Heralding Divine Truth

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

HERALDING DIVINE TRUTH

Matt 9:35-38

35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." 

NIV

We have more than one truth to contemplate here. First, that Jesus traveled to many towns and villages and he went to the synagogues to teach and preach the good news of the kingdom. It is interesting the use of these two words, teach and preach. This could be seen that he was teaching or preaching the same good news. However, we have many situations where we have seen Jesus have the crowds sit and he taught them, such as what we just saw back a few chapters which is known as his sermon on the mount. Although it was not a sermon, like we think of sermons, having three points, and lasting about twenty to thirty minutes, give or take. Jesus taught a lot about life, relationships between God and men, and about how we should interact with each other, or how we should treat each other. He also taught about the kingdom and eternal life and that He was the truth, the way, and the life. But Jesus also preached or as the Greek means, heralding divine truth. Of course, everything Jesus said either through teaching or preaching was and still is divine truth. This should be our task to teach and preach divine truth and that means everything we say must be grounded in the Word of God. This is not to mean we cannot have a conversation about the weather, sports, politics, the economy, or many other topics, but in those conversations, our viewpoint should always be influenced by divine truth. However, when we have been called to teach in the church or preach in the church, to our fellow believers, as Jesus did among his fellow Jewish believers, then we must always be either teaching or heralding divine truth. It also appears that because all of us believers have been told to go out into all the world and herald the divine truth about the good news, the gospel to everyone. Again, this meant for the disciples to travel around, spread the good news, but we have taken that command as well for us. However, we all do not go about traveling the world. We do send and support several couples that do travel, but we who stay put in our towns and villages can also go out into the world in which we live our daily lives. We go into retail, construction, banking, medicine, transportation, trucking or railroads, engineering, science, art, just to name a few areas in life that we go out into. We can always be about heralding divine truth, either in our words or in our behavior, our living testimony so others may get a glimpse of Jesus. We have yet to touch on the other truths, as His healing everyone, and His compassion, and people who do not know or have not heard the divine truth are like sheep without a shepherd and, of course, his words about workers and the harvest. We will ponder on those later. For now, let us simply consider being a teacher and preacher, heralding divine truth, regarding the good news through and throughout our lives.