When the Pharisees confront Jesus over the failure of His disciples to follow their traditions, He points out how traditions often en up being used as an excuse to not follow Go’s commands. Then a little later in the passage, Jesus compares such traditions to yeast. It just takes a small seemingly harmless tradition but which can be used to avoid taking responsibility for doing God’s will to undermine the good intentions of people. One other important point regarding this: what we say influences whether we do God’s will, while what we eat does not. Therefor we should put more effort into choosing our words than we do into choosing what we eat and how we prepare it.
I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I am on vacation from July 31 through today, but I did my Bible reading in advance so that I could continue to publish these every day.
Growing up, and even into my young adult years, I viewed passages like those in today’s reading where the prophets spoke against idols made by man as something to be read figuratively. However, in recent years I have come to know more and more people who are returning to worship of gods made by human hands. Some of them even view the gods they worship as being man-made. We should not allow ourselves to be drawn into their practices. None of those other gods can compare to God. God created the universe and all that is in it. The believers in those other gods make no such claim.
God sent Jeremiah to speak His message to people who did not want to hear it. Some of those to whom Jeremiah preached wished to silence him by killing him. We see the same thing today. Perhaps not yet to the point of seeking to kill those who truly preach God’s word, but strong efforts are under way to silence such voices. Those who sought Jeremiah’s death were from Anathoth, which was one of the Levitical Cities of Refuge and Jeremiah’s birthplace. A little further on God tells Jeremiah that his own brothers had turned against him. Since Jeremiah was a priest, his brothers also would have been priests. So, some of the religious leaders of the day were taking part in the attempt to silence Jeremiah because he spoke God’s word. Similar things happen today.
