Matthew 4 - Thursday 8th August

Today’s chapter is Matthew 4.

Tom writes:

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 will somehow 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”. Repentance is letting the Word shred our self-centred, insecurity-driven approach to life.  Gold-plated repentance is letting the Word assault our judgmentalism and savage our pride. Signs and wonders are the Kingdom of God come near. Wow, oh wow, there are so many of them on offer in the Kingdom. But the Kingdom of God come near is much more than that. To acknowledge that the Kingdom of God has come near is to drink deep of the life-giving, hope-creating and freedom-finding Word, letting it dwell in you richly, to strengthen your compassion and assure you of your adoption. Jesus’ extraordinary ministry and his astonishing fulfilment 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 can get close to the kingdom in any other way.  Man cannot live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. The whole counsel of God is the true bread of life. We need to get that bread in our head.

Question for reflection

Are you letting the whole counsel of God form you? What opinions of yours has it changed in the last couple of weeks?