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How to Resist
Immediately after his baptism with water and with the Spirit of God, that same Spirit leads Jesus into an uninhabited region where he goes without food for 40 days and faces testing from the devil. After 40 days, he was hungry, so the first test he faces springs from his hunger. The devil says, “If…
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Religious Leaders
Matthew doesn’t say what motivated the Pharisees and Sadducees to seek out John the Baptist. He only tells us what John said to them. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham…
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Joseph the Dreamer
The birth narrative in Matthew is told entirely from Joseph’s point of view, and like his namesake in the final 21 chapters of Genesis, Joseph is a dreamer of dreams. Through dreams God communicates with him, telling him to take Mary as his wife, to flee the murderous cruelty of Herod, to return to Israel,…
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Matthew’s Gospel
Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus. He presents three lists, representing three periods of time, each comprising 14 generations. The first list goes from Abraham to King David. The second goes from David to the Babylonian exile. The third goes from the exile to Joseph, the father of Jesus. Throughout Matthew’s gospel…
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Jesus is the Question
Jesus is the Answer. Popular Christian saying This saying has always troubled me. It’s not that I doubt its truth; I do believe that Jesus is the answer to all our most intractable problems, because our worst problems are caused by human selfishness. It is rather the finality of the sentiment that I find troubling,…
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