Seeds for 08/04/2023 - Matthew 10:24-25
Scripture: 24 “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
Observation: Like Jesus. That’s the goal. He is teacher and master to His disciples, both then and now. We are not and will not become “above” Him. That’s fine though—it is enough to become like Him. In fact, it is excellent to become like Him. That’s the journey that all Christian believers are on, or should know to be on. Believing in Him is the first step; becoming like Him is the next. Both are centered on trusting God’s grace.
Then Jesus says, “If they talk trash about me, don’t be surprised when they do the same about you.”
This is a good reminder that Jesus wasn’t crucified by a bunch of meanies for being nice.
Looking through a theological lens, Jesus was crucified as the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.
Observing from an historical perspective, Jesus was crucified because He was a threat to the religious and political leadership class in a small religious province within a dominant empirical superpower. The hope among the Jewish people in the region was for a messiah, a true godly king and deliverer from their God to face down Rome and kick them out. The people had begun to hope that Jesus was that very messiah, with He Himself signaling in the affirmative all along the way.
The theological and the historical reasons for the cross happen simultaneously, merging because Jesus being the true Messiah of Jewish hope means He was and is a real threat to the temporal rulers of this world then or now. And the true nature of messiahship is about the self-sacrificing love of God for the sake of the world.
When the True King shows up it’s no longer our version of business as usual. There will be changes. When the early disciples starting worshiping and following Jesus, they experienced transformation and they reoriented their lives around Him, which meant both reinterpreting their religious texts and teachings in light of Him and putting commitment to Jesus above commitment to anything else, including to Rome.
Putting Jesus first is the only way to really do it right. And doing that will have consequences. We won’t go along with the crowd’s values and virtues, and we may be criticized or even scorned for doing so. Jesus simply says, “Don’t be surprised.”
Application:
Have you received saving grace by believing in Jesus?
Are you living by His grace in order to become like Him?
If not, what is your next step? What prioritization in your life conflicts with putting Him first and the pursuit to become like Him? What commitment do you need to make to Him now?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, I love you. Make me more like you today than yesterday, more like you this year than last year, for your glory’s sake. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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