Key Passage
Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to the place where John was baptizing people. When John saw them he said to them: "You are all snakes! Who warned you to run away from God's anger that is coming? You must do the things that show that you have really changed your hearts and lives. And don't think that you can boast and say to yourselves, 'Abraham is our father.' I tell you that God could make children for Abraham from these rocks here. The ax is now ready to cut down the trees. Every tree that does not make good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
— Matthew 3:7-10 ERV (Read Full Text)
Key Thought
So much of religion can be little more than posturing, passionate opinions, and religious pomp without much true substance. God, however, demands lives that are consistent with the words of our mouths. Wearing robes, having titles, coming from a strong religious heritage, and liking to be recognized as religious, in and of themselves, simply don’t count with Jesus. He wants to see the fruit of lives dedicated to him as God. In fact, Jesus uses terms of utmost derision for those claiming to be religious but not living righteously. He reserves the greatest punishment for those who take advantage of their religious positions. What counts with our Lord are lives that are true to God, not ones that merely look and sound religious.
Prayer
Faithful and just God, thank you for being consistent and true. At times, dear Father, I find myself struggling to have the purest of motives and sincerest of commitments. Please forgive me when my faith is more about religious showy rituals and not about a changed daily lifestyle. Help me to be more true to what I say I believe, and not get caught up in religious pretensions. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Related Scriptures
"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees have the authority (power) to tell you what the law of Moses says. So you should obey the things they say. You should do all the things they tell you to do. But their lives are not good examples for you to follow. They tell you to do things, but they don't do those things themselves. They make strict rules that are hard for people to obey. They try to force other people to obey all those rules. But they themselves will not try to follow any of those rules. "The only reason they do good things is for other people to see them. They wear special boxes full of Scriptures. They make these boxes bigger and bigger. And they make their special prayer clothes very long {so that people will see them}. Those Pharisees and teachers of the law love to get the most important seats at the feasts. And they love to get the most important seats in the synagogues. They love for people to show respect to them in the market places. And they love to have people call them 'Teacher.' "It will be bad for you teachers of the law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites. You are like tombs that are painted white. The outside of those tombs looks fine. But inside, the tombs are full of the bones of dead people. And all kinds of unclean things are inside there. It is the same with you. People look at you and think that you are good. But on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and evil.
— Matthew 23:2-7, 27-28
Do what God's teaching says; don't just listen and do nothing. Why? Because when you only sit and listen, you are fooling yourselves. If you hear God's teaching and do nothing, you are like this: You are like a man that looks at his face in the mirror. The man sees himself, but he does nothing. He goes away and quickly forgets how bad he looked.
— James 1:22-24
"Every person that hears these things I say and obeys is like a wise man. The wise man built his house on rock. It rained hard and the water rose. The winds blew and hit that house. But the house did not fall, because the house was built on rock. But the person that hears the things I teach and does not obey those things is like a foolish man. The foolish man built his house on sand. It rained hard, the water rose, and the winds blew and hit that house. And the house fell with a loud noise."
— Matthew 7:24-27
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