Matthew: Clarity, Call, and Cost of the Kingdom

Listen in as we look at the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 13, verses 44-58.

Sermon Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 13:44-58

“The parables in this chapter are a challenge to us at two levels: understanding and action. Understanding without action is sterile; action without understanding is exhausting and useless.” N.T. Wright

Our present culture, specializes in inflaming endless lust for possessions with advertisements that constantly convince us that we need more, particularly to create the ease we have never found. The marketers don't tell us much about their products, but they spend a great deal of energy and enormous amounts of money appealing to our fears and dreams. Thus, the idolatry of possessions plays to the deeper idolatry of our selves-and in an endlessly consuming society, persons are always remaking themselves with new belongings. - Marva Dawn

Galatians 3:3

Proverbs 3:5-6

“Your Word come” (the Sower, with understanding faith), “your Way come” (the Wheat in the Weeds, with nonviolent love), “your Work come” (the Seeds, with confident hope that Jesus’ “little” work will one day prove immense), “your Wonder come” (the Gems, with the joy of grace and the abandon of obedience), and “your Warning come” (the Net, with the seriousness of true repentance). To pray “Thy kingdom come,” then, is to pray that the gospel may be under-stood, lived out, hoped for, “bought up,” and taken seriously” - Dale Bruner