Reminders and Woes from Matthew.

I've blogged about it here before, but it's still true that I think of this passage in Matthew quite often.  I thought that having a dishwasher in our apartment would change that, but having a job where I hand wash dishes for a great part of my day, I think of it as often as ever (Matthew 23:25-26...“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.").


How much do we as Christians try to fix the parts of our lives that others can see, when inside we are a train wreck?


Today I was reading Matthew 23 again, and came across a couple more verses just ahead of the famous dishes verses:  


  ¹³ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

   ¹⁵ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

Woah. (Woe?).  Especially 15.  What great responsibilities we have if we are ministers of the Gospel!  In what ways do we shut the door of the kingdom in people's faces?  In what ways do we win people over and then leave them in the deep end of the pool?

Ah, I have to go.  These are all the thoughts I have time to get out for now.