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It would’ve been hard to be a Pharisee sitting in the audience of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Again and again Christ seemed to deliberately antagonize any religious leaders listening to his teaching—singling them out, calling them unflattering names, and mocking them with increasingly absurd insults. Matthew 7:3-5 records another example of this kind of…

“Do not judge…” These words of Jesus that open Matthew 7 have been a source of confusion—and antagonism—for centuries. The problem seems to be that many of us misunderstand the distinctions between similar Greek terms that mean different things. Anakrinō (“to discern”) is a general term that means “to investigate…to examine, scrutinize, question.” It’s a…

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness…” Jesus told his hearers on the mountainside (Matthew 6:33). This command was both a promise of freedom (from worry) and a promise of daily provision. So what does it mean to “seek” God’s kingdom and righteousness? The Greek word used here is zeeteo, and it entails a few…

A few random thoughts about Matthew 6:25-34… In Jesus’ time, poverty was the norm, not the exception. Add to that vagaries of crops and crime and war and more, and you can see why people would worry about what they would eat or drink or wear from day to day. Most laborers worked on a…
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