Gospel Of Matthew

Author(s): Mark Luke John
Publisher: Mark Luke John

Page 59

Entering the kingdom may mean painful sacrifice
9:43-49 - "Indeed, if it is your own hand that spoils your faith, you must cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to keep both your hands and go to the rubbish-heap, If your foot spoils your faith, you must cut it off. It is better to enter life on one foot than to keep both your feet and be thrown on to the rubbish-heap. And if your eye leads you astray, pluck it out. It is better for you to go one-eyed into the kingdom of God than to keep both eyes and be thrown on to the rubbish-heap, where 'their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched'. For everyone will be salted by fire."
9:50 "Salt is a very good thing; but if it should lose its saltiness, what can you do to restore its flavour? You must have salt in yourselves, and live at peace with each other."
CHAPTER 10
The divine purpose in marriage
10:1-2 Then he got up and left Galilee and went off to the borders of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Again great crowds assembled to meet him, and again, according to his custom, he taught hem. Then some Pharisees arrived to ask him this test-question. "Is it right for a man to divorce his wife?"
10:3 - Jesus replied by asking them, "What has Moses commanded you to do?"
10:4 "Moses allows men to write a divorce-notice and then to dismiss her," they said.
10:5-9 "Moses gave you that commandment," returned Jesus, "because you know so little of the meaning of love. But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female'. 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'. So that in body they are no longer two people but one. That is why man must never separate what God has joined together."
10:10 On reaching the house, his disciples questioned him again about this matter.
10:11-12 - "Any man who divorces his wife and marries another woman," he told them, "commits adultery against his wife. And if she herself divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery."
He welcomes small children
10:13-16 Then some people came to him bringing little children for him to touch. The disciples tried to discourage them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and told them, "You must let little children come to me - never stop them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.