I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 23-24

Jesus continues His condemnation of hypocritical religious leaders.  It would be easy to say that Jesus is pointing at someone else when He says all of this, but we should look at how what Jesus says applies to ourselves.  He condemns them for doing things solely for the purpose of gaining respect and being viewed as righteous.  I don’t know about you, but I want people to view me as a good person who does good for others.  However, what Jesus says here makes me want to BE a good person more than I want to be viewed as a good person.  We all have a tendency to create rules which we use to define what it means to be a good person that are easier for us to follow than those given to us by God.  We think that if we convince others to follow our rules that will make our rules the ones that matter.