Matthew 7-9

The Message continues to speak very fresh words to me. Maybe it's that it's been so long since I have read these passages at all, but I really am hearing some of these words as if I've never heard them before. Her's one passage that really speaks to me: "These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on." I so often hear or quote scripture as incidental comments, but it really must become foundational to me. It has been founcdational before, but that has been years ago. I've gotten away from inspirational reading at all, and it's been a LONG time since I turned to the Bible for guidance.

Wesley's commentary makes an observation I've never thought of before. Near the end of Matthew 8, Jesus allows the demon spirits to go into a herd of pigs, which then runs off a cliff into the sea and drowns. I've always known that pigs were undesirable animals to Jews (because of their being forbidden as food), but Wesley comments that it was illegal for Jews to own pigs. Therefore, Wesley says, allowing the spirits to kill the pigs was a humane way for the illegal and undesirable animals to be disposed of. And then Matthew tells how angry the townspeople were over the loss of the pigs, even though they knew they shouldn't have had the pigs to begin with. "They loved their swine so much better then their own souls!" Wesley writes. "How many are of the same mind!" How true that is--that we complain when something bad or harmful or sinful is taken away from us rather than seeing the blessing and protection in the event.

I've always thought of Mark as the book where Jesus moves immediately from one event to the next, but I'm seeing that in Matthew too. In these 3 chapters, Jesus heals so many people, one after the other. No wonder the people were so drawn to him. But he isn't easy to follow. Too many of us want a quick fix without really making life changes. Really loving him and following him means that we give ourselves back to him, not just that we take from him.