He is afraid of the first thread.
That is the honest shape of it, and he has never said it in those words to anybody. There are things he does that he cannot find, and he knows he cannot find them, and he has known for years. He has looked. He did not find anything and he stopped looking, and the reason he stopped is not laziness.
The reason he stopped is that he could not see where it ends.
If that one is not in there, what about the next one. And if that one is not either, then how much of what he has built his life around is somebody's grandmother's preference wearing a Bible cover. And once a man starts pulling he does not know where the pile stops, and he has watched two people he knew start pulling, and neither of them is anywhere now.
So he keeps all of it, including the ones he cannot source, and he keeps them a little harder than he needs to, because the keeping is what holds the whole structure up.
There are two verses about this and the second half of the second one is the part nobody quotes.
The smallest possible rule, named exactly
Here it is, in the King James Version:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)
Mint and anise and cummin. Kitchen herbs. He picks the three smallest, most trivial items anybody in that room was being careful about, and He names them by name.
And have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. There is the charge, and it is not about the herbs. It is about what got dropped while the herbs were being counted.
And then the five words:
And not to leave the other undone.
He does not tell them to stop counting the mint.
That is worth sitting with for a minute, because everybody who quotes this verse stops one clause early. The whole rhetorical weight of the passage is on the weightier matters, and then He turns around and protects the small thing on His way out of the sentence.
You are not being asked to tear anything down and you were never facing a choice between the small things and the real ones. Matthew 23:23 ends with and not to leave the other undone, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a bolder attitude who makes both halves of that verse sit in a man at once.
What He calls the heavy end
The three He names as weightier are worth having in front of you, because they are unusually concrete.
Judgment, mercy, and faith. Micah says almost the same three, in a verse that a lot of people know half of:
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8)
Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. None of those is a rule about a substance or a schedule. Every one of them is about how a man treats people and how he stands in front of God.
And that is why they can be omitted without anybody noticing. Nobody at a table can see whether you walk humbly. Everybody at a table can see whether you took the second helping.
Which means a structure built on the visible things will drift toward the visible things, not because the men inside it are wicked, but because that is what gets measured.
You have the weightier things named for you in plain words and you were never left to guess which end was heavy. Micah 6:8 lists justice, mercy and humility and Matthew 23:23 lists judgment, mercy and faith, and it is His Spirit rather than a sharper conscience who makes a man able to see the end of the scale nobody is watching.
He is not against the small things anywhere
This matters because a man in this position has usually been handed one of two bad options: keep everything, or become somebody who sneers at the people who keep things.
Jesus takes neither.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. (Matthew 5:17)
Not come to destroy. Said before the Sermon on the Mount gets going, as a guard on everything that follows.
And Hosea, which He quotes twice in Matthew:
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6)
Mercy, and not sacrifice. That is a statement about priority, not about abolition. The sacrifices were His own instruction. He is not repudiating them. He is telling people which one gives way when the two collide, which is a question a man can only answer if he is allowed to ask it.
So the fear of the first thread turns out to be built on a premise the text does not share. The text does not treat the small things as load bearing, which means pulling on one of them is not structural.
You are not holding the roof up and you were never the one keeping this from collapsing. Matthew 5:17 says He came to fulfill rather than to destroy and Matthew 23:23 protects the small thing in the same breath as it names the large one, and it is the Holy Spirit who holds a man steady while he asks a question he has been afraid of.
What actually is load bearing
And then the answer to the fear, which is that something is holding the structure up and it was never the herbs.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
On these two hang all the law and the prophets.
Hang. The picture is of a door on hinges, or of a weight suspended from a peg. Everything else is attached to those two, which means those two are the structure and the rest is what is hanging from it.
A man who has been treating a sourceless rule as a load bearing wall has the architecture backwards, and the good news in that is not that he can knock things down. It is that the building is not going to fall while he asks.
You have a structure that holds without you and you were never the wall it was resting on. Matthew 22:40 says all the law and the prophets hang on two commandments, and it is His Spirit who is named as the one who sheds that love abroad in a man's heart rather than the man producing it.
So ask about one. Out loud, to God, on paper first if that helps.
He named mint and anise and cummin, and He named the weightier matters that had been dropped, and then He put five words on the end of the sentence that keep the small thing from being collateral.
You are not choosing between the two and you have not been handed an all or nothing. The written word says these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone in Matthew 23:23, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a nerve you have to work up who makes both halves of that hold in a man at once.
And the fear about the first thread is answered by where the weight actually sits. You have a structure hanging on two commandments and you were never the one holding it up. Matthew 22:40 says all the law and the prophets hang on loving God and loving a neighbor, and Matthew 5:17 says He came to fulfill rather than to destroy, so the question you have been afraid to ask cannot bring the building down.
Nothing here promises the answer is comfortable. The man who waited thirty years found out his father did not know either. What is promised is that the small thing was protected by the same sentence that named the large one, and you were never asked to choose between them and it is written that way on purpose (Matthew 23:23, Matthew 22:40), and it is His Spirit rather than your courage who makes writing one rule down and asking about it a receiving.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own condition is genuinely yours, handed to you and never invented. Jesus named the three smallest rules in the room, named what had been dropped while they were counted, and then protected the small thing in the last five words of the same sentence, so speak to the fear that one question brings the whole thing down: you have standing to address it because He addressed it first and did it without contempt. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Matthew 23:23 and Matthew 22:40 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not the nerve behind your saying, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Fear that one question drops them all, you are not telling me the truth. The Word of God ends that verse with and not to leave the other undone, which is Him protecting the small thing on His way past it.
- Weight I carry as though I hold it up, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says all the law and the prophets hang on two commandments, and neither of them is mine to keep standing.
- Father, You said You came not to destroy but to fulfill, and You said the weightier matters are judgment and mercy and faith. I receive what Your word says in Matthew 23, and I am writing one rule down today and asking You about it out loud.
Matthew 23:23
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