Tag Matthew

Jesus’ Missing 30 Years

Todd R 1 Comment

The four Gospels are not biographies of Jesus, written to tell us all about His life, but they are summaries of His life designed to make the case that Jesus was truly the Son of God who died for our sins and rose again.  Unlike a biography, the Gospels skip over most of Jesus’ life, most notably the 30 years or so between Matthew 2:23 and 3:13.  In one verse He’s a toddler and in the next He’s an adult beginning His public ministry.

What happened in the meantime?  We don’t know much because the Bible doesn’t say much.  Jesus most likely worked as a carpenter[1] in Nazareth most of that time.  But, while we don’t know what He did, we get a sense of how He did it.

At the end of Matthew 3, Jesus goes to John the Baptist to be baptized, and when He comes up from the water, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’”[2]  In this revelation of the Trinity, the Father says He is “well pleased” with the Son, Jesus, and the Spirit confirms.

Note that the Father said He was “well pleased” before Jesus had done anything in His public ministry.  Since God knows the future, He may have been saying He was “well pleased” with Jesus’ whole life, but those there would take it to mean His life to that point.  The period of Jesus’ life that we know so little about.  What Jesus did in those 30 or so years was pleasing to God the Father.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

What does this mean for us?  Most of us don’t have a full-time ministry, but spend most of our time doing other, sometimes mundane, things.  Most, or all, of our lives are more like the 30 years missing from the Gospels than they are like Jesus’ 3 or so years of ministry.  But since the Father was pleased with the first 30 years of Jesus’ life, we also can fully please God without dedicating ourselves to a full-time ministry.  Lay people aren’t second-class citizens in the kingdom of heaven.

But also, if Jesus pleased God at all times, including His work as a carpenter, to be like Jesus we need to please the Father in not just our acts of ministry, but in all of life.  In how we do our jobs, in how we treat our family and neighbors, in how we do everything.

If we want our Lord to say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant,”[3] we must follow Colossians 3:23 – “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”  All of our activities can please the Father, even the most mundane things.

[1] Mark 6:3
[2] Matthew 3:16b-17
[3] Matthew 25:21

Help! There’s a Log in My Eye! (Part 2)

Todd R 2 Comments

Dear fellow travelers,

Yesterday’s post started to discuss Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:3-5 – “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Jesus was telling His followers that they should help each other move closer to God, but only to remove specks from others’ eyes after dealing with their own logs.  The first lesson, covered yesterday, was to make sure our motive is right.  The second (today’s topic) is to learn from our own experience fighting the logs in our own eyes.  When I think about these logs, and really try to remove them, I realize it’s a lot harder than I might assume about specks in other people’s eyes.

First, being told I have a log in my eye might be counterproductive.  The hardest logs to get rid of are the ones we already know are wrong, and possibly because we know they are wrong.  Paul gives an example in Romans 7:7b-8a, saying “For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’  But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”  Being told my log is a sin isn’t necessarily going to get it out of my eye.  It might make things worse.

Second, the most stubborn logs might be there because I’ve decided, at least subconsciously, that I am better off with the log than I am without it.  Until we are perfected in heaven, part of us wants to listen to “the woman Folly,” who cries out that “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” in Proverbs 9:17.  Even though Wisdom offered a feast of meat and wine in Proverbs 9:2, our flesh is drawn to the bread and water because they are “stolen” in “secret.”  Whatever “bad” the log does to me, I sometimes prefer it to the “good” represented by the alternative.    Being told my log is bad for me might not overcome that.

Third, I know that Jesus said, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye,” and I’m tempted to think the log in other people’s eyes give them no right to be judgmental.  As noted yesterday, for some, the lesson of Jesus’ words is about how to identify a hypocrite.  For others, the lesson may be that people should mind their own business.  Of course, once I think that, I’m trying to remove a speck from their eye, judging them and saying their behavior should be changed.  Maybe in writing this, I’m being judgmental myself.  Avoiding being judgmental is perhaps the hardest thing for a person to do, while graciously accepting the imperfect love of a brother can sometimes be harder.

Who do you trust with your eyes? Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash

So, what’s the solution?  There may not be a magic formula, but in examining our own logs, we learn to approach others in loving service, not judgment, understanding what Paul said at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 10:13, that “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.”    Fighting sin is hard.  For all of us.  It requires overcoming our natural response to rules, requires trust that His way is better than ours (proof isn’t always possible), and requires relationships that nurture meaningful involvement – even around the parts of our lives that, like our eyes, we fiercely protect.  We won’t often let anyone near the speck in our eye who hasn’t proven their love by tangible acts.  People can tell when (or imagine that) our motivation is our own anxiety, envy, or anger.

Me First (Redux)
Immediately after the version of the speck and log story in Luke’s gospel, Luke records Jesus saying: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.  The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”[1]

I believe Luke puts this here because removing our own logs makes us more like a good tree that can produce good fruit.  Only by knowing and relying on God can we approach the specks in our brother’s eyes inspired by grace not legalism, concern not unwelcome intrusiveness, and love not judgment.

God, the only righteous judge, forgave us our sins by taking the judgment we deserved upon Himself on the cross.  Instead of fretting over evildoers, He sought to save them.  Knowing our Lord and how He approaches us in our sin as our Savior helps us see more clearly to help our brothers remove the specks from their eyes.  Only He can heal us, but sometimes He wants us to participate in His work.

“…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

[1] Luke 6:43-45

Help! There’s a Log in My Eye! (Part 1)

Todd R Leave a comment

Until we get to heaven, none of us can fully understand what God is telling us in the Bible, but I believe one particularly tricky passage is this one: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:3-5

For some, the lesson is about how to identify a hypocrite.  For others, the lesson may be that people should mind their own business.  Some might think it has applications for the church’s role toward the sinners of the world.

While there might be good points to be made about those lessons, here I want to focus on what Jesus told those listening to actually do: 1) “take the log out of your own eye,” and 2) “take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”  Jesus is definitely not saying His people should always ignore every speck and log.  His mission is to make His church holy, and we participate in that work.  Christians are supposed to help each other move closer to God.  However, there are right ways, and very wrong ways, to remove specks and logs.  He says do (1), then only do (2) afterward.

When saying “first take the log out of your own eye,” I think Jesus is offering two bits of advice.  First, be more concerned about your own sin first before dealing with the sin of others.  Second, take what you learn about overcoming your own logs of sin and apply it to ministering to others with their specks.  The cure for hypocrisy here is not to do nothing about the brother’s speck.  It is to remove our own log first, so we “will see clearly.”

This is a huge topic, but today’s post will briefly cover the first point, and tomorrows will cover the second point.  There’s definitely a lot more that has been, and can be, said.

Me First
By focusing on our own problems first, we might avoid three problems, the first being putting ourselves through endless anxiety about the sins of the world.  Psalm 37:1 advises “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers!”  When God chose to love the world, He did so knowing that the world contained nothing but evildoers, and therefore advises not to fret about evil.  He has a plan, and that plan is not that we need to address or fix every problem.

Later in the same Psalm, verse 8 advises: “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.”  This means that fretting over the sins of others leads us to wrong emotions and motives, particularly envy and wrath.  Referring back to verse 1, “be not envious of wrongdoers”, because we may be tempted to participate in their wrongdoing.  If we think they’ve done well by sinning, and that there was no negative consequence, we might persuade ourselves to join in out of envy for their “success”.  So, we add the speck in their eye to the log in our own, and everyone is worse off.

Third, if we see that wrongdoers are not punished, and are frustrated by it, we can be tempted to take it into our own hands to “correct” their situation by removing their speck.  In this case, we’re motivated by wrath, instead of a loving desire to do the best for our brother.  Also, others might see that we did this, got away with it, and be tempted to join in (envy again?), and so these 2nd and 3rd points can become a vicious cultural cycle within a community of believers.

In another post, The Desires He Delights to Give, I wrote about verses 4-6 of Psalm 37 and it would a good read for context here, but the summary is that when we seek to please God, we will learn to be less anxious about evildoers, and also feel less envy and wrath.

So, Jesus’ first advice before removing a speck from someone else’s eye seems to be to make sure we have the right motive – love.  Tomorrow, part 2 will briefly talk about how hard it is to remove the real logs in our own eyes.

Church is Not a Shopping Mall

Todd R 3 Comments

I recently had a very strange dream, which occurred (kind of) in the church I went to as a kid.  This church, in Washington, D.C., has been around for over 130 years and meets in a stone building and has an amazing pipe organ in the main sanctuary.  The appearance and structure of the church communicates permanence and tradition.

In this dream, I was roughly a teenager on one end of the church building but had to meet up with my family at the other end of the building.  I started out in a place that seemed like the church I knew, but as I travelled to the other end, things got really bizarre.  First, the size of the building seemed to keep expanding and the number of people in it kept multiplying.  Soon I noticed that there was a gift shop selling all sorts of kitsch that had nothing to do with religion.  I kept going in the same direction, trying to find my family, but the building just kept growing as I went, eventually having many levels, with huge moving walkways and escalators.  The dream ended with me still in the church, but this end of it had become a very upscale, very massive, shopping mall.  I remember wondering “how did the church turn into this?”

What to make of this?  Consider what a shopping mall is.  Yes, it’s a large collection of stores in one place, but not a random collection.  Those stores were chosen to be as diverse as possible.  The more of our desires and wants the mall can meet by having different types of stores, the more economically successful the mall will be, and that’s what matters to the mall operator.  People want fancy clothes, jewelry, entertainment, snacks and candy, toys, and many other things.  So, a mall can represent our “do whatever you want” culture.

I wonder if the seed of the dream was something I saw on Twitter a few days before: “There are infinite ways to be non-binary.”  What they were saying is that not only are there not just two genders, but that we can endlessly create new ones with no limit at all.  It’s like a sexual version of the shopping mall, and also a denial that there’s any real right or wrong or that there’s any such thing as an inappropriate desire.  But can we really make ourselves into anything we want to be without consequences?

Consider this: no competent computer engineer would tell us that we can just arrange a diverse group of components any way we want and end up with a working computer.  The engineer isn’t being intolerant or mean, they just know what it takes to make a computer do what it’s supposed to.

Likewise, when Jesus says “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few,”[1] He is not being intolerant or mean by saying we can’t do whatever we want to, He just knows that we were designed, what we were designed to do, and also what will ultimately satisfy us.

Christian churches are supposed to teach us how to follow Christ, not tell us to do whatever we want to, but now many churches, just like in my dream, have turned into proverbial shopping malls.  In many cases, we’ve forgotten that people are not accidents of random circumstances in nature, and we’ve forgotten that our Creator knows what’s best for us.  We’ve decided to pursue “the way that is easy” forgetting that it “leads to destruction.”  Too many churches, now including the one I went to in DC, say that Jesus will meet whatever needs we think we have, rather than saying that Jesus knows what we need better than we do; that it’s our idea of need that must be changed.

It’s our idea of need
that must be changed

When Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” the “world” He loves is the one where we’ve come up with infinite ways to reject Him.  Where we’ve come up with infinite ways to deny that He made us and knows better than us what’s right and wrong, what “leads to life” and what “leads to destruction.”

When God gave His Son, His sacrifice was sufficient for all sin and can cover all the infinite ways we decide to ignore what’s good for us.  Because God loved this world, it’s also true that His people should communicate His love and grace at all times to all people, by word and action.  Yet it’s also true that church is not a shopping mall regardless of what people can imagine in their dreams that it should be.  The church is called to a higher standard of living, a holy standard informed by our Creator’s knowledge of what works.

So, in these troubling times, pray that people will continue to find Jesus, both within and outside the church and what much of it has become.  That God’s people will love holiness, but also love sinners.  Pray that we find the way that is hard but leads to life and that God’s church is a beacon calling people to it.

Amen.

[1] Matthew 7:13-14

Minding Our Own Business

Todd R 5 Comments

Have you heard the term “virtue signaling”?  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”  The phrase seems like it’s been around a long time, but the first use of it may have been as recent as 2013.[1]

Maybe the words “virtue signaling” are new, but the idea is at least as old as the Bible.  In chapter 26, verses 6-13 of Matthew’s gospel, he tells the story of a woman who came to Jesus with “an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment” which she poured on Jesus’ head in front of the disciples.  In Jesus’ view “she has done a beautiful thing to me…to prepare me for burial.”  But the disciples didn’t see it the same way Jesus did.  They indignantly said “Why this waste?  For this [ointment] could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.”

Jesus responded how it was “a beautiful thing”, but also made another comment that made it clear the disciples were virtue signaling.  He told them not to “trouble the woman.”  “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”  I think Jesus had at least 3 points in this phrase, related to virtue signaling.

The first is that knowing what to do isn’t enough.  In fact, it just increases our responsibility.  James 4:17 says: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”  Although the disciples knew that giving to the poor was good, in this case were more concerned about sharing that knowledge than about using it.  Today, we might call such people virtue signalers, but the Bible calls them “busybodies” and “meddlers”[2]  People who go from person to person evaluating and criticizing their work instead of minding their own responsibilities.  These people are common on social media.

Second, that there is always an opportunity to help the poor – they always will exist and aren’t hard to find – and each disciple surely missed opportunities every day.  On what basis could they pick on someone else’s failure to help the poor?  By criticizing the woman, they revealed that virtue signaling was more important to them than actually being virtuous.

Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

The last point is that service flows from worship, not the other way around.  When we worship Jesus, the ultimate servant, our own ability to sincerely serve others increases as a result.  The woman with the ointment knew this may be the only opportunity to anoint Jesus for burial, and knew she shouldn’t miss it.  On the other hand, the disciples wanted Jesus to punish the woman when they should have been minding their own business.  An internal posture of worship may be the best antidote to hypocrisy and the temptation to merely signal virtue.

The phrase “mind your own business” usually is said to someone we want to leave us alone, but the words actually mean that we should consider our own activities and motives more important than the policing of other people’s activities and motives.  We “always have the poor” with us and fall far short of the standard we need to meet to judge other people’s use of resources.

When we all stand before God in judgment, Jesus will tell the blessed: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’”  In other words, the blessed minded their own business instead of just criticizing others (virtue signaling).  Jesus notices when we take effective action and doesn’t care much about our opinions of others’ effectiveness.

Therefore, pray that we can all mind our own business, in worshipful service, “for you always have the poor with you,” and thank God for His forgiveness, because I know I don’t mind my own business nearly as often as I should.  Sometimes I just blog about it.

“Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love,
            but a faithful man who can find?” – Proverbs 20:6

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtue signaling
[2] 1 Timothy 5:13; 1 Peter 4:15