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World Changing Words Devotional-Day 62

by David Joynt on October 02, 2020

World Changing Words Devotional-Day 62

MATTHEW 23:1-3 | 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.

 The more control an actor seeks over others, the more threatened they are by resistance. Authoritarian regimes, that seek total control over economies and political practices, are brutal to the slightest level of criticism or protest because it shatters the myth that their version of reality is inevitable, exclusive, and irresistible. They have a monopoly on force but not the truth.

 Jesus commanded obedience from his disciples for the Jewish teachers who “sat on Moses’ seat.” Authority and truth cannot be separated! When the legal experts correctly taught God’s law they were to be obeyed, but by implication, disobeyed when they did not! Their authority was borrowed not intrinsic, indirect, and not personal, derivative not original.

 How do you connect truth and authority?

 

 

Tags: truth, authority

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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