Please read the note from Pastor Woodhouse regarding his sermon below:

Our Old Testament and Gospel readings for this week present us with a troubling challenge: We may say with our lips that we will follow God, while our hearts remain far from Him. Jesus uses the traditions of the Pharisees as an illustration of this problem. Among the Jews in Jesus’ time, no one presented the appearance of piety and theological seriousness than the Pharisees. And they devised so many rules and regulations to govern a faithful life that hardly anyone could obey them all. And yet, when Christ considers the hearts of the Pharisees, He sees people whose rules mask what is truly in their hearts… rules that sometimes even gave the Pharisees an excuse to ignore what God truly wanted from them.

We are often tempted to fall into the same way of thinking. In fact, the Old Testament reading illustrates just how backwards our thinking can get at times. While claiming to be obedient to God, we’re often tempted to define God for ourselves – to decide according to our own preferences and traditions what God must want from us, and to live according to those rules rather than what God has truly said to us. But God’s ways are superior to ours, and we pray that the Holy Spirit will grant us the humility and faith to follow God instead of ourselves.