89 chapter project: Matthew

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paradox3 said:
Reflection: Matthew 11: 1 - 30

Rest to the heavy laden is a new concept for this chapter, balancing out the cost of discipleship which was discussed earlier in Matthew.

Verses 28 - 30 are familiar from my Sunday School days: "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."(NKJ)

How do find rest for our souls in Jesus? Is the yoke of following him easy and the burden light?
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We who follow Christ must bear the yoke of Christ, the yoke of the cross. We are, after all, followers of he who bore his cross for us.
 
paradox3 said:
A note of thanks to those actually discussing the book of Matthew on this thread. :nerd:
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I would suggest that if someone wants to do some discussion on a topic in detail and use other scriptures that they start a new thread, so that this thread can move on to a further reading of the Gospel of Matthew.
It would be easily possible to spend a whole season on one chapter. I could preach the whole sermon, which takes days of preparation, to talk about the single phrase or ehort parable in the sermon on the mount. I don't think this is Paradox's purpose in this thread.
 
Waterfall said:
Thats the best you can come up with? You are mid 40's (guessing), do you suppose there is a person living today that will be revered by as many people 2000 years from now? Someone who would be written about by their followers enough to influence future generations to suggest divinity?
Or are past generations particularly prone to being fooled and this generation exempt due to being more advanced thinkers IYO?
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The problem with people claiming to be gods today is not that we're less gullible - it's that we have cameras and other ways of testing and recording claims. So now when people claim divinity, we have facilities with one-way glass to observe them from.

You picked a popular religion, but it's still just one of many. There are competing claims from other religions that are incompatible with yours. In the absence of anything better than, "people wrote lots of books and he's still popular," my best answer is that all these religious groups are most likely full of it.

Waterfall said:
We all know theyre fiction.....so why dont you try to make Superman a God and see how far you get.....according to you it should be easy.
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Careful - this sort of wager is how Scientology started. That seemed easy enough. Mormonism is also rather new. Lots more cults are so fresh they still have their new-scam smell.
 
blackbelt1961 said:
There are a lot of Orthodox Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah they call themselves, Messianic Jews
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What I find interesting about Christians claiming Messianic Judaism is a thing, is that these same Christians usually don't see post-faith Christians, or Christian Atheists, as "true" Christians.

What you have with Messianic Jews (Jews for Jesus!) are a group of self-identified Jews whose beliefs about a messiah move the checkmark from ( ) Not yet here, to (x) Yep, he was here, you just missed him, but he'll be back.

This, to me, makes them the Christian Atheists of Judaism. Christian Atheists, after all, follow many of the customs of Christianity, they just may not believe in the divinity of Jesus, or that he existed at all.

So, we have Messianic Jews who Christians say are "Orthodox Jews" despite other Orthodox Jews saying they are Christians in hats and pigtails.

But if just following some of the customs while rejecting much of the underlying faith makes them Jews, then Christian Atheists must still be Christians. Unless you ask the sort of person who thinks Messianic Jews are Jews.
 
chansen said:
move the checkmark from ( ) Not yet here, to () Yep, he was here, you just missed him
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to (x) Netflix is bringing him back as "American Jesus," an adaptation of a comic book by Mark Millar that follows a 12-year-old boy who suddenly discovers he's Jesus reborn.

"American Jesus," in which the boy can turn water into wine, make the crippled walk, and, perhaps, even raise the dead, will have six episodes in Spanish and English, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The series is about how the boy will "deal with the destiny to lead the world in a conflict thousands of years in the making."

Millar's comic was initially published as "Chosen" in 2004 but later retitled "American Jesus" for its trade paperback collection.

In 2008, Millar said he contemplated writing "Bible 2," a sequel to the Bible. "The Bible sold a lot of copies, and it would be quite nice if there was a sequel," he said, according to CBR.com.

FULL ISSUE - Mark Millar's American Jesus Vol. 1: Chosen
 
So ... in the gospel (according to) Matthew (11.27) Jesus makes some pretty radical personal claims ...

"All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

Is Jesus calling himself the son of God (father) and the revelation of God (father) to mankind?
 
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BetteTheRed said:
Pavlos, you know better than this. The case for a real person named Jesus is pretty strong. Tom Harpur tried on a "Jesus the myth" in The Pagan Christ, which really suffered from playing very selectively with the evidence. There's strong external evidence for the existence of a human Jesus, writings contemporary to the time - Jewish, Roman and Greek, in later Judaism and Islam; the evidence for a divine Jesus is, of course, non-existent.
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No there is circumstantial evidence. Not strong not in the least. There is a consensus of a opinion that a jesus person may have lived. And even now that is still in debate. There is no contemporaneous evidence for a jesus person ever living. But we say there may be, simply because it is probable. Not because we know. The circumstantial evidence is such that we have to accept the possibility.
 
BetteTheRed said:
I agree, and I'm starting to suspect that you need a living religion backing it up to render something "sacred scripture". I guess it's why the Aeniad is no longer sacred scripture.

Where does ancient stuff with no believers, like the Aeniad, like Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, belong in our "canon" of literature? What do we consider worth preserving and why?
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It all worth preserving simply because it is ancient. Aesops fables and Joel Chandler Harris' 'Brer Rabbit' stories. all contain wisdom, are beautiful in there simplicity, and fun to read. Homers Illad and Odyssey, The Mahabharata, Firdawsi, still very beautiful but not so easy to read. but fun all the same.
Wise men and woman throughout history are respected, idolized for their words and deeds, but they are not divine. To make them such is a step to far.

To me sacred and divine are just more words that mean myth.
 
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Pavlos Maros said:
No there is circumstantial evidence. Not strong not in the least. There is a consensus of a opinion that a jesus person may have lived. And even now that is still in debate. There is no contemporaneous evidence for a jesus person ever living. But we say there may be, simply because it is probable. Not because we know. The circumstantial evidence is such that we have to accept the possibility.
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The real reason I believe that Jesus lived is because I believe that he now lives within my heart and within the hearts of millions of other Christ-followers around the world.
 
Jae said:
The real reason I believe that Jesus lived is because I believe that he now lives within my heart and within the hearts of millions of other Christ-followers around the world.
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But Jae that does not make him real, it only makes him imagined. Just because a lot of people believe a thing doesn't make that thing fact. Sorry.
 
Pavlos Maros said:
But Jae that does not make him real, it only makes him imagined. Just because a lot of people believe a thing doesn't make that thing fact. Sorry.
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Well Pavlos, I believe him to be real because I believe he's in my heart right now. I believe he entered my life while I was just a little baby and I trust that he'll always be with me.
 
Ritafee said:
So ... in the gospel (according to) Matthew (11.27) Jesus makes some pretty radical personal claims ...

"All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

Is Jesus calling himself the son of God (father) and the revelation of God (father) to mankind?
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Yes, I agree that Matthew 11 has Jesus making some radical personal claims. And, yes, I read 11: 27 as you do.

Indirectly, 11: 1 - 10 also makes claims about His significance. My first reading of this chapter had me thinking Jesus was becoming rather arrogant. :)

Especially if we contrast these claims with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
 
Jae said:
Well Pavlos, I believe him to be real because I believe he's in my heart right now. I believe he entered my life while I was just a little baby and I trust that he'll always be with me.
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You are making a faith statement here, Jae, and it is a lovely one. I always find it difficult to be so succinct about my own beliefs.
 
Jae said:
We who follow Christ must bear the yoke of Christ, the yoke of the cross. We are, after all, followers of he who bore his cross for us.
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Some carry flames ... some aulde ... some Nous ... some don;t get it as they lost their grip of essence ... like withdrawing your hand from the fire ... a super fission reflex? Know when to fold eM ...
 
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