Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 25-26.

Often when I read what is titled here as The Parable of the Bags of Gold, I worry that I am the servant who was given one bag.  This worry is not because I feel like I was not given many gifts by God, but because I fear I have not worked to develop and expand those gifts.  Today, I developed a new fear.  In Jesus’ metaphor of the sheep and goats, I have long comforted myself for times when I have down charitable work which meets the criteria which Jesus says for the sheep.  However, I noticed something about what He said to the goats.  He told them that whatever they did not do for the least of these they did not do for Him.  So, how many opportunities to do for Jesus in need have I overlooked?  I know there are time when I have seen people in need and acted to help them, but I also know that there have been times when I have seen people in need and done nothing.  I am not referring to those times when I could not do anything, only those times when I chose not to do something.  We each need to think about our lives and strive to serve God more.  We can never stop and say, “Well now I have done all that God has asked of me.  I can rest on my laurels.”  As long as we are on this earth there is more that we can do to serve God.

As an example of this I will tell the story about my Mom’s last day on earth.  My Mom spent her whole life serving others to the best of her ability.  However, in the last year of her life she developed dementia and could no longer do the various volunteer things which she loved.  As time went one, I cried out to God, “Why don’t you take her home? She is suffering and no longer able to do Your will.  She is suffering because she can no longer do You will.”  Then, came the day when it was obvious she only had hours left.  My siblings and I took turns sitting by her bedside to make sure that she would not be alone at the end (although, for much of that time more than one of us were present).  I was there at the afternoon shift change.  When the aid who had just come on duty came in and saw my Mom, I saw her face when she saw my Mom.  It was clear that she was deeply sorrowful that my Mom would not last the night.  I realized that, even in her dementia, my Mom had been a blessing to these workers who were caring for those who could not care for themselves.  Even in her dementia, my Mom served God to her last breath.  We, in our humanness, would have understood if she had become selfish of her comforts in the end, but my Mom, even when her mind stopped serving her, continued to serve God.  My Mom did not miss any opportunities to do for “one of the least of these”, even as she became one of them.  I have failed to truly follow her example.  I must seek to do better.  I must pray that God’s Spirit transform me so that I do better.  I want to do better.  Not because the doing will save me, but because of the blessings which my Mom experienced even at the end.

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

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 25-26.

Chapter 25 contains three parables.  I am going to look at how these three interact to teach us a lesson.  Each of the three has its own lesson, but those three lessons combine for a larger lesson, or maybe it’s just that the three lessons fit into each other.  The first parable teaches us that we cannot wait until just before judgement to begin serving God because we do not know when our time will be up.  The second parable teaches us that we must make use of the gifts which God has given us.  The final parable actually teaches us two lessons.  The first, and most obvious, one is that what we do for the most unfortunate members of our society are the things we have done, or not done, for Christ.  Second, it teaches that we will not know when we have, or have not, taken advantage of our opportunities to serve Christ.    The middle parable is the one which scares me the most because I feel like I was the one given five bags of gold, but have only produced the results of the one given a single bag.  I do want to look closely at what the one given a single bag did wrong.  His failure was not in that he did not make the most of his opportunity.  His failure was that he failed to do anything with it.  This is the same failure which the goats in the third parable made.  When given the opportunity to serve Christ by serving others, they passed.  Going back to the second parable, the man given five bags of gold was rewarded because he made the most of the opportunities which God gave him.  So, the lesson we learn is that we should take advantage of every opportunity we see where we might have the opportunity to serve God.  Perhaps it is not an opportunity which God has sent our way, but better to do good for someone where God was not directing us than to miss an opportunity which God directed to us.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 25-26.

Today’s passage begins with three parables which Jesus told about the kingdom of heaven shortly before His crucifixion.  The first one warns us against waiting until we know that Jesus’ return is imminent to prepare for that day.  Repeatedly throughout the Bible we are told to seek God while He can be found, and to do His will before it is too late.  The second parable teaches us that God has given us gifts which He expects us to use to advance His kingdom.  If God has given you wealth, work to increase that wealth so that you can use it to advance His kingdom.  If God has given you skills, hone those skills so that you can use them to bring His words to others.  The final parable discusses the difference between those whom God will invite into the kingdom and those He will banish to the eternal fires.  The blessed fed Jesus when He was hungry, gave Him water when He was thirsty, clothed Him when He was naked, and extended hospitality to Him when He was a stranger, while the damned did none of these things.  The members of both groups were equally unaware of any opportunity they may have had to serve Him in this way.  Jesus tells us that whenever we did, or did not, do these things for the least, we did, or did not, do it for Him.   If you read this and do not immediately start thinking about trying to figure out how you can feed more of those who are hungry, or clothe more of those who need clothing, or visit more those who are sick or in prison, you will find yourself among the goats.  Both groups felt like they never had the opportunity to serve God in this way, the difference was that the sheep kept looking because they thought they had not done so.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 25-26.

Chapter 25 contains three parables about getting into the kingdom of heaven.  The first parable is about being prepared for the Day, despite not knowing when it will be.  The second parable is about making use of every opportunity we have to serve God, and how the more we make use of those opportunities the more we have. The final one is about serving God through serving others.  All three parables make closely related points.  However, I want to look more closely at an aspect of the third parable that we usually only think about in a secondary manner.  So, the third parable talks about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison.  But what I want to focus on is the reply of both the sheep when they were told why they were being rewarded: “When did we do that?”  They honestly did not remember doing the things which God was rewarding them for doing.  Or, to be more precise: their thought when they had done these things was, “But that doesn’t count.”  When I think about this, I think about  a book I own about a village in France during WWII which saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis.  After the war, several of the people in the village were asked why they did what they did.  Their answer was, “When they came to my door, I just did what anyone would have done.”  We know that that is not true.  Most people throughout France did not do what they did.  So, when you see people doing nice things for the homeless, or the sick, or the poor who would say, “Well, I just did what anyone would do,” you are seeing someone doing what Jesus said the sheep in this parable did.  They did not do it for reward, they did it because they cared.  Do we care?

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 25-26.

To me, this passage is one of the most frightening and most heartening passages in the New Testament.  Every time I read this I fear I am the guy who buried his one bag of gold, that I did not make good use of the talent which God gave me and will be condemned for that on Judgement Day.  On the other hand, I also see how Peter denied that he even knew Jesus and yet was forgiven.   So, it really comes down to, no matter how bad we have messed up so far, God will forgive us if we return to Him and seek to do better going forward.

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

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 25-26

This is another passage with many lessons for us, but today I want to focus on what we can learn about praying for things to happen.  When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed that He not have to go through the coming suffering.  However, He also surrendered Himself to God’s will in that prayer.  He desperately wanted to avoid the coming suffering, but He saw no way to avoid it if God’s plan was to be fulfilled.  In the same way, we should pray for that which we desire to happen, but accept that perhaps God’s plans require things to work out differently.  We should not be ashamed to pray for what we want, even when we believe God’s plan calls for something different.  We should just remain open to things not going as we desire.  We see more of this in Jesus’ second prayer.  In His second prayer, Jesus understood that He was going to need to suffer.  So, He referenced His desire that things go differently while surrendering completely to God’s will.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 25-26

Jesus’ last three parables, as recounted by Matthew, give lessons on facing God’s judgement.  The first parable tells us that we need to be prepared and that others cannot prepare for us.  The second parable tells us that being prepared involves making good use of the resources and opportunities which God has given us.  The third parable tells us what “making good use of” means.  The second parable scares me because I feel like I have failed to use the gifts and abilities which God has given me to anywhere near their full potential.  However, the third parable eases some of that fear because it tells us that those who have been doing God’s will don’t know what He is talking about.    When we see others in need and care for them, we are preparing ourselves to face judgement and we are investing God’s resources as He intended us to do.  Every time we pass up an opportunity to help someone in need, we are robbing from both ourselves and from God.  Those whom God rewards did not help others in order to receive a reward.  In fact, they were not even aware that they were doing anything special.  When we reach the point where we help those in need without noticing that we are doing anything noteworthy, we have gotten the point of these parables.