Posts that reference the Gospel of Matthew

Secrets

He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, And light dwells with Him. Daniel 2:22

According to a study published in 2017, the average person is holding on to at least thirteen secrets, five of which they’ve never told another living soul. These aren’t what-I-got-you-for-Christmas kind of secrets, either. They are heavy, burdensome secrets like lies told, trusts violated, marriage vows broken, and crimes committed ranging from theft to assault. Thirteen of them.

We expend tremendous mental energy to keep them hidden, only to have the memory and regret assault us in our quietest, private moments. The guilt and shame associated with the secrets come out as anger and irritability. Secret-keepers can become bullies or manipulators, protecting the secret at all costs. Sometimes, the cost is loss of relationships. Sometimes, it’s loss of health. Occasionally, tragically, secret-keepers have taken their own lives rather than face exposure.

We have lived in fear of exposure of our secrets and our sins since Eden. But we don’t have to.

We are invited and encouraged to bring those secrets to Christ. In Matthew 11:28 Jesus called for all who were burdened to come to Him for rest, whether burdened by the standards of the Law or burdened by failure – even secret failure – to live up to it. Peter echoes that in 1 Peter 5:6-7 “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

Letting go of our secrets requires humility. We have to own our secrets and the failures behind them. Primarily I mean owning them before God. (There are undoubtedly times when confession to others is in order, but public humiliation is rarely helpful.) When we do, God does an amazing thing — He covers them. He doesn’t hide them again under layers of shame, but He covers them with His love and His righteousness. Theologically, this is called atonement. God acted it out when He covered Adam and Eve with animal skins. He gave it to Israel in an object lesson when the broken law tablets in the ark were covered with the blood of the sacrifice. He completed the covering when Christ died and atoned for our sins.

Letting go of our secrets requires trusting God. We have to trust that He will keep His promise to cover the secrets, (He will) and that He won’t cast us out when we ask. (He won’t). Romans 10:11 and John 6:37 assure us. God knows all of our deep, dark secrets, and He has taken action to deal with them, beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing to the present day.

Letting go of our secrets requires letting go. It sounds obvious, but sometimes this is the hardest part. We have long memories and much more experience with the conditional, incomplete forgiveness and acceptance that others offer, rather than the total atonement God gives us. In Isaiah 54:4, God promises He won’t shame us again. For those of us who have carried secrets as an integral part of our selves, it takes time to grasp that God has taken them, and we no longer have to carry the burden for ourselves. It can be a hard habit to break. Added to that, one of Satan’s lines of attack is to try and convince us that we still deserve our shame.

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we have a Great High Priest as our advocate, and as a result, we can boldly and confidently approach God’s throne to obtain (not just ask for, but receive) grace and mercy when we need it. (Hebrews 4:14-16) Even … and especially, when it comes to dealing with our secrets.

Still Hosanna

By Paula

Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: “Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Hosanna in the highest!” Matthew 21:9

Hosanna is a Hebrew word, a prayer.

Save now.

It is a call for God to do what only He can do.

In the first century the Jews cried out for Jesus to deliver them from political corruption and oppression, from the curse of sickness and disability, from a religious system that replaced intimacy with God with ritual and formalism.

But Jesus came to deliver them from sin, not Rome. From sin, not disease. From sin and not religion.

The crowds couldn’t grasp that their biggest problem was not the world around them. It was much closer to home.

It was sin within their own individual hearts.

Like the crowds, we cry out for the same things. Deliverance. Relief. Restoration.

Good things, serious needful things.

Could it be that we also miss the fact that our greatest need is deliverance from our sin and not our situations?

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

Let These Words Sink Down into Your Ears

By Paula

“Let these WORDS sink down into your ears, for the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.” But they did not understand this saying, and it was hidden from them so that they did not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask Him about this saying. Luke 9:44-45

Before His death, Jesus spoke very frankly with His disciples about the coming events. He was going to be betrayed, handed over, and crucified, but He would rise again after three days. Everyone who heard Him understood the WORDS He was saying, but none of them grasped the reality of them. Even as the events unfolded before them, the disciples struggled with how things played out. Instead of clinging to their faith in Christ, in who He is, and what they had already witnessed from Him, that faith gave way to fear for their very lives. They heard the hatred in the mob’s cries and the religious leaders’ hypocritical disdain. They saw the brutality and the scorn of the Romans. That very natural fear led to doubts about this man they had given up everything to follow. Had they misunderstood? Was this the way it was supposed to be?

Surely, some of the longest hours in their lives were those between the Upper Room and the empty tomb.

The Resurrection changed all that. The doubts and fears gave way to the boldness and fire at Pentecost and beyond. The WORDS that Jesus said became real. Things that they struggled to grasp in those hours in between made sense at last in ways that were beyond their imagination.

Even now, with the Holy Spirit living in us, with the completed canon of Scripture readily available to us, and with 2000 years of church history to draw upon, we have the same trouble grasping the WORDS of Jesus.

Toward the end of His earthly ministry, He said, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.” (Matthew 24:9) And we struggle to understand why culture is so hostile to our values.

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. (Matthew 24:7) And yet we trust treaties and military buildups to protect us and depend on science and technology to fix everything else.

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24:12) We’re still shocked at scandals that reveal the depth of our self-absorption and misogyny.

Jesus told us these things would happen, and now we are living in the in-between time like the disciples in those hours between crucifixion and resurrection. We wrestle with questions – Why doesn’t God do something? Is He even paying attention? Why is everything a struggle?

But when He comes again, and He will just as surely as He resurrected, everything will make sense. The questions and the frustrations will melt into worship and affirmation that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His words will be fulfilled in ways outside the bounds of our imagination.

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Peace. He has overcome. We’ll know exactly what those WORDS mean. Just a little longer.

The Chiasm: X Marks the Spot Proverbs 6:16-19

By Paula Wiseman

What in the world is a chiasm and why would anybody care about knowing that?

A chiasm (kī-a-zəm) is a structure that appears over and over in Scripture. When you recognize it, the structure gives some insight into what the key point in a passage or section is. That helps us correctly interpret and apply what God’s word says.

Most of us (most of my readers, anyway) are “Greek”. By that, I mean we’re Western. We have a particular way of thinking and approaching information. We expect the points to be delivered in a logical order, with increasing importance until the climax is reached. When we read an op-ed, we expect the most important idea to come last. When we hear a commercial, the clincher is the last thing. Preachers save the most significant idea or application until the end. That’s Greek.

Hebrews, on the other hand, often write with a parallel mirror structure. The most important point is in the center with the subpoints building up to and stepping down from that high point. This structure is the chiasm. Its name comes from the Greek letter chi, which Is just an X.

It makes more sense with an example. Consider Proverbs 6:16-19.

16 There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

Now, let’s take verse 16 as the title, and let’s rearrange the rest.

16 There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him:

17 haughty eyes, 
    a lying tongue, 
        and hands that shed innocent blood, 
            18 a heart that devises wicked plans, 
        feet that make haste to run to evil, 
    19 a false witness who breathes out lies, 
and one who sows discord among brothers.

See the X on the left side?

Now as Greeks, we would read that list and conclude that sowing discord among brothers is the worst. And it’s bad, no question. Anything that makes God’s list of things He hates is bad. But the chiasm structure tells us that it’s the wicked heart that is the most serious problem. Considering verses like “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ) and Jesus’s words, “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15:18-19), we’d have to agree with that assessment.

But take a step back from the center and there is a parallel between hands and feet. Both indicate our actions. Another step back and we get a parallel between a lying tongue and a false witness. One more step out and there’s the haughty eyes (the attitude that you’re better than others) and the outworking of that attitude (causing discord).

The wickedness in the heart manifests in our actions, our words, and our attitudes. It is an abomination to God that wickedness dictates our attitudes, actions, and words. That doesn’t reflect Him or His image at all. He takes that very seriously.

Proverbs 6:16-19 is a good chiasm to start with, but there are many more. Some span entire chapters or even whole books. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at some other chiasms and see the fresh insights they offer.

Psalm 1 and Matthew 5

By Paula

Have you ever read Matthew 5:1-12 and Psalm 1 together?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.
Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Psalm 1 and Matthew 5
Old Testament and New Testament
An anonymous writer and Jesus Himself.
The messages are the same.

Blessing follows godliness, follows righteousness.
Godliness comes from knowing and following God’s instructions.

Do I?
Do I hunger and thirst for righteousness?
Do I have a pure heart?
Do I delight in God’s instructions?
Do I avoid ungodliness?
Do I lead others into that same blessedness by my example and by my words?

I Have Come: To Be King

By Paula Wiseman

Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” John 18:37

Nearly every Christmas movie and special reaches its climax with a declaration “that’s what Christmas is all about.” Multiple times in the gospel of John Jesus clearly says what Christmas was all about. First, Jesus explained He had come to do the Father’s will, resulting in salvation, preservation and glorification for us. Jesus explained He came for judgment. Jesus declared He came to bring us life, and even better, life more abundantly. He even said He came as Light. But toward the end of John’s Gospel in a conversation with Pilate, Jesus makes one more statement about why He came. He came to be King.

The paradox of the King’s earthly power versus eternal power

In John 18:31, we learn the whole reason the Jewish leaders brought Jesus to Pilate was that the governor had the power of life and death in Palestine. Just in this narrative, he ordered Jesus to be scourged. He ordered Barabbas released. He ordered the crucifixion, the relinquishing of the body to Joseph of Arimathea the posting of the guards at the tomb. Every one of those orders was obeyed. Pilate was quite used to exerting his power and being obeyed.

Pilate was therefore quite taken aback by the prisoner before him.

So Pilate *said to Him, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?”
Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.” John 19:10-11

Jesus knew Pilate was playing a part in the plan laid down by God. Pilate’s only power came at God’s pleasure. Jesus was going to give His life to redeem mankind and Pilate would give the order. In the garden, mere hours before, Jesus asserted that He had legions of angels (Matt 26:53) available to deliver Him from the Jews and from Rome. If He chose. Pilate could not conceive of that kind of power.

The paradox of the King’s judgment

Pilate thought he sat in judgment of Jesus. In reality, Jesus will judge him. God in the flesh, the King of all creation, the Ultimate Truth stood before him and he refused to recognize Him. Earlier in John’s gospel, Jesus explained:

“For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, … “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. John 5:22, 24

Pilate temporarily passed judgment on Jesus. Jesus will eternally judge Pilate and all others who reject Him.

The paradox of the King’s testimony

Pilate cross-examined Jesus, looking for evidence of His crimes. Jesus provided testimony as to His identity. The King said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” John 18:36

The King came to bear witness of this truth – that He was building a kingdom, not of this world. The great gift to us is that we can be part of this kingdom. If we hear His word (Hear is not just listen but understand and agree with. “I hear what you’re saying!”) and BELIEVE the Father who sent Jesus (Not believe the Father exists, but believe the things God says about Christ) we have eternal life, a gift beyond our comprehension.

That eternal life includes ruling with Jesus when He receives His eternal kingdom.

THAT’S what Christmas is all about. Christ came to pay the awful price required to bring us back into His kingdom. Merry Christmas!