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 5-6.

Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount with a series of sayings which would seem counterintuitive if we had not heard them so often.  Some of them make sense: Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the merciful.  But others do not: Blessed are those who are persecuted, Blessed are you when people insult you.  Jesus goes on from saying that we are blessed when people insult and persecute us to talking about being salt without losing that which makes us salt.  Jesus gives us two more metaphors which clarify what He meant by that.  You can’t hide a town built on top of a hill and you don’t light a lamp in order to cover up the light it gives off.  In the same way, Jesus does not call secret followers.  That is, the actions of Jesus’ followers will always reveal that they serve Him.  Having laid the groundwork, Jesus goes on to tell us that it is not enough to not take sinful actions, we need to learn to not desire to commit sinful actions.  It is not enough to not commit murder, we must not desire to murder someone.  It is not enough to not commit adultery, we must not desire to commit adultery.  The Pharisees built a fence around the Law of Moses to keep from violating it.  Jesus teaches us to teach ourselves to not want to do the things which violate the Law.  And He teaches that the way to do that is to love others, even our enemies, as much as we love ourselves.

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.

I had originally not intended to write anything about the genealogy of Jesus which Matthew gives here, but then I was thinking about the fact that Matthew mentions five women in Jesus’ ancestry: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.  He lists all of them by name, except for Bathsheba.  Matthew tells us that Solomon’s mother had been Uriah’s wife.  In other words, he didn’t want us to miss the scandal around David and Bathsheba’s relationship.  In fact, there was a scandal associated with everyone of the women Matthew mentions here.  Tamar pretended to be a prostitute in order to become pregnant with a twins by her father-in-law.  Rahab was a prostitute.  Ruth was a Moabitess, about whom the Law of Moses said their descendants should not be eligible to enter the Tabernacle, or Temple, for ten generations.  Mary was unmarried when she became pregnant (even though this was a virgin birth, it was still a scandal).  Matthew’s audience would not miss the scandal concerning those four, but they might think about Bathsheba only from her role in King David naming Solomon as his heir.  Matthew made sure that we would not miss the scandal concerning Bathsheba.  He wanted to make sure that we realized that God can, and will, use those we consider improper.  If these women were acceptable ancestors for the Son of God, what makes you think God won’t use you for something wonderful?

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 27-28.

Many people wonder why Pilate would have bothered washing his hands of Jesus’ blood when he sentenced Him to be crucified.  After all, we know from historic records that Pilate was a typically brutal governor by Roman standards.  What we know about him suggests that Pilate would have had no qualms with crucifying an innocent man if he thought doing so was in his best interest.  So, why would Pilate have made the gesture of washing his hands in order to proclaim himself innocent of Jesus’ blood?  We find the answer to that question in the message Pilate received from his wife about her dream.  Many first century Romans believed that dreams were messages from the gods and often made important decisions based on their dreams.  So, Pilate ritually absolved himself of Jesus’ death by washing his hands in front of the crowd.  Further, that ritual was intended to transfer any guilt which may have accrued to Pilate to those in the crowd on whose behalf he ordered the crucifixion.  The acceptance of that guilt by the crown completed the ritual.  I do believe that those in the crowd did suffer for the guilt they willingly accepted of crucifying an innocent man, but we should note the crowd which was present did not represent the majority of Jews alive at that time, not even the majority of those living in Jerusalem.  So, even if they had been able to condemn their descendants for the guilt which they took upon themselves, they would have fallen far short of condemning all Jews for all time after.  The people in the crowd accepted the guilt for shedding the blood of an innocent man on that day and all of us are included in that guilt.  Only by accepting His sacrifice on our behalf can that guilt be expunged.

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

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.