Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 7-9.

There are so many lessons for us in today’s passage that I will not be able to touch on them all.  The passage begins with Jesus warning us not to judge because we will be judged by the standard we use to judge others.  However, a few verses later He tells us that we should determine whether a prophet is true or false by looking at the results of their actions.  Which suggests that we are called to judge according to a standard.  I am going to try to show how there is a thread of thought going through this passage.  In between those two passages Jesus tells us that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us because if we ask we will receive, if we seek we will find, and if we knock the door will be opened.  Then after telling us to judge a prophet by the fruit he produces, Jesus tells us that not everyone who calls Him Lord will enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of the Father.  The logic which Jesus presents here is that we should apply the standard by which we judge others to ourselves before we apply it to them, AND, that standard is that we should treat others as we desire to be treated.  All of which is based on the idea that if we ask God, He will give us good gifts, good gifts which we can pass onto others.  I want to circle back to what Jesus tells us about those who call on His name but will not get into Heaven.  They performed miracles in His name, they prophesied in His name, they even drove out demons in His name, but they did not do the will of the Father.  Paul expands upon this idea in 1 Corinthians 13 where he writes, “If I do not have love, I am nothing.”(paraphrasing here)  If we ask God for something, we should be doing so from love of others.  If we seek, we should be seeking the good of others.  If we knock on the door looking for hospitality, we should be planning to be hospitable.  If we do these things, we will get what we ask for, we will find what we are seeking, and the door will be opened and we will be invited in.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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