The Attributes of God:

Answering the Call Matthew 10:1-15 “And when you go, preach, saying, ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”               What is your goal in life?  At the end of your life, what do you desire to accomplish?  These are no idle questions to ponder and dismiss.  They are the hard questions we need to ask so that our life has genuine purpose and meaning. Tim Kizziar wrote, “Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be the fear of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”  Too often, we spend our lives in pursuit of the things that, in the end, are insignificant and temporary rather than meaningful and eternal.             In response to the spiritual needs around them, Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom's message.  In 9:38, he challenges his disciples to...

Seeing as Jesus Sees Matthew 9:35-38 “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”               “Seeing” is a significant thread woven throughout the chapter, focusing on what Jesus sees in contrast to what others see.  Throughout the chapter, we find Jesus seeing people, not from a physical but spiritual perspective.  In verse 2, He saw the faith of the men who brought the Paralytic.  In verse 9, while people saw a despised tax collector, Jesus saw someone who would be a disciple and writer.  In verse 22, Jesus did not see an unclean woman but a woman who was desperate and in need of healing and had faith in his ability to provide for her needs.  In verse 23, Jesus enters a room of mourners, and he sees a hopeless crowd in the face of death.  In verse 30, Jesus give physical and spiri...

The God of Hope Matthew 10:20-22, 27-34 “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.”               When we face unrelenting adversity, we lose hope, and despair grips the soul.  After contrasting the new order of faith versus the old order of religious ritual, Matthew gives examples of how the old brought despair but the new brought hope.   The first individual was a woman suffering from a continuous menstrual flow.  In the Old Testament, the period of a woman’s monthly cycle rendered her ritually unclean.  Because of this, anything she touched would also be unclean. Consequently, for the past 12 years, she was regarded as unclean and unable to participate in any temple worship. While the physical ailment was not life-threatening, it was untreatable and life-changing.  As one unclean, she was limited in her contact with people and would have been looked down...

The Old versus the New:  Death versus Life Matthew 9:18-34 “He entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.”               Having compared the old religious order with the new order of faith, Matthew now gives us a series of miracles highlighting and contrasting the Old and the New.  The old order operated based on a religious system in which works attained salvation and reason explained life.  The old was powerless to overcome death. But the new order operates by faith, allowing God to transform us supernaturally. The new order brings victory over sin and its effects by giving us victory over death.               As Jesus contrasts the hopelessness of the old religious system and the hope of the new, we surprisingly find a religious leader (identified by Mark and Luke as Jairus) who comes to Jesus with a desperate...

Outward Conformity vs. Inward Transformation Matthew 9:14-17 “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.”                 The disciples of John were troubled. This was not the first time that the disciples of John had conflicts with the disciples of Christ.  While John readily and wholeheartedly supported the rising ministry of Jesus, his disciples were more reluctant.  For them, John represented the maintenance and advancement of the Jewish faith, while the disciples of Jesus seemed to be undermining the rituals and practices of the Jews.  In their eyes, the criticism of the Pharisees that Jesus and his disciples were not rigidly upholding the Law and Traditions of the Jews seemed valid.  Even though the Old Testament law did not specifically command fasting (except on the Day of Atoneme...

The Unlikely Disciple Matthew 9:9-13 “He saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector’s booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow Me!’”               With God, it does not matter where you have been; it only matters where you are going.  For the Christian, what defines us as a person is not the past but the future.  Matthew illustrates this principle in his life and calling to be a disciple.             Of all the 12 disciples of Jesus, Matthew was the least likely.  We know little of Matthew's background besides that he was formerly a tax collector. Apart from his mention in the gospel, we find no other mention of him in the church's history after the gospel.  It was enough that Matthew was formerly a tax collector.  Tax collectors were private subcontractors who would collect tools and taxes on behalf of the Ro...

  The Authority of Jesus Matthew 9:1-8 “So that you many know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”               The religious leaders were shocked and enraged.  After his brief respite from the crowds, Jesus again returns to his adopted hometown of Capernaum.  When news of his arrival spread, people gathered to hear his teaching. One group of people who heard of Jesus’ presence was a group of men with a paralyzed friend.  In this story, we discover three important lessons.  First, we find out that some accidents or illnesses directly result from sin. While we do not know the exact cause of his accident, Christ reveals that it was connected to the sinful actions of the individual.  While illness and accidents often result from a broken world in which disease and injury stem from the fall of Adam and Eve rather than the judgment upon an individua...