Lena's Journalin to TRC's DB reading for the day Matthew 15

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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Matthew15:1-39
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.
Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living TranslationCopyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
~ Lena’s Journalin’ ~
Do we love and serve God with our heads or our hearts?
Is our “Christianity” something else we do or another thing we add in to our lives or is it who we are?
New Age Philosophy it is quite a wide road of travel. The way is very broad in that anything and everything pretty much goes, it is all acceptable. Your god my God, our god and me god, anything that works for you is ok, accepted and embraced. One problem is Jesus said, “I Am The Way The truth The Life and no one comes to the Father (God) except through Me”. We can’t come by finding our inner self, or getting in touch with the universe or accepting anyone and everyone’s faith.
It was told me that when a person goes into a country such as India and speaks to its countrymen about Jesus, they must be very, very specific with those they are sharing truth with. If they are not clear, the countrymen might mistake them and adopt Jesus as one of their many gods, embracing Him as a deity, and a great man, yet He will find a place on the mantles with everything else that they worship. They actually embrace Him and accept Him alongside all else they embrace and accept.
The 10 commandments are clear and say, “You shall have No other gods; before Me” (Jehovah, the One and only God) Well this also goes for us here in the USA, is our god truly God or do we serve others? If we go to church because we are being told it is a good thing and that we feel a certain obligation to come and check in with the Christian family every once in awhile, we may as well stay home. Church is like a little village scene at Christmas on our mantle, it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We’ve adopted it in, as one of the many good ideas in life.
That is what the Pharisees did. When we read the Bible we think, those Pharisees, they did not understand, but do we understand?
Are we 22nd century Pharisees? Or are we disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ?
A disciple is one whose mind is in the position of learning and training, of hearing, and being informed, putting into practice what God is saying in His word, by action. Contrary to a Pharisee, who seemingly was one who was learned, but the air they portrayed was more for their own self exaltation. They gloated in the keeping of specified rules, saying the rules were God’s rules, all the while the infliction and policing of these rules were to show themselves wise in the eyes of others and somehow more perfected which elevated them as “holy”.
Where God’s commands and rules are for the benefit of the doer, not for God’s benefit alone.
The Bible again says “To make disciples”, not converts, a disciple places themselves in the position of a learner of love, one who is open to God’s commands, one who listens for the sake of doing and becoming as God is, in His very own image.
So are you a disciple? Or a Pharisee? One is a “Christian” outwardly where it might look good, for the other they are being changed into Christ’s image inwardly, beginning with the heart.
Are you always right, argumentative, knowing everything about everything, extremely opinionated? Do you go to church and hear truth, but expect others to live up to it, maybe even calling them hypocrites, if they don’t, while you yourself don’t even do the part that was given to you by God?
Don’t we all “fall” under that kind of sway? I know I have.
We’re in such a serious day and time, we’ve got to humble ourselves and become teachable once again, breaking down our prideful walls and submit ourselves to God’s simplistic words we’ve been lacking in obedience to. We need to become brave and ask God to show us something to do, that He’s probably already told us, and then petition Him to give us the strength to go ahead and do it.
Only then will we kill the religious giant in our individual lives and conquer the call and pull of the natural blood, sin nature and our world’s call upon us to be just like “Mikey” or “Brittany” or whoever else.
How many times have we blamed God for the messes we are in actually thinking that He’s inflicted some kind of punishment on us?. That is just such incorrect thinking. It is the very thinking that God’s enemy wants young believers to have. If we turn to God, the enemy’s ok as long as he can lie to us and turn us back away from God. One way he does this is to make us believe God is not for us, all the while he is the one afflicting and tormenting us and then he’ll do it in the name of God, meaning he lies and causes us to put the blame on God!
It is time to rise up and insist on what Jesus paid for. This gentile woman did just that. Even the Lord told her what she was asking for was not something readily given to heathen people, but she insisted, persisted in faith. How many times do we stay with our faith on something, insisting, without an inch of wavering? Did you see this woman waver? She persisted in what she believed and God honored her faith in Him. Awesome, huh?
What did Jesus die for, for you? It is yours for the taking, the deal is you have to rip it out of the enemy’s hands. To do that you must know it belongs to you, then your spirit man must rise up and with the strength of Jehovah take a hold of God, make a covenant exchange, put His armor on, and go headlong into the enemy’s camp if need be and get back what is yours without being talked out of it belonging to you. You must deafen your ears to his lies and believe in God’s words about you and over you.
It is God’s words that heal. Are His words your words? Do you believe them as though they were/are your very own? Should be, He gave them to us, for us to use and then backed it up with His power in us by the Holy Spirit.
Listen, it can actually take a lifetime to get this and walk in it, but as you can see here, this is for the getting the taking and the giving. God is leading us to the place where we can get it, then we can insist on it for ourselves and take it as our own. The best part of all, thought is where we turn around and be as He is, giving it to the world. That’s the part He is leading us all into. If we know that that is the goal, or the degree we’re to have, why not plug in and go for the gold, and not miss the mark by spending our whole lives just mottling through trying to get it for ourselves?
There are multitudes to feed on only a little of what we have been given. Give thanks, break it and distribute.
It is so the time. I beg of you, know the times, the days and the hours, they are very serious times.
Pharisee or disciple, you decide.
Come follow Me and I will make you______________ ____ ________.
The key word is “you”.
Then find someone who follows Christ and follow them and they follow Christ, become a disciple, the keywords are, “you – become”

Daily Repetitive Verses:

John 3:17
You know these things – now do them! That is the path of blessing.