A Link to Mark 7 (ESV)

Making Void the Word of God (7:9–13)

Jesus tells the Pharisees and scribes that they honor God with their lips while their heart is far from him, and he quotes Isa 29:13 in support (Mark 7:6–8). But then, in verses 9–10, he stops quoting the prophet and instead quotes from the Law.

For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die” (7:10).

Jesus quotes two separate commands from Exodus. The first, Exod 20:12, is the fifth commandment of the Decalogue. The second, Exod 21:17, is the penalty attached to breaking the fifth commandment; it is part of the case law that follows the Ten Words in Israel’s legal code. Jesus cites the command, together with the sentence Israel’s own law once attached to violating it, against a practice the Pharisees condone and possibly even promote.

The tradition works like this:

“If a man tells his father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban’ (that is, given to God), then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother” (7:11–12).

Corban transliterates the Hebrew קָרְבָּן (qorban), the standing term in Leviticus for a sacrificial offering (e.g., Lev 1:2). To declare something corban removed it permanently from ordinary use by dedicating it to God. The son need not have spent a cent on himself; later rabbinic discussion of this kind of vow shows no workaround that let him secretly reap the benefit of what he had declared corban. The vow itself was the problem.

Once support for his parents was named corban, giving it to them would violate the dedication, so filial support became permanently unavailable no matter what he did with the rest of his property. Devotion to God had become a legal wall against caring for one’s parents. The Mishnah later agrees with Jesus on this point, ruling that a vow harming one’s parents does not stand (m. Nedarim 9:1). Whatever earlier practice allowed, it did not survive scrutiny within Judaism’s own legal tradition.

Jesus names this “making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down,” and adds, “many such things you do” (7:13). Mark 7:9–13 diagnoses something larger than one loophole. It’s asking us to think about what happens when religious language and tradition are allowed to override the Word of God. To be clear, it’s not that traditions are bad, but rather that all traditions, religious practices, and spiritual habits must be submitted to the Word of God. Even more than this, we should be cautious about using those sorts of things as excuses not to engage in the equally, if not more, important things that God has called us to.

The Children First, and Then the Nations (7:24–30)

The promise to Israel was always wider than Israel alone. When Yahweh first called Abram out of Ur, the call carried within it a horizon that reached past Abram’s own descendants:

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2–3).

Israel was chosen for the nations. The blessing flowed inward in order to flow outward. Israel’s prophets carried this vision forward.

According to Isaiah, Yahweh says that it was “too light a thing” for the servant to raise up only the tribes of Jacob, and so the servant would be given “as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:6). The foreigners who joined themselves to the Lord would be brought to his holy mountain and made joyful in his house of prayer, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa 56:7). And on that mountain Yahweh would prepare a feast, “a feast of rich food for all peoples” (Isa 25:6).

But the promise has a structure: Israel first, and then through Israel, the nations. Not Israel instead of the nations. Not the nations instead of Israel. Israel first, so that the nations might be brought in.

In Mark 7, Jesus has just dismantled one wall separating Jews from Gentiles. The pericope on defilement closes with the parenthetical “thus he declared all foods clean” (7:19), undoing the food-purity boundary that had separated Israel from the Gentile world since Sinai. The very next scene crosses the corresponding people-boundary:

“And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon… a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter” (7:24–26).

Food, then people. The two walls fall in sequence.

Then comes the difficult line:

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (7:27).

The crucial word is “first,” πρῶτον. Jesus is not refusing the woman; he is naming the sequence the prophets had already taught. The bread of the kingdom comes to Israel first, and then, through Israel, to the nations. This is the same logic Paul will later articulate as “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). The image of bread and table belongs to the Isaianic banquet, where Yahweh sets out a feast for all peoples, but the table is laid in Zion, and the children of the house are seated first.

The woman hears the sequence and steps into it:

“Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (7:28).

Her answer is a confession of how the covenant actually works. She does not ask Jesus to reverse the order. She asks for what the Abrahamic promise has always made room for: that the abundance given to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is so great that the blessings overflow to the Gentiles as well.

Jesus answers: “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter” (7:29). The woman goes home and finds the child well.

The Gentile mission of the church is not an emergency improvisation after Israel’s failure. It is the goal toward which the covenant has been moving since Genesis 12. The woman in Mark 7 is not breaking into the kingdom from outside. She is the first sign that the table Yahweh promised in Isaiah is being set, and that the bread laid out for the children of Israel is already abundant enough to reach the nations.

Beyond All Measure (7:31–37)

There is a moment near the end of Mark 7 where the crowd’s response pushes the Greek language to its limit. When Jesus heals a deaf man in the Decapolis, Mark tells us the witnesses were ὑπερπερισσῶς ἐξεπλήσσοντο (hyperperissōs exeplēssonto) — “astonished beyond all measure” (Mark 7:37). The word ὑπερπερισσῶς is a genuine hapax legomenon, which means that it appears nowhere else in all of known Greek literature. Mark takes an ordinary word for “exceedingly” and stacks the preposition ὑπέρ (hyper), meaning “above” or “beyond,” onto the front of it, as if ordinary amazement is simply insufficient for what they have just witnessed. Mark reaches for a word that does not quite exist.

What the witnesses saw was this: Jesus privately took aside a deaf man with a speech impediment, touched his ears, spat, touched the man’s tongue, looked up to heaven, and sighed deeply. Then he said a single Aramaic word — ephphatha (transliterated as ἐφφαθά), “Be opened” — and the man’s ears were unstopped, and his tongue was loosed (Mark 7:31–35). The crowd’s reaction follows.

And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (Mark 7:37).

That final line is not merely an expression of surprise. It is a confession, and Mark intends his readers to hear its Old Testament register. The prophet Isaiah, describing the return of YHWH to Zion with his people, wrote:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. (Isa 35:5–6)

Isaiah’s vision was of a new exodus — God returning to redeem and restore his people, healing what their idolatry and exile had broken. When the crowd echoes Isaiah’s language in the Decapolis, Mark is signaling that the moment the prophets anticipated has arrived. Jesus is not performing miracles for their own sake. Each healing is a signpost to a larger reality: YHWH has returned to his people in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the new exodus has begun.

This is why the crowd cannot stay silent. Jesus commands them to say nothing (Mark 7:36), but the more he charges them, the more zealously they proclaim it. Ordinary words are insufficient. Ordinary composure is impossible. Mark invents a new word because nothing else will fit the moment.

The same Gospel that opened deaf ears in Galilee is still being proclaimed today. May it still astonish us beyond all measure.

A Link to Mark 6 (ESV)

He Could Do No Mighty Work (6:1–6)

Jesus goes home. After healing the Gerasene demoniac and raising Jairus’s daughter, he returns to Nazareth, and on the Sabbath he teaches in the synagogue where he grew up. Many who hear him are astonished, though not in a positive way:

“Where did this man get these things?” (Mark 6:2).

They know exactly where he’s from. What puzzles them is the wisdom and the mighty works reported of him. So they answer their own question by cataloging what they already know:

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?” (6:3).

The word translated "carpenter" is τέκτων (tektōn), and its range is broader than a specialized woodworker. A τέκτων built and repaired in wood or stone as the work required, the kind of skilled manual labor every village needed and no one found remarkable. The crowd's question assumes an ordinary laborer cannot carry extraordinary wisdom.

Jesus answers with a proverb:

“A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” (6:4).

Then comes one of Mark’s more remarkable statements about Jesus:

“And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (6:5–6).

Mark is being a bit clever here. He uses two Greek words that share a root, ἐδύνατο (edynato) and δύναμιν (dynamin). The pun does not survive translation, but Mark is saying something like Jesus did not have the power to do a powerful work, and he relates this inability directly to the unbelief of the people of Nazareth.

The link to unbelief is confirmed by Matthew, but also softened. When he retells this scene, he keeps Mark’s editorial comment but softens it: “And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief” (Matt 13:58). Matthew seems uncomfortable with the implication in Mark that Jesus could not do a mighty work at Nazareth. Mark says Jesus couldn’t; Matthew says Jesus didn’t. Matthew also makes explicit what is merely implicit in Mark: the reason Jesus performed no mighty works was the people's unbelief.

The point is the same either way. Jesus’s power works through and with the faith of his people. The point is not that God cannot simply do as he wishes; he can. But he has instead chosen to work through his people's faith. This is how God has always preferred to work: through humanity. If we want to see God’s healing and transformative power at work in this world, the first step is believing that he can. It’s faith like that through which God’s mighty power works and flows.

He Meant to Pass By Them (6:45–52)

When Moses asked to see Yahweh’s glory, the answer was: “I will make all my goodness pass before you” (Exod 33:19). Moses was placed in the cleft of the rock, “and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by” (33:22). To reveal himself was to pass by.

The pattern returned at Horeb. Elijah, fleeing Jezebel, was told to stand on the mountain, “and behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord” (1 Kgs 19:11). “Passing by” is how Israel’s God revealed himself and his glory to his prophets.

Mark places the disciples inside that tradition.

And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them (Mark 6:48).

The Septuagint of Exodus 33 and 1 Kings 19 uses the verb παρέρχομαι, the same verb Mark uses here. Jesus walking on the sea is itself a divine prerogative; Job confesses that Yahweh alone “trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8). When Jesus then speaks, the words are ἐγώ εἰμι, “It is I” (Mark 6:50), the name spoken at the burning bush now spoken from the water.

Mark wants the disciples, and his readers, to see what is happening. They do not.

And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened (6:51–52).

The hardened heart is the language of judgment. It belongs first to Pharaoh, who watched plague after plague and still could not see what God was doing (Exod 7:13; 8:15). It belongs to the generation Isaiah was sent to warn, whose heart was made dull and whose ears were heavy lest they “see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn and be healed” (Isa 6:10). It belongs to the rebels in the wilderness whom Psalm 95 names as those who hardened their hearts at Meribah and never entered the rest (95:8–11).

Mark tells us that the disciples, who had just watched their master feed Israel in the wilderness as Yahweh had fed Israel in the wilderness before him, are standing where Pharaoh and rebellious Israel once stood. Knowing the facts of a miracle is not the same as understanding and trusting the one who has done it. The disciples saw the loaves multiplied, and Jesus walking on the sea. They were eyewitnesses to both, yet their hearts remained hardened. Knowing about Jesus is not the same as trusting the one who passes by.

John the Forerunner, Even in Death (6:14–29)

Mark does something unusual in the sixth chapter of his Gospel. Just as Jesus sends the Twelve out two by two to proclaim repentance and heal the sick (Mark 6:7–13), Mark interrupts the mission with a long, almost novelistic flashback to the execution of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14–29). This is intentional. Mark places the fate of the prophet at the very center of the apostolic mission, as if to say: this is the world you are entering, and this is what it may demand of you.

The story is intentionally sordid. Herod Antipas, already involved in an unlawful marriage to his brother’s wife (6:18), hosts a birthday feast for the powerful men of Galilee (6:21). When Herodias’s daughter dances and Herod makes a reckless oath, the trap is set. John, whom Herod himself called “a righteous and holy man” (6:20), is beheaded to protect a king’s pride in front of his guests. The only person in the scene with any moral bravery is the one whose head ends up on a platter.

Mark sees this scene through the lens of the Old Testament. John is already shown as the Elijah figure, dressed in camel’s hair and a leather belt, deliberately mirroring the prophet’s description in 2 Kings 1:8, fulfilling the forerunner promise of Malachi 3:1 and 4:5 (Mark 1:2–6). Now Herodias acts as Jezebel to Herod’s Ahab, plotting the prophet’s death who dared to speak against the throne, just as Jezebel threatened Elijah after his confrontation with her household (1 Kgs 19:1–2). The pattern of the persecuted prophet is ancient, and Mark’s first readers would have recognized it immediately. Every empire, in every era, has found ways to silence voices it cannot control.

But the most significant detail appears at the very end. “His disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb” (Mark 6:29). Mark uses almost identical language when Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus’s body and places it in a tomb at the end of the Gospel (15:45–46). The death and burial of John serve as a purposeful preview of Jesus’ passion. A weak ruler, manipulated by others, kills a righteous man; his followers claim his body; then he is laid in a tomb. Mark establishes a pattern that Jesus later fulfills.

For the community reading this Gospel under the shadow of Roman imperial hostility, the message would have hit close to home. To be sent out as a disciple of Jesus Christ means entering a world that has always known how to silence prophets. John’s faithfulness cost him everything, and Jesus’s faithfulness will cost him the same. Yet Mark frames all of this within the story of the Twelve being sent out and returning (Mark 6:30). The mission continues. The disciples come back. The work does not end with the prophet’s death because the One who sent them is greater than any Herod. What makes this dark story ultimately bearable—and truly subversive—is that Mark’s readers already know that the tomb is never the final word.

A Link to Mark 5 (ESV)

Found Without Being Sought (5:1–20 again)

Jesus crosses the sea for the first time into Gentile territory, and he meets a man on the shore who has come from the tombs. Mark says the man lived there: no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, and night and day he cried out among the graves, cutting himself with stones (5:2–5).

The language here is reminiscent of Isaiah 65, which catalogs how Israel had traded the LORD for other gods, including those “who sit in tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat pig’s flesh, and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels” (Isa 65:4). Sitting in tombs meant seeking the dead for oracles, spending the night among graves to receive by dream what the dead were thought to know. Eating pig’s flesh meant more than diet; the meat most often turned up on pagan altars, sealing a family’s loyalty to a god other than the god of Israel. Isaiah names tombs and pigs as the profile of covenant unfaithfulness, and Mark sets the same two images side by side as the man comes to Jesus: a man among the tombs and a herd of pigs on the hillside (5:11).

Isaiah wrote those words to Israel, not to the nations; the charge was covenant-breaking, not paganism from the outside. But the oracle opens with a claim the LORD makes about people who never sought him at all:

“I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that was not called by my name” (Isa 65:1).

Paul later hears that verse fulfilled in the Gentile mission:

“I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me” (Rom 10:20).

The unclean spirits ask to enter the pigs rather than leave the region. Jesus lets them, and the herd runs into the sea and drowns (5:13). The one who had seemed impossibly far off from Israel’s God is now found sitting, clothed, and in his right mind (5:15).

It’s helpful for all of us to remember that no one is too far from God. Inherent to the Gospel is the incredible truth that God goes after those who are from him. He calls to them. He shows himself to them. Those who do not see him still find him. Those who are not called by his name still become his children. That means we should never give up praying for people and reaching out to them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter how far from God they might seem to us, for God, they are never too far away.

When Holiness Is Contagious (5:21–43)

The purity laws of the Torah work by contact. A woman with a discharge of blood beyond her menstrual cycle remained unclean for as long as the flow continued, and her uncleanness passed to whatever she touched:

“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity... all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness... And whoever touches these things shall be unclean” (Lev 15:25–27).

Contact with a corpse carried the same logic.

“Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days” (Num 19:11).

Uncleanness was the stronger force; it traveled from the unclean to the clean and never the other way.

Mark sets two such cases inside one scene. Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, falls at Jesus’ feet because his daughter is dying. On the way to the house, the crowd presses in, and one woman carries a defilement the others would not have seen unless they knew her:

“And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years... She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment” (Mark 5:25–27).

The two are bound by a number. The woman had bled for twelve years; the girl was twelve years old. The bleeding began about the time the child was born, and both afflictions ended on the same afternoon.

By the law’s reckoning, her touch should make Jesus unclean, along with everyone she pressed past. But the contagion runs backward. Power leaves him, and the flow of blood dries up at its source (5:29–30). He turns, calls her “daughter,” and tells her that her faith has saved her. The verb is σῴζω (sōzō), which means both to heal and to save, and Mark intends both.

Word then spreads that Jairus’s daughter has died. Jesus takes her by the hand, an act that should make him unclean for seven days, and says, “Talitha cumi” (5:41). She gets up, and he refers to her death as sleep because in his hands, death is no more permanent than sleep.

Holiness turns out to be the more powerful thing. Where the kingdom lays hold of uncleanness and death, they are the ones that gives way.

The Real Enemy (5:1-20)

When Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee, they were doing more than navigating a body of water. For any first-century Jewish reader, a sea crossing immediately evoked one story above all others: the night God led Israel through the sea on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army was swallowed by the returning waters (Exod 14:26–28). Now, stepping onto the far shore, Jesus walks straight into one of the most dramatic confrontations of his ministry.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 5:1–2).

The man who meets him is possessed by a force that has broken every chain his neighbors could fashion. When Jesus asks his name, the answer is:

“My name is Legion, for we are many” (5:9).

“Legion” is a Roman military term for a unit of roughly 6,000 soldiers. To people living under occupation, it meant one thing: an army.

But Mark’s point is precisely that Rome is not the real enemy. Jesus has crossed the sea not to overthrow Caesar but to confront the true occupying power — the spiritual forces opposed to God and his kingdom.

The demons beg not to be sent out of the region. Jesus grants their request to enter a herd of pigs, and what happens next is unmistakable:

“The herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea” (5:13).

An army is drowned in the sea. Israel’s God had done this before. The Exodus is happening again.

The people of the Decapolis were afraid when they saw the man “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). They had grown accustomed to the enemy’s power. The freedom Jesus brought was more frightening than the bondage they had known. But the man himself understood. He begged to go with Jesus, and when refused, went home and proclaimed “how much the Lord had done for him” (5:19–20).

Paul would later name the same truth plainly:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness” (Eph 6:12).

Our neighbors are not our enemies. Our political opponents are not our enemies. The legion arrayed against the people of God is spiritual, and it has already met the one who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea. In Christ, the outcome is not in doubt.

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Introduction

Sometimes people will ask me how long I’ve been a priest, and I almost never know the answer. I know it’s been more than a decade, but I can never remember the specific day of the month or the year. What I do remember is the feast day on which I was ordained as a priest. Bishop Morales ordained me on the feast day of the confession of St. Peter, which is our Gospel reading this morning. So, this passage has extra significance for me because it will forever be connected in my mind to my ordination and ministry.

So, we’re going to stay here in Matthew 16 for this Sunday and the next because there’s a straight line from Peter’s confession to Jesus’ prediction of his death and resurrection, and to his command for his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. There is what we say about Jesus — that’s Peter’s confession. There is what Jesus actually accomplished as the Messiah — that’s his death and resurrection. And then there is what it means to be the disciples of a crucified and risen Lord — that’s “take up your cross and follow me.” Today we’re just going to focus on the confession. You’ll have to come back next Sunday to hear the rest.

What Do Others Say?

As for Peter’s confession, we’re going to skip over the opening words — we’ll come back to that — and focus on the first question Jesus asks his disciples.

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt 16:13).

This question is fascinating because the disciples clearly understand Jesus to be asking, “Who do people say that I am?” and that is, in fact, how both Mark and Luke phrase the question. Only Matthew replaces “I” with “the Son of Man,” Jesus’ favorite self-designation. In doing so, Matthew is already coding in part of the correct answer to the question of Jesus’ identity. The title Son of Man comes from Daniel 7, where this mysterious figure, who represents Israel, is crushed and devoured by the four beasts representing four earthly kingdoms, but ultimately vindicated and exalted by God, and to him is given an everlasting kingdom greater than all the kingdoms of this earth. So, Matthew is already giving us a hint at the answer to Jesus’ identity even before the disciples have even said a word.

But when they do answer, their answers tell us quite a lot about what people understood to be happening in the ministry of Jesus. The disciples answer:

“Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matt 16:14).

All of these answers are interesting. Some say Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life, presumably because there was such a clear link between their ministry and proclamation. In fact, Matthew says as much just a few chapters earlier.

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him” (14:1–2).

So some say he’s John because there’s a clear connection between what John was doing and what Jesus has been doing. Others say he’s Elijah because the book of Malachi had said:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Mal 4:5–6).

Ironically, that’s actually the role that John played, but it shows that the people were thinking along the same eschatological timetable that we find throughout the Gospels.

Others say that Jesus is Jeremiah, presumably because his ministry of preaching against the religious establishment and pronouncing judgment on the city and temple more closely resembled Jeremiah's than that of any other Old Testament prophet. Jesus was a Jeremiadic prophet, so it is not surprising that people thought he might actually be Jeremiah. In fact, the mention of Jeremiah in the disciples’ reply is unique to Matthew and is probably a connection that Matthew himself is trying to draw out, just like with the insertion of “Son of Man” in the initial question.

Lastly, the disciples answer that some say Jesus is one of the prophets, most likely indicating a general understanding that what he was saying and doing were from God, but not much more than that.

What Do You Say?

It’s of course interesting to think about what other people say about Jesus. There are plenty of books you can read on the subject, and no shortage of television programs devoted to it either. You can sit down with someone over coffee or in a Bible study and ask them what they think.

What others say about Jesus is interesting, but what really matters for you is not what anyone else says about Jesus but what you say about Jesus. And so Jesus asks:

“But who do you say that I am?” (16:15).

For just a moment, I want you to imagine that Jesus is asking you that question this morning. It won’t do you any good if Jesus asks you, “Who do you say that I am,” and your response is, “Well, Fr. Michael said” or “N. T. Wright said” or “J. I. Packer said.” You fill in the blank. Who do you, in your heart of hearts, say that Jesus is?

Peter answers — surprisingly, miraculously, and here I’m offering my own translation:

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16).

(The ESV renders this “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” I’ve swapped in “Messiah” — the sense is the same, but it keeps the title in front of us as a title, rather than letting “Christ” slide by as though it were simply Jesus’ surname.)

Nothing in the Gospel thus far would have prepared the reader for Peter to give this kind of answer. Of course, the reader knows it’s the right answer, but the disciples, including and especially Peter, seem to be incapable of understanding who Jesus is and what he’s doing. Just look at the immediately preceding scene, where Jesus seems flabbergasted that his disciples seem to be clueless about what he’s actually doing. He says:

“O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread?” (16:8–11).

He was trying to use bread as a metaphor for something else, and they thought he was talking about how much actual bread they had. Jesus goes from exasperation in one scene to Peter nailing it on the head in the next, and his response, I think, comes from that same exasperation. Peter says:

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16).

And Jesus says, “Well, you certainly didn’t figure that out on your own! You’ve gotten everything wrong up until this point! That must have come from God!” That’s my interpretation of what Jesus actually says, which is:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (16:17).

For a moment, even if only in broad outline, Peter recognizes who Jesus is. He is more than a prophet. He is more than a healer. He is more than John the Baptist, more than Elijah, more than Jeremiah, and more than all the other Old Testament prophets. He is the Messiah, the promised King, the one for whom Israel had been waiting, the one who would deliver them from their bondage and set them free. He was the one, the only one, who, in a way that Peter could not yet even possibly have fathomed, was worthy to be called “the Son of the Living God,” and remember, Peter makes this confession standing in Caesarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi

And what’s truly remarkable about this moment isn’t only that Peter’s confession seems to come out of nowhere — that he gets everything right all at once. It’s also where Peter says it. The opening words of this scene, which we skipped over, tell us that Peter is standing in Caesarea Philippi. Matthew is not merely interested in the patch of ground where Jesus and the disciples happen to be standing. There’s a reason he tells us this.

Part of Caesarea Philippi, long before the region bore that name, was named Paneion, after the Greek god Pan. The city was said to have a cave with an underground spring so deep that, despite attempts to measure its depth with weighted ropes, the bottom could not be reached. This led many to believe that this cave was an entrance to the underworld — to Hades, the realm of the dead, the place from which there was no escape because the gates were locked. The cave was known as the “gates of Hades” because pagans believed their gods used it to travel to and from the underworld.

And then Herod the Great — Herod, king of the Jews — built a temple to Caesar Augustus at the foot of this cave, because he had just been made king and wanted to honor the man who had made him king. Herod’s successor in the region, Herod Philip, then renamed the city Caesarea Philippi to honor the current Caesar, Emperor Tiberius.

Tiberius, like most rulers of the day, had coins minted to solidify his rule, and around his image the coins read: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.” Note the parallel to “Son of the Living God,” and Don’t miss that the “divine” Augustus was most certainly no longer living.

On this Rock

So Peter is standing in the place where pagans thought the very gate of death stood, the same place where Israel’s rulers had erected a pagan temple and renamed a city after Caesars who demanded absolute loyalty, and he replies to Jesus, “You are the coming king we were promised. You, not Tiberius, who was the son of a dead emperor — YOU are the Son of the Living God.”

To which Jesus says, “Only God could have revealed that to you,” and then he adds:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (16:18).

(This is my own translation at this point too. The ESV actually reads “gates of hell” — but the word here isn’t hell, and it isn’t even Gehenna. It’s Hades.)

To say that the rock on which the church is built isn’t Peter does violence to the text, but so does pretending that the rock is Peter apart from what he confesses about Jesus. The church — the church of Jesus Christ, of which we are all a part — is built on the foundation of what Peter confesses about Jesus in this particular location. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the promised king. He and he alone is the Son of the Living God.

In short, he is Lord and everyone else is not. Not pagan gods. Not emperors. Not kings, queens, or presidents. Surrounded by all these would-be gods, with temples and cities built in their honor, and a long tradition of people coming to this cave to offer sacrifices for their loved ones, Peter’s confession, in this place, amounts to this:

Jesus is the promised, coming King, the unique and only Son of the Living God, and therefore he is Lord, and everyone and everything else is not. That is the confession on which the church is built.

Gates Do Not Attack

And we could just leave this here, but I have one more thing to say: despite how so many people talk about this passage, gates do not attack. Gates defend. Gates keep out.

If Jesus promises that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church, then his understanding of the church is that its primary mission is a full-frontal assault on death.

Death in ancient times was thought to be an unconquerable power guarded by the strongest gates. These gates prevented escape and barred access to invaders. Jesus understands the church as those invaders who, rather than engaging in a culture of death, will say to death:

“You do not get to write the last words in the story of humanity, for there is one who is even more powerful than death, and by confessing who he is and what he’s done in the midst of a pagan world, in the midst of people prone to treat mere mortals like gods, death itself will be defeated.”

That’s the promise. That’s the mission of the church — a full-frontal assault on death and all the power it continues to exercise in this world — and it’s directly tied to Peter’s confession, which Peter speaks even though he doesn’t yet fully understand it.

How to Defeat Death

Peter, like everyone else, wanted the coming king to bring more death. Death for the enemies, death for the people who oppressed us. “Jesus, go to the city, take up your sword. Bring death if you have to, but bring us liberation at all costs.”

But you can’t defeat death by killing others.

You can win a war like that, but you can’t defeat death that way.

So Peter says, “You are the Messiah.” And Jesus says, “Yes, I am. Do you want to know what it means that I’m the Messiah? It means I’m going to Jerusalem, not to fight, but to die, but I will rise again, and if you want to be my disciples in this assault on the gates of Hades — in this war on death and its continued influence in this world — then you must take up your cross, and follow me.”

Amen.

Life Group Study Guide

Intro Prayer

Heavenly Father, we come before you today as your gathered people, asking that you open our hearts and minds to hear what you would say to us. As we reflect on your Word and the bold confession of Peter, quiet the noise of our own assumptions and preconceptions. Grant us the courage to wrestle honestly with the question Jesus asks each of us: “Who do you say that I am?” May your Holy Spirit guide our conversation, draw us closer to one another, and above all, draw us closer to you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ice Breaker

If you could visit any historical or ancient site in the world, where would you go and why?

Questions

• Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt 16:13). If someone in your community were asked that question today, what kinds of answers do you think they would give?

• Jesus then makes it personal: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15). How would you answer that question in your own words, not borrowing someone else’s answer?

• Peter’s confession seems to come as a surprise, maybe even to himself, and Jesus says that “flesh and blood” did not reveal this to Peter, but God the Father (Matt 16:17). What does it mean to you that recognizing Jesus for who he truly is requires divine revelation rather than human reasoning alone?

• Matthew 16 places this exchange in Caesarea Philippi — a place of pagan worship, imperial power, and the supposed gates of Hades. Why do you think Jesus chose this particular location to ask his disciples about his identity? What does that setting add to the meaning of Peter’s confession?

• Peter confesses that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16) in a place where coins bore the inscription “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.” How does this contrast shape your understanding of what it means to confess Jesus as Lord in today’s world?

• Gates defend rather than attack — so when Jesus says the gates of Hades will not prevail against the Church (Matt 16:18), he’s describing the Church as an invading force against death, not a fortress under siege. How does this image challenge or expand your understanding of what the Church is called to be and do?

• Peter’s confession is directly tied to the Church’s mission to confront death and its power in the world. Where do you see death exercising its influence in your own community or culture, and how might the Church respond faithfully?

• Jesus redefines what it means to be the Messiah — not through conquest and violence, but through dying and rising again. How does this shape the way you think about following Jesus and “taking up your cross” in your own daily life?

Life Application

This week, set aside a few quiet minutes each day to sit with the question Jesus asks: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15). Write down your honest answer in a journal or on a piece of paper, in your own words, without borrowing language from a book or another person. Then consider one area of your life where you are tempted to give ultimate loyalty or trust to something or someone other than Jesus. Bring that area before God in prayer, and ask him to help you live out Peter’s confession more fully in that specific place.

Key Takeaways

• Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” is the foundational declaration on which the Church is built, and it demands a personal, not merely inherited or secondhand answer from every believer.

• The location of Caesarea Philippi is theologically loaded: surrounded by pagan worship, imperial power, and the supposed gates of Hades, Peter’s confession amounts to a bold proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord and no one else is.

• Jesus’s promise that “the gates of Hades will not prevail” against the Church reveals that the Church’s primary mission is an active assault on death and its power, not a defensive retreat from the world.

• True messiahship, as Jesus defines it, is not achieved through violence or conquest but through his own death and resurrection, which is the only way death itself can ultimately be defeated.

• Discipleship in the way of a crucified and risen Lord means taking up one’s cross, following Jesus into the world, and participating in his ongoing mission against the powers of sin and death.

Ending Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of this time together and for the truth of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. As we leave this place, remind us that we are not called to retreat from the world but to carry his light into it, trusting that the gates of death do not have the final word. Strengthen us by your Spirit to answer Jesus’s question honestly in our own hearts, to give him our full loyalty, and to follow him even when the way is costly. May our lives together as your Church be a witness to the world that he alone is Lord. In his holy name we pray. Amen.

A Link to Mark 4 (ESV)

Seed Parables (4:26–32)

Jesus gives two more parables about seed here. In the first, a man scatters seed on the ground, but he does not know how a seed grows from seed to grain (4:27). He goes to bed and gets up, goes to bed and gets up, day after day, and all the while the seed is doing its work in the earth. It grows under the soil, then the first blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, until it is ripe, and Mark closes the parable with a citation: “at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (4:29).

That last line comes from Joel 3, which speaks of God’s coming judgment on the nations:

“Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe” (Joel 3:12–13).

But the harvest here is not judgment on the nations, as it was in Joel. Jesus is quoting Joel and turning its meaning on its head. This harvest is the result of sowing the seed. It is the spreading of the message of the kingdom, not just in Israel but over the face of the known world, and so the harvest, which was once bad news for the nations, is now good news.

The sower does not have to understand how the seed grows. All he has to do is sow. Sowing is how it works in the kingdom of God. We do not have to understand it all or get every detail of God’s grand design to know what we are supposed to be doing. We are simply asked to go and sow, to spread the seed of the kingdom, and let God take care of the rest. We can follow the regular pattern of our lives, going to bed and rising in the morning, so long as we do our part during the day by spreading the seed. As long as we are sowing, we can be assured that the seed will grow and one day the harvest will come.

Jesus ushered in the kingdom of God in a way no one expected, and one of the clearest differences between his reality and the people’s expectations was the kingdom’s size. He had no large army. He had no capital. No base. He did not march on the city. He did not fight a war. He did not overthrow Caesar’s agent. By the standards of the day, Jesus’s kingdom was small, and according to this second parable, smallness is exactly how the kingdom works.

Jesus says:

It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade (4:30–32).

Daniel and Ezekiel both use the image of a tree grown so large that birds nest in its branches to describe a great kingdom, one that shelters even those outside its own soil (Ezek 17:23; 31:6; Dan 4:12, 21). Daniel writes:

Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it (Dan 4:12).

Daniel was describing Nebuchadnezzar’s empire, but it is not hard to see the connection between that vision and the kingdom Jesus describes here.

The world runs on a direct correlation between big actions and big rewards: invest a lot, gain a lot; invest a little, gain little. The kingdom of God does not run that way. God can use even the smallest of things as a seed that grows into a tree whose branches reach further than our wildest expectations. So we should not get so caught up in the big acts of faith that we lose sight of the small ones. Not all of us are called to Nepal. All of us are called to witness to our neighbor. Not all of us are called to full-time ministry. All of us are called to be ministers of Christ’s love to the people around us. The size of the seed does not matter, because Jesus is the Lord of the harvest, and that means the harvest will come. Our job is simply to sow.

Who Then Is This? (4:35–41)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, mastery of the sea belongs to YHWH alone. He rules the raging of the sea and stills its waves (Ps 89:9). At creation, he set the limits of the deep, saying to its proud waves, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther” (Job 38:11).

One of the fullest portraits of YHWH and the stormy sea is in Psalm 107. Sailors go down to the sea in ships and see the deeds of the LORD in the deep. A stormy wind rises at his command. The waves lift them up to heaven and down to the depths, their courage melts, and in their distress, they cry out:

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven (Ps 107:28–30).

The pattern is consistent. Storms rise at YHWH’s command, and he alone can still them.

This is the world the disciples inhabit when Jesus tells them to cross to the other side. The storm that rises is no ordinary squall. The waves are breaking into the boat, and the fishermen among them, men who know this lake, are afraid for their lives.

Jesus is asleep in the stern, on the cushion. The detail recalls another sleeping figure in a sinking boat. In Jonah 1, the prophet sleeps below deck while the sailors panic above. The captain wakes him with an urgent plea: arise, call on your god, that we do not perish (Jonah 1:6). The LXX’s verb for "perish" here is the very one the disciples use when they wake Jesus (Mark 4:38). In Jonah's case, the storm was stilled only when the prophet was thrown overboard. The sea was calmed by his “death.” After the calming, the sailors "feared the LORD exceedingly" (Jonah 1:16).

Jesus answers differently. Ultimately, his death will calm the winds and waves of this world, but not right now. In this moment, he simply rises and rebukes the wind. To the sea he says, “Peace! Be still!” (4:39). The verb is the same one Mark used earlier to silence an unclean spirit (Mark 1:25). The sea is treated as a hostile power that obeys his command.

Mark then describes the disciples with the very phrase from Jonah. They “feared a great fear” (Mark 4:41). And they ask the question the whole passage has been driving toward:

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

The Hebrew Scriptures have already given the answer time and time again. There is only one who stills the storm and calms the sea.

The Mystery of the Sower (4:1–20)

When Jesus shares the Parable of the Sower, he is not giving a timeless lesson about spiritual openness. He is describing a crisis. In Mark 3, the religious leaders accuse him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul (Mark 3:22), and his own family thinks he is out of his mind (Mark 3:21). The message is spreading, but the rejection in ch. 3 shows it faces hard soil. Why?

The weight Mark places on this parable is unmistakable. It is the first substantive parable in all three Synoptic Gospels, and in Mark’s Gospel, which contains only one major parable section (here in ch. 4) and then only one other significant parable (the Wicked Tenants in chapter 12), it is nothing less than load-bearing for the whole Gospel and ministry of Jesus. When Jesus asks his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13), he means it. This parable, like the others, explains what is happening in the ministry of Jesus.

To make sense of this parable, Jesus reaches for a word his disciples would have recognized immediately. He says:

“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11, author’s own translation).1

The Greek word translated as “mystery” here is μυστήριον, the same word the Septuagint uses in Daniel 2 when Nebuchadnezzar has a dream no one can interpret, and Daniel alone receives its meaning from God (Dan 2:18–19, 27–30). Mark signals that this parable is apocalyptic. Like Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, it is a vision whose meaning must be revealed from outside, and it explains real events that are happening or will happen in human history. And just as Daniel’s mystery concerned the coming kingdom that would one day fill the whole earth (Dan 2:44), so Jesus’ mystery concerns the kingdom that is arriving now — silently, against all appearances, like seed falling on the ground.

The seed, Jesus explains, is the word (Mark 4:14). This takes us straight to Isaiah 55, where God promises that his word, like rain and snow falling on the earth, will give “seed to the sower” and will not return to him empty, but will accomplish its purpose. That purpose is the New Exodus, the end of Israel’s long exile, and the return of Yahweh to Zion (Isa 55:10–11). The teaching of Jesus is doing precisely this: scattering the word of return across the landscape of human hearts.

But the harvest is uneven, and this is the parable’s great burden. The problem is not the seed or the sower. The word will not return empty. The problem is the soil. John the Baptist had come before Jesus with one message: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3, citing Isa 40:3). To prepare the way was to prepare the soil — to repent, to clear the ground of whatever would keep the word from taking root. Many in Israel had not done this. And so when the sower arrived and began to scatter the word, he found paths and rocks and thorns where there should have been good earth.

The parable invites us to ask a hard question — not simply which of the four soils describes us, but what has hardened us. What love, what fear, what idol has compacted the ground so that the word cannot go as deep as it should? John’s ancient call has not expired. We must prepare the way of the Lord.

A Link to Mark 3 (ESV)

Twelve on a Mountain (3:13–19)

And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him (3:13).

Mark does not name the mountain, but the action is one his first readers would recognize. Israel became a covenant people in this same way: Moses went up a mountain and set up twelve pillars, “according to the twelve tribes of Israel” (Exod 24:4). Jesus goes up a mountain and appoints twelve. Mark names the number twice, in verse 14 and again in verse 16, as though he wants to make sure no one misses it. Twelve tribes once stood at the foot of Sinai. Twelve men now stand around Jesus. Israel is being remade, gathered around Jesus the way it was once gathered around Moses.

The purpose Mark gives for the appointment is carefully ordered. The twelve are appointed “so that they might be with him” first, and only then “he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (3:14-15). Presence comes before mission. Whatever they do later (including casting out demons), they will do it because they first spent time in his company, not because they arrived qualified. That lesson is important for all later disciples to remember.

Then Mark gives their names, and two of them change. Simon becomes Peter. James and John become Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder” (3:16-17). Renaming, in Israel’s story, is typically an act of God. For example, Abram becomes Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:5), and Jacob becomes Israel after a night of wrestling that leaves him limping (Gen 32:28, 31). When Jesus renames Simon and the sons of Zebedee, he exercises that same divine prerogative.

Mark has already shown one threat in this chapter. Six verses earlier, the Pharisees went out and conspired with the Herodians to destroy him (3:6), a danger from outside the circle Jesus is now forming. Here, in the act of forming it, he names a danger from within: Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, “and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him” (3:19). The betrayal is stated before it happens, folded into the roll call as though it already belongs there. The new Israel Jesus is calling together is not, by that fact alone, a guarantee of loyalty. It is twelve men, freshly named and newly gathered, and one of them will hand him over.

I sometimes like to place myself in the different scenes in the Gospels, and I like to think that I would have responded better than pretty much everyone does in all these stories. But the truth is this: I wouldn’t have. I would have failed, just as the different characters do again and again, because greater proximity to Jesus does not guarantee greater faithfulness. Just like having a collar doesn’t either. Nor do many other things we label as religious. Judas was as close to Jesus as you could get, and yet he still betrayed him, and the possibility of that betrayal lies in each of our hearts.

Doing Good on the Sabbath (3:1–6)

When the Sabbath law is given in Deuteronomy, the Lord states that its purpose is to serve as a memorial of God’s liberating act.

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15).

The Sabbath is meant to remind Israel of the God who unbinds and grants rest. Every seventh day, the people are to reenact, in their bodies and households, the deliverance that defines them.

The prophets emphasized this point even more. When Israel turned their observance into mere ritual obsession, Isaiah reproved them:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa 58:6).

The chapter concludes with a vision of Sabbath joy connected to the same freeing activity (58:13–14). For Isaiah, observance and mercy are one and the same act.

Jesus shares the same view, as he clearly demonstrates when, on a Sabbath in a synagogue, he heals a man with a withered hand.

“And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent” (Mark 3:4).

Jesus’s question echoes Isaiah’s and is aimed at those who have spent their lives carefully following rule after rule. The Sabbath was created to remind us of liberation from bonds. To deny this man’s release on this day is to invert what the Sabbath is all about

So, Jesus restores the hand, and as we might expect, the Pharisees go out and conspire with the Herodians about how to destroy him (3:6).

Jesus frequently pushes past the letter of the law, and especially past the letter of our manmade interpretations of the law. The Sabbath was given so that God’s people would remember what kind of God we serve, and become the kind of people who reflect his character back into the world. To stand in his presence and refuse the work of restoration, even on the Sabbath, is to forget our own deliverance and to deny the very reason the day exists.

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord (3:20–35)

One of Mark’s favorite literary techniques is called intercalation — or, more memorably, “sandwiching.” He begins one story, interrupts it with another, and then returns to finish the first, inviting the reader to interpret the two in light of each other. Mark 3:20–35 is a textbook example. The passage opens with Jesus’s family coming to seize him, convinced he has lost his mind. Mark then pivots to a confrontation with scribes who have traveled all the way from Jerusalem. Then he returns to the family. The sandwich is intentional, and the theme holding it together is rejection.

The two groups reject Jesus in different ways. His family concludes he has gone mad.

“He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

The scribes reach a different but equally damning verdict:

“He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark 3:22).

C. S. Lewis famously argued that these are the only live options for someone who says the kinds of things Jesus said. You cannot call someone merely a good moral teacher when they speak and behave like Jesus. According to Lewis, he is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Mark’s sandwich presents us with people who have chosen the first two options.

Jesus’s reply to the scribes exposes the incoherence of their charge. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand; Satan would hardly be in the business of casting out his own (Mark 3:23–26). The real explanation is simpler and more alarming: someone has entered the strong man’s house and bound him (Mark 3:27). The exorcisms are not evidence of demonic collusion — they are evidence of conquest, specifically the New Exodus conquest. To look at that conquest and call it the work of Satan is the unforgivable sin. It is not a moment of doubt or confusion. It is a heart so hardened that it can no longer distinguish the work of God from the work of the devil (Mark 3:28–30).

Then Mark returns to the family waiting outside. Jesus does not go to them. Instead, looking at those seated around him, he redefines the category of family entirely:

“Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).

These words are not a warm sentiment about community. They are Jesus’s answer to rejection. Those who will not receive him are outside. Those who do the will of God (and thereby recognize that the will of God is being done through Jesus) are inside, gathered around him, constituting a new family defined not by blood but by allegiance.

A Link to Mark 2 (ESV)

The Guest List (2:13–17)

Jesus is beside the sea again, and he is teaching the crowd that has followed him from the synagogue and the sickbeds of the previous chapter. That’s when he sees Levi sitting at the tax booth. Capernaum sat on a customs line. It was a border town where tolls were paid on goods crossing between the territories of Rome’s client rulers. Levi’s job was to collect those tolls, but then Jesus says, “Follow me” (Mark 2:14), and Levi does exactly what Simon, Andrew, James, and John did before him: he gets up and leaves what he was doing behind.

As shocking as that might be, what’s truly startling is what comes next. Levi throws a dinner, and Mark tells us Jesus reclined with him at the table in his house (2:15). Levi filled his table with the only people who would sit with a toll collector: other toll collectors, and the sort of people the scribes of the Pharisees simply called sinners. Jesus took his place among them.

It’s important to remember that the Pharisees were a renewal movement. They drew careful lines around who counted as faithful Israel at a moment when Rome and its collaborators seemed to have the run of the country. From where they stood, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (2:16) was a serious question about what kind of teacher Jesus was, not merely a trap. A rabbi’s table told you who he believed belonged to God’s people.

Jesus answers with a diagnosis.

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (2:17).

The saying assumes rather than denies the Pharisees’ sense that something at this table needs mending, but it locates the remedy in proximity, not distance. A physician goes looking for the sick.

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (2:17)

This verse names those Jesus will gather around him, and it should give us pause. Are we like the Pharisees, deciding, often without noticing, who is worthy to sit at our tables and who is not, or are we more like Jesus, associating with all the wrong kinds of people because we know they’re the ones who most need the healing and salvation that only the divine physician can give?

The Bridegroom (2:18–22)

The question put to Jesus is straightforward. John’s disciples fast. The Pharisees’ disciples fast. Why don’t yours? Jesus’ answer must have been surprising to his original audience.

“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:19–20).

Jesus’ answer reorients fasting around a single criterion: his own bodily presence. The guests at a wedding do not fast while the bridegroom is among them, and now the bridegroom has come.

But this assertion is no mere analogy. Jesus is claiming to be the bridegroom Israel had been waiting for. By using this term, Jesus alludes to prophetic tradition in which Yahweh is described as the husband of Israel. Isaiah states the relationship directly:

“For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isa 54:5).

Later in the same book:

“As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isa 62:5).

Hosea sees the renewal of the covenant as Israel’s recognition of God in these very terms:

“And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband’” (Hos 2:16).

When Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, he takes on the role of Yahweh in this tradition. He doesn't explicitly state the claim. Instead, he embeds it in his words, as Mark does in the opening quote (1:1–3). In those verses, a claim to divine identity is hidden within a combined Old Testament quotation.

The point about the presence of the bridegroom does not make the fasting of the Pharisees’ disciples or John’s invalid or corrupt. Jesus isn’t making a judgment about them in and of themselves. He’s commenting on the redemptive-historical moment. Fasting isn’t problematic, but the bridegroom has arrived, and this is no longer the time to fast. When the new comes, the old must give way.

The two sayings that follow Jesus’ discussion of the bridegroom point in the same direction. No one sews a new patch onto an old cloak; no one pours new wine into old skins. Old practices, like the fasting of the Pharisees’ disciples or John’s, aren’t wrong, but they aren’t suitable containers for the new thing that is happening with the arrival of the bridegroom. This might explain why Luke softens the language here by adding a line about the value of the old (Luke 5:39). Mark has no such softening. What has arrived in Jesus cannot be patched onto what came before.

The temptation is always to try anyway, to accept Jesus on the terms we already understand. We want to fit him into our system, but that’s not how the Gospel works. The bridegroom has arrived, and the old must give way to the new.

The Lord of the Sabbath (2:23–28)

The Sabbath dates back to the beginning of the story. On the seventh day, God rested from all His works, and He invited Adam and all of creation to share in that rest (Gen 2:2–3). The command to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy is part of the Ten Commandments — not as a burden placed on people but as an invitation to enter into the rest that God Himself was already enjoying (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15).

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had developed an elaborate hedge of laws around that command to make sure it was not broken. But when they saw his disciples plucking heads of grain as they walked through the fields on a Sabbath, they confronted Jesus directly (Mark 2:23–24).

His response first pointed to David, who entered God’s house and ate the bread of the Presence when he and his men were hungry (1 Sam 21:1–6)—bread reserved by the law solely for the priests (Lev 24:5–9). The principle: when people are starving, human needs override the command. Then he drew the conclusion:

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28).

The Sabbath was created for the benefit of humanity. Humanity was not created for the benefit of the Sabbath. This truth applies to any commandment: the commandment is meant to serve the good of people; people were not created to serve the commandment. This idea should make us question ever treating the rule of law as something sacred while watching people suffer.

But Jesus does not stop there. He goes a step further and says that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath. This passage is only the second time in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus has called himself the Son of Man. The first was earlier in this same chapter:

“that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

Now the claim expands — the Son of Man has authority even over the Sabbath.

In Dan 7:13–14, the Son of Man appears before the Ancient of Days, to whom is given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. Jesus claims to be this figure. If that is who he is, then his authority goes beyond kingdoms, nations, and languages. It includes forgiving sins and redefining what Sabbath keeping looks like.

The logic is clear: if the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, then the one who truly embodies what it means to be human has authority over what was created for humanity. The author of Hebrews will later explore the full implications of this, arguing that the rest God has always invited his people into is fulfilled not in a day but in a person (Heb 4:1–11). Right now, we are only seeing signposts, but they are pointing us toward something extraordinary.

A Link to Mark 1 (ESV)

What Moved Him (1:40–45)

A leper’s approach to another person was itself a violation of the Law. Leviticus required a leper to live outside the camp alone and warn others away (Lev 13:45–46). When the leper comes to Jesus, he kneels and says, “If you will, you can make me clean” (1:40); the question he raises is not whether Jesus is able. It is whether Jesus is willing to risk the contact the Law was put in place to prevent.

Mark’s next clause has occupied textual critics for over a century. Nearly every Greek manuscript, including important ones like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus, reads that Jesus was σπλαγχνισθείς (splanchnistheis), “moved with pity,” before he touches the man (1:41). A minority stream, preserved in Codex Bezae and the Old Latin tradition, reads ὀργισθείς (orgistheis) instead, “moved with anger.” The manuscript evidence favors ‘pity’ by an overwhelming margin, and that is the wording that should stand, even though ‘anger’ is the more difficult reading. The variant persists because this same Gospel is willing to say that Jesus once looked at people μετ’ ὀργῆς, “with anger” (3:5), so the emotion itself would not be out of character here.

The manuscript question need not be resolved for the exegetical point to stand. Jesus heals the man, and then Mark writes that Jesus ἐμβριμησάμενος, “sternly charged,” the man (a verb used elsewhere of a horse’s snort) and ἐξέβαλεν, “sent him away,” at once (1:43). Mark used that same verb in the same form one paragraph earlier for Jesus casting demons out of the possessed (ἐξέβαλεν, 1:34), and it shares its root with the verb for the Spirit driving Jesus into the wilderness at the start of the chapter (ἐκβάλλει, 1:12). The man who had once been cast out of his community is now cast out again, not because he is unclean, but because he has been made clean and can return to his family and former life.

But Jesus does not send the leper away without instruction. He tells him to show himself to the priest and “offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them” (1:44). Jesus is referring to the rite of Leviticus 14 that begins outside the camp with the blood of one bird and the release of a second, and ends, on the eighth day, with further sacrifices before the man is restored to full standing in the community. Jesus heals apart from the law, but he sends the man to be verified by it rather than around it.

The irony lands in the closing verse. Leviticus said the leprous man’s dwelling had to be outside the camp (13:46). Once healed, this man disobeys, talks freely, and spreads the news, and it is Jesus who can no longer enter a town openly but stays in desolate places (1:45). Jesus, not surprisingly given the whole shape of Mark’s Gospel, now takes the place of this leper as he lives in desolate places.

The Torn Heavens (1:9–11)

When Jesus comes up out of the water, Mark describes what follows with a word no other evangelist uses:

Immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10–11).

Matthew and Luke both say the heavens were “opened” (ἀνοίγω). Mark says they were “torn” (σχίζω). All three Gospels are alluding to the same text, but Mark’s allusion is more accurate to the Hebrew.

At the end of Isaiah 63, Israel has concluded that God has abandoned them entirely. The final words of the chapter land like a statement of resignation:

We have become like those over whom you have never ruled, like those who are not called by your name (63:19).

Then the prayer breaks open:

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence (64:1).

The Hebrew verb is qāra’ — to tear, to rend. The Greek translators rendered it with ἀνοίγω, which may be why Matthew and Luke read as they do, or they may be flattening Mark’s dramatic verb choice. Either way, Mark clearly appears to be reaching back to the Hebrew when he uses σχίζω. The heavens are torn open. Isaiah’s prayer has been answered.

The Spirit descends like a dove, and then the voice from heaven speaks in a composite citation. “You are my Son” draws from Psalm 2:7, the coronation language spoken to the Davidic king on the day of his installation. “With you I am well pleased” (ἐν σοὶ εὐδόκησα) echoes Isaiah 42:1, where the servant is identified as the one on whom God’s Spirit rests and in whom God delights. The royal king and the Isaianic servant are identified as the same person: Jesus of Nazareth.

σχίζω will appear only once more in Mark. At the crucifixion, the temple veil is torn (15:38). The word frames the entire Gospel: the heavens torn at the baptism, the veil torn at the cross. What the baptism announces, the cross delivers.

January 10, 2026 (The Baptism of Christ)

Because today is the First Sunday of Epiphany, which is the traditional Sunday in the West for celebrating the baptism of Jesus, we will take a break from our usual reading sequence. Today, I want us to look at an account of Jesus’ baptism. Mark is my favorite Gospel, so today’s reading is from Mark 1. Since I previously preached on the baptism of Christ (though not specifically from Mark’s Gospel), I’ll link to the sermon here rather than repeat what I already discussed.

On the Way

The Beloved, Baptized Son

Read more

8 months ago · Fr. J. Michael Strachan, PhD

Still, I want to share something with you, so here’s an interesting fact. In the Western Church, the Feast of Epiphany emphasizes the revelation of Christ to the Magi from the East. However, in the Eastern Church, the focus is on the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God during his baptism. In fact, in the East, Epiphany is sometimes called “Theophany.” On one hand, we have the revelation to the Gentiles; on the other, the revelation of Jesus’s divinity.

The Western tradition treats this difference by always celebrating the baptism of Christ on the first Sunday after Epiphany, keeping the two closely linked. Both events are explicitly mentioned (along with the miracle at Cana) in our eucharistic prayer during the season of Epiphany. Essentially, instead of choosing one over the other, we celebrate both!

A Link to Matthew 28 (ESV)

Where’s the Body? (28:11–15)

While the women are still on their way to tell the disciples what they have seen, Matthew turns his attention back to the tomb they have just left. Some of the guards go into the city, not to Pilate, who assigned them, but to the chief priests, who had asked Pilate for their service in the first place (27:62–65).

The chief priests assemble with the elders and, in Matthew’s own phrase, have “taken counsel” (28:12). He has used this phrase twice before. The chief priests and elders “took counsel against Jesus to put him to death” (27:1), then handed him to Pilate. After Judas hanged himself, they “took counsel” again and bought a potter’s field with his returned silver (27:7). Now, a few verses after the resurrection, the same leaders take counsel a third time, and they use again the same tool they used on Judas two chapters earlier (26:15). Money bought Jesus’s death. Now it is spent trying to bury the fact that he did not stay dead.

The story itself has an obvious hole. Saying “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep” (28:13) requires sleeping men to testify to what happened while they were unconscious. The priests seem to know this will not hold up on its own, so they offer to bribe Pilate if needed:

“If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble” (28:14).

Roman soldiers who failed at their post rarely got a second chance. For example, Herod had the sentries who lost Peter put to death for exactly this kind of failure (Acts 12:19).

Matthew adds one more line, and it is an odd one for a Gospel writer to volunteer: “this story has been spread among the Jews to this day” (28:15). Matthew is aware of this objection to the resurrection, and presumably he knows some of his readers are too. The simplest thing for anyone who wanted to disprove the resurrection to do would have been to produce Jesus’ body. But they couldn’t. And when they couldn’t, they made up a story to explain why: his disciples took him even though there were armed guards at his tomb. But armed guards and a bag of money don’t change the simple truth. They couldn’t produce a body because that body had risen from the dead.

Emmanuel through the Spirit (28:20)

Matthew’s Gospel ends with a promise that creates an obvious problem. Jesus stands before his disciples on a Galilean mountain, commissions them to make disciples of all nations, and closes with this:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (28:20)

Then the narrative ends.

Matthew has no account of the Ascension nor a description of the Spirit’s descent. If you knew the story of Jesus only from the Gospel of Matthew, you would have the impression that the resurrected Christ remained with his disciples on earth forever. That is, after all, what Jesus says at the end of the book.

But of course, that’s not what happened. Jesus said, “I am with you always,” and then he left.

Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, and he left his disciples behind.

That fact would be a theological problem if it weren’t for Pentecost. Pentecost is the answer to the question, “How is Christ with us always if he’s in heaven and we’re still here on earth?”

When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, he poured out the Holy Spirit on his disciples (Acts 2:1-4). And while we rightly say that the Holy Spirit is a Person of the Trinity distinct from God the Son, we also confess (using the filioque clause) that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, yes, but he is also the Spirit of the Son. He proceeds from both of them, and this is consistent with the witness of the New Testament.

Paul identifies the Spirit as “the Spirit of his Son” by whom we cry, “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6). He also refers to “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:19), while Luke calls him “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ just as much as he is the Spirit of the Father.

When Jesus says, “I will be with you always” and then leaves, he doesn’t abandon us forever. Ten days after the Ascension, Jesus poured out his own Spirit on his people. This is how Christ chose to be with us always, not by remaining bodily and keeping the Spirit to himself, but by ascending to heaven and pouring out his Holy Spirit into the life of every believer.

Jesus was Emmanuel bodily. He is now Emmanuel through his Holy Spirit.

All Authority Has Been Given to Me (28:16–20)

Matthew does not end quietly. The final scene of his Gospel takes place on a mountain in Galilee, where the risen Jesus stands before his disciples and makes a declaration that would have stopped any Jewish reader in their tracks:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18).

Those words echo a vision from the book of Daniel, where the prophet sees “one like a son of man” approaching the Ancient of Days on the clouds of heaven:

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away. (Dan 7:14)

Matthew has been building toward this moment. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man — the figure Daniel saw receiving cosmic authority from God himself. Now, standing on the other side of the cross and empty tomb, Jesus declares that the vision has been fulfilled. The dominion has been given. The enthronement has occurred. What Daniel saw in a night vision, the disciples are witnessing in a Galilean morning.

This truth is crucial for understanding what comes next. The claim of authority isn’t just an introduction — it’s the basis. Since all authority has been bestowed upon him, Jesus proceeds:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt 28:19–20a).

The “therefore” carries significant theological weight. Jesus doesn’t present the Great Commission as a hurried plea or a moral duty hanging in the air. Instead, he presents it as the result of a completed reality—mission springs from enthronement.

It also influences how we understand authority itself. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say all authority has been given to the Scriptures his followers will write or to the Church they will build.

Whatever authority the Bible or the Church has is real, but it is secondary — derived from Jesus, accountable to Jesus, and subject to correction by Jesus.

The Great Commission, then, is not an errand we undertake on our own initiative. It is participation in the ongoing reign of the one to whom all authority has already been granted. We do not go because the need is urgent, although it is. We go because the King has spoken.

A Link to Matthew 27 (ESV)

As the Lord Directed Me (27:7–10)

Judas is dead by his own hand, and the chief priests are left with thirty pieces of silver they cannot use.

“It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money” (27:6).

The men guarding the temple’s holy fund are scrupulous about it even now, even in the face of their own guilt. Blood money is not something you deposit; it is something you get rid of.

So they buy a field from a potter and turn it into a burial ground for foreigners (27:7). The field receives a name that outlives the transaction: “the Field of Blood,” a name Matthew says has stuck “to this day” (27:8).

Matthew says the whole transaction fulfills a word attributed to the prophet Jeremiah:

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

However, the quotation is not found in Jeremiah. It belongs to Zechariah, where a rejected shepherd’s wages, thirty pieces of silver, are thrown into the Lord’s house, to the potter (Zech 11:12–13).

Matthew appears to have the quotation right and the prophet wrong, until you look at what actually happens in his own story: a potter, a field bought with silver, and a burial ground. Zechariah's oracle has the potter and the silver, but no field and no burial ground. Those two missing pieces come from Jeremiah: a field bought with silver weighed out in payment (Jer 32:6–9), and a valley outside Jerusalem pressed into service as a burial ground because there is no room left to bury the dead (Jer 19:6, 11). Jeremiah also gives the potter a scene of his own, at his wheel, reworking what he is making (Jer 18:2–4), which is not needed to fill a gap in Zechariah but strengthens the same association.

Matthew's field, bought with blood money and turned into a grave for outsiders, is Jeremiah's valley. Zechariah supplies the sentence Matthew quotes; Jeremiah supplies the story that sentence is quoted into. Matthew names the prophet who explains what the field became, not the one whose words he borrows.

The quotation Matthew gives them ends with the potter’s own claim that the silver was given for the field at the Lord’s direction. The priests thought they were disposing of a problem no one would trace back to them. Scripture says they were following directions they didn’t know they had received. Everything that happened during Holy Week happened because it was the Lord’s plan.

When the Graves Were Opened (27:51–53)

Ezekiel saw a valley full of bones. Dry, scattered, lifeless: Israel in exile, the covenant people cut off from their land and from their God. The vision was not primarily about individual survival after death; it was about the end of exile. “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” God tells the prophet. “They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off’” (37:11). And then Yahweh speaks:

“Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel” (37:12).

The Septuagint is precise: “I will open your graves” (ἀνοίγω... τὰ μνήματα) and bring you up from them. Opening the graves and returning the people to the land are one and the same act. Resurrection, in Ezekiel’s vision, is the end of exile.

Matthew 27 brings that promise into sudden focus. When Jesus breathed his last, the earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs were opened: τὰ μνημεῖα ἀνεῴχθησαν (27:52). The language and imagery are Ezekiel’s, now unfolding in Jerusalem at the foot of the cross.

Matthew is precise about the timing. The tombs opened at the moment of Jesus’s death, but “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (27:52–53). The cross opens the graves; the resurrection is the moment they emerge. Death is broken at Golgotha, but the new creation begins to move through the empty tomb three days later.

The “saints” (οἱ ἅγιοι, “the holy ones”) who appear in Jerusalem are the firstfruits of Ezekiel’s promise: faithful Israel raised, returned, walking in the city. Their appearance to “many” (ἐνεφανίσθησαν πολλοῖς) carries the vocabulary Matthew uses elsewhere for resurrection appearances. They are witnesses to what has begun.

We tend to treat resurrection as a distant promise, a consolation reserved for the future. Matthew 27 will not allow that. The bones have already been breathed into. The exile has ended. The tomb that opened at Golgotha is the fissure through which the new creation has already begun to pour. To live in Christ is to live already on the other side of that opening.

Remorse is Not Repentance (27:3–10)

Judas realized something had gone terribly wrong. When he saw that Jesus had been condemned, Matthew tells us he “changed his mind” and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying:

“I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt 27:4).

It’s a confession, of sorts. It’s grief, of sorts. But Matthew’s word choice reveals something important about what it is not.

The word Matthew uses for Judas’s response is μεταμέλομαι (metamelomai) — a word that means to regret, to feel remorse, to wish things had gone differently. It is not the word μετανοέω (metanoeō), which appears throughout the New Testament for genuine repentance — a turning of the whole self away from sin and toward God. Judas feels the weight of what he has done. He even speaks the truth about Jesus’s innocence. But his grief turns inward rather than outward, toward despair rather than toward the one he has betrayed.

The contrast with Peter is revealing. Peter also fails Jesus terribly in the previous chapter, denying him three times with curses and oaths (26:69–75). Matthew does not use metanoeō for Peter here either. But Peter’s story does not end in a field bought with blood money. Something in Peter reaches outward, toward grace, toward restoration — the path that metanoeō describes.

Lent is a season meant to encourage this kind of self-examination. It doesn’t ask whether we feel guilty about our sins — most of us do, at least at times. It questions whether our sorrow over sin leads us toward God or turns inward on itself. Remorse alone can become a kind of prison, a fixation on our failure that, paradoxically, keeps us focused on ourselves rather than on the one who forgives.

The difference between Judas and Peter is not the severity of their sin but the direction of their sorrow

A Link to Matthew 26 (ESV)

I Will Strike the Shepherd (26:31–35)

Walking toward the Mount of Olives, Jesus tells the Twelve what this night will bring.

You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” (Matt 26:31).

The quotation is from Zechariah 13:7, and Matthew’s version of it contains a significant change.

In both the Hebrew and the Greek Old Testament, the command to strike is addressed to someone else. The Lord calls out, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd... strike the shepherd” (Zech 13:7). Here it is an order given to the sword itself, or presumably to the person bearing the sword. Jesus does not cite it this way. He quotes the passage in the first person, future tense: “I will strike.” The command once addressed to the sword becomes a declaration in the mouth of God himself. The shepherd is not struck by happenstance, by the crowd that will arrive with clubs, or even by Judas’s arrangement with the chief priests. The God who commands the sword is the one who will strike the Shepherd.

This language is that of punishment. Jesus is taking Israel’s (and the world’s) punishment on himself, and then the sheep “will be scattered.” Jesus uses the same construction for what will happen to the Twelve: “you will all fall away.” The disciples will not simply fail on their own; they will be caught up in the same action that strikes the shepherd.

Peter cannot hear this as anything but an insult to his loyalty.

“Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away” (Matt 26:33).

Jesus answers with a very specific prediction.

“Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times” (26:34).

Peter insists again, and so do the rest (26:35). None of them yet understand that the coming scattering is about a lack of resolve. God will strike, and the sheep will scatter.

Jesus does not leave the Twelve with no hope. Zechariah’s oracle knew that one day the scattered flock would be regathered and once more called “my people” (Zech 13:9). So Jesus says:

But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. (v. 32)

The shepherd struck down will not stay that way forever. The same God who struck him for the sake of the whole world will raise him up, and he will gather the flock back together.

The Sword and the Servant (26:47–56)

Isaiah 53 depicts a figure who has every reason to resist but chooses not to.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter... so he opened not his mouth” (Isa 53:7).

The servant’s silence reflects not helplessness but vocation. Yahweh himself designs the servant’s journey.

“It was the will of the LORD to crush him” (53:10).

Matthew has already linked Jesus to this servant before the passion begins. At 8:17, citing Isaiah 53:4 in a direct fulfillment formula, Matthew provides his readers with the interpretive key: the servant’s surrender, when it happens, will be chosen rather than forced.

When the crowd arrives in Gethsemane with swords and clubs, the other Evangelists mention the sword, the severed ear, and a brief response from Jesus. Matthew includes all of this and goes further. Only Matthew preserves the three-part argument Jesus gives for why he does not resist, and it provides the most theologically clear statement of the passion’s logic among the four Gospels.

First:

“All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (v. 52).

Violence perpetuates itself; it solves nothing. Second:

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (v. 53).

A Roman legion numbered about 6,000 soldiers, and a single angel defeated 185,000 Assyrian troops in one night (2 Kgs 19:35). What Jesus describes is an overwhelming force, which is available but intentionally not used. Third:

“But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (v. 54).

The Greek δεῖ (dei, “it must”) indicates divine necessity. The servant’s journey demands his surrender.

Peter draws his sword in a fundamental misunderstanding of the servant’s vocation. When the disciples run away and Matthew records that “all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled” (v. 56), he is not just noting an incidental detail. He is completing the interpretive loop that started at 8:17.

The church has not stopped reaching for Peter’s sword. We reach for it whenever we imagine the kingdom advances by force, whether political, social, or physical. Jesus had the power to prevent his arrest and chose not to use it. The sword is never the way of the cross.

Promise Kept (26:26-29)

Matthew has been working toward this moment since the first chapter. When the angel announced the birth of Jesus, he declared:

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Twenty-six chapters later, Jesus himself gathers with his disciples in an upper room, takes the cup, and says something found in no other account of the Last Supper — not in Mark, not in Luke, and not in Paul’s independent tradition in 1 Cor. 11:23–25.

“For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).

Mark and Luke include the words of institution, but neither Evangelist adds “for the forgiveness of sins.” Neither does Paul. Matthew alone includes those four words — and they are not accidental. They close a loop that has been open since the angel’s announcement before Jesus’ birth. The name and the mission have finally converged at the table.

The phrase also carries the weight of Israel’s deepest hope. When Jeremiah described the coming new covenant, he did not end with law written on hearts or the knowledge of God spreading among the people — though he promised both. He ended with this: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). Forgiveness was the covenant’s goal. Matthew presents Jesus as the one who arrives there, and the language Jesus uses is intentionally sacrificial. Blood poured out for many echoes the Levitical offerings and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Forgiveness comes not despite sacrifice but through it, and here Jesus himself is both the priest and the offering (Heb. 7:27).

This scene is one of those moments where Matthew’s careful structure becomes clear to an attentive reader. The Gospel isn’t just a collection of Jesus’s teachings and miracles loosely arranged around a passion narrative. Matthew is making a case. He presents Jesus as the one who will save his people from their sins, and he makes sure the reader doesn’t forget it. At the table, on the night before the crucifixion, Jesus explains what his death achieves. The forgiveness of sins isn’t a side note to the passion — it is its main purpose.

As you approach the Lord’s Table, reflect on what it means to receive the cup that Jesus himself explained. He did not leave the meaning unclear. The blood of the covenant is poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. The promise made before his birth is kept in the upper room.

A Link to Matthew 25 (ESV)

Readiness (25:1–13)

Jesus sets the parable of the ten virgins at a specific moment in a typical first-century Jewish wedding. On the wedding day itself, the bridegroom went first to the bride’s family to complete the marriage settlement, a negotiation custom expected to run long. A father who haggled over the terms was thought to be paying his daughter a compliment, showing how reluctant he was to part with her. Only after the settlement was concluded did the groom bring his bride back to his own household for the feast, arriving after dark behind a procession of torches. The ten virgins are that escort, waiting for word that the bridegroom is on his way.

What they carry are more like torches, oil-soaked poles built for a night procession, not the small clay lamps of a house. Torches burn oil fast, and no one could say in advance how long the negotiations at the bride’s house would run. That is the difference between the five wise and the five foolish virgins: the wise packed extra oil for a wait of unknown length, and the foolish did not (25:1–4).

All ten grow drowsy and fall asleep before midnight (25:5), and Jesus faults none of them for it. When the cry goes up, “Here is the bridegroom” (25:6), the foolish find their torches failing, and the wise refuse to share. That refusal is not selfishness. Dividing five torches’ worth of oil among ten would have left no one with enough light to see the bridegroom in. Sending the foolish to find a dealer at midnight was not a real solution either, since no merchant kept his shop open at that hour, and the wise know it.

While the foolish virgins are gone, the bridegroom arrives, and those who are ready go in with him. The door is shut (25:10). Once the wedding party was inside, the house was sealed for the feast, and a virgin arriving afterward with no torch could no longer be distinguished from an intruder, so the bridegroom answers, “I do not know you” (25:12).

“Watch therefore” (25:13) is easy to misread as a summons to stay awake, but the wise virgins slept as soundly as the foolish did. What the parable presses on us is the temptation to treat readiness as something we can improvise once the hour is obviously upon us: more earnest prayer, more thorough repentance, closer attention to Christ, all promised for later. The hour when we need to be most ready rarely announces itself in advance. What we fail to store up in the ordinary days cannot be bought or borrowed once the moment of need arrives.

Entrusted with Talents (25:14–30)

The parable of the talents follows immediately after the parable of the ten virgins, and the two are meant to be read together. The first parable raised the question of who would be ready when the bridegroom arrived; this one asks what the servants will have done in the meantime. The delay that shaped the first parable reappears here as a journey, and the same question is asked from a different perspective.

The departure in verse 14 (ἀποδημῶν, “going on a journey”) reflects a tradition deeply rooted in Second Temple Jewish memory. Since Ezekiel’s visions of the divine glory leaving the temple at the start of the exile (Ezek 10–11), Israel had been waiting for YHWH’s return to Zion. The parable is set in that context: the master has entrusted his property to his servants and will return to settle accounts.

The distribution in verse 15 is uneven but proportional. Each servant gets according to their own ability. The first two servants trade and double what they received. The third digs a hole and hides (ἔκρυψεν) his talent in the ground.

That verb is important. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told these same disciples: “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden (κρυβῆναι)” (5:14). What God had entrusted to Israel, and now to the disciples, was never meant to be concealed. Isaiah had framed the mandate generations earlier:

“I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:6).

The lamp belongs on the stand. The talent belongs in the world. The third servant’s act of preservation is, by the logic of the calling, an act of sabotage.

This servant’s explanation in verse 25 is revealing. He did not squander the talent; he kept it intact. His stated reason is fear. He said the master was a hard man, harvesting where he had not planted, and so he hid the talent rather than risk losing it. The master does not dispute the characterization. He turns it back on the servant: if you knew I was that demanding, that is all the more reason to have done something. The judgment falls not on a wrong theology but on the inaction that theology was used to justify.

The talent taken from him is given to the one who already has ten. What is hoarded does not last; it is redistributed to those who multiply what they are given. To hide what the master entrusts is not caution; it is loss.

The parable does not focus on how much you have been given. The servant who doubled two talents received the same praise as the one who doubled five. What it emphasizes is simpler and more serious: the talents given by the master were meant to be used in the world, and burying them is not wise. The servant who buried his talents was cast into outer darkness. What he feared most happened to him, and the talent he refused to take a risk with was taken away.

As we once again wait for God, let’s make sure we aren’t burying the gifts he’s given us, but instead investing them in the world for the good and growth of his kingdom.

The Hidden Christ (25:31–46)

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a name: Immanuel, “God with us” (1:23). It ends with a promise: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20). Between these two statements, Matthew 25 presents a question that every reader must answer — where, exactly, is Jesus present in the world right now?

The parable of the sheep and the goats provides a startling answer. When the Son of Man sits on his throne and separates the nations, the standard of judgment turns out to be surprisingly ordinary: food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, hospitality for the stranger, clothing for the naked, companionship for the sick and imprisoned. The righteous are confused. “Lord, when did we see you?” (v. 37). The guilty ask the same question (v. 44). Neither group realized what they were doing — or failing to do.

That double surprise is the key to understanding verse 40. Some scholars argue that “the least of these my brothers” (τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων) specifically refers to Jesus’s disciples—missionaries who spread the gospel into hostile territory and relied entirely on the hospitality of strangers. Matthew does use ἀδελφοί this way elsewhere, and the mission discourse of chapter 10 makes receiving Jesus’s messengers the same as receiving Jesus himself. That is a consistent interpretation. But it clashes with the scene Matthew actually describes. If the nations were being judged by how they treated identifiable Christian missionaries, the universal shock of both groups wouldn’t make much sense. They would know exactly who those missionaries were and what was at stake in accepting or rejecting them.

The better reading takes that surprise seriously. Jesus identifies himself with the poor and suffering of the world in a way that goes beyond the community of disciples. The hidden presence of Christ in the vulnerable neighbor is not a metaphor. It is the logic of the Incarnation extended to every encounter with human suffering. Immanuel did not come to be with us in comfort and then depart. He came to dwell where human beings are most exposed — in hunger, in exile, in illness, in chains — and he remains there.

This reality changes the texture of ordinary life. Every act of mercy is an encounter with the living Christ, whether the giver knows it or not. The question Matthew 25 presses upon the reader is not whether you have said the right words or held the right beliefs, but whether you have learned to see Christ in the needy and vulnerable.

A Link to Matthew 24 (ESV)

Let the Reader Understand (24:15–22)

Jesus has just told his disciples that the temple will fall and that not one stone will be left upon another (24:2). They then ask him for a sign (24:3). In the middle of his answer, he gives them one:

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains (24:15–16).

Mark records this same warning without naming Daniel. He writes only “the abomination of desolation” and leaves the source unstated (Mark 13:14). Matthew adds the attribution himself, and the Greek is the same formula he uses elsewhere for a marked Old Testament citation: τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ ... τοῦ προφήτου (to rhēthen dia ... tou prophētou), “that which was spoken through ... the prophet” (Matt 2:17; 3:3).

Daniel’s original context is important. The phrase τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (to bdelygma tēs erēmōseōs), “the abomination of desolation” (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11), described the desecration of the Jerusalem temple in 167 BC, when Antiochus Epiphanes set up a pagan altar over the altar of burnt offering and stopped the daily sacrifice. Any literate Jew in Jesus’s audience would have recognized the reference at once: temple defilement leading to national catastrophe, survived only by those who read the sign correctly and acted on it. Jesus tells his disciples that the pattern is about to repeat, and that it is again Jerusalem’s own house that stands under judgment (cf. 23:38).

There is a question of whether “let the reader understand” is an editorial aside or part of what Jesus said. If the latter, the “reader” is the reader of the book of Daniel. If the former, the “reader” could still be the reader of the book of Daniel or could refer to the reader of the Gospel. Some have theorized that those tasked with transporting and reading the Gospel aloud to the community were, at this point, to add commentary or information not included in the written text.

I tend to agree with the opinion that this is an editorial aside (although sometimes I vacillate). If so, then these words are a warning to those still living in Judea of what was to come, and, for what it’s worth, suggest an earlier date for the writing of Matthew’s Gospel than is typically assumed. The conventional dating of Matthew’s Gospel makes such a warning to Matthew’s readers basically irrelevant since the historical event has already passed by at least a decade.

What follows is concrete and unglamorous, but makes abundantly clear that this discourse is not about the end of the world but about a national catastrophe. The audience is warned to flee without going back for a coat (24:17–18) and to pray that the flight does not fall in winter or on a Sabbath, when travel would be hardest (24:20).

Verse 21 then borrows Daniel’s own language for what comes next: “great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be,” echoing Daniel 12:1’s “time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation.” Jesus takes the vocabulary of Israel’s worst national catastrophe and applies it not to the end of the world but to the end of the temple standing in front of him.

Much bad eschatology has developed from reading this chapter and its parallels apart from their historical context and without due attention to the Old Testament language from which Jesus is borrowing. Fleeing to the mountains won’t help anyone escape the end of the space-time universe. But it would help someone escape the destruction of a city, and that’s exactly what Jesus is predicting throughout this chapter.

The Coming of the Son of Man (24:30)

The source of Jesus’s language in Matthew 24:30 is the night vision in Daniel 7. Four beasts emerge from the sea; four empires have oppressed God's people. Then the scene shifts:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him” (Dan 7:13).

The direction of the movement matters. In Daniel, the one like a son of man does not descend to earth; he ascends to the divine throne room. The movement is upward, and the outcome is enthronement: dominion, glory, and an everlasting kingdom are given to him before the Ancient of Days (7:14). When the angel interprets the vision (7:26–27), the transfer of power is complete: the fourth beast is destroyed, and the kingdom passes to the people of the Most High.

Matthew 24:30 places Jesus squarely inside this vision:

“Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt 24:30).

The Danielic background makes it clear that the coming of the Son of Man does not depict Jesus descending through the sky. The sign appears in heaven because it symbolizes a heavenly event: the condemned prophet's vindication before God’s own tribunal. The phrase “coming on the clouds” is Daniel’s way of describing the transfer of dominion from the empire to the Son of Man, and Jesus uses it in the same way.

But who is the “they” who will see? Matthew’s passion narrative provides the audience. At his trial, Jesus directly tells the high priest:

“From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt 26:64).

Jesus here conflates Daniel 7:13 with Psalm 110:1 (”Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”). The Psalm sits at the center of the argument, and its logic governs the entire passage: the coming of the Son of Man is the act by which God puts Jesus’s enemies under his feet. The “they” who will see the Son of Man coming in 24:30 are not the disciples; they are those who condemned Jesus, like the high priest.

The mourning that follows in 24:30 echoes Zechariah 12:10–12, where the tribes of the land mourn when they look on the one they have pierced. That is not the mourning of those awaiting rescue. It is the recognition of the guilty.

Matthew 24:30 is not, despite the numerous claims to the contrary, but about the second coming. It is about a heavenly verdict rendered in space and time within the generation standing before him.

This Generation Will Not Pass Away (ch. 24)

Matthew describes the disciples asking Jesus a question that reveals much more about their expectations than they realize.

“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt 24:3).

For centuries, readers have believed the disciples were asking about two separate events: the temple’s destruction and Jesus’s distant second coming. However, this misreads their question badly, as the parallel passages in Mark and Luke show.

The Greek word translated as “coming” is parousia, which means “presence” or “arrival.” Paul uses it throughout his letters in exactly this common sense. He mentions the parousia of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (1 Cor 16:17). He rejoices at the parousia of Titus (2 Cor 7:6–7). He compares his bodily parousia with his letters (2 Cor 10:10). The word did not have mystical overtones. It was the standard term for someone’s arrival, especially for the visit of a royal or official personage.

The disciples weren’t asking about Jesus floating down on a cloud at the end of time. They wanted to know when he would become king in Jerusalem. They had followed him to the holy city, expecting his coronation. Now he had just predicted that not one stone of the temple would be left upon another (Matt 24:2). Their question was simple: When will you actually take power?

More importantly, they believed all these events would occur simultaneously. In Second Temple Judaism, the destruction of the temple was linked to the end of the age (note: not the end of the world). The temple was viewed as the center of the cosmos, the place where heaven and earth met. How could it fall and the age continue as it had? The disciples thought that temple destruction, Jesus’s royal installation, and the end of the current evil age were all part of the same catastrophic event.

Jesus’s answer confirms the temple’s fall within their generation:

“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt 24:34).

The apocalyptic imagery that follows—“the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven” (Matt 24:29)—is not about the collapse of the space-time universe. This imagery is standard Old Testament language for massive political upheaval and the fall of great powers. When Isaiah and Ezekiel spoke of cosmic signs, they meant Babylon’s fall and Egypt’s defeat (Isa 13:10; Ezek 32:7–8). Jesus is using the same prophetic vocabulary. Jerusalem’s destruction will be an earth-shattering event in Israel’s story, the vindication of Jesus as the true prophet and Israel’s representative.

The disciples wanted to know when Jesus would come to power. His answer is both immediate and delayed in ways they could not imagine. The temple would fall within a generation, vindicating his prophetic ministry. But his true enthronement, his real parousia, would mean something far stranger than a military coup in Jerusalem. The question reveals how much they still had to learn about the kingdom they thought they understood.

A Link to Matthew 23 (ESV)

The Greatest Among You (23:1–12)

Jesus opens this chapter by affirming the teaching authority that the scribes and Pharisees already hold, but then he immediately turns to their conduct. He tells the crowds and disciples to do and observe whatever the scribes and Pharisees say, because they sit on Moses’ seat, the recognized place of authority for expounding the law (23:2–3). The seat carries the authority, whatever the character of the man in it. These men, Jesus says, “preach, but do not practice” (23:3).

Verse 4 makes the charge specific: they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on other people’s shoulders, keeping their own hands still. Verse 5 turns to display: they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their fringes, both objects drawn from the Torah itself. Moses told Israel to bind the words of the Lord as a sign on the hand and as frontlets between the eyes (Deut 6:8), and to make tassels on the corners of every garment, with a cord of blue on each, so the wearer would remember all the commandments of the Lord (Num 15:38–39). The command was intended to help God's people remember who he had commanded them to be. A lengthened fringe only changes what a crowd can see. The objects God gave Israel to remember him in private have become an advertisement for personal piety.

The rest of this section follows the same pattern: the religious leaders want the place of honor at feasts, the best seat in the synagogue, a bow and a title in the marketplace (23:6–7). Jesus answers with three commands, each pointing from a human title toward himself.

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ (23:8–10).

Jesus’ aim with these words (and please note that he often speaks in hyperbole) is not a change in vocabulary but a change of posture. Paul will call himself a father to the Corinthians a generation later. We refer to many people as “teacher” throughout our lives, and we certainly call our own father some version of the word “father.”

Jesus is naming titles often used to build hierarchical divisions among equals so that some stand over others by right of address rather than by service.

The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (23:11–12).

Those of us who carry titles in the church, clergy and vestry alike, should hear this passage first as an examination and only second as a warning about somebody else. The temptation runs deeper than the word “Father” attached to a name: it is the pleasure of being addressed that way, the quiet expectation of deference it produces, and the slow slide from serving a brotherhood into presiding over one.

From Abel to Zechariah (23:29–36)

The Hebrew Bible doesn’t end with Malachi. In the Jewish canonical order, the Ketuvim (the Writings) concludes with 2 Chronicles. That order is important for what Jesus says in v. 35.

The woe in verse 29 begins with an accusation that, on the surface, appears to be misplaced praise. The scribes and Pharisees build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. They claim that if they had lived in their ancestors’ time, they would not have shed the prophets’ blood. Jesus turns their own words against them.

“Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” (23:31–32).

The verb πληρόω (plēroō), which is usually translated as “fulfill,” is correctly rendered here as “fill up.” I’ve previously discussed Jesus “filling full” the OT. Now it’s the scribes’ and the Pharisees’ turn. They also have a role in the story to “fill up” or “fill full” as well.

The indictment then reaches its full scope:

“...so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (23:35).

Abel’s blood is the first in Scripture crying out for justice. When Cain killed his brother, Yahweh told him:

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10).

Innocent blood does not simply disappear. It calls out to God for justice.

Zechariah marks the other end of the span. The Zechariah killed between the sanctuary and the altar is almost certainly the one described in 2 Chronicles 24:20–21: a priest who stood in the court of the temple and rebuked Israel for forsaking Yahweh, only to be stoned at the king’s command in that same court. His dying words were:

“May the LORD see and avenge!” (2 Chr 24:22).

Again, Righteous blood, once shed, does not go silent. (That’s a sobering thought for another time.)

Since Chronicles closes the Hebrew canon, “from Abel to Zechariah” covers the entire biblical story. Jesus is making a canonical point: the history of Scripture, from beginning to end, is about those who spoke for God being silenced by those claiming to represent him. The scribes and Pharisees standing before him bring that history to its tragic climax.

Every generation honors the prophets it did not have to live with. We build memorials to voices we would have rejected at the moment. The question Matthew 23 raises is not whether we venerate the prophets of the past, but whether we are willing to hear the living Word that challenges us now.

When Yahweh Returns to His Temple (23:1–39)

Israel’s prophets promised that Yahweh would one day return to Zion. Malachi envisioned the Lord suddenly coming to his temple, but warned that his arrival would bring judgment:

“Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal 3:2).

Ezekiel foresaw the glory of the Lord returning to a purified temple (Ezek 43:1-5). The hope sustained Israel through exile and occupation. One day, God would come back to his city and his house.

Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfillment of this hope, but the homecoming is not what Israel’s leaders expected. Yahweh has returned to Zion, entered his temple, and now renders his verdict. Matthew 23 records the divine audit. The seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees echo the covenant curse formulas of Deuteronomy 28 and later prophetic indictments. Jesus speaks with authority that transcends even Moses. He prosecutes those who were supposed to shepherd his people.

The charges are devastating. The religious leaders shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces (Matt 23:13). They strain out gnats while swallowing camels (23:24). They clean the outside of the cup while remaining full of greed and self-indulgence (23:25). They are whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the exterior but full of dead bones within (23:27). These are not merely ethical failures. They represent a fundamental betrayal of Israel’s covenant calling.

What makes this passage uniquely powerful is how the divine prosecutor’s voice breaks with grief.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (23:37).

Yahweh himself laments over his beloved city. The maternal imagery reveals the depth of divine longing. God came to gather his people, but they refused his embrace.

The pronouncement that follows is therefore both judgment and heartbreak.

“See, your house is left to you desolate” (23:38).

The house is the temple, the dwelling place God chose for his name. But now the Lord who has returned to his house will depart from it. The glory is leaving, echoing Ezekiel’s vision of God’s presence abandoning the first temple before its destruction (Ezek 10–11). Jesus then quotes Psalm 118:26:

“You will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matt 23:39).

The crowds shouted these words at his triumphal entry (21:9), but now they point to a future moment of judgment when all will acknowledge who he truly is.

His departure sets the stage for Matthew 24. As Jesus leaves the temple, his disciples marvel at the buildings. His response confirms what the lament implied:

“There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:2).

Yahweh returned to Zion, found it wanting, and now withdraws his presence again. The consequences will be catastrophic.

A Link to Matthew 22 (ESV)

Called and Chosen (22:1–14)

Jesus tells a story about a king who gives a wedding feast for his son and sends servants to summon those already invited. They will not come. A second summons adds a detail: the meal is ready to be served.

“I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready” (22:4).

The verb behind “I have prepared,” ἡτοίμακα (hētoimaka), is in the perfect tense; the preparation is complete, its effect reaching into the present moment of the invitation.

That same verb, and the word for the invited guests beside it, appear together in one other place in Israel’s scriptures. Zephaniah announces that the day of the LORD is near and adds, “the LORD has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests” (Zeph 1:7). The Greek behind that verse uses ἡτοίμακεν (hētoimaken), the identical perfect tense on the king’s lips in Matthew, and κλητούς (klētous), built from the same root as κεκλημένους, Matthew’s word for “those invited” throughout the parable (22:3, 4, 8). Zephaniah’s day of judgment falls on officials and on “all who array themselves in foreign attire” (Zeph 1:8). Matthew’s feast borrows that structure: the meal is ready, and the refusal will not be overlooked.

The guests do not merely decline. Some go back to the farm and to business, and the rest seize the king’s servants and kill them (22:5–6). The king answers in kind, destroying the murderers and burning their city (22:7). The verdict is the same as that in the parable of the wicked tenants where the vineyard is let out to others (21:41, 43). The burning city is Jerusalem’s future. The invitation widens rather than closing: servants go into the roads and gather “both bad and good,” until the hall is full (22:9–10).

But the width of the invitation is not the last word. The king finds a guest not dressed for the wedding, οὐκ ἐνδεδυμένον ἔνδυμα γάμου (22:11). Zephaniah singled out for the same day of judgment those “clothed in foreign garments,” ἐνδεδυμένους ἐνδύματα ἀλλότρια (Zeph 1:8), the same word for “clothed” and the same word for “garment” in both texts. Being gathered into the hall and being dressed for what happens inside it are not the same thing. The man has nothing to say and is cast out (22:12–13).

The closing line gives the parable its shape: “For many are called, but few are chosen” (22:14). The two are not the same thing. Some will try to enter the kingdom trusting in their own righteousness (as the prayer of humble access says). But those who are chosen will enter the great feast covered in the divine mercy of God. That is the garment that we all must wear.

The Things That Are God’s (22:15–22)

Genesis begins with a statement that sets Israel apart from all surrounding cultures: human beings are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27). The Hebrew word is tselem (“image, likeness”), and the LXX translates it as εἰκών (eikōn). In the ancient Near East, images of gods and kings were not just decoration; they symbolized the presence and authority of deities and rulers. Egypt and Mesopotamia viewed the king as the image of the deity, carrying divine authority in the world. Israel’s scriptures democratize this idea: not just the king, but every human being bears that image.

That tradition stands behind one of the questions Jesus asks in the Temple.

The Pharisees and Herodians, enemies united by their goal of trapping him, pose what seems to be an unanswerable question: is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? If he answers yes, he risks alienating Jewish nationalists; if he answers no, he risks arrest. Jesus calls them hypocrites (ὑποκριταί) before giving any answer, which is Matthew’s unique touch. Then he asks them to produce the coin used for the tax. They bring a denarius, the Roman tribute coin bearing Caesar’s image.

Jesus asks a question of his own:

“Whose image and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (22:20–21).

The Greek word for “image” is εἰκών, the same term used in Genesis 1:26–27 in the LXX. The coin bears Caesar’s εἰκών and belongs to Caesar. Human beings bear God’s εἰκών. This logic goes beyond the coin: give Caesar what bears his image, and give God what bears his, which is the total human being.

Jesus completely reframes the question. The Pharisees asked about tribute, but he responds with a more probing question: to whom do you belong?

We often pay close attention to the first half of Jesus’s reply while giving the second half much less thought. We understand what to render to Caesar. The more important question is whether we are offering our full selves to God as his image bearers. It’s possible to structure your entire life around earthly responsibilities, ambitions, and approval, and call it responsible living. But the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears Caesar’s image. Everything that bears God’s image rightfully and completely belongs to God.

David’s Lord (22:41–46)

Matthew carefully arranges the final days of Jesus’s Jerusalem ministry as a series of confrontations. The religious authorities try to trap him with questions about taxes, resurrection, and the law. Jesus answers each challenge skillfully. Then he asks his own question, leaving them completely silent.

The question involves Psalm 110. This detail is more important than most people realize. Psalm 110 is the most quoted or alluded to Old Testament chapter in the entire New Testament. The early church repeatedly turned to this psalm to understand who Jesus is and what he is doing now.

Jesus quotes the opening verse:

The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” (Matt. 22:44).

Then he asks:

“If David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt. 22:45).

The riddle compels its listeners to understand what the psalm reveals. Yahweh speaks to someone whom David addresses as “my Lord.” If this psalm is messianic, and Jesus and his contemporaries interpreted it as such, then David acknowledges the Messiah as his Lord. A king does not call his descendant Lord. The opposite happens: sons honor their fathers, and descendants honor their ancestors. Yet here is David, the greatest king in Israel’s history, calling the Messiah his Lord.

The riddle shows that the Messiah goes beyond human lineage. Yes, he is from David’s line. Matthew has carefully traced that genealogy in his opening chapter. But David’s son is also David’s Lord. He has an authority and status that surpasses royal inheritance.

The image from Psalm 110 depicts enthronement. Yahweh invites this Lord to sit at his right hand, the position of ultimate authority. He waits while God defeats his enemies. He rules from the heavenly throne.

Matthew returns to this image at the very end of his Gospel. The crucified and risen Jesus declares:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18).

The person who posed the riddle now says it has been fulfilled. He sits enthroned at God’s right hand.

The answer to the riddle changes how we interpret everything that follows in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus does not go to the cross as a defeated prophet. He goes as the enthroned Lord whose enemies will be put under his feet. The passion is not the end of his authority but the journey through which that authority is revealed and exercised.

No one could answer the riddle (Matt. 22:46). The answer stood before them. David’s Lord had come.

A Link to Matthew 21 (ESV)

The Fig Tree & This Mountain (21:18–22)

Mark spreads the fig tree scene over two mornings, with the temple action sandwiched between the cursing and the discovery of the withered tree the next day (Mark 11:12–14, 20–21). Matthew collapses the whole incident into a single moment: the tree withers “at once” while Jesus is still standing there (21:19–20), and the whole scene follows immediately after the cleaning of the temple (21:12–17).

It’s important to understand the geography. Jesus is walking from Bethany, and the path carries him back across the Mount of Olives and down into the city with the temple mount rising across the valley the whole way.

When Jesus tells the disciples that faith could say to “this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea’” (21:21), the demonstrative is critical. “This mountain” points at something specific and in view, not a generic illustration about any regular mountain. The nearest mountain (and the one Jesus has just finished pronouncing judgment on) is the temple mount itself.

Israel’s poetry had already described that mountain in cosmic terms. The earth is founded “upon the seas” and established “upon the rivers” (Ps 24:2), and Zion, “beautiful in elevation,” is the fixed point of that founding, “the city of the great King” (Ps 48:2). Solomon’s temple had made this literal in bronze: the great basin standing in its court was called simply “the sea” (1 Kgs 7:23), a working model of the chaos that had been subdued at creation and which the temple now held in check. For that mountain to be uprooted and hurled back into the sea it was raised from is to undo the very act that gave Zion its footing. Jesus is describing dry ground pulled out of the chaotic water now being hurled back into them by the disciples’ faith.

The fig tree and the mountain are one verdict rendered twice, once as enacted parable and once as an expression of faith. Faith here is not a technique for producing whatever the disciples happen to want but trust that the judgment Jesus has already begun is not too large a thing for God to finish. The promise that follows, “whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (21:22), describes prayer that has caught up with what God is actually doing rather than asking him to do something else.

In the Temple (21:12–17)

When Jesus enters the temple, it’s a divine act. Israel’s God has arrived at his temple, and he is executing his judgment. The buyers and sellers are driven out, the money changers’ tables are overturned, and the dove sellers’ seats are knocked over.

His verdict on what the temple has become draws from two prophets. Isaiah said that the temple should be “a house of prayer” (Isa 56:7); Jeremiah warned that it had become “a den of robbers” (Jer 7:11), meaning a hiding place for those exploiting the vulnerable before retreating into religious routine. Together, the two quotations form a single criticism: the temple exists to encounter God, but it has become a place of escape into empty religious ceremony instead.

What follows after this moment is unique to Matthew. Mark and Luke move directly from the cleansing to the confrontation with the religious leaders. Matthew inserts something neither of them records:

“And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them” (21:14).

Earlier in the Gospel, when John the Baptist sent from prison asking whether Jesus was the one to come, Jesus answered by pointing to what was happening: the blind are receiving their sight, the lame are walking (11:5). These were echoes of Isaiah’s new-exodus hope (Isa 35:5–6). Now those healings move into the temple itself, and they happen not because the temple is functioning properly (he has made sure it isn’t) but because the true temple was there in person.

The children see what’s happening, and they begin crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David. But the chief priests and scribes are indignant:

“Do you hear what these are saying?” (21:16).

Jesus does not quiet the children. He asks whether the leaders have ever read Psalm 8.

The Hebrew of Psalm 8:2 says that from the mouths of infants and nursing babies God has established ʿōz (strength) “because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” The LXX renders ʿōz not as strength but as αἶνον (ainon), “praise.” Matthew quotes the Greek:

“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise” (21:16).

The praise that silences God’s enemies doesn’t come from those with credentials. It comes from the mouths of the vulnerable. In Psalm 8, the “foes” who are silenced by this praise are those opposing what God is doing. Jesus directs this psalm at leaders who are, at that moment, doing just that. They have just witnessed the blind and lame healed in the temple. They have seen that the New Exodus is finally happening. But their main concern is whether Jesus deserves the praise he is getting. The psalm answers that question and reveals their position.

We reproduce this failure more easily than we might think. The temptation isn’t always to deny what God is doing; sometimes it’s to be outraged that the credit is going to someone we didn’t authorize or someone outside our camp. These leaders wanted to control the temple and the people’s holiness, but something they couldn’t control or did not sanction was happening right in front of them. By week’s end, they would try to take permanent control by silencing Jesus for good. For now, God’s praise was being spoken by the vulnerable, and no outrage from the powerful could silence it.

Palm Sunday and Psalm 118 (21:1–11)

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds lay their cloaks on the road and cut branches from the trees. What they shout is (in part) directly from Psalm 118:

“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9, quoting Ps 118:26).

The crowds are not improvising. Psalm 118 was the final psalm of the Egyptian Hallel (Pss 113–118), the sequence of psalms sung at the Passover seder.1 As Jesus entered Jerusalem in the days before Passover, every Jewish pilgrim who had ever celebrated the feast would have recognized these words. The question the crowds are answering, perhaps without fully realizing it, is who is the one for whom these songs have always been waiting.

But notice what they add. They call Jesus “Son of David.” To hail David’s Son in the first century was not an act of gentle piety. It carries the weight of the Davidic warrior tradition, the hope for a king who would defeat their enemies and restore Israel’s sovereignty. The crowd wants a conqueror riding into Jerusalem. What they get instead is the fulfillment of Zech. 9:9: a king who is “humble” (πραΰς), riding a donkey, a figure the prophet explicitly links with peace rather than war. The crowds are singing the right psalm about the wrong kind of king, at least from their point of view.

“Hosanna” captures this exactly. When the crowd shouts “Hosanna” (ὡσαννά), they are quoting Ps. 118:25 directly, transliterating the Hebrew הוֹשִׁיעָה נָּא, meaning “Save us, we pray.” The crowds intended it as a plea for military rescue, the kind Israel had longed for under Roman rule. Jesus accepts the cry but will spend the rest of the week reinterpreting what salvation truly means.

The crowds shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, meaning one thing. Jesus enters Jerusalem with a completely different purpose. This contrast will carry through all of Holy Week.

The Way of Righteousness (21:28–32)

Matthew 21:28–32

Just before Jesus shares the parable of the two sons, the chief priests and elders confront him in the temple with a pointed question.

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matt. 21:23).

Jesus avoids giving a direct answer, but he doesn’t leave them without a response. The parable of the two sons is his reply and is unique to the Gospel of Matthew.

The parable is simple. A father asks his two sons to work in the vineyard. One agrees but doesn’t go. The other says no, but later changes his mind and goes. When Jesus asks which son did the father’s will, the religious leaders correctly answer: the second son. But then comes Jesus’s explanation, and this is where most people miss the point.

Jesus says:

“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him” (Matt. 21:31–32).

The key phrase here is “the way of righteousness” (ἐν ὁδῷ δικαιοσύνης). This phrase is not just a nice way of talking about living a moral life. As N. T. Wright has shown, dikaiosynē in biblical thought often refers to God’s covenant faithfulness—his righteousness in the sense of God acting to set things right and fulfill his promises to Israel. John the Baptist came “in the way of righteousness,” meaning he announced that God was now acting to restore his people and fulfill his covenant promises.

When the tax collectors and prostitutes heard John’s preaching, they recognized that God was at work fulfilling his promises. They saw that God’s saving justice was breaking into the world, and they responded with repentance. When the religious leaders heard John, they missed it entirely. These were the very people who were supposed to be custodians of Israel’s hope for God’s covenant faithfulness. Yet, they could not recognize it when God was actually delivering on it.

This parable is Jesus’s response to the authority question. The same covenant faithfulness of God that validated John the Baptist’s ministry also validates Jesus’s ministry. Those who saw God’s saving work in John naturally saw it in Jesus too. The religious leaders, who agreed with God’s covenant promises through their religious practices but rejected John’s call to repentance, showed they could not see God’s righteousness when it was right before their eyes.

Matthew shares this parable to help his readers grasp an essential point. The key question isn’t whether we verbally agree to God’s covenant promises but whether we recognize when God is actively fulfilling them. When God’s saving justice enters the world, do we notice it? Or, like the first son and the religious leaders, do we say yes with our words while remaining blind to what God is truly doing?

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A Link to Matthew 20 (ESV)

The Right Words (20:29–34)

Two men without name or sight or a place in the procession address Jesus with the title his own disciples have only begun to understand. They cannot see him; they can only hear that he is passing by. Their cry duplicates, almost word for word, the plea of the two blind men Jesus healed earlier in Galilee: “Have mercy on us, Son of David” (9:27).

The crowd traveling with Jesus will not tolerate it. The verb Matthew uses for their objection, ἐπιτιμάω (epitimaō), “to rebuke,” is a hard word in this Gospel. It is what Jesus does to the wind and the sea (8:26) and to a demon convulsing a boy (17:18). The crowd treats two beggars’ confession of Jesus as something dangerous, something to be silenced like an unclean spirit.

But they are not silenced. Matthew repeats the verb κράζω (krazō), “to cry out,” and intensifies it: they cried out (ἔκραξαν) once, and after the rebuke they cried out μεῖζον, “all the more” (20:30–31). Of everyone on that road, only Jesus stops for the two people others are trying to silence.

“What do you want me to do for you?” he asks (20:32).

Before he touches their eyes, Matthew says he is moved by σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai), the same verb used earlier to express his compassion for the crowds who were “like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36). He touches their eyes. They see, and they follow him (20:34).

The next scene in Matthew’s Gospel recalls this moment. Days later, the crowds who escort Jesus into Jerusalem take up the very cry the crowd on the Jericho road had just tried to stop, and Matthew uses the same verb a third time. “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they cry out, ἔκραζον (21:9). The title that sounded like a disturbance on the road becomes the city’s own liturgy. Matthew has let two forgotten men rehearse, days ahead of time and to no applause, the very confession the whole city will soon perform for an afternoon and then abandon by the end of the week.

Except these two men received healing, while the city received a pronouncement of judgment. Perhaps the city should have been crying out for mercy to the Son of David rather than welcoming him as a conquering king. The juxtaposition of these two scenes should remind us that just getting the words right isn’t enough.

A Ransom for Many (20:20–28)

The mother of James and John approaches Jesus with a specific request. She wants seats of honor for her sons at his right hand and left in his kingdom. The other ten disciples’ indignation at the question (v. 24) suggests they shared the same idea; they were simply annoyed someone else asked first. Jesus recognizes that they all need to understand the true way to greatness.

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (20:25–28).

The climax of that teaching goes back to Isaiah. In the fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12), Yahweh’s Servant suffers not for his own wrongdoings but for the sake of “the many.”

“He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (53:12).

“His soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) and “the many” (רַבִּים, rabbim) are the key terms. The LXX translates nefesh as ψυχή and rabbim as πολλῶν — and these are precisely the words Matthew uses in 20:28: δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν, “to give his soul as a ransom for many.” Jesus references Isa 53:12 to frame his coming death in the exact language Isaiah used for the Servant’s vicarious self-giving.

That identification redefines the entire passage. Servant leadership in the kingdom is not a management philosophy or style; it is a cruciform pattern modeled after the Servant who gave his ψυχή as λύτρον for the πολλοί. The call to be “slave of all” follows the example of the one who fully embodied Isaiah’s Servant. In this kingdom, seats of honor are not taken. Their mother had asked for places at Jesus’ right and left. By week’s end, those seats were occupied (27:38), and no disciple had claimed them.

“What Then Will We Have?” (20:1–16)

At the end of ch. 19, Peter asks a question that lurks inside many disciples’ hearts.

“See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matt 19:27, ESV).

Jesus told the rich young man to sell everything and give to the poor, and the man walked away. That interaction causes Peter, who has actually left everything to follow Jesus, to wonder what his reward will be for doing what the rich young man could not. Jesus promises rewards—thrones, hundredfold returns, eternal life—but then adds a jarring qualification: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (19:30).

The following parable (Matthew’s “for” in 20:1 connects it directly to this statement) explains why Jesus issues this warning just as Peter begins calculating his heavenly portfolio. A landowner hires workers at different times throughout the day, then pays everyone the same wage, starting with the last hired. The workers who work all day, expecting more, receive exactly what they agreed to. Their complaint reveals the problem:

“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (20:12).

This is also Peter’s problem. He has carried the burden. He has sacrificed. He believes he deserves more than most. The landowner’s response gets straight to the core of the issue:

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” (20:15).

We cannot be the arbiters of God’s grace. We cannot control when God calls someone or how much grace he dispenses. Some enter the vineyard as children; others arrive minutes before the workday ends. Some appear to us as deserving; others seem like questionable candidates for divine favor. God’s grace operates according to his equity, not ours, and it is offered freely to all without our input or approval.

The danger Jesus warns against here is viewing discipleship as a transaction and service as a way to earn heavenly rewards. Peter’s question—“What then will we have?”—exposes a heart still linked to following Jesus for “what’s in it for me.” Jesus does offer rewards, but he refuses to let his disciples serve mainly for those rewards. The call is to faithfulness, service, and sacrifice that mirrors his own coming death. We trust that God will settle the account on the last day, when many who seem last by our standards will be first by his, and vice versa. Until then, we serve without resenting the very generosity and mercy that is our only hope.

A Link to Matthew 19 (ESV)

If You Would Be Perfect (19:16–22)

A young man approaches Jesus and asks what good deed he must do to have eternal life. Jesus directs him to the commandments: the second table of the Decalogue (Exod 20:12–16; Deut 5:16–20) and the summary command from Leviticus (19:18):

“You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18–19).

The man claims to have kept all of them, and then asks, “What do I still lack?” Jesus answers:

“If you would be perfect (τέλειος), go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (19:21).

Mark's parallel (10:21) simply states "you lack one thing." Matthew's use of τέλειος is a deliberate addition. In the Septuagint, τέλειος occasionally renders the Hebrew tamim, which means “complete”. Israel is called, for example, to be tamim:

“You shall be tamim before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this” (Deut 18:13–14).

Israel was to listen to God alone and not have divided loyalty. They were to be whole with Yahweh.

The tamim background potentially shifts the reading of τέλειος away from moral achievement toward something more fundamental: wholeness of person, an undivided giving of oneself. Matthew has already used this word at the end of the Sermon on the Mount's antitheses:

“Be perfect (τέλειος), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (τέλειος)” (5:48).

In this section, Jesus is pressing beneath the surface of law-keeping toward the condition of the heart. τέλειος in Matthew, I think, has more to do with the wholeness of an undivided heart than perfectly keeping rules.

The young man has kept every commandment. Jesus does not deny that. The issue is not a lack of adherence but a split in his loyalty. His wealth divides his heart, and a divided heart cannot be tamim. The commandments he has obeyed are about restraint; the one he cannot fulfill demands that he give himself completely.

He goes away sorrowful, and Jesus does not call after him. The sorrow confirms he understood. He was being asked to be tamim: complete, whole, with nothing held back. The commandments can be kept from a distance. Following cannot. Following requires tamim. 

Eunuchs and the Kingdom of Heaven (19:10–12)

Jesus has just given a challenging teaching on marriage and divorce (Matt 19:3–9). The disciples’ reaction is revealing and somewhat unsettling.

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matt 19:10).

Their reasoning reveals a deeply cynical perspective on marriage. They have become used to a culture where men can divorce their wives for minor reasons, leaving women vulnerable and abandoned. The concept of lifelong commitment is so unfamiliar, so restrictive, that they would prefer to avoid marriage altogether rather than accept such binding terms. Their complaint shows they view marriage mainly as an arrangement they can leave at any time.

Jesus doesn’t directly rebuke them but instead redefines the entire conversation. He talks about eunuchs.

But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it” (Matt 19:10–12).

In the ancient world, eunuchs held a complex social position. Deuteronomy 23:1 clearly excluded them from the Lord’s assembly. The law was straightforward.

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

But consider the context in Matthew 19. Earlier in this same conversation, Jesus explained that Moses allowed divorce “because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). If the permission for divorce was a concession to Israel’s spiritual state rather than God’s original plan, then some other laws, like the exclusion of eunuchs, might also have been accommodations that can be reconsidered.

The prophet Isaiah seems to think so.

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off (Isa 56:3–5).

The eunuch is told not to say, “I am a dry tree” because God promises to give faithful eunuchs “a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.”1 What Moses excluded, Isaiah envisions God embracing.

Jesus takes this trajectory to its fulfillment. He identifies three categories of eunuchs, but the third is revolutionary. These are the “eunuchs” who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. This phrase appears nowhere else in Scripture and is unique to Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is not merely reversing an old exclusion or affirming a prophetic promise. He is reframing social categories entirely in terms of kingdom purpose. Voluntary celibacy becomes an honored vocation when undertaken for God’s reign. The kingdom does not simply tolerate those who cannot marry. The kingdom elevates renunciation itself to the level of devotion.

This teaching finds its narrative fulfillment in Acts 8:26–40, when Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah. The man is baptized without hesitation. The one whom Deuteronomy excluded is welcomed into the messianic community. Isaiah’s promise of a name better than sons and daughters is realized in the name of Jesus.

Jesus concludes with a warning. Not everyone can receive this saying. But for those who can, the kingdom opens a path the world considers barren and finds it fruitful beyond measure.

A Link to Matthew 18 (ESV)

Without Standing (18:1–5)

The disciples come to Jesus asking about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. While the disciples are busy asking who outranks whom, Jesus calls a child and sets him in the midst of them (18:2). The gesture points past sentiment toward something more specific: social standing. In the first century, a child could not testify, could not inherit outright, and had no voice in matters of family honor. A slave at least produced labor the household needed. A young child produced nothing yet and could claim nothing on his own behalf. This lack of standing is what the child in the middle of the room represents.

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (18:3).

The verb Jesus chooses, στρέφω (strephō), “to turn,” speaks to a full reorientation, the language of repentance. The disciples are not being asked to feel young again. They are being told to turn from the path they are on, a path where who is the greatest matters deeply, to a path where they embrace a lack of social standing.

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (18:4).

The verb here, ταπεινόω (tapeinoō), “to humble” or “to make low,” is active, and the disciple is its subject, not the child. A child has no status to lower. A disciple does, and Jesus tells them to lower themselves because greatness in the kingdom is measured by how far down a person is willing to go, not by what he has climbed.

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me (18:5).

The verb δέχομαι (dechomai), “to receive” or “to welcome,” carries no qualification. Jesus does not say that whoever teaches the child, or provides for the child, or is charmed by the child receives him. Whoever simply welcomes the child, on the strength of nothing but the child’s presence and Jesus’s name, welcomes Jesus.

We rarely ask the disciples’ question in so many words, and yet there are numerous ways, some intentional and some subconscious, that we compare ourselves to and measure ourselves against others. Jesus measures greatness by the welcome of those without standing, not by the accumulation of whatever it is that our culture thinks makes a person great.

The Lost Sheep (18:10–14)

Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep has a different setting from Luke’s. In Luke 15, Jesus tells this parable in response to the Pharisees, who are offended by his dining with sinners. In that case, the lost sheep represents an outsider being brought in. In contrast, here in the fourth major discourse of Matthew, the parable is meant for the disciples, and the wandering sheep is not an outsider but a member of the community who has strayed.

The scene in Matthew is framed by references to the “little ones,” the humble and vulnerable members of the community Jesus first mentions in verse 6, and Jesus begins with a warning on their behalf:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (18:10).

The parable follows immediately afterward. A shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to find the one that has gone astray, and the Matthean conclusion from Matthew is unique. Jesus does not mention the rejoicing in heaven over a repenting sinner, as in Luke 15:7, but instead speaks about the Father’s will.

“So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (18:14).

This concluding line points to Ezekiel 34, where Yahweh issues a covenantal indictment against Israel’s shepherds for abandoning the flock’s most vulnerable.

“The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought” (Ezek 34:4).

The verdict is followed by a divine promise: Yahweh himself will do what those shepherds refused to do. In 34:16, he reverses the indictment of verse 4 term by term: the lost (τὸ ἀπολωλός) he will seek, the strayed (τὸ πλανώμενον) he will bring back. The language of Matthew 18:12–14 maps onto this pairing precisely: the sheep that “strays” (πλανηθῇ, v. 12) shares its root with τὸ πλανώμενον, and the little one who must not “perish” (ἀπόληται, v. 14) shares its root with τὸ ἀπολωλός. The shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine is not acting recklessly; he is doing exactly what Yahweh said he would do.

The community that gathers around Jesus, then, is the place where the vulnerable are sought and not turned away. To despise a little one is to repeat the failure of Ezekiel’s corrupt shepherds. To go after the one who has strayed is to act as the Father acts, which is the only posture available to those who have themselves been sought and found.

Seventy Times Seven (18:21–35)

Peter thought he was being generous. The rabbis taught that you should forgive someone three times. Peter doubled that and added one for good measure.

“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matt. 18:21, ESV).

Jesus’s response must have stunned him:

“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22, my translation).

The Greek phrase here is often translated “seventy-seven times,” but the literal reading is “seventy times seven.” The construction uses an adverb (ἑβδομηκοντάκις, “seventy times”) followed by the number seven (ἑπτά) with no conjunction between them—a grammatical pattern that indicates multiplication rather than addition. This reading unlocks a profound connection to Israel’s story that Jesus’s first audience would have immediately recognized.

The prophet Jeremiah had promised that Israel’s exile in Babylon would last seventy years (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10). The people waited. They counted. When those seventy years ended, Daniel prayed for restoration (Dan. 9:2-3). But instead of announcing the exile’s end, the angel Gabriel delivered shocking news. The exile would not last seventy years but seventy weeks of years—seventy times seven, or four hundred ninety years (Dan. 9:24). Israel’s punishment had been multiplied because their sin remained unforgiven.

This background is what Jesus’s audience would have heard when he said “seventy times seven.” He was not merely telling Peter to forgive an impossible number of times. He was announcing that the long exile was finally over. The four hundred ninety years of waiting had come to an end. The age of forgiveness had arrived.

The parable that follows illustrates this new reality. A servant is forgiven an impossible debt—ten thousand talents, roughly two hundred thousand years of wages. Yet he refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owes him a mere hundred days’ wages. The king’s verdict is severe: the unforgiving servant loses everything.

Jesus’s warning is equally severe:

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35, ESV).

Those who have experienced the forgiveness that ends the exile cannot refuse to extend that same forgiveness to others. The vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship with our neighbor are inseparable. You do not get one without the other.

Jesus came to set the world to rights. Through his cross, he has forgiven our impossible debt. Now he calls us to participate in that great work of restoration by forgiving others as we have been forgiven. That sounds an awful lot like the Lord’s Prayer, doesn’t it?

Introduction

We have a small group at St. Dunstan’s called “Theology on Tap” (a very original title, I know). We’re reading A History of the Bible by John Barton, working through it chapter by chapter, and at our last meeting, we finally got to the chapter on the Gospels.

Now, as you might imagine, if you know anything about me at all, I have a lot to say about the Gospels. Just next week we’re resuming our Sunday School series on the Gospel of Mark, which we started at this time last year, and we’ve only made it through chapter nine. We’ve taken so long because I have a lot to say about the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Mark.

So, as I am prone to do, I did most of the talking at our last Theology on Tap, but one thing we didn’t get a chance to discuss was the different methodologies for interpreting the Gospels. Now, (fear not) I’m not going to go through all the different methodologies this morning, but I do want to say something about what is known as form criticism.

This is a very basic way to understand form criticism, but essentially this methodology asks us to read individual scenes in the Gospel accounts, like Jesus walking on the water, and ask, given all the incredible things that Jesus said and did (John 21:25), why this particular story in this particular form was remembered and passed down by the early church and eventually made its way into our canonical Gospels.

To read this way is to read with an eye to the earliest history of the church and to ask of a scene like Jesus walking on the water, “What is it about this story (or these sayings) that made it so memorable to the early church?”

On the one hand, you can easily imagine why some people in the early church, particularly those with some connection to Peter, might not want this story passed down. Sure, Peter walks on water, but then he becomes afraid and begins to sink. And, on top of that, Jesus then addresses him as “O you of little faith.”1 So, despite how the story starts (with Peter walking on water with Jesus), Peter doesn’t come out so well in the end.

Why then remember this story? Why tell a story, given all the other stories that could have been passed down and written down, that seems to shame Peter?

Is it because the early church expected all Christians to do what Peter did, but without failing? Did the early church expect believers to be able to walk on water miraculously without sinking, and so pass this story on as an example of what all Christians should be able to do if only they have faith rather than doubt?

Probably not.

There’s no evidence that anyone in the early church thought walking on water was supposed to be a normative experience for all believers. So then why remember, pass down, and write down this particular story?

A Divine Action

The first reason is fairly obvious. This action of walking on water, particularly in the midst of a storm, is a divine action. The last verse drives this point home.

And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God” (Matt 14:33, ESV).

The disciples in the boat get what’s happening here, or at least they seem to be saying the right thing. The sea represents the primordial chaos of creation, which is always threatening to undo the created order, and Jesus, in the midst of a storm as the wind and waves beat against the boat, calmly walks across the water. He can do so because he is the Lord of the wind and the waves. He is the one who brings order to chaos, the one who sets the boundaries of the sea, and the one to whom even the chaotic forces of creation bow and obey. This is why there is a sea of glass like crystal before the throne of God in Rev 4:6, because before the divine throne, the chaotic forces of creation are completely stilled and calm.

So, that’s the first reason the early church remembered this story. They remember this story and passed it down because of what it said about Jesus.

But you could tell this story and make that point without all the parts about Peter. Matthew could have said: “The disciples were in a boat and there was a big storm. They were afraid, but then they saw Jesus walking on the water toward the boat, and he got into the boat with them, the storm calmed, and they all said, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”

Matthew could have told the story like that, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to include the parts with Peter, so why did the early church remember and write down that particular part of the story? What is it that we’re supposed to learn from the incident with Peter?

To answer that question, we have to hear this part of the story again in its ancient Near Eastern context, in which the sea was much more than a body of water. It was chaos.

Chaos and Christ

Do all believers find themselves in a boat tossed to and fro by the wind and the waves?

Literally, no. Metaphorically, absolutely.

These are literal wind and waves in the story, but they point beyond themselves to the chaos of this world that we all experience far too frequently.

Just this past Friday, Michelle and I took the kids to see our favorite band perform at the arena in Tampa. It was an absolutely awesome evening, and we came home still riding that emotional high. But then we walked through the front door, I sat down on the couch, and lo and behold, what do I hear but the sound of water spraying inside one of our walls.

Nobody shook the pipe. Nobody kicked it on our way out the door. (At least I hope not.) It just sprang a leak, and now there’s water in our walls again.

That’s chaos, and honestly, that’s a mild version of the chaotic nature of life. People get sick seemingly spontaneously. People lose jobs when they weren’t expecting it. Loved ones pass away before we get the chance to say goodbye. And the list could go on and on.

This life is full of chaotic waves that come crashing against our boats, and more often than not, even when we’re just trying to get by, it can feel as though the wind is always against us and that everything, even things that should be easy and simple, has become difficult, complicated, and challenging.

And what I’d love to do on Back-to-School is stand here, address all the students who are heading back to school very soon, and say, “This year is going to be your best year ever. You’re going to do great in all your classes. You’re going to make lots of new friends. No one will pick on you. No one will bully you. You’ll love every teacher you have. You’ll never forget your lunchbox or lunch money. All you’re going to get are A’s, and everything’s going to be smooth sailing for you.”

That’s what I want to say to the kids this morning, but I can’t.

If I said that to them, if I said something like that to all of you about life in general, I’d be a liar. The wind and the waves are real, and I can’t stand here and pretend that they’re not. Nor can I say that they won’t ever touch your boat.

But what I can say to all of you this morning is this.

A day will come when you feel beaten down by the waves and as though the wind opposes you on all sides, no matter what you are trying to do. In that moment, the first and best thing that you should do is look for Jesus, and (I promise you) he will be there.

At some point this year, you will feel as though you are in the midst of chaos, but when you set your eyes upon Jesus, what you’ll see is that around him, the chaos is calmed. Around him, the sea is flat like glass.

And he will invite you into his calm. He will invite you into his peace.

When that moment comes, don’t be like Peter. Don’t let your attention rest on the wind and the waves still circling around you. Don’t focus on the chaos that wants to consume you by making sure that it’s all that you can focus on and think about.

Keep your eyes on Jesus, and he will see you through the storm. He will make sure that you walk in his peace rather than sink into the chaotic waters of this world.

When life is hard, when school is hard, when chaos rears its ugly head, focus on Jesus. He is the one who brings order to chaos. He is the one whom the wind and the waves obey. He is the one who will see you through the storm.

Conclusion

Doubt is easy. Doubt is our natural inclination. When Peter sees the wind and is afraid, that’s an entirely normal and natural response. It’s easy to doubt. We’re inclined to it.

But belief, keeping your eyes focused on Jesus in the midst of life’s storms—that’s hard work.

And so, students, if I could give you one piece of advice in conclusion (and this isn’t really just for the students), it would be this.

Every new school year is a chance for a new beginning.

Start developing the habits of keeping your eyes focused on Jesus now (through Bible study, prayer, small groups, whatever works for you), so that when the wind and the waves come (and they will come), you will already know how to block out all the nonsense and keep your eyes focused on Jesus.

That’s why the early church remembered and passed down this story of Peter’s failure: so that we could learn from it and so that we could walk with Jesus where Peter sank.

Amen.

Life Group Discussion Guide

Intro Prayer

Heavenly Father, we come before you as a community of faith, grateful for the gift of your Word and the stories you have preserved for our instruction and encouragement. As we open this passage together, quiet the noise and distractions in our hearts and minds. Help us be honest about the storms we each face, and give us eyes to see Jesus clearly in the midst of them. May your Holy Spirit guide our conversation today, and may what we receive be not simply what we hoped to find, but what you know we truly need. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ice Breaker

What is one thing you are genuinely looking forward to in the season ahead, whether it is a new school year, a new project, or simply a fresh start of some kind?

Questions

• In the ancient Near Eastern worldview, the sea represents primordial chaos rather than simply a body of water. How does understanding that background change the way you read the story of Jesus walking on the water in Matthew 14?

• The disciples in the boat respond to what they witness by saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God” (Matt 14:33). What do you think it means to genuinely confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and how does that confession shape the way we face difficulty?

• Peter actually steps out of the boat and walks on the water toward Jesus before he begins to sink. What do you think motivated him to step out in the first place, and what does that tell us about the relationship between faith and action?

• Jesus responds to Peter’s sinking by saying, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matt 14:31). How do you personally understand the relationship between faith and doubt? Is doubt always a sign of spiritual failure, or can it be part of an honest faith journey?

• In this account, fear and doubt lead Peter to begin sinking, while trusting Jesus in the midst of the storm requires him to resist that fear actively. Do you agree that keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus is harder than giving in to doubt or fear? Why or why not?

• The literal wind and waves in this story point to the metaphorical chaos we all experience in daily life. What does the chaos in your own life look like right now, and how are you responding to it?

• Developing spiritual habits, such as Bible study, prayer, and small groups, before the storms arrive can prepare us to keep our eyes on Jesus rather than waiting until we are already overwhelmed. What habits have you found most helpful for keeping your focus on Jesus during difficult seasons?

• The early church chose to remember and pass down Peter’s failure alongside his moment of faith. What does it say about the character of the Christian community that we preserve and share stories of failure alongside stories of triumph?

Life Application

This week, identify one spiritual habit you can begin or strengthen before the next storm arrives in your life. It might be a daily time of prayer, a commitment to reading a portion of Scripture each morning, or showing up consistently to a small group. Write it down, share it with someone in this group for accountability, and take one concrete step toward making it a regular practice. The goal is not perfection but preparation, so that when the wind and waves come, you will already know where to fix your eyes.

Key Takeaways

• Jesus walking on the chaotic sea reveals his divine identity. He is the Lord over creation, the one who brings order to chaos and the one to whom even the wind and waves submit.

• The early church preserved Peter’s failure in this story not to shame him but to teach every generation of believers what happens when we shift our focus from Jesus to the chaos surrounding us.

• Doubt and fear are natural human responses to life’s storms, but faith, actively keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, requires intentional effort and practice.

• Spiritual habits formed in seasons of relative calm are what equip us to remain focused on Jesus when the storms of life are at their most intense.

• No matter how severe the chaos we face, Jesus is present in the midst of it, and he invites us into his peace rather than leaving us to sink.

Ending Prayer

Heavenly Father, we praise you for your Son, Jesus, the one who walks upon the waters and stills the storm with his presence. We confess that we are far too quick to fix our eyes on the chaos around us rather than on him. Forgive us for the times we have let fear and doubt pull us under when he was standing right before us. As we leave this time together, send us out with a renewed commitment to keep our gaze set on Jesus, in the ordinary rhythms of daily life and in the moments when the waves feel overwhelming. We pray especially for those in this group who are walking through a particular storm right now. Meet them in it. Calm what only you can calm, and carry them safely through. May we be a community that reminds one another, again and again, to look to Jesus. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.