Proverbs 6:20-23

These commands are like a lamp; this teaching is like a light. And the correction that comes from them will help you have life.

God’s instruction, rules, and laws are good and life-giving, not life-taking.

Freedom is not the absence of rules, but the presence of discipline.

Luke 23:50-53

There was a good and religious man named Joseph who was a member of the council. But he had not agreed to the other leaders’ plans and actions against Jesus.

See, not everyone on the council was a total jack-hole.

Not everyone at those mega-churches is a shallow boob.

Judge not.

Do you know them personally? All of them?

No.

So you don’t know their hearts.

We tend to think of all the religious leaders and tax collectors of Jesus’s day to be in the category of “Horrbius Terrabius” as my daughter Zayra would say. But what about this Joseph? Or Nicodemus? Or Zacchaeus? Or Matthew?

Be careful not to lump people into huge categories for your own high and mighty delegation of status.  This is prideful, ugly, divisive, and wrong. Who are you to say what people are? There is only One qualified to render what people are. The One who made them!

And may we never forget, that with the measure we use for judgement, it will be used on us. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but it sure makes me stop and think.

Luke 23:54-56

When after six days God finished the work of the “old Creation”, He rested. After six hours, our Lord finished the work of the “New Creation”, and He rested on the Sabbath in Joseph’s tomb.

-Warren Wiersbe