The Hard Sayings of Jesus in Matthew 18...Matthew 18:21-35

 


A beautifully restored barn in the Kawuneeche Valley of the Rocky Mountain National Park.  It probably took a lot of work to bring it back to life.  Restoring something take that.  Repairs, replacing and reinforcing are also usually part of the process.  So it is with the restoring of relationships.  I see a lot of that in the lessons taught by Jesus to His disciples in Matthew 18.  Just finishing the chapter this Sunday, here are some of my highlights from the chapter.

  • The disciples are disputing and questioning Jesus about who is the greatest (the GOAT) in the kingdom of heaven and Jesus redirects their thinking and vision not to the prideful but the humble.  
  • Jesus declares that sin needs to be taken seriously.  Repair needs to happen when we sin and heaven forbid when we entice others to sin.  Sin is not to be patched over or ignored but replaced with repentance and forgiveness.
  • Jesus also declares that we are not to despise those who are little ones who believe in Him who miss the mark, who wander from the flock, but rather be deployed to go after them with the word of God.  We are to be in restore mode so that we can rejoice when they return to the righteousness set by God for us to follow.  Jesus gave His disciples and us the restoration plan.
  • Jesus is serious about sin and He is also serious about forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a sign that we truly are one of His sheep.  We forgive as the Father has forgiven us.  Both of these actions by Him and us is not easy.  The work of restoration requires effort and seeing beyond what is to what could be.  Our offered forgiveness helps the one who needs forgiveness through the conditions and consequences of their sin.  Who better to aid them then ones who know they have been forgiven of a debt they could not repay.  
True sheep of the Shepherd are humble; they take sin seriously with actions of repentance and forgiveness; they deploy themselves with God's words to restore wandering sheep; and they offer forgiveness because they have received forgiveness.  These are some of the signs if our stony heart has been replaced with a heart of flesh that beats with the love of the Father for others.  Jesus is helping His disciples and us to know how to respond to those who are truly apart of the flock and those who are not.  We are to reach out to both.

Adam



A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 39th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Am I asleep to Jesus' presence?...Matthew 17:1-13...Falling in love again with His words.

Image
  The Never Summer Mountain Range is behind me.  It is always amazing to me how people will respond more quickly to a picture than to the text.  I updated our Facebook cover photo and profile picture and people are responded left and right to it.  I do not get as much response when I print text to the same group of people.  I think this bears true with the response to video presentations of the Bible over just the written text of the Bible.  But since we don't have actual video footage of Jesus (sorry Chosen) I feel it is important to not just rely on someone's artistic presentation of the text but to read it for ourselves.  The question would be, "Am I reading more than I am watching when it comes to God's words?" I have purposely not used much video in my preaching opportunities because video will steal the show, no pun intended, to the actual passage we are looking at.  I think we need to train ourselves again to rely on what we are reading rat...
Read more

Stephanie's blooming flowers...Matthew 17:24-27...Jesus the perfect fishing guide (longer post - Charlie Kirk)

Image
  Look at the color that greets us on our deck!  Stephanie sure has a green thumb.  I'm just the waterer and also diligent to keep spraying to keep the critters away.  It is also the sign here that colder weather is on the way.  There is snow on the tops of the mountains again and there was also frost on the roofs.  Summer people are headed to warmer temps and we settle in not just for the colder climate but also for the time the core has to zero in on each other.  What will come of our colder months together in light of the further developments of being a better established biblical church?  I am praying that we will develop a pathway to go from investigating SCC to investing in the ministry here, from being infrequent in attendance to being a frequent flyer with us, from just attending to one assigned to a ministry, and from the pew to being a player.  How are we assisting in this process and what does this person look like in practical ter...
Read more

The Big Feed...Matthew 14:13-21...Life around Jesus' table

Image
  This isn't 5,000 men plus women and children as in the passage last Sunday but this is our 5,000+ for the week.  It is amazing to be all around the table at once.  There are now 20 of us.  We have went from addition to multiplication in our family as each of our 4 children are now having their families.  Our 2 year reunions have been highlights of our lives and this one was spent in Colorado.  This picture featured the 20 rainbow trout the grandchildren caught at a local kids' fishing pond. Jesus is going to present 2 amazing events back to back for his disciples.  In this big feed they are ready to pass off the responsibility to someone else.  They tell Jesus to send the crowd away and their solution is that those people can fend for themselves.  They use the word " only " and calculate what was possible with the money they may have had.  The disciples were identifying and pointing at the need but they were not going to get involved ...
Read more