Daily Dose of Hope
June 2, 2025
Day 1 of Week 9
Scripture – Matthew 7:1-14
Prayer: Abba Father, We come to you today with gratitude. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for wanting a relationship with us. Thank you for never leaving our side. Help us to follow you more closely, Lord. We need your truth. We need your guidance and direction. With every fiber of our being, we need you. As we read your Word today and reflect on it, Lord, speak to us. Help us grow closer to you. Let us know where we are falling short so that we can be the people you have called us to be. In Your Name, Amen.
Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, a Deep Dive into the Gospels and Acts. Happy Monday! Yesterday, we had a big baptism celebration at New Hope and it was such an amazing event. We had roughly 30 people get baptized or remember their baptisms between the English and Spanish-speaking congregations. What a day of joy, as we celebrate new life in Christ!
Today and tomorrow we are finishing up the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been teaching us that while outward actions matter, what really matters to God is our heart. We are to behave and think fundamentally different from the world around us. Up until this point, we have learned about the different groups that God honors, such as the poor in spirit, the merciful, and those who are persecuted for belief in Jesus. We’ve learned about what it means to be salt and light in our world, pointing others to Jesus. We have also talked a lot about how Jesus took concepts like divorce, adultery, giving to the needy, fasting, and prayer, and turned them on their heads. Jesus is raising the bar for his people.
Today, the teaching is just as difficult and yet, critically important. The first portion of the chapter deals with judging others. Judgement is something that has gotten Christians in a lot of trouble with the world around us. In fact, being judged by Christians is one of the main reasons people say they have avoided the church or left the church. This should be heart-breaking to all of us. Something has gone terribly wrong.
Jesus is saying you will be judged by the same measure you use to judge others. Think about this. How do you want to be judged? I can tell you that I want to be judged with mercy and compassion. Jesus talks about not trying to take the speck out of a friend’s eye without taking the plank out of our own. Why do we obsess over others’ specks, over their short-comings? Well, because it’s easier, it’s more fun, but most of all we feel so much better about ourselves when we point out someone else’s stuff. It distracts me from dealing with my own stuff. I wonder if sometimes we don’t even notice the plank hanging from our own eye. Maybe we just aren’t very self-aware or we don’t want to be self-aware. We are happy being ignorant about our own issues.
Jesus brings up hypocrisy again. It’s worth a review. A hypocrite is someone who is more concerned with what’s wrong with someone else than what’s wrong with themselves. Urban dictionary has three definitions:1) A person who engages in the same behaviors he condemns others for. (2) A person who professes certain ideals, but fails to live up to them. (3) A person who holds other people to higher standards than he holds himself. Sounds about right. And as Christians, we have often been accused of hypocrisy. Some of it has been fairly earned.
Jesus is saying, before you start pointing out other people’s issues, examine yourself. Stop to see where you have traces of sin in your own life. We all have it. Sometimes when we notice sin in the lives of other people, it’s time to do a self-examination. We need to examine our own behavior, speech, and thoughts. We have to look deep in our own hearts and see what we need to fix. Just FYI – we all have something to fix.
So do we just stop there? No. Following Jesus means we never stop with what’s in it for us. Sure, we’ve looked at someone else and seen their mess and it’s been a big signpost to what’s wrong in our lives. But that is not where it ends. Jesus says, “First get rid of the log in your own eye; THEN you will see well enough to deal with speck in your friend’s eye.” This is where it gets really hard.
One of the main points of Jesus’ ministry was teaching his followers to love each other. Love your neighbor. Love one other. John 13:34-35, So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. This teaching on judgement is not just about letting people do whatever they want, about never confronting people. Judge not is not just about letting people live and think and speak in whatever way they want to because, well, Jesus said “Don’t judge others.” It is so much more than that.
It’s not just about dealing with our own stuff either, although we do need to do that. When we see others’ issues, it should be an impetus for us to look at ourselves and say, “Do I have that issue? Am I addressing it? What issues do I have that I need to address? What do I need to do to become more like the person Jesus wants me to me?” This is called being self-aware, knowing where your weaknesses are, and trying to deal with them.
But Jesus’ lesson on not judging is more than that. We deal with the log in your own eye and then we may need to approach someone else about the speck in their eye. Part of loving others well is holding other believers accountable. We need each other. Judge not does not mean care not. It doesn’t mean act not. It doesn’t mean don’t get involved. We need to keep our motives in check and be humble, but there will be times in Christian community where we truly need to get involved and let others know that while we care about them, they are off the mark.
Moving on in the passage, Jesus then teaches about praying expectantly. This is the ask, seek, knock passage and many of you have probably heard this a lot. It’s powerful. But does this mean that if we ask, God will give us whatever we want. Not exactly. But it does mean to pray expectantly; pray expecting that God will us an answer.
This can be a difficult scripture to teach. Some of you might be thinking, “Well, I prayed for my mother, or my son, or my husband to be healed and I prayed both persistently and expectantly, and it didn’t work. They still died.” How do we make sense of this? I believe that part of it is understanding the context. Just as Jesus often used parables in his teaching he also used hyperbole in his speech, which is an overstatement or an exaggeration. This was a really common way of explaining things at that time, in that culture, and it would have just made a lot of sense to first-century people. We, on the other hand, are products of twenty-first century modern life. In our culture, we tend to read everything very literally. And this isn’t a bad thing–we just need to consider that Jesus was trying to make a point.
The reality is that this world would be even more chaotic if Jesus’ words on prayer were actually meant to be taken literally. For instance, if we could just pray to have money and it appeared, well, then why work a job? If we could just pray to have an A on that Calculus test without studying for it, then everyone would have A’s and grades wouldn’t really have much meaning. That doesn’t mean we don’t pray, and it doesn’t mean we don’t pray boldly, because God intends for us to do so. He says to pray without ceasing. But it means we know that prayer isn’t a get rich quick scheme or a way to get all our dreams to come true, but rather a way to get closer to God, a way for God to sustain us, a way to know that God is always with us. Pray expectantly because prayer does change things, but not always the way we want them to be changed. Pray expectantly because God always answers prayers, sometimes just not the way we want them to be answered.
The last few verses in today’s reading are short but powerful. Jesus tells his listeners to enter through the narrow gate. This means following him and his ways. Most people will enter through the wide gate. On first glance, the wide gate seems easier. It’s the way of the world, it’s living for yourself, it’s doing what you want when you want and how you want. Less people choose the narrow gate but it’s that road that leads to Jesus which leads to life.
This Scripture always reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. Many of you probably know it. I would close with the poem except for Frost was a complicated man who was never that clear about his faith. He had some kind of belief but never professed Jesus as Savior. I think he struggled with this narrow door/wide door issue. And there really isn’t anything more important in life, getting the doors and roads correct. Yet, elements of Frost’s work point to exactly what Jesus is saying, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
Which door have you chosen? Which road will you pursue?
Blessings,
Pastor Vicki
