Matthew 16 -- The Two Choices In How We Live

In verse 24, Jesus said, “If people want to follow Me, they must give up the things they want.  They must be willing even to give up their lives to follow Me.”

 

My commentary used what He said here to show the two approaches to life that Jesus presented to His disciples:

 

Deny yourself                                                                    Live for yourself

Take up your cross                                                          Ignore the cross

Follow Christ                                                                      Follow the world

Lose your life for His sake                                             Save your life for your own sake

Forsake the world                                                           Gain the world

Keep your soul                                                                  Lose your soul

Share His reward and glory                                          Lose His reward and glory

 

It’s not difficult to see that the world’s view is selfish and prideful and goes against everything God as said in all of Scripture.  Christ’s view instead throws out selfishness and self-centeredness.  “It is in what man denies himself that truly makes him a man,” I tell my sons often.  In this case, we see that it’s only in giving up what the world says is living that we truly begin to live as God originally intended.

 

Father, when I’m tempted to live by the ways of this world, shout loudly and remind me that I am not OF this world.  I am not my own.  I was bought at an unimaginable price, and I am Yours.  Help me to act like it.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 15 -- What Pharisees Try To Do Even Today

God really didn’t like what the Pharisees had done to hijack His people’s hearts.  “They’d developed traditions that had been handed down, allegedly (according to the rabbis) from Moses to the elders as oral law.  It had eventually been written down and called the Mishnah.  They’d made it more important and more authoritative than the original law of Moses,” my commentary noted.

 

“Jesus let them know that they were breaking God’s law by practicing their traditions … Jesus made it clear that obedience to tradition made a person disobedient to the Word of God, and this proved the tradition to be false … Tradition deals with ritual, while God’s truth deals with reality.  Tradition brings empty words to the lips, but truth penetrates the heart and changes the life.  Actually, tradition robs a person of the power of the Word of God … God wants us to give Him our hearts, and not just our lip service.  We believe in the heart, love from the heart, sing from the heart, obey from the heart, and give from the heart.” 

 

If our worship is simply lip service and doesn’t come from the heart, we might as well not even have shown up!

 

My commentary wrapped up this chapter with six spiritual lessons:

 

(1)    The enemies of truth are often religious people who live according to man’s traditions.  Satan often uses religion to blind the mind of sinners to the simple truths of God’s Word.

(2)    We must beware of any religious system that gives us an excuse to sin and disobey God’s Word.

(3)    We must also beware of worship that comes from the lips only, and not from the heart.

(4)    If we major on the inner man, the outer man will be what God wants it to be.  True holiness comes from within.

(5)    It is difficult to break free of tradition.  There is something in us that wants to hold to the past and make no changes.

(6)    We dare not limit Christ to any one nation or people.  The gospel came ‘to the Jews first’, but today is for all men in all nations.

 

Father, the Pharisees were trying to create or manufacture holiness through actions that did not change the heart.  True holiness only comes from You when our hearts have connected with You and are not set on being about us.  It can’t be contrived or forced upon us.  Keep that from happening and open our hearts to true worship of the One who loves us just as we are, but Who also wants to make us more like Himself.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 14 -- What Faith Really Is

Two miracles Matthew recorded tell us a lot about Jesus and how we should relate to Him.  When 5000 men plus women and children had stayed late out in the country to hear Jesus and to have their friends healed, the disciples encouraged Him to send them home to get their supper.  Rather than agreeing, Jesus was moved with compassion for them.  My commentary says this was a deep feeling, meaning “to have one’s inner being stirred.”  “It is stronger than sympathy.”  It also asked the question, “If our heavenly Father has such compassion toward us, should we not have compassion toward others?”

 

“When they considered the time and the place, they came to the conclusion that nothing could be done to solve the problem … How like many of God’s people today.  For some reason, it is never the right time or place for God to work.  Jesus watched His frustrated disciples.  He Himself knew what He was intending to do.”

 

He finally took what they had and not only fed everyone, but each disciple was left to carry out a basketful of leftovers!  I wonder if that weighed on them as they headed for their boat.

 

Jesus stayed on shore and set them off in their boat.  He knew the storm was coming and He purposefully sent them out.  The storm came because they were in the will of God, not out of it.  If we are out of His will, the storms He brings will be correcting storms, my commentary says.  If in His will, they will be perfecting storms.  And that’s what this one was.

 

What was Christ doing while they were fretting?  He was praying for them!  And even today He is in heaven making intercession for us in our storms, asking God to perfect our faith and trust in Him.

 

In the same way that He waited for just the right moment, when all human hope is gone, He’ll do that with us as well.  To test our faith, He has to remove every human prop.

 

My commentary also mentioned that Jesus walked on water to show His disciples that the very thing they feared was only a staircase for them to come to Him.  Today, our trials are ways for Him to come to us, using our trials to get to us.

 

Peter started out well, but ended up crying out to Jesus as he attempted to walk on water towards Him.  My commentary said, “Faith is not believing in spite of evidence, but obeying in spite of consequence.”

 

“If Jesus says, ‘Come,’ then that word is going to accomplish its intended purpose.  Whatever He starts, He completes.”

 

Father, help me to understand that faith is obeying in spite of consequences.  When I hear Your voice, let me know that You have spoken to me and help me to believe that Your commands enable me to accomplish Your will.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 10 -- Chosen To Know

Talking to His followers, Jesus said, “You have been chosen to know the secrets about the kingdom of heaven.”  He then told them eight parables – stories that could be taken at face value by those who would never understand, but stories that held deep hidden meaning to the chosen.

 

Had we been there to hear these parables back then, would we have grasped their importance without the aid of Jesus’ explanations?  We are so fortunate to have His explanations of them written down for us to discover and understand. 

 

Yet even with all we have today to unveil the meaning of them, there are so many in the world who will never read these parables.  Nor will they understand them.

 

I watched this morning as maybe 100 students gathered around the flagpole to pray and worship God.  I wondered how many of my own fellow students would have done that all those years ago.

 

You’re at work, Father, and I thank You.  This generation faces so much falsehood from the world and it so desperately needs Your truth.  I’m thankful that You are calling out many – that You have chosen these precious kids to know You early in their lives, and that they boldly stand up for what You’ve been revealing to them!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 12 -- What GOD Wants, NOT What WE Want

Jesus had to show the religious leaders of their day what was wrong that they either couldn’t see or wouldn’t admit.  He quoted Scripture, saying, “I want kindness more than I want animal sacrifices.”  Doing the right thing was much more important that doing things right.

 

The Pharisees and priests had developed Sabbath traditions in trying to quantify every conceivable aspect of the Law.  Those traditions had not been given by God or handed down by Moses.  They’d gone from “do no work on the Sabbath” to disallowing people from taking heads of grain that God had caused to grow for food when they were hungry!  They’d taken out compassion by forbidding the good deed of healing on the Sabbath.  The religious leaders had uncompassionately used a man with a crippled hand as a weapon against Jesus, attempting to goad Him into healing on the Sabbath.  He simply told the man, “Hold out your hand.”  He never said, “Be healed.”

 

Jesus knew their hearts and called them out on it by saying that they’d certainly pull their sheep out of a ditch on the Sabbath, but not a man!

 

One thing my commentary pointed out I hadn’t considered before – Jesus mentioned how an evil spirit could come out of a person, then come back with seven more spirits and make the person much worse off.  It said, “It is not enough to clean house; we must also invite in the right tenant.  The Pharisees were proud of their clean houses, but their hearts were empty!  Mere religion, or reformation, will not save.  There must be regeneration, the receiving of Christ into the heart.”

 

Finally, Jesus identified his true family members as “those who do what My Father in heaven wants.”  It’s not about what we want, but about what God wants, and Jesus had quoted that at the first of this chapter:  “I want kindness more than I want animal sacrifices.”

 

Father, help me to see those who are hurting and show me the best way to show compassion to them.  Don’t let me not be compassionate because of manmade rules.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 11 -- Come, Take, Learn -- Deeper Peace Available At Each Level

God knew He had me this morning when I read Jesus’ words, “Come to Me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest.  Accept My teachings and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives.  The teaching that I ask you to accept is easy; the load I give you to carry is light.”

 

It sure seems that I’m tired and exhausted a lot lately, and it really feels like I’ve got a heavy burden.  My commentary brought out three commands in those verses:

 

Come – “The Pharisees all said ‘Do’ … This invitation is open to those who are exhausted and burdened down.  That is exactly how the people felt under the yoke of pharisaical legalism.”  They were sick and tired of being sick and tired, trying to feel better about themselves by trying to keep all of the commandments while seeing how miserably they failed at the task!

 

Take – Christ gives us rest, but we have to accept what He’s given us.  Taking His yoke means becoming his disciple and learning from Him.  It’s a deeper experience.  “That deeper rest is surrender and obedience, and that word ‘easy’ means well-fitting.  He has just the yoke that is tailor-made for our lives and needs.  The burden  of doing His will is not a heavy one.”

 

Learn – “This step is a process.  As we learn more about Him, we find a deeper peace, because we trust Him more.”  The more we trust Him, the more our faith grows, increasing our trust and giving us a deeper peace.

 

Father, when I see that I am tired and don’t have peace, remind me to check and see if I’m forgetting one of these commands.  Am I coming to You with my burdens?  Am I taking the peace You have to offer me?  And am I learning more about You and Your Son, or am I simply coasting?  Show me what I’m missing.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Matthew 10 -- Reminders of 10 Years Ago

My commentary indicates that Jesus’ warnings to His disciples before their “tour” commenced may actually be for a future time, since no record indicates that they ever encountered the difficulties He mentioned during their trips.

 

Verse 19 and 20, though, always remind me of the past – my first trip to Ukraine to get my appointment back so I could go get my oldest son.  As I waited to speak with the head of the National Adoption Center, these verse came to mind.  I knew I was obeying God in being there, and it seemed that they were doing everything they could to prevent me from adopting.  I made it clear that I was there because God had told me to be there to get my son.  There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever.  It was amazing seeing the transformation on the director’s face and to see her willingness to grant me an appointment.  God had opened that door.  When my son and I returned In July 2005 to get him a brother, it was even more evident.  God had been busy opening doors and hearts ahead of our arrival, and although the expected wait time was four weeks minimum, our trip was 18 days door-to-door!

 

When we do not deny Him, He is quick to help us.

 

Father, I will never forget those days.  Watching You work on my behalf to give my boys a home and a father was incredible!  You taught me so much about trusting and obeying You, regardless of what the work might think.  Thank You for those memories!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford