If you’re interested in reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John before Christmas, download the PDF below. The plan kicked off last week with this post, and it’s still easy to get caught up.
“I’ve gotten kind of bored with Jesus.”
When was the last time you heard a Christian admit something like that?
Given a suitable setting, believers will talk about their battles with lust. Many will confess that their tempers get the best of them. From time to time, you’ll hear a Christian admit that a sobriety streak just came to an end.
But nobody ever says out loud that Jesus seems stale. That doesn’t mean, however, that no one ever feels that way.
This fall marks fifteen years of churchgoing life for me. And while I wouldn’t volunteer to relive my early years as a believer, I know that Jesus’ words often don’t grab me today as they did back then. Years ago, even familiar verses seemed to me to crackle. They were stirring and enticing. Mysterious, yet inviting.
Today, while I can still experience Jesus that way in the Bible, it rarely happens by accident. Down below, I’ll get to how our encounters with Him can remain fresh. For now, just keep in mind that however long you’ve been following Jesus, He invites continual rediscovery.
Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”
And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
Matthew 9:14–15
When was the last time you heard a man who’s neither married nor engaged refer to himself as a groom? Put yourself in the shoes of Jesus’ original hearers. You’re simultaneously trying to figure out why exactly His disciples resemble wedding guests, how He, Himself, could possibly be a bridegroom, and, above all, why in the world He’s going to be taken away. As a first century Jew, you’d have been overloaded with perplexing images and analogies.
Huston Smith, a scholar of world religions, described Jesus’ language as “compact” and said it “invariably cuts to the quick.” Those who heard Him firsthand put it even more bluntly: “No one ever spoke like this man!”1
It’s in Matthew 8, today’s chapter in the reading plan, that Jesus tells one of his disciples to “leave the dead to bury their own dead.”2 The hearer, if he continued to follow Jesus, would have to forsake his familial duty to bury his own father. Next, in Matthew 9, Jesus is smeared by the religious authorities for eating with tax collectors and sinners. His response is to effectively own the accusation, and then frame His entire mission in terms of it.
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. . .I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
Matthew 9:12–13
Jesus, of course, isn’t merely a quick wit. Again and again, He’s challenging those with small-minded misconceptions of Him to think much bigger. It’s also in Matthew chapter 9 that He compares Himself to a bridegroom, as quoted earlier. And then He makes it clear that His arrival represents something utterly transformative for Judaism—and the world.
No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.
Matthew 9:16–17
With images like these, I used to wind up in the cul-de-sac of overanalysis: If Jesus, as the patch, is shrinking, then why is Jesus, as the wine, expanding?
Anymore, I don’t think Jesus is concerned with the precise mechanics of how the garment and wineskins come to ruin. Rather, He’s saying that He’s an entirely new chapter in Israel’s story. He’s come to fulfill. . .everything. The sacrificial system. The promises made by generations of wild-eyed prophets. The prediction that a once-and-for-all King would arrive to sit on David’s throne. Jesus has come to trample humanity’s ultimate fear and offer ultimate hope: victory over death itself.
But how can we really experience Scripture as brimming with that hope? How is a well-worn Jesus saying going to excite you when you’re reading it for the umpteenth time?
The answer is this: the same way it grabbed you before. It’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can ever understand who Jesus is. And it’s only by the Spirit that we’ll ever be captivated by His Words.
Back at the beginning of this year, I invited readers to pray the Bible. That simply means that as you read God’s Word, you pray in response to it. It’s uncomplicated, and if you haven’t tried it before, I can promise you that nothing magical will happen the first time you do it. But I can also promise you if you make a habit of praying the Bible, over the long haul, it will transform how you relate to God.
Psalms, as I’ve written, are well-suited to this kind of prayerful engagement. They make for a great onramp. But ultimately, the goal is to interact with all of Scripture while actively communing with God. As you read Matthew, feel free to pray as the Lord moves you. I’d also encourage you to pray specifically that God would startle you with the full wonder of who Jesus is. Ask that the Holy Spirit will enable Jesus’ words to land on you afresh. That you’ll recognize their full brilliance, force, and beauty.
And when, on occasion, you do feel a little bored with Jesus, just admit that to Him. Trust me, He won’t be offended. In fact, it’s His joy to enliven your heart and mind again and again. And as you experience that, you’ll be equipped to serve as a guide to others who need to be startled—for the first time or the five-hundredth—by Jesus of Nazareth.
Store Up the Word in Your Heart
Last week, we started by memorizing John 1:1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
If you managed that, try adding verses 2 and 3.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
There are lots of tips and tricks for memorization. As I offer some in the weeks to come, give those that appeal to you a try. Stick with those that you find work.
This week, consider writing the verses out to help you memorize them. The act of writing the words will help to anchor them in your mind.
If you’ll take on learning just a verse or two each week, you’ll have memorized the opening of John’s gospel by the time we start reading it in a couple of months.
John 7:46
Matthew 7:22
Great encouragement. Love the practical steps for scripture memorization.