Is Jesus trying to confuse people? Is he telling cryptic stories and saying impossible things on purpose because he's hiding something from us?
Yes, yes he is. But he doesn't want you to stay confused. He wants to give you the answers, but he wants you to stick with him through the confusion.
Taking a detour from our lessons in Matthew, this is a full sermon-style message studying Hebrews 7. I've never had the opportunity to teach through Hebrews, so I'm taking the time to address at least this one chapter simply because it's on my heart to do so. Thinking of Jesus as our forever King means so much more than we tend to think.
Why did Jesus let John die in prison? After all, the job of the Messiah was to set the captives free. What if I told you that Jesus is the kind of king who will disappoint you today because he has something bigger in mind for the future. Would you still follow a king like that?
When Jesus sent his disciples out as workers in his harvest field, he gave them a clear message and a clear method. And neither had anything to do with salesmanship.
When Jesus tells his followers that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, what does he mean by the harvest? Is it all about telling people the gospel and getting them saved, or is there something more going on? If we want to know how we are supposed to participate in the great harvest Jesus mentions, we should probably consider what kind of harvest he initiated and what kind of seeds he planted to produce that harvest.
Don't build your house on the sandy sand. Don't build your house on the shore. Well, it might be kinda nice, but you'll have to build it twice. Oh you'll have to build your house once more.
What does Jesus mean by telling us not to judge before giving us instructions about avoiding pigs, helping someone get a speck out of their eye, and avoiding false prophets? That sounds like a lot of judgment doesn't it?
Perhaps not the way he meant it.
On Wednesday, September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a MAGA political activist, founder of Turning Point, USA, husband and father, was killed in what most people are calling a politically-motivated act.
At this point we don't know the motives of the killer, but we can know the motives of our own hearts, and so it's time for us to reflect on whether or not we are loving our enemies the way our King would have us do.
Do you have enough faith to trust that God will take care of you? Actually, how would it change you if you had that much faith? How would it change your relationship to money? In Matthew 6, King Jesus makes a promise that seems too good to be true.
Have you ever realized that giving to the poor or forgiving someone who hurt you are both acts of faith? Both of them will cause you to lose out on something that was rightfully yours, and if you keep doing it enough, you will eventually become needy yourself, won't you? That is... unless you are getting filled up in some other way.
What is the heart of the Law of Christ? If you think the rules of the Sermon on the Mount are all about avoiding lust or avoiding divorce, you might have missed what's really going on. It's so much deeper than that.
If you think of Jesus primarily as a Savior, he's the one that gets you out of the things you don't want to do. But if you think of him mainly as your King, you should expect him to demand something of you.
Citizens of the new kingdom of Jesus are salt and light to the people of the old kingdom, but what does that mean? Here's a hint. It doesn't mean to be a restraining force and it doesn't mean to shine a light of shame on the sins of the world. Still, it is the first command of the new kingdom and how you understand the command will affect nearly everything about how you live in relationship to the world around you.
Last time, we considered one aspect of blessing, but in Matthew 5, Jesus starts really teaching about it. He gives us 8 very specific blessings along with the principles for how you can get in on them. This section sets us up to see the entire Sermon on the Mount with completely new eyes.
What if blessing was already on the way to you? What if you were impatient and wandered away before the blessing came? What if that blessing ended up falling to someone else?
That's what happened when Jesus went to Galilee and fulfilled Isaiah 9.
The story of Jesus's temptation is not a story for us about how we can defeat temptation. Rather, it's a story about the supreme achievement of our king who defeated the most fundamental of all temptations and proved to us that he is exactly the king we need even if he isn't the king we thought we wanted.
Our next passage in the Gospel of Matthew takes us to a passage on judgment. Actually, it's the message John the Baptist gave to warn people about the coming Messiah. For John, the coming Messiah was something to be scared of... John would baptize with water, but the coming Messiah would baptize in fire. This should teach us at least two important lessons about Jesus, our King.
What does it take for a leader to be rejected? What kind of leader will religious people follow and what kind will be despised? Jesus was the kind of leader religious conservatives hated.
What kind of king is Jesus? He's the kind of king who would do things we can't imagine to reach people we don't love!
Christians today often fantasize about what it might be like to have a king like David again. We know the stories of his victories, and we imagine what it would be like to have a king like that fighting our battles for us. However, the opening to the book of Matthew shows us that Jesus is so much better than David!
