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

I really love to write about the contrast between Matthew 7:1 (Do not judge, or you too will be judged.) and Matthew 7:15-20 (Watch out for false prophets…Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.).  Often times, the first of these is misinterpreted, but the second helps us to understand that we need to dig a little deeper into the verses following Matthew 7:1 if we are going to understand it.  However, today I want to write about the connection I saw today between Matthew 7:7-12, Matthew 7:13-14, and Matthew 9:36-38. Perhaps I should have lumped those first two together and made this a comparison between just two passages, but I am going to stick with viewing it as three.  In the first passage Jesus tells us to ask, to seek, and to knock.  When we ask, He tells us that we will receive, and when we seek, He tells us that we will find, and when we knock, doors will open for us.  We, evil as we are, give good gifts to our children, so we know that God, being good, will give good gifts to those who ask Him.  I find the conclusion which Jesus reaches from this interesting: since God will give good gifts to those who ask of Him, to those who Jesus has just declared evil, we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Not, the way so many misremember, do unto others AS they do unto us.  No, we should do as we would like them to do unto us.  And, that reminds me of another misinterpretation.  We should not do as we think would be best for them, but as we would like them to do to us.  From there Jesus tells us to enter the narrow gate.  And from the two misinterpretations I just identified we do indeed see that what Jesus tells us to do is the narrow gate.  Which brings me to the third of the segments from today’s passage which I want to bring into this theme.  So, what is it that we should be asking God to give us?  We should be asking Him to send workers to harvest the crops of those who are seeking something without knowing what that something is.  We should be asking God to send people, hopefully like us, to show the lost how much God loves them and wants to heal them.  We should be asking God to send 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 7-9.

I struggled with where to start on today’s blog because there were so many items in today’s passage which spoke to me.  After much thought I decided to begin with Jesus’ parable about the wise and foolish builders.  I think this parable provides a wonderful clarification on the “works vs faith” discussion.  In Ephesians 2 Paul writes:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Many people focus on that first sentence.  They believe that it does not matter what they do, as long as they have faith in Jesus.  They are not entirely wrong, nothing we do, or can do, will provide us with salvation.  Our actions will not get us a “ticket” to spend eternity with God.  However, in today’s passage tells us that if we do not act on His words, we are fools.  Even in that passage from Ephesians Paul writes that God created us to do good works, which He prepared in advance for 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 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.

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

Today’s passage begins with Jesus saying something which people love to quote, “Do not judge others…” and there is merit in paying close attention to that and the ways in which Jesus expounds on that.  However, a little further on Jesus also tells us that we can identify a tree by its fruit.  He says this in the context of warning us to beware of false prophets.  There He tells us that we can identify what type of person someone is by their actions.  So, we have two different instructions from Jesus.  One tells us not to judge others, the other tells us to pay attention to how people act and judge them accordingly.  A little closer look at what Jesus says immediately after telling us not to judge reveals that He is telling us to apply the same standard to others that we apply to ourselves.  Actually, I think Jesus is telling us we should apply the standard we apply to others to ourselves.  All too often we loudly complain about those who break a “rule” in minor way when we ourselves break that same “rule” in a major way.  We should instead seek to be more forgiving of the failure of others than we are of our own failures (although there are people who take this too far as well).

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

Today’s passage begins with Jesus saying, “Do not judge others.”  However, just a few verses later He says, “As you can identify a tree by its fruit, you can identify a person by their actions.”  Once again we see the sort of paradox to which my college Bible professor referred.  Fortunately, we can resolve much of this conflict by looking at context.  Just after telling us not to judge others Jesus tells us that we will be judged by the standard we use to judge others.  Jesus further clarifies what He means here when He tells us to treat others as we would like them to treat us.

So much of this passage touches me in a way that I want to write more about it, but I only have so much time today.  So, I am going to tie together two last pieces (I find it interesting that I so often write about things in two in my blog).  First Jesus says that not all who call out “Lord, Lord” to Him will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Then at the end of today’s passage He tells us to pray to the Lord of the Harvest, to God, to send more workers.  If we are praying for more workers, it should be because we are doing as much as we can and we can see that there is more work to be done.  Of course, even if we are doing as much as we can, there is more to be done.  I don’t think I am doing all of the work God has that I could be.  So, I pray that God will get me moving.