Category: Matthew

Matthew 11:1-6 & Diagnosing a Believer’s Doubt

Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Luther, Calvin, Beza, and J.C. Ryle all agree that John did not doubt, but rather, that he asked this question for the sake of his disciples. I see nothing to support that interpretation and much to indicate that John doubted. But why did John doubt?

While in prison John hears of Jesus deeds, and he doubts, doesn’t this seem strange?

“John, Jesus is restoring sight to the blind! (Matthew 9:27-31)”

“John, Jesus is healing the lame so that they walk! (Matthew 8:5-13)”

“John, Jesus is cleansing lepers! (Matthew 8:1-4)”

“John, Jesus is casting out demons! (Matthew 8:28-34)”

“John, Jesus is raising the dead to life! (Matthew 9:18-26)”

And John’s response to this news is… doubt? Notice John doesn’t doubt that Jesus does the deeds. He doesn’t doubt the deeds of Jesus but the identity of Jesus. Imagine, John hears the news of Jesus raising the dead, believes the report, but thinks, “Yea, I don’t know… is He the one?”

What condition can there be in our hearts and minds such that when we hear of Jesus’ authoritative words and deeds that call for a response of complete abandonment and surrender to His supremacy, we doubt instead of taking up our cross and following Jesus? Why does John doubt?

Let’s start at the surface. John hears of Jesus’ deeds while he is in prison. One very likely reason for John’s doubt is his imprisonment. While circumstances are not everything, that does not mean that they are nothing. Few of us doubt when times are happy. This isn’t necessarily because our faith is strong, but more often because our hearts are wrong. When doubts only flee when circumstances are optimal, this does not mean we are people of great faith, but people of great sin. When a change in circumstances deeply affects a change in heart, idols are being exposed. Thus, circumstances are only surface.

I believe at root John doubts because Jesus isn’t meeting John’s expectations. I don’t think John expected less from Jesus, but more. It is not that John is disappointed by the salvation Jesus is bringing, but He was expecting judgment as well (Matthew 3:11-12). John is the forerunner to God’s king, and he is in prison, so where is the King’s full salvation? You see John expected Jesus’ salvation to include judgment, as he should. Jesus’ reply to John alludes to many passages in Isaiah, many of which include predictions of salvific judgment upon the enemies of God, who are also the enemies of the people of God (Isaiah 35:4-6, 61:1-2). Jesus will preach both salvation, and judgment; a judgment He will bring, but right now He is bringing salvation.

So then, John’s doubts don’t arise because of unbiblical expectations of Jesus, but because of a misunderstanding of God’s timeline. The problem is not John’s theology, but His chronology. There are some sins that only a faithful Christ-follow can sin.

Why do you doubt? Ask yourself two questions:

  1. Am I expecting something unbiblical of Jesus?
  2. If my expectations are Biblical, is my timeline different than God’s?

Drop your expectations, they are small and sinful; if not in the thing desired than in the motive behind them. Instead, look at Jesus, not in the light of your sinful expectations, but in the light of Scripture’s holy promises and realize Jesus will always be more, not less than you could expect.

Matthew 10:32-42 & Increase the Tension by Alleviating It

Jesus is not afraid of being misunderstood. For instance, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will say, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” He will say something shocking, something meant to make you think, something that we may think contradictory to something else He has said, and then leave you with it. He feels no necessity to qualify and explain away all of the difficulties. Gospel ministers should do the same. Their are times when we should try to explain the difficulties, more often this will be in regards to doctrinal truths. There are often other times when we should just let the tension be, and let sheep wrestle with the text.

Jesus says that if we acknowledge Him, He will acknowledge us. If we deny Him, He will deny us. I will ease tension as to how this does not contradict justification by faith, but I will not seek to ease tension for one who is apprehensive to share Jesus by assuring them that they must be saved despite that fact.

1 John 2:23 is illuminating to our text, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.” Notice it does not say that if you confess you will have the father, but if you confess you have the Father. If you possess the Father you profess the Son. If you do not profess Jesus, you do not possess the Father. This confession is not meritorious towards salvation, but resultant from salvation.

This does not alleviate tension for the apprehensive soul timid to share Jesus. Explaining the doctrine rightly increases conviction rightly.

A hard soul might instantly object, “But Peter denied him!” Indeed Peter did, but ultimately and most often Peter boldly professed Him.

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.’ -Acts 5:27-32

Don’t quickly comfort yourself by looking at Peter’s failures, challenge yourself by looking at his courage. I leave you with the exclamatory, Christ-like, tension-creating question of Thomas Brooks:

Ah, souls, you can easily sin as the saints, but can you repent with the saints! Many can sin with David and Peter, that cannot repent with David and Peter, and so must perish for ever.

Matthew 10:24-33 & Fight Fear with Fear

Hundreds of miles wide in its swath of destruction you have no hopes of outrunning or outmaneuvering it. It’s as though Jupiter’s red spot were condensed, concentrated, amplified and transported to earth. The rain falls fat and thick; so thick the atmosphere seems an ocean. Breathing is imagined to be an impossible labor in the midst of this storm. That’s assuming you would even be allowed time enough to take a breath. Hail stones the size of boulders fall with such force they are splintering redwoods. Deep purple and wickedly splintering lightning bolts strike repeatedly within mere feet of one another. Families of F5 tornadoes populate the storm liberally, like hordes of Okies fleeing in the midst of the Dust Bowl.

Yet in your blind terror you find an enchanted cave, or rather it is almost as if it found you. There is as it were an invisible barrier that the storm cannot pass. This does not cause you to belittle or mock the storm. You still fear it. It is your dread. But now your fear is mixed with delight. The cave both allows you to reverence the storm more, for now you more fully can observe its glory, and to delight in it more for you can observe all of this in complete safety. Fear has not been eradicated but transformed into that holy love called reverence. One deep mark of this reverence is a rejoicing and delighting in the cave.

This cleft is Christ, and the storm is the glory of God’s holiness. But Jesus has promised that as we identify with Him we will be persecuted. In this cave there is a serpent. He is a wounded serpent. He is a dying serpent. But He is a dangerous serpent, and he has minions. The whole world is under his sway. But you dare not flee the snake to take your chances with the storm, for you know this; the snake could never defeat the the storm, but the storm has already mostly done in the snake, and is sure to finish the job.

If you love the cleft of Jesus, and reverence the storm of God’s holiness you will not be afraid of the serpent’s threats.

[Adapted from an illustration in The Pleasures of God by John Piper]

Matthew 10:16-23 & When His Promises Are Precious

When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

If you are not zealous for the glory of Christ, but only concerned for your own skin, this promise does not relieve anxiety, it causes it. Only someone burning with the prayer, “hallowed be Thy name,” derives any peace from this promise.

This is not an exhortation to preach extemporaneously as some have made it. There is nothing wrong with extemporaneous preaching per se, as long as it is expository preaching, but that is not what this text is about. Nor is this a promise that we will be given clever words to weasel our way out of pain, but rather that we will be given bold words despite threat of pain. This is a promise for anointed preaching when persecuted.

Preaching in the power of the Spirit is always the goal of all Christians when they herald Christ, and of course Christ promises to be with His church as they go forward faithful to the great commission (Matthew 28:20), but to those who go zealous for His glory to the hard places of the earth He gives this special promise of anointed preaching. Do you want the Spirit to anoint your preaching? Go to the hard places of the earth in zeal for His name and compassion for souls and you are promised it! We see several instance of this in the book of Acts, here are just a couple:

Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking.  -Acts 6:9-10

On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’  – Acts 4:5-12

This promise relieves anxiety only if you treasure Jesus more than life. It gives peace only if your greatest fear is belittling, disowning, or maligning the name of Jesus. This promise is precious to you if Jesus is precious to you.

If worship is not our goal, we will not be martyr-minded Christians faithful to the great commission, and if we are not martyr-minded Christians, we are not worshippers of God, but of our own lives.

Matthew 10:5-15 – His Mission Is Not Ours, but Ours Is His

A Christian seeking significance, meaning, or purpose is a contradiction. It would make more sense for Winston Churchill in the midst of the Second World War to think, “I really wish I had a task, a mission, something to do.” As Christians we don’t get to live where we want, we don’t get to proclaim what we want or how we want, and we don’t get to determine the response to our message or how we should respond to those responses. We get something infinitely better, cosmically bigger, and eternally glorious. We don’t need to find our own mission, Jesus has folded us into His.This mission isn’t elective Christianity for God’s nerdy children, but essential Christianity for all His children.

Contrary to any impressions you may have gained on your high-school mission trip, Jesus does not send us as an affluent and indulgent father might send his bohemian child to venture the world aimlessly in an attempt to discover himself. Jesus doesn’t just send, He instructs. He tells us where to go, what to do, and how to do it. We don’t make or discover our own mission, He gives us one.

His mission is not ours, but our mission is His. We don’t saunter up to Jesus and co-opt His mission, saying, “I’m here to help, and here’s what I’m going to do.” We are not co-redeemers. Jesus’ mission was not just to proclaim the gospel, but to be the gospel. Our mission is not to be the gospel, but to proclaim the gospel Jesus is. We don’t saunter up to Jesus; He comes after us, calls us out of darkness, and makes us messengers of light. He makes us ambassadors such that when we herald the gospel, the glory of Christ is set before souls calling for a response of submission or rebellion. We herald something so glorious that an opportunity for great salvation or great sin is set before them (2 Corinthians 2:14-16). When we proclaim the good news, we must also share the bad news – that they abide under the wrath of God, and that should they reject this message, the wrath they will have to endure will be even greater (Matthew 10:15). This is so because as ambassadors sent by the King they are not responding to us, rather, God is making His appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Jesus’ mission is over, under, and through ours. He is over our mission calling and sending us. He is under our mission sustaining and empowering us. And He advances His kingdom not because of us, but through us.

His mission is not ours, but our mission is His. He is over, under, and working through our mission.

Matthew 9:35-10:4 & May We See. May We Sing

Jesus sees and Jesus acts, do we?

When Jesus sees the crowds He is moved with compassion. The word behind compassion has no one English equivalent. It means compassion, pity, and sympathy and more. It is a visceral, gut-grabbing kind of compassion. Why don’t we see this way? The answer – sin. Sin blinds. It can blind in numerous ways to the crowds all around us. Prejudice, racism, hatred are all obvious blinders, but selfishness, materialism, and lust are equally as effective.

God’s Word, especially the truth of the gospel, helps us to see. We have to be taught to see. We have to be sanctified to see. Other tools are helpful as well, perhaps none more so than Operation World.

So what do you see when you look at the Muslim world? The Hindu world? The Buddhist world? The materialistic, pluralistic, atheistic, humanistic world? Are you moved deeply in your gut with compassion? When you look at India do you see the largest concentration and variety of the least-reached peoples on earth? Do you even look at India? When you look at Afghanistan do you see the 48,000 mosques, the absence of even one church building, and 70 unreached peoples? When you look at Africa do you see 13 of the worlds 20 least-evangelized countries? Do you see the 240 million Bengali who comprise the largest unreached people in the world? Yet, these statistics mean nothing if we have not been gripped by the glory of the gospel, that God saves sinners, for there is no one else to save.

But Jesus not only sees, He acts. His action is a call for action. He calls for His disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers into His harvest. Some might see the need as so great and say, “What? Pray? That’s it?” No prayer is not to be our only action, but it is to be our first and greatest action. John Bunyan said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” Prayer calls down heavenly firepower, the only firepower that can storm the gates of hell, advance the kingdom, and rescue captives. The greatest doers are the greatest prayers, relying on power from above and not from within. God may bless in spite of us, but when we pray we will most often get what we can do – nothing (John 15:5)! But when we pray we get what God can do. The harvest is God’s. He sends out laborers, He gathers in the nations. Prayer is our greatest weapon. Nations are won because of prayer.

But Jesus’ action doesn’t end in His calling his disciples to prayer. He then answers that prayer in authorizing and sending His disciples to proclaim and act. We must be willing to be God’s answer to our own prayers. Really we should all be the answer to this prayer, the question isn’t whether or not we should be involved in world missions, but to what extent should we be involved? Really our hearts should be burning with desire asking, “To what extent can I be involved?” We shouldn’t have to wrestle so much with going to the mission field as much as staying here.

Do you see? Do you pray? Do you act? Do you proclaim? Do you act?

Do you sing?

May God be gracious to us and bless us

and make his face to shine upon us, Selah

that your way may be known on earth,

your saving power among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all the peoples praise you!

                                                    – Psalm 67:1-3

Matthew 9:18-34 & Death Is Only a Nap

We all mourn differently. This is especially true across cultures. In our western culture we mourn very quietly, not so the Jew. The cacophony, commotion, and chaos of Jarius’ house were a common scene. Among this mournful crowd there would have been professional mourners hired by the family. One Jewish writing says that even the poorest of families was expected to hire not less than two pipers and one wailing woman. Biblically we can trace the custom as far back as Josiah at the latest. (2 Chronicles 25:35). Jeremiah uses this common imagery when He writes:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skillful women to come; let them make haste and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water. For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’” – Jeremiah 9:17-19

Jarius’ being a ruler, and thus no doubt a man of some means, would have been expected to have several professional mourners. Also a frenzy of activity would be taking place as the family scrambled to make all preparations to bury the body within twenty-four hours.

Jesus comes on the scene and dismisses the crowd. Remember His presence necessitates feasting not fasting (Matthew 9:14). The King is present, the kingdom is breaking in, away with such mourning, she is only sleeping. They laugh taking Jesus literally.

Sleep was a metaphor for death, but it is easy to see how the crowd misunderstood Jesus. If simply taken as a euphemism he would be in effect saying, “Go away, for the girl is not dead, but dead.” So Jesus isn’t simply using a euphemism for death, but He isn’t saying she is just snoozing either. Again, Jesus isn’t using a euphemism for death, He is euphemizing death. Jesus is saying is that because of Him, death is just a nap.

All this foretells a far greater awakening. Paul says we will not all sleep (1Corinthians 15:51), but be assured, all those who die in Christ are only sleeping; they will rise again with renewed, sinless, glorified bodies. All mourning will be eternally dismissed.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23

Matthew 9:9-17 & The Plight of the Too Healthy

Tax collectors were unacceptable in every way: socially, politically, and religiously. Some might say that things haven’t changed much, but really the plight of the tax collector is so much better in our day. We might despise the IRS auditor in our own house, but we like the idea of him in the house of a scoundrel. Further, no one ever thinks the IRS employee a Benedict Arnold because of his job. He may be one, but it is not inherently related to his job. But to the Jew, the tax collector was the worst of traitors. Backed by Roman soldiers he extorted his own countrymen to finance the enemy. Rome grew stronger, the Jews grew weaker, all while the tax collector grew wealthier. In addition he would be religiously unclean because of his frequent dealings with Gentiles.

There was only one reason to be a tax collector in this society, money. You were virtually free to charge as much as you want and any surplus collected was pocketed.

Now imagine the kind of company that such a person who has so ostracized himself form respectable Jewish society would keep. They would be the sort of riffraff who have nothing to lose by associating with him. Jesus was dining with the likes of pimps, prostitutes, thieves, and gamblers.

Jesus seems to call the oddest of disciples and keep the worst of company. Isn’t it wonderful that we’ve now refined the church so that such persons rarely have any dealings with the church except perhaps to beg outside its doors? Evidently Paul still had this problem, the early church being made up of those with less than desirable backgrounds (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Jesus may still call such disciples, but the church rarely does.

But our “health” may come at a cost. If we keep our illusion of health, the Great Physician will have nothing to do with us, He came for sinners.

Sinner, never fear of being too sinful for Jesus, rather, dread thinking yourself too healthy.

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

Let not conscience make you linger,
Not of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth,
Is to feel your need of Him.

I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms;
In the arms of my dear Savior,
O there are ten thousand charms.

– Come Ye Sinners by Joseph Hart

Matthew 9:1-8 & Rejoice That It Was Blasphemy

Logic is a powerful tool, but tools can destroy as well as build. Used wrongly a tool can be deadly to the user. The Pharisee’s logic here is valid. They think Jesus is blaspheming. In Mark they are recorded as thinking, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They are right. God is always the most offended party in our sin, it is ultimately His prerogative to forgive sin. Your sin never hates anyone as much as it hates God. Sin mocks and belittles all that God is. Think of an attribute of God, then meditate a little, it shouldn’t take long to see how even the smallest sin laughs at that attribute. “Your omnipotent God, do something about this! You are all wise; well I think this is the better way to live. All seeing, do you see this? Your gracious, you’ll forgive this sin.” Sin is the hating of God, the seeking to de-god God. So the Pharisees rightly reason thus:

Only God can forgive sin.

Jesus is a man.

Therefore Jesus cannot forgive sin.

The logic is valid; the problem is that the second premise is false. Jesus is more than a man. That’s the point of this text, the healing of this paralytic is a subplot.  Jesus is the God-man with authority to deal with all of our problems at the root.  Jesus doesn’t come as the Great Physician to merely alleviate symptoms, but to do radical surgery by His own wounds.

All sickness is due to sin. It may or may not be due to a particular sin in your life, but all sickness is ultimately due to sin, namely the sin of Adam. Sickness then is a vivid, pervasive picture of the heinousness of a greater plague of which we all suffer, sin. The greatest disease is not to be dreaded as much as the least sin.

Jesus comes to make all things new; a new heaven and a new earth with no more sickness, pain, or death. In order to do this He will have to deal decisively with sin. This He did on the cross, as the God-man. As Anslem would reason, only God can deal with sin, only man ought to, and only in Jesus do the can and ought meet.

So it is the Pharisees, not Jesus, who blasphemed that day. I do not rejoice that the Pharisees blasphemed, but I do rejoice that it was blasphemy. Jesus does have the authority to forgive sin.

Matthew 8:28-34 & Irony and Insanity

Irony: the disciples who after seeing Jesus’ supremacy over the storm, ask, “What kind of man is this?” receive their answer from demons once they come ashore. Jesus is the Son of God, the Sovereign Judge before whom demons fall, beg, and tremble, the One who in the weakness of His exhausted human flesh beats up a legion of demons with a single word. Learn from the demons not only who Jesus is, but that intellectual assent is not enough (James 2:19).

Insanity: the locals learn to tolerate the kingdom of darkness, but when Jesus demonstrates His power over the realm of evil they beg Him to leave.   They prefer pigs to persons and swine to the Savior.