Matthew 23 - Part 4

 

Read Matthew 23

The third of the woes—blind fools.

In government, politics, and war there is something called mission creep.  This is where a well-defined mission adds something else to the initial tasking, then something else, then something else, so much so that the initial mission is obscured.

I will abuse the term mission creep and say the Pharisees had righteousness creep.  They started with what God had prescribed and ordained and then they added something and then something else and then they lost sight of the sacred nature of God’s instructions.

They had become obscured by their own mandates, so much so that not even the Pharisees could distinguish between God’s law and their own directives.

The quote often attributed to Mark Twain is: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”  The Pharisees easily fooled themselves.  Power is seductive like that, but it left them helpless to hear the truth.

They had become blind.  They were not born blind.  They became blind.

We are to have eyes to see and ears to hear.  We must know the voice of the Good Shepherd. We will not follow any other.

We are not to become blind.  We must keep our eyes to see and ears to hear by putting the words of our Master into practice.

Amen.