Month: August 2020

Week 36 Matthew

The last big teaching section in Matthew is in chapters 23, 24 and 25. In my bible it’s written almost totally in red-letters – the Lord talks to his disciples for about 136-verses.
The bible is an impression-making book. As I read the bible impressions are made on me. Impression-making isn’t always the same. Some things in the bible don’t make too much of an impression. Or they might not make much of an impression one time, but then another time they do. And I think that some things make more of an impression on some people than others.
Anyway, reading through this time the parable of the talents made an impression on me. The master in the parable says to his servant: well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount…
The master says he’s interested in three things:
Whether the guy did well.
Whether the guy was good and faithful in doing what he did.
Whether he was a faithful handler of what he had.
The one thing the master wasn’t too concerned about was the amount the guy had.
The master seems to be saying that the amount I gave you is irrelevant. Even if I gave you virtually nothing, the real question is: what did you do with it?

Note: quote from Matthew 25:21 & 23 (NLT). Reading report: Total read = 1385 pages. Total to read = 1866 pages. 74% read in 66.6% of 2020.

Week 36 Matthew

The Lord’s parable in Matthew 20 begins: the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers.
I’ve read it before, and I totally understand the laborers’ complaint about pay inequity: if we work ten hours in the hot sun and get paid 1 denarius, then a guy who works only 1 hour should only get 1/10th of a denarius.
The complainers – who I think make good sense – are the exact people that the Lord says don’t.
The landowner offers the unhappies a couple of common sense explanations: I haven’t done anything wrong; I gave you what we agreed to; if I decide to give someone a more generous contract I can do that; etc. But then he adds a final not-so-common sense reason. In the kingdom: the last shall be first and the first last.
The normal outside-the-kingdom rule is that the first shall be first and the last shall be last. But inside the kingdom the first shall be last.
Values inside the kingdom shift by 180-degrees.
Outside the kingdom doesn’t mix very well with inside the kingdom; the rules that worked outside lack authority once you get inside.
Outside the kingdom you earn what you get; inside you get what you didn’t really earn.

Note: quotes from Matthew 20:1 & 16 (NASB)

Week 35 Matthew

One of the stories in Matthew is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
In this story Matthew is making the point that the Lord is the Supreme Master of Meteorological Events. So while I put together my Composite Sketch of the Lord’s Spheres of Influence this story checks off one big box.
But I also notice something right in the middle of this demonstration. Just before calming the waves the Lord says to the disciples: why are you afraid? You have so little faith.
I just read that exact phrase and so I page back to Matthew 6:30. Little faith.
I get out a word book and look up little faith. Matthew uses the expression four times.
Little is a quantitative word. Let’s say I draw a vertical scale – something like one of those old mercury thermometers – and I call it my Faith Scale. The bottom registers a basically zero amount of faith. No faith at all. The top is a maximum amount of faith.
Where is little on this scale? Somewhere close to the bottom. I wish little was not so inexact. I’d prefer a scale of one-to-ten where the disciples’ little-faith is – let’s say – a #2 on the scale.
But let’s face it: my personal concern is that if faith is actually measurable then where am I on the scale?
The fact that the disciples were low on the scale is only a small consolation.

Note: quote from Matthew 8:26 (NLT)

Week 35 Matthew

Not all bible passages are equal for a bible reader.
For example 1 Chronicles 1-9 was a high-speed read for me. But when I get to Matthew 5-7 I pretty much have to gear-down.
So…mental conflict reading the gospels. How much do I plough through to save time; how much do I ease off to absorb content? The answer is probably: somewhere in the middle.
Anyway I had a case of slow-down-to-think in chapter six: Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, because then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven.
I remembered back awhile, driving into a fast food restaurant. There was a woman coming through the front door – I knew her; she went to the church. She had a cardboard sandwich container in one hand and a tall coffee cup in the other and she walked over to a guy sitting in the sun on the concrete, handed them to him and turned and left. The guy was wearing a parka and he set the cup on the ground in front of him and started eating.
I can’t be absolutely sure but I think that action was a Matthew 6:1 example of someone not acting so she’d be admired in the moment (it was a very quick and discrete exchange).
I’m also not sure about this but I think that at a future reckoning this woman will be rewarded for her hidden action.

Note: quote from Matthew 6:1 (NLT)

Week 35 Matthew

Just before the start of his public life the Lord spent forty days in the desert being tempted by Satan.
The first temptation was a food-related one, a hunger-temptation. Food was part of Adam and Eve’s test. Same with Daniel and his friends. But the Lord’s was a near-starvation-temptation.
I thought back to the Esau story. He was famished and traded off his inheritance to his wily brother for a plate of food (which has to be one of the most stupendously idiotic exchanges in the bible).
The Lord was hungry too. Way hungrier than Esau.
Satan said to him: if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.
The Lord didn’t say anything to him about being the Son of God. Didn’t say anything about his miracle-working capacities. He just bypassed Satan’s comments like so many monotonous acoustic vibrations thrumming in the desert heat. He got to the real point. People shouldn’t: live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The main thing the Lord was getting at is that there’s a material dimension to life that’s in the need-to-eat-bread-to-stay-alive domain and there’s a non-material dimension to life that’s in the need-to-take-in-every-word-that-comes-from-God-to-stay-alive domain.
Two parts: Life A and Life B. Bread for Life A; words of God for Life B.

Note: quotes from Matthew 4:3 & 4 (NASB)

Week 34 Matthew

I was thinking some more about Matthew’s list of OT names in chapter one.
I was wondering how much OT-related content Matthew had brought over into his gospel.
The simplest way for me to do that was to count how many times he quoted straight out of the OT. The editors of my bible already did some homework to help me. They typeset OT quotes using all upper case letters. Here’s an example: …for so it has been written by the prophet, AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH…
I got a sheet of paper and then started scanning through Matthew looking for upper case sentences. I wrote the references in a column on the left-hand side of the page. When I got to the bottom I started a second column at the top. Fifty references. I’m solid with the number 50 because I’m pretty sure I missed some. 50 OT references in 28 chapters rounds up to 1.8 OT references per chapter.
I noticed Matthew also dropped names: the Queen of the South, Solomon, Jonah, Elijah, Abel, Zechariah, Noah, who I guess he figured any reader would know about. Like knowing who George Washington was.
Two conclusions from the exercise:
Matthew used a bunch of OT material in his NT book.
If I haven’t read the OT I won’t get what Matthew is driving at as well as I could.

Note: quote from Matthew 2:5-6 (NASB)

Week 34 Matthew

Joseph shows up on page one of the NT so technically I’d considered him a NT guy. But he appears just one page after Malachi so he’s a kind of borderline-OT guy, a just barely legitimate NT guy.
My tendency is to batch die-hard OT guys under the Legalistic, Hard-liner, Paternalistic, Rules-is-Rules Guys heading. I know it’s a crazy stereotype, a dumb default but I still end up sliding Joseph closer to the chilly, impersonal, judicial side of the spectrum.
So this story is a bit of a surprise. Joseph’s engaged to Mary but before they marry she admits she’s pregnant. Joseph’s reaction? Don’t know for sure. I figure he might have been shocked, upset, baffled, dismayed, angry; felt betrayed, jealous, blind-sided. Can’t say what-all. But his fiancée had had sexual intercourse with another guy.
Matthew tells us this much: because Joseph…was a righteous man and did not want to expose (Mary) to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
There’s something going on with Joseph. Mary hurt him but he doesn’t want to disgrace her publicly, loudly, explicitly, humiliatingly in return.
A basic principle of life is that if someone hurts me I want to hurt him back. It’s a foundational rule of homo sapienity. But Joseph breaks from the pack.
An example of NT-style righteousness shows up on page one: don’t take revenge on your fiancée.

Note: quote from Matthew 1:19 (NIV)

Week 34 Matthew

Before I’m half a dozen words into the NT I’m into another list of names. More than forty family names in sixteen verses.
Matthew says in verse one that his gospel story is about Jesus. In fact he calls it: the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and he starts by highlighting the family tree of Jesus that goes through David, all the way to Abraham.
Hundreds of pages of OT anecdotes are reduced to a list of about four dozen names.
One nice surprise is that I recognize a few of them: Abraham Isaac Jacob Judah Perez Tamar Rahab Boaz Ruth Obed Jesse David Solomon Rehoboam Asa Jehoshaphat Joram Uzziah Hezekiah Manasseh Josiah Zerubbabel.
There are stories behind the names. I’m guessing Matthew figured he could get away with sixteen verses of genealogical shorthand because his audience already knew the stories.
Matthew 1:1-16 is a kind of argument for reading the OT because Matthew is telling me that the NT story of Jesus, the last person in his list is where I’ve being headed for the last thirty-three weeks. A kind of ending-beginning.
Abraham and Judah and Ruth and Solomon and Uzziah all lived their own independent personal lives in what seemed to me a pretty jagged, haphazard, coincidental, mish-mashed chain of tragic & comic family history. But Matthew is saying that, no, there was purpose behind it all. Jesus is the last link. He’s the exact one.

Note: quote from Matthew 1:1 (NASB)

Week 34 Matthew

In my print bible the OT ends on page 1334, a left-hand page, which only has three verses of Malachi on it so it’s about 80% white space.
There’s white space on the next page too. It only says two things. In a big bold font: The NEW TESTAMENT. Then a bit below that a more discrete heads-up: Words of Christ in RED LETTER. That’s all. It doesn’t say anything like START READING THE BIBLE HERE! or, SKIP THE FIRST 1334 PAGES. I’d have to fill those in myself.
I’m pretty sure it can be shown statistically that quite a few people prefer the NT to the OT. I do. Let’s say I lived in Russia in 1949 and Joseph Stalin condemned me to Siberia and I could only take along a copy of the OT or the NT I would take the NT. No question. On the other hand, if I could take the OT and the NT or just the NT I’d take both.
If I figured that the OT said anything enlightening at all, anything that helped me understand what was going on then I figure I’d be crazy not to read it even if the enlightening parts were mixed in with a bunch of hard-to-understand things. Which is why it’s taken me thirty-three weeks to get to page one of the NT.

Week 33 Malachi

Let’s say I’m living in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. The temple is rebuilt and animal sacrifices are back on the agenda.
Let’s say I have a prize-winning sheep.
And I also have an old worn-out crippled half-blind sheep.
I have to go up to the temple to sacrifice one of them. Question: which one do I choose?
Pretty clearly for me it makes better economic sense to give the Lord the old sheep that’s on-its-last-legs.
So one of the first reminders Malachi gives is that OT regulations aren’t just stand-alone exercises. He asks the people: when you give blind animals as sacrifices, isn’t that wrong?…Isn’t it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased? The Lord clarifies things when he says: you have despised my name by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar.
The big issue with giving a beat-up animal to the Lord is that the animal isn’t the big issue.
When I sacrifice I’m sending two signals: a publicly observable signal, and a private signal, a signal to the Lord.
Anyone else seeing me sacrificing my sheep will be thinking: good-religious-guy.
But sacrificing a bad animal to the Lord is like holding up a sign to the sky saying: I Despise You.
So is the secret of sacrificing making sure I offer a blue-ribbon animal? Not really. The secret is to not despise the Lord.

Note: quotes from Malachi 1:8 & 6 (NLT)