Reflective Bible Study

During Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount”, He describes for us the motivation God wants for us regarding our giving and helping others. It is likely that Jesus shocked many people in the audience when He transitioned to this section of His message.

To help catch the crowd’s attention and get them to take note, Jesus begins by stating, “Be careful not to do your good works in public in order to attract attention. If you do, your Father in heaven will not reward you.” (v. 1)

It is odd to think about God not rewarding someone’s generosity, but that is what Jesus is clearly stating here. If someone does something good because they are trying to build their reputation or strengthen their public image, then whatever it is they are doing is really not to help the other person; they are helping themselves first.

A couple verses later, Jesus emphasizes this idea even further when He states, “When you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” (v. 3)

This mentality becomes tricky because at some point, when we want to help develop a spirit of generosity within a group of people, we should celebrate the giving that has happened. What we celebrate gets strengthened, and when we do things to help those who give feel appreciated, then we are likely to attract more people to give.

But perhaps we should shift our focus away from focusing on who gave, and instead focus on what the gifts that were given accomplished. If we place our focus on sharing how lives were transformed, how marriages were strengthened, and/or how people experienced healing because of the gifts that generous “anonymous” people gave, then we can receive the same benefit as a group of people.

When celebrating life changes vs. celebrating those who donated, the donors can stay anonymous and let God reward them later, and a culture of giving can be inspired as well.

Before diving into this passage and the one big idea I want to focus on, I want to emphasize that this is a challenging passage for many people. A lot of people who have experienced divorce in their lives can look on this passage as God condemning them for their actions. I don’t have much to say about this – since this is something that everyone must work out with God personally/individually. I may write my thoughts on how I see this passage relating to divorce in a future post, but instead, this post will focus on a big idea for those who are married or are currently in a long-term relationship.

In verse 6, we read the following phrase, “God has joined the two together”. I know there are countless things that have happened and choices that were made that directed me to moving to Idaho where I would meet my bride-to-be. It seems as though God is working behind the scenes to direct people together. I could make my head spin trying to think of what may have happened had I made different choices regarding my schooling, major, and direction after college, but whatever the case is – whether there is only one match or several great candidates along a variety of different paths, the passage states that God is present in the relationships that I have – especially in my marriage.

Here’s the big idea, stated in the form of a question: If I believe that God brought people into my life for a reason (including my spouse), would I treat them differently?

And an equally challenging follow-up question: If I believe that God loves my wife enough to die for her and that it hurts Him when I hurt her, would I treat her differently? (Feel free to swap genders if you need to.)

God brings people into our lives, and in many cases, not all of them are pleasant. Some might be downright annoying at best, and one (hopefully not more) of these you might have ended up marrying. (Disclaimer: This is not my marital situation, but it seems to be a common theme in culture.)

However, have you ever stopped to think that Jesus loves – and He died for – those annoying people too? It isn’t just the pleasant people that Jesus loves, but the unpleasant ones too. If we are really being honest with ourselves, we might be that annoying person to our spouse. We might be closed off to them when they are looking for love, or harsh with them when we are really upset about something unrelated in our own lives.

We can only change ourselves, and our actions. We cannot change others. However, with the thought that God brings people into our lives, and that He loves them enough to have died for them, would that be enough to change my attitude and actions towards them?

Part way through Jesus’ ministry on earth, on the last day of a festival Jesus was attending in Jerusalem, Jesus stood up and proclaimed a message in a loud voice. This happened in the temple and with guards present who were looking for an opportunity to arrest Jesus.

But while there were guards present, Jesus’ final words in this event are powerful, and potentially confusing. John tells us, “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’” (v. 37-38)

John knows that some of his readers may misunderstand or not pick up on the spiritual symbolism Jesus is using in this statement. Perhaps at this point in the young Christian church movement, there were people who had already misunderstood or misinterpreted Jesus’ words here, or maybe there were those who had written Jesus off because of this statement. Whatever the reason, John breaks from the story here to insert a side-note about this statement. John tells us, “By this he [Jesus] meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” (v. 39)

The truth John wants us to grasp from this concluding statement is that the only way we can receive the Holy Spirit is by believing in Jesus. Jesus shares the results of this belief. He describes it as “rivers of living water will flow from within them”. (v. 38b)

Jesus is not speaking literally here in a physical sense. Jesus is sharing a metaphor for how the Holy Spirit draws people into spiritual truth. The Holy Spirit prompts people with a spiritual “thirst” (desire) to learn more, and Jesus provides the truth. When someone believes in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes and lives within them. And when the Holy Spirit is living in someone, they will have a self-sustaining spiritual life while the Spirit is within them.

When I read Jesus’ words here, I cannot avoid realizing my dependence on the Holy Spirit when I open up my Bible to read and study. The only way I can learn spiritual truth is through paying attention to the Holy Spirit and one of the best tools the Holy Spirit uses is the Bible. The truth I believe Jesus is sharing here is that by coming to Him, we all can receive true spiritual life through the Spirit, and this life will flow outward – being visible towards those around us.

In one of the earlier conflicts Jesus had with the Jewish leaders, we find Jesus sharing some pretty amazing things. Following Jesus healing a paraplegic man at a pool, John shares how the Jewish leaders were upset at the reality that this miracle happened on the Sabbath day.

John tells us that “because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.” (v. 16)

It would seem that had it not been for extreme Sabbath regulations that they had put in place, the Jewish leaders might not have had any issue with Jesus – at least until they became jealous of His popularity. John tells us that in Jesus’ defense, He replied to them saying, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” (v. 17)

Had the Jewish leaders not had this confrontation with Jesus over Sabbath observance, they wouldn’t have had another reason to stand against Him. Because of this response, the Jewish leaders “tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (v. 18)

The interesting thing in my mind about the initial stages of this confrontation with the Jewish leaders is that Jesus never denies the claim about working on the Sabbath. Perhaps this is because Jesus didn’t believe His actions to be work, or maybe it is because He wanted to draw their attention onto something greater that was happening at that moment in time. If Jesus had gone down the path of trying to redefine the concept of “work” with these Jewish leaders, it would have been a lost cause, because defining “work” was what these Jewish leaders were experts at doing.

Instead, Jesus draws in someone else who works on the Sabbath, and by placing God in the position of His Father, Jesus simply has to lean on the cultural cliché that says “like father, like son”.

Jesus drew the attention of everyone present onto the idea that there is something bigger at “work” regarding Sabbath rest. Jesus did not claim that He wasn’t working, but He also didn’t sweep the commandment aside either. In other places, Jesus elevates the Sabbath away from a list of restrictions for the day, and He instead frames it as a day where we are free to do good deeds and help others.

Blending that idea with this one, the message I see in Jesus’ initial response to the Jewish leaders is that the Sabbath was intended to be a blessing, not a burden and the Sabbath should be more about worship than about avoiding work.