A Link to Mark 9 (ESV)

Cast into Gehenna (9:42–48)

There is a ravine on the southern edge of Jerusalem called the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. In Hebrew, it is gê ben-hinnōm (גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם), often shortened to gê-hinnōm, and carried into Greek as γέεννα. It is a place on the map. Under Ahaz and Manasseh, it was a site of child sacrifice, and Josiah defiled it precisely to end that horror (2 Kgs 23:10). But its lasting meaning was fixed by Jeremiah, who announced what God would do to a people who would not repent:

“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere” (Jer 7:32).

Jeremiah’s threat is concrete and historical. The bodies of Judah would be cast into that valley because judgment was coming, and the slaughter would be too great for the ordinary graves. This warning sits in the same chapter as his temple sermon, the very text Jesus takes up when he enters the temple and pronounces its end (Mark 11:17).

So when Jesus warns of being thrown into γέεννα, he is not referring to a metaphysical underworld. He is alluding to Jeremiah’s words (just as he does in the cleaning of the temple) and warning of the same judgment. The parallel he draws makes this plain: the alternative to losing a hand is not afterlife in hell but being cast into the sea with a millstone, a death in this world (9:42). And the description of the place is lifted straight from the prophet who saw Jerusalem’s enemies lying dead outside the walls:

“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched” (Isa 66:24).

Jesus stands where Jeremiah and Isaiah stood. He warns his own generation that the judgment prophesied for a faithless people is coming again, and within a generation, Roman armies would make the warning literal. Josephus wrote of AD 70:

The latter at the outset ordered the bodies to be buried at the public expense, finding the stench intolerable; afterwards, when incapable of continuing this, they flung them from the ramparts into the ravines. When Titus, going his rounds, beheld these valleys choked with dead and the thick matter oozing from under the clammy carcases, he groaned and, raising his hands to heaven, called God to witness that this was not his doing. Such was the situation within the city (Jewish War 5.518-519).

I’ve heard several people say that Jesus spoke more about hell than any other topic (with the implication that we should talk about it too). Not only is that obviously not the case, but I’m not even sure Jesus talked about hell at all. Gehenna is not hell. It’s a place on the map just outside Jerusalem.

Elijah Does Come First (Mar. 2, 2026)

Mark’s Gospel begins with a subtle literary technique. The evangelist states, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,” then quietly quotes Malachi first: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way” (Mark 1:2; cf. Mal 3:1). The Elijah question is subtly embedded from the Gospel’s opening line — evident to those with ears to hear, unseen to others.

Now, in Mark 9, as they come down from the mountain where Moses and Elijah had appeared beside their transfigured Lord, the disciples pressed Jesus with a question that had long troubled the scribes: why did they teach that Elijah must come first?

The question was significant. Malachi closes the Old Testament with a promise and a warning. Elijah would return before the great and dreadful day of the Lord to turn the hearts of the people — and if he did not, God would curse the land (Mal 4:5–6). In other words, Elijah was the one who would prevent judgment, acting as the forerunner preparing the people before the decisive moment arrived.

Jesus does not dispute the tradition. He affirms it:

“Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him” (Mark 9:12–13).

The answer is both a confirmation and a devastating redefinition. Yes, Elijah came. But instead of being welcomed as the great restorer, he was rejected and killed. John stepped into the role Malachi announced, and the people’s response was not repentance but violence.

This matters a lot. If Malachi’s Elijah came to prevent destruction and was himself destroyed, then judgment was not avoided — it was confirmed. Israel’s fate was sealed. Israel’s God (in the person of Jesus) would return to his city and his temple and declare their judgment.

Not surprisingly, the forerunner’s rejection foreshadowed the response that would greet the one he announced. The pattern is older than John: God sends His messengers, and they are rejected (Jer 7:25–26; 2 Chr 36:15–16).

But woven into Jesus’s answer about John is a haunting question about himself:

“How is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things?” (Mark 9:12).

The answer is obvious. The suffering of the forerunner and the suffering of the Messiah belong to the same script. The story of Jesus will go the same way as the story of John, and Israel’s rejection of its God, which started at Mount Sinai with the golden calf, would be complete.

A Link to Mark 8 (ESV)

Two Touches (8:22–26)

Israel’s prophets gave sight to the blind a particular meaning. When Isaiah looked ahead to the day God would come to save his people, he described it as a healing of sensory organs.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Isa 35:5).

To open blind eyes was the work of God, and one of the signs that the new Exodus had begun. So when Mark sets a healing of blindness at the seam of his Gospel, he is not merely recording a cure. He is reminding us of the true meaning of Jesus’ ministry.

Every other healing in Mark happens at once, but this one takes two touches. After the first, the man sees, but not clearly; figures move at the edge of his vision like trees. Only after the second does he see everything plainly. Mark slows the miracle down and makes us watch sight arrive in stages.

He does this intentionally because the men following Jesus have the same problem as the blind man. A few verses earlier, Jesus had pressed them with the prophets’ own indictment of a hard-hearted people: “Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?” (8:18). The blind man at Bethsaida is the enacted solution to the implied answer to that question. The disciples may see in part, but they do not yet see completely. They need their blindness to be supernaturally healed.

This particular miracle, along with the healing of blind Bartimaeus (10:46–52), frames what is known as Mark’s Way Section. Mark began his Gospel by announcing a road: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,” joined to Isaiah’s cry to “prepare the way of the Lord” (1:2–3, citing Isa 40:3). Then the word mostly vanishes.

Then it returns at 8:27 and saturates the next two and a half chapters. In the Way section, Jesus tells his disciples plainly three times that the Son of Man must suffer, be killed, and rise (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34). Three times they fail to take it in. Each time, Jesus answers their blindness the same way: whoever would come after him must deny himself and take up a cross, whoever would be first must be last and servant of all. The way of the Lord, promised in Isaiah, turns out to be the way to a cross, and he is calling his disciples to walk that path with him.

The Way of the Cross (8:31–9:1)

Peter gets the answer right. When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29), Peter responds without hesitation: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29). Full marks on the title. But within moments, Peter pulls Jesus aside to rebuke him, because the Messiah he has in mind bears no resemblance to the one standing before him. Peter knows the word without knowing what it means.

So Jesus teaches him — plainly, Mark says, not in parables:

And Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8:31).

The word “began” is important. This moment isn’t just a simple correction; it marks a key turning point in Jesus’s ministry, indicating that his teaching intentionally shifts toward the cross. It’s no accident that this change occurs exactly where it does in Mark’s Gospel. From this point forward, through the end of chapter ten, the word hodos — “way” — is repeated throughout the story. Scholars call this the Way Section, and the theme connects back to the beginning of Mark, which quotes Isaiah 40:3: “prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3, quoting Isa 40:3). The path Jesus takes to Jerusalem symbolizes the Lord’s return to his people. The Way of the Lord is now the way of the cross.

This truth means that when Jesus gathers the crowd and speaks the following words, he is inviting his disciples to join that same journey.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Mark 8:34).

Following Jesus has always come with a cost. It cost the disciples their livelihoods, reputations, and ultimately their lives. The way that cost manifests differs for each of us, but the call remains the same — to deny ourselves, to take up whatever cross he sets before us, and to walk the path he walked.

This is worth reflecting on, especially during times of self-examination. What have you given up to follow Jesus? Is he asking you for more?

A Link to Mark 7 (ESV)

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 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)

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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A Link to Mark 4 (ESV)

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)

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 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)

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

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5 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)

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 embark on based 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 17 (ESV)

Listen to Him (17:1–8)

Matthew 17 begins with the words“And after six days” (17:1). In Exodus 24, the cloud of God covered Sinai for six days before the divine voice called to Moses on the seventh (Exod 24:16). The mention of the number of days here at the beginning of the chapter is an intentional allusion to Sinai.

In this new Sinai event, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, and there he is transfigured before them. His face shines like the sun, and his clothes become white as light. Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus.

Peter’s impulse is to build three booths, one for each of them. The word Matthew uses for ‘booths’ is σκηνάς, which is the same word the Greek Old Testament uses for the tabernacle, the tent of God’s dwelling. Peter wants to enshrine the moment. He does not yet understand what the moment means.

A bright cloud, the visible presence of God, overshadows them, and from within the cloud comes a voice:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (17:5).

The first part of the declaration echoes the baptism (Matt 3:17). The last three words reach even further back. In Deuteronomy 18, as Moses prepared Israel to enter the land without him, he promised that God would raise up another prophet like himself, and he gave Israel a single instruction about that prophet: “it is to him you shall listen” (Deut 18:15). Moses added that this prophet would speak everything God commands, and whoever refused to hear him would be held accountable (18:18–19). Israel’s task, after Moses, was to recognize this figure when he came.

The voice from the cloud is performing that identification. The disciples fall on their faces, terrified. When they look up, they see no one but Jesus only. Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, have served their purpose and withdrawn. The one they pointed to stands alone on the mountain. The time of listening to the Law and the Prophets as the ultimate authority has come to an end. Now that authority rests on Jesus.

That’s why Walking with Jesus exists: to help us listen to Jesus.

The Son and the Temple Tax (17:24–27)

The unusual story in Matthew 17:24-27, found only in Matthew’s Gospel, reveals something important about Jesus’s identity. The tax mentioned is not a Roman civil tax but the yearly half-shekel temple tax that all Jewish males paid to support the upkeep and operations of the Jerusalem temple. This religious duty traces back to Exodus 30:11-16, where God commanded a census tax to support the tabernacle. By the first century, collectors gathered this tax across the Jewish world to pay for temple repairs, sacrificial supplies, and the daily functions of Israel’s main place of worship.

Jesus’s reasoning is powerful. Kings don’t tax their own sons; they tax others. If the temple is God’s house, and Jesus is God’s Son, then he doesn’t need to pay to support his Father’s house. Jesus makes a striking claim to divine sonship, spoken quietly during a personal conversation with Peter. He is claiming his special connection to the God of the temple and his authority over the very institution that shapes Jewish religious life.

Yet Jesus chooses to pay the tax anyway. He exercises his freedom by limiting it, refusing to cause offense even when he has every right to cling to his privilege. Jesus demonstrates pastoral wisdom worth reflecting on. There are times when insisting on our rights does more harm than good, and when accommodation serves the gospel better than assertion. Jesus models a kind of freedom that is expressed not in defiance but in voluntary submission for the sake of others.

The payment method is also important. Jesus doesn’t just reach into a purse. Instead, he tells Peter to go fishing and promises a miraculous coin in the first fish’s mouth. The amount is precisely right—one stater, worth four drachmas—enough for both of them. This miracle demonstrates Jesus’s authority over creation while exemplifying an act of humble obedience. God provides for obedience, even when that obedience is voluntary in nature.

The short story reveals something fundamental about Jesus. He is the Son with authority over the temple itself, yet he submits to its rules. He is free, but he chooses humility and service instead of confrontation. The King pays taxes in his own kingdom, and he does so through a miracle that hints at his true identity to those who have ears to hear.