Have you ever been fed up with people? Have you wondered why they just don’t seem to understand what you are telling them? Does it frustrate you to no end? Is it worse when it is something extremely important? Can you imagine how Jesus felt?
Trying to get your point across to someone who doesn’t understand can be very frustrating. We can get to a point of boiling over. Explaining over and over or saying the same thing over and over, and not being understood can get under our skin. We may finally shake our head and just walk away.
Jesus tells the crowd that gathers around Him some very important insights into the kingdom of God. Evidently, He has tried to tell the Pharisees this before or they are in the crowd. In either case, Jesus is telling them they need to rethink what they believe is important.
Their blindness was not in their eyesight, but in their way of thinking. They put more emphasis on the expensive decorations within the temple than the temple itself. It was the temple that was sacred and what made the decorations sacred. It was not the gold itself.
Do we do this yet today? Do we put more emphasis on the decorations within our churches than the church itself? Think about it for just a moment. What is the church? No, it is not the building. It is the people. The temple Jesus spoke of was not the building either. The temple He spoke of was Himself. Only God can make something sacred or holy. Jesus told the crowd, the Pharisees, and He tells us that we need to put God first. We need to serve our people. The church building needs to be cared for, but it doesn’t need to be extravagantly decorated.
I pray we all put our emphasis on God. I pray we take care of the membership of our churches. I pray each one of us will ask God to remove the blindness in our minds and help us see as he sees. Open your minds’ eye. Ask God to remove your blindness. See as God sees. Take care of his people.
Matthew 23:16-17 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?”
Marty Pressey 