{"id":3925,"date":"2021-10-04T15:22:05","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T20:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/?p=3925"},"modified":"2025-08-28T08:32:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T13:32:32","slug":"%e6%bb%a4%e5%87%ba%e8%a0%93%e8%99%ab%ef%bc%8c%e5%90%9e%e4%b8%8b%e9%aa%86%e9%a9%bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/bible-faith\/devotional-notes\/2021\/10\/%e6%bb%a4%e5%87%ba%e8%a0%93%e8%99%ab%ef%bc%8c%e5%90%9e%e4%b8%8b%e9%aa%86%e9%a9%bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Strain Out a Gnat, Swallow a Camel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Matthew 23:23-24 &#8211; &#8220;Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Because they lacked a heavenly perspective, the Pharisees failed to distinguish between what was important and what wasn&#8217;t. They focused on outward appearances while neglecting the inward qualities of &#8220;justice, mercy, and faithfulness.&#8221; For this, Jesus condemned them as hypocrites and &#8220;blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.&#8221; What did He mean by this? At that time, Jews would often strain wine through a cloth before drinking it to avoid any contact with or consumption of unclean things. The &#8220;gnat&#8221; was an extremely tiny insect, while the &#8220;camel&#8221; was a massive animal. In the Aramaic language commonly used in Judea, the words for &#8220;gnat&#8221; (qalma) and &#8220;camel* (gamla) are very similar in spelling. The saying &#8220;to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel&#8221; was a proverb that meant people were so meticulous about trivial details that they completely ignored the truly important matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>(Edited and compiled based on the Chinese Union Version Bible and Comprehensive Biblical Interpretation)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew 23:23-24 &#8211; &#8220;Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional-notes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3925"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11669,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925\/revisions\/11669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}