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

The passage begins with Jesus condemning the Pharisees for hypocrisy.  The key phrase in what Jesus said in this section was this, “they do not practice what they preach.”  Jesus goes on to explain that much of what the Pharisees, and other hypocrites, do is intended to cause others to honor them.  I want to write about some of the types of hypocrisy Jesus points out.  We should not ask others to address us by honorifics, such as “Father”, “Rabbi”, “Teacher”, “Reverend”, or “Pastor”. Nor should we address others by those honorifics.  All followers of Christ are equal, do not hold others up above yourself, and do not hold yourself above others.  The next one I want to look at is kind of interesting.  Jesus talks about considering an oath sworn on the temple as non-binding, but one sworn on the gold of the temple is binding.  Now why would someone make such distinctions?  It seems to me that the purpose would be to able to make an oath which might sound binding, but which you did not count as binding.  In other words, the purpose of such a distinction is to deceive people.  The final type of hypocrisy was the things done for the sake of appearance.  Things like washing the outside of a cup but leaving the inside untouched.

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