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 27-28

I came across an Internet meme a few days ago which said that Christians identify with the heroes of the Bible and not with the villains.  They identify with Peter and not with Judas.  The meme had a point, but failed to truly comprehend the Bible.  Peter and Judas are in many ways two sides of the same thing.  Both betrayed Jesus and both felt remorse for their betrayal.  However, Judas punished himself for his failure, whereas Peter threw himself upon Jesus’ mercy.  Both felt terrible remorse for their sin, but Judas refused to live with the shame.  Yes, from a human perspective (and perhaps from God’s as well, but I won’t know that as long as I am on this earth), Judas’ sin was the greater sin, but it was also necessary for God’s plan.  I believe that if Judas had been willing to face others after his betrayal became obvious, Jesus would have forgiven him.  Neither Judas nor Peter could make their betrayal right, but Jesus could and did for Peter.  While Judas never heard Jesus say the final words Matthew recorded, I believe he was unwilling to live with their truth.  Are we?

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 25-26

This is another passage with many lessons for us, but today I want to focus on what we can learn about praying for things to happen.  When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed that He not have to go through the coming suffering.  However, He also surrendered Himself to God’s will in that prayer.  He desperately wanted to avoid the coming suffering, but He saw no way to avoid it if God’s plan was to be fulfilled.  In the same way, we should pray for that which we desire to happen, but accept that perhaps God’s plans require things to work out differently.  We should not be ashamed to pray for what we want, even when we believe God’s plan calls for something different.  We should just remain open to things not going as we desire.  We see more of this in Jesus’ second prayer.  In His second prayer, Jesus understood that He was going to need to suffer.  So, He referenced His desire that things go differently while surrendering completely to God’s will.

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 23-24

Jesus repeatedly criticized those who did things in order to be seen by others as righteous.  As He describes them here they were continually telling people how much more righteous than everyone else they were.  They were meticulous at the ritual aspects of righteousness, but could not be bothered with those things which occurred out of the public eye.  They were insistent on being called, Reverend, or Teacher, or Father.  They wanted to be seen as being superior to others, as being able to mediate between the common person and God.  However, Jesus made it clear that sometimes the common people were guilty of setting such people up as superior to themselves.  That was just as wrong.  We should not allow others to call us Reverend, or Teacher, or Father, or some other honorific which suggests that we are better than they, but we also should not call anyone those things.  It is not just the titles, they are an indication of something more basic which has gone wrong.  Instead of seeking to be exalted by others, let us seek to serve them.

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 21-22

When the religious leaders of Jerusalem challenged Jesus to declare by what authority He did the things which He did, He did not directly answer them.  Instead, He asked them if they thought that John the Baptist got his authority to baptize from Heaven, or merely from men.  They refused to answer.  We can learn a lot about having debates from this.  Jesus asked them this question because He knew that they were not asking because they wanted to know the answer.  They were asking in order to set up a narrative with those listening.  By asking His question, Jesus could establish the criteria by which His answer would be judged.  If they had said that John’s authority came from man, He would have established that they were merely looking for an excuse to demonize Him.  If they said that John’s authority came from Heaven, Jesus would have established a basis for making the case for His own authority.  By saying that they did not know the answer to Jesus’ question, they revealed that they were more interested in a “gotcha” moment than in an honest discussion.

A similar thing happened a little bit later when Jesus was asked about taxes and about marriage after the resurrection.  In both cases, those who asked the question were not interested in having an honest discussion.  They were looking for a “gotcha” moment.  In both cases, Jesus turned it around on them.  He showed that their questions looked at the situation they were about from the wrong direction.  This is something to which we need to pay careful attention.  Many of the conundrums we face in life result from looking at things the wrong way.

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 18-20

I love this passage, from beginning to end it contains teachings which should guide our lives.  Near the beginning is a verse which I have recently seen taken out of context to claim that followers of Christ do not need to concern themselves with dressing modestly.  People take the phrase, “And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” And use it to say that it is OK for someone to dress in a manner which inspires lust in others.  Now, they make a point that is relevant: Jesus’ teachings are directed for us to apply to ourselves, not to others.  However, shortly before He says the phrase they like to quote, Jesus says, “Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.”   So, we should think carefully about how we dress and act so as to not tempt others into sin.

From there Jesus speaks about the lost sheep and what to do if a fellow believer sins.  These all tie together.  Let’s see if I can explain how in a way which makes sense.  The first bit discusses how we should take responsibility for our own actions and go to extreme measures to avoid sin, but also indicates that we, and others, will sin.  Then He tells us of the effort which God will go to in order to redeem those who do sin, and effort which we should also be willing to exert.  From there, Jesus speaks of how we should act when we observe our fellow believer sin.  It is a three step process, go privately, take one or two others with us, and only if we still believe they are sinning after that, take it to the Body of Believers.  I am convinced from Jesus’ choice of words that at each step of the process we should listen to the person’s explanation of their actions while being open to the possibility that they had not acted in the manner which we thought.  The one or two witnesses should not have decided in advance that the person had sinned.  The Body of Believers should not have decided in advance that the person had sinned.  They should listen to what both parties have to say and reach a judgement only after hearing the “sinners” explanation for their actions.

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 15-17

There is a lot to be learned from this passage, but I want to focus on what Jesus says about following man-made traditions and rules instead of following the commands given by God.  I will first note that the traditions which Jesus calls out were not invented from whole cloth by the Pharisees.  They developed these traditions as an interpretation of certain instructions which had come from God,  However, we must keep in mind that doing this is a human tendency.  We all have a tendency to make complex rules that allow us to justify serving our own interests rather than obeying God.  We should be careful about listening to the guidance given by religious leaders who are willing to tell us what we want to hear.

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 13-14

Jesus taught using parables because the concepts He was teaching could not be summed up in simple, one-size fits all ways.  Those unwilling to accept the complex answers which Jesus teaches find His parables confusing and contradictory.  Those who truly seek God will understand how each parable presents just a partial picture of the whole truth.  An example of what I am talking about can be seen by comparing Jesus’ parable of the good seed and the weeds to the saying “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”  Jesus’ parable is the exact opposite of the saying.  Both things tell us that we do not have the ability to distinguish between truly good people and truly bad people.  Both tell us that only God can do that.  However, Jesus tells us that it is better to let the guilty go unpunished than to harm the innocent, while the human saying tells us that it is more important to punish the guilty than to protect the innocent.

We will see how this next bit goes.  I am going to try to make a connection between Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of Heaven and the account of Peter attempting to walk on water.  Jesus describes how small things lead to great things.  This is a theme which Jesus speaks of quite a bit.  Earlier in Matthew, Jesus told us we should be like salt.  Here, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to yeast and to a mustard seed.  All of these things share a common element.  It doesn’t take much salt to completely change the flavor of food.  It only takes a small amount of yeast to make a lump of dough become much larger.  A mustard seed is very small and hard to locate if you drop it, but the plant which comes from it grows very large.  So, the message Jesus was giving us there was that small things can accomplish great things.  The connection to Peter attempting to walk on water is that if we want to do miraculous things we need to focus on Christ and not let ourselves be distracted by what else is going on.  In a way this brings us back to what I talked about in the first paragraph.  If we want to transform the world by destroying evil, we need to be strong and powerful.  On the other hand, if we focus on doing God’s will, He will transform those around us even though we are no more than a grain of salt, or a bit of yeast.