Jul 30, 2018
Jesus uses childhood games to speak to the attitudes of the scribes and Pharisees. Kids played a wedding and a funeral game but no one danced to the wedding music or mourned at a funeral—fickle kids—and Jesus said this is what the Jewish leaders were doing with both He and John the Baptist. But, in time this behavior would be shown to be error. Then, the contrast between the self-righteous Pharisee and a tax collector, who both went to the temple to pray at the same time. No one was lower in the Jewish community than a man who sold out to the Romans and cheated his own people out of money. The tax collector who prayed, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner” was forgiven and justified rather than the boastful Pharisee.