Category: Matthew

From Glory to Horror to Hope

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Matthew 2:13-18

Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

So strange—at this point in the Christmas story, we’ve heard of angelic announcements and a virgin birth, events so miraculous they’re highlighted in the night sky, drawing wise men from distant lands. And then this horror happens.

As terrible as the slaughter of these innocent children is to contemplate, perhaps the account does help us process the horrors we have seen. It’s not unusual for people to ask, “How can God let such things happen?”

Well … evil remains in the world, doesn’t it? Satan and all beings who follow Satan’s lead see their impending destruction in Christ’s arrival. Their ongoing response is one of fury, an unleashing of the irrational anger at the core of their being.

Like Herod, any self-centered human can experience how frustration leads to anger, and anger can turn violent. There’s also a general brokenness to the world, the result of uncountable generations of sinful decision-making going back to the original break between humanity and God.

So even at the time of the birth of Christ, horrors persisted. And horrors will persist, for a time.

God has provided the solution, though. Somehow, the solution even will be mysteriously retroactive, wiping away every tear, to quote Revelation 21:4. We also can look to the concluding verses in Jeremiah 31:15-17, to which Matthew alluded after telling the tale of the Bethlehem children:

“There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.”

The work of Christ does not yet relieve us of the horrors we have witnessed or experienced, but it will. That great truth, mysterious as it is, should give us hope in all circumstances.

Lord, as we confront the dark realities of our world, give us a deeper understanding of how very temporary you will prove them to be. Amen.

God’s Stepfather

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Poor Joseph, husband of Mary and earthly step-dad to the son of God. Even today, his situation seems awkward, what with God placing a baby directly in the womb of his wife-to-be.

It had to be embarrassing for him. We can tell from the first chapter of Matthew, where we find an account of how Jesus’ birth came about.

When Joseph discovered Mary was pregnant, he initially planned “to dismiss her quietly,” knowing he had not touched her in anything resembling an intimate way, but assuming some other man had.

And even after an angel told him the child was the direct work of the Holy Spirit, the circumstances still had to be embarrassing. People would have noticed Mary’s pregnancy was out of sync with her marriage to Joseph.

The gossip mongers would have speculated on some ugly possibilities: Maybe Mary was in love with some village boy. Maybe she was raped by a Roman soldier. Maybe Joseph couldn’t control himself until the wedding night.

Joseph doesn’t need our pity, however. People face such quandaries from time to time, situations where what is right before God may not look right before the world. We should all hope to handle such dilemmas as well as Joseph.

Matthew describes Joseph as a “righteous” man, but we can miss just how righteous he was. He proved himself to have the kind of righteousness Jesus would talk about as an adult, a “Sermon on the Mount” kind of goodness about him.

That righteousness was in Joseph even before the angel came to him in a dream. You would think that a man who believed he had been made a cuckold would lash out. It’s surprising he didn’t embarrass Mary and her family, and perhaps even demand serious punishment for what was a crime in their society.

Yes, as a righteous Jew, Joseph would have known the Jewish law and how it worked to his advantage. But he also seems to have understood that the root of the law is love. Thus, the plan to dismiss her quietly.

I’m reminded of Jesus’ teachings that occurred more than three decades later. He would begin a lesson with, “You have heard that it was said,” and finish by demonstrating how the law actually calls us to sacrificial levels of love for God and neighbor.

And that superbly righteous behavior continued after the angel came. Having awakened from his dream, Joseph leaped into immediate action.

He took Mary as his wife, and proceeded to follow God’s instructions. He obediently let God use him as a trustworthy tool, one capable of keeping the Christ child out of the reach of murderous kings.

In Joseph, we see a righteous and obedient man for every age, a model for those who would follow God regardless of what the world thinks.

Lord, thank you for the remnants of righteousness, the ones who were able to take part in your great plan to save humanity from sin. Amen.

The God Who Speaks

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Hebrews 1:1-2 (New Living Translation)

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe.

These words and what follows in the opening of Hebrews remind us of the astonishing change God wrought in the history of the universe through Jesus Christ.

Even in their sin-soaked brokenness, people had always received at least some indirect word from God. In particular, prophets would arise who would speak on God’s behalf, usually issuing a call to repent, an exhortation to live as God would have them live.

In those prophecies, there also were promises. God said he would provide a way out of sin, an opportunity for otherwise hardened hearts to be softened, beating once again to God’s rhythms rather than the world’s.

In this season of Advent, we move toward celebrating the incarnation, the strange fact that God actually took on flesh and lived among us. Not only that, God came among us not as a king but as a vulnerable, very poor baby, fully experiencing what it means to be human.

How does the Son speak to you? Are you in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, letting his words challenge and shape you?

Advent is a good season to reconnect with the one who is always available. God continues to speak a new, life-changing truth to all of us.

Over the next few days, try something. Read the first two chapters of each of the gospels. It’s my prayer that starting these stories will renew a desire to hear what the Son has to say.

Lord, thank you for the ongoing blessing of your holy word. We particularly thank you for the penetrating, life-changing words of the Messiah. Amen.

Houseful of Servants

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Matthew 24:45-51
Jesus Discusses the Need To Stay Ready

“A faithful, sensible servant is one to whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his other household servants and feeding them. If the master returns and finds that the servant has done a good job, there will be a reward. I tell you the truth, the master will put that servant in charge of all he owns. But what if the servant is evil and thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? The master will return unannounced and unexpected, and he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Just in case you’re missing the meaning—we are the servants. In a culture where we have a tendency to exalt ourselves, we can fail to recognize this all-important starting point.

We have hit a place in the cycle of Bible readings where we’re getting daily reminders that our situation is temporary. Christians believe Jesus Christ will return one day to set the world right, restoring holiness and driving away evil. This servant metaphor is embedded in a long section of Matthew where Jesus talks in very apocalyptic tones.

Servants have responsibilities; we are to understand ourselves as being in charge of each other’s well-being. Remember Philippians 2:4? “Look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

In a lot of ways, a narcissist—a psychopathically self-centered person—is the behavioral opposite of the perfect Christian. Most of us fall on a scale somewhere in between these two extremes, and we of course want to be “going on toward perfection,” to use an 18th-century Methodist term.

How will we be found? Caring for others, or obsessively taking care of our own needs and wants?

These are good questions to ask ourselves as we arise each morning. They could very well shape what we do each day!

Lord, help us to look out for those opportunities to support our fellow servants. As we care for each other, we know your household will grow stronger day by day, until the day we see you in full. Amen.

Scrubbed of Hypocrisy

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Matthew 15:1-9 (NRSV)

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”

I had been wondering when this text would come up during the pandemic. I figured someone would have something to say about Jesus defending his disciples’ lack of handwashing.

Except this story is not really about handwashing, is it? Instead, it’s about empty rituals, and even worse, rituals used in a mean-spirited way.

The Pharisees and other Jews did have a long tradition of ritual washing before eating, although the act had little to do with modern hygiene. It’s questionable whether they even had soap as we think of soap today.

The ritual, rooted in God-given instructions to priests, was intended to put a holy act between any inadvertent unclean contact and the act of eating. For example, you never know when you might have brushed against a person or object considered unclean under the law.

As Jesus often did when he realized a strategic effort to discredit him was underway, he in a theological sense returned fire, revealing the hearts of those who piously invoked the handwashing tradition.

Specifically, he pointed out the Pharisees’ tendency to use the letter of the law they had defined to overcome the spirit of the law given by God. Jesus picked an ugly example: the ritual neglect of needy parents.

If you know your Ten Commandments, you know that caring for your mother and father is very important. These Jewish leaders, however, had designed a way to shield their assets by dedicating their property to the temple, even though they continued using their possessions for their own benefit. “Sorry Mom, sorry Dad—it’s all set aside for God’s work, can’t help you.”

Maybe Mom and Dad weren’t so great, having been neglectful or abusive. Who knows what could harden a child’s heart in such a way. None of that really goes to the point Jesus was making, however.

God in his greater wisdom ordained a system of relationships that holds godly society together. When a parent and a child are properly bound by unconditional love, or a man and a woman are joined in the marriage covenant, or a neighbor cares for a neighbor, we are seeing God’s system at work. We may not understand it in full, but we honor the fact that love undergirds what God has established.

Love also is why we should not let today’s Bible passage create in us a disdain for rituals. Ritual religion should be a powerful and beautiful part of our lives. Appropriately performed, rituals allow us to receive love from God, return love to God, and share God’s love with each other.

Let’s keep the good rituals, and if we run across one that fails to transmit love in one of these ways, let’s ditch it.

Lord, where we find ourselves working hard to avoid loving as we should, help us to pause and consider what you would have us do. Amen.

Timing

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Joshua 6:1-20 (NLT)

Today is election day, and as I look at the recommended Nov. 3 Scripture readings, the irony of finding a particular story from the Book of Joshua does not escape me.

In the story there is a wall, and the wall collapses. The story has inspired many people through the years, including Black slaves who once sang, “Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumblin’ down.” It is a story of change, chaotic change, but change designed to benefit the people of God.

First and foremost, let’s be praying that any change to come from today’s voting process is according to God’s will, and to the benefit of Christ’s kingdom on earth. There also is a lesson in this story about timing, a lesson any culture can benefit from in any era.

Joshua asked the Israelites to do a difficult thing—trust God’s timing. It must have been strange, marching around a city’s high wall day after day in silence. I wonder, once back in camp in the evening, did anyone mutter, “When are we going to actually do something effective?”

Timing is difficult to master. If you’ve ever played sports or music, you know how critical timing is. My father has been a drag racer for decades; races are often won or lost by thousandths of a second. In karate, there’s an ancient saying: “The time to strike is when opportunity presents itself.” You can be too quick or too slow. 

People sometimes like to act as if God isn’t fully awake. The solution we’ve deemed right must be forced, it seems: Here, Abram, go impregnate Hagar. Other times, we lose focus, and we’re too late to be effective. (I plan to preach this “too late” text Sunday.)

Jesus’ earthly ministry relied on timing. He repeatedly warned the disciples and others not to reveal too much about him, not just yet. It was as if Jesus knew exactly which beams and nails had to be available for his crucifixion if heaven and earth were to be joined through him.

If we’re going to master timing as Christians, we need to be sure we’re hearing clearly from God. Let’s neither rush nor miss those moments when our Lord says, “Blow those trumpets! Shout!” Again, prayer and study of Scripture are the best ways to unstop our ears.

Once we know God has issued a call to action, we can be confident our efforts to change things for the better will be effective, even if it turns out we’re just one move in the Lord’s long game.

Today seems like a good day for John Wesley’s covenant prayer. Here’s a modern version:

I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,
exalted for you, or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Four Parts of Worship: Sending Forth

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Matthew 28:1-10

At the end of each worship service, I “send us forth,” to use the language of fourfold worship. The obvious question is, “Send us forth to what?”

The answer, of course, lies in the word of God.

The Matthew text linked above is typically used as an Easter reading. Easter—the day we celebrate the resurrection of Christ—also is the key to understanding “sending forth,” however. We’re going to use Matthew’s story of Christ’s resurrection to help us better understand what we’re sent forth to do.

Jesus doesn’t appear until late in the story, but as he is the starting point for all things, we’ll begin with him. Even if you’ve heard this core story of Christianity a thousand times before, try to hear it with fresh ears today.

In the resurrection, Jesus is revealed fully as the Christ, the son of God, the promised gift of God sent to redeem the world. As we understand the resurrection more fully in the context of other holy writings, we see he is God in flesh, God among us.

We also want to consider some of the humans in the story, the two Marys and Jesus’ disciples.

The two Marys. One is identified as Mary Magdalene, a woman Jesus freed from demon possession. She was clearly devoted to Jesus. The “other Mary” is less easily identified; Matthew would never have referred to Jesus’ mother in such a way. She was likely the “mother of James and Joseph” identified as being at the cross. If you haven’t figured out by now, Mary (Miriam in Hebrew) was a very common female name in Jesus’ day and place.

What I take away from their part in the story is faithfulness, likely combined with an expectancy that something more was to happen. Unlike the other gospels, Matthew says the Marys merely went “to see the tomb,” rather than going with a specific purpose, such as to anoint Jesus’ body more thoroughly. I think that unlike many of the male disciples, the women had fully heard Jesus’ words about what was to come after his death, and hope remained in their hearts.

Through their faithful attendance to Christ, even when all seemed lost, they became important witnesses to mighty events surrounding the resurrection, standing at an intersection of heaven and earth. They also became the first humans to declare the truth about the remarkable event that changed the world.

The Disciples. Just as they were Jesus’ primary audience in his three years of ministry, they seem to be his primary audience immediately after the resurrection. The angel told the two Marys to go to them with word of the resurrection. Jesus repeated this instruction when he appeared to the women suddenly, as they ran to the disciples.

Later in Matthew, we’re told something interesting about the 11 remaining key disciples—despite seeing Jesus, some doubted. I wonder if they muttered in Aramaic, “It’s just too good to be true.” Jesus told them to go forth and spread the word of the resurrection, however, baptizing believers in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s clear they finally did believe. After all, we’re here on the other side of the planet, worshiping Christ as Savior.

As people who gather to worship Christ, we have the potential to fulfill some of these roles as we go forth into the world. Where do we fit in the story?

At a minimum, I pray we’re like the disciples, following Jesus, even enamored with Jesus despite our occasional doubts. Can we do as they did and become more like the Marys? Can we declare what has been revealed to us through God’s word? Can we live as if we expect greater things to happen?

That is what we’re sent forth each week to do. Despite our current circumstances, most of us have gathered in worship week after week and equipped ourselves through the word. We’ve celebrated what has been declared.

Let’s never stop sharing the good news about Jesus Christ with those who so desperately need to hear it!

Lord, regardless of how we worship, may we always go into the world declaring Christ as Savior to all who need to hear. Amen.

Four Parts of Worship: Gathering

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

The pandemic has seriously impacted our ability to worship as we like, and there’s no telling when we will return to something resembling normal. Times like this offer an opportunity to get back to basics, however.

At a minimum, when Covid-19 is gone, we should be ready to worship in a powerful way, perhaps more powerfully than ever. With that in mind, I thought we could spend the rest of the week talking about worship’s four big “parts,” something I’ve done before in the form of a sermon series.

Worship experts use different terms for these four parts of worship, but I like these: Gathering, Word, Celebration, and Sending Forth. We’ll begin today with gathering, of course.

The gathering time is perhaps the most confusing of the four, simply because many Christians don’t consider it part of worship at all. Much of it happens before we’ve officially “started.” When we neglect it, however, we’re like a traveler who begins a journey by tripping in the first few steps and cracking a kneecap. The rest of the journey will be painful, and the traveler may never reach the destination.

At the latest, the gathering should begin somewhere near the church lawn, before we ever enter the building. It begins as we ready ourselves for why we have come to this place—to encounter God and join with others seeking to do the same.

If you’ll pause outside a church building for a moment and breathe, you’ll see there is so much designed to put you in the right frame of mind. The exterior design of most church buildings is intended to point you toward God, to say to you, “Lift up your eyes! Look up!” We’re granted a moment of perspective, remembering  where we stand in relation to God.

Where there are bells or carillons, the ringing is a call to the faithful and a reminder to the lost that something special is about to happen.

You may have noticed that I said the gathering begins near the church lawn “at the latest.” I’m probably stretching the concept of gathering a little, but I would argue it begins long before we cross the church property line. Are you preparing yourself for worship through encounters with God during the week? Was your Saturday night an appropriate prelude to an encounter with God, including plenty of rest?

Once inside the sanctuary, the gathering continues as the service formally begins. Our individual readiness becomes a group readiness, and when we gather correctly, great things begin to happen. We feel it in the recitations and the singing. The prayers bind us together.

And we should expect great things. Just look at Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:19-20, words given to us very clearly in the context of church life: “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

God is present when we gather. Not only that, the holy decisions we make as a church align us with events in heaven.

When worship is properly understood, the question regarding church attendance should never be, “Am I going today?” Instead, it should be, “How will I prepare, and how will I ever leave?”

Lord, as we find ourselves denied worship in the ways we most enjoy, help us to consider what it means to gather in your name. Amen.

Get Real

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Matthew 22:23-33 (NLT)

That same day Jesus was approached by some Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name.’ Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children, so his brother married the widow. But the second brother also died, and the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them. Last of all, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her.”

Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.

“But now, as to whether there will be a resurrection of the dead—haven’t you ever read about this in the Scriptures? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ So he is the God of the living, not the dead.”

When the crowds heard him, they were astounded at his teaching.

If you’re a cynic, you have to be careful when you’re near Christ. You may find yourself confronted with the grittiness of your world view.

Just ask the Sadducees, a party within the Jewish religious-political structure in Jesus’ day. What made the Sadducees unique was their belief that there was no afterlife, and that in particular God would never raise people from the dead.

The Sadducees enjoyed publicly making fun of Jesus’ teachings about resurrection and an afterlife with God. They did so in what sounds like a riddle, one designed to expose what they considered the silliness of the resurrection.

The riddle also opened the door to some off-color humor at Jesus’ expense. It relied on the image of a pitiful woman passing from the arms of one brother to another. The riddle was rooted in the Jewish tradition that if a man were to die childless, his brother was to marry the widow and impregnate her so the dead brother would have an heir.

All seven brothers tried, and all seven brothers died, the riddle went. Finally, the woman died, too. “So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” the Pharisees asked Jesus. “For all seven were married to her.”

When I imagine this ribald theological challenge, I see the Sadducees snickering, or at least suppressing a smirk. Any Jews standing nearby may have laughed out loud.

In modern terms, Jesus’ response can be boiled down to two words: “Get real.” He ignored the intricacies of the Sadducees’ earthy riddle. Instead, he affirmed the resurrection and tried to help them see that their theology was as coarse as their humor.

Jesus wanted them to see the glory and hope God offers us through Jesus Christ. “For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven,” he said.

We are reminded that we are so much more than what day-to-day life reveals to us. Jesus went on to prove his assertions by dying on the cross for our sins and then rising from the dead transformed, demonstrating that the power of sin and death had been defeated.

God promises us the same resurrection experience if only we believe in the effectiveness of Jesus’ work on the cross to save us. In fact, all of creation will be reworked to fit God’s view of how things should be.

Such belief does more than give us a future. It gives us a present we can interpret with hope and optimism rather than cynicism.

Even where we see pain and death, we can say, “I know the ugliness of this world is temporary. I know God hates what I’m seeing even more than I do, and that he’s provided a way out.”

The world may remain gritty, but knowing the situation is temporary changes everything.

Lord, may today bring us a special experience of your very present, resurrection-rooted kingdom. Amen.

A Joy to Behold

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By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Psalm 96

Let’s close out the work week with a psalm, hoping its words will enhance our weekend worship. (The link above will take you to the full psalm.)

Followers of Christ have a basic, biblically inspired vision and mission for their lives and churches, and vision and mission interact in this psalm.

When we speak of “vision,” we’re talking about how we believe events in heaven and earth will play out one day. In short, we see a future where the world will conform to the happy truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

In the words of Romans 14:11, which is quoting Isaiah 49:18, ” ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will confess and give praise to God.’ “

The vision naturally inspires us as we go about our day-to-day mission. We let the Holy Spirit work through us so new disciples of Christ are made. Implicit in all of this is our need to grow as disciples so we can be more effective in our work.

Psalm 96 brings out one particular aspect of vision and mission. In living them out, there is great joy.

We worship a loving, glorious God, and he wants to put a new song in our hearts!

Lord, where our vision has grown dim and we have strayed from our mission, forgive us, please. Give us new light and understanding so we may better serve your kingdom. Amen.