Daily Devo | October 7, 2020
When Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying he must suffer, he is betraying the fact that he is still invested in the old definition of the triumphant Messiah king…
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When Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying he must suffer, he is betraying the fact that he is still invested in the old definition of the triumphant Messiah king…
Those who find the treasure recognize it as the kind of wisdom described in Proverbs 2: worth seeking like silver and hunting like treasure. It’s the joy of water to a woman dying of thirst, and free bread to a penniless beggar-of-a-man…
As we become mindful of his original audience, sitting in the synagogue, listening to his various lessons from the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew will come to life…
the Gospels say [Jesus] gave them his “authority,” a concept from the Old Testament world comes to the surface. It was known as the saliach. The saliach was the “authoritative representative.” Often…
Our farmer in 4:26-29 should be understood to be like any farmer of his day: constantly at work tending to the cultivation of his crop. His “sleeping and rising” and “not knowing how” the seed sprouts are not due to inactivity, but rather refer to the undeniable metaphor Jesus is getting at with how spiritual life “sprouts and grows” in a person…
We receive a soil sample report from this farmer’s field after he has sown his seeds and turned the soil to enfold the seed beneath. That’s how agriculture worked back then. First you planted, then you cut open the earth to bury the seed and await it’s resurrection as life-sustaining grains…
Michael Card does an excellent job of helping us to enter the world fo the text, so for today, I’m going to let his words carry us, and the rest of the week we’ll expand on the parable’s meaning by looking at passages that intersect and give additional light…
Yesterday we noted that the father’s foolishness wasn’t really foolishness at all. Not really. Not in the economy of God’s Kingdom where fools receive hesed (mercy) but those who hate mercy receive correction. Our passages today reflect this theme….
But this is the scandal of the gospel, the scandal of grace. It turns out that the story of the two brothers is a story of hesed, a story of someone who deserves nothing but gets everything! But it’s also the story of a fool….