Not lifting a finger

Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. – Matthew 23.1-4

It is easy for us 2000 years on to sit in judgement on the Pharisees. Their sins and their problems are so obvious to us that we wonder how they missed them. Here Jesus addresses another one if their hypocrisies. They made all kinds of rules and regulations for the people to follow, but then they would ignore those things for themselves.

These were the kind of guy you still might see around today. These are some of the religious guys who go by doctor, or reverend, or bishop, or whatever other title they might come up with. They get to be religious megastars who preach and pontificate about how everyone else ought to life while all the time living false hypocritical lives.

It is easy to stand in judgement of them. But instead of doing that I think we ought to examine our own lives to see if we do the same kind of things. Paul warns about this at the beginning of Romans 2 where he condemns those who judge the sinners in chapter one while carrying on in their own sin.

But the crux of the matter is at the end of the passage. While these guys were loading on burdens while carrying on with their own sins they were doing nothing to lift the burdens of those they condemned. They were more concerned with condemning than helping.

I can do the same thing myself. I can so busy looking at the sin in this world that I forget that these people are heavily burdened under the load of sin.

Instead of just condemning and carrying on it seems that we ought to be doing something about their sin burden. That ‘something’ is simply loving them and sharing Christ with them to show them had to lose that terrible burden.