In my 75-year lifetime, the red ribbon winner as the most gifted writer of illustrations and comparisons, in IMHO, is Mark Twain. One of my favorites is in as letter he wrote to George Bainton in 1888. “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Who can’t close their eyes and touch that bug and flinch over the clap of thunder? And as great as I believe Twain was, he only wins the 2nd place trophy. 1st place? JESUS!
Example: Mt. 23:24 “Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!” Just how powerful is that illustration? Mathematically speaking: weight? a camel exceeds a gnat by 1,500,000,000 times; length? a camel wins by 1,500 times; volume? camel again wins by 3,375,000,000 times greater.
In Twain’s illustration, mathematically speaking: voltage? lightning wins 333,000,000 times stronger; brightness? 40 billion times brighter; energy output? lightning is 5,000,000,000 times more powerful; efficiency? the bug wins by being 2.5 times more efficient.
Oh, Jesus’ illustration wins on another front, the most important one of all: ETERNITY! Jesus didn’t waste His time on earthly illustrations that only had earthly meanings. Jesus’ parables, all earthly illustrations, always had heavenly, eternal meanings. Such were His words about the gnat and the camel.
He was trying, in a final attempt, during His last days, to help the Pharisees see their blindness, so that they could stumble across repentance. It didn’t work. They were as stubbornly legalistic as the most powerful computer, which always has to have everything it‘s way; its way or the highway.
So just how legalistic were the Pharisees? The Law of Moses contained 613 laws from God. The Pharisees were so terrified over breaking one of them, that, by the time Jesus came along, they came up with 1,500 of their own “oral laws & traditions” that they enforced as rigidly as any of God’s 613 laws; making them equal to God’s laws. To them, violating one of their 1,500 was just as wicked as doing the same to one of God’s 613. Now that’s legalistic.
The point of the gnat and the camel? In Mt 23, Jesus calls attention to the “blindness” of the Pharisees 5 times. Why? Even in their blindness, seeing clearly Jesus’ illustration of the gnat and the camel was easy. They might not be able to see the evilness in the theology of their legalism, but no one could miss the gnat and the camel. They also might even miss the reality of the eternal danger that awaited them, but who could possibly miss the gnat and the camel.
The image is that of a Pharisee straining his daily water from the local well, to eliminate anything that might have fallen or flown into it. But then once it had been cleansed, he took his bucket outside and forced his camel to step into it. And then he drank from it. Who could miss seeing that? Not even the legalistic Pharisees could miss seeing Jesus’ point. They might reject Him and His words, but they couldn’t say that they missed His point.
This is just one illustration from the lips of Jesus that I believe gives Him the top writer’s blue ribbon.
The point for us today? I remember in my preacher training days, that I once corrected one of my professors with something that I had been taught at the church I grew up in. He told me to make a presentation the following Wednesday, from the Bible, regarding what I said. I arrogantly said, “Great, be glad to.” I looked and looked and looked for the scripture that I was sure was there in my Bible. But it wasn’t. On Wednesday I hoped he would forget. He didn’t. I was embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t in the Bible, which meant that it was a tradition of man and not God. My
professor was kind and showed us all what our Bibles actually said.
We need to love only God’s Word and the truths that are in it. Not what we “think” it says, but what it really says. The Pharisees got mixed up on the 613 vs the 1,500. If we are not careful, we can fall in the same hole. God help us.
Mike “Pawdad” Sublett, Pastor @ Hi-Land Christian Church, Pampa, Texas 79065, 630-730-8015
