Welcome to Cam’s Reflective Bible Study Journal

Cam’s Reflective Bible Study Journal is a blog/podcast where Cam, one of Reflective Bible Study's founders, shares things he has discovered from his time studying the Bible (usually from one or more of the four gospels).

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God the Redeemer: Matthew 1:1-17

Published May 11, 2021 in Written Journal Entries
Focus Passage: Matthew 1:1-17 (NASB)

Of all the portions of the gospels that we might call boring, topping the list for most people would be the two genealogies of Jesus. Both Matthew and Luke include a record of Jesus’ ancestry, and while many of us might gloss over Jesus’ family tree, if we push ourselves to look for interesting details, we are able to find them – even in these boring lists of names.

For instance, if we push ourselves while reading Matthew’s version of Jesus’ genealogy, we might be surprised when we see a number of Old Testament women show up. Matthew includes Tamar, who was Judah’s wife (v. 3); Rahab, who was the wife of Salmon and who may have possibly even been the same Rahab who helped the spies in Jericho (v. 5a); Ruth was the wife of Boaz (v. 5b); Bathsheba was originally Uriah’s wife but then became David’s wife after Uriah’s death (v. 6); and last but far from least, Mary was Joseph’s wife and the mother of Jesus.

The interesting thing about these women comes when we ask ourselves the question: Why did Matthew include these women in a type of list that was usually limited to males?

Some of these women were born Jewish, while others left their own people and joined the nation of Israel. Each of these women lived in different time periods, and each woman came from a different background and a different social class. But with all this uniqueness, is there something that unifies all these women’s stories?

When I stop and think about it, one big unifying factor is that each of these women (except for Mary) was not in their first relationship:

  • Judah and Tamar’s story is far from ideal – or even within the realm of God’s original plan (Genesis 38).

  • If the Rahab that is included in this list is the same Rahab that helped the spies, then she becomes the only person (plus some members of her family) who was spared from Jericho when the Israelites entered the Promised Land. She was a prostitute, and also would have had a less than ideal past. (Joshua 6:22-25)

  • Ruth, who was Boaz’s wife, did not start with that as her first marriage. She was first married to one of Naomi’s sons while Naomi was living outside of Israel, and she was the only daughter-in-law who returned with Naomi when she came back. Her marriage to Boaz was a second marriage, and her story is one that emphasizes the woman pursuing the man. (The short book of Ruth includes her story.)

  • Bathsheba started out as Uriah’s wife, that is, until David took a liking to her. This was one of the biggest failures in David’s entire life, and one that God called him out on. (2 Samuel 11)

  • Mary, Jesus’ mother, had the opposite issue. Everything appeared as though she became pregnant because she was unfaithful to Joseph, and while Joseph understood after the visit from an angel, the situation still didn’t look good to those who were close to this young couple.

All these women, and the men they are connected with, had less than ideal circumstances. They all had had relationships with men prior to their relationships with the men that they were connected with (except Mary), and for some reason, Matthew chose to include them in his genealogy for Jesus.

However, even more amazing is this: God took these four women with non-ideal pasts, and He draws them into His story, and into key places within Jesus’ family tree. This tells us that God redeems sinners, and that even with our failures, He still has a place for us in His story!

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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Flashback Episode — The Two Halves of Salvation: Matthew 25:31-46

Published May 10, 2021 in Audio Journal Entries

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After sharing some end-time parables with the disciples in the large discussion about the time of His return, Jesus shifts His focus out of speaking in parables, and He returns to teaching about His return. In this grand conclusion to His end-time message, Jesus shares one of the most practical truths in the entire Bible, and it is a truth that is easy to see while also being easy to miss.

Let’s read how Jesus concludes His message for these disciples, and how this message has challenged believers throughout the centuries stretching all the way to today. Our passage is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 25, and we will be reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Starting in verse 31, Jesus continued by saying:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on His right and the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35 For I was hungry
and you gave Me something to eat;
I was thirsty
and you gave Me something to drink;
I was a stranger and you took Me in;
36 I was naked and you clothed Me;
I was sick and you took care of Me;
I was in prison and you visited Me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’

40 “And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’ 41 Then He will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels!

42 For I was hungry
and you gave Me nothing to eat;
I was thirsty
and you gave Me nothing to drink;
43 I was a stranger
and you didn’t take Me in;
I was naked
and you didn’t clothe Me,
sick and in prison
and you didn’t take care of Me.’

44 “Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or without clothes, or sick, or in prison, and not help You?’

45 “Then He will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me either.’

46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

In this passage, we see one of the most startling challenges we have on the subject being saved. This passage seems to indicate that our salvation hinges on something we do rather than on the One we believe in. However, narrowing our salvation down to be exclusively based on the truth in this passage only shares half of the truth.

The full truth is that our salvation is based on faith, but our faith is only valuable when it is visibly helping others.

In this passage, I find it interesting that both groups of people are surprised to find out that Jesus was among the least of these people. While I don’t believe that Jesus was literally present in each of these situations, I believe that Jesus shares a powerful truth based on how God wants us to focus our love for Him. Within this passage, I see God, through Jesus, challenging us to love Him by loving and helping those in society who cannot help us in return or repay us for our help.

While the list of help that Jesus shares is probably not exhaustive, I believe it gives a tangible theme of the type of help God values. When someone is hungry or thirsty and we give them food or drink, they cannot repay us. If they had money, they could simply buy food or water, and if they had food or water, then they wouldn’t be hungry or thirsty. Helping others in this way is help that introduces us to the theme of helping in a way that cannot be repaid.

Next, we discover that helping a stranger by giving them a place to stay also follows along the same theme. If someone had money, they could rent a room in a hotel, and they would have a place to stay. Without money, when we take someone in and give them a place to stay, there is nothing they can really do to repay us. While they might help around our home, chances are good that their “repayment” is really a way of saying thank you more than trying to earn their right to stay.

After the stranger, we discover the same theme within being naked and being clothed, sick and being taken care of, and in prison and being visited. All of these examples represent help that is giving without expecting any type of repayment, and it is help in situations where payment cannot be returned.

So why does God value this type of help to base our salvation on? In my mind, I see this type of help being God’s type of help. This type of help is what God has done for each of us.

By sending Jesus into this world, God chose to step down and help the human race when we didn’t deserve help, and when we could not do anything or repay anything back to God. It is as though God gave us a million dollar gift and the best we could return is a penny.

But Jesus didn’t come to collect the pennies of humanity. He came because God is interested in sharing the millions and billions in gifts because of who He is and how much He loves us. The best way we can say thank you to God, continuing our metaphor, is to pass our pennies on to those who cannot repay us.

While it might be easy to jump to the conclusion that money is the best gift, money is also the most repayable gift. When we are called to help others, we are called to help in ways that are not repayable.

God values humanity so much that He gave Himself for us. While anyone could help another person out, only those who help others because they love God, they have placed their faith, hope, and trust in Jesus, and they have chosen to show their love for God through loving others will experience salvation. The motivation of the heart matters and the reason for our love is crucial.

People can love and help others with self-serving motives, and people can love and help others without having faith in Jesus. These people will have only carried out the visible half of salvation while missing the hidden part. Others can place their faith and trust in Jesus but be cruel and mean to everyone they meet. This second group will have only carried out the hidden half of salvation while missing the visible part.

In order to be welcomed into heaven, we must be saved internally, because of our faith is in Jesus, and we must display our faith and thanks to God for His gift by helping others in ways that are not easily repaid. This is living out God’s character in the world, and it’s His challenge to each of us!

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

Always seek God first and place Him first in your life. Be sure to have your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus’ sacrifice to cover your sins. Believe that His sacrifice is enough and show your thanks to God for what He has done for you through helping others who cannot help you in return. Pay God’s love forward in the world around you!

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to keep your connection with God strong. We need a strong private connection with God to truly know His level of love and sacrifice for us. We cannot out give God, and the closer we are to Him, the more we know this to be true.

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 fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Flashback Episode: Year of the Cross – Episode 19: When Jesus finishes describing the end-time, He describes separating sheep and goats on one visible criteria. Does this mean salvation is based on works, or can we learn something about the visible half of our faith?

The Baptism Commitment: Mark 1:2-8

Published May 7, 2021 in Written Journal Entries
Focus Passage: Mark 1:2-8 (NLT)

2 just as the prophet Isaiah had written:

“Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    and he will prepare your way.
3 He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
    Clear the road for him!’”

4 This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. 5 All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 6 His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.

7 John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

Read Mark 1:2-8 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!

While all the gospel writers focus their writing on Jesus’ life, each gospel writer helps set the stage for Jesus by first sharing about Jesus’ cousin and forerunner in ministry, John the Baptist. If there was ever a person who had a clear-cut vision for His life, it was John. The prophet Isaiah predicted John’s coming, and in the prophecy, John even knows what the mission for his life will be and where he should center his ministry.

Isaiah talks about John being “a voice shouting in the wilderness” with a mission that prepares “the way for the Lord’s coming!” (v. 3)

To fulfill these prophecies, Mark tells us a brief overview of John the Baptist’s ministry. “This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River.” (v. 4-5)

According to Mark, baptism was an outward sign of repentance — which simply means that these people made a commitment to turn away from sinning. Mark also tells us that baptism was a visible message that these people gave that said they were turning to God and asking for forgiveness from their past sins.

In the sign of baptism, we see a past, present, and future picture of someone’s commitment. Someone being baptized is asking for forgiveness from past sins, they experience a present sign of humility towards God and symbolically taking part in burying their past life, and they make a commitment to live differently in the future.

Perhaps it was because John’s teaching and method was novel, or maybe it was the people of Israel’s longing to see the Messiah arrive, but our passage tells us that John’s ministry was effective, and “All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John.” (v. 5a)

John’s teaching was effective too. When the crowds heard his message, they were convicted of their sins, and “when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River.” (v. 5b)

Baptism is a sign that symbolizes a turning point in life. Baptism is submitting to God and asking for forgiveness from our past sins, and requesting help while making a commitment to live differently in the future.

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!

Subscribe to this blog and never miss an insight.

The Common Denominator: Matthew 9:27-34

Published May 6, 2021 in Audio Journal Entries

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As Matthew shares more of the healing miracles Jesus helped people with, we come to another two miracles that don’t seem very connected. However, these two miracles give us insight into Jesus’ character and how Jesus worked His miracles of healing.

Our passage picks up right as our passage from the last episode ended, and it can be found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 9. For this episode, we’ll be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 27, Matthew tells us that:

27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” 28 When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then He touched their eyes, saying, “It shall be done to you according to your faith.” 30 And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them: “See that no one knows about this!” 31 But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout all that land.

32 As they were going out, a mute, demon-possessed man was brought to Him. 33 After the demon was cast out, the mute man spoke; and the crowds were amazed, and were saying, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” 34 But the Pharisees were saying, “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”

Let’s stop reading here. In these two miracles, almost nothing is the same. In the first miracle, we see a clear example of Jesus attributing the success of the miracle to the faith of those being healed, but in the second miracle, the passage doesn’t indicated the person being healed had any faith. In the case of the first miracle, Jesus tells the men He healed to be quiet about it, even if they choose to share it with everyone, while the second miracle doesn’t have the same warning.

The second miracle prompts the religious leaders to challenge the source of Jesus’ miracle working ability and attribute Jesus as a messenger of Satan, while the first miracle has no such backlash.

But in these two miracles, we see a big picture summary of all the miracles Jesus did to help people. Within these two miracles, we see Jesus healing the blind and healing the mute. We see Jesus healing disabilities that were caused by demon possession and disabilities that were not. We see Jesus healing based upon the faith of those being healed, and we see Jesus healing regardless of the faith of those present. We also see Jesus healing regardless of whether those He healed would obey His instructions afterwards and we see a healing where no follow-up instructions are given.

In these two miracles, almost every detail is different. However, one detail is clearly the same. With all the unique details of these two miracles, we cannot get away from the common denominator of Jesus. The two blind men followed Jesus and the mute, demon-possessed man was brought to Jesus. In both these miracles, Jesus is present, active, and willing to help in the situation.

Will all the miracles in the gospels, and really with all the miracles in the Bible as a whole, we cannot get around the presence of God the Father, Jesus the Son, or the Holy Spirit being present and active in every significant event.

This is a key theme in the Bible, and those writing the various books that have been assembled into our Bible all believed that God was alive and working in the world during their time period in history. In the case of the gospels, the writers of these four books believed Jesus to be God who became one of us, and they risked their lives to share Jesus’ life with others.

However, too often, in our lives today, we are quick to discount God’s active involvement. We are quick to look at science for an answer, quick to look to an expert for an explanation, or quick to look to ourselves for a solution. In our lives, we are less likely to see God moving in the details, that is except for in one way.

The way every one of us can see God moving in our lives if we want to see Him is when we look at our past. When you look at your past and when I look at mine, there are countless ways that our lives could have been different if things went just a little differently. It’s possible that you have come close to seriously injuring yourself, or even killing yourself, but something happened that changed your path or prevented this accident. When I look at my past, I see a whole collection of unrelated events shaping who I am today.

While some people look back and see a series of coincidental events that randomly brought us to this point, other people, myself included, instead see a series of God-directed events where He was leading and directing our lives up to this very moment in history.

When faced with huge challenges in our present or in our future, it can be easy to forget God’s leading and His working in the past, including in our past lives. However, the way we can trust that God is still interested and in control is by remembering all the times in the past where things could have gone worse than they did, but for some reason they didn’t. We can attribute the series of events that brought us to where we are at right now in life to God.

Sometimes the events in our past are bad or negative. It also can be easy to blame God or to doubt His love because we went through some trial or challenge. However, while God might be worthy of blame for causing or not preventing something bad from happening, the only way we can move forward in our own lives is to forgive God and trust that there must have been a reason we don’t understand behind what happened.

While I don’t have all the answers to life’s tough questions, I do know that this world has anger, hostility, pain, sin, and struggle associated with it. If God were to remove all the bad in the world today, we would have no need of Him and no reason for a new life in a perfect recreated world. Instead, God wants to eliminate sin from the universe forever, and part of keeping sin from resurfacing is letting sin reveal its true colors. Sometimes bad things happen simply to remind us that our eternity is not in a sinful world.

Sometimes when bad things happen, God is reminding us to look forward to a new life with Him in heaven.

In the two miracles we looked at in Matthew’s gospel, there weren’t many similarities. However, both miracles had Jesus, and when we face trials in our lives, Jesus is the best place for us to look to and the best Person for us to lean on!

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

Always intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to trust Him and lean on Him when trials, challenges, and problems come into your life. Blaming God doesn’t solve anything, but trusting God helps us move through whatever trial comes our way and out the other side. Sometimes, when bad things happen, we are reminded that God is preparing a better place for us without all the sin and negatives in our current world. In other times, bad things happen to give us a connection point for others who may be facing what we have faced. Only God has all the answers, and we should look to Him when we question what is happening around us.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself. Grow your personal relationship with God so that you will have the faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus to withstand all the storms that Satan wants to throw our way. Our world is getting crazier each day, and only by staying connected to God can we remain grounded in Him.

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 leave where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Year in Matthew – Episode 18: In two very different miracles, Jesus subtly teaches us about His character and how God works through the craziness of our lives.

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