Tag Christian

Hypocritical Bread

Todd R 3 Comments

One of the reasons Jesus encountered so much opposition was that He could see many of the religious leaders of His time as they really were – sinners condemned by the law and in need of a Savior – and was not afraid to call them out on it. Once when some scribes and Pharisees were crowding Him, trying to catch Him in an error, Jesus said to His disciples:

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.  Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.”[1]

Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites, which means someone deceitfully playing a part, using leaven as a metaphor.  Leaven is yeast, but how is yeast like hypocrisy?

Beware the nooks and crannies of the Pharisees! Photo by Debbie Widjaja on Unsplash

Looking at leavened bread and unleavened bread from the outside, they might look the same: they both look like solid loaves of bread.  However, in the process of making bread rise, yeast creates gas bubbles that form holes inside the bread (or “nooks and crannies” as in an old English muffin ad).  So, when you break or cut open a piece of leavened bread, it does not look solid on the inside like it does from the outside.  It is full of holes.  On the other hand, unleavened bread tends to be more solid, such as many flatbreads or tortillas.

Yeast is like hypocrisy because the hypocrite is not the same on the inside as they are on the outside.  The image they carefully craft for themselves fails inspection to One who can see inside.  In the case of the Pharisees, who wanted to appear superior in their knowledge of, and observance of, Jewish law, Jesus revealed that they were “like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”[2]

Later in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 8:1, the apostle Paul wrote: “we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up.”  Paul’s warning was that knowledge, if not used in love, puffs us up as yeast puffs up bread, making it full of air bubbles, and hollow inside.  Knowledge can make us proud and inflate our own sense of importance if we aren’t careful.  Love, on the other hand, seeks to build up others in humility.

Therefore, whose who seek to walk in integrity before God, to live an unleavened life, must reach out to the only One who can see all of our inner nooks and crannies, yet still loves us.  Though we are still sinners, by His blood we are justified in His sight and being made whole by our Maker.  We should pray as David prayed in Psalm 139:23 –

“Search me, O God, and know my heart!
            Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
            and lead me in the way everlasting!”

He can supply everything we lack.

[1] Luke 12:1b-2
[2] Matthew 23:27

Daily Readings for November 3 – 9

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Fellow travelers:

Here is the list of readings for this week: 2 chapters to read per day as the main reading plan, and extra chapters for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2025.  I goofed last week and listed Acts 1-2 twice as the reading plan.  Sorry!  I got it back on track this week.

Follow along (or not) any way you choose!  Also, let me know if you’re interested in me doing this again next year with a different order of books.

2 chapter a day plan:

Monday, November 3: Acts 11-12
Tuesday, November 4: Acts 13-14
Wednesday, November 5: Acts 15-16
Thursday, November 6: Acts 17-18
Friday, November 7: Acts 19-20
Saturday, November 8: Acts 21-22
Sunday, November 9: Acts 23-24

Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible this year:
Hosea 3-11

Learning Godly Fear

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Does being forgiven by God cause us to fear Him less, or to fear Him more?  Perhaps it’s both.

Psalm 130:4 tells us this about God: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”  To one way of thinking, this seems backwards: why does knowing that God has forgiven us make us fear Him more?  Shouldn’t we fear Him less when forgiven?  It depends on what we mean by fear.

For me, getting Psalm 130:4 to make sense with the order of forgiveness and fear required a re-thinking of repentance.  My conclusion was: the one who has not been forgiven has not repented, and the reason they did not repent was that they did not fear God.  They did not understand Him properly.  They might be afraid of God, but that’s not the kind of fear referred to in Psalm 130.

In contrast, the one who has been forgiven has repented, and they repented because they understood it was the best thing for them to do, out of a fearful respect for God.  A proper understanding of God’s character makes us turn to Him with our guilt, rather than run away from Him.  We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to be passive – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear.  We should fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, and therefore actively seek to please Him.

A lot goes into repentance.  When we pray and ask for forgiveness, it’s often a simple prayer made with the proverbial faith of a child, but there are a lot of assumptions we make when we say that prayer.  Every prayer of repentance directly or indirectly acknowledges some or all of these things:

1) God as the source of the law, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong
2) Him as the righteous judge who is personally offended by our sin
3) His omniscience, knowing we cannot hide our sin
4) His uniqueness, as there is no other God to turn to
5) His steadfast love for us, knowing He bore the cost of our sin, therefore enabling us to approach Him
6) His compassion for us, since He lived as a man
7) His power and willingness to heal us of sin
8) His consistency of character: that He is not arbitrary

If we don’t implicitly or explicitly believe these things, why would we repent and ask forgiveness from God?  Why would we expect to get it?  Exploring that set of statements could fill multiple volumes of theology books, but we don’t need that knowledge.  In His grace, He honors our simple, heartfelt confessions.  He paid the price for all our inadequacies – even when we don’t fully understand our own prayers or who we’re praying to.  The Spirit pleads with the Father on our behalf[1].  Mercifully, our forgiveness is based on His faithfulness to us, not on our detailed theological knowledge.  1 John 1:9 tells us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Even our faith is imperfect, but His faithfulness bridges the gap between our childlike faith and His omniscience.  He knows all our doubts and all their answers.  We come as we are, but with fearful respect, and are forgiven.

Only through acceptance of the cross, where Christ’s atoning blood was shed for us, can God in His Holiness commune with us.  Only through forgiveness will the Holy Spirit come and live in us.  Only by tasting of His goodness do we really know what He is like, not before.  And if we never repent, we don’t learn what it tastes like, we only know what you’ve been told about God, and we might not have been told the truth.

Psalm 130:4 shows us that genuine repentance leads to forgiveness and gives us a better appreciation of who God is.  As we experience Him more, we live Psalm 34:8 for ourselves:

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
                        Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

[1] Romans 8:26-27

Godly Cleanliness

Todd R 2 Comments

Have you heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”?  The saying suggests that being physically clean is almost as important as being morally righteous before God.  Cleanliness is important from a physical health and hygiene perspective, but I don’t think there’s anything spiritual about it and in fact it might hurt us spiritually if we view it the wrong way.  Here’s why.

Our Lord Jesus met a lot of opposition during His time here on earth, much of it from the strictest sects of Judaism.  Often Jesus angrily cast aside as unimportant things that people like the Pharisees saw as absolutely essential to a relationship with God.  They didn’t like that.  One such example comes from Luke 11:37-41.

“While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table.  The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner.  And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.  You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?  But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”

Key to understanding this story is knowing that the Pharisees weren’t talking about simply washing your hands as you and I would before a meal.  They were referring to an elaborate washing ritual developed over centuries as part of a system they thought made someone presentable to God.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Here is a partial description of this ceremony: “water was poured on both hands, which must be free of anything covering them, such as gravel, mortar, etc. The hands were lifted up, so as to make the water run to the wrist, in order to ensure that the whole hand was washed, and that the water polluted by the hand did not again run down the fingers. Similarly, each hand was rubbed with the other (the fist), provided the hand that rubbed had been affused.”[1]  There were also requirements for how much water to use, and so on.  I recently learned that some still follow this practice today.

Jesus’ rebuke comes across differently when we know about this washing ritual.  Jesus isn’t angry because they were dirty and unsanitary; He was angry because the Pharisees were more concerned about appearing righteousness than they were with actually being righteous.  The Pharisees may have had cleaner hands than Jesus on the outside, but “inside you are full of greed and wickedness” He told them.

To a perfectly just God, any “greed and wickedness” requires judgement regardless of how clean your hands are, but the Pharisees thought their system could please God based on their works.  But as long as they believed in this system, the Pharisees would be unable to believe that the only way to be presentable before God is through the blood of Jesus shed for our sins.  When we accept Jesus, God does not view us as our sinful selves, but as He would His sinless Son.  No amount of ritual is needed beyond what Jesus already did.  Most of the Pharisees were blind to this truth.

This story in Luke also reminds me of Ex 37:2, “And [Bezalel] overlaid it with pure gold inside and outside, and made a molding of gold around it.”  “It” – the ark – was completely overlaid with gold inside and out.  No surface was left uncovered, and I think the order of “inside and outside” was also important and intentional.  Bezalel probably covered the inside first and then covered the outside as a picture that holiness begins on the inside of God’s people and then flows through to holy living on the outside.  Not the other way around.

Only once we rid ourselves of all “greed and wickedness” on the inside, which only Christ can do, are we acceptable to God on either the inside or outside.  Fortunately for us, Christ did all that is needed to cleanse us of sin.  Even if our hands are dirty.

“But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”

[1] Edersheim, Alfred.  The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1886).  P. 482

It’s Never Too Late

Todd R 2 Comments

The New Testament book of Acts is also sometimes referred to as “Acts of the Apostles” because of the book’s focus on the apostles and God’s work through them.  The book has story after story of them preaching, but also healing and performing miracles.

For example, Acts 3 has a story of a man healed by the power of Jesus through Peter and John.  They were walking to the temple for prayer, and came across a lame man begging for alms.  But instead of giving the man money, Peter says to him, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”  Then, “immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.”[1]

This is already an impressive miracle, but Luke (author of Acts) adds some additional details to show us that God had sovereignly arranged this miracle for maximum effect.  First, Acts 3:2 tells us this man had been “lame from birth” and verse 10 says all the people recognized him, so there could be no denying it was the same man.  Later on, Luke adds another detail to the story, in Acts 4:22. “For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.”  If this were a hoax, one might imagine someone putting it on for a short period of time, but not for forty years!  And not from birth!  In addition, someone lame for any period of time should take months or years to gain strength enough to walk and leap, but this man was immediately healed!  This was undeniably a miracle.

However, I think the mention of the man’s age carries a couple of other lessons as well.

First, like the healed man, many people live for forty years or longer before coming to really know Christ, but Jesus found him.  Therefore, it’s never too late for someone to come to Christ.  Also, for those who already know Christ, it’s never too late to find purpose in Him.  God may reveal His purposes late in someone’s life.  Sometimes being a late bloomer only means that was God’s timing.  Many can discover gifts and ministries late in their life, meaning either their biological or Christian life.

Lastly, this miracle on a forty-year-old shows us that even great suffering can result in glory to God.  We don’t know why this man had to suffer with disability for so long, but we do know that the name of Jesus was glorified in the presence of many because he was healed.  We may never understand why there is so much suffering in this world, but God assures us with this miracle that it is inevitable that He will be glorified.  Suffering can have a purpose.

So, if you’re suffering in some way, or even struggling to overcome some specific sin, it’s never beyond Jesus’ ability to heal you.  If you’re frustrated with a lack of purpose or struggling to fit in, it’s never too late to find meaning in a walk with Christ.  If this has been going on for a long time – even forty years or longer – it’s never too late to hope in Jesus.  He will heal all our physical, emotional, and spiritual problems in His timing and in the way that will most glorify Him.  He guarantees it.

“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” – Romans 8:29

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Acts 3:1-10