Matthew 23:17-19

Undoubtedly God goes along with us as far as He can in this weak and one-sided treatment of the Holy Scriptures, but He cannot be pleased with this way of doing. Our Heavenly Father takes pleasure in seeing us develop and grow up spiritually. He does not want us to live entirely on a diet of sweet stuff. He gives us for our encouragement Isaiah 41, but He gives us also Matthew 23 and the book of Jude,...

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day taught that if a man swore by the Temple, he wasn't necessarily obligated to do what he promised. But if he swore by the gold of the Temple, then that was a different story. He was bound by that oath. They made the same false distinction between swearing by the altar and swearing by the sacrifice on it. The former oath could be broken; the latter was binding.

The Lord told them that their sense of values was completely twisted. It is the Temple...