Tidings for Tuesday
And it came to pass, as He went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched Him. Luke 14:1
Someone did a survey, or conducted a study somehow, to find our what people do as they are driving alone in their cars. Sorry if this sounds a bit gross, but they found the most common activity among all solitary drivers is picking their noses! Why do people engage in such a disgusting act when they are alone in their cars when they would never dream of attempting it at the dinner table or while in a meeting? They do it because they assume nobody is looking. They don’t really have any objection to performing such an anti-social little act, but they would never let on to anybody. If they had any idea that somebody could possibly see them, they wouldn’t do it. It would never happen at all if their lives were under constant scrutiny. Jesus’ life was under constant scrutiny, and He stood up under it. Would we?
With all of Heaven watching, and a good slice of earth noticing, Jesus never did anything wrong, although he occasionally did things that the Pharisees thought were wrong. In the account of which our text is the introduction, He healed a man on the sabbath day, in violation of the Pharisees’ interpretation of Scripture. Our text tells us that He was being watched. You are I are being watched today. Our neighbours and fellow-workers are noticing how we live and how we respond to situations. They may not be trying to catch us in a critical violation, as the Pharisees were doing with Jesus, but they do notice when anything we do violates what we profess, or even what they think we profess. We need to be on guard at all times, because we are being watched.
There is something that the world hates, almost as much as God hates it and as much as we should hate it – hypocrisy. Oh, my, how the world despises a hypocrite! Trouble is, the world hangs the hypocrite handle on anybody they think is ‘religious’. If you let the world know that you are a Christian, the world will tar you with the same brush that they tar the televangelists and the faith-healer hucksters. We can’t always convince them of the difference. But we can always live before them according to the Word of God. We can be honest and faithful, kind and caring, truthful and pleasant… acting as the Lord Jesus Himself would act. Remember, some people are watching us to find a cause to condemn. But others are watching to see whether we have something worth living for. Our testimony is at stake, and so are souls of those watching.
Those who watch us to condemn will be condemned. Those who watch us to learn will learn. But only if we are the Christians we ought to be. -Jim MacIntosh