After
speaking forcefully and truthfully to those who were demonstrably against Him while pretending to be for God,
Jesus turns to His followers and begins to speak lovingly and truthfully to
those who are for Him.
The loving
truth is there will be a cost associated with following and gathering with
Jesus, and He tells them God sees and God knows the extent to which they
follow.
Remembering
this teaching began with Jesus informing all who were listening and paying
attention there was no neutral ground when it comes to being a child of God,
and telliing everyone you are either for
Him or against Him – He now warns
His followers you cannot fake this.
The
Pharisees were prime examples, and this is why He had scolded them so severely.
The way Jesus spoke to the Pharisees would have been extremely shocking to
those gathered to hear Him speak. Jesus has just accused the Pharisees and
scribes and lawyers of being complete fakes. In essence, they were followers of
Satan, not God, and any who chose to follow them were actually in danger of the
judgment they were to receive. The days of pretending to follow God by
religious external practice while your heart is wicked are over. (In reality
they always have been.)
But can you
speak like this to the powerful religious leaders and get away with it?
Ummm…No. And this will be the cost of being a
genuine follower of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus is going to be killed by the
fake followers of God as a demonstration of what it means to NOT be a hypocrite,
and to not be one who fears those who can kill the mortal body but cannot touch
the soul.
Obviously
there is great fear induced by this kind of teaching, and explains why these
eternal reminders are so important to us. If we value this life above the next,
we may be inclined to recant under the pressure of the hypocrites who seek to
punish those who are genuine children of God.
How
comforting it is to know we are never alone in this pressure of punishment by
external forces. Jesus reminds us God sees our plight, and God knows all we go
through to follow Jesus. His eye is even on the sparrow. He knows the numbers
of hairs on our head. He certainly watches over those who genuinely love Jesus
no matter what.
-Pastor Bill
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