Category: Band

Jesus had just been pronouncing the woes upon the Pharisees for their toxic religiosity and then arose to walk away. His time was done at the temple. The temple’s time was over. He was leaving and he wouldn’t return.

But just at the most inopportune moment, the disciples came up to Jesus to point him to the beauty of the temple. It had been, in fact, built beautifully. After the original temple that Solomon had built was destroyed, Nehemiah had returned to rebuild the temple and the initial rebuilding seems to have been finished during the reign of the Medes and Persians. Ezra says that it was finished in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the Great.

So this second temple became the center of religious life for the Jews, and as a demonstration of his greatness, Herod came and built it out even further, expanding the temple and layering it with gold and marble. This was likely intended to be just as much of a testament and a building project in memory of Herod as it was a place to worship and offer sacrifices.

So as Jesus was leaving, what do the disciples do? They look to the beauty of what man has made.

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings.

Matthew 24:1

They loved the beauty of the building. They loved its splendor and grandeur. I’m imagining that maybe they said:

What do you think, Jesus? Isn’t this great?

Aren’t the Jews truly an amazing people?

The kingdom of God as represented by this temple is wonderful, isn’t it?

But of course Jesus then turns and looks at them directly and says:

“Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

Matthew 24:2

Any more questions?

Do we need to wonder any longer where Jesus places his priority?

His thoughts and priorities have nothing to do with the buildings. They have nothing to do with the religious trappings of Judaism. They have nothing to do with anything except the full and complete love and devotion to him with a changed heart created by the change initiated by the Holy Spirit. That’s it. Nothing else.

So he essentially tells the disciples: You like this? It is useless. It is all going away and not a single stone will be left standing on another.

And that is exactly what happens. Less than 40 years later, the Romans come through and destroy the temple. Gone. Nothing left.

And yet the Jews still go to the western foundational wall today to mourn and pray. They still march around the temple mount desiring to take back the religiosity. Take back and rebuild something that will only be torn down and destroyed yet again.

Of course, we can point our fingers at the Jews, but this is a universal perspective and desire, that we build these temples, these monuments so that we can show our “devotion”. It happens in Christianity as well, doesn’t it? We justify it saying that we are devoting ourselves to building something great for God, to worship Him, to help more people come to know Him. But if we are being truthful, it ends up being itself the thing that we serve because it lifts us up. It is, itself, what takes up the majority of our time and energy.

So we must watch out for these things. Don’t say I would never… because yes you would. We all would. We are drawn to build so that we will become known, but Jesus told his disciples that it would all be torn down. The only thing that will last will be his Kingdom. Everything else will be destroyed. Everything else will go away. Let us live today in that future reality!

In Matthew 21, we see this strange scene where Jesus is entering Jerusalem as a king. The people are spreading out their cloaks, placing palm branches on the road, and treating him as someone would treat a king entering into Jerusalem. In fact, they are even declaring him to be the king, saying:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Matthew 21:9

But what is he riding on? He is riding on a donkey! What kind of king rides on a donkey? This is weird…

And what is the first thing that he does? He goes to the temple courts to overthrow the money changers and drive out the vendors saying that his house is to be a house of prayer.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if he were to go to the seat of governmental power to overthrow the government? Isn’t this Messiah supposed to come to kick out the Romans and end the oppression of the Jewish people?

What kind of king is this Jesus supposed to be? A strange one, to say the least.

Just from these actions, Jesus is making it clear that Yes, he is a king, and the people have recognized him as such. But he isn’t the king that the people want him to be. He isn’t a king that has come to overthrow the Roman government. That isn’t the mission. That isn’t his plan.

There is an oppression that is much greater that the people have simply become used to. It is the oppression of rampant sin. It is the corruption of the heart that Jesus has come to overthrow. To call people out of darkness and into the light. To make those who are dead in their sins to come alive again.

But the people who are looking at this king with human eyes, not spiritual eyes, will not see what this king has come to do. That is the problem that they had when, upon entering Jerusalem, the people simply asked:

Who is this?

Matthew 21:10

They don’t get it. They don’t get him. They don’t understand, because they don’t see him in the way that he intends for them to see him.

Last night, a friend of mine told me that he sees the same thing in the stories of the Bible that we see today. For example, we read the story of the rich young ruler and talked about how Jesus calls us to come to him, that he wants the entirety of our lives, but instead we want to give him a part and retain the rest for ourselves. Jesus told him that he needed to sell everything, give the money to the poor, and follow him. But the man went away sad because he wanted to keep his riches.

My friend said that he sees the same thing today, and I think that he is right. Despite all our knowledge, all of our technological advancement… Despite all of our perceived achievement, in our hearts, little has changed from what we see from the stories in the Bible. Our hearts have, in many ways, continued on just as they always have.

But we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to see Jesus for who he intends to show himself to truly be. He desires to be both Lord and Savior. He not only saves us from our sins, but he commands our lives and draws us forward toward true obedience as a result of our love for him. Our obedience comes because we desire to please him and we find joy in being with him.

So we can have true joy in Christ if we see him and respond to him for whom he truly is. Let us make that choice and not continue to look at Jesus with human, fleshly eyes, but instead understand him with the depth of our hearts.

In Matthew 20, Jesus is telling a story of his ransom mission. At the beginning of the chapter, he is speaking to his disciples when he tells them a parable of a landowner who hires day laborers to work in his vineyard. Those that are brought in last are given the same wages as those who came in first, so Jesus shows the Jews that the Gentiles will also, despite coming into the Kingdom later than the Jews, will also be able to inherit entry into Jesus’s Kingdom.

Jesus then, yet again for the second time recorded in Matthew, tells his disciples that he is going to be condemned and crucified, but that he will be raised to life again.

And finally, just before leaving from Jericho to head up to Jerusalem, he tells his disciples that they must be a servant if they want to be great within the Kingdom of God. The justification that he gives for this is that, just as he is giving his life as a ransom for many, they must also give their lives away in service to others.

So Jesus is trying to be very clear with his disciples about his mission and what he is doing. Of course, they continue to be blinded by their ambition and desire to see Jesus for whom they want him to be, not necessarily who Jesus says he is and what he is planning to do.

Very often, we also can become confused and misunderstand the fundamental mission of what Jesus came to do and has called us to do. We can be hung up in many different concerns, but miss Jesus’s basic calling to bring people into his Kingdom, thus missing also our basic calling to bring people into his Kingdom!

Instead, let us stay focused on what Jesus has called us to do – to usher people into his Kingdom. He has called us abide and grow in his, bringing others also to know him. Let us make sure that the main objective remains the main objective. Help us Lord to stay focused on your plan!

A few days ago, I wrote that Jesus truly calls us to a radical, or some might say “extreme” lifestyle. There is little balance in what Jesus asks of us. Instead, there is no room for the things of this world. There is only one thing that is worthy of the totality of our lives. Him, and him only.

That is the message that Jesus delivered to the rich, young ruler. He was a man who had kept all of the commandments. At least he had said so. But he came to Jesus asking how he too could have eternal life. He wanted to know how he could live on forever.

Jesus says that he must obey the commandments such as not stealing, not murdering, not commiting adultery, not lying, honoring his father and mother, and the man says that he has.

But Jesus knew that, in fact, the man’s heart was divided. He wasn’t sold out to the things of God. More to the point, he wasn’t completely sold out to Jesus.

In fact, I think that we could even say that Jesus was actually checking the man on the rest of the commandments. Think of it this way: Jesus had initially asked him about whether or not he had obeyed the commandments regarding how we interact with other people. But he didn’t ask him anything about whether or not he had any other gods before the one true God. Or whether or not he had placed any idols before God.

It would be easy for the man to say that he, of course, had no other gods before God. It would be easy for him to say that he had made no idols.

But was that really true? If so, how could Jesus find out? By calling the man to sell everything, Jesus could determine whether the man truly had no other gods before God or any idols. It was a way for him, with action, to show the true state of his heart.

So Jesus gave him an opportunity. Although I think Jesus probably knew what the man’s response would be, he could have been Jesus’s 13th disciple. He could have said Yes and followed Jesus.

But Jesus gave him the hardest commandment. He struck at the man’s core. He tested the man’s true desire to enter eternal life, his true desire to be with the One who would give him that eternal life. Jesus told him:

Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

Matthew 19:21

Whoa… You’re going to mess with him that much? You’re going to force him to sell EVERYTHING, Jesus? Isn’t that a little over the top? Isn’t that extreme?

Yes, it is. And that is the point. Jesus wants everything. All of it. All that we are and nothing less. He is the treasure. He is the pearl of great price. Being with him is worth it all because the things that we value in life are nothing compared to entering his Kingdom, to having a relationship with him.

Someone recently asked me for the definition of membership in the small church that we lead. I told them that we didn’t really have a specific “membership” process, but that we called people to obedience to Christ. We demonstrate our love for him by obeying him each day. Interestingly, we have driven away more people than have stayed, most likely because of this very issue. This is membership in the Kingdom of God. This is membership in the Church.

We attempt to follow Christ to the maximum, leaving the rest behind. We put Christ first above all else. Those who desire that and keep coming back for more, those are the members in our church. May that always be the case and may we continue to call people to this in the same way that Jesus did as he walked the earth.

Jesus uses a phrase a few times as he is teaching and speaking with his disciples. He talks about “binding” and “loosing”. For example, such as this in Matthew 18:

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 18:18

What is Jesus referring to here? What does it mean that someone would bind something on earth and it would be bound in heaven? Or that someone would loose something on earth and that it would be loosed in heaven?

This statement, initially to Peter after he declared Jesus to be the Christ, has been plucked out to be used and abused by the Roman Catholic Church, both in the past and even up to this very moment, giving scriptural authority to the idea of papal authority. But we see, actually, in this particular example, that Jesus doesn’t just give this authority to Peter, but he is actually speaking to the other disciples as well.

In addition, Jesus goes on to immediately talk about two of the disciples, and then even more, two or three that are gathered in Jesus’s name. We see that they have Jesus’s authority, and he is there with them when they are connected and gathered in his name.

But what do those statements mean: “Whatever you bind on earth…” or “whatever you loose on earth…”? These actually harken back to a Jewish way of saying “to forbid” or “to permit”. So to say “whatever you bind” would be to say “whatever you forbid”, and to say “whatever you loose” would be to say “whatever you permit”.

Now, if we misunderstand what Jesus was saying here, we could easily find ourselves thinking that Jesus left us in charge of making up our own plans, our own rules, because we could say that we have “bound” (forbidden) XYZ thing or we have “loosed” (permitted) ABC other thing. But to say this would be a significant misunderstanding and would lead us down the path that the Catholic church has gone as they decided to give authority to their pope to decree what he would decide that he wants to decree and it have the same level of authority as God’s word, or God Himself. Hmmm…

Obviously, I don’t subscribe to this point of view, and here is why:

If you look at what Jesus is talking about, in context, he is referring to calling someone back from sin. First, he talks about a man who owns a hundred sheep and then goes looking for the one that gets lost. He leaves the 99 and goes to look for the 1.

From there, he tells the disciples that if someone is in sin, the others should go to point out their fault. He then gives a process through which the person should be brought back into the community of believers. He talks about an individual going, then going with one or two others, and then finally taking the matter to the church, at which point, if the person still will not repent, they should, essentially, shun that person, sending them out of the church, out of the spiritual community within which they have been a part of together up to that point.

So it is within that context that Jesus says that “whatever you bind” or “whatever you loose” on earth will also be done in heaven. In other words, if they make a decision that someone should be brought back into the community after repenting from their sin, heaven will agree and it will be done. But if they believe that the person should be sent out because they are not repentant of their sin, heaven will also agree.

And what is more, Jesus is there with them. He is gathering together with them in their meeting, both in trying to reconcile the brother or sister that has been called out of their sin as well as in putting that person out of the community, should it come to that.

There is an old saying that says that there is a reason that God gave us two ears and one mouth. We were intended to listen more than we speak, but we tend to do exactly the opposite. We tend, instead, to speak with the one mouth that we were given much more than we listen with the two ears that we have.

This was apparently also true of Peter as Jesus was revealing his true identity to the disciples, transfiguring into his spiritual self and speaking with Moses and Elijah about the time that he would depart from the earth, starting from what would happen in Jerusalem.

Instead of watching and listening, Peter began to speak. But he was so overwhelmed by what he was seeing, he was speaking nonsense. Despite being also transfigured and having appeared from heaven, thus needing no physical shelter, Peter proposes shelters for all three: Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Here is how it went:

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

Matthew 17:4-5

Jesus doesn’t even have to say anything. Instead, a voice from the cloud, the voice of God Himself, speaks to all of them and declares for a second time that this Jesus is His son.

Jesus is divine. He is God, and he is here in human form. And what is more, God loves him and is pleased with him.

What I love, though, is that it says that his voice came out of the cloud while he was still speaking. God interrupts Peter, in effect saying:

Stop talking. Listen to Jesus.

I think it is a lesson for each of us. We all, also, have two ears and one mouth. It is a lesson that we also should listen much more than we should speak. Stop speaking, listen to Jesus.

But let me take that one step further. As believers in Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit to live within us. We have the living God living inside of us and we dare to speak faster than we listen. Our Creator lives within us. The One who made us dwells inside of us and He wants to speak to us. To lead us. To guide us.

And yet we speak.

Let’s remember what the Father said to Peter and the disciples:

This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!

I was struck today to read that there was a specific moment at which Jesus began to tell his disciples the end of his plan, the end of his time on earth. Jesus knew that his end would come by suffering and by being killed, and he began to predict his death to his disciples.

But I realized that he started telling his disciples at a specific moment. Here is what Jesus said:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Matthew 16:21

But what was that time that was “From that time on…”? Jesus chose the moment at which Peter and the disciples recognized Jesus to be the Messiah to be “that time” from which he would start telling his disciples that he would suffer and be put to death.

So, it would be a little like Jesus was saying:

Great news! You’ve now figured out who I am! Yes, you are right, Peter. You are blessed because this wasn’t revealed to you by any man, but instead by my Father in heaven.

Now, let me explain something else to you… I’m about to go suffer and die, and then I will be raised to life again.

And what is more, if you are my disciple, you will have to carry a cross just like me. My disciples produce fruit by losing their life, leaving their old life behind, and instead take on my life. This is what it means to be my follower.

Whew… that’s pretty heavy. Just as soon as the disciples figure out that Jesus is the Messiah, he starts saying that he is going to die. No wonder Peter stood up to say that it would never happen that Jesus would die under his watch. Peter thought that for Jesus to be the Messiah would mean, just as the Jews have always – and to this day – thought it meant, that the Messiah would be a political leader and lead the Jews out from underneath the tyrrany of the Romans.

But this isn’t at all what Jesus was saying, and he wanted to make that perfectly clear to his disciples. He wanted them to understand, now that it was understood that he was the Messiah, what it meant for him to be the Messiah. It meant that he was establishing a whole new Kingdom and purchasing people for his Kingdom with his blood. Not with a sword, power, and might, but by bringing people into his Kingdom with mercy, love, and grace through forgiveness for their sins, if only they would believe and have faith in him.

In fact, Jesus tells them clearly something that should have definitely piqued their interest. He said, “and on the third day be raised to life”.

Shouldn’t that be an interesting comment to take note of? Shouldn’t we understand what Jesus was doing in a different light? I would think so because most people who are killed aren’t raised again to life. Jesus is clearly doing something new. He is obviously not getting ready to go to war with the Romans. He is going to war with death, and he is saying that he is going to win.

Jesus knew that the Jewish leaders hated him already. He also knew that the Romans were the only rule of law that could actually kill him, at least legally, so they would also be involved. Now, he is explaining to the disciples that they would all be used in God’s plan for the Messiah to be put to death so that he would take on the punishment for the sins of all men. He would take the punishment that he didn’t deserve so that these men wouldn’t have to be punished but instead would receive grace and mercy instead of God’s wrath for their disobedience and sin.

But in the end, God would win. Jesus would return to life and be raised again. He wouldn’t stay dead in the grave. He would be raised to life again, defeating death and the grave, the same hope that each of the disciples would have, and the same hope that is available to each of us as well.

Reading in Psalm 109 today, I came across an interesting statement. David is writing this psalm when he says:

But you, Sovereign LORD, help me for your name’s sake;

Psalm 109:21

That struck me:

Help me.

For your name’s sake.

For whose benefit? For the benefit of David? No, for the benefit of God. David is saying that he wants God’s name to be lifted up. God will be glorified as a result of the help that He, God, will give to David.

David is asking that God would be made known, that God would be glorified as a result of what he has done for David.

Shouldn’t that be our attitude, that God would be glorified? Yes, of course it should, but so often it isn’t. Instead, our attitude is simply: Help me!

Help me so that I will be in a better position.

Help me so that I will be seen in a better light.

Help me so that I will have more money.

Help me so that my problems will go away.

But to his credit, that isn’t what David says. Instead, he says help me for your name’s sake. David wants God to be known. He wants God to be lifted up, for God to be glorified. Whatever God is going to do in this situation, David wants God to receive the credit for that which He will do for him.

May we also live our lives so that they will glorify God. Not for us, but for him. May God act in our lives and on our behalf for His name’s sake.

I like to stay focused, staying on task to complete the project and specific things that I am working on. In this way, I can accomplish what I am working on and complete the work that I set out to do.

However, there are often situations where I am interrupted, and personally, it stresses me and is difficult for me because my mind tends to be focused on what I was working on.

Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to take interruptions in stride and seemed to place his priorities on the people that he had in front of him. This morning, I was reading in Matthew 14 that Jesus had learned of his cousin’s death and was headed off to a solitary place to pray and connect with God when suddenly a large crowd came to him.

I’m pretty sure that, if I were him, I would have likely either pushed my boat back into the water and gone to the other side, or figured out some other way to get past these people. But not Jesus. Instead, he stopped and had compassion on them.

John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus.

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Matthew 14:12-14

I would say that is a pretty big interruption. It wasn’t even just that Jesus was trying to do something, but he was mourning. He was trying to be by himself for a while because his cousin, who was not only his family but also a very significant part of his work, had just been beheaded by a drunken puppet king. I think that would, very much, have saddened him.

But even in the midst of the sadness, Jesus stops and has compassion on the people.

It is a lesson for me. So frequently I have interruptions from people for one thing or another. Often, those things seem so silly to me as well, if I am being honest. But like Jesus, I need to be ready for those interruptions and be ready also to not reject the people, but instead have compassion and embrace them. God help me to do this!

Jesus explained that the Kingdom of God starts very small but grows in an outsized way to become extremely large, given how it started. Here is what he said:

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Matthew 13:31-33

A few things that I noticed here:

First, both of these parables start with “the kingdom of heaven is like…”, so if we want to know how we can expect the Kingdom to work, we should pay attention when Jesus starts a sentence like this.

This is notable because most of our earthly kingdoms appear to run on the idea that “bigger is better” and “might makes right”, but of course a kingdom that starts as big as a mustard seed or a yeast spore doesn’t seem to be much at all.

Next, given its starting size, it will seem like nothing for some time. Even after it has grown to twice its size, it will seem that it hasn’t done anything. After it grows three or four times its size, nothing.

But it isn’t an issue of the size. It is an issue of the DNA within the seed, or within the spore. It is a question of reproduction, not size. Size will follow reproduction. Reproduction does not follow size.

Third and finally, there is an end point of full maturity. The small thing that becomes large does so because it has become mature. The point of maturity, whether it is because it has reached the end of what it can consume, as in the case of the yeast spores that work its way through the dough, or in the case of the mustard seed that grows to full maturity, enough to house all of the birds, there is a place of maturity that it wants to go and grow toward.

So these are elements that we need to learn from as well. As disciple-makers and church planters, we may be starting small, but our DNA should be that of replication and growth.

We may seem to stay small for some time, but if we are growing, we are going in the right direction.

And God will take us to maturity. He will finish the work. He will do with us what he wants and will continue the work the fullest extent that he wants it to go. It is His work and it is His final product that we will see established and sustained.