The householder has sown good seed in his field. It is the enemy who has come to corrupt the crop, sowing weeds among the wheat. The weed, cockle, would look very like wheat and could easily be mistaken for wheat until the ears appeared. If ground with the wheat, the flour would be contaminated and the bread nauseas to eat. In the East, personal vengeance might take the form of sowing cockle among an enemy’s wheat [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Explains The Parable Of The Sower | How To Read The Bible | True Faith | King James Audio KJV
Jesus contrasts those who are ready in their hearts to receive the Word of God with those for whom the Word remains obscured. A body of disciples, followers and believers, has begun to form around Jesus. These are they who have understanding, not particularly in an intellectual fashion, but rather because they are lovingly receptive, whereas lack of love opens the door of the soul to the devil. Jesus’ disciples are disposed to conversion, to permit God’s grace to transform their lives. We understand in these verses a contrast between Christian faith and lack of faith [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Christian Prayer And Faith | How To Read The Bible | Teaching The Gospels In Parables
Jesus’ disciples have opened their hearts to Jesus. They have responded to Jesus by being receptive to the Christian truth he brings, and therefore they may be given to understand the parables. The disciples’ understanding of the presence of the Kingdom in their lives, of which the parables speak, follows upon their faith in Jesus [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus’ Christian Mysteries | Prayer And Hearing Of The Gospels | Parable Of The Sower | God The Son
With Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel begins the Discourse of the Parables, which concerns the Christian mystery of the Kingdom Of God present in life now. The parables draw us to Jesus, whose divinity is the central fact of the parables. Christ is the veiled truth of each parable. As we uncover the meaning of each of the parables we discover Jesus [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Christian Faith And Family | Gospel Prayer In Christ | Jesus’ Disciples Are His Family
We learn in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus’ friends are concerned about Jesus, thinking that he is beside himself, and intending to restrain him (Mark 3: 21). Shortly afterwards, in Mark’s Gospel, Mary and others of Jesus’ family make the journey recounted in today’s Gospel verses to try to see Jesus [ … ]
Daily Audio Bible Verses | Christian Faith | Truth Faith In Jesus | An Evil And Adulterous Generation Seeketh After A Sign | Jesus God
Jesus has performed many healing miracles in his homeland, the area in the region of the Sea of Galilee – also known as the Lake of Tiberius and the Lake of Gennesaret. These miracles, or signs, have communicated something of the truth of Jesus to the people, who have responded to Jesus’ miracles and to his teaching. It is through the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings as much as through the healing miracles that people have responded to Jesus, recognizing in Jesus the answer to questions they have long asked, and prayers they have prayed for generations [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Martha And Mary Welcome Jesus | Work And Prayer | Jesus’ Ministry
Jesus’ journey has taken him to Bethany, the village where Lazarus, Martha and Mary live. There is clearly a feast happening. So often we find Jesus’ ministry associated with great banqueting, on what must have been quite a lavish scale, considering the milieu, the poverty suffered by many in the Holy Land. The story that follows has a similar shape to one of Jesus’ parables, but this is a real event in the life of our Lord. There is a certain contrast between the doings of Martha and Mary, which have symbolic significance, in ways which might seem initially counter-intuitive [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Gospel Truth | Christian Faith And Healing | The Pharisees Plot Against Jesus | Servant Of God
Jesus has challenged the malice of the Pharisees by curing the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. In response to the pure goodness of Jesus, the Pharisees take council together and decide to kill Jesus. Their response to absolute good is evil, even as Jesus gives the Pharisees every reason to see the ways in which they have fallen into error. The refusal of the Pharisees to respond to Jesus’ call to reform compounds their evil. They have locked their hearts [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Law Of The Sabbath | Jesus Is The Fulfilment Of Jewish Law | Prayer | Jesus’ Disciples Pluck Corn | Christian Truth | Faith And Salvation
Jesus’ Ministry has entered into a time of conflict, during which people begin to react against Jesus’ teachings, despite the many and beautiful miracles he has performed. In today’s Bible verses, the Pharisees accuse Jesus and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath. Jesus defends himself, justifying his actions, and in doing so suggests both his own divinity and a greater dignity for all people than that which the Pharisees can admit [ … ]
Daily Bible For Advent | Jesus And The Christian Cross | My Yoke Is Easy And My Burden Is Light | Celebrate Christmas
We all face difficulties in our lives. The crowds who listen to Jesus must have felt cruelly burdened, labouring and seeming to find no true reward. They must have sensed injustice and longed for their Messiah to set them free [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | True Faith | We Are Not Alone | Jesus Thanks His Father | God The Son Consubstantial | Christian Prayer
It is in Chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus’ mission has encountered serious difficulties. Through Chapters 11 and 12 there are challenges, which confirm what Jesus has told the disciples in the Discourse of the Mission, concerning his bringing not peace but a sword, of Jesus’ Mission being a sign of Christian contradiction. There is real enmity in the region of Galilee, the scribes and the Pharisees especially rejecting the truth of Jesus, while even John the Baptist fails to understand [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Reproaches Cities For Their Unbelief | Christian Evangelization | Repentance | Judgement
In the Discourse of the Mission, in Chapter 10 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has instructed his disciples about evangelization. Now, in Chapter 11, we are told more of Jesus’ Mission in the region of Galilee – also known as the Lake of Gennesaret and as Lake Tiberius. The area in which Jesus preaches and performs his healing miracles is relatively small, and it is an obscure part of the Empire. In some ways, though, it is a microcosm of the world beyond and the world of later history to come, as we learn of those who will accept and those who will reject Jesus [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Discourse Of The Mission | I Came Not To Send Peace, But A Sword | King James Audio Bible
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ message may strike us as difficult to understand. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus’ message is one of peace and Christian brotherhood, of reconciliation with our fellow human beings and with God, whom we are asked to call Father. Today Jesus speaks of variance and contradiction. Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Christian Mission | Jesus Instructs His Disciples | Faith And Christian Prayer | King James Audio Bible
No matter how great the world’s lies may be, we are assured by Jesus, truth will triumph. For this reason, these verses of the Gospel of Matthew teach us, we need not be afraid, though the going can get very rough indeed, and our Christian faith will be tested, our love always coerced to turn into the opposite of love, and so we need always the more love to counter this threat [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Speak The Name Of Jesus | The Mission | Jesus Reassures The Apostles | Challenges To Come
‘I speak the name of Jesus.’ As the Discourse of the Mission continues, Jesus prepares his disciples to face danger. They are to be as sheep. In this way again they are to imitate Jesus – to act in persona of Jesus – as they preach and heal, as they prefigure the saving sacrifice upon the cross. There is to be contention, contradiction [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Discourse Of The Mission | Jesus Instructs His Disciples | Power Of Exorcism | Trust In God
The Discourse of the Mission continues as Jesus mandates his disciples to preach the good news that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is a wonderful, new message. For other Jews, the Kingdom to come remained far in the future. It would come after they had done their own part. The Pharisees believed that the Kingdom would come once the Law were perfectly observed, the Essenes when the country would have purified itself. For Jesus, the time is already fulfilled. Independently of any good works the people could do, the Kingdom of God is here already, as a completely gratuitous gift of God. What is now required is to teach the people to perceive this fact. This will mean to look at the world in a new way [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Discourse Of The Mission | Power Of Exorcism | Our Neighbours | The Apostles Are Sent
Jesus’ great Discourse of the Mission begins in these Gospel verses with the calling together of the twelve disciples and the summative naming of the twelve. These twelve apostles are mandated; they are sent to establish the first foundations of Christ’s Church, and they are empowered by Jesus to exorcise unclean spirits and to heal the sick, to perform the very miracles of Jesus as a sign that the Kingdom of God has come. Through exorcism, the apostles are called to an imitation of Christ, and so in this way to establish the Christian community [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | An Exorcism | The Dumb Devil Cast Out | Jesus As Exorcist And Healer | Sheep Without A Shepherd
Matthew’s account of Jesus’ healing of the dumb man through exorcism, by casting out the demon possessing him, is brief, and in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus does not respond to the Pharisees’ malicious accusation, as if to say, their evil is evident and does not merit response. Rather, Jesus pours immense effort into his Galilean ministry, teaching and healing, and bringing the people to God [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Faith Heals | Jesus’ Miracles | The Raising Of Jairus’ Daughter And Curing Of The Woman With The Haemorrhage | Prayer Healing
The two miracles, which occur almost simultaneously in these Gospel verses, shed light upon one another, as Jesus brings two people back to their communities, the woman with the issue of blood, a haemorrhage, because this would render her impure and so outcast, and the girl from death. Two aspects of the Law regarding purity are juxtaposed, and with them sin and death [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Mission Of The Seventy Disciples | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ | God’s Love In The Book Of Revelation
The seventy disciples, or as some authorities state: the seventy two, are symbolic of the sending to all nations, and supplementary to the Twelve. There is a numerical symbolism here, the meaning of which we may with confidence say concerns a sending of the Gospel to all nations [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Calls Matthew, A Publican, A Sinner, A Tax Collector | Sinners Called To Repentance
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached a message of love and acceptance. He called everyone to a new way of being, which would be true to God’s will. As the narrative account continues from chapter eight through nine, we see Jesus putting into practice the lessons he has taught. Jesus accepts lepers, foreigners, women, the sick, the possessed, paralytics, the unclean, and now a tax collector [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Heals A Paralyzed Man | Prayer And Blasphemy | Lead The Sinner To God | Miracle Healing
For the Jewish people, the sickness of the paralyzed man was a symptom of underlying sin. It was a punishment, a consequence of one’s own moral evil or of one’s parents. We can imagine the social consequences for the paralyzed man, in the light of the various exclusions which were applied to disabled people [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Faith And Trust In God | Jesus Calming Of The Storm | Scriptures
The miracle of the calming of the storm made a powerful impression on Jesus’ disciples. It is recounted by all three synoptic Gospels. In each Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples of the troubles to come. Jesus tells his disciples that to be Christians is going to be difficult, hard work, at times fatal [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Trust In God | Verse on Faith | Scriptures On Trusting God | Follow Me And Let The Dead Bury Their Dead
The crowds press in around Jesus. Perhaps there is a sense of enough having been done for now in this place, in terms of teaching and the healing miracles of Jesus. Perhaps there is a sense of too much ferment, and a need to leave these thousands upon thousands of people in quiet to reflect upon what they have experienced of Jesus so far. It is time to move, and now there does arise a question of who will follow Jesus and who will stay behind. This may be a figurative moment, in that sometimes there are people who follow Jesus in a great rush of feeling and momentarily; others are concerned to follow Jesus permanently, all their lives [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Heals A Leper | Define Faith | Be Thou Clean | Miracle Prayer Healing | God Is Love
We are reminded once more in this Gospel reading of the huge numbers of people who flock to Jesus. Jesus’ fame and popularity are extraordinary, while his mission proceeds at what we might think an incredibly fast pace. There is such need on the part of the people for salvation, no matter the extent of their consciousness as to how Jesus asks to save us all [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Sermon On The Mount | Beatitudes | Jesus Prayer | Rock Of Ages | Doing The Will Of God
Faith, then, is far from being a denial of reality – indeed it is the opposite; it is a meeting with reality, and where we are at our most real. Jesus asks us to be careful that our faith be not a kind of escapism. We are to ask ourselves how we are doing as Christians [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jesus Prayer | Beatitudes | The Sermon On The Mount | Beware Of False Prophets | Sin And Christian Faith
There is a beautiful lesson in love, which is to test ourselves when we are offering gifts of love to our beloved/s, and this is by imagining that we actually don’t know the person or people to whom we are giving. This way, we can make sure that what we are doing is giving, rather than making an investment and expecting something in return [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Sermon on the Mount | Jesus’ Jewish Mission | Give Not That Which Is Holy Unto The Dogs, Neither Cast Ye Your Pearls Before Swine | Faith
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine. This is difficult text. The dogs, the pigs – these would be terms to describe the non-Jewish, yet in acknowledging this we are aware of Jesus’ ministering to everybody, gathering crowds of disparate people, and enjoining them to coexist peacefully, while he walked in the land of the Gentiles [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Sermon On The Mount | Jesus | Jewish Law | Judge Not | Cast Out The Beam Of Thine Own Eye
Jesus continues to preach the Sermon on the Mount with a further lesson in love and humility. Once more, Jesus teaches us about our proper relationships with God and with other people. This is a lesson against conceit and anger. It is a call to peace, such as can heal the divisions between people [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Peter’s Profession Of Faith | Jesus Announces The Passion | Christ Of God | King James Audio Bible
Today’s Gospel verses invite us once more to consider the true identity of Jesus. This scene is filled both with a sense of preconceptions and expectations, and with the over-riding knowledge of the new, which is the truth of Jesus. Additionally, we are asked by Jesus to declare the truth of our knowledge of who Jesus is. We are invited by Jesus to confess our Christian faith [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Sermon On The Mount | Jesus | Jewish Law And History | Consider The Lilies Of The Field | You Cannot Serve God And Mammon | Seek Ye First The Kingdom Of God
is astonishing to think that very, very few people in the western world do not live in a manmade environment. There may be acres upon acres of farmers’ fields and forests in front of us, and every acre is managed by people, often in situations of great anxiety as they worry about whether they might make some money from their work here. There is little in the way of wilderness remaining in our territories, and each day more is taken away. We may anticipate that, in very little time, all human beings will be living in an obviously man-made environment. It may be that our life on earth will become quite claustrophobic [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Sermon On The Mount | Jesus | Jewish Law | Treasures In Heaven | The Eye Is The Lamp Of The Body
No-one lies on his death bed wishing he’d bought more product – more disposable or semi-disposable consumer trash. It may be that when we are confronted with the thought of owning nothing, we may feel straight away that there are things we treasure, which we hope to hand on to other people. There are beautiful things, indeed of such beauty that we know we don’t finally possess those things – we could not hoard them; they will be passed on to other people, and who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years they might give people pleasure [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses For Lent | Our Father | The Lord’s Prayer | Forgive Us Our Trespasses | Simple Christian Prayer | Petition | Audio KJV | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
In Matthew, Jesus teaches the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, as part of the Discourse on the Mountain, in which we are instructed in the correct ways of practising almsgiving, prayer and fasting. Certain tendencies of the Jewish converts are corrected, particularly a certain ostentation and vacuity in the manner of prayer, giving and fasting to which they were accustomed. When they are praying, Jesus orders his followers not to be like the Gentiles, who heap up long-winded but ultimately empty phrases in the vain and superstitious belief that this will impress God. True piety means looking to God with simplicity of heart and true love through the course of each day. Spoken prayer is good and necessary, but the words only count if they express the truth of our inner feelings [ … ]
Ash Wednesday | Daily Bible Verses For Lent | Giving, Prayer And Penance | Christian Faith | King James Audio Bible | KJV
In these Bible verses, from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives to his people instruction regarding the three traditional works of mercy of the Jews, namely almsgiving, prayer and fasting. A key message is that, when we pray, when we fast and when we give charity, this is not supposed to be because we wish to be seen as pious by other people. Jesus satirizes those hypocrites who wish to be glorified by other people for their fasting, their giving of alms and their prayers. They sound a trumpet in the streets and strike extravagant attitudes in the synagogues. They visibly mortify their bodies and pull dismal expressions. Jesus portrays such hypocrites as ridiculous. Their piety is not to do with their love of God; it is to do with their wish to be seen as ‘pious’ by their fellow man. And such will be their reward [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses For Lent | Love Your Enemies | Neighbours In Christ | Christian Faith | Spiritual Healing | Love Revealed By Jesus
The Sermon on the Mount continues with Christ’s call to reconciliation and forgiveness. Jesus urgently wishes the Jews to be at peace among themselves, and he implores his listeners not to aggravate the Roman oppressors, whose utter brutality in suppressing dissent would indeed ultimately destroy Jerusalem. (We should remember that, prior to AD 70, thousands of Jews could be crucified at just one go to suppress insurrectionary threats.) Just as God’s love is for everyone, so we should see everyone as being our neighbour. This is the truth of the teaching of Levitus (19:18): ‘You shall love your neighbour.’ [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Sermon On The Mount | Jesus | Jewish Law | Eye For Eye, Tooth For Tooth | Turn The Other Cheek | Faith Healing | God Is Love
When we are offended or injured, Jesus teaches us not to demand pay-back, an eye for our eye, a tooth for our tooth, but rather to forgive, and where there was hatred, to bring instead to the situation the opposite of hatred, which is love [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Jewish Law | Sermon On The Mount | Jesus’ Jewish Heritage | Transformation | Christian Faith And Prayer | Swear Not At All
In Jesus’ time, the swearing of oaths was common, and the casuistry surrounding such oaths was intricate. There were what we would now term loopholes – ‘perfectly’ legal ways of doing wrong. The letter of the Law, rather than the spirit, had proliferated – the whole of the Sermon on the Mount concerns this subject – and thereby our knowledge of the will of God had been deliberately obscured [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | The Sermon On The Mount | Adultery, Fornication And Divorce | Sin | Miracle Healing | Inward Purity | Purity Of Thought
Through these verses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus directs us to consider and take to heart not the outward show of the Law, the behaviour which other people can see, but rather the inward spirit – our thoughts, our mind, the invisible part of ourselves, which is visible to ourselves and to God [ … ]