We spent a good deal of time discussing our marriages because many of us are going through rough patches in these parts of our lives. It was an encouraging. Keep all of our marriages and our families in your prayers.

Verse Discussion

21-28

• this is a hard section!
• Jesus is also revealing the order in which revelation will come to the world of himself--first to the Jews, the people of God, then to the Gentiles, everyone else.
• Jesus is calling up the treasure in this woman's heart, faith, to put it on display for others. --John Chrysostom

v11

• what about thoughts and what about repeated thoughts?
  • we see from the sermon on them mount that our thoughts are important and can condemn us, but at the same time we cannot control what comes into our mind at first. We must take captive the thoughts that come into our mind (what we cannot control) rather than engage with those thoughts and therefore commit sin.
  • one member mentioned the backwards thinking we sometimes have where the last thing we think we should do is invoke the name of Jesus, but in fact that is the one thing that can save us from these thoughts and temptations

v12-15

• Jesus brushes off the offensiveness - he fights back with old testament Scripture. We see Jesus do this a lot with the old testament because this is what the Jews should know! He uses it as a mirror for groups like the Pharisees that were supposed to know it extremely well and yet didn't.

v19-20

• grave sins, comparing the law us what the Pharisees said
• inner argument in our head. Then this comes out of our mouth with the actual conversation

Other Discussions

How do we fight pride?

• more substantial prayers or more time in prayer
• retreat or silent retreat
• Pilgrimage, even to local churches
• serve others in love
• whatever you are doing now to increase your holiness and relationship with God, if it is not working, do more of it