It’s just about bed time already. It’s been an interesting day. My main focus was to complete the sign installation for Erickson Tire in Molalla—now called POINT-S. That involved removing the old faces, replacing 8 florescent lamps, and installing two new acrylic faces with fresh graphics. It was a challenging operation for this little scrawny bald guy. But my old 1971 Ford boom truck came through for me again. Just for the fun of it I’ll stick on a photo.
Jesus addresses 3 common religious practices in this reading—giving, praying, and fasting. In each case he warns against the contaminating effect of hypocrisy—which is a general preoccupation with the appearance of DOING rather than the purity of BEING—or heart-level motivation. Jesus hardly leaves any room for misunderstanding when He begins this series by saying, “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
But alas!!! We have a built-in problem here. Hypocrisy and deceit are qualities of our natural DNA. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” That’s from Jeremiah 17:9. And I notice that the verse following is also a good confirmation of Jesus’ words in our reading. Jeremiah 17:10 reads, “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”
We just read in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Since dirt of heart is our natural heart condition, it only confirms that no one is going to accidentally become pure—or accidentally fall into heaven, for that matter. It requires nothing short of rebirth and a continual washing in the Word. (Ephesians 5:25-27)