“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law-justice, mercy, and faith. These things should have been done without neglecting others.
Blind guides! You strain out a gnat, yet gulp down a camel!” Matthew 23:23-24 HCSB
Often times in life, we are unable to do something because of a technical difficulty. I have had some issues lately with getting this blog done. My website was messed up for several days. Then last weekend my internet was out. We have problems and issues that arise that make it difficult to do what we need to do.
But one thing we must be sure of is it’s not what we do that saves us, it’s who we know. We must have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We must trust in Him. We are saved by grace through faith, it’s nothing we do, it’s a gift from God, not a result of our works, so that no one can brag about what they’ve done (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The problem we often have as Christians is that we are not walking closely enough with the Lord. When this happens, we can fall into legalism and rely on all the good that we do. We should never do this.
In Matthew 23, Jesus says over and over, “Woe to you Scribes!” These Pharisees were by the book, they were well versed in the Bible and the law. They frequently clashed with Jesus over the interpretation of the law. Jesus warns them that their religious practices and their tithing does them no good if they don’t care about others.
The greatest commandment according to Jesus is that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind. The second greatest commandment is that we love others as we love ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). You can attend church every Sunday dressed in your Sunday best. You can tithe right down to the penny. You can memorize lots of Scripture. These are all wonderful things for you to do. But, if you don’t have a good, solid, loving relationship with your Lord and Savior, these things do you no good. Many believe that because they are a good person this will get them into heaven. People believe because they do good things with their money, this will get them into heaven. But we are told in the Bible that our good works is not what gets us into heaven (Romans 3:28).
We also must beware of false teachers. The Bible tells us they come to us as wolves in sheep’s clothing in Matthew 7:15. They look good, they talk a good game, but they are filled with evil and deceit. Since the pandemic, a number of people have opted to watch church on television or Facebook. Please be very careful to be sure that you are listening to a good, Bible teaching pastor.
One problem that kept my internet down was that I called the technical support division of my provider to see if it was an outage or if it was my system. They weren’t able to tell me what I wanted to know and I should have hung up at that point. But, I didn’t. I listened to them and walked through their trouble shooting. At one point they told me to unplug all the wires on my router. I did as they instructed. Then they told me to plug the red wire in. I had no red wire. The technical support person spoke with a heavy Indian accent and it was difficult to understand him. But, he kept telling me to plug the red wire into my broadband outlet on my router. I tried explaining that I had no red wire. It went downhill from there. When the tech came out yesterday, my following the instructions of the technical support person was what had my internet down. There had been an outage, but in instructing me to plug wires back in, he had me change the order. I foolishly trusted this person instead of simply plugging them back in as they had been before I unplugged them.
They offered to send someone out in about 10 days. Thankfully, my nephew was able to get someone to come over and find that my wires were not plugged in properly and get me up and going.
We experience technical difficulties when we listen to those that do not have our best interest at heart. God loves us and wants what is best for us. This doesn’t mean we will never have technical difficulties, it just means that he is there to properly guide us through them when they come along. He gives excellent tech support and trouble shooting through His Holy Word. He can fix a faulty wiring job and get you up and running.
Trust in Him and you will experience less down time.
Have a great day!