Like this admirable woman… who brought pleasure to the heart of Jesus….  Truly Follow Jesus……xSeek the pleasure… seek the honor of your Savior using the resources you have… despite the reactions of others

Christ tells us the road ahead is hard and it will be filled with apocalyptic events, imposter Christs and false prophets who are powerful, inescapably persuasive and able to perform the supernatural.  But God is faithful, He is with us and we are with him as he gathers his elect across time and peoples and is coming back.  Though we are to know the signs, no man knows the moment and we are called in every stage to not live in panic or fear but rather living very awake and mindful of God’s placement of us in our particular moment and longing for Him.

So the future gets hard … really hard before he makes all things right.  Christ has told how to expect false messiahs, teachers, prophets and others who will capitalize on this to gather followers out of fear.  But our call is to expect such times and to be dedicated to being Christ’s witnesses through the power of the indwelling Spirt with relentless pride in Christ, even at the cost of our loved ones rejecting or killing us.

As Jesus wraps up his public teaching, he gives warnings about the scribes and their desire to be the center of attention, and contrasts them with the poor widow who humbly gave all that she had.

Our savior is seated in majesty right now until the Father is finished subjecting all spiritual authorities, rulers and powers to him…. And part of our worship is praising and adoring Him in that majesty and authority and patience.

Praise God that He raises us up after death and that we are forever with him. And may each of us deeply know and love the power of our Great God and his authoritative Scriptures.

Jesus once again shows that his approach to those who come to him with humility and sincerity is much different than those who come to him in accusation and condescension. As he does so he lays out some incredibly helpful guidelines for how we should look at God’s law as new covenant believers.

God created and appoints governing authorities for a specific work of providing justice and human flourishing. Both the people of government and the hearts of people must never allow government or leaders to become greater than their role, laying claim on things that belong to God alone such as glory, divinity, becoming a truth absolute, a hope of the soul or using his church.

The leaders of Israel knew who Jesus was and so-loved themselves that they decided to murder Jesus, the Son of God and the prophesied Messiah, to keep the money, power and honor that really belonged to Jesus and the Father.