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

Chapter 25 contains three parables about getting into the kingdom of heaven.  The first parable is about being prepared for the Day, despite not knowing when it will be.  The second parable is about making use of every opportunity we have to serve God, and how the more we make use of those opportunities the more we have. The final one is about serving God through serving others.  All three parables make closely related points.  However, I want to look more closely at an aspect of the third parable that we usually only think about in a secondary manner.  So, the third parable talks about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison.  But what I want to focus on is the reply of both the sheep when they were told why they were being rewarded: “When did we do that?”  They honestly did not remember doing the things which God was rewarding them for doing.  Or, to be more precise: their thought when they had done these things was, “But that doesn’t count.”  When I think about this, I think about  a book I own about a village in France during WWII which saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis.  After the war, several of the people in the village were asked why they did what they did.  Their answer was, “When they came to my door, I just did what anyone would have done.”  We know that that is not true.  Most people throughout France did not do what they did.  So, when you see people doing nice things for the homeless, or the sick, or the poor who would say, “Well, I just did what anyone would do,” you are seeing someone doing what Jesus said the sheep in this parable did.  They did not do it for reward, they did it because they cared.  Do we care?

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

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

The passage begins with Jesus condemning the Pharisees for hypocrisy.  The key phrase in what Jesus said in this section was this, “they do not practice what they preach.”  Jesus goes on to explain that much of what the Pharisees, and other hypocrites, do is intended to cause others to honor them.  I want to write about some of the types of hypocrisy Jesus points out.  We should not ask others to address us by honorifics, such as “Father”, “Rabbi”, “Teacher”, “Reverend”, or “Pastor”. Nor should we address others by those honorifics.  All followers of Christ are equal, do not hold others up above yourself, and do not hold yourself above others.  The next one I want to look at is kind of interesting.  Jesus talks about considering an oath sworn on the temple as non-binding, but one sworn on the gold of the temple is binding.  Now why would someone make such distinctions?  It seems to me that the purpose would be to able to make an oath which might sound binding, but which you did not count as binding.  In other words, the purpose of such a distinction is to deceive people.  The final type of hypocrisy was the things done for the sake of appearance.  Things like washing the outside of a cup but leaving the inside untouched.

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

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

When the religious leaders came to Jesus and asked Him to site His authority to take the actions He had taken, and tell them who had given Him that authority, Jesus recognized that they were not asking in good faith.  They did not care what His answer was, they were asking this question in order to discredit Him no matter how He chose to answer.  So, rather than debate them on their terms, Jesus changed the context of the debate in a way which made their dishonesty obvious to those to whom they had intended to discredit Him.  And, to the more insightful of those listening, He also answered their question with His question.  By asking them whether John’s baptism was from Heaven of from man, Jesus was indirectly stating that His authority came from the same place as John’s.  A point He makes clear in the next thing He says.  Jesus tells them that John came to show them the way to righteousness, and that those who they looked down upon as depraved sinners listened to him and received righteousness, while those who presumed themselves righteous rejected him and remained without righteousness.  This makes the point that those who presume their own righteousness as a basis to condemn us as depraved sinners will never debate us in good faith.  We should make sure that we do not debate them on their terms.

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

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

I am going to try to connect what Jesus says in His debate with the Pharisees at the beginning of today’s passage with His comment to His disciples in chapter 16 about being on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  When the Pharisees confronted Jesus about His disciples failing to wash their hands before eating, He responded by pointing out how they had developed traditions around one of the laws of Moses which functioned as a loophole against the requirements of a different one of the laws of Moses.  After He did this, His disciples were aghast that He had risked offending the Pharisees.  And this is where it gets interesting.  Jesus was not the least bit concerned with offending the Pharisees.  This deserves a bit of unpacking.  Who were the people whom Jesus was unconcerned with offending?  They were those who had just attempted to shame Him by pointing out that His disciples did not live up to their standards of righteousness.  And what had Jesus done which offended them?  He had pointed out that their standard of righteousness did not measure up to the one laid out in the Law of Moses (or perhaps just His interpretation of that Law, since I am sure they would have had an argument making their interpretation the right one).  The point being that they were not concerned with offending Him, why should He be concerned with offending them?  Which brings me to the point about the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  Those two groups operated from the assumption that they were the arbiters of righteousness and offending them was a sin against righteousness, but if you were offended by them, it was merely a sign of your unrighteousness.  And this allowed them to fool both themselves and others into thinking that anyone who opposed their selfishness was unrighteous.

That did not go where I thought it would, but I am going to stick with it.

I use 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 like writing about the parables in this passage because they contain so much for us to contemplate.  However, there are two which I rarely do more than just touch on, if that.  They both express the same thought in slightly different ways.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

Until today, these two parables never really connected for me.  I am not sure that I can express the understanding of these which came to me today in a way that gets past the “Well, yeah, OK” they inspired in me previously.  The point here is that the kingdom of heaven is of such great value that anything, and everything, else is a small price to pay to acquire it.  If you are not, if I am not, willing to sacrifice everything else which gives us pleasure and joy to obtain it, we fail to understand its value.  Up until today, I am not sure that I understood this.  There can be no risk, no pain, no suffering, no loss that I am unwilling to suffer in order to obtain admittance into the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever price God asks me to pay, I sincerely hope that I am willing to pay.  I would like to say that I am willing to pay that price, but I am not sure that I can honestly say that.  If there is a limit to the price we are willing to pay in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, than we are not worthy of entry.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 10-12.

There are three things in this passage which I want to focus on today.  The first of those comes when Jesus commissions the Twelve to preach throughout Israel.  He tells them to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the unclean, and drive out demons .  They have freely received from God, so they should freely give to others.  A little later during His commissioning of the Twelve He tells them not to worry about what to say, or how to say it, because it will not be them speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaking through them.  The third thing comes when Jesus responds to the question from John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask about whether He is the One.  Jesus tells them to report what they see–the blind can see, the lame walk, the unclean are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead raised, and the gospel preached.

When I started to write this I had no idea how these three things fit together, mostly because in my mind the first thing was “Freely you have received; freely give.”  As I wrote it, I felt like I needed to include what came just before that about healing, etc.. So, I did.  Which made me realize that the first “thing” is almost identical to the third “thing”.  Which brings me to what brings this all together.  Jesus did not directly answer the question John’s disciples asked Him.  Instead, He told them to look at what He was doing.  And most of what He was doing was the same as what He told the Twelve to do when He sent them out.  So, we too should be doing more than speaking, and when we do speak, don’t spend time worrying about what to say; God’s Spirit will talk through us.

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

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

Today’s passage contains the centerpiece of Jesus’ teaching.  It contains enough material to blog on for days.  However, I am going to write about something which I have never thought about the way it struck me today.  That is not quite true, it crossed my mind several times, but I just went on and dismissed the thought as unimportant.  Today I realized that it is important, and that I cannot recall anyone taking note of it.  So, Jesus talks about being angry at people as being as great of a sin as murder, and then says “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.  First go and be reconciled t them; then come and offer your gift.”  Or, if you realize that someone is angry with you, drop everything, no matter how important, and go make it right with them.  And why does He say you should do that, because being angry with someone is just as bad as murdering them!  But wait, He doesn’t say, “Because being angry is so bad, go and resolve things with those YOU are angry at.”  No, He says, “Because being angry is so bad, if you know that someone is angry at YOU, go and resolve things with them.”  He doesn’t say to make it right if it is your fault. He says, make it right, no matter whose fault it is.  Now, we could easily make the mistake of thinking that if we are angry at someone, it is their job to come to us and make it right and that it is OK for us to stay angry with them until they do so.  But that doesn’t work because Jesus has just gotten done saying that being angry with someone is the same as having murdered them.  So, it comes down to this: if you are angry at someone and hold on to that anger, you are sinning.  On the other hand, if you know someone is angry with you, or think they might be, and you do not go and try to make peace with them, you are sinning.  Or, to put it more generally, if you realize that someone sins because of you, you should strive to change either your behavior, or how they view you.

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

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

One of the things we often miss in reading the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, is the way in which Jesus’ ministry was connected to what was going on in Judaism at the time.  The Gospel of Matthew was written in attempt to convey the connection between Christianity and Judaism in a manner convincing to Jews.  Which brings me to Herod and why he and “all of Jerusalem” were disturbed by the arrival of the Magi looking for the newborn king of the Jews.  I think that, in part, Matthew included this account because it reminded his readers about the political instability of this region.  Most of us are familiar with the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid dynasty based out of Antioch on the Orantes (a city located in what is now Turkey) to establish the Hasmonean Dynasty over Judea.  What we generally are unaware of is the many civil wars fought among the Hasmoneans.  To a large degree those civil wars were fueled by disputes over the proper way to worship God.  Fights between Jews who had adopted the cultural practices of the Greeks (Hellenists) and those who supported more traditional cultural practices.  Further, it is clear from the stances on these issues taken by the various Hasmonean rulers that the conflicts were more about different factions than about specific religious practices.  Herod the Great had been made king over Judea, in place of the last Hasmonean, by the Romans and despite his cruelty brought a period of stability.   Since Herod was an Idumean who had converted to Judaism, he had brought a sort of peace among the factions.  So, the various leaders of Jerusalem had to be alarmed by the news of the birth of a new king…especially since they knew he was not being put forth by their own faction.  While the various factions hated each other, and fought each other for power, they were united in opposing Jesus because His very existence was a threat to their power.

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