Bourland Family Blog

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you give a tenth of your mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected and omitted the weightier (more important) matters of the Law—right and justice and mercy and fidelity. These you ought [particularly] to have done, without neglecting the others.”  Matthew 23:23 ->me: This passage today really points at how damaging legalism can be to one’s faith.  I am currently reading through the “7 woe’s” and this one just reinforces that my heart has to be right and the motives behind my worship be true.  Reading through Matthew has been such a great time of my theology flowing together to help reinforce the heart behind how I follow God.  Jesus’ instruction, even on just one topic, can span multiple chapters.  Justice, mercy, and fidelity – these combined with “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind”…”love your neighbor as you yourself want to be loved”, is really poignant.  Remembering these throughout the day helps me stay on the right track!

“…you are not to be called rabbi (teacher), for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers.  And do not call anyone [in the church] on earth father, for you have one Father, Who is in heaven.  And you must not be called masters (leaders), for you have one Master (Leader), the Christ.” Matthew 23:8-10 ->me: This is Jesus talking to the disciples.  These are the men (witnesses of Jesus), including Peter, who would carry the gospel forward, be filled with the Holy Spirit, able to perform miracles, speak in tongues, and lead people into an eternal relationship with God….but, they would not be called ‘teacher’, ‘father’ (I wonder if catholic priests have read this passage), or ‘leader/master’.  These were personal monikers of status that the Pharisees sought to have – doing everything to raise themselves up and get the best seats in the synagogues.  The following verse Jesus says “the greatest among you will be your servant”.  With everything I have going on in my life right now, I can sometimes have a mind that seeks entitlement -> I worked hard for this….I have put up this treatment too long….I deserve better.  These thoughts are toxic and counter to the attitudes Jesus calls me to have.  I need this reminder today -> He is my Rabbi/Teacher, God is my Father, and Christ is my Master/Leader.  I have one role on this earth, to serve my brothers and sisters in Christ and to never seek a place status or position over them.

“If then David thus calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?  And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day did anyone venture or dare to question Him.” Matthew 22:45-46 ->me: To save room here in my text I am only going to include the last 2 verses of this passage of Jesus asking the Pharisee’s “That do you think of the Christ? Whose Son is He?”.  The Pharisees respond with “The Son of David”, to which Jesus recounts Psalms 110:1 -> “The Lord said to my Lord….”.  I read the accounts of Mark and Luke on this situation.  Jesus always poses these ‘unanswerable’ questions.  If they agree with Jesus then they must admit that Jesus is of higher authority than David.  They feared further debate and stopped asking questions.  What’s crazy is that this started when Jesus was 12 years old.  In Luke 2:46&47, after three days of Mary and Joseph missing him, they went looking for Him in the temple where it says -> “They found Him sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard Him were astonished and overwhelmed with bewildered wonder at His intelligence and understanding and His replies.”  I love how God in His word has given us these views into Jesus’ life that help us see the amazing humanness as well as His obvious divinity in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.  Thank you God for the gift of your Word!

“…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect). This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40 ->me: I feel like I need to sit and stew on these verses for hours.  I just continually find myself asking -> What does it mean to love God with ALL my heart?  Love God with my soul…what does that mean? Now…with all of my mind, I can wrap my brain around that.  After all, I am very logical thinker and this makes sense to me.  Loving my God is the most important and first commandment.  For the ‘love your neighbor’ verse (39), this is something that my cousin (Teague) and I are setting out to not only beseech God for ourselves, but also for each other.  We are spending the entire week reading over 1 Corinthians 13 (the preeminence of LOVE) and praying Colossians 1:9-14 over each other.  What a gift Teague is to me.  Loving God with all of my heart and all of my soul….this is going to require more time in the prayer closet to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what this means in my daily life and application.

“”Show me [Jesus] the money used for the tribute [Tax to Caesar].” And they brought Him a denarius, and Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and title are these?” They said, “Caesar’s”. Then He said to them, “Pay therefore to Caesar the things that are due to Caesar, and pay to God the things that are due to God.”” Matthew 22:19-21 ->me: When I read this passage today it was the first time that I applied what Jesus said to all things I might need to ‘render’ to any organization or person.  Jesus did not see a conflict in paying taxes and giving God what is His.  Now you might take the comment that Jesus stated (give Caesar what is Caesar’s….) as being nonsense because God’s claim is that above Caesar; but Jesus, without reducing the demands of loyalty to God, indicates that political allegiance even to a pagan state is not incompatible with it. This is not a rigid division of life into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, but rather a recognition that the ‘secular’ finds its proper place within the overriding claim of the ‘sacred’.  I can work at Microsoft, a very worldly environment in which I render effort and get paid for the work I do there, but God owns my heart and that I give freely to Him.  I have been bought with a price.  Everything good in me has been created by God; my strengths, talents, patience, mercy, etc.  Anything I [the new man] have to bring to the table is God’s and should be rendered to Him.

“…when the king came in to view the guests, he looked intently at a man there who had on no wedding garment.  And he said, Friend, how did you come in here without putting on the [appropriate] wedding garment? And he was speechless (muzzled, gagged).  Then the king said to the attendants, “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the darkness outside; there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.”” Matthew 22:11-13 ->me: This sobering parable is a lesson to the self professing Christian who has not exhibited the ‘new creature-ness’ of their conversion; therefore calling into question the genuineness of their conversion in the first place.  They are the person who sits in Sunday services, sips coffee and talks about the goodness of God with others in the foyer…but then goes home to live a life steeped in sinful behaviors; void of the lifegiving water the fear of God brings.  My cousin Teague and I have a heart for these lost souls who will have this jarring experience at the Throne of God on Judgement Day.  Teague, let’s make it a goal this year to share our testimonies in such a way that these souls may be won for the Kingdom of Heaven!

“And the love of the great body of people will grow cold because of the multiplied lawlessness and iniquity, but he who endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 24:12-13 ->me: Today I was listening to John Piper and his sermon on the “Passion for the Supremacy of God”.  He referred to an analogy he has used about the Glacier and the Torch.  The Glacier is the ‘people will grow cold’ in the passage above but we can be the ones holding a torch high.  Think of that picture, standing tall, holding a torch high above your head, melting a hole in that glacier and the glory of God pouring down through that hole.  If there are enough of us in the church holding our torches high, we can (through the power of God) melt a bit of that glacier before He returns to take us home.  I love this picture -> the brightness and heat of my torch of ministry is directly proportionate to the quality time I spend with my Almighty King.

“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Ephesians 3:19 ->me: This last year has taught me my limitations. Just like I learned what my pain threshold was when I had a kidney stone, I now understand the limits I need to hold to when it comes to the things of this earth ‘under the sun’. This next year will be different; a year spent seeking more time with God, more time with family, and more time living the love of Christ while I am here on this sphere. Will you partner with me in seeking your own path to glorifying God this next year?  This text is the beginning of another year of daily quiet times. I will try to keep my thoughts short and concise to what God is leading in me for the day. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see what God will do through all of us!!

“The baptism of John—from where was it? From heaven or from men? And they reasoned and argued with one another, If we say, From heaven, He will ask us, Why then did you not believe him? But if we say, From men—we are afraid of and must reckon with the multitude, for they all regard John as a prophet. So they answered Jesus, We do not know. And He said to them, Neither will I tell you by what power of authority I do these things.” Matthew 21:25-27 ->me: This passage is from when Jesus came back to the Temple in Jerusalem to teach right after the ‘Fig Tree Incident’.  The Sanhedrin was questioning Jesus’ authority and from Whom He received it.  2 big points I take away here.  1) the Elders/Chief Priests were more concerned about their idol of public sentiment than the truth that John the Baptist and Jesus had the same ministry -> the Messiah is here and His name is Jesus. [there are too many churches that operate with this same idol in their midst] 2) the Elders/Chief Priests hated the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus because it took away the exclusivity that was ‘the Chosen Children of Israel’.  Just because you were born of Abraham no longer meant that you were secure.  Now that Jesus had come meant that even if you were not born of Abraham, you had an opportunity at Eternity with the Almighty God.  Life application questions:  Am I guilty of feeling exclusive in my ministry?  Do I try to conform God’s word to the culture and social norms of our society?

“…and Jesus answered them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith (a firm relying trust) and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the sea, it will be done.  And whatever you ask for in prayer, having faith and [really] believing, you will receive.”  Matthew 21:21-22 ->me: Today I read about Jesus withering the fig tree that had produced no fruit.  Remember, this is the morning after 2 days of seeing the perverting of the temple courts and scribes/chief priests questioning Jesus on the children singing “Hosanna, to the Son of David” [Calling Jesus the Messiah].  Jesus was probably down right sick and tired of religiosity without godliness.  Now He comes to a fig tree that has bore leaves but no fruit, so He withers it right there in front of the disciples.  Do the disciples ask why He withered the tree? No, they essentially were in awe of the power to do such a thing.  They were missing the point -> when you have a righteous person, full of faith and no doubt, that person will have God’s power in his hand to do God’s work.  This is important – just like my life verses say [Psalms 1:1-3], {paraphrased} Blessed is the man who delights in the word of God, dwelling on His word day and night; that man will bear fruit in his season and his leaf will not wither…in everything he does, he prospers.{/paraphrased}  When I am so close to God through His word by knowing His character, I will know how He is moving and I will respond to His voice.  It is HIS power in me that can chuck mountains into the see and it is HIS character and will alive in me that prays the right prayers.