Matthew 13:43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

1. We know we have an eternal Sabbath of peace and rest promised to us. We know, however, that it is __________ __________.

2. The master __________ the weeds in the field, lest in being uprooted, the wheat are __________.

3. To His followers, Jesus always __________ __________!

Scripture Readings
Isaiah 44:6-8
Romans 8:18-27
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Take It With You!

Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the message to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with what we are hearing.

John 20 stresses twice (in verses 1 and 19) that Easter is the first day of the week. John has so ordered his gospel that the sequence of seven signs, climaxing in the cross of Jesus on the sixth day of the week and his resting in the tomb on the seventh, functions as the week of the old creation; and now Easter functions as the beginning of the new creation. The Word through whom all things were made is now the Word through whom all things are remade. So far from being an odd or isolated supernatural event, breaking in as a sign of what God could do if he chose but normally doesn't, Jesus's resurrection is to be seen as the beginning of the new world, the first day of the new week, the unveiling of the prototype of what God is now going to accomplish in the rest of the world. Mary supposes Jesus is the gardener; that's the right mistake to make because, like Adam, he is charged with bringing God's new world to order. He has come to uproot the thorns and thistles and to plant myrtle and cypress instead, as Isaiah promised in his great picture of the new creation that would result from the Word of God coming like rain or snow into the new world.

NT Wright, Surprised by Hope