Matthew 27:32-66 What does power look like? How do we know whether someone is weak or strong? In the death of Jesus, we see that God’s view of power is very different from the world’s view. Those who watched Jesus’ death believed his crucifixion revealed weakness. While Jesus was on the cross, people mocked him for his seeming failure to fulfill his claims. The religious leaders also joined by say...

A correction and clarification from yesterday’s reading:The rooster crowed twice, not three times (Mark 14:30).  Also, Peter is taken back, but not Judas who is not saved (Matthew 26:24; John 17:12).Matthew 27:15-31 Who put Jesus on the cross? We could point to the religious authorities who had Jesus arrested and dragged him through his sham trials. We could point to the crowd who shouted, “Crucif...

Matthew 26:69-27:14 Are you willing to testify concerning the truth, or will you conform to the crowd? Will you follow along with everyone else or go against the flow? Peter is questioned three times concerning his association with Jesus and three times he denies even knowing him. The cost of allegiance to Jesus seemed too high, so he chose to swim along with the crowd. He valued his own comfort a...

Matthew 26:47-68 The ends justify the means. This common philosophical idea states that if we get the intended outcome we want, then anything we do can be rationalized and justified. We find that Jesus has a very different understanding. Peter wanted to protect Jesus. How could he let his master be arrested? How could he allow all they accomplished to be torn apart? Surely, this could not be God’s...

Matthew 26:14-46 Betrayal is a universal experience. We all have experienced someone ‘stabbing us in the back’ whether with a verbal insult, theft, or potentially physical abuse. In all of these cases, someone we loved and with whom we had experienced a closeness showed our trust had been misplaced. On his last two days on Earth, Jesus announces he would be betrayed. Judas betrays him by turning h...

Matthew 25:31-26:13 Jesus says the greatest command is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He intricately connects our love of God with our love of people and vice versa. You can only do one when you are doing the other. Jesus makes this point very clear in some of his final words to his disciples. He proclaims that the judgment people will face will be connected to “whatever you di...

Matthew 25:1-30 A wedding can be one of the most stressful events in life. When I do premarital counseling, we often spend time discussing how stressed the couple is because of the planning. Think of all the things that go into a wedding: clothing, food, music, location, a date, vows, and an absurd number of other details. That is a lot of stuff. In the same way, Jesus says we need to prepare and ...

Matthew 24:29-51 As Jesus heads to the cross, he makes a point of instructing his disciples about his return. He wants this final event of human history to transform their lives. The return of Christ is not meant to be an abstract theological concept but a life transforming reality. Jesus gives two specific applications regarding his return. First, we are to be watchful. We are to have our eyes op...

Matthew 24:1-28 What is going to happen? How many times in life have you wished you knew the future? Though we are not given the details of our tomorrow, Jesus does lay out for his disciples a general map of what was to come for them and some of what is still to come for us. As the disciples look around the magnificence of the temple mount, they are stunned that Jesus says it will soon be destroye...

Matthew 23:13-39 Woe! Woe! Woe! This sounds like an antiquated phrase that has probably never been pronounced over you. It is the word of a prophet or judge announcing the consequence of a life of waywardness and wickedness. It is used seven times by Jesus to shock his audience into a response; to move them from apathy and opposition, to draw near to him. There is a common caricature of Jesus that...

Matthew 22:34-23:12 How do you feel about rules? Do you find them confining, restricting, or life giving? Are you a natural rebel, who sees in rules an opportunity to break them; or a rule follower who will follow commands to their full extent? Jesus and the Pharisees have a conversation about two sets of rules in Matthew 22-23. One set of rules are those which come from God. Instructions summariz...

Matthew 22:1-33 To live life well we must know the truth. Life and people throw questions at us that we need to be able to answer well. Towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, he is asked a series of questions. The first question is a political question where the Pharisees attempted to paint him into a corner by forcing him to acknowledge whether his allegiance was to Rome or his Jewish brethren. Yet ...

Matthew 21:23-46 Who has authority to go into your house if you are not there? Who has the authority to go into your fridge and take some food without asking? Authority determines what someone is allowed to do. One of the questions which the Pharisees wrestled with was whether Jesus had the authority to back up his claims. Was he a blasphemer or the Son of God? Jesus revealed his identity in a sub...

Matthew 20:29-21:22 Who is Jesus? The validity of our answer determines our eternal destiny. In Jesus’ day, most of the crowds failed to understand who Jesus was. The crowds proclaimed Jesus to be simply a prophet (a Muslim view of Jesus), the Pharisees thought he was a blasphemer (similar to atheists), and the crowds in Jericho thought he would not care about the plight of blind men (like deists ...

Matthew 20:1-28 What are the priorities of your home? One of my friends, who is a missionary in Taiwan, consistently tells his kids their family does things differently than other families. They have priorities and values that may not be shared by their neighbors, but their family does what they do because it expresses their values―particularly, a love for God. God’s family is also called to live ...

Matthew 19:13-30 If your wildest dreams came true, what would be different in your life? You might wish for a larger bank account, a bigger house, and more stuff, but would these things be helpful? Jesus’ interaction with the young man reveals that the things we value and desire might hinder our relationship with God. We are told the man walked away sad because his great wealth walled him off from...

Matthew 18:21-19:12 How easy is it for you to forgive someone? Jesus spends a lot of time communicating about the kingdom of God and in Matthew 18 he stresses one of the highest values of his kingdom is forgiveness. As you think about the various kingdoms of this world, I do not think that forgiveness would be a high value in any of them. Yet as citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to learn to be peo...

Matthew 18:1-20 Greatness in our culture is often marked by celebrity status. The number of likes you get or how many people retweet your thoughts becomes a signal of greatness. Jesus’ view is very different. He brings a young child in front of his disciples and proclaims this is where true greatness lies. Jesus’ metric of greatness is radically different than the world. He assigns greatness to th...

Matthew 17:10-27 Do you feel weak or powerful? Do you feel like you are able to accomplish your tasks today, or do you feel completely incompetent?The disciples had been ministering alongside Jesus and had seen great success, but suddenly, they were tasked with something they could not grasp how to accomplish. A man brought his demon possessed son to them, but they were unable to cast out the demo...

Matthew 16:13-17:9 In college one of my roommates, a nonbeliever, asked “Why does God let bad things happen to good people? If He has a plan, why does He let bad things happen to his ‘beloved’ children?” Before I realized what I was saying, I responded, “There is no such thing as a good person aside from Jesus. Jesus was perfect and He was killed in the most brutal way imaginable. Every person, no...