On This Day: The Words That Comfort Richly

   “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:13-15)

   While my first interest in seeking God in his word is always what he is teaching me (because however I put his words to me into practice affects everything I do in seeking to love and bless others), there are times when God’s ministry to me comes in the way of him telling me how he thinks of others. 

   Often this is positive, as in helping me see how to apply his word to me because he shows me his love for others, his forgiveness of others, his gifting of others, and he wants me to share that with him.

   Other times it is negative, as in identifying his view of what people have done to me by showing how he related to the same things himself, through his messengers, or especially through his Son. 

   All that to say that every word of today’s Scripture told me God’s view of people who were relating to Jesus a particular way. And by showing me God’s view, it comforted me so much about my experiences with similar people since God is good and will bring every wrong to justice one way or another.

   A Scripture that often guides me in how personally I interact with God’s word is this: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). When I picture what God has in mind for me to let his word dwell in me richly, I see a heart that treasures God above all others, that treasures God’s word above all words, and that treasures living by God’s words above any thoughts or opinions of men, me included! 

   When I come to a Scripture like this one in Luke, every phrase speaks comfort into my heart because it gives God’s view of real-life heartaches. To let those words dwell in me richly involves attaching to how personal God is with me. He sets a stage so familiar to my own. He reveals the hearts of people so I can see them in his own words. He presents them as they really are and answers them as he really is. It’s all so plain and clear that it comforts me as much as I will let it dwell in me richly.

   I hope that my sharing of this helps to do the “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” part. 

   I can’t think of any songs that capture this particular passage about Jesus rebuking the Pharisees that would fit “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God”, but I know we have songs that glorify God for his justice, mercy, and faithfulness in handling everything according to his sovereign goodness and working all things in our lives together for good. 

   Today, I already feel the richness of God’s comfort in telling me both sides of the story. Hypocritical narcissists are nothing new. They often look like they are winning, just as the Pharisees appeared to be victorious when they succeeded at putting Jesus to death. 

   But those who love God instead of money are the ones who live as “more than conquerors through him who loved us,” knowing that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39). 

   And so, we set our hearts on God as our supreme treasure, we set out into the day to use our money, our time, our spiritual gifts, to serve others in love, and we do so in the hope that someone out there will be encouraged to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love their neighbor as themselves, including using our money for God’s glory and their good.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: When Hypocrites Don’t Know God’s Word

   One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:36-39)

   My first thought about this passage was to thank our Father in heaven for making his word real to his children. While skeptics mock it and reject it, God opens the eyes of the blind so we can see what he has written. He opens the ears of the deaf so we can hear “what the Spirit is saying to the churches”. 

   And so it stood out that Luke’s “orderly account” brought out the contrast between the way Jesus constantly used God’s word (Scripture) to teach and affirm what he was doing, while the religious elite judged him by their own personal notions and presuppositions. 

   Because this Pharisee, Simon, was convinced that the Messiah would never have let a “sinful” woman touch him the way he and his guests had all witnessed, and because the Pharisees were the religious teachers of the people, it is very telling that Simon judged Jesus based on personal preferences rather than the Scriptures!

   This made me explore again what the Scriptures of Simon’s day (what we now call the Old Testament) said that would have made perfect sense of what was happening with Jesus and the sinful woman. 

   The passage in Isaiah 53 is very clear about the Messiah’s association with sinners. It is sadly fascinating that the Jews of our day are just as ignorant of that chapter of the Bible as Simon was 2,000 years earlier! 

   In fact, in videos I have watched of Jewish believers in Jesus sharing the gospel with the Jewish people, when they read from Isaiah 53, most Jewish people think that is from the New Testament because they realize right away that it sounds like Jesus! They are shocked to find that it is their Bible (called “the Tanakh”) that described what the Messiah would do. They are then bewildered by the realization that they knew it was talking about Jesus!(1) 

   When we consider how the prophets spoke of a Savior who would so associate with our sins as to bear them on himself, and then consider what God says about being close to the “broken and contrite in heart” (Psalm 51:17), it should be no surprise that Jesus who was “God with us” would let a sinful woman touch him in worship because she had experienced the forgiveness of her sins. 

   One of my favorite expressions of God’s association with sinners in the Old Testament (Tanakh) is God’s own testimony about himself, 

   For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15).

Just as much as God “dwells” in the high and holy place of heaven, he “also” dwells with sinners who are “contrite and lowly in spirit”. The Pharisees should have recognized that Jesus was showing us what this looks like in person! 

   I will conclude with one more Scripture that shows what this Savior would look like when he came into the world to save sinners.

He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead those that are with young. 
(Isaiah 40:11)

I am quite sure that Jesus did not see a “sinful woman” worshiping him that day. He saw a sheep who was responding to the Shepherd who found her. He saw a lamb feeling that he had already gathered her into his arms and carried her close to his heart. 

   She, in fact, knew what the Messiah would be like better than a Pharisee whose hard heart saw nothing good at all. And I would rather be thought of as a sinner who has no right to be amongst the religious elites than a religious hypocrite who doesn’t even know what God’s word says about our Savior coming into the world to save sinners.

(1) Here is a link to the “So Be It!” YouTube page that has many videos showing Jewish believers in Jesus (Messianic Jews) sharing the gospel with fellow Jews. https://www.youtube.com/c/SoBeIt32ad#:~:text=Welcome%20to%20SO%20BE%20IT%21%2C%20a%20video%20project,conversations%20about%20Jewish%20life%20with%20faith%20in%20Jesus.  

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)