585 Practice instead of Preach - Matthew 23:3

I'm Mike Henry. Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. And our verse for today is Matthew chapter 23, verses two and three. "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice."

And that's from the English Standard Version of the Bible. And that's Jesus speaking. These are his words. For many of the latter chapters of the book of Matthew, Jesus is mixing it up with the scribes and the Pharisees, the leaders of the Jewish nation. And, he's beginning to let them have it. 

This whole section of the scripture is actually got a whole heading over it. The seven woes to the scribes and Pharisees Jesus is going to let them have it in the verses to come. But in this verse here, he challenges us. And it's interesting because he begins by telling us to obey what they say. We're to obey our leaders. We obey the people who are in positions of authority over us.

That's not what I want to talk about today. Today, I want to challenge us to be people who practice and not preach. Practicing is much more important than preaching. We have a radar for people who talk, but don't do. That radar becomes sharper and sharper as we get burned by these people throughout our lives.

The word practice is a great word here because none of us are perfect. None of us are performers. We're practicers. We go through life trying to do and learning and getting better at the things that Jesus has for us. You've heard the stories of the great sports figures and how they continuously practiced.

And they always practiced well. Our job is to be practicers. We practice following Jesus by the way that we live our lives every day. We're all doing our best and no one has it all figured out. But if we're all practicing, one error we can avoid is telling others what to do.

All we have to do is remember our position. Remember where we came from. Once again, we're bordering on this topic of humility, which I've said before, I'm not qualified to speak on. I have so much trouble with this. But as Christ followers, we're all challenged to practice life following him. Our job is to be an example, and all of us are qualified to do that job.

Our job might even be to be an example of how not to follow Jesus, or to be an example of what we need to do when we make a mistake or when we screw up. I feel like that. I feel like the before picture all the time. But when we're transparent with our own pursuit of Jesus and our struggle to live up to the standard, we give other people hope.

We strive and practice and hopefully we're so well plugged in with Jesus that we succeed some and we fail others and we can always enjoy. And what's interesting is, is that we can also always rejoice. Rejoicing in the Lord is one of the most common commands in scripture.

We are transformed as we practice and we build our endurance and we experience great joy when we do this. When we live following Jesus, people will ask and then we can speak for ourselves. Those are our daily activities in Follower of One. Follower of One is an online community designed to help marketplace Christians live integrating their faith into their daily life.

Transparently, practicing following Jesus. Why not join us? Check out our free online community is https://community.followerofone.org. I want to challenge you to create a profile there and join us on our next Marketplace Mission Trip, a two week exercise to practice following Jesus. Another Marketplace Mission Trip begins in just a few days and we always have another mission trip starting in another few weeks, we do six or more a year.

Join us on the next Marketplace Mission Trip. Let's follow Jesus together. Let's practice life as a follower of Jesus so that he can be glorified and he can become visible. Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister.