Seeing the Camel

Don’t tell my children, but a couple weeks ago, I found a ladybug swimming in the soup pot. We ate the soup, but not before I liberated the ladybug. In Matt. 12:1-14 we are given more examples of the Pharisees straining out gnats and swallowing camels. (Matt. 23:24) Now, no one I know wants to eat bugs, but it could happen accidentally. But imagine accidentally choking down a whole camel (not a ‘clean food’ either)! How often we do just that in our own Christian walks: focusing only on the details and missing the grand themes in our practice. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones wrote, “We have somehow got hold of the idea that error is only that which is outrageously wrong; and we do not seem to understand that the most dangerous person of all is the one who does not emphasize the right things.” This is the Pharisaical problem in a nutshell: Matthew 23:23-24 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”(NKJV) So as I contemplate my own responsibility, before God, to stand for the truth (1 Tim. 3:15, 4:16, 2 Tim. 4:2, Titus 1:9, 2:1, etc.) I must ask myself, “Am I living God’s priorities of mercy over sacrifice (1 Cor. 13:1-3, 13) and love over all?” Lord, help us to discern the camels! “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:9-11(NKJV)