The main message that Jesus preached to the religious people of His day was the longest and most public of all His teachings, called the Sermon on the Mount. If you analyze what Jesus said as a religious person of the day, believing and obeying the Bible selectively, it would be very painful to your beliefs.
The dominant message of the Sermon on the Mount is that one must not find comfort merely in right theology, much less in contemporary philosophy, geographical separation, or military and political activism.
Right theology is essential; so are being contemporary in the right way, separating ourselves from worldliness, and taking stands on moral issues. But those external things must flow from right internal life and attitudes if they are to serve and please God. That has always been God’s way. He told Samuel, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). In Proverbs, wisdom says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
When the Pharisees with whom Jesus was having lunch were bothered that He did not ceremonially wash His hands before eating, Jesus said, “Now you Pharisees have the habit of cleaning the outside of your cups and dishes, but inside you yourselves are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not the One who made the outside make the inside too? But dedicate once for all your inner self, and at once you will have everything clean” (Luke 11:39-41). That was His message for every sect of Judaism.
As grace-energized believers who are sound in faith, when we look at the error of the Sadducees, we can see a common element with what we are facing today.
They modified God’s Word by adding pagan philosophies and secular ideas to the Bible, and this blending of non-truth with God’s truth is called syncretism.
From GEM-20d – Guarding Sound Faith By Unmasking Old Lies (080330AM)
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