Living a Life of Form and Substance | Matthew 23:27-28

[00:00:00] We'll truth, Daily This is Daily Truths with Dave Ahlman Hi everybody, welcome back to Daily Truths. I eat sunflower seeds and I really like them but sometimes you bite into one that's not

[00:00:16] very good on the outside it looks great, looks normal, looks just like all the other sunflower seeds and then you bite into it at a taste horrible. Do you know why? Because inside of it is a worm. So it looks good but on the inside it's not good.

[00:00:35] You know what? I bet people like that who hourly they seem to be nice and caring and kind and considerate But inwardly and when you talk to their family members they say there anything in our family

[00:00:47] But what you see out there, I mean they are not the same person. And so Jesus talks about that and he's really warning not only the Pharisees and scribes but also you and me about living a life of form and substance.

[00:01:00] Substances, what's on the inside, form is the way we appear to other people. This is what Jesus said about the Pharisees in Matthew 23 beginning to read at verse 27. Woke to use scribes and Pharisees hypocrites. For you are like white wash tombs.

[00:01:19] In other words back then tombs were very elaborate and they look nice and sometimes they even paint them to keep them looking nice which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead people's bones and all Encleaness. Yeah that's what happens when people die right?

[00:01:35] Bones and contamination and that's what Jesus is saying about the Pharisees. Inwardly, they're dead. Inwardly there's not a lot of healthy stuff there, a lot of six stuff. That's what Jesus is saying. Now in verse 28 he says so you also appear righteous to others.

[00:01:52] In other words you're out on a parent's you fast. These factories, you are in the marketplace, you're greeting people, you're very learned, you're educated, you let people know how much you know that kind of thing but then he says this about them

[00:02:06] but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Other than that they were good guys. Oh my goodness, Jesus letting them have it right? And we've talked about that again this is holy week and so he's saying all this stuff.

[00:02:24] All these criticisms about the Pharisees but again as we talked about the last couple days there's a little bit of Pharisee in all of us and so we have to take some of this and say okay how does that apply to me?

[00:02:35] Am I the same person out there in public then I am at home? And I know that people say you know well you know it's we can kind of let our hair down at home.

[00:02:44] Yes, but we still ought to be practicing the fruits of the spirit at home. And by the way if there's something inwardly that's wrong that's sinful we confess that before God we receive the cleansing blood of Christ.

[00:02:57] He washes us from the inside out and he gives us power to amend our sinful life. So what Jesus was saying here is these guys who just fake pretenders are really not on the inside who they appear to be on the outside.

[00:03:10] I saw bumper sticker recently that said this, be the person that your dog thinks you are. I love the statement about some people that I know and you can say about them what you see is what you get.

[00:03:26] In other words there's a same people inside their home and seemingly inwardly that they are out in public. That's the admonition for us today. Don't be like that sunflower seed that looks absolutely great and then you bite into it and it's worming and it's infested.

[00:03:43] And then we're not working. I know what you're thinking because you're probably a good Lutheran or good Baptist or a good assembly of God or whatever it is. You're probably thinking well nobody can do that perfectly absolutely right.

[00:03:54] We all have been here since we talked about this yesterday. We all have things going on inside of us that nobody else knows about what do we do with that we confess it. We bring it before the Lord.

[00:04:06] We receive the Holy Spirit to walk in the unison of life and we try to let what is on the inside be the same person that we project on the outside right.

[00:04:18] That there's a lot of symmetry, a lot of balance, a lot of connectedness between who we are on the outside and what we believe and live and know on the inside. Here's the thing, the stronger we become in the Lord Jesus.

[00:04:33] Here again we become the less prideful we become the more humble we become and we start to see ourselves as we really are sinful people in need of the grace of God.

[00:04:46] You are sinful, I am sinful and need of the grace of God and we have it in Christ and made the cleansing power of Jesus clean us up from the inside out so that we indeed can be the person our dog really thinks we are.

[00:05:02] Have a great day in the Lord Jesus Christ and that is today's Daily Truth.