BEWARE.
BEWARE.
Jesus uses that word a handful of times throughout the gospels. Interested to know what sorts of things Jesus warns his followers about? Don’t these sound about right:
Christian, BEWARE of angry rock music!
Christian, BEWARE of MTV!
Christian, BEWARE of losing the moral high ground!
That’s what we seem to be most worried about these days. Those aren’t found int he Bible. The actual list is very telling of what creeps into our minds when we are following Jesus. Here’s what Jesus actually warned his disciples with -
BEWARE not to perform righteous acts in front of people (<– Tells of latent hypocrisy)
BEWARE of false prophets (<– Calls them sheep in wolves clothing // definition of hypocrisy)
BEWARE of the yeast of religious leaders (<– that yeast is hypocrisy)
BEWARE of how you treat a brother in sin
BEWARE of teachers of the law(<– because of their showiness)
BEWARE of being overtaken by anxieties of life (<– the product of trying to be something you’re not)
When Jesus tells his disciples to BEWARE in the new testament, He is warning them not to fall into that trap of hypocrisy. It is an easy, easy trap to fall into. Jesus seems to be very concerned that our interior matches our exterior; that we don’t just do what Jesus tells us to do, but we are who Jesus has made us to be.
Read through Matt 6:1-18. Jesus lays it all out there: his disciples seek Heaven’s approval, and hypocrites seek the approval of their peers.
Who’s approval are you after?
BEWARE.
