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

One of the most misused, and misunderstood, passages of the Bible starts off today’s passage when Jesus says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  That seems pretty straightforward.  Except a few verses further on, Jesus tells us, “Watch out for false prophets. … By their fruit you will recognize them.”  That latter instruction is much like what people often mean for us not to do when they tell us not to judge.  That being said, let’s go back to the verses immediately following the one in which Jesus said, “Do not judge…”  I am not going to quote it, you can read it for yourself.  But, Jesus is clearly telling us that we should be more concerned with correcting our own actions than with correcting the actions of others.  In fact, most of this passage is about evaluating our own actions and faithfully doing the Lord’s will.

Which brings me to where I want to focus my attention, although I am not quite sure how to tie this together.  Jesus gives us very strong warnings against following the crowds, against doing things because everybody else is doing it.  I believe that Jesus’ teachings on having strong faith here are part of the same teaching.  We often overlook what happened when Jesus called Matthew as to how it connects to the other teachings on faith in this passage.  When Jesus called him, Matthew immediately got up and followed Him.  Matthew did not spend any time settling his affairs and making arrangements.  He just began following Jesus.  All of the faith stories in this passage have a similar theme, those who received that for which they asked, asked even though they knew their request was ridiculous.  They all put themselves out there to look foolish (except possibly His disciples on the boat in the storm).

I am going to take one more stab at trying to get this to all come together in the way it felt in my head when I started writing.  Early in this passage Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  Another passage which we often misunderstand and misuse.  Jesus expands on what He means when He says that and wraps it by giving us the Golden Rule, but we so often miss the connection the “Ask, Seek, Knock” quote and the Golden Rule.  We should treat others the way we would like them to treat us because God will give us good things when we ask Him. It is not enough to call Jesus Lord, we have to mean it and act accordingly.

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