Are we that much Different?

Matthew 19:1-9

Even the most casual of readers will come to this conclusion, large crowds followed Jesus and Jesus had compassion on them, healing many.  There is also another common occurrence, it seemed that a group of very religious men called the Pharisees were always testing Jesus to try to find fault with His teaching. 

Often, I forget that Jesus had emotions and being a man who had just healed a little boy who never walked and then watched him running down the road to his sister, would that not stir something deep inside of you?  Yes, sure it would, and Jesus was just like you and me, except without sin.  He enjoyed the blind man seeing the birds that he has heard for so many years, and the sun that has kept him warm while he was begging for bread, the leper who is being hugged by his family for the first time in years.  Jesus’ emotions are running wild, and then the religious guys who seem like blind men with no emotions, ask this question: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”  (Matthew 19:3b)

At that moment of amazing joy, can you grasp what you or I would have said to those clowns?  Are you nuts, did you not see little Joseph take his first step; can you not see the joy and tears of his mother and father?  What’s wrong with you guys, did you not hear the blind man telling anyone who would listen about what he is seeing for the first time in his life?  Or what about the leper who was driven from his family and today they are hugging and holding each other, what’s wrong with you guys?  But that’s not what Jesus did, “He answered them, “Have not you read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-9)  Emphasis added

Now you may be thinking, go Jesus that will shut those clowns down, but O how wrong you would be.  This is Matthews account; “They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”  He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.  And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”  Did you grasp what just happened?  Jesus assumed not the role of teacher, but authority, “And I say to you” not a suggestion, but a command.  The church today is full of command breakers, when we read and hear the words of our Lord, yet only come up with, Jesus you just don’t understand; are we that much different than the religious guys called Pharisees?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice