Hope Blog

▶ 1:11:01

Hope Chapel had just finished 1 Corinthians, and a series on Revelation has
been sitting on Matt’s desk for months — he is saving it for a season when fewer people are
traveling. So this Sunday was a single verse, picked up because another preacher had called
it the best-known verse in the country, more familiar even than John 3:16. Matt thought that
was probably right. People may not be able to quote John 3:16, and they almost certainly
cannot tell you what chapter this one comes from. But they can quote it.

The text, and the shape of it

▶ 1:13:15

▶ 1:13:46

“In a lot of ways this really speaks for itself,” Matt said. “I don’t need to dress it
up.” But he did want one structural observation on the table before anything else: verses
one and two and verses three through five are saying the same thing in two registers. The
measure-for-measure warning comes first as a principle, and then Jesus acts it out — a man
with a log in his face, offering eye surgery. That is what the measure looks like when it
plays out. It is hypocrisy to go after someone else’s failure without touching your own,
because it means exercising a judgment you have no intention of submitting to, pronouncing a
condemnation you would never accept.

Not the universe. A judge.

▶ 1:14:58

Luke has the sister passage, and it widens the frame:

▶ 1:15:39

At first hearing, Matt admitted, this can sound like The Secret — put something
out into the universe and it comes back to you, big with the Oprah crowd in the early 2000s.
It is not that. Read it carefully and ask the obvious question: is the universe in the
business of judging, condemning and forgiving? Those are not forces. They are the acts of a
person. “There is a judge, Jesus Christ, who as God has the authority to judge, condemn and
forgive.” What we are reading is not a law of reciprocity but a warning issued in advance by
someone who is longing to give mercy and will not look kindly on us condemning others while
asking forgiveness for ourselves.

▶ 1:16:50

Luke then adds a parable that looks unrelated and is not:
“Can a
blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his
teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Matt refused to
let that pass as religious filler. A blind man leading a blind man is a man with a log in his
face offering to guide somebody — and both of them end up in the same hole. And if a fully
trained disciple ends up like his teacher, then a blind teacher produces blind students. It
is all the same point, arriving from a different direction.

Three first impressions

▶ 1:19:06

Before getting to how people use and abuse this text, Matt slowed down to name what is
simply on the surface of it. First, God clearly desires mercy. There is nothing braggadocious
in the warning — it is not judge me and see what happens. It is a caution meant to
get us walking carefully, and it is aimed at sight, not blindness. He is not teasing anyone
for being blind; he wants people who can see.

▶ 1:19:49

Second, the warning about reciprocity quietly reaffirms that he has the right to judge. He
is the judge. Which means that if we are going to act as micro-judges at all, we ought to do
it the way he does it. And third — the one the room needed — correction is not banned. “He
isn’t saying, well, that guy has a speck but it’s not your place. He’s saying take the log
out.” The sentence does not end at the log. It ends at the speck, removed, with both people
seeing clearly.

Leviticus behind the Sermon on the Mount

▶ 1:21:53

Matthew 5 through 7 reads almost like a sermon preached from an outline of
Leviticus
18 and 19 — murder, wrath, sacrifice, divorce, oaths, retaliation, love of enemies,
generosity. Matt was careful not to overstate it; it is not a line-for-line remake, and
whether Matthew arranged the material or Jesus was preaching from Leviticus, the themes are
unmistakably there. Which makes this verse worth reading beside it:

▶ 1:23:13

Failing to correct someone, Matt pointed out, can implicate us in their wrong — and not
only by sharing the guilt. Silence lets a grudge grow. Someone else’s ongoing, unaddressed
behavior will work on your heart until you hate them for it. So even for your own sake, speak
frankly. “Done correctly, correcting a sin isn’t a way of opposing the person but opposing
the very sins that entangle us and ruin the relationship.” Reasoning frankly with a neighbor
is how you keep the relationship, not how you end it — which is exactly where Jesus lands
too, with both parties clear-sighted and the hypocrisy gone. The result he was after was
restoration and redemption for both people. The result was not a ban on correction.

What “reason frankly” actually means

▶ 1:24:21

The Hebrew verb behind “reason frankly” can mean simply point out, but in the Old
Testament it usually carries the weight of rebuke — and Matt proved it by reading two other
passages with the Leviticus phrasing dropped straight in. God says of David’s son, the one
who would build the house for his name,
“I
will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will
discipline him with the rod of men” — and Matt read it back the other way: when he
commits iniquity, I will reason frankly with him, with the rod of men. That is the verb.
And then David himself:

▶ 1:25:10

Same verb again, and Matt ran it through the same test out loud: let him reason
frankly with me — it is oil for my head. Righteous correction, on this reading, “is
apparently really valuable stuff,” the sort of thing a king longed for, ranked alongside
kindness and oil for the head. Matt granted that oil on the head is not part of our culture
and we might not want any, but the point stands: it was something pleasant, something that
improved your life and your appearance.

David, who taught transgressors anyway

▶ 1:25:49

Here is the thing that stops most of us from ever opening our mouths: we have done the
same thing, or worse, and we conclude that we have forfeited the right to speak. Matt went
straight to the worst case he could find. Psalm 51 was written after David stayed home from
war, took another man’s wife, and had the man killed by arrangement on the battlefield —
left unsupported by his own men — to cover the pregnancy. Undignified and atrocious, and
everybody probably knew.

▶ 1:27:49

Verse 13 is not hypocrisy, Matt argued, precisely because of verses 10, 11 and 12. The
heart was dealt with first. “We are not operating in a tit-for-tat, legalistic, algorithmic
world where I can only speak the truth if I have no record of wrongs in that regard. We are
playing on God’s team, and we are always loyal to him.” That may mean saying a true thing you
yourself have failed to walk in — because the question is your alignment with him, not your
scorecard against somebody else.

“You are the man”

▶ 1:28:54

Which is why Matt wanted the backstory of Nathan’s parable and not just the punchline. A
rich man with countless sheep is entertaining a traveler, is unwilling to take one of his
own flock, and instead takes the single lamb a poor man loved and prepares it for his guest.
David’s anger blazes: as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die, and he shall
restore the lamb fourfold, because he had no pity. And then the pause, which Matt said must
have been unbearably strange, and four words —
“You
are the man.”

▶ 1:29:36

“It’s probably true that we are often very harsh about the sins we commit, in other
people,” Matt said, “because externalizing sin is so much easier than fighting it inwardly.”
Then the diagnostic question of the whole message: you have noticed a speck in someone’s eye
— are you opposed to specks, or are you opposed to them? If it is really specks, and
really because you are aligned with Christ, then you will check yourself for specks too. If
you are genuinely animated against the thing, the battle starts at home.

The one who judges righteously

▶ 1:30:33

“We all know that fighting against sin on our own is often a fruitless endeavor,” Matt
said — “there is an ultimate sin warrior,” and he wanted the room to see him. A shoot comes
from the stump of Jesse; the Spirit of the Lord rests on him, the Spirit of wisdom and
understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord; and his delight
is in the fear of the Lord:

▶ 1:31:43

“That’s just like a sneak peek,” Matt said — the seedbed for the image of Jesus riding out
on a horse with a sword coming from his mouth. He destroys God’s enemies by speaking. If we
want to be like him, then we too want to judge righteously, to delight in the fear of the
Lord, and to use our mouths.

How correction is actually done

▶ 1:32:31

The same Lord who said “judge not” also said
“if
your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” —
and if he listens, you have gained your brother. If not, take one or two others, so that
every charge is established by two or three witnesses. If he still refuses, tell it to the
church. And if he refuses even the church, he is to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,
which Matt admitted “might sound really bizarre,” but amounts to this: not in the church.
These do not contradict “judge not”; they are the procedure it protects. “This godly
correction is a way that, like our Lord, we can overcome evil with our words — words of
truth, words of testimony about God.” And lest anyone conclude the warrant is limited to
sins committed against you personally:

▶ 1:34:20

Matt read the conditions out one at a time. Anyone — not just the person who
wronged you; anyone in the body caught in any transgression. Those who are spiritual
— it comes from his Spirit and from alignment with him no matter what, not from a grudge.
“Not because we are against that person, and I will selectively become a self-appointed sin
sheriff, but only for people I don’t like.” In a spirit of gentleness — the aim is
winning over a brother, not destroying someone who made you angry. And keep watch on
yourself, because this is precisely the errand on which a person falls.

▶ 1:34:55

Which leaves the other misuse, the one Matt called a shield. If the rule is that pricking
my conscience with scripture makes you judgey and gets you cut out of my life, then I have
just judged and condemned in the name of a verse about not judging and condemning. The text
cannot be made to do that.

▶ 1:35:32

And then the second caution, in the same breath as the permission: we should do this, but
we should be careful how. In a spirit of gentleness. “Starting with as small a population of
people involved as possible.” Based on seeing clearly, not based on teams. “It’s important
that being right is not greater or more important than knowing the truth, whatever it is.”

Why correction stings, and whose team we are on

▶ 1:36:09

Underneath all of it is a question about loyalty. If I want mercy for me and not for you,
what team am I actually on? “It would seem to me that in that sense I’m on team me. I’m not
on team mercy.” Jesus, Matt said, is almost letting us reason our way there sociopathically:
you want mercy, you want to be forgiven, you want God to be generous with you — all right,
then be generous and forgiving and merciful to others, “because I long to do that to you.”

▶ 1:36:47

“But this isn’t a you versus them thing,” he added. “I like how Jesus is openly telling us
ahead of time: I want to be merciful to you, I want you on my team — team forgiveness, team
mercy.”

▶ 1:37:27

So why are we so sensitive to correction? Matt named two shapes it takes. One is getting
real mad about everyone else’s sins and always moving to confront — “kind of the way King
David was when he was mad about this guy in the parable.” The other is a stubborn
rebelliousness that never wants to hear it: don’t talk to me about what I’m doing. Judge
not, bro.

▶ 1:38:06

Some of our sensitivity, Matt allowed, is earned: we do this so badly to each other that
it can be genuinely traumatizing. But
Proverbs
9:7–8 names the other half — whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse; reprove a
scoffer and he will hate you, but reprove a wise man and he will love you. When we are
entangled in something we tend to align ourselves with the scoffing and the wickedness, and
abuse and injury and hatred come out of us on contact — “and that is an issue for us to
repent over.” Matt included himself without flinching: “I’m not sure which one is my first
go-to. Is it scoffing, or hatred? It might be a scoff. But I know that in that mode I am
walking unrighteously.”

▶ 1:38:47

And the flip side, which is the test: “when I am walking wisely, when someone corrects me
I love them for it.” Because we are not competing against one another. Whether we look dumb,
whether we are right or wrong, whether someone corrects us or we are the ones who have to
bring something — it is always about alignment with him, allegiance and loyalty to Jesus.

▶ 1:39:21

He closed where Luke closes it:

▶ 1:40:04

Intense, Matt said, but good to embrace — because to God we are far worse than seven times
a day, and he longs to be received graciously and mercifully every time he comes. If he wants
that treatment from God that badly, he can consider extending a much smaller amount of
forgiveness to someone who sinned against him far less than he has sinned against God. “My
goal is not to win, or at least it shouldn’t be. My goal is to be in Christ, to drink it up,
to just gorge on the grace and the forgiveness and the mercy — to revel in it, to celebrate
it.”

▶ 1:40:53

And what celebrating it looks like from the outside is forgiving others when they sin
against us, blessing our enemies, praying for the people who hassle and antagonize and
persecute us. “That’s a privilege to do, not a huge burden, because we were invited into
Christ, who is all of these things for us.” Then he prayed — that God would keep speaking
about the practical ways to walk this faith out, would bring specific acts of obedience to
mind for him and for the whole body, and would in mercy make it understandable enough to
actually do. And with that he called the Heart Ministry teams forward, a roomful of people
ready to pray with anyone who wanted it, and sent the rest out in peace to love and serve
the Lord.

▶ 1:00:08

This message closes out fifteen to twenty weeks in
1 Corinthians,
and Matt admitted he had not planned to read the last chapter at all. Someone he loves dearly
talked him out of skipping it — “then we won’t feel closure” — so the church read the whole
thing, chapter 16 included, the most stubbornly practical page in the letter.

How to read a letter

▶ 1:00:43

His standing advice on reading the Bible is to notice what kind of literature is in front of
you and read it accordingly. This is a letter, written to be read aloud in church from beginning
to end. Matt confessed that Bible facts never stuck for him — he did not grow up in a
memorization club — until one night when Mandy was working a night shift and the kids were
asleep, and he read
Galatians
out loud to himself in the living room. It did more for him than six or seven silent readings.
A Hope small group ran on that principle for a while: whole books, out loud, the way they were
meant to be heard.

1. Not so that — because

▶ 1:03:08

Matt is eager to say that Christianity is not about being a good person, and puzzled about how
the faith acquired that reputation — “as if we are united by our common effort to be better.” The
core is the good news of who Jesus is and what he has done: by grace, an effortless union with God
that sounds too good to be true.

▶ 1:04:18

Which raises the obvious problem with a letter full of correction. Look closely at Paul’s
motive, Matt argued, and it is never so as to find the gospel but because of the
gospel. Take the very first issue, the factions: “It’s not so that we can have unity with Christ.
It’s because we have unity with Christ, and because he is not divided, that we can have unity.”
The alternative is the oldest religion there is. “Come on, man, do better — that is the rally cry
of dead religion.”

▶ 1:05:49

And he was honest about why that bait works. Shame, fear and insecurity are common human
weather, and “at least better than average” is a real relief for about a week. Pride behaves like
a drug — a shot of adrenaline, a sense of calm, a borrowed dignity that comes from superiority and
from belonging to a club of elite betterers. Then you need another hit.

2. The highlight reel

▶ 1:07:54

Before finishing, Matt ran back through the letter to show the same move made over and over.
Chloe’s people report quarreling
(1 Corinthians 1:11),
and the solution is not a retreat where everyone holds hands; it is a question —
“Is Christ divided?”
That is gospel-powered, not man-powered. When the church is embarrassed about its lack of worldly
wisdom
(1 Corinthians 1:25–26),
the answer is not “read some scrolls, master the philosophy of the age better than they do.”

▶ 1:10:08

Matt lingered on that third word. “Did you know that sanctification is mostly a person, not a
process?” It means holy-ification, and Christ is ours — not the slow accumulation of earlier
mornings and longer readings. Growth in godly behavior is good. It is not what makes anyone
holy.

3. Freedom, and the poison you do not sweeten

▶ 1:11:19

The Corinthians had a slogan: all things are lawful for me. Paul answers it twice —
not all things are helpful, and “I will not be dominated by anything”
(1 Corinthians 6:12).
Notice how practical he is willing to get once the foundation holds: it may not be illegal for
you, but is it any use to you?

▶ 1:12:23

That is also how Matt read Paul’s hardest instruction — do not even share a meal with a
professing brother living in immorality. The door to union with Christ stands wide open through
his sacrifice. If someone would rather drink the poison of the age, “the proper response is no, I
don’t want to make that easy on you. If you want to destroy yourself, that’s tragically your
choice, but I’m not going to make that fun for you.”

4. The prize is already given

▶ 1:13:56

His picture for it came from an old video game. Beat the final boss and you can go back and
replay the earlier levels — you already won; the coins are no longer the point. “The whole
operation is not resting on your shoulders, but you can spend yourself even to the point of death
in your faithfulness to him as an act of worship.”

This, Matt said, is the thing people spend whole lives reaching for by moralistic effort, and
it was given away free before any of us were born. Not a palace of luxury, whatever we imagine
heaven to be — union with the bridegroom himself, who is already at the door knocking.

5. The judge and the defense attorney are in cahoots

▶ 1:15:35

At the Lord’s table the Corinthians were eating selfishly — one goes hungry, another gets
drunk
(1 Corinthians 11:21–22).
Paul refuses to commend them, and then explains what is actually happening to them:

▶ 1:16:48

Matt’s image: in a small town you might find the judge is the literal father of your defense
attorney. Here it is Father and Son. “This is collusion in your favor.” Discipline is not how God
gets to a point where he loves you; it is what his love does, and it beats the alternative of
being abandoned to figure life out alone. “Being disciplined by the Lord is far better than being
affirmed by the world. If you’ve tasted both of these deeply, you can testify.”

▶ 1:17:47

The gifts of the Spirit work the same way. Their purpose is that “there may be no division in
the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another”
(1 Corinthians 12:25).
Not a program for getting God’s attention — enough prophecies and he might notice you — but the
overflow of something already true:

6. Chapter 16, which is nothing but practicals

▶ 1:19:22

The collection is not for the Corinthians’ own church and not for Paul; it is relief for
Christians in Jerusalem living hand to mouth. Set something aside on the first day of every week,
“as he may prosper” — no percentage named, just proportion, and stored up so there is no
scramble when Paul arrives
(1 Corinthians 16:1–4).
They accredit their own couriers by letter, so that people they trust can say they saw the gift
arrive. Above reproach, financially, in public.

▶ 1:21:41

Paul will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, “for a wide door for effective work has opened to
me, and there are many adversaries”
(1 Corinthians 16:5–9).
Matt noticed what he does with the opposition: mentions it, asks nobody to make it stop, and goes
anyway.

▶ 1:22:45

Then Timothy, and this was Matt’s favorite aside in the chapter. This church has been harsh
with Paul, and Timothy is a man who gets nervous. So Paul says it three times in two verses: put
him at ease among you; let no one despise him; help him on his way in peace
(1 Corinthians 16:10–11).
Care for a fellow worker, written into the itinerary. Apollos, by contrast, is free to decline —
Paul urged him strongly and he simply was not willing to come yet
(1 Corinthians 16:12).

▶ 1:24:43

▶ 1:25:47

The household of Stephanas gets commended for devoting itself to the service of the saints,
and the room is told to be subject to such people
(1 Corinthians 16:15–18).
Greet one another with a holy kiss — “we’re still working on holy hugs, and that’s fine. Holy
fist bumps are just fine.” Even the closing curse on anyone with no love for the Lord is not Paul
cheering for anyone’s ruin
(1 Corinthians 16:21–24).
“If you want death, you can eat it, but we’re not going to stand in your way and make it taste
real good before you get there. What we really want is for you to taste and see that he is
good.”

7. So why bother with any of it

▶ 1:28:08

Matt started deliberately low. Nothing in Scripture requires a church to have plumbing or air
conditioning — “but I mean, it sure is nice. I got at least one amen.” Firm foundation first, then
you are free to care about things that practically serve people.

▶ 1:29:39

A harder example: the head coverings of
1 Corinthians 11:3.
Hope does not ask anyone to wear a veil, because the cultural signal is gone — but the shape Paul
was protecting is not. Husband to wife as Christ to the church is a play acted out at home,
because “with our very lives we want to illustrate the gospel.”

▶ 1:30:46

Then the one he clearly cared about most. Treating his children with dignity and gentleness is
not why he is forgiven. He does it because small children superimpose God onto their earthly
father, and this is his feeblest attempt to point at the truth: your dad loves you, your mom and
dad love each other, God your Father disciplines you in love for your good, and you are invited to
the
marriage supper of the Lamb.
“None of that’s legalistic. It’s not a condition for God to love us.”

▶ 1:32:55

Same logic for small groups, and he said plainly that Hope Chapel needs several more. Skipping
one does not unmake anyone’s salvation; the cost is everything you miss — the life, nourishment,
comfort and encouragement that only move through a body. And there is no franchise rulebook. Meet
at your workplace. Meet Friday mornings if that is when you are free. Start it with the one friend
you have here. Ask someone to come alongside you. Ask for help choosing what to study.

The question he left

▶ 1:36:45

“Since the gospel is true and I have this blissful, joyful union with Christ available to me,
what is a way I can obey — not so that he’ll love me, but because he loves me? What is a thing I
can do to serve him and his body, not so as to be forgiven, but because I am walking in freedom
and in newness of life?” He would not answer it for anyone: you know your life, the needs around
you, the person who is lonely, who you could invite into your home. And if you genuinely do not
know, ask the Holy Spirit to put it on your mind this week.

▶ 0:59:04

Matt came to the red letters by way of the living room. Before he said a word
about Paul, he spent ten minutes on why a person needs other people — and the two halves of
the message turn out to be the same point looked at from opposite ends.

1. Transformative community, and the risk it costs

▶ 0:59:38

New families have joined Hope Chapel over the summer, and returning ones have come back.
What Matt said he is after is not attendance but transformative community — and he named the
price up front. “The life of Christ that I want to see lived out among us is full and rich and
involves risk. One big risk is relational depth. I say that’s a risk because in order to
establish deep connection we have to be known, and that is not always easy to do.”

▶ 1:00:54

He grounded it in how we are made. God
places the lonely in families
for a reason, and Jesus promised that whoever loses a brother or sister for his sake receives
them back
a hundredfold.
Against that, Matt set the world we actually live in: oddly dehumanizing, and fluent in
substitutes. “I have a close relationship with my phone,” he admitted. “It might be satisfying
a bit, but is that the relational depth God wants for me?” The sharper charge was that
relationship itself has been turned into something to collect. “You are not a product. You are
not a commodity. You are a brother or a sister.”

▶ 1:04:07

He anticipated the reply. People say: I don’t need community, I need Jesus. “True, you need
Jesus. But you also need water, food. There are certain ways he made us. Pray all you want,
bro, but take a drink of water too.” So he has been praying for the Holy Spirit to work like a
telephone operator — mature saints connected to newer believers, people who need a father or
mother figure connected to someone willing to mentor. And rather than wait to be pursued, he
is starting a small group about leading small groups: an open-source leadership training group
that functions as a real group while he narrates why he does what he does. Stay a year, stay a
semester, stay two weeks. “If you want to join and then take everyone with you and start a
group without me, that’s fine. I will be left with my thoughts that day.”

2. What red letter Christianity is

▶ 1:08:15

Some Bibles print the words of Jesus in red. Red letter Christianity is the movement that
treats those words as the whole canon — following Jesus while declining to follow Peter or
Paul. Where an apostle’s letter cuts against a life, it gets dropped: I am not a disciple of
Peter, I am a disciple of Christ. Matt has a neighbor whose front-yard sign reads
we follow the Lord, not Paul, with the Greek for “another” printed large. “That’s the
first thing these people want me to know about them.” The same move is everywhere online, and
not only from believers — Matt noted how readily Jesus gets used as a weapon against
Christians.

▶ 1:13:32

Why is it attractive? It sounds spiritual. The epistles prick, and deleting them is easier
than obeying them. And Jesus spoke so often in parables that his words can be molded. That is
the real damage: “Essentially at that point you have made a cartoon Jesus, and since we’re the
creator of that cartoon Jesus, we’re actually the ones in charge. And that also feels good.”

3. “Is Christ divided?”

▶ 1:09:10

Hope Chapel has been working through 1 Corinthians, and Matt doubled back to the first
chapter, because Corinth had this faction already.

Matt pressed on the question. It is not about a Jesus missing an arm. It is asking whether
Christ can be had separately from the men he sent. You can be the most quarrelsome person in
the room while flying a Christ-only flag. He also enjoyed Paul’s very human accounting a few
verses later — Crispus, Gaius, then the household of Stephanas, then
“beyond that I do not know whether I baptized anyone else”.

4. The gospel Paul received

▶ 1:14:52

If Christianity were a new lifestyle, a twelve-step program or a magnetic personality, the
red letters would be enough. So Matt went to the core statement of the faith.

▶ 1:16:13

Two words carried the weight. Received — from Jesus, who plucked Paul out of his
depravity, and from the apostles, who in
Galatians
gave him the right hand of fellowship. And the phrase for our sins: “Christ died is a
fact. For our sins is the meaning.” The letters of Paul, Peter, John, Jude, James and Luke do
not merely report what Jesus did; they tell us what it meant. Strip them out and you keep the
events and lose the gospel.

5. Why Jesus explained everything in private

▶ 1:18:20

▶ 1:19:40

We are Jesus’ disciples, but we were not in that room, and Matt acknowledged that can sting.
Shouldn’t he have rented billboards? Then he argued the opposite: it was the shrewdest possible
arrangement. Jesus moved constantly — the disciples sometimes could not find him — so anyone at
all could have surfaced later claiming a private word. “People could have said any kind of wacky
stuff, and then they would put a Jesus sticker on it to give it some gravitas.” How do you fight
that? You make it public that the explanations went to twelve identifiable men, who can then say:
no, he did not say that. “The Inner Circle was like a supreme court on what Jesus was actually
like or not like. And that Supreme Court fully endorsed Paul — and then that group wrote the New
Testament.” Which yields the test: when a Jesus-only reading will not sit with the rest of the New
Testament, we are the ones who are wrong.

6. A saying that is in no gospel

▶ 1:22:22

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do not contain that line. Paul had it anyway, because there was
a body of everything Jesus said and did, explained plainly, and he had been brought into it.

▶ 1:22:56

So the familiar objection collapses. Paul teaches on spiritual gifts in the local church;
Jesus never mentioned that. How do you know. Paul gets uncomfortably specific about sexual
purity; Jesus never said that. How do you know. Paul and Peter both handle judgment and church
discipline; Jesus wouldn’t have. How do you know. “If these guys are explaining these things in
that level of detail, we know Jesus did teach that. It might be odd to picture Jesus teaching on
gifts of the Spirit, and yet that is exactly what we should assume.”

▶ 1:24:17

Matt’s reading of that: the gospels are a deliberate selection, not an archive. Jesus put a
filter in place that he himself designed, so that we come to him on his terms. He added a wry
aside — if Jesus had written a gospel in his own hand, we would be kissing the book. “Deep down
you might feel like, oh, that’s tough. But we want it that way. Our terms often look good, but
they’re dumb. The way he does things may hurt at first, but it’s healing.” Hence the sentence
the whole message had been building toward: remaining under the authority of Scripture does not
compete with being under the authority of Jesus. It is an essential part of it.

7. The slow fade

▶ 1:26:08

Here Matt stopped and said he was pausing the sermon. He has watched people close to him do
what he calls the slow fade: a life with the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit all over it, and then
— not in a day — a cooling, a distance, a little animosity, a drift toward spiritual death. “The
first step doesn’t always feel obviously wrong. Maybe it’s just tolerating a little bit of an
agreement with the devil.” He named three such first steps. Isolation, which is why faith has to
be lived in community: “We don’t want to be the magisterium and the pope and the presbytery all
to ourselves.” Red letter Christianity, because an isolated Christ is so easily distorted. And
intellectualizing faith — having the right opinions.

▶ 1:28:19

Demons can quote Scripture at us; we watched the devil do it
to Jesus in the wilderness.
Matt’s concern was the believer who can teach the Bible, has memorized a great deal of it, and
camps there permanently.

▶ 1:29:01

“When Jesus pokes us and prods us, it is to give us life. He wants that for us.”

8. Who hired Paul

▶ 1:30:22

Plenty of men on the internet will tell you what the real Jesus was like. Matt offered a
source with better standing. Ananias is told to go to the man who has been destroying the church
and arrives holding warrants from the chief priests, and he says so plainly
(Acts 9:13–14).

Jesus hired him. And if the reply is that this only comes to us from Luke — then we are back
to whether we trust the Gospel of Luke, which Luke also wrote. “There’s no way at Jesus on our
terms. It’s just the way he designed it.” Every opening looks available and none of them quite
works, and that is the point, because he is not a vibe, a product, a steps program or a
lifestyle. “He’s real. And the relationship he wants with you is real and dynamic and, frankly,
out of our control. And you want it that way.”

9. Sixty seconds, and an invitation out

▶ 1:32:58

Matt ended by setting a timer and having the room sit in silence before the Lord — for
repentance if that is what came to mind, or comfort, or something to go and do. “Since he’s real,
I feel like I can take a risk like that.” Then he spoke to anyone who recognized themselves in
the fade: the invitation back is not a slap on the wrist. “When he invites you to come to him,
it’s life and healing. Maybe he put something on your heart to do. Find a way to obey it, even if
it sounds hard. It’s going to be liberating.”
His yoke is easy and his burden is light;
it is our attachment to the world that is heavy and poisonous. And if the timer cut anyone short:
“That was sixty seconds. Go back before the Lord. He didn’t go anywhere.”