Thank you all so
much for your prayers, concerns and questions about Emma; we are glad to say
that she continues to be perfect. Let’s continue looking the seven woes in
Matthew 23.
Matthew 23:27-28
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and
Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful
on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything
unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to
people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Jesus is once
again striking at the heart of the matter. The fact of the matter is that you
can’t be pleasing to God with only an outwardly clean appearance for all to
see. In order to be pleasing to God both the inside and outside must to be
clean. This is a concept that I believe must be reinforced daily in the lives
of Christian people especially in the society in which we are living. Far too
often you hear of deals brokered behind closed doors, CEOs with two sets of
books and people telling “little white lies” on their tax returns. As
Christians our attitude should be, “what you see is what you get”, meaning that
we are not ashamed of anything we are doing and that we should have nothing to
hide because we are living the kind of life that is pleasing to God.
Another thought
to consider is this. Many of you know that my Father’s side of the family is
from the Nashville, Tennessee area, which I think of as the buckle of the Bible
belt. In East Nashville where my Dad grew up you are rarely, if ever, not
within walking distance of a congregation of the Lord’s Church. This was due to
the effort of the Christians living in the area in the 1950’s and 19060’s. This
was a noble effort and at one time these buildings were full of people and of
life. The sad reality is that now many of these building sit all but empty most
Sundays; where once there was vibrancy and life there are only memories. It is
interesting that even though these congregations have dwindled to nearly
nothing in some cases that their buildings are immaculate. The architecture of
the time period in which they were built and the lawns that surround them are
in pristine condition and yet the inside these buildings aren’t even a tenth as
full as they were so many years ago. This isn’t a situation that is unique to
East Nashville, this is an epidemic plaguing our congregations all over the
country and it is my belief that this has happened, in part, because the seven
woes Jesus shared in Matthew 23 have been ignored.
While the
buildings look beautiful and the lawns receive their weekly manicure, people
still fight about things that are not of consequence. While painstaking effort
is given to the colors of the walls, people still ignore the problems they are
facing spiritually. The examples can go on and on but the fact of the matter is
that we have become much more concerned with our outward appearance
individually and as a group of believers.
There is hope
for us though. The words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 23 and in the pages of
scripture are just as true today as they were when they were spoken so long
ago. Let’s start putting those words into practice in our lives and focus on
making sure that we present ourselves to God clean on the inside and the
outside.
Questions For Thought
1. What helps
you be consistent in you Christian life?
2. Is your
concern centered on Biblical/Spiritual issues or the things of the world that
distract us?
3. What is it
going to take to help bring God’s people back to a place where the Bible is the
governing principle of their life?
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