Matthew's Passion

One of the reasons we want to encourage systematic Bible preaching and teaching in churches is because it forces us to focus on the harder parts of scripture. If we just pick and choose, we end up filtering out the difficult bits, or the things that will stretch us or disturb us.

It's the same with daily Bible reading. Over about a five year period, if you stick with our popular Explore daily Bible reading notes, you'll work your way through the whole Bible, and be exposed to the whole counsel of God. Including all the tough bits, the stories that make you squirm, and the parts that just have you scratching your head in bewilderment!

So when Carl Laferton, the Explore editor asked me to write the Explore notes for the end of Matthew, I secretly thought - "OK this is going to be relatively easy. It's the last week of Jesus' life - the cross and the resurrection. Familiar territory. Shouldn't be too stretching."

But when I finally got my head into it - it proved a very different matter - and I actually found it quite shocking in many ways. Seems that the Passion was familiar territory to me from Luke and John and Mark, but not Matthew's Passion.

Chapter 23 came as a massive punch to the gut. The Lord Jesus is teaching in the temple and delivers the most blistering attack on the hypocrisy of religion; with the target of his invective stood in the crowd! And the Lord doesn't pull his punches at all. They are whitewashed tombs, they are blind guides, they are snakes.

To get the feel for how this must have been just imagine that a guest preacher comes to your church, climbs into the pulpit and starts his sermon.

Today, I want to tell you why you will all go to Hell if you keep listening to what your pastor says... "

And he then proceeds to name in very precise detail everything that the leadership team at your church is wrong about, and how they are corrupt, manipulative hypocrites.

It's that shocking.

And we're tempted to cheer until we realise that we could be just as much the target for his firebrand sermon as the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law back then.

He follows on, in Chapter 24, with a story about sheep and goats, and makes it crystal clear that anyone who is not practising their faith in practical ways has no real faith at all, or the rewards and punishments that result.

Reading this inflammatory material, it is little wonder at the reaction that comes back. They are baying for his blood. And as it proceeds, Matthew's passion takes special note of how abandoned, betrayed, deserted the Lord was as he is mocked, crucified and cursed for our sake.

We can easily drop into a sentimental version of what the Lord Jesus was like as a man, a preacher and a teacher. The solution? We must continue to read our Bibles, carefully, sequentially, attentively, so that we keep meeting the real Jesus.

The next issue of Explore is out now HERE, and runs from October to December. You can also read Explore on your digital device as an app. See HERE for download details.

Image: Brooklyn Museum - Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees - James Tissot - Public Domain