Jesus now issues a tirade against the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. Hypocrisy is the root of His condemnation of them. True religion is about reality, and we always need to be on our guard against hypocrisy. Every one of us, and every branch of the church is prone to this. It does not matter whether you are charismatic, evangelical, catholic, reformed, baptist or whatever. We need to watch ourselves.
The fruit of their hypocrisy was that they stopped others entering the kingdom, and would not enter themselves. Hypocrisy is a serious matter.
The tragedy was that they put great effort in, they would travel far and wide to find a convert, but then the convert was worse off than before they found him.
One aspect of their hypocrisy was that they developed a ridiculous system of oaths. God's "system" is very simple, speak and live the truth. The Pharisees system was very complicated and resulted in a lie. God's ways are straightforward, and if things start getting convoluted it is a sign that we are straying off the path.
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