Hypocrisy Exposed

Mark 12:38-40

      Backroom deals abound. Corporations in bed with politicians. Special interest groups writing legislation. The Justice Department being told not to enforce justice. Infectious diseases spreading without acknowledging the role of politics in its spreading. And all this to keep up the appearance of those in power.

      Jesus puts His finger in the eye of the teachers of the law, those who were charged with educating the next generation about every area that was touched by the Scriptures. And just about every area of life was touched. They taught about the LORD, but also about economics and interpersonal relationships.

      The problem became their own egos. They wanted to be important people. They wanted people to recognize their importance. They wanted the pats on the back. The wanted the special parking places. They wanted the exclusive clubs. They wanted the embossed place cards. They wanted all the outward symbols of success and respect.

      But behind the scenes, where no one was really looking, they were crooks. They used their positions to get what they wanted. And they wanted more for themselves. They wanted fat portfolios. They took advantage of the weakest in their society for personal gain.

      To put it in a modern context, they left political office and moved into the corporate world as a payment for their role in passing favorable legislation. They took favors from those over whom they had regulatory authority. They got cozy with the crooks and in the process became crooks themselves. They gave bankers the orders to lend money to those unable to pay, and then blamed those very banks for carrying out their orders. And then they tried to set themselves up as the heroes by forcing all of us to pay for their mistake, billions of dollars from my grandchildren’s pockets.

      Jesus says that this kind of behavior earns the worst punishment. He doesn’t sugarcoat the problem. He isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. The combination of crook and piety don’t mix. When a lawyer gets caught having an affair, the world says it’s no big deal. But when a Christian gets caught.... That is another story.

Thieves’ Hangout

Mark 11:15-16

      Fruitlessness rarely ends in something positive. As I drive around Florida I see a countryside that has fed so many in years past. There are still vast expanses of cattle being grazed here. Citrus still goes on for miles. Strawberries dominate my corner of this state.

      But there are large areas where the orange groves are now covered with weeds and vines, the trees having died down to their roots. There is a bacterium that is attacking these plants, causing the fruit to grow small and bitter, eventually killing the tree. Billions of dollars are at stake. And farmers and scientists are working hard to find a cure.

      And this means there are millions of orange trees that are being bulldozed, piled and burned. Since at this point there is nothing that can clean the tree of the bacterial infection, there is only one way to go forward, and that is to start over from scratch. New trees replace the old ones. You might say, not much lost. But large mature trees produce hundreds of oranges, while small new trees produce only a handful. It takes years of growth to recoup the growing capacity, which means years of lower yields.

      Jesus enters the area in Jerusalem that is space meant for gathering and for worship preparation. This is not an area inside the Temple, but just outside. I might liken it to the foyer in many large churches.

      In this space people are engaged in for profit activities. Over the years scam artists had set up shop right under the noses of the priests and Levites, those charged with executing the worship plan that the LORD has instituted. They were there at the permission of these leaders, and probably got a cut of the profit.

      Part of this activity stemmed from a legitimate practice prescribed in the Old Testament Law. When anyone brought an animal to be sacrificed to the LORD, usually as part of a prescribed ritual designed to remind the Israelites that they needed mercy, they had their animal inspected. It had to be spotless and without defect in order to be sacrificed.

      So out of the kindness of their hearts, and the profit they could get by selling them an “officially accepted animal” to replace their defective animal, these entrepreneurs set up shop right in these large waiting and gathering areas. And of course most animals did not pass inspection and had to be replaced, often with an animal that they had flunked a few minutes before. It was a Ponzi scheme, bait and switch.

      The other side of this equation was money changing. In order to give a donation to the Temple, you had to exchange your secular money for official Temple money. You brought your dollar and bought Temple dollars. Of course your dollar ended up buying less than a dollar’s worth of Temple money, because those who made the exchange charged a large fee for the transaction.

      Jesus comes in and ends their practice. They are stealing from God’s people right under the noses of those who ought to be protecting. Instead of spending time preparing for worship, people had to engage in corrupt business practices. No wonder Jesus rebelled against this corruption.

Calculation Error

Mark 8:14-21

      Being a sniper is one of the most challenging jobs in the military. It takes nerves of steal and a very sharp mind. The calculations involved in making shot are incredible. Distance, wind speed, temperature, sunlight, altitude, angle of descent and probably some more. They now have small computers to help make the calculations. It only takes a slight error in any of those to make the shot miss its mark.

      When cooking, especially baking, you have to get the proportions of the ingredients just right if you want your masterpiece to be masterful. And you want fresh ingredients. Meal worms are no fun! If one ingredient is bad, say an egg, then the whole recipe will be ruined, inedible. Once it is mixed in, there isn’t much you can do to fix it.

      It only takes a little error in your belief system to get you completely off track in your faith. The closer the error is to the center of the Gospel, the further off course you will end up. If you believe that Jesus only died for some people, then you must twist and turn to apply the Gospel to the world. You have to qualify all the all’s and everyone’s of Scriptures. You put the mental filter on every time you read or hear the Word. You have to constantly adjust the Word so that it will fit your belief system.

      If you don’t believe that God is able to communicate to the world in a manner that enables people across time and culture to hear His Truth, then you will constantly be placing your own cultural filter on what your read. Or you will place your carefully constructed theology over Scripture and correct the Scriptures every time they contradict your theology. In the process you become the ultimate source of truth. You become god.

      Certain teachers today introduced very small error into their teaching which in the end leaves what they teach very much short of the Gospel. They leave out punishment for the wicked, for instance. They talk about money all the time. They take an eraser to Scripture and eliminate the politically incorrect sins, and with a swoop of their pen make every behavior they choose acceptable in God’s eyes. Or at least they think that it is acceptable. Or they want you to believe it is acceptable.

      This is not a new problem. Our text talks about how Jesus warned His disciples about the corrupting influence of the teaching of the religious and political leaders. The religious teachers hadn’t taken away from Scripture but added to it, and in the process had invalidated some of God’s most basic principles about our relationship with Him. The political climate had taken away the uniqueness of the LORD, and made the Jews and their beliefs just one of many acceptable belief systems. Sounds like political correctness at its worst.

Couponing

Proverbs 15:27

      We live in a society of debt. Each person in the USA owns over $53,000 in federal debt. If we had to pay the government’s debt today, that would drain most of our checking and savings accounts! And this doesn’t even take into consideration the unfunded obligations like Social Security.

      Then we add the personal debt, credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages, and we are pretty tapped out. Many people live paycheck to paycheck with little cushion. Many don’t even have a ‘rainy day’ fund.

      Most of us don’t have anything over which someone could bribe us. We don’t work at the permit office, or have positions of power that give us some advantage. We don’t have the authority to grant someone permission to do something.

      It is the ability to say “Yes” or “No” over a decision that opens the door to bribery. We don’t generally call it a bribe. Instead, we say they now have access to whatever it is they were seeking. We know ‘access’ in the political realm means power. But we don’t call a bribe a bribe. Instead, we wink and shake hands, and the favor gets done.

      This kind of power for sale is hated by the LORD. This power of a bribe to corrupt is recognized by the government. Ethics rules limit the dollar value of a gift given to an employee.

      The flip side of the bribe is greed. If the person receiving the bribe were not greedy, wanting more money, power, influence, then a bribe would not work. They take the little extra because they can. It is not that the bribe is huge, but that it represents power.

      I hope coupons are not bribery! I hope the store really just likes me and wants to help me out. If we purchase something using a coupon that we normally would not have purchased, is it a bribe? Did they exchange money (my discount) for their access to by credit card? Think about it, will you. What power exchanges hands when I get and use a coupon? Are they paying me for something? What do I get in return?

Roommates

Proverbs 8:12-21

Prudence is a word that has lost its meaning it today’s world. We have lost the ability, or perhaps more correctly the will, to govern and discipline ourselves by using our reasoning. I think we have instead developed the ability to use our reason to make up excuses for our lack of self-control. When an individual or a society expresses prudence, there is a stabilizing effect on the whole system. If we govern ourselves well, others around us also tend to govern themselves well.

The writer says that prudence and wisdom are roommates. They hang out together with another pair, knowledge and discretion. Their behavior is contrasted with that of pride, arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Which kind of people would you want to be in business with, having control over your money?

Wisdom drives all that is truly good and just in the world. As we listen to the news and hear reports of group violence and mob behavior in some of our cities, we can see the ravaging affects of ignoring wisdom producing fruit. When there is no right and wrong that is accepted by the society and reinforced through all means, then anarchy takes hold. Looting becomes the norm. Lying becomes the expected.

But when the first four are given space to work, justice is the outcome. The natural fruit of wisdom is all that people gain what is valuable (vv18-21). But if we seek these ends in themselves, we will try to shortcut the process of wisdom. We will sacrifice long term stability for short term gain. If we seek wisdom, we get wealth that will pass from generation to generation, not just the physical kind of wealth either. Justice and righteousness are the environment in which wealth takes its proper place. Outside of justice and righteousness, wealth corrupts to the very core.

Well, with whom are you going to become roommates? Wisdom or foolishness?