Planning for 2021 - two key life goals to focus on (Part One)

Two Pillars That Stop the Roof Caving In

Have you ever watched someone make a massive mistake while they were completely convinced they were doing the right thing? Matt Edmundson opened this talk with exactly that image — a video of a man demolishing a building who clearly thought he was approaching it the right way. The audience could see the roof was about to collapse on him. He could not.

It is a vivid picture, and Matt used it to frame a passage from Mark's Gospel where Jesus tells a group of highly educated religious leaders that they have made a serious error. Not a small oversight. A fundamental mistake about how life and faith actually work. And the lesson Jesus draws out applies to anyone heading into a new year with plans, goals, and assumptions about how things should go.

Smart People, Wrong Conclusions

The people Jesus was speaking to were the Sadducees — Jewish religious leaders who were, by any measure, educated and intelligent. They knew their scriptures. They held positions of authority. And yet they had decided that certain core teachings of their own faith could not possibly be true.

The big one was the resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in life after death. As Matt noted, "I'm no expert, but that's a pretty big part of the Jewish faith, right? But they chose not to believe it."

This is not just an ancient problem. Matt was direct about that: "Today I think we kind of have the same thing happening. We have folks who will say, for example, that they are a Christian but then disagree with some of the significant teachings of the Christian faith, such as the resurrection of Christ or miracles."

The pattern is familiar. When a teaching feels uncomfortable or does not fit neatly into our worldview, we find ways to explain it away. We use logic, education, and reasonable-sounding arguments to reshape the inconvenient bits until they sit more comfortably with what we already believe.

The Riddle That Backfired

The Sadducees came to Jesus with a riddle designed to prove their point. They described a scenario involving seven brothers who each, in turn, married the same woman after the previous brother died. Their question was meant to be a knockout blow: in the resurrection, whose wife would she be?

It was clever. It sounded logical. And it was built on a faulty foundation.

Their reasoning followed a pattern that Matt described plainly: "I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense. Therefore it cannot be true." They had reached the only conclusion their framework allowed — and they were wrong.

Matt was honest about recognising the same tendency in himself. "I have lots of questions when I read the Bible. I struggle with some of the theology. I find some of it, I'm not going to lie, well it's a little bit difficult to get your head around. Like, why should I forgive my enemies? Well, that doesn't make sense on the face of it."

The difference, he suggested, is in what you do with those questions. Having them is fine. God "can handle our questions and our doubts and our fears and our insecurities." But concluding that something cannot be true simply because you do not yet understand it puts an enormous amount of faith in your own intellectual abilities — and not enough in the possibility that God might actually know more than you do.

Your Mistake Is That You Don't Know

Jesus did not dance around the issue. His response started with a sentence that Matt described as having "no gentle break-in": "Your mistake is that you don't know the scriptures and you don't know the power of God."

Two pillars. Two things the Sadducees had allowed to crumble, and without them, the whole structure of their understanding had collapsed.

The first pillar is knowing the scriptures. Not just having read them, but genuinely understanding what they say in context. The Sadducees had taken one verse, isolated it, and built their riddle around it. Jesus responded by painting the bigger picture, pointing them to Moses and the burning bush, showing how one passage fits within the whole story of God's relationship with humanity.

Matt drew out the practical point: "Have I spent the time necessary to understand what the Bible really has to say about something? And here's the question — once I have done that, am I prepared to submit to it if I don't like it?"

That, he acknowledged, is "a mic drop moment. Because it's very difficult to do, especially in the culture in which we live."

The Power You Cannot Explain Away

The second pillar is knowing the power of God. This one intrigued Matt: "Why would Jesus say this? I get that he would say they have misunderstood the scriptures. But why would he mention that they don't know the power of God?"

His answer was that without the power of God, nothing else in the faith makes sense. Walking on water, feeding five thousand people, splitting the Red Sea — these become impossible if you remove God's power from the equation. But "walking on water is not a problem when you consider the power of God. If our God can create worlds with just his words, then walking on water is definitely not a problem."

The resurrection itself, the very thing the Sadducees denied, "becomes eminently believable when you consider it in the light of the power of God."

Matt referenced the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans: "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes." And Peter's letter, which says that "divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness."

The link between the two pillars is not accidental. As Matt pointed out, Peter draws an explicit connection "between the knowledge of God and the power of God" — the same two things Jesus identified in his conversation with the Sadducees. Understanding who God is through the scriptures leads naturally to understanding what God can do through his power.

Planning for 2021 With Both Pillars Standing

This talk aired between Christmas and New Year, a time when most people are thinking about the year ahead — goals, resolutions, plans. Matt framed the whole discussion as a foundation for entering a new season well.

The principle is straightforward but not easy. When you hit something in scripture that you do not understand or do not like, the response is not to explain it away or pretend it does not apply. It is to go deeper, to take the question to Jesus, and to be genuinely open to the answer — even if it is uncomfortable.

And when the answer requires something that feels impossible, the second pillar kicks in. The power of God is not theoretical. It is the thing that makes the whole story work.

Where This Leaves Us

Matt was candid about the challenge. "You're not going to like everything about the teachings of scripture. You're not going to like everything that Jesus talks or teaches about. And in fact, Jesus actually says we'll be offended with some of these teachings."

The question is not whether you will hit moments of confusion, disagreement, or discomfort. You will. The question is whether you will let those moments knock out one of the two pillars — or whether you will hold onto both, even when it is hard.

The Sadducees were brilliant people who made a serious error. They thought their intelligence was enough. Jesus gently but firmly told them otherwise.

As you think about the year ahead, what assumptions are you carrying that might need re-examining? And are both pillars — scripture and the power of God — still standing in your life?