Matthew 1-8

Matthew 1

Clearly no-one told Matthew that listening to someone else’s family history is less interesting than filling out a passport application.  And yet, in this family history we see the bewildering arc of God’s grace, stretching across kings (Solomon) and prostitutes (Tamar), adulterers (David) and asylum seekers (Ruth).  On reading this stuff, barely anyone could think they are ineligible to be included in the family and plans of God. And after putting that awesome inclusivity out there, Matthew quite happily switches into one of the most understated paragraphs I have ever read – a virgin to give birth, an angelic appearance and a promise so great the English language can’t do it justice.  “To save people from their sins” – in six words to define the predicament and remedy for every individual in the whole of history. In six words to sum up the huge imbalance of all Christian faith – that we bring the sin and Jesus brings the salvation. In six words to reassure all struggling believers that they are in the hands of One who has come to rescue them. Now that’s a message for our stressed out, lonely, confused world if ever I’ve heard one. And what does the message invite you to do? To read on. To consider these things and maybe – just maybe – give your whole life to embracing Immanuel.

Matthew 2

It seems strange to me that Herod – the Jew – had so much vested interest in finding out who this King of the Jews was but he couldn’t even be bothered to head down to Bethlehem to check him out for himself.  And it also seems strange that God allowed these wealthy, funny-hat-wearing foreigners – the Magi – to be some of the first to be overjoyed and overawed by this new baby king. But I guess that is the way with God – the most unlikely people get to play jubilant parts in His redemption narrative if they will just seek after Him.  And those who seem best qualified end up bitterly angry and tragically rejected because of their arrogant complacency towards Jesus. Matthew shows right at the start of this gospel that Jesus runs a dividing line through every community in history… but the dividing line is not between the good and the bad or the qualified and the unqualified or between this race or that race, but between those who are inclined towards the worship of Jesus and those who are inclined towards rejecting him.  The good news for you is that if you are reading these notes then you are almost certainly on the ‘inclined towards worship’ side of the dividing line. Will you stay there? The Magi’s journey was neither short nor simple, it wasn’t always clear where it was leading but they held the course. Our pursuit of the presence today is similarly grubby. But awe and joy lie at its end. Will you hold the course and make pursuit your priority? Or will you, like Herod, find more important things to do?

Matthew 3

You can just imagine Jesus coming out of the Jordan river, hair dripping wet, white robe clinging to his skin in a few embarrassing places, maybe there was even some algae hanging off his right ear.  This was the One who was showing everyone what God had called his people to be. This was the one who had come to fulfill all the promises of the prophets. Many in Israel had turned the ‘call of God’ into a status symbol.  They had become like celebrities flaunting their credentials around. They would never have been seen dead with wet clothes clinging to their buttocks. So many in Israel thought living for God meant impressing others; putting on good show after good show… but never bothering to sort out their hearts.  John the Baptiser had slated them for it and, by his baptism at John’s hands, Jesus throws all his weight behind John’s judgement. As Jesus comes up out of the water he shows that God’s real people, God’s real hope is not about trying to look good but about raw, honest humanity humbling themselves in a flood of repentance and then calling for the Dove – the Spirt from God – to transform them from the inside out.  This is the oxymoron of our faith. If you want to be God-like you need to look like a moron every now and then. The thing we need – the one we need is the Dove who will transform us and empower us, and the Dove only comes after the Flood. 

Matthew 4

This is a pretty mega passage.  Jesus just won’t accept single bible verses as convenient proof texts to get to do what he wants.  Instead he chooses to lay his desires aside and submit his way to the prevailing winds of the whole counsel of God.  And that is a challenge – to get beyond just snatching at bible verses that seem relevant to our situation and instead letting the Word dwell in our guts and change our whole perspective on the world.  To do that takes time and to do that takes effort. To do that involves days reading passages that don’t make a whole heap of sense but which we trust somehow will go to work on our innards. If we were just able to do that, if we were just willing to consistently do that then our churches would be very different places.  They would be much more joyful places. They would be much more free places. Because if we wrestle with the whole counsel of God then we will allow it to re-work our whole perspective on the world. This fundamental re-working of how we view the world is at the core of what Jesus meant by “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near”.  Letting the Word shred our old self-centered, insecurity-driven approach to life is repentance. Letting the Word assault our judgementalism and savage our pride is gold-plated repentance. And then drinking deep of the life-giving, hope-creating and freedom-finding Word is to have the Kingdom of God draw near. Letting the Word dwell in you richly, to strengthen your compassion and assure you of your adoption, that is God’s Kingdom come.  Jesus’ extraordinary ministry and his astonishing fulfillment of all the hopes of Israel were birthed and suckled and weened on the living word of God. We would be crazy to think that we be close to the kingdom in any other way. We need to get the bread in our head.

Matthew 5

O the awesomeness of these phrases.  I must have read them 20 to 30 times in the last few days and yet every time I feel like I’m getting claxoned in the face by another surprising truth.  Jesus calls ‘good’ a lot of things that I like to keep at arms’ length. It says it is a glorious thing to feel the inadequacy of spiritual poverty, to be wracked with the sorrow of mourning, to constantly be feeling like you are wanting and needing more.  I don’t want any of those things. I want to sit pretty and smile smugly and be patted gently on the shoulder by one man and his dog (if only my dog could pat my shoulder- now that would be a wonderful thing).  But Jesus seems to be saying that is not how the kingdom works.  The rich and succulent pleasures of the kingdom are reserved for those who have struggled and strained and reached the end of themselves.  The Kingdom is for the humble – for those who spend their life on their knees, knowing that their help comes not from themselves but flows from their King. 

And when the King brings help, he wants to drum the beat. Our King wants us to do what he says. It’s actually a bit embarrassing how strong Jesus is on this point. Why is he like this? Isn’t he meant to be “LOVE”? Well, Jesus is the lover who knows better than us. He knows what we get wrong and he wants to help us get it right. And so, if we let him actually be our King we discover, perhaps surprisingly, that central to his Kingdom are quality relationships.  How we treat those around us really matters to Jesus. Even more than things like reading Christian books and re-posting posts of the latest ‘hot’ preacher. Many of us could bring far more pleasure to God if we exerted more energy on reconciling ourselves to our family and dreamed more dreams about carrying others’ burdens. Keeping oaths isn’t sexy. Praying for annoying people isn’t glamorous. But these are the places where mourning comes in, where spiritual poverty and purity are forged and where blessing chases us around like a stray dog on heat.

Matthew 6

This reminds me of the game chubby bunnies – where you have to stuff as many marshmallows in your mouth as you can and then say “chubby bunnies”.  Jesus has packed as much rip-snorting, life-flipping truth as possible into this ever-so-short sermon and then we, with our souls straining with the effort, try to apply it to our lives without our brains bursting out and sliding onto the floor.  Even the greatest minds the world has ever known have found the Sermon on the Mount to exceed their abilities. What chance do we have? And yet I do think that this monstrous and intricate sermon has several fundamental principles which even a child could understand.  Jesus seems to be building an argument on four basic convictions: 1) that God is real 2) that God acts as our Father 3) that God sees all we do and 4) God will ultimately determine how our life works out. Each one of these principles builds upon the other and, if we are honest, each of them is probably something we struggle with at times.  And no wonder. The God of this Age – Mammon, or whatever other form he chooses to appear in – screams in our faces that God is not real, that he does not want to nurture us, that what is secret is irrelevant and – perhaps most of all – that he (Mammon) has the keys to our fate. Do we really believe that our secret prayers and our unrecognised obedience and our quiet service are building our future?  Do we value these above the comments of our bosses and the statements of friends and the £££s in our pay-packet and the looks we get on the street? It is a challenge. I find I am so much in the pocket of the latest fad or the latest meeting. I want to be where it is at and I want to be recognised there too. When earthly success (which generally revolves around numbers) is all around then I am happy as Larry but when it begins to fade I find myself scrabbling about for a quick fix.  But God is real. God is my Father. He sees what I do in secret and he will ultimately decide my fate. I don’t need quick fixes. I need to trust Him. I don’t need earthly success, I just need to give Jesus my heart. For if I make Him my treasure and if I give him my prayers and if I seek Him first then I need to worry about nothing. For I may not be ‘successful’ but I know I’ll be safe.

Matthew 7

Live different.  Don’t just go with the flow.  Don’t conform to the pattern of this world but continually mark yourself out as children of your Father by responding to situations and people in a radically different way.  I find it easy to approach people – all people whether I know them or not – with one over-riding question; “what can you do for me?”. Whether it is my wife who I want to listen to me or my friends who I want to entertain me or a random stranger who I want to keep out of my way on the train, I am pretty good at asking the question and finding an answer for what I want people to do for me.  It is almost like that question is engraved on my soul. And also engraved on my soul is a rampant bitterness and frustration that all these ignorant people don’t live up to my expectations. My wife has to go and sort out one of the kids, my friends start talking about their problems (how dare they?? don’t they know that I should always be the topic of our conversations?) and the stranger on the train talks infuriatingly loudly on their mobile phone.  This is how I find life is naturally lived. But Jesus wants to wipe this away. Jesus wants to fill in all these engravings and carve something almost entirely opposite in their place. Jesus wants us to ask not “what can you do for me” but “how could I help you out today”. Jesus wants us to look into other people’s lives not to work out what we can plunder from them but to work out what we can shore up in them, what we can encourage in them and, at times, what we can challenge in them. How can we do this?  How can we start to be truly generous towards others, even if they steal our seat on the train? It comes through knowing beyond doubt that we have a Father who will give us all we need. It comes through realising that we are one of the lucky few who have found the narrow way. It comes through looking at the cross and the resurrection and realising that what God did for us there is more than enough to sort us out for this life and for eternity. And so we don’t need to put our expectations on the people around us because our expectations have already been more than exceeded by our  God. Instead we can genuinely give ourselves to others, trusting and praying that as we do so, they will come to see that God can exceed all their expectations as well. And all of that comes out of the Presence. Your changed life comes out of how much you build all your self-understanding on the unchanging, attentive, self-testifying presence of Mighty God.

Matthew 8

Authority.  In some ways it has been torn down in our society.  But in other ways it is more highly regarded than ever.  People pay small fortunes for a lunch with Warren Buffet in the hope that they can learn some invaluable investment tips.  TED is awash with “experts” on pretty much everything. Our deference to experts is an acknowledgement of authority; that some people have particular spheres of life that they know everything about.  If you have a particular problem in a particular sphere then all you need to do is employ the right expert and they will sort you out. It is this kind of authority that Matthew speaks into. Jesus, he says, is your expert par excellence.  If you are being battered by a storm and you want to know how to survive this One Man will help you stand firm through the trials. Whether your storm is disease or loneliness or family issues – this same expert will see you through your malady.  Matthew is making this One Great Claim; Jesus has authority. Jesus is the expert. Jesus is the Master Teacher for life. Jesus is the Great Physician, Jesus is the best counselor or adviser or healer that you ever could find. And – this is the really cool bit – he is willing to work for all at no initial charge.  I think we need to recapture our confidence in this basic idea. We need to re-convince ourselves of the expertise of Jesus, of his unrivaled knowledge on life. Each and every person we see today would find their lives dramatically improved if they sat at the feet of Jesus. And how do we re-convince ourselves? I think it is by testing it out. Give his words a try. And consistently and gently encourage the people around you to turn their ears to Jesus. If we do that I think we will pretty quickly be convinced; seeing the sick healed is quite a convincing thing, seeing changed lives is quite a convincing thing. It all starts with listening. And then giving it a go. Will you do that today?