Category: Heads Up (Page 19 of 36)

Matthew 10 teaches what the first preachers of the Gospel were to expect as
they copied Jesus, going out among all the towns and villages preaching the
Good News and healing the people’s diseases. Our first reaction is to
suppose that they should have been well received. Who is more welcome than
bearers of good news? Or those who are able to drive out demons and heal
diseases? But when we remember the way people received Jesus, we know that
presuming a good reception is too facile. Jesus did all these things, but
he was “despised and rejected … a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief.” Continue reading

There are those who believe and teach that an earthly messianic kingdom was offered to the Jews first and that only after it was rejected was it offered to others. But that is not the way we should read Matthew. Matthew knows nothing of two Gospels. There is only one Gospel of God’s rule in Jesus Christ, and he takes pains to show that it was preached from the beginning. Continue reading

There is something very significant about the ordination of a Christian to the ministry, at least if that person has been called to the work by God and takes the call seriously.

In Matthew 10.5-42, we have a record of the first Christian ordination ever to take place. It is a particularly important and solemn one. In this chapter we read about the Lord commissioning the twelve apostles to preach in Galilee. As John Ryle notes, “Never was there so important an ordination! Never was there so solemn a charge!” Continue reading

At this point we might think we have reached the end of the lessons in the passage (Matthew 9.1 – 10.4), since a need has been perceived and described, and we have been told to pray for a solution: “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” What more can we do? We have been told to pray, so we pray. That is the end of it. Ah, but it is not. What strikes us at this point is that having instructed His disciples to pray and undoubtedly having prayed Himself, Jesus also took action. He placed “the very men who had been urged to pray that the Lord of the harvest might thrust out laborers into his harvest … in the forefront of these laborers.” Continue reading

As Jesus moved throughout Galilee teaching and healing the people, He was moved by their pitiful condition. Verse 36 of Matthew 9 says that He had compassion for them, because they were like shepherdless sheep, uncared for and completely helpless. “They were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (v.36). Continue reading

In the last part of Matthew chapter 9, it contains two more healing stories. The first, which is the eighth in the overall series, is about the healing of two blind men. If we look at them in the same context in which we have been looking at the other miracles, we see that they are concerned with what Jesus does when he saves sinners. Continue reading