Category: Matthew

But that little ship did present a figure of the Church, in that she is disquieted ‘in the sea,’ that is, in the world, ‘by the waves,’ that is, by persecutions and temptations; the Lord, through patience, sleeping as it were, until, roused in their last extremities by the prayers of the saints, He checks the world, and restores tranquility to His own.  – Tertullian

So the boat is the church, the sea the world, the waves persecution and temptation, Jesus’ sleeping His patience, the disciples cries the prayers of the church, and Jesus stilling the storm His deliverance? Nope. That is a horrible way to read this text.  The boat is… a boat. The sea is the sea, the waves are waves, Jesus is Jesus, and the disciples are disciples. What then is the point of this story? How are we to relate to it?  You are meant to with these disciples, as disciples, marvel at the Christ.

While few may be in danger of allegorizing the text as Turtullian did, many may spiritualize the text and make application in a similar way.  “Come to Jesus when the storms of life suddenly arise and you will have peace.” There is truth in that, but that is not the point of this text. Jesus says, “Peace, be still” and all is calm except for their hearts.  Luke says “they were afraid and they marveled.”  Mark adds further insight recording they were “filled with great fear.” The storm is stilled but they are still in awe. Something more awesome remains in their presence.

“Awesome” has to be one of the most abused words in the English language. Films are awesome, CDs are awesome, clothes are awesome, gadgets are awesome, you might even have a friend who is awesome. No, that which is awesome arouses a complex mixture of dread, wonder, and veneration. Storms are awesome, tornadoes are awesome, hurricanes are awesome, earthquakes are awesome, volcanoes are awesome, tsunamis are awesome.  Here these disciples encounter the exceedingly awesome. When sinful men encounter the glory of the holy Christ, they are filled with awe.

The tragedy of their fear and little faith is that they were more in awe of the storm than the Sovereign, but that soon changed. They caught a glimpse of Jesus, and when they did faith flourished, worry wilted, and fear was properly redirected.

The tragedy of all humanity is that we were made for the Awesome, but we are enamored with the trivial. No wonder our faith is so small and our fears are so big.

Nothing, in fact, has done more harm to Christianity than the practice of filling the ranks of Christ’s army with every volunteer who is willing to make a little profession, and talk fluently of his experience. It has been painfully forgotten that numbers alone do not make strength, and that there may be a great quantity of mere outward religion, while there is very little real grace. Let us all remember this. Let us keep back nothing from young professors and inquirers after Christ. Let us not enlist them on false pretenses. Let us tell them plainly that there is a crown of glory at the end. But let us tell them no less plainly, that there is a daily cross in the way.  – J.C. Ryle

Jesus is redeeming a vast people for Himself from every tribe, language, people, and nation, but he is not after a crowd, he is after disciples. Jesus is not after a million-man-militia ready to run at the first hint of danger, He is after the 300 of Thermopylae ready to lay down their lives, and He lets you know the terms up front.  Jesus does not refuse either one of these would-be disciples, nor does he eagerly accept their proposal, rather he calls them to think. He calls them to count the cost.

You cannot barter the terms of you discipleship. You may not build your own custom Christ desiring the benefits of knowing Him as Savior without the demands of His being Lord. What are the terms?  All. Your heart, your mind, your will, in totality, are to be His.

Discipleship costs, but it is a blissful bankruptcy. In sacrificing all we are the ones who receive. We give up the finite for the infinite. So yes, count the cost, but also consider the Christ.

Initially, as he approached, He seemed to be just yet one more joining the crowd to see this One who spoke with such authority and worked wonders. But as he drew nearer they noticed that his clothes were torn, his hair hung loose, and his upper lip was covered.  He was an outcast. He was a leper! Surely he would divert his path, at least he would soon cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” so that the crowd could divert theirs.

***

Leprosy could refer to several diseases that could affect the skin in a particular way including Hansen’s Disease (Leviticus 13). Hansens’ disease is a peculiar disease. It is not dreaded for the pain it causes (though in the initial stages there is some), but for the pain it anesthetizes. Leprosy does deform, but the most severe damage comes precisely because the leper doesn’t feel any pain. But to the Jew  the most dreaded aspects of this disease were not physical, they were religious and social. According to the law the leper was unclean. That is why the leper asked to be cleansed rather than healed. You were healed of other diseases, but you were cleansed of leprosy. Being unclean he dwelt outside the camp. He dwelt alone. He was a picture of sin, cast away from God and God’s people.

***

Perhaps others started to slow down and murmur. They didn’t want to touch this leper and render themselves unclean. Jesus’ pace and trajectory didn’t change, neither did the lepers. The holy Christ and the unclean leper were on a collision course. The crowd gasps, they are shocked, they step back. This is taboo. The leper’s boldness was matched only by his reverence and humility. Now “Lord” could mean nothing more than “sir” in this culture, but when applied to God it was a title of supreme sovereignty. This bold leper, this bowing leper was not simply being polite, he recognized in Jesus a supreme kind of authority. The question was not whether or not Jesus could heal him, but would He heal him?

***

Later in the 5^th century the Talmud would say to stay at least 6 feet away from all lepers, 150 feet if the wind was blowing. This dread disease is contagious by contact and can be airborne; hence the prescriptions in the law (such as covering the upper lip) had a practical as well as spiritual purpose.

***

The lepers boldness is not the most socially starling thing in our text. Though the leper’s behavior is both shocking and a violation of the law, it is understandable from a human point of view. One can understand the loneliness and desperation this man must have felt. No, the most astonishing actions here are not those of the leper, but Jesus. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him!

***

Leprosy wasn’t something one was commonly healed from, this is one of the reasons it was so dreaded. In the Old Testament only two persons are healed by leprosy, Miriam via Moses’ prayers (Numbers 12), and Naaman via Elisha’s advice (2 Kings 5:1-4).   Both were healed without touch, from a distance.

***

Jesus would later heal from a distance in this chapter. Jesus didn’t need to touch this leper, He wanted to touch this leper.  Just imagine what that touch must have felt like.  Just to be touched by someone must have been wonderful, but to be touched by Jesus!  Moreover to feel His gracious healing touch, well, we can only speculate as to the bliss that leper’s heart was filled with.  This leper could never come close to God’s temple of stone, but in the temple of Jesus’ flesh God came close to Him.

***

Jesus cleanses more than sin defiles.  Edmund Clowney well writes,

Ceremonial symbolism in the Old Testament uses the fundamental distinction between the clean and the unclean.  The comparison of sin to filth is linked with the need for cleanness to approach holy things of the holy Lord.  The prevailing power of sin is shown in the fact that the unclean pollutes the clean, never the other way round.  Haggai’s message focuses on this feature (Hag. 2:10-14).  In fulfillment, the prevailing power of Christ reveres this principle.  When Jesus touches a leper, Jesus is not defiled, the leper is cleansed…

You are cursed with a greater malady of which leprosy is a fit, but faint analogy.  You have only one hope, His name is Jesus, and He is willing to heal would you reverently bow to His supreme authority.

Some will say that in the Sermon on the Mount we find Jesus at His truest; simply a fine moral teacher, perhaps the best there ever was.  People who offer such analysis simply can’t read. Jesus’ claims to supreme authority are the warp and woof of this fine tapestry, unravel this thread and the beauty is lost.

Jesus says those who are persecuted for His sake are blessed (5:11). Jesus does not simply say he came to keep the law, but to fulfill it, that He is everything that it points to (5:17). Repeatedly, at least twelve times, Jesus says something like “I say to you”, or the more emphatic ‘Truly, I say to you,” emphasizing that He stands as the authority behind His own words.  He does not quote the Scriptures or appeal to other teachers as the scribes do, He does not even say “thus says the Lord” as the prophets do, His words carry their own authority precisely because they are His words. Great men don’t speak like this. Sane men don’t speak like this. If Jesus is not divine He is not a good man, He is the worst kind of man.

With nuclear force you collide with this reality in this text. Jesus calls for a decision. You cannot simply be amazed at His authority as the crowds were, you must bow to it. The doctrine you must clearly face here is the supremacy and exclusivity of Christ.

Concerning the narrow way some may say that it seems so, well, narrow. By that charge I take it they mean arrogant.  Imagine you go to a doctor and he tells you that you have a certain problem, immediately you think of your friend who had a similar malady and only needed minimal surgery with one tiny incision. The doctor explains that your problem is such that it requires intensive and extensive surgery, it is the only way. After further multiple expert collaborations would you deem all such doctors narrow and arrogant?

I think the charge of arrogance is laid before us not because we claim to know the only way, but because people think that like doctors we do it based on our own expert knowledge and authority. But they are laying the charge of arrogance at the wrong feet.  I haven’t found the only way by my own intellectual superiority or spiritual fervor, it was graciously revealed to me as good news. I didn’t make the news, I heard it, and now I tell it. Christians don’t claim Jesus is the only way on the basis of my own authority, I claim it on His.

Ultimately the charge of narrowness and arrogance is self-defeating. When others say that it is arrogant to say that your religion is superior, that all others are wrong, and that you shouldn’t try to convert others, they themselves are making a religious statement they think is superior to yours and trying to convert you to it. So who is arrogant? Upon what authority do you make your truth claim? Ultimately it must be yourself. Oh sure you may read others, but you are the one who has ultimately evaluated and decided.

So let us all lay the charge of arrogance where it belongs, at the feet of all humanity. As Christians we don’t deny our hubris, we admit it, repent of it, and bow to kiss the Son (Psalm 2). In such light, the narrow way isn’t arrogant, it is gracious.

Some scholars think that Matthew has done a massive bit of editing here, leaving out the transitions and connective tissue that would help make sense of unrelated parts. I do not think that Matthew has haphazardly arranged parts of this single sermon or is pulling pieces from several sermons for the following reasons.

1.  If 7:7-11 has no connection to the surrounding verses then why not place them in chapter 6 where Jesus teaches concerning prayer?
2. While Matthews’ account of this sermon certainly is condensed, every other part of this sermon has a flow to it.  I do not think Matthew near the end got lazy and just randomly started throwing pieces in.
3. Even if Matthew was getting sporadic in his selection, the Holy Spirit wasn’t.
4. The scene Matthew gives us in 5:1 and 7:28-29 is that of a single setting.
5. 5:1 forms and inclusio (think parenthesis) with 7:28 marking off the main body of this sermon with the repeated phrase, “the law and the prophets.”
6. Finally the strongest and most meaningful word in our text is the little word with which verse 12 begins, “so”. This “so” is the glue that holdes the sermon together.

Here is the breakdown, Matthew 7:1-6 deals with our relations as disciples of Christ to other people, verses 7-11 teaches us about prayer, then in verse 12 we return to how we are to relate to others.  What the “so” in verse 12 tells us then is that as we are reading about prayer we have not left the heading of personal relationships. The teaching on prayer relates to how we are to relate to others.

So, how then does this section on prayer relate to what comes before and after it? As you read verses 1-6 you realize your need for grace and wisdom and Jesus tells you prayer is for power to love people. You have a loving heavenly Father eager to give you such good gifts. Your love for others then overflows from His love for you. We are able to love because He first loved us.

This keeps the passage on prayer from being abused as a means to get whatever we want, and it makes the golden rule golden, that is, uniquely Christian.

Notice how Jesus deals with worry – He’s logical. Now if you know anyone that struggles with worry you know how insufficient logic is to battle anxiety. Statistics give no strength for the worrier. He only reasons, “I could be the one.” But Jesus isn’t simply logical, He is theo-logical.

Three times we are commanded not to worry in this text, and all three times Jesus introduces the command to worry with “therefore”. In light of what Jesus teaches, you are commanded not to worry.  His teaching should result in you not worrying. This knowledge should result in you not worrying. Jesus does not exhort you to pray for deliverance (you should, but this is not the primary way to deal with anxiety). Jesus does not tell you to seek an experience. Jesus tells you to think. The worrier may riposte that thinking is exactly what he has too much of. But when you worry, are you really thinking? Are you controlling your thoughts, or are your thoughts controlling you? Lloyd-Jones expresses this well when he writes,

I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this [the man in Ps. 42]; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’….The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.

Now why is thinking so crucial? Why does Jesus call us to think, and then abandon worry as a result? The answer lies in another question. What is Jesus calling us to think about? We are to consider the character of the Sovereign God, our Master and Lord, who is also our Heavenly Father.  If I lack anything it is not because He is unloving or incapable. God is to be my Treasure, my Vision, my Master, and my Ambition. Worry therefore is God-belittling, that is, blasphemous, as it doubts His providence, and idolatrous as it reveals what we fear and therefore what we love, value, and treasure.

Worry wars against faith; big worry, little faith, big faith, little worry (Matthew 6:30). You fight against worry by fighting for faith. It is true that we cannot make faith happen, it is a gift of God. But God does use means that we can avail ourselves of to increase faith, namely His Word (Romans 10:17) coupled with prayer (Psalm 119:18). Why does the Word increase faith? Because there God speaks to us of Himself. Our faith is not ethereal, it has an object – God. Our faith is in Jesus Christ and all that God is for us in Him. By thinking God’s own thoughts of Himself, given to us in Scripture, we gather wood for the fire. The Spirit sovereignly ignites faith in our chests using the logs of Scripture as fuel. Faith flourishes as it looks to Christ and all that God is for us in Him. Jesus here is directing our gaze to God, who  is our Father in Him (Ephesians 1:5) so that our faith might flourish and our worry wilt.

The theological bedrock that you are meant to stand firmly on in this text is not that you will never hunger, but that God always cares. In Christ He is your Father.

God doesn’t give us our money, He entrusts us with His money.  It’s not a question of how much of our money will we give to Him, but how much of His money are we bold enough to keep for ourselves.  When Jesus uses strong language to rouse us to this reality He is not seeking to rob our joy. This command and the reward for obeying it are not about merit – they both come as further lavish grace in Christ – they are grace upon grace. Jesus wants us to unfurl our sinful fingers and give away temporal pebbles so that our hands are open to receive eternal diamonds.

Live on less, give more, and receive even more, this is heavenly math.

In Matthew 6:1-18 Jesus contrast how the hypocrites practice three acts of piety with the way His disciples should practice them. I can imagine someone reading this section and being really convicted by the first two. They may think, “I sometimes give hypocritically, and often pray hypocritically, but I never fast hypocritically.” But they never set themselves up for the fall.  They never fast hypocritically because they never fast. We’re not even sinning in the right direction.

I think we never or rarely fast hypocritically for the praise of men because there are better ways to achieve our sinful desires. In America we value appearance too much to disfigure our faces and put ashes on our heads. Why fast when there are sexier ways to look spiritual? Besides, you might be though odd for God if you were known to fast regularly. Instead of abusing God’s ordained means for our won glory, we craft our own means so that we get double the glory. We don’t need fasting, we use programs, positions, and ministries as outlets for our hypocrisy. These means, more than fasting, will lead to people seeing me, thinking me spiritual, gifted, and wise.

Our craving is for our own glory, not His. We do not fast because we are fat on the world.

Half of Christian fasting is that our physical appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense. The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so intense. In the first half, appetite is lost. In the second half, appetite is resisted. In the first, we yield to the higher hunger that is. In the second, we fight for the higher hunger that isn’t. Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.  – John Piper in A Hunger for God

The most important prayer request is that the most important person in the universe would do the most important act in the universe.  – John Piper

Last time we reflected on Matthew I said that our biggest sin in prayer is not that our prayers are too short, but too small.  Small prayers both blaspheme and are idolatrous.  Prayer should be God-centered.

And now we come to the second half of the Lord’s Prayer.  We transition from “Your” to “us”.  Is this prayer at war with itself?  Does this prayer implode?  Does it self-destruct?  No, this prayer is perfectly at peace, because all other requests are submissive to the first and primary request, that God hallow His name.  All of the “we needs” are “to God be the glories”.  In one way this prayer is divided into two halves, but in the deepest sense it is a unified whole.  The “us” is still “Your”.

One way to see this is by noticing what is not there, what is not there at least in most good modern versions.  The traditional ending, “For yours is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”, is either in brackets, placed in a footnote, or omitted from modern versions.  I believe this is a good decision.  The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not include it, it was not in the original document written by Matthew.  How did it come to be in the text?  Most likely this was a liturgical ending added by the early church inspired by 1 Chronicles 29:11-13.  Some assuming scribe then sat down to copy a copy of a manuscript and thought that the poor bloke before him left out part of the text.  That monk’s revised copy is then copied several times over until a whole family of manuscripts has the liturgical ending while the older ones do not.  Do not let this disturb you, when the manuscript evidence is examined we can be extremely confident of what the original author wrote.

So how does this help?  The early church saw no disparity between praying the first part of the prayer and the second for the glory of God, nor should we.  God is glorified in both halves.  Ultimately we ask for our daily bread, forgiveness, and to be kept from temptation and the evil one for His glory.

In the final three requests God is glorified as our Sustainer, Redeemer, and Treasure.  Further the Son is glorified in that He is the only way we can approach the Father and know Him in these ways.  God sustains all of humanity, but only through the Son can we come to Him as a Father and ask daily provision for our needs.  Only in Christ can we be forgiven by God.  And it is only because of the gospel of Christ that we see the ugliness of sin and the glories of God and cry, “No contest, give me the eternal pleasures of God and not the temporal pleasures of sin!”

“Us” is still “Your”.  At least is should be.

The biggest problem with our prayers is not that they are too short, but too small.  Our biggest sin in prayer is not the infrequency of our petitions, but the finitude of our petitions.  Small prayers are fit only for a small God, small prayers blaspheme!  Don’t strive to pray more as much as to pray big.

This language is not meant to push you toward using prayer for more health and wealth, but beyond that.  Praying big does not mean praying for more measurable stuff, but praying for the infinite.  Stuff is measurable, God is not.  Also this does not eliminate prayer for daily needs or casting all our anxieties upon Him (I Peter 5:7), but rather establishes the proper setting for such requests.

The Disciple’s Prayer is comprised of six requests that can be divided into two groups of three requests each.  The pronouns are your clue to the division.  The first three all concern “Your”; not your your, but His Your.  The final three concern “us”.  The first three are worshipful longings, the last three are needs humbly requested.

So prayer is to begin with God.  Prayer will reveal our priorities.  What you pray for (content) is what you pray for (motive).  That is, what you request in prayer, is why you pray.  The first petition reveals what should be first in our hearts, the glory and renown of God.  If this isn’t first, your prayers are idolatrous.  Pray big or sin, these are your options.

Prayer seeks the saving rule and reign of God to come and regenerate men’s hearts so that they hallow His name and so that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  The answer to our deepest longings in prayer should fall like a mountain thrust to the earth from the heavens totally rearranging the landscape of this world and we are asking only for feathers.

Pray prayers as big as God.  Pray prayers for God.

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!  When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.  From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.  You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?  – Isaiah 64:1-5