I've gotten a little off schedule due to traveling and fighting a sinus infection. The traveling part is wonderful...going to see children and grandchildren...special times! The sinus infection, not so much! But when I wake up, even with a thick head and puffy eyes, and see a beautiful morning of light rain, green grass, flowers blooming, I am reminded that God is a good, good Father who has provided so many gifts for us to enjoy. Each day we are given let us give thanks to Him...He has blessed us enormously with the visible, and even more so with the invisible gifts...our Savior Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit, forgiveness, and eternal life. Thank You Lord Jesus for coming for me!
Chapter 4 of Matthew is an incredible message and one that we should think about often as we are no strangers to temptation and the schemes of Satan. If Satan was brazen enough to tempt Jesus, knowing who He was, are we to think that he will not attempt to pull us away from God's path for our life? I'm sure he realizes that we will most likely be much easier to sway than Jesus was...Jesus held firm, and we can too through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we think we can forego Satan and his devices on our own, we will fail, if not immediately, eventually. But when we rely on God's Spirit living within us, and ask Him to make us strong, and speak Scripture back to Satan just as Jesus did, then we can start being victorious over our enemy, no matter what tricks he may use against us.
Satan knows our vulnerabilities. He knew that Jesus had just gone 40 days without food and that to tempt Him to turn stones into bread would be...well, tempting! Satan knows my vulnerabilities as well. He knows them from looking at my past and where I have previously failed. He knows them from the small missteps I may make that show my hand...where I am not following God as closely as I should be. And then he makes his move. We must be aware, we must be alert, and we must pray for deliverance from temptation and his plans of evil. Jesus is our example...look to how he handled Satan's attack. The same attack, by the way, that he had used in the Garden of Eden 4,000 years before---questioning the relationship and the identity of those he was working on. To Adam and Eve he made them doubt the goodness of God as their Father; to Jesus he boldly confronts with the question, "If you are the Son of God..." He does the same thing with us..."Are you really a child of God?" "Is God really looking out for your good?" "Did God really say this is wrong? After all, you want it so badly and it seems so right? Surely God would not withhold this from you if He loves you?" If we are not grounded in God's Word, we will fall to the questions that Satan plants in our minds. We cannot recall Scripture at the time of need if we have not securely hidden it in our hearts prior to that time. Jesus KNEW the Word of God---He would not be a victim to Satan's lies.
Verses 12-17 of Chapter 4 launch Christ's preaching ministry to the world. He hears that John the Baptist has been imprisoned and what does He do? Does He go to see John? Does He free him...the faithful forerunner? No - "He withdrew into Galilee. He left Nazareth behind and went to live in Capernaum by the sea..." Is this what we would expect Jesus, the Son of God, the bearer of all justice to do? For He had to know the reasons for John's imprisonment, and they were far from just. We ask the same question today when good, faithful Christians are imprisoned, mistreated, and executed. Why doesn't God come to their rescue? Why didn't Jesus? Jesus allowed John to be beheaded at the hands of a tyrant....why??
Could it be that this was one of the first "sermons" Jesus preached? Just as He would tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again", Jesus came to preach to us that we must look at life entirely differently than we ever have. We must shift our focus from temporal to eternal. Jesus DID come to John's rescue...He did that on the cross. He rescued John, and all of us, from an eternal imprisonment, an eternal death. He had started that rescue mission, and He wouldn't be deterred. Whatever our fate on this earth, we must remember...we have been rescued!
Verses 18-22 convey to us Christ's selection of His first disciples...Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, James and his brother John. The things that jump out at me in this section are that they were all fishermen, and that when they heard Jesus say, "Follow Me", they immediately left their livelihood and family and followed Him. Jesus calls the same words to us...what is our response? And when we hear Jesus say, "Follow"...do we end up trying to lead? Instead of waiting for Jesus to show us what/where He wants us to do/go, do we head down the road and ask Him to come with us? FOLLOW...He is the leader. We try to assume a role that we were never intended for and we end up in a place we should have never been!
The chapter closes by telling us that Jesus went all over Galille, teaching and preaching the "good news of the Kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Jesus was showing the people of the world what God looks like....He cares. Just as the prophet Isaiah had said and who Matthew had quoted in v.15-16, Light had come into a dark world, and people were drawn to that Light.
Christ's Mission revealed in Chapter 4? This is what I see:
1. To show His superiority and victory over Satan
2. To be the Light to a dark world
3. To bring the truth of God to the world
4. To bring people to repentance
5. To establish disciples who would continue bringing light into the world
6. To show God as a God of compassion and tenderness
Chapter 5 will cover the Sermon on the Mount - it is a long chapter and we'll divide into two sections - Verses 1-26, and Verses 27-48. Out of the first section, the verse I'm choosing to remember is verse 16: "In the same way, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."
It's all about bringing glory to God...to HIM be the glory!!
Chapter 4 of Matthew is an incredible message and one that we should think about often as we are no strangers to temptation and the schemes of Satan. If Satan was brazen enough to tempt Jesus, knowing who He was, are we to think that he will not attempt to pull us away from God's path for our life? I'm sure he realizes that we will most likely be much easier to sway than Jesus was...Jesus held firm, and we can too through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we think we can forego Satan and his devices on our own, we will fail, if not immediately, eventually. But when we rely on God's Spirit living within us, and ask Him to make us strong, and speak Scripture back to Satan just as Jesus did, then we can start being victorious over our enemy, no matter what tricks he may use against us.
Satan knows our vulnerabilities. He knew that Jesus had just gone 40 days without food and that to tempt Him to turn stones into bread would be...well, tempting! Satan knows my vulnerabilities as well. He knows them from looking at my past and where I have previously failed. He knows them from the small missteps I may make that show my hand...where I am not following God as closely as I should be. And then he makes his move. We must be aware, we must be alert, and we must pray for deliverance from temptation and his plans of evil. Jesus is our example...look to how he handled Satan's attack. The same attack, by the way, that he had used in the Garden of Eden 4,000 years before---questioning the relationship and the identity of those he was working on. To Adam and Eve he made them doubt the goodness of God as their Father; to Jesus he boldly confronts with the question, "If you are the Son of God..." He does the same thing with us..."Are you really a child of God?" "Is God really looking out for your good?" "Did God really say this is wrong? After all, you want it so badly and it seems so right? Surely God would not withhold this from you if He loves you?" If we are not grounded in God's Word, we will fall to the questions that Satan plants in our minds. We cannot recall Scripture at the time of need if we have not securely hidden it in our hearts prior to that time. Jesus KNEW the Word of God---He would not be a victim to Satan's lies.
Verses 12-17 of Chapter 4 launch Christ's preaching ministry to the world. He hears that John the Baptist has been imprisoned and what does He do? Does He go to see John? Does He free him...the faithful forerunner? No - "He withdrew into Galilee. He left Nazareth behind and went to live in Capernaum by the sea..." Is this what we would expect Jesus, the Son of God, the bearer of all justice to do? For He had to know the reasons for John's imprisonment, and they were far from just. We ask the same question today when good, faithful Christians are imprisoned, mistreated, and executed. Why doesn't God come to their rescue? Why didn't Jesus? Jesus allowed John to be beheaded at the hands of a tyrant....why??
Could it be that this was one of the first "sermons" Jesus preached? Just as He would tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again", Jesus came to preach to us that we must look at life entirely differently than we ever have. We must shift our focus from temporal to eternal. Jesus DID come to John's rescue...He did that on the cross. He rescued John, and all of us, from an eternal imprisonment, an eternal death. He had started that rescue mission, and He wouldn't be deterred. Whatever our fate on this earth, we must remember...we have been rescued!
Verses 18-22 convey to us Christ's selection of His first disciples...Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, James and his brother John. The things that jump out at me in this section are that they were all fishermen, and that when they heard Jesus say, "Follow Me", they immediately left their livelihood and family and followed Him. Jesus calls the same words to us...what is our response? And when we hear Jesus say, "Follow"...do we end up trying to lead? Instead of waiting for Jesus to show us what/where He wants us to do/go, do we head down the road and ask Him to come with us? FOLLOW...He is the leader. We try to assume a role that we were never intended for and we end up in a place we should have never been!The chapter closes by telling us that Jesus went all over Galille, teaching and preaching the "good news of the Kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Jesus was showing the people of the world what God looks like....He cares. Just as the prophet Isaiah had said and who Matthew had quoted in v.15-16, Light had come into a dark world, and people were drawn to that Light.
Christ's Mission revealed in Chapter 4? This is what I see:
1. To show His superiority and victory over Satan
2. To be the Light to a dark world
3. To bring the truth of God to the world
4. To bring people to repentance
5. To establish disciples who would continue bringing light into the world
6. To show God as a God of compassion and tenderness
Chapter 5 will cover the Sermon on the Mount - it is a long chapter and we'll divide into two sections - Verses 1-26, and Verses 27-48. Out of the first section, the verse I'm choosing to remember is verse 16: "In the same way, let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."
It's all about bringing glory to God...to HIM be the glory!!
