"Ye Would Not"

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Matthew 23
The words of Jesus in this chapter are very sad, they were spoken to men who knew God’s words and taught His laws to people, but did not themselves honor Him. Jesus told of their great pride.
Long before, when God saved the oldest son of each family of Israel from death, in Egypt, because the blood of a lamb had been sprinkled around their doors, He told the fathers to write His words about that time and keep them as a sign on their hands and on their foreads, and they were to tell them to their children. Later, they were told other words also to be written, and bound on their arms and foreheads.
You see each family could not have all the scriptures as we now have, but they could read those words fastened on their arms, and be reminded of God’s power in saving them, and of what He wanted them to do. Later, the people seem to have had small leather cases in which they placed the words, these were bound on their arms and foreheads and called “phylacteries”.
Instead of thinking of God’s care for them, these men of Jerusalem were making those little cases larger, that other people would be sure to notice that they wore them!
Another thing God had told the people to do, was to make a band of blue cloth on the lower edge of their cloaks or garments (Num. 15:38,3938Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: 39And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring: (Numbers 15:38‑39)). When they looked at those blue borders they were to think of God’s words: the color blue spoke of the sky, and was worn near their feet to remind them to walk and live to please God in Heaven.
The proud men Jesus spoke of wore very wide blue bands on the border of their garments, but did not honor the Lord nor do His ways. They were taking the seats of honor at the feasts and in the synagogues, yet they did not act fairly as judges, nor show mercy when needed, nor have faith in God.
Jesus said the men were as wrong as the men before them, who had done evil to the prophets. They were so angry because He had told them their sins, that they hated Him and would not believe He was God’s Son. Yet Jesus spoke most sorrowfully of them, speaking as though to the city:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children tether, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”
How much He had wanted to do them good! He would have kept them from danger as carefully as a hen shelters its chickens under its wings—their enemies could not have harmed them. What sadder words could there be than those of Jesus, “Ye would not!”
Then Jesus said, “Behold your House (the Temple) is left desolate” (forsaken).
The Temple had been “God’s House” and all there had been to teach of Christ. But, because He was refused, the Temple was no longer an honor to God.
ML 09/19/1943