{"id":16842,"date":"2018-02-25T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/?p=16842"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:37","slug":"whitewashed-tombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/whitewashed-tombs\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitewashed Tombs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Whitewashed-Tomb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-16845 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Whitewashed-Tomb-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"whitewashed tombs\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" \/><\/a>In Matthew 23 Jesus launches into a verbal assault on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pharisees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pharisees<\/a> and scribes: the religious leaders and lawyers (interpreters of The Law) of the nation of Israel.\u00a0 He calls them hypocrites (several times) and blind guides, saying they would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel: meaning that they pick at details but ignore the main concept of faith.\u00a0 His most striking analogy, however was to call them &#8221; whitewashed tombs &#8220;: painted and pleasing to the eye on the outside, but full of death and decay on the inside.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>His diatribe came because these leaders portrayed themselves as the holiest of the holy yet exempted themselves from many of the rules and laws they expected those they lead to follow. They put on great shows of piety, but then exhibited no compassion toward others. They grew fat and rich while those they led suffered.\u00a0 They offered long, impressive prayers; but had no actual regard for God.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus\u2019 accusations of the leaders of His day also ring true for some today.\u00a0 Anyone who uses the preaching of the Gospel to amass wealth and comforts for themselves is obviously neglecting the needs of those who follow them.<\/p>\n<p>But even every-day \u201cChristians\u201d can be guilty of being whitewashed tombs if we parade our righteousness on Sundays then live like everyone else in the world the rest of the days.\u00a0 If we are truly following Jesus, we will live a consecrated life every day, not just when gathered together with other believers.<\/p>\n<p>Hypocrisy is the stench that fills whitewashed tombs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Matthew 23 Jesus launches into a verbal assault on the Pharisees and scribes: the religious leaders and lawyers (interpreters of The Law) of the nation of Israel.&nbsp; He calls them hypocrites (several times) and blind guides, saying they would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel: meaning that they pick at details but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/whitewashed-tombs\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Whitewashed Tombs&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[78,71],"class_list":["post-16842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matters-of-faith","tag-christian","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21301,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16842\/revisions\/21301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}