{"id":9936,"date":"2021-10-17T06:37:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-17T11:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-matthew-15\/"},"modified":"2021-10-02T13:12:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T18:12:07","slug":"devotional-on-matthew-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-matthew-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Matthew"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15668\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15668\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" class=\"size-large wp-image-15668\" srcset=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318-768x576.jpg 768w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/P5029318.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15668\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Arches National Park, Utah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Priorities<\/p>\n<p>Matthew 15: I hurt for these people.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think the stories of the response of Jesus to the Pharisees and his response to the hungry people out in the wilderness are necessarily intentionally placed as they are, but they do provide an interesting study in contrasts.  For three days Jesus has ministered to people in a \u201cdeserted place.\u201d  Near the conclusion, the physical hunger of the people is obvious to Jesus, who has had his own intense hunger experience at the beginning of his ministry.  Jesus remarks to the disciples that he hurts for them and then performs the miracle of the feeding of the four thousand.  Earlier, though, Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees and religion scholars who travel all the way from Jerusalem to check out his ministry.  They immediately complain that the disciples don\u2019t properly follow the rules concerning religious practice that they\u2019ve set up.  Jesus, in just a few words, puts them in their place and the disciples are somewhat concerned that Jesus has upset these powerful people.  In this case, Jesus just shrugs his shoulders and says in so many words that what these people say or think doesn\u2019t matter.  Here\u2019s our Lord dealing with different sets of people.  Some, he says aren\u2019t worth our time.  Their words and opinions will be \u201cpulled up by their roots\u201d so we might as well just \u201cforget them.\u201d  Others though are people who are hurting.  They may not be important in the eyes of society, but they matter to God and should matter to us.  In Jesus\u2019 day, his priorities are upside down as far as the world is concerned.  They still are.  I\u2019m a follower of Jesus and I want my priorities to reflect that.  God help me to brush off that which isn\u2019t worth a hill of beans and to figure out what really matters.<\/p>\n<p>Take Away: Some things that others worry about aren\u2019t worth our time and effort.  Some things no one else worries about are.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Priorities Matthew 15: I hurt for these people. I don\u2019t think the stories of the response of Jesus to the Pharisees and his response to the hungry people out in the wilderness are necessarily intentionally placed as they are, but they do provide an interesting study in contrasts. For three days Jesus has ministered to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1518,1428],"tags":[1188,198,863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9936"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15669,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9936\/revisions\/15669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}