{"id":1086,"date":"2009-07-24T05:59:43","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T13:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/pantinghart\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2015-03-11T20:18:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T03:18:06","slug":"jesus-defender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/2009\/jesus-defender\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus, Defender?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reading:<\/p>\n

Matthew 15:1-9<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

The religious leaders of the Jews had many questions for Jesus. This time the question had to do with the behavior and the values of His disciples:<\/p>\n

“Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?”<\/em> (Matthew 15:2).<\/p>\n

If those who observe my life could easily go to Jesus face-to-face to ask about me, what would He say to this question: “Why does Mark…?”<\/p>\n

Can we at all imagine the sadness (and shame?) in Jesus’ heart when the question is a legitimate one? (An example. You want an example. Well…try this one: “Why does Mark promote himself so much?”)<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the question of the scribes and Pharisees was one about which Jesus could defend His disciples!<\/p>\n

Jesus turned the question back on the accusers, probing the darkness in their own hearts:<\/p>\n

“Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”<\/em> (Matthew 15:3).<\/p>\n

Wow! I like it when Jesus is my defender!<\/p>\n

That’s a blessing and an encouragement to me this morning.<\/p>\n

But it’s sobering — extremely sobering — to me to put myself in the disciples’ shoes and think of Him being questioned about some aspect of my life.<\/p>\n

And there’s also this additional challenge: Before going to Jesus with a complaint about another, I’d better throw out the darkness that may be within me.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, that challenge also applies to going to someone else with a complaint about another!<\/p>\n

\"[The<\/a>
\nfrom Matthew 15:8<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading: Matthew 15:1-9 The religious leaders of the Jews had many questions for Jesus. This time the question had to do with the behavior and the values of His disciples: “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?” (Matthew 15:2). If those who observe my life could easily go to Jesus face-to-face to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[51,44,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-1086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-matthew","7":"tag-discipleship","8":"tag-live-right","9":"tag-warning","10":"h-entry","11":"hentry","12":"h-as-article"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJBV-hw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}