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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 3
and other small herbs which were cultivated to a limited extent. This
caused the tithing plan to be attended with such care and perplexity that
it was a wearisome burden. While they were so exact in things which
God had never required of them, and were confusing their judgment
and lessening the dignity of the divine system of benevolence by their
narrow views, they were making clean the outside of the platter while
the inside was corrupt. Exact in matters of little consequence, Jesus
accuses them of having “omitted the weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy, and faith.” No outward service, even in that which is
required by God, can be a substitute for an obedient life. The Creator
desires heart service of his creatures.
The Jews read in the requirements given to Moses that nothing
unclean should be eaten. God specified the beasts that were unfit for
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food, and forbade the use of swine’s flesh and the flesh of certain other
animals, as likely to fill the blood with impurities and shorten life. But
the Pharisees did not leave these restrictions where God had left them.
They carried them to unwarranted extremes; among other things the
people were required to strain all the water used, lest it might contain
the smallest insect, undiscernible to the eye, which might be classed
with the unclean animals. Jesus, in contrasting these trivial exactions
of external cleanliness with the magnitude of their actual sins, said to
the Pharisees: “Ye blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a
camel.”
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like
unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are
within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” All the pomp
and ceremony of the priests and rulers were but a cloak to conceal
their iniquity, as the white and beautifully decorated tomb covers the
refying remains within it. Jesus also compared the Pharisees to hidden
graves which, under a fair exterior, conceal the corruption of dead
bodies: “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but
within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” All the high pretensions
of those who claimed to have the law of God written in their hearts as
well as borne upon their persons, were thus shown to be vain pretense.
Jesus continued:—
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build
the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous,
and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have
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