Daily Bread Pastor Mike Anderson

Click here to Read the Whole Chapter 25  “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish,  but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.   26  Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Jesus finally gets to the heart of the matter.  He calls the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, "hypocrites".  He says earlier in verse 3, " So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach."  Jesus is saying that though what they teach may be okay, don't look at their lifestyle because it doesn't match what they teach.     Then, Jesus uses the metaphor of a "cup" and a "dish".  He says although the outside of the cup might look clean, the inside is unclean, which he characterizes as greed and self-indulgence.  It reminds me of a verse in the

Click Here to Read the Whole Chapter The Parable of the Wedding Banquet 22  Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying:   2  “The kingdom of heaven is like  a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.   3  He sent his servants  to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. 4  “Then he sent some more servants  and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ 5  “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business.   6  The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.   7  The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers  and burned their city. 8  “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come.   9  So go to the street corners  and invite to the banquet anyone you fin

Click Here to Read All of Matthew 21 14  The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.   15  But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,”  they were indignant.  16  “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,”  replied Jesus,  “have you never read,  “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?” As Jesus nears Jerusalem and the cross, he comes into the temple courts, and what a scene it is.  The moneychangers were making money on the exchange of currency, as were people selling doves needed for the sacrifice.  Barclay notes, “A pair of doves could cost as little as 4p outside the Temple and as much as 75p inside the Temple.” This is almost  20 times  more expensive . What was supposed to be a sacred place was now in Jesus' words, "a den robbers". But at least

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard Click Here to Read the Whole Chapter 20  “For the kingdom of heaven is like  a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.   2  He agreed to pay them a denarius [ a ]  for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3  “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.   4  He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’   5  So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.   6  About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7  “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8  “When evening came,  the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginni

Click Here to Read the Whole Chapter 3  Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife   for any and every reason?” 4  “Haven’t you read,”  he replied,  “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’   5  and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ [ b ] ?   6  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7  “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8  Jesus replied,  “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.   9  I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Jesus addresses another difficult topic today, whether or not it is lawful to divorce one&#

Click here to read the whole chapter! Dealing With Sin in the Church 15  “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault,  just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17  If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church;  and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18  “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. This is a passage that is not talked about very much in the church, much less practiced.  I wonder how much healthier our churches would be if it were applied correctly and not be used improperly.  I think the key to this verse is the role of the community in working out problems within the body of Christ.  Notice the language,

Click here to read the whole chapter! The Temple Tax 24  After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax  came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”  25  “Yes, he does,” he replied.  When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak.   “What do you think, Simon?”   he asked.   “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes —from their own children or from others?”  26  “From others,” Peter answered.  “Then the children are exempt,”  Jesus said to him.   27  “But so that we may not cause offense,  go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.” This is a great story which we can learn a lot about.  First, we need to understand that the temple tax was collected for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem.  Jewish males over 20 paid the tax usually annually, a

Click Link to Read Matthew 16 1 5  “But what about you?”  he asked.  “Who do you say I am?”  16  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  17  Jesus replied,  “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood,  but by my Father in heaven.   18  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,  and the gates of Hades [ c ]  will not overcome it.   This is a crucial point in Matthew's gospel.  Jesus was born from the line of the Messiah through King David. He was born in the town of David, Bethlehem.  He preached and taught about the kingdom of heaven in ways that baffled the elders.  He was rejected by the very people he came to save.  And he healed and delivered all people. Unlikely people like tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers.  The untouchables in society. When the leper asked if Jesus was willing to touch him he said, "I am willing!"  Unlike the Pharisees who a

Click To Read Matthew 15 3  Jesus replied,  “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?   4  For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’   5  But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’   6  they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. The Pharisees were always on the look out for Jesus to make a wrong move.  The tried to use the Old Testament law to try to besmirch him.  In this case they accused Jesus' disciples of not washing their hands.  But Jesus turns the tables around and points out their hypocrisy.  In particular, he notes they have been more focused on tradition than scripture itself.   "The matter in question had nothing to do with good hygiene. The religious officials were offended that the disciples did not ob