I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 25-26.

    As I read the parable of the three servants and the story about the sheep and the goats at the final judgment, I realized that there is a connection there. Over the summer my pastor preached a sermon on the parable of the three servants where he compared the coins given to the servants to opportunities. What have we done with the opportunities God has given us? Have we turned them into more opportunities? Today when I read the story of the final judgment in this passage I realized that the sheep and the goats had one thing in common: neither one of them recognized when they had the opportunity to serve Jesus. The difference was that the sheep took advantage of those opportunities despite the fact that they did not recognize what they were, while the goats did not. Have we taken advantage of the opportunities we have had, even though we did not recognize them at the time?

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 23-24.

    In this passage Jesus says something which I am disheartened to see being overlooked more and more in the Church today. He warns us against giving honorifics to people based on their spiritual standing. He tells us not to let anyone call us Rabbi or Teacher because we should all be turning to God to be taught and that we should call no one father because we have one Father, which is God. Yet time and again, I hear people referring to someone as “Pastor Bob” (or whatever the person’s name is). People tell me it is not the same because they are not using “Rabbi”, or “Teacher”, or “Father”. This instruction from Jesus comes in the midst of Him warning against people who teach us how to find loopholes by using the letter of the law against the spirit of the law. The whole point of what Jesus was teaching here is that we should not place some people as elevated relative to God from the rest of us. We are all equal before God. We should not attempt to put someone between ourselves and God and we should not allow others to view us as being between them and God. When we give such honorifics to people, we tempt them to think of themselves more highly than they ought. When we allow others to apply such honorifics to us, we begin the path to being hypocrites, we begin to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 21-22.

    One thing that I always like to point out about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is that Jesus entered not just as a king, but as a king who is entering his city after victory. This is the week BEFORE His crucifixion and Jesus is declaring that He has already won His victory. It is in light of this understanding that I read the story of Jesus driving the merchants out of the Temple. Jesus entered the Temple as a victorious king. He has defeated His enemies, now it is time to clean up the corruption at home. The problem Jesus was addressing was not the business practices of the merchants. It was the fact that they were there at all. The presence of the merchants interfered with the ability of those who could go no further into the Temple to worship. What are we doing which interferes with worship by those who have not yet joined the Church, those who have are still seeking?

    The following day Jesus tells three parables about what it means to faithfully obey God. It is not a question of what we say when God calls us. It is what we do when it is time to do what God called us to do. The first parable is a contrast between those who reject the idea of appearing righteous, but choose to do what is right vs those who wish to be perceived of righteous without doing what is right. The second parable is about those who abuse the authority given to them by God. Finally, we have a parable about those who initially accepted God’s invitation, but when it was time to act on that invitation they could not be bothered. All of this tells us that it is not enough to say that we will do God’s will, we need to do God’s will. It is not enough to accept God’s invitation, we have to act on that invitation.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 18-20.

    This passage begins and ends with a lesson about being great in God’s eyes. I believe that most of us would agree that a person who acts the way Jesus describes is what a truly great person acts like. The problem we have is that we are not satisfied with being great, we want people to KNOW that we are great. If we want to be great in God’s eyes, we need to be humble. We will never be great in God’s eyes if we think we are better than others. Of course there is another reason we have a problem with being great by God’s standards. We want to be great in order to have other people satisfy our needs and wants. Jesus tells us that it is impossible to be both great and have others satisfy our needs and wants because in order to be great we need to spend our time satisfying the needs and wants of others. If we want to be truly great we need to spend our time serving others. Which leads us to one of those paradoxes of life, sometimes in order to satisfy the needs and wants of others we need to allow them to satisfy our needs and wants.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 15-17.

    When I first read this, I really wanted to write about what Jesus said about following human traditions, but it did not seem to come together. Then I started typing. There is a very human tendency to look for loopholes in the rules. Jesus tells us that God will judge us by the intent of His rules, not by the loophole we think we have found. When we choose to live according to what God desires rather than take advantage of the loopholes people have created to allow themselves to gain from giving us an out from the responsibilities God has given us we will offend those people. Jesus tells us not to be bothered by offending the self-righteous. This particular instruction applies to both the religiously self-righteous and to the politically correct self-righteous. However, while we do not need to worry about offending the self-righteous, what we say reflects what we genuinely feel and believe in our hearts.

    I just want to touch briefly on the story about the Gentile woman near Tyre and Sidon. This story illustrates what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8. The woman kept asking and she received that for which she asked. That makes her a model for us to follow.
    Now I want to go to Jesus’ response to Peter when he declared that Jesus was the Christ and when Peter rebuked Him for talking about His death. Jesus said that the Church would not be overcome by the gates of Hades (or Hell, or the Grave). I have often heard this interpreted as meaning that the Church (and we as members of it) will be able to stand up to any attacks Satan may throw at us. There is one problem with this: gates don’t attack, they defend. That means that the Church is intended to be on offense. It is out job as followers of Christ to take the battle to Hades, not to stand on defense and wait to be attacked. Which brings me to what Jesus said in response to Peter’s rebuke. We need to take up our cross, that is we need to embrace our death and our fears, in order to follow Jesus. It is by following Jesus into that which we fear that we will defeat that which we fear. If we willingly give up our lives, if we willingly face our fears to serve God, we will find life and joy. If, on the other hand, we fail to follow God’s call in order to save our lives and to avoid our fears, we will lose our lives and experience that which we fear. These two message go together. If we take up our cross and face down death and our fears to follow Christ, they will prove to be no obstacle at all.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 13-14.

    I was going to completely skip over the parable of the sower because I have thought, written, and heard so much about it. However, as I read it this morning, I saw something to which we need to give some thought. When Jesus was asked why He spoke in parables He answered that was because only those who genuinely wanted to understand would understand. I think part of what He meant was that it was harder to make a parable mean something other than what it was intended to mean. If you don’t understand a parable, you, usually, will not think that you do. However, the point for us to recognize from what He said is that those who do not want to understand will not understand, no matter how we say it. No matter how carefully we choose our words those who want to misinterpret them will do so.

    The parable of the wheat and the weeds and the parable of the fishing net have related lessons for us. Actually, they share a common message in addition to each having their own message. Their common message is that if we try to distinguish between those who will accept God’s call and those who will not, we will cause a lot of people who would otherwise answer God’s call to miss it. My understanding of the first informs, and is informed by, my belief in non-resistance. If we attempt to “pull” out the weeds, the bad apples, we will also destroy some who will produce a crop for the Lord. Until it is time to harvest (and only God knows when that is) many weeds look just like the good plants and many good plants look like weeds. There is a motto associated with the military, “Kill them all, let God sort them out,” which reflects the same idea, only in reverse. Jesus’ message in this parable is, “Don’t kill any of them, God will sort them out.”

    While the parable of the wheat and the weeds teaches that it is not our job to sort the righteous from the unrighteous, the parable of the fishing net tells us to take a more active approach. In the latter parable Jesus teaches us to actively gather in everyone, even those who we “know” will not accept God’s gift. It may be possible to gather only those who will choose to do God’s will, but doing so will mean leaving behind many who would choose to do so if given the opportunity. Like the commercial fisherman, to whom it is worth the effort of throwing away the worthless fish in order to maximize his profit collecting a larger number of marketable fish, we should be willing to “waste” effort on those who will never come to the Lord for the sake of those we would otherwise miss.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 7-9.

    Another passage packed with more than I can cover in one day’s blog. I think I am going to start in the middle and work out from there. Jesus warned us to build our beliefs and base our lives on the solid foundation of His teachings. This means constantly striving to better understand them and living according to that understanding. I am trying to figure out how to put the words together to explain how I see this all tying together today. Jesus’ comment about not judging others and being judged by the standards we use to judge others is a way of expressing the same thought as what we know as the Golden Rule, treat others the way we want to be treated. We should judge others according to a standard to which we would be comfortable being held. However, more importantly we should seek to learn the mistakes and sins that we commit rather than worrying about the mistakes and sins of others.

    The other part of building on the solid foundation is persistence and faith, or persistent faith. It is continuing to believe, even when we do not see results immediately. We need to ask until we receive, seek until we find, and knock until the door opens. We do this, not because we think we need to nag God, but because we continue to believe that God will act in His own time. We need to ask over and over again to remind ourselves that God will act. If we believe that something is God’s will we should have the faith to continue pursuing it, no matter what obstacles are put in our way AND we should have faith that it will come to pass because we know that God’s will will be done.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 5-6.

    This passage is central to my understanding of what it means to follow Christ. I do not think I can possibly cover all of the things of importance here in one blog entry. That being said, there are a couple of over-arching themes which cover most of what Jesus says here. In some ways the rest of the passage in an expansion on what it means to fulfill the characteristics listed in the Beatitudes. Jesus explains how we can live with humility, purity, and righteousness. We cannot accomplish these things by obeying the letter of the law. No set of rules, no matter how well thought out, can cover every eventuality. But even more so, being pure, righteous, humble, godly, etc. cannot be accomplished by following a set of rules. Rather we must strive for doing what is best for others and ourselves. This does not mean that we do not follow the rules. It means that we go beyond the rules.

    The first point Jesus makes after the Beatitudes is that being righteous is about changing the world around us. At first glance it appears that Jesus’ teachings about being noticed and making a difference are contrary to His teachings a few verses later about not doing things to be noticed. However, if you read the whole passage carefully you realize that the latter verses are actually further explanation of the first verses on salt and light. We do not change the world by making people think we are righteous, good people. Rather, we change the world by making people realize that we are damaged, sinful people who do the right thing despite our weaknesses.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 1-4.

    I do not know why I went here this morning. If you were to make a series of superhero style movies out of the Book of Matthew, today’s passage would be the basis for the “Origins” movie. I think it has the potential to make an interesting movie. First we have the opening scene showing that Jesus is descended from Abraham. I am not quite sure how you would make this compelling, but I think it has possibilities as a series of montages (I was going to list some of the scenes, but realized that I am not sure how to make it work). The next scene is Mary becoming pregnant and Joseph planning to divorce her quietly then the vision telling him to marry her anyway. Up to here should take no more than 15 minutes total, and probably less than 10 minutes. Next would be two scenes with the astrologers from the east. One with them in Jerusalem, one with them in Bethlehem. Then would come the first action scene where Joseph and Mary hurriedly leave Bethlehem, followed a short time later by Herod’s soldiers sweeping down and killing all of the young children in the town.
    The first half of the movie would end with Joseph bringing the family to Nazareth with a transition scene showing the young man Jesus with His family in the house in Nazareth (so that the audience can see the connection of the actor playing the grownup Jesus with the baby). The next scene is John the Baptist preaching along the Jordan, clearly showing him condemning the same sort of men we saw advising Herod earlier. Cut to Jesus in the audience coming forward to be baptized. John sees the dove and hears the voice, but it is clear that no one else does (except perhaps one or two of John’s disciples). While John continues to baptize others, Jesus heads out into the wilderness. I am not sure how I would do the temptation scenes. They could be either realistic or vision/hallucination scenes. I suspect I would do the latter, allowing the audience to decide for themselves if they were visions or hallucinations. When Jesus comes out of the wilderness He hears of John’s arrest and heads for Galilee. In Galilee we see Him on the shore speaking to one or two people, more people come over as they hear what He is saying. When He finishes speaking He heads down the shore and calls the first disciples. Then we have a scene in a synagogue where Jesus heals someone followed by ever increasing crowds when He speaks in synagogues and following Him as He travels. Initially, He is invited to speak at synagogues by people trying to get more people to come to their services. Eventually, the crowds are too large for Him to speak in buildings and the “Origins” movie ends with Him speaking on the side of a mountain with His disciples moving out and repeating what He says so that those farther away can hear.