DAILY DEVOTION / QUOTES

     Two things to do

Once upon a time, Jesus faced a certain sect of meticulous fanatics that made a show of their piety, but with hearts out of proper place; fanatics who had mixed up the order of priority in their service to God and to humanity; Pharisees whose right acts were being soiled by a wrong heart.  There were two general items on the discussion list with those fanatics: matters of righteousness and a matter of religious obligation; or personal acts of character and general acts of religious devotion; or inner integrity and outward show.
This was how Jesus responded to them and to the two items on the ‘list’: “What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things” (Luke 11:42, New Living Translation).  The Contemporary English Version puts it a little more forcefully: “You Pharisees are in for trouble! You give God a tenth of the spices from your gardens, such as mint and rue. But you cheat people, and you don't love God. You should be fair and kind to others and still give a tenth to God.”  In other words, Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of those Pharisees – not the practice of any of the two things under focus.  “You should…” He said, which did not sound like an advice or a suggestion that they could choose to obey nor not.
In the proper order of spiritual priorities, justice and love for God should have come before tithing, or righteousness and holiness before religion.  One set was more important than the other, but both were important, according to Jesus in that New Testament passage.  The fact that one was “more important” did not mean that “the other,” as some Bible translations put it, was NOT important.  In other words, the superior value of one did not eliminate the lesser from the list of “important” things to do.
Despicable as the showiness of the Pharisees was, the Master did not abolish any of the two items on the list; He only put them in their proper order.  He did not cancel any of them; He was only worried that a certain sect of flamboyant fanatics had mixed up their proper places, which is the sad case where religion has replaced righteousness, where external show of piety is exalted above inner sanctity, where rituals get elevated above righteousness, where impressing humans takes precedence over obeying God.  Does that describe any congregation you know?
The matter would appear to have been so significant that Apostle Matthew also records it almost exactly, in Matthew 23:23, as if to say, according to scriptural legalities, that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established” (Matthew 18:16).  The Master’s address on that subject seemed so final that no other later episcopal or apostolic voice was to challenge it.  The meticulous Pharisees did not break a law, they broke an order on the ‘to do’ list; an order of spiritual importance, if Jesus was right.