BLOGINTHENOW: 2009-07-05

Matthew In The Now is finished and about to go to the publisher...just posted the foreword below...

Most of Mark In The Now is published here on the blog (up through Chapter 10)...six more chapters to go...

Work on Luke In The Now will begin in a few weeks...

John In The Now is published and available (www.churchinthenow.org)...

FOREWORD TO MITN: Why write a new paraphrase of the book of Matthew?

1. Because I love Jesus.

I love the real, living Jesus…the outspoken, passionate, confrontational, provocative, liberating, counter-culture, strong and brave and totally secure-within-Himself, fully integrated Jesus…the Word made flesh who became Jesus, the Christ…Jesus in the now…the One who embodies the “I Am,” the God who defies definition and description…the manna or the “what is it?” that came down from heaven…the One whose humanity is every bit as beautiful and intriguing and wonderful as is His divinity…the God-man who cannot be bound or limited in any way by religion or philosophy or doctrines or dogma…the firstborn among many siblings in the family of God who live in the 21st century. I love that real Jesus now more than ever and am in no way offended that He says that I must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have a revelation of Him!

2. Because I love the Scriptures.

They are a part of me, as absorbed into the fiber of my being as they could possibly be. The words of God vibrate in every cell of my body... they occupy the largest part of my mind…they completely saturate my spirit. The Bible is a miracle – not a book, but a collection of 66 books written by 40 authors over a period of 1,500 years in different languages to different people groups in different generations for different purposes. Therefore, the Scriptures must be rightly divided instead of wrongly connected. In other words, each book must be judged in its own context and on its own terms, whether it confirms any other book or not. In this way, biblical contradictions are not only acknowledged and accepted...they are expected. I celebrate the tension caused by the conflicting viewpoints of the writers who had different paradigms of God; their contradictions make the Bible literally pulsate with life! And amazingly, in spite of the given contention, the confirmation of Jesus, the Christ, is still the glue that holds the whole collection together!

3. Because I love the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew's Gospel...the Gospel of the Kingdom...the Gospel of THE KING...is uniquely important. Matthew writes it for the Jews, from a firsthand, up-close-and-personal viewpoint, portraying Jesus as the Messiah so long awaited after Abraham... the King after David. There is a particular and sometimes palpable tension in Matthew, probably due to the fact that it was written by a Jew whom the Jews hated, because he was a collector of taxes for the Romans. And yet he wrote it with much love, even for those who hated him. Matthew was apprehended by Jesus, and was not at all like the other disciples, so his writing brings a certain richness to the Jesus narrative that is very important. What the other Synoptic Gospel writers call the "Kingdom of God", Matthew calls the "Kingdom of Heaven" (or, better translated: Kingdom of the Heavens". "Kingdom of God" says what and Whose it is..."Kingdom of Heaven" says Who authorized it and where it's from. Perhaps the most significant contribution of Matthew is his attention to detail in the Sermon on the Mount...the radical, out-of-the-box blueprint for the "Kingdom of/from the Heavens", which is at hand for all of us!

4. Because I love the diversity among all the translations and paraphrases of the Bible.

Although I wholeheartedly reject the notion of an official “authorized version,” I do honor the grandeur and loftiness of the Bible that James, the King of England, authorized for his subjects to read in the 17th century (King James Version). That’s why I have memorized vast sections of it. And I love the way James Moffatt could turn a phrase in his translation. I could virtually live in The Amplified Bible with all of its shades of meanings and wordy explanations and parentheses and brackets. It’s like heaven to someone who loves exploring words and their meanings as I do. When I was young, Kenneth Taylor’s beautifully accessible Living Bible changed my life and set the course for my whole ministry. Many years later, Eugene Peterson’s daring paraphrase called The Message affected me nearly as dramatically. In recent years I have grown to respect the Today’s New International Version for its modernity and clarity and lack of religious sexism. In my opinion, it is probably the most accurate mainstream translation of them all*. But I also love the New English Bible and The Jerusalem Bible for other reasons. I am constantly referring to all of these translations for my teaching and writing, along with some other great ones not mentioned here. You may ask then, “If you love all these translations so much, why write a new one?” My only answer is that this writing is my way to pay homage to those who have already blazed this trail of translation before me. I could not do this if they hadn’t done what they did. But this translation is what I hear when I read and teach these chapters and verses. These are the things I have seen...what I have read between the lines...for the last 36 years of ministry, and I simply want to submit them to you, the reader, for your consideration.

5. Because I love communication.

Nothing is more important to the life of relationships than communication, and nothing is more gratifying than knowing that you have effectively communicated your message to someone else. I certainly don’t claim to know everything about Jesus; in fact, the more that I increase in my knowledge of Him throughout the course of my life, the more mysterious He actually becomes to me. For me that’s not a problem. I’m rather glad that, even though I know Him more intimately than I know anyone else, there is always a part of Him that is past my finding out. I know that I will never reach the limits of the breadth and length and depth and height of Him, ever. But, what I do know about Him is the most wonderful knowledge that I possess, and I have a need to share that knowledge with others.

6. Because I love people.

One of the greatest songs ever written contains the words, “If I can help somebody as I pass along…then my living shall not be in vain.” I try to live by the philosophy of that song, so if this book can help someone to rediscover and rethink the Bible – someone who has previously been intimidated or confused or bored by it, regardless of its available translations and paraphrases – then I will have fulfilled at least a part of my destiny. I want to help people know and love Jesus better, but I also want to make them more comfortable with the Bible and with their own interpretations and opinions about it. The Bible is hearty, robust – it is not delicate or fragile – it can withstand a lot of handling by human beings, because it was meant to be people-friendly, and I want to open a door to the house of understanding and let the people in!

7. Because I love living in the now.

More than anything else, I believe that I was specifically put here on this planet to be a good steward of the concept of living in the now. God is in the now because He is always revealed as the I Am. His word is in the now because people cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds (present tense) out of His mouth. His kingdom is in the now because it can only be discerned one day at a time by those who take no thought for tomorrow. I will proclaim and defend the doctrine of the “now-ness” of God for as long as I live and will aggressively wage war on every religious idea that tries to relegate God to the past or attempts to project Him into the future. God is always now and my prayer is that, as you read Matthew In The Now, you will walk in a fuller revelation of that. Now is all that matters!

*In general, I bestow that honor on The Concordant Literal New Testament

1. Then Jesus left that place and went into the region of Judea, and across the Jordan. And again crowds of people came to Him, and, as was His custom, He went right into teaching mode.

2. And some Pharisees who were in the crowd came to Him again and put Him to the test by asking, “Is it legal and right for a man to dismiss his wife…to divorce her for any reason that he may have?

3. He answered their question with another question, asking, "What did Moses command you?"

4. They replied, "Moses permitted a man to simply write a certificate of divorce and just send her away, no strings attached."

5. “Moses set up this system basically because of the hardness of your hearts…specifically, your insensitivity to women. He permitted you to easily dismiss your wives with no regard for required responsibility to them, because you have had no concept of covenant", He said to them.

6. But in this Moses did not have the heart and mind of God, considering that this self-serving male convenience was not in God’s original plan...at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'

7. This is why a man has to leave his father and mother at some point, and be united and bonded to his wife.

8. And when that happens, the two of them become, in a sense, one single entity, so that they are no longer two separate physical bodies, but actually become one new one.

9. And if a particular union between a man and a woman is, indeed, God-ordained, then no human being should do anything to create a disconnect between what God has intentionally put together.”

10. When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus to explain this further.

11. He answered them, "Whoever just casually dismisses his wife for no legitimate reason, and marries the next available woman who comes along, really is only committing adultery with her. His shallow flippancy in such a case shows that he has no understanding of the seriousness of covenant.

12. The situation is somewhat different if the wife has been unfaithful to her husband, but the real issue is still about the apparent disregard of covenant. So if she divorces her husband and marries another man for no good reason, she commits adultery, as well, because there is no genuine commitment to the covenant of marriage.”

13. Around this time people were beginning to bring their little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them and bless them when He was ministering; but when they did, the disciples would insult them by preventing them to do this.

14. One day it happened, and when Jesus saw what the disciples were doing, He was furious with them. He said, "You let these little children come right to Me, and don't you dare tell them that they aren't allowed or welcome! Childlikeness is the standard for the Kingdom of God, so, in essence, the Kingdom belongs to such as these.

15 The truth is that anyone who will not perceive and receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it in the first place."

16 Then He stopped what He was doing and saying, and started taking the children who were there in His arms, placing His hands on them, affectionately, and taking the time to bless each one of them.