Leon Morris wrote, “Any system that puts its emphasis on rules and regulations all too easily degenerates into observance of requirements that may have been designed to help but became an end in themselves.”  We are returning to our study of Matthew this week and chapter 23 is a chapter of grieving woes.  The presence of irreligious legalism grieved Jesus’ heart.  What I’m learning however is not about the legalistic practices themselves and their rightness or wrongness but rather about the heart and our motives.  This is tricky business.  The Scribes and the Pharisees studied the Law and did their best to apply its good principles.  Their codification of the Law actually helped people figure out how to embrace God’s life.  But, their applications became an end in themselves and the “measuring stick” by which piety was measured.  As bad as that is, what is even worse is thinking we are better!  The legalism in question is actually a symptom of a deeper problem that is very likely present in people that are not classical legalists.  Jesus said little about the various specific practices but went to the heart of the matter—which is, the heart.  The insidious desire for recognition, affirmation and power is a problem deeper than a list of practices.  Jesus warned us of this problem in the Sermon on the Mount and this lesson resurfaced in a number of places throughout the gospels and in the epistles.  Those of us that grew up in fundamentalism can get rather smug over casting off our former restraints but be just as messed up in the heart as those with a list of “don’ts.”  The spirit competition, contempt, presumption and affirmation gratification is the deeper problem of which legalism is a symptom.  This work of grace is going to have to go deeper than the surface and it must touch places we didn’t know were there.  I think the pain will be good because He is a good, good Father and being liberated from the cancers of the darkened heart will be life-giving indeed.  “Search me O Lord and show me me…and thank You for being gentle.”