23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Chapter 23 has Jesus using the Pharisees as a rhetorical light bag, beating them halfway to Sunday.
I've been looking at faithfulness this week; here, it rides shotgun with justice and mercy. Both are features of God. Both require seeing the spirit of the Word rather than just the letter.
It doesn't take much to take your paycheck and move the decimal point over one and cut a tithe check for that amount. That can be done with an Excel function; =Round(Paycheck/10,2) would do the trick. However, there's not much soul in that calculation.
Doing the right things for your fellow man (and avoiding doing the wrong things) are what Jesus is after more than whether you should round up or down on the tithe check or rag on you for not including your money-market interest deposit in last week's check.
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