St Matthew, Chapter 19, verse: 16, The Good Master.

Our paragraph topic is:  (The rich young man speaks to Jesus )
Part 1.

Our scripture journey skips and takes us to another time and place.  We left Christ where he laid hands on the children and prayed over them.  He departed from that place and moved on to another.  It is in this place where he encounters a young man that has heard of him through the word.  The word traveled.  The word was with the people.  The word was with the rulers, the wealthy, the soldiers, the merchants, the word was with everyone.  The people spoke it.  They heard it.  They marveled at it.  And it spread from one mouth to one ear to another mouth and so on.

It was the word that caught this young man.  He wanted his questions answered.  So he sought  Christ to pose the questions that that no one else could answer to his satisfaction.  He wanted an answer that would provide meaning  to his life.  He wanted to know.  He wanted to believe.  He wanted to do those things that would guarantee him success to the kingdom of heaven.  So he sought Christ  for the answer to his questions.  And behold, a certain man came to him and said, "Good Master, what good work shall I do to have eternal life?" 

What good work shall I do to have eternal life?  Is this not the question for each and every one of us?  Do we not want to have eternal life?  Do we not want to enjoy the life that we have forever?  Or, is this not a question that we concern ourselves with now.  Are we only concerned with the questions of the here and now:  Where will I work to make money?, How will I pay bills?, Where will my kids go to school to get the best education?, What can I do tonight to entertain myself?, What girlfriend shall I call tonight?, etc.  These and others are worldly questions that are upfront on our conscious mind on a daily basis.  They occupy our minds from the time we awake from the time we pass out to sleep.

Do we concern ourselves with what we must do to have eternal life?  Will compliance with Sunday worship be enough to secure our future eternal life?  Or is there more that we should do to be certain of that future?  Our lives are filled with worldly thoughts and demands that prevent us from concerning ourselves with eternity.  And it is those thoughts that we are given to have that stop us from being who we are.  We are eternal beings created in the image and likeness of our Father.  He gave us life and Christ came to renew that life after it was lost by Adam.  Yet in the world today we have no awareness of who we are. 

We are drowned by the demands of the world.  We are blinded by the desires and passions of this world.  We are lost and asleep in the world, as if we are the walking dead.  For it is death that leads us in this world.  It is death that drives us into oblivion.  It is death that stimulates our passions and desires.  And it is death that will lead us down the wide path of destruction. 

Christ came that we would have life.  He came that we would know the truth of who we are.  He gave us the instructions to discover ourselves.  He arose from the grips of death.  He left this world that we would know that he is truly the Christ.  He sits at the right hand of his father waiting for us to call to him as our savior.  The decision is up to us.  The path is before each of us to follow.  The door is open to those who decide to seek the path that will lead them to the knowledge of eternal life.  Know yourself.  Be yourself.  See yourself as you are seen.  For it is through the knowledge of yourself that you open the door to the truth of who you are now and forever.  Christ awaits you.  God the Father loves you.  And the Holy Spirit will lead you in this world and the next.  Open the door and ask Him in.

Read the sign of the times! Read the Highlighted New Testament Bible and lift the scales from your eyes that you may see, that you may know, that you may find the truth of who you are in Christ. Read it as though you would read a good book, from cover to cover, and see for yourself. Do not study it in parts reading one passage and then skipping to another, but read it for understanding. Read it for knowledge. Read it for faith. Read it that your eyes may be opened, that your ears may hear, that your heart may be filled with the light of Christ. The Holy Spirit awaits you. Christ seeks to know you. Open the door and let him in.

St Matthew, Chapter 16, verse 25, The Cross of Man: Life!

Our paragraph topic is: (The doctrine of the cross) Part 2.   

Death was in the minds of the disciples.  Death was the fear of the disciples.  Death was the unknown factor that all feared, for no one knew except Christ what happened after death.  But death was upon them, for Christ had spoken to them of his impending fate.  As they were going up to Jerusalem Christ instructed his disciples as to his fate.  He told them that he would suffer at the hands of the Gentiles and that he would face death.  And the disciples knew what kind of fate that death meant.  It meant death on the cross, a fate too horrible to imagine or to think of.  And they were fearful.  They were in doubt.  They did not know what to do.

Simon Peter spoke up to Christ but only out of fear.  He spoke because evil had entered into his heart and wanted to persuade Christ to change his mind and his heart.  Evil again wanted to interfere into the plans of God to redeem man from death.  And it was through fear of death that it sought to stand in the way.  But Christ rebuked the evil of fear and moved Satan from his path.  And his path led him to walk through death into his destiny.  And it was this destiny that Christ instructed his disciples to follow.  As horrible as it seemed and as fearful as it appeared to them, Christ gave them the instructions to follow him.  Take up your cross, he said and follow me.  For he instructed them:  "For he who would save his life will lose it; but he who loses his life for my sake will find it."

Two thousand years ago, those were his instructions to his disciples.  And today these are his instructions to the church.  Life is good.  We are born into it.  We experience it as children.  We love it as toddlers.  We are amazed by it as young children through our formative years.  We grow with it as teenagers not fully comprehending it yet wanting to experience more of it.  We spring forward and dive headlong into it as young adults wanting to conquer it to the fullest.  And as mature adults we seek to be on top of it as we are given to believe what we must do to have it to the fullest.  Then, as time marches forward, we embrace it or we struggle with it as age begins to take hold of our physical bodies.  For life is to be experienced and we want to experience it all, especially in these modern times when we have the technology that shows us all that we are able to have with the fullness of physical life.  

So we struggle to hold onto life.  We struggle to have more life.  We seek to save the life we know that we may experience it for all eternity.  For we hope that as time marches on that, through our own intelligence, we will conquer death and live eternally in this physical realm of life.  We seek to save our physical life.  But the will of God has spoken and death will overcome us.  Attempt to save your physical life and you will loose your eternal spiritual life is what Christ told his disciples.  But if one saves his spiritual life through Christ, then he must loose his physical life to death.  Christ is our example.  He walked through death and came out again into the physical and spiritual life of eternity.  He gave us the example so that we may know the truth of who we are.  We are life eternal in Christ.  But, if we are not life in Christ then we loose that eternal life to death. 

It fills my heart with joy to hear those who have died and experienced heaven to come back and say that they did not want to come back to this physical life.  They went home to Christ.  They went home to their loved ones who came before them in Christ.  They went home to peace and love and joy and happiness, all the things that we search for here on earth and can only find temporarily.  But, in heaven, they are permanent. 

Why would one want to come back?  Why would one, after having experienced the truth of eternal life, want anything other than eternal life in heaven?  Yet we fear death and cling to physical life as though it is the ultimate that we have to live for.  Embrace death, for through it we go home.  Embrace, what death has to offer, for with it we come to life.  Seek the truth of who you are in Christ and death no longer has fear within you for you know that through death you will live.  Christ came that we will have life and have it more abundantly.  For it is through Christ that comes the truth if who we are.  And it is through that truth that we begin to experience true life here on earth and abundant life in heaven.  Come!  Follow the path set before you and begin to experience the truth of who you are in Christ. 

Read the sign of the times! Read the Highlighted New Testament Bible and lift the scales from your eyes that you may see, that you may know, that you may find the truth of who you are in Christ. Read it as though you would read a good book, from cover to cover, and see for yourself. Do not study it in parts reading one passage and then skipping to another, but read it for understanding. Read it for knowledge. Read it for faith. Read it that your eyes may be opened, that your ears may hear, that your heart may be filled with the light of Christ. The Holy Spirit awaits you. Christ seeks to know you. Open the door and let him in!

St Matthew, Chapter 15, verses: 24, The Lost Children of God: He was not sent.

Our paragraph topic is: (The Canaanite woman) Part 3.

The Canaanite woman came out of the country.  She came to plead for her daughter.  She came because she knew that he was the answer.  She came because she believed that he could save her daughter from the demons.  She came because she had faith in the word that she heard about him.  She came because nothing or no one else could help and she had tried them all. 

She cried out to him.  She pleaded with his disciples.  She wept for her daughter that she may know peace.  And Christ answered her not.  But she would not be turned.  She would not be moved.  She would not relent.  She had heard the word and she believed that he could.  She had heard the word of what he had done for others and she knew that he would save her daughter.  She knew that he would help her if only she could plead with him for her daughter.  So she came out of her country and cried out to him to save her daughter.  Christ answered her not.  But he answered and said,  "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Christ was not sent.  He came of his own.  He came to save.  He came to free.  He came to sanctify.  He came to justify.  He came that mankind would be restored to their rightful place before God our Father.  But he was sent by God to lost sheep of the house of Israel.  He was sent by God to bring back the lost.  He was sent by God to restore to the house of Israel, those that had gone astray and were lost.  And to the rest he came. 

The Canaanite woman came.  She came for her daughter.  She came because of the word.  She came because she knew that he would save.  Why do we come?  Why do we seek him out?  Why do we pray?  Why do we plead to him for mercy?  Do you know that he is the one?  Do we believe that he can save?  Do we know in our hearts that Christ is the Son of God and can provide for us?  Do we believe that Christ is the Son of God and he can protect us from harm, can heal our wounds, can bring us joy and peace and happiness?   Or do we seek him that we may know worldly goods?  Do we seek him that we may live prosperously in this world?  Do we seek him that he may provide for us in this world.  For the world is corrupt.  The world is evil.  The world is on the path of destruction.  Do we know this and accept it or do we believe that having Christ with us in this world will redeem us?

Christ died that we may have spiritual life with the father.  For God said that if you eat of the forbidden tree then you must die.  And the spirit of man died on that day that he eat of the forbidden fruit.  But Christ came and restored what was lost.  Christ came and gave mankind new life that we may know spiritual life in him.  He did not come that we would know worldly life.  He came that the life that is within us, the spiritual life, would be restored, the spiritual life would be given back to mankind, if they chose to believe.  For it is through belief that we are restored.  It is through belief that we have eternal life in him.  It is through belief that we are baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And new life is restored and given.  Christ came of his own to save all mankind.  But he was sent by God to the lost house of Israel that they may be given new life in him. 

Do you believe?  Do you know?  Do you seek because you seek worldly relief?  Or do you seek because you believe that he is the one, that he is the truth, that he is the way to eternal life?  For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that we may have life everlasting.  The Canaanite woman believed.  What do you believe? 

St Matthew, Chapter 10, verse:40a, The Reward.

Our paragraph topic is:  (Blessings for the Apostles' benefactors) Part 1. 

Life!  Wondering in the distance.  Elusive.  Needing to be discovered.  Begging to be found.  We live in a world filled with the sights and sounds and wonders and magic that brings palpitations to the heart and joy to the mind.  Our ever increasing desires are the stuff that industrialist dream of, the passion of capturing the expanding market to be on top.  Life!  Where are you?  Why do you elude me?  I seek to find you.  I seek to know you.  I seek to have you fully, present in the here and now.  Not tomorrow!  Not yesterday!  But right now, as though I lived in a movie of my own making, on top of the world.  What I see in the movies drives me.  I want you life and I want you now!  Where are you?

Christ told his disciples,  "He who finds his life will lose it."   We have life.  What is meant by this?  I am alive and I have life.  I want more life that I may live it to the fullest.  But I live.  If I had the money and the cars and the fame I would really be alive.  I would live like a king, like a prince.  I would travel the world, eat in the best restaurant, wear the finest clothes, drive the most expensive cars, and have the most beautiful women that the eye has seen.  Then I would really live.  I will have found my life.  I will live my life, never working again, only doing what I feel like doing everyday.  That would be the life.  Where is the jackpot?  Where is the power ball?  Where is my luck?  But Christ says that I will lose it.  He says that the life that I find I will lose it.  Why?  Because it is not lasting, it is not forever, it and I are only temporary.  For I am not eternal and though I may have found my life I will lose it because I want to keep it forever.

How then can I keep my life?  How can I preserve it so that I can have it forever?  Christ say "He who loses his life for my sake, will find it."  So I have to lose my life for Christ's sake to find it permanently.  I have to give up the joys and pleasures that I dream of to get them.  I have to set my plans of being a millionaire and living the life of a prince so that I can have it forever in Christ.  What must I do? 

Christ sends his disciples out to teach the people how to find their life.  He wants the disciples to teach the people how to have life eternally and not life that is lost.  Many will not accept.  Many will not believe.  Many will call this blasphemy because it goes against the thinking of the day.  Receive the message of the kingdom and find your life.  Christ told his disciples,  "He who receives you, receives me."   Receive Christ.  Receive the life you are meant to live.  Find the life of your dreams and live it in Christ.  Those who do not, will miss the reward.  Those who live for today, will lose their life.  Those who seek to preserve the life they have, will lose that life and the life they have in Christ.  Do you have life?  Will you lose it?  Come receive the life that Christ has to give and live life eternally.  Get your reward!!!