Saturday, November 17, 2007

Matthew 15 Today

Note- IF this e-mail is at all encrypted and is unreadable, scroll down to the end of the passage and click on the underlined blue words "Lena's Discipleship Journalin' For Today ", this will take you straight to the website where you'll enjoy a readable copy
God Bless You Today, Lena B


Matthew 15
Jesus Teaches about Inner Purity
1Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to interview Jesus. 2"Why do your disciples disobey our age-old traditions?" they demanded. "They ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat."
3Jesus replied, "And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? 4For instance, God says, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.' F78 5But you say, 'You don't need to honor your parents by caring for their needs if you give the money to God instead.' 6And so, by your own tradition, you nullify the direct commandment of God. 7You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said,
8 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away.
9 Their worship is a farce, for they replace God's commands with their own man-made teachings.' F79 "
10Then Jesus called to the crowds and said, "Listen to what I say and try to understand. 11You are not defiled by what you eat; you are defiled by what you say and do. F80 "
12Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?"
13Jesus replied, "Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be rooted up, 14so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch."
15Then Peter asked Jesus, "Explain what you meant when you said people aren't defiled by what they eat."
16"Don't you understand?" Jesus asked him. 17"Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes out of the body. 18But evil words come from an evil heart and defile the person who says them. 19For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all other sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. 20These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands could never defile you and make you unacceptable to God!"
The Faith of a Gentile Woman
21Jesus then left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22A Gentile F81 woman who lived there came to him, pleading, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! For my daughter has a demon in her, and it is severely tormenting her."
23But Jesus gave her no reply—not even a word. Then his disciples urged him to send her away. "Tell her to leave," they said. "She is bothering us with all her begging."
24Then he said to the woman, "I was sent only to help the people of Israel—God's lost sheep—not the Gentiles."
25But she came and worshiped him and pleaded again, "Lord, help me!"
26"It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs," he said.
27"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even dogs are permitted to eat crumbs that fall beneath their master's table."
28"Woman," Jesus said to her, "your faith is great. Your request is granted." And her daughter was instantly healed.
Jesus Heals Many People
29Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee and climbed a hill and sat down. 30A vast crowd brought him the lame, blind, crippled, mute, and many others with physical difficulties, and they laid them before Jesus. And he healed them all. 31The crowd was amazed! Those who hadn't been able to speak were talking, the crippled were made well, the lame were walking around, and those who had been blind could see again! And they praised the God of Israel.
Jesus Feeds Four Thousand
32Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I feel sorry for these people. They have been here with me for three days, and they have nothing left to eat. I don't want to send them away hungry, or they will faint along the road."
33The disciples replied, "And where would we get enough food out here in the wilderness for all of them to eat?"
34Jesus asked, "How many loaves of bread do you have?" They replied, "Seven, and a few small fish." 35So Jesus told all the people to sit down on the ground. 36Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, thanked God for them, broke them into pieces, and gave them to the disciples, who distributed the food to the crowd.
37They all ate until they were full, and when the scraps were picked up, there were seven large baskets of food left over! 38There were four thousand men who were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children. 39Then Jesus sent the people home, and he got into a boat and crossed over to the region of Magadan.
________________________________________
FOOTNOTES:
F78: Exod 20:12; 21:17; Lev 20:9; Deut 5:16.
F79: Isa 29:13.
F80: Or what comes out of the mouth defiles a person.
F81: Greek Canaanite.


Lena Journals Today
Religion is so perverted in nature.
It is man’s idea of how he can partially live out acceptably what God has said, it’s an attempt by man to be good, though not go all the way.
Love obeys God.
It does not make up its own set of rules to live by them in the name of God.
Remember how Jesus said, God is the only one who is good? Why’d He say that?
That is the only “goodness” to compare one’s self to.
If we don’t measure up to it yet, we can change and through faith’s intent desire be changed by the power of His Spirit’ power available to us. Or else we can also seek Him more towards that change till it happens.
Man’s own set of goodness rules are so stinky to God’s nose.
The Bible says it is like a dirty menstrual rag!
Religion is that putrid to God.
One practical example - speaking evil of our parents, while we smile, say amen, and care what how we are specifically eating and become picky about specifically what we eat. WOW!
In comparison to loving people being #1, who cares what we eat, and how it is washed? God made food to be eaten, and yes, washed before doing so, and mainly to be received and prayed over, and received with thanksgiving. His important order and design is for people to be loved and nurtured.
Ex # 2 - To give money to church (I’m speaking of offerings, and am not referring to the tithe, which is that which already belongs to God) and then to not care for our parents financially, is poo poo.
What are we Doing with God’s word?
Loving God by loving people?
Or hating people, being impatient w/ people, acting as if people get in our way, so we can do the work of God?
The religious, Israel, even the organized church of today, would not love in a godly manner, so He offered their promises, their blessing for living an obedient love filled life, to others!
I don’t know how far off from that we as individuals place ourselves?
Time to wake up!
How much faith do we have?
I mean, if Jesus spit in our faces and said get away from Me for I cannot stand how you misunderstand things and are acting religiously, what would we do, how would we feel, what would we believe?
The Gentile woman pressed in when he called her a dog!
We could say she was the church within the organized church.
We could say she was not religious, but relational.
After Jesus saw her faith he was moved with a bit of compassion, healing a multitude of diseased – Israelites.
I wonder why everyone was in such bad shape???
I wonder if these healed of the Lord were the same crowd who stayed to hear Him and that became hungry. I wonder if their families were the religious ones who would rather be seen giving at church than to feed or care for them.
I wonder if they were a part of church who felt unloved and uncared for by religious people?
Jesus told the disciples (also Israelites), (YOU) feed THEM!
We are now to Go and do likewise Today!
Amen