Monthly Archive: September 2013

This coming weekend, I'll be at Otford Manor, the base of Oak Hall Expeditions, for a teaching weekend. Roughly 4 times a year, they run weekends under the title of "Unlocking the Bible", at which a speaker takes one book of the Bible, and seeks to unpack and apply its main message for today.

This week, I've been pondering how the individual paragraphs of Matthew 7 fit into the whole chapter. It's always a mistake to take a paragraph of Scripture away from its context, and to read it with no regard to where it comes. In this case, these paragraphs were spoken by Jesus, but he said them as part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

On Monday, I posted about the difficulties in reading Matthew 7 as a whole. Far easier to read a paragraph in isolation; hard to
articulate what the chapter as a whole is about and how each paragraph contributes to that.

On Monday, I posted about the difficulties in reading Matthew 7 as a whole. Far easier to read a paragraph in isolation; hard to articulate what the chapter as a whole is about and how each paragraph contributes to that.

Both Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 have a clear structure. Each chapter also has a clear message - Jesus seems to be developing one clear theme in each chapter. This is not the place to go into what the structure and message of each chapter is.