All around us are forces at work to distract, delude, and deter us from experiencing God's plan and vision for us as individual believers and as the body of Christ as a whole. We see people shattered on the rocks of delusion and despair. We see a skyrocketing divorce rate, abuse in the home, disease, crime, abortion, gangs, suicide, incest, child abuse, rape, drive-by shootings, drugs, and the inability of government to handle our problems because we are a people who seek man-made solutions and ignore the biblical mandates of Scripture. So, the list of problems grow.

Unfortunately, in the midst of this, we also see churches turned inward rather than outward as lights in the midst of this horrible darkness. Why? Because to a very large degree, the church—though very religious—has ignored the truth of this passage and lost sight of the vision it gives us of what life should be.

Let us not forget as we examine this passage that Christ's conflict was with the religious people. They were experts in the Old Testament Scriptures but they had missed the central truth of the Word of God. And the same can apply to us.