Tag Archives: gospel of matthew

the end

“The end is near!” We usually see that statement written on a sandwich board being worn by a crazy looking guy who looks like he hasn’t showered in a month. You know…in the movies. As Hollywood’s obligatory smirk at the Christian idea that there really is going to be an “end”.  I doubt there’s going to be enough time for an “I told you so” when the end that was near becomes the end that is here, but something in me thinks it would feel really good.

The 24th chapter of Matthew has Jesus Himself wearing the sandwich board. As I read it I imagine the looks on the faces of His disciples as He told them the story of “the end”, a story they, and all those that come after them would take part in.  You and I are those that come after them. We are living in the story of “the end”, and it is nearer now than it was then. So I’m listening.

~ “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, claiming ‘I am the Christ’, and will deceive many.” (24:4-5)

Deception is rampant, and will only increase. I don’t want to be one of ‘many’. I want to be numbered with those who have followed Him closely enough to know His truth and His presence. I want to be with those who know that when He returns, He will not need to “claim” to be the Christ. It will be unmistakable. 

~ “You will hear of wars and rumors of war, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.” (24:6)

Are we not just easily alarmed? That’s more of a statement than a question, actually, so don’t try to answer it. Every new twist in the story alarms us. Every election, every law that’s passed, every talk of war, every sign that things are getting darker, causes us, the Church, to cry out with alarm. We become more and more indignant that things are getting so much worse, so out of control, so unchristianly.  We start passing around petitions and staging protests, as though man has any power to stop the page from turning. We live as though we are “in the beginning”. But we aren’t. We are living in “the end”. It is no place for alarm.

~ “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me.” (24:9)

Yes, we will be persecuted and hated. Many will die for their faith. There will be great deception and wickedness will increase. The love of many will grow cold. The end holds great, unequaled distress. The sun will darken and there will be no light from the moon. Stars will fall from the sky.  It is the story of “the end”. But then…

~ “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” (24:30-31)

And the end will be over. And we, His Church, will enter into the beginning of something beautiful, something beyond our comprehension. A beginning with no end.

 May every new twist and turn, every event, every evidence of the increase of darkness, cause us to look heavenward, unalarmed and undeceived. And may we determine to draw our hearts ever closer to Him until at last we see Him face to face.

The end is near. Don’t be alarmed. It’s a good thing.

how many times?

Matthew 18:21-35 stands in stark contrast to a particular theory prevalent in the counsel many receive, both secular and christian.  The question of “how many times” is answered by many with “not enough to enable them”.

Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive his brother when he sinned against him.  Seven times? That probably sounded like a fairly generous number. But Jesus is far more generous than we are. “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (v.22) By the way, the definition of that number is “countless times”.

Jesus then went into the parable of the unmerciful servant, explaining that God has forgiven us of all of our debt, and so we should do likewise to our fellow man. And just so we don’t think we jumped into the shallow end of the pool, He adds “from your heart”.  That means we forgive, countless times, from the very center of our being. We forgive with our will, our emotions and our thoughts.  Countless times. The same brother, the same sin.

The definition of “forgive” in this passage is to release a debt, to “let go”. How many times have we said we have “forgiven” someone, but never let go of what they did to us? We forgave with our words, but we remain angry, we continue to think about what they did, how many times they did it and why they did it.  Our response to the countless times they’ve sinned against us is often to cut them out of our life, or at least out of our hearts.  We punish with silence, with anger and with detachment, all while saying they are forgiven.

We are called to more than lip service. We are called to release people from the debt of their sin against us, from our hearts. And it’s hard. Being a follower of Christ is not sissy work. This passage in Matthew is not about “enabling” or “disabling”. It’s not about trying to figure out how many times is too many. It’s about forgiving, and as with everything else Jesus taught, it becomes about our own heart.

On the surface, the enablement theory sounds good, like we have the “sinner’s” best interests at heart. It alludes to the idea that if we don’t “enable”, we will somehow “disable” their sin. The problem is that we have no power to “disable” anyone from sinning. Sin has it’s beginning in the heart, and power over the human heart belongs to God alone.

I really think the enablement theory is about us, the person being sinned against. Its our “out” from the “countless times” of having to forgive someone. It’s our way of making forgiveness make sense. It’s what we’re prone to, this constant attempt to make God’s ways seem logical, to fit our “common sense” way of thinking. But He is not a common God, and if His ways made sense to us, they wouldn’t be His ways. They would be our ways.

Countless times. Over and over. Forgive. Why would Jesus command such a thing of us? Perhaps part of the answer lies in listening to the answer to a different question.

“Father, how many times are You going to forgive me for sinning against You?”

“Countless times”.

the wheat forgets

Today was parable day as I followed Jesus into Matthew 13.  To be honest, parables are like riddles, and while I rock at puzzles, riddles make my head hurt.  Fortunately, the disciples were also riddle challenged, so Jesus explained His parables to them. I found the one about the wheat and tares particularly interesting today, so naturally, it becomes fodder for my blog.

In Matthew 13:24-30 Jesus gives the parable of the wheat and tares. Then in verses 36-43 He explains the parable. Let’s discuss, shall we?

In the parable, a man sowed good seed into his field, and then an enemy came in, unseen, and sowed weeds among the wheat seeds. When the wheat began to sprout, so did the weeds. So the servants asked the field owner if they should go into the field and pull up the weeds. The owner said no, let them both grow together, because if you try to pull up the weeds, you might pull up some of the wheat too. At harvest time, my reapers will gather the weeds and burn them, and then they will gather my wheat and bring it into my barn.

Jesus then explained that He represents the man who sowed the seed. The field is the earth, and the seed He sowed are Christians (sons of the Kingdom). The weeds are the sons of the wicked one, sown by Satan. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

So, I need to process this, and by process, I don’t mean create doctrine. I mostly mean speculate.

I am God’s good seed, and He has sown me into the world. I am where I am because He has planted me here. At the end of the age, I will be part of His great harvest, but I was not planted alone. I am planted with other seed like me, and together we are the harvest. My purpose is the same as theirs…to bring forth a crop…to bear Him fruit.

But the wheat is not alone. As it turns out, the earth is not just a wheat field. Not yet. The enemy has planted his own sons in the same field with the son’s of God, and it is God’s intention to leave them there, for now. Until harvest time. In the meantime, what does the wheat do about all these weeds?

Wheat and weeds, growing closely together. And by God’s own intention, the weeds are not to be gathered out of the field, because of the possibility of pulling up wheat. Could it be that sometimes wheat can look like a weed? If so, God clearly doesn’t want that ‘weedy looking wheat’ accidently pulled up with the weeds…which means God still considers it wheat, even if it looks like a weed. But I’m just speculating. Then again, if I’m wrong, what do we do about Peter? Remember him? Denied Christ three times. Was he wheat that became a weed and then turned back into wheat? Or was he wheat that looked suspiciously like a weed for awhile… wheat that Jesus prayed for.

I think sometimes, wheat is afraid of weeds. So they attempt to carve out a section of the field that is “weed free”. They don’t associate with weeds, won’t work in the same place that weeds work, won’t go to school with weeds, and can be heard treating the weeds with great contempt, despising them because they aren’t wheat. Wheat can become very distracted from their purpose (bringing forth fruit) because they are so busy watching and chastising the weeds. For being weeds.

I think wheat acts like that somtimes because it’s forgetful. That’s all. The wheat has simply forgotten.

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” Colossians 1:21

Wheat forgets that it was once a weed.

I think my speculating might make me a little unpopular. At least with the wheat. Especially the forgetful ones.

the overflow

Just yesterday I had a thought and decided I probably should not give it a voice. But then today I did my reading in Matthew and realized I needed to talk. I’ll talk to myself. You can listen if you’d like.

After reading a few things on the internet yesterday, here is the thought that popped into my head:  “Most of the christian bashing I hear and read, is done by other christians.” Being a christian myself, you can see why I thought it best to keep that thought to myself. And then I read Matthew 12:33-37, and one line leaped off of the page and slammed right into my brain, giving me what is at least a headache, but may quite possibly be a concussion. I should probably skip today’s nap, just in case.

“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Some of the things I have read, heard and spoken in the past few months, even years, are telling on the heart of the Church, on my own heart.  We bash pastors, churches and fellow christians. It seems we are always on the lookout for what christians are doing wrong, bringing into question whether they are “really” christians, or at a minimum, what kind of christian they are. Of course, because we are, after all, christians, we wrap it all up, put a big bow on it and call it “speaking the truth in love”. And then we go back to adjusting our robes and polishing our gavels.

To be fair, we don’t always go to that extreme. We keep a tighter rein on our tongues by limiting ourselves to complaining and grumbling against our brothers and sisters. We question their motives and their methods, and their true devotion, as though we ourselves are the barometer for all things right and true.

I do this. Me. I say ‘we’, because I’ve listened to ‘we’ so I know it’s ‘we’, but right now God is dealing with the ‘I’ in ‘we’.

They say that we can’t know what is in another person’s heart. Jesus begs to differ. All we have to do is listen. I have listened to the overflow of my own heart, and I am grieved. I am especially pained by the fact that I have caused others to get caught in my overflow.

Based on what I’ve seen, I do not have a tongue problem. I have a heart problem. I don’t want a heart like mine, I want a heart like His. So I listen to the overflow of God’s heart for His Church…and begin to seek an exchange of hearts. Mine for His.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—  for we are members of His body.”  Ephesians 5:25-28

Today, I apologize to His Church, His Bride, especially those who have found themselves caught in my overflow. I have not loved you as He has loved you. Today, I am going after His heart for you, because I want to change the overflow of mine.

Just A Glimpse

Matthew 12:1-13 is an interesting passage. Actually, it became interesting to me today, because today is really the first time I read it in search of God’s heart. I’ve read it many times before, and kind of understood the lesson in it, but today I squinted, and I caught a glimpse of something else.

I wonder if Jesus knew His disciples were hungry when He decided to lead them through a grocery store even though it wasn’t time to eat, according to the rules (actually, it was a grain field, but I’m picturing myself following Jesus and I don’t know that I would break any rules just to eat grain. I’d like to think I’d at least need a potato chip aisle.). I wonder if He knew the Pharisees were lurking about, watching and waiting. I wonder if this was a set-up. But that’s not what I saw when I squinted. I just like to wonder about things.

I read the entire passage three times before I saw it. There, in five little words in verse 7, I caught a glimpse of the heart I am after. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice…”.

“mercy: kindness or goodwill towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them”  “sacrifice:  animal or other “sacrifices,” as offered under the Law”. (Hebrew/Greek lexicon)

I won’t go into how so many of us know God according to the “rules” of Christianity. We know what is required of us, and we definitely know what is required of other people. I won’t talk about our determination of how much we will help someone is often made by how much they are willing to help themselves, or by whether or not they are willing to start following the rules.  Let’s not discuss how obsessive-compulsive we can be about rules and regulations, while completely dismissing the affliction of the alcoholic standing in front of us…or the one who can’t stop taking pain medication, or eating food…or the one who is losing everything because they don’t have a money management skill in their body, and they have an affinity for making bets.  If they would all just follow the rules, they wouldn’t need our help, right? But I won’t go into any of that today.

Instead, I will stand in front of a mirror. I will watch as I continually beat myself up every time I fail to meet the requirements of the rules. I’ll listen to the chastisement of my own heart against me for being unable to go far without falling down. I’ll watch the look of contempt on my face as I see myself once again struggling to untangle things, knowing my entanglement was my own fault.

I have glimpsed God’s heart today. And now I know. The emotional beatings, chastisement, and contempt that I assumed were His, were only mine.

“I desire mercy…”  It’s just a glimpse.

what did i expect?

Blind people see. Lame people walk. The unclean are now clean. Deaf people hear. Dead people are now alive. And the lost are being found. Blessed is the one who doesn’t walk away because he was expecting something else.

That was Jesus’ answer to John the Baptist’s inquiry from prison:  “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:-6)

Then Jesus asked the crowd about their expectations of John the Baptist. Only those expecting a prophet would not have been disappointed.

Jesus described “this generation” by their expectations, and the fickleness of those expectations. “That” generation may be no different than “this” generation.

The Messiah that was “expected” would have been a royal warrior. One who would overthrow the oppression of the Roman rule and establish the Jewish Kingdom. To say the least, He was not what they expected. Turns out, they expected far too little of Him.

What about us? Are we any different? I know some who have walked away because they didn’t get what they expected from Jesus. The problem is not who Jesus is or what He does or doesn’t do. The problem is what we expect of Him.

We expect Him to change our spouse so that we can have a happy marriage. He instead teaches us the true meaning of dying to ourselves. We expect Him to keep us employed so we can pay our bills. He takes away our job, and we learn dependency on the One who provides when there is no provision in sight. We make a plan for our lives and expect Him to make it happen. He throws out our plan and we find ourselves in the middle of something we never dared to dream up, and we have no idea where we’re heading or how to get there. So we have to continually seek Him for our next step. We expect a life without pain or suffering. We get troubles, trials, and suffering that bring us face to face with mercy, comfort, and a place of refuge like no other. We expect happiness, not realizing that happiness is fleeting. He gives us joy, which abides in the deep place of our heart even in the midst of difficulty. We expect punishment and receive forgiveness.

We expect a “saved” life to be lived out on this earth basically the way we see fit. We expect to see Jesus in heaven, but until then, we’re on our own for the most part. We expect to have lives that won’t really matter or make a difference. We expect to have a relationship with Jesus that doesn’t include His Body, that doesn’t require us to walk in submission to others, that doesn’t seek to force our hearts out into the open. We expect our lives to be, well, ours.

You see, we too expect too little of Jesus.

Until our expectations of Jesus change, He will never meet them. Hopefully, we won’t walk away before we realize that He has far surpassed every expectation.

would I go?

I tried to imagine myself among the twelve men Jesus called and then sent in chapter 10 of the gospel of Matthew. As I read the scriptures, I pictured myself standing among them, hearing these instructions for the first time with them. I then wondered how I would receive His instructions today, in the world I inhabit, in the Church as it is today. What follows are my thoughts as I read chapter 10 as though I am standing with the twelve. In all fairness though, these are not just my own thoughts. I have heard the same kind of thoughts expressed by others, so I can’t take all of the credit (or the rap) for what follows.

“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.”   What if it doesn’t work? What if I don’t have enough faith in that? What if I pray for them and they don’t get healed or come back to life? Then I’ll look like an idiot, and I’ll make people doubt Your power.

“Do not take any gold or silver…take no bag for the journey or extra tunic or sandals…”  No provisions? No money? That doesn’t seem very prepared to me. What if there’s an emergency? How can I wear the same clothes the whole time? Is it wise to depend on the generosity of the people we are being sent to?

“Be on your guard..they will hand you over…and flog you.” Beg your pardon?  Surely there is some other, less dangerous way to do this.

“All men will hate you…when you are persecuted, flee…”  I don’t want people to hate me. I work very hard to make sure people like me. And I can’t run very fast. Seriously. I can’t.

“Do not  be afraid of those who kill the body  but cannot kill the soul.”  Don’t be afraid? I’m already afraid. I was afraid when you said “flog”. Now you’re saying I might die. I don’t know about this. I have a family to think about. 

“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” There must be some other meaning to that statement.

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”  I don’t know. This all sounds extreme. I’m going to have to pray about this. You can’t make this kind of commitment without a lot of prayer and counsel. I need to be wise and figure out if I am really being called to do something this radical.

I wonder. If Jesus chose 12 of us today, how many of us would still be standing there at the end of His instructions? Would there be one who would say “Here I am. Send me.”?

We don’t know what those disciples were thinking or feeling.  What we do know is this. Because of the commitment of the early followers of Jesus, you and I received the good news. The willingness of a few to lay down their lives for Christ completely changed the world. We also know that the world still needs to hear about Jesus.

As I put myself among them, hearing the instructions Jesus sent them out with, I marvel at their courage. And I am inspired by their love for the One sending them. I am also very aware that I don’t really know if I would have remained standing there. I need to search my heart and examine the strength of my love and commitment to Jesus and the radical way of life that comes with being His follower. And then I need to get at His feet and ask Him to strengthen that in me that feels so weak at the moment.

I should probably also stop trying to figure out just how much a flogging would hurt. I think I may be obsessing.