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

When Jesus sent the Apostles out to preach that the kingdom of God was near while healing the sick and bringing comfort to the emotionally scarred (many of those we see today as suffering mental illness would have been considered demon possessed in First Century Judea, and I am not convinced that they did not have a better understanding than we do), He told them that they had been freely given, so they should freely give.  Interestingly, right after telling them that He also told them not to take any money or supplies with them, but to live off of the generosity of those whom they met on their travels.  He also told them, and thus us, that He was sending them out as sheep among wolves.  So, they, and we, should be shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.  A little later, when Jesus was preaching to the crowds, He declared that God had hidden His message from the wise and learned while revealing it to little children.  He did not mean that the wise and learned could not learn God’s message.  Rather He meant that the desire of the wise and learned to appear sophisticated caused them to miss what was obvious to those who were willing to be considered simple.  Along the same lines, Jesus told His disciples not to worry about what they would say when put on trial because the Holy Spirit would speak through us.  We get a further insight into what Jesus means by that when He tells us that a good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored in him.  The results of our actions will reveal our true intentions.

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