Flashback Episode — Seeking His Kingdom: Matthew 13:44-52


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Jumping ahead in Matthew’s gospel, we come to a series of parables Jesus shares while He was alone with His disciples that together show us a powerful picture of God’s character and love for us. While often we might think of the first two parables in this set as referring to us doing the majority of the work, when we look at this set as a whole, we get a completely different picture.

Let’s read what Jesus shared and what we can learn from this set of parables. Our passage is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will read it from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 44, Jesus continued sharing with the disciples, saying:

44 “The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man happens to find a treasure hidden in a field. He covers it up again, and is so happy that he goes and sells everything he has, and then goes back and buys that field.

45 “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man is looking for fine pearls, 46 and when he finds one that is unusually fine, he goes and sells everything he has, and buys that pearl.

47 “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Some fishermen throw their net out in the lake and catch all kinds of fish. 48 When the net is full, they pull it to shore and sit down to divide the fish: the good ones go into the buckets, the worthless ones are thrown away. 49 It will be like this at the end of the age: the angels will go out and gather up the evil people from among the good 50 and will throw them into the fiery furnace, where they will cry and gnash their teeth.

51 “Do you understand these things?” Jesus asked them.

“Yes,” they answered.

52 So he replied, “This means, then, that every teacher of the Law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of heaven is like a homeowner who takes new and old things out of his storage room.”

In our passage, we find a set of three parables, with a bonus, one-verse, fourth parable right at the end. In the bonus parable, we find Jesus making room for those who are teachers of the Law to become disciples in the Kingdom of heaven. From this bonus parable, it seems that the teachers of the law who become disciples have an advantage over the teachers who don’t become disciples, and over the disciples who were not teachers, because only the teachers of the law who become disciples can bring out and blend both old and new truths.

However, the real focus of our passage is the first three parables that together make a neat set. What is unfortunate is that too often the parables are split apart and shared separately, or the first two parables are shared without the third.

I can understand why the first two parables get more attention and while the third parable is a little more concerning. The third parable focuses on the judgment and it includes people being thrown away. The third parable calls those who were thrown away as worthless fish.

However, Jesus shares these three parables in a set, and all three of these parables build on each other to give us a picture of what God’s Kingdom of heaven is like. In the first parable, the Kingdom of heaven is described as a treasure hidden in a field. This treasure is so valuable that when a man finds this treasure, He sells everything so that He can buy the field that contains this treasure.

While the first parable is often shared with the focus placed on you and me finding the Kingdom of heaven and valuing it like a treasure, since this is a parable about the Kingdom of heaven, God is present in it. In this parable, God could be the treasure, or He could be the man who sold everything.

The context of this parable allows for either interpretation. God gave up everything to purchase the field called the earth, and this is because this field had treasure in it. Also, we are called to give up everything for God, because God’s treasure is more valuable than anything we currently own or have.

The second parable is similar, however, this time, the Kingdom of heaven is compared with a merchant, who finds a pearl of great value, and he sells everything he owns to buy this pearl. Again, since this is a Kingdom of heaven parable, we should look for God represented in this parable, and again, this parable only gives us two options. God is either the merchant, or the pearl of great value.

Similar to the first parable, both interpretations work. God as the merchant sold everything He had to purchase the pearl of great value, which He did through Jesus. God valued us so much that He gave everything He had to redeem us from sin. God is also a pearl of great value and we are called to give up everything we think is valuable in order to gain God and His unusually fine pearl-treasure.

Before jumping into the third parable, it is interesting that these two parables are similar but also opposites. The first parable of the treasure in the field has the Kingdom of heaven being represented as the treasure while the second parable of the pearl has the Kingdom of heaven being represented as the merchant. I think both the interpretations for both parables work because each parable has a slightly different focus. The first parable is likely focused on us seeking God as our treasure, while the second parable is likely focused on God seeking us as His pearl of great value.

The third parable seems different, but it shares the same theme of looking for things of value. However, Jesus shares the interpretation of the third parable and He attributes this third parable to the end of the age. When Jesus returns at the end of the age, the angels will separate the evil people from the good and they will throw the evil people away – specifically into the fiery furnace.

As a side note: reading this reminds me of Daniel’s three friends facing the fiery furnace because they chose to only bow and worship God, not the king’s statue. In an interesting twist, those who are evil, who have chosen anything and everything but God will ultimately face God’s “fiery furnace”.

However, the big focus of this third parable is God collecting His people at the end of the age and saving them from this sinful world. This third parable leaves no vagueness because Jesus clearly shares what the parable means.

All three of these parables together form a big truth that we are to seek and give up everything for God’s treasure, God gave up everything for us because we are His treasure, and at the end of the age, God is going to return and rescue His treasure from this world of sin.

This is one of the only places in the gospels where the disciples respond saying they understand Jesus, and I really believe they did. After Jesus returned to heaven, every one of the remaining disciples gave up everything, including their lives, for the gospel message. The disciples’ lives are an example for us what it means to see God’s kingdom as our treasure!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and value God like the man valued the treasure in the field. Understand that what God offers us is more valuable than anything we could ever hope to earn or acquire on our own, but we must give up ourselves in order to gain what God has promised us.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn how much God values you and me. God gave up more than we possibly could imagine purchasing us out of sin because He values us like the merchant valued the pearl of great value. Praying and studying the Bible helps us discover just how much God really loves us and how much He gave to redeem us!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or be discouraged away from walking with God to where He wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Flashback Episode: Year in Matthew – Episode 23: In a set of three short parables, Jesus expands our view of God’s Kingdom of heaven, how valuable God’s kingdom is compared to this world, and how valuable we are in God’s eyes that prompt Him to do something incredible for each of us!

Join the discussion on the original episode's page: Click Here.

The Other Great Commission: Mark 16:15-20

Focus Passage: Mark 16:15-20 (NCV)

15 Jesus said to his followers, “Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone. 16 Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved, but anyone who does not believe will be punished. 17 And those who believe will be able to do these things as proof: They will use my name to force out demons. They will speak in new languages. 18 They will pick up snakes and drink poison without being hurt. They will touch the sick, and the sick will be healed.”

19 After the Lord Jesus said these things to his followers, he was carried up into heaven, and he sat at the right side of God. 20 The followers went everywhere in the world and told the Good News to people, and the Lord helped them. The Lord proved that the Good News they told was true by giving them power to work miracles.

Read Mark 16:15-20 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

When we read the closing statements in many of the gospels, too often we play favorites, and focus on one or perhaps two that we like the best. Unfortunately, this tendency to ignore or minimize the other gospel writers causes us to miss out on some amazing details – especially in this event.

When we think of the Great Commission, we think of Matthew’s version of Jesus’ famous, concise challenge to His disciples minutes before He ascended into heaven. There is a lot to like about Matthew’s version of the Great Commission challenge.

But Mark also includes a version of the Great Commission, but it is less popular, perhaps because it contains some challenging statements. Mark describes Jesus’ Great Commission to the disciples in a different way. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus turns to His followers and says, “Go everywhere in the world, and tell the Good News to everyone. Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved, but anyone who does not believe will be punished. And those who believe will be able to do these things as proof: They will use my name to force out demons. They will speak in new languages. They will pick up snakes and drink poison without being hurt. They will touch the sick, and the sick will be healed.” (v. 15-18)

While Matthew focuses on baptizing, teaching, and making disciples, Mark focuses on sharing, baptism, belief, and proof that Jesus’ disciples have God by their side. Mark draws our attention to belief in Jesus being the source of these Holy-Spirit-powered signs.

However, perhaps Mark’s commission has fallen out of favor among people because we don’t see the miracles today like we read about in the book of Acts. The first followers of Jesus and those in the early church, had the Holy Spirit come into their lives in such a way that they were able to perform all that Mark describes, but in two or three generations after the first followers, these Holy-Spirit-powered signs had all but vanished.

Mark’s Great Commission is powerful. Mark tells us that belief in Jesus is the key to being rewarded by God. Mark emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is our reward in this life for believing, and implied is eternal life in the next life.

But Mark’s Great Commission has a flaw. If the list of actions that Mark gives as proof are the only foundation people use to have faith in Jesus, then there is little reason to have faith today if I don’t see those signs being performed (either by me or someone else). It also means that if Satan chooses to fake Jesus’ second coming as a way to draw the world to his side, then some miracles is all he needs to do.

This leads me to believe that while miracles are given to help people take notice, we must judge the teaching, the lives, and the actions of those performing the miracles to see if they are truly Christ-like.

This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!

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Praying Like Jesus: Luke 11:1-13


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As we continue our year podcasting through Luke’s gospel, we come to a place where Luke describes Jesus teaching His disciples to pray. While Matthew’s gospel gets the majority of attention when looking at this event, the prayer Luke describes is surprisingly simple, while also being incredibly profound.

Let’s read what Luke wrote down, and discover what Jesus wanted the disciples to know about prayer. Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 11, and we will read from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 1, Luke tells us that:

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say this:
‘Father:
    May your holy name be honored;
    may your Kingdom come.
Give us day by day the food we need.
Forgive us our sins,
    for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.
    And do not bring us to hard testing.’”

While our passage continues, let’s pause here briefly. With this last request about not bringing us to hard testing, it appears as though the prayer ends. There is no “amen” or any other concluding phrase. This makes me wonder if the last portion of the prayer was lost, or if Jesus is sharing a simple example we can use as a framework for prayer.

Spread throughout the gospels are times when Jesus spent extended periods of time in prayer. Sometimes these prayers lasted for minutes, others hours, and a few even all night long. The example Jesus gives us likely wouldn’t even take us a minute to pray. This tells me that God probably values short, to the point, prayers over long prayers with lots of repetition.

When we look at this prayer Jesus told the disciples, we see four key parts. While some people can easily make acronyms and fancy models for prayer, I won’t attempt to do this. Instead, I will simply share the four big pieces I see in this prayer and how these pieces fit together in a powerful way.

The first portion of the prayer acknowledges God as our Father, and then we give Him glory, honor, and praise. Verse 2 states: “Father: May your holy name be honored; may your Kingdom come.” To summarize this first verse: Our prayer opens with acknowledging God for who He is and looking forward to the arrival of His Kingdom.

The next part of this prayer acknowledges God’s blessings and our requests for our present circumstances. We request our immediate needs focusing on God’s providing for the present moment of time we are living in. This is stated in verse 3 when Jesus says, “Give us day by day the food we need.” Not only do we ask God to be with us each day as we move forward through life, we ask Him to be actively giving us what we need every “present” moment of our lives.

The third part of this prayer focuses on forgiveness in the present, because of forgiveness in the past. We ask God to continue forgiving us because we are forgiving those who have done us wrong. Jesus states this by saying in the first part of verse 4, “Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.” We want God to forgive us and we acknowledge Jesus’ promise that we are forgiven when we choose to forgive others.

The last part of this prayer focuses on protection for our future. While it sounds obvious that we wouldn’t want God to bring hard test or trials into our lives, this statement is a reminder for us that God protects our future. Jesus finishes this prayer at the end of verse 4 by saying “And do not bring us to hard testing”. We want God to protect us from things we cannot bear, and in a subtle way, we are reminding ourselves that God protects us and that anything that comes our way has been allowed into our lives because God knows He can turn it into a positive when we’ve learned from it.

This is Jesus’ model prayer.

In this prayer, we have two parallel progressive themes. The first big progressive theme is that this prayer begins by honoring God, before then asking God to provide for our present, forgive our past, and protect our future!

The second progressive summary still begins by honoring God, but then it asks God to provide for our physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. Our physical needs are represented by our food each day, our spiritual needs are represented by forgiveness, and our emotional needs are represented by our request for protection from the big tests of life.

If we keep all this in mind for our prayer time with God, I believe He will honor our prayers and answer them with our best interests in mind.

However, Jesus still has something else to teach us about prayer. Continuing in verse 5, Luke tells us:

[And] Jesus said to his disciples, “Suppose one of you should go to a friend’s house at midnight and say, ‘Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don’t have any food for him!’ And suppose your friend should answer from inside, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking. And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, and the door will be opened to anyone who knocks. 11 Would any of you who are fathers give your son a snake when he asks for fish? 12 Or would you give him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? 13 As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In this additional teaching on prayer, Jesus challenges the disciples to pray purposefully and continually until we see God fully grant our request. However, we shouldn’t stop praying when God has started answering our prayers. Instead, we are challenged to shift our prayers from asking for our request to thanking God for answering our prayer.

The last big detail we have time for in this episode is where we should focus our prayer requests. When we ask God for His help, and for things that we need in our walk with Him, He knows exactly what we are asking for and He knows what the best thing we need is. God is more than willing to give us the best gift we need in any and every circumstance. However, it is worth pointing out that God has a much bigger perspective than we do, and this is why His best gifts might not always feel like the best gifts.

God knows exactly what we need, and God knows exactly the way to answer our prayers that leads us, and the most possible people, into a saving relationship with Jesus that ultimately leads into eternal life.

The best gift that God can give us is a gift that He is more than willing to give to us when we ask for it. This gift is His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the best gift God can give us, because the Holy Spirit is the ultimate guide for our lives, and the Holy Spirit is more than willing to bless us with everything we need to lead us into eternity with God when we let Him into our hearts and lives!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to ask Him for His gift of the Holy Spirit. God is more than willing to answer this request and this request is one we should persist in when praying. Also, when praying, always acknowledge God for who He is, and ask Him to provide for your present, forgive your past, and protect your future!

As I also always challenge you to do, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each day. Prayer and study are among the best ways to grow a personal relationship with God and a personal relationship with God is what leads to eternal life. Above everything else, don’t let anyone get between you and your relationship with God!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Year in Luke – Episode 22: When the disciples ask Jesus how to pray, discover some big themes we are able to see in a very simple prayer, and also discover the one gift God is more than willing to give to His people when they ask Him for it!

Join the discussion. Share your thoughts on this passage.

Life Is Short: Luke 13:1-9

Focus Passage: Luke 13:1-9 (NIV)

 1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

 6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

 8 “ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ ”

Read Luke 13:1-9 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

While we often time read this passage and focus in on the parable that it includes, we can learn a valuable truth from what is shared immediately before the parable is told.

In the conversation leading up to the parable, Jesus is told about a group of Galileans who were killed in a certain way. The implied question is whether they were worse sinners than others who had died. Jesus draws the question out into the open and then compares it to another accidental event where a tower fell and killed a number of people.

The big idea that I want to bring out from this passage comes from looking at these two death events. The first event was a “government” slaughter – the ruler chose to kill a group of people for whatever reason. The second event was a “natural” disaster – a tower fell down and killed a group of people.

What stands out to me in both these cases is that we don’t choose when we will die. Even those who have chosen to commit suicide don’t always “succeed”. Both these cases are situations where the people who died did not die from some act they chose to do. Instead, these deaths were thrust upon them from an outside source.

Which brings us to the big idea that is a theme running through these first few verses: Life is short, and we don’t choose when we’ll die. The bad that happens around us is a reminder to live a life that continually leans on God. That is the only way to ensure we’ll be saved for the life to come.

This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!

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