Read: Luke 16; Luke 17:1-10
When I read today’s scripture I was almost offended by what Jesus said in verse 8. He said, “…for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Then I meditated on it and understood what Jesus was saying. The people in the world are better connivers and sinners than Christians. Their father is the father of lies and deception. This man was totally deceptive and selfish. He didn’t care about his boss - he cared about himself. A Christian’s response to being audited would be to bring the facts of his labor to his boss and let the facts prove his innocency then he might have been able to keep his job. This man was not innocent so he needed to find a way to be taken care of when he lost his job. So, he resorted to more deception. His boss applauded his quick thinking, not his fraud. We can learn great things from ungodly minds but godly principles can only learned by godly people. Our goal is not to outsmart the world but win it to the truth. Jesus went on to say that God knows are hearts and those that are highly esteemed among men are an abomination in the sight of God.
Jesus went on to explain that every Hebrew letter, called a tittle has significant meaning just as every law did. He gives divorce as an example of this. Men were divorcing their wives without going through the proper procedure. The law says that man has to write his wife a certificate of divorcement to divorce her. (Duet. 24:3, Is. 50:1, Jer. 3:18, Matt. 5:32, Mark 10:4). They weren’t doing that so they were not legally divorced. When they remarried they were committing adultery because they weren’t legally divorced. The spiritual meaning to this is that when we divorce the devil to marry Christ we have to legally divorce him. We can’t be married to both just like Jesus said you can’t serve God and mammon both.
The next story Jesus gave them about the rich man and Lazareth was Jesus’ explanation of why the Pharisees were not going to accept Jesus. They had studied Moses and the prophets and still didn’t recognize the Messiah when he came so they would not get it when he rose from the dead either. They thought they were rich because they knew the scriptures but they were poor because they were blind to its spirit.
Lord, help us to be wise to the things of the spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment