Cow Appreciation Day

Where were you July 11th? If you were not dressed like a heffer at Chick-fil-a, just you just missed out my friend. July 11th was Cow Appreciation Day!! What does that mean? Well you come in to any CFA dressed like a good ole' bovine, and you get a free meal. Sounds good to me! So some friends of mine, (listed in order of their height, tall to short): Seth(by far), Steve (his white man's fro helps to give him another 1 1/2 in. ontop of his lanky self), Myself, Ben(really we are at a good equal stance), and Jordan decided to do this whole Cow Appreciation Day thing.

We rolled over to Target and spent about $6.78 on different materials, stood outside of Target and geared up. (I will try to get a picture up sometime in the future.) We went over to Chick-fil-a just in time, and they loved us! We got the largest combos they had, packed up and headed downtown.

We arrived at Graham and Trade at about 10:00 p.m., parked, grabed our #4 Chargrilled Club meals, Bibles, tracts, giftcards, and headed out to minister to the homeless.

As soon as we got out of the car, a man walks up. "Ya'll help a brotha' out wit some food?" We were like yeh!! So Jordan and Ben gave him the food, and began sharing the Gospel. The rest of us began venturing into uptown.

Honestley it was hard to tell if a dude was homeless or not. You can try to imagine how I felt when I went up to dude said, "You hungry? When was the last time you ate?" And he replied, "Dude, like 30 minutes ago." In my head I am just thinking, dude you gotta like take a bath cuz I swore you were homeless. But anyway, we passed out all five meals, some tracts, all the Bibles we had, some gift cards, some money, and got to tell the greatest news they could ever dream of. The glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, which saves.

I encourage you, love the poor. Love the lost. Tell them the truth about Christ. And have fun doin it!!

Note to the reader: I did not write this post because I am myself, currently a CFA employee.

Matthew 22- The Wedding Garment

Read this: Matthew 22:1-14

Are you confused? Bush looks about like I did when I first read this. I literally looked at my girlfriend and said, "Wow, this is straight confusing, it doesn't make any sense!"

Since you have now read the text, please click here to see my guess as to what this wedding garment may have looked like.

Q: "So what is Jesus saying through this parable of the wedding feast?"

A: This king punishes this guy for something that at face value seems to be insignificant, simply not having the garment that he was required to have to come to the wedding.

So whats to big deal? I mean, he simply didn't have his garment. Well here is the problem, and it is a big problem. From the text we are given some clues:

1. That anyone was allowed to come to this wedding. In vs. 9 we find that these people were from the "highways", they would not have been expected to be dressed nicely, already possessing this garment on their own.
2. We also see that all who had shown up to the wedding had been given a wedding garment.
3. The response of the king tells us that this garment must be worn to come into the wedding.

So it is not that this guy just snuck in, didn't recieve a garment, and was thrown into outter darkness for no reason. He refused to wear this garment, he thought he could come in garmentless.

Christ here is speaking of the kingdom of heaven and the imagery of this parable is what allows it to come to life and make sense. To get into heaven you have to have a on a garment, just as with the wedding. That garment is King Jesus' righteousness. (Isaiah 61:10 is a beautiful picture of imputed righteousness.)

You can't enter into heaven without wearing Christ's righteousness, just as they could not enter the wedding without their wedding garments.

From the imagery we can see that Christ is comparing people who claim Christianity, but try to establish a righteousness of their own, with the man without a garment. Jesus is would rather we reject His garment of righteousness, than try to get the benefits of it (namely heaven), without truly accepting the garment, and wearing it.

Bottom line: Christ willingly, graciously, and joyfully offers us His garment to enter into eternal life, but we have to chose to wear it.

Matthew

First I gotta say my sorrys for not posting anything lately. Since school let out in late May, I have been all over the US. First gone on a missions trip with Northside Baptist Church to Marble, Colorado. To sum that trip up in three words I would say: Crazy Old Man. The founder of the camp is up there in the years, but he is fearless. Absolutely fearless, I mean as fearless as a Naked Mole Rat that didn't budge while stareing at a 457lb. Anaconda. Then I was off to California with my wonderful girlfriend Jenny Miner, for a little vacation.

So that has been my life apart from blogging. Now I wanna read your mind. You are wondering why in tarnation is the title of this blog, "Matthew". Well, actually I am not sure. Just thought that "Matthew" would get you thinking. You know, like a buzz word. A buzz word is something that gets your attention, such as: naked, obese, death, viral, diversity, proactive, green, and others.

Ok the word "Matthew" is not a buzz word. The reason this blog is titled "Matthew" is because over the next few weeks I will be posting thoughts, take aways, applications, things I never knew, and just cool things God shows me as I am reading through Matthew chapter 22 through 28. So be looking for those posts.