161 - But How About You?

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Wow, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has been traveling, traveling, traveling. He's gone everywhere. And today he's going to go somewhere you would never expect him to go. In fact, where is he going?

Right up to the gates of hell. Oh, let's find out what that's all about today on More Than Ink. Well, welcome. Welcome to our dining room table. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. I'm sitting at the dining room table too. We really are sitting at the dining room table. I'm not here by myself.

We are so glad you're with us this morning. We are about to enter into Matthew 16. And if you remember that last week we talked about the incident of feeding the 4,000 over on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. Not the 5,000, yes, the Gentile feast. And so right at the end of that, they get in the boat and they go back across to the west side to the Jewish territory. So chapter 15 was all concerned about this tour of the Gentile areas where Jesus met that woman who came and knelt at his feet. And then he went across to the top of the Sea of Galilee and healed crowds. And they said, this is only done by the God of Israel, right?

And then the feeding of the 4,000 over there. So here we are back on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. Back on the west side, back on the Jewish side, back in the territory where the Pharisees are actually hunting for him. Right, because the Pharisees hadn't bothered to track him when he left the borders. So when he comes back to their side of the lake, a little bit of fireworks. So here we are, chapter 16, verse 1. Want me to read?

Yeah. So the Pharisees and the Sadducees came and to test him, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. And he answered them, when it's evening, you say, oh, it'll be fair weather for the sky is red. And in the morning, oh, it'll be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. So he left them and departed. Huh. Huh. So it's fascinating to me that over on the other side of the sea, he had just done all these clearly messianic signs. Big time stuff, yeah. And the response of the Gentiles was, this is, they're glorifying the God of Israel.

The God of Israel. Right? Yes. But here he is back in Israel, and they're saying, ah, we're not going to believe you until you show us a sign. Yeah, bring down fire from heaven. Exactly, aren't they looking for?

That would be cool. And it's worth noticing too, it says the Pharisees and Sadducees, and these guys are not friends. No. Pharisees and Sadducees, I mean, they're both components of the religious elite and the powerful. But they joined forces against Jesus. But they joined forces. So it's like they have a common enemy. Right.

And for the first time in the narrative, they're actually doing something together. Because, I mean, it's very stark because the Pharisees believed a Messiah was coming. The Sadducees didn't.

Right. And the Pharisees believed that there was life after death. The Sadducees did not. So there were some gigantically different doctrines between the two, but in Jesus they see a common threat.

A common enemy. So they say, prove who you are, show us a sign from heaven. Isn't it interesting, though, that he says, I'm not giving you a sign, except the sign of Jonah. Yeah, the sign of Jonah. Which he had already said that to them before a few chapters ago, back in chapter 12.

That's right, I was having deja vu. But he says a lot more back in chapter 12, so it's probably worth reviewing it. I wonder if he said all of that also here, and Matthew just didn't repeat it again.

Could be. But back in chapter 12, when they'd asked him for a sign, he said, an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. Here it comes. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation at the judgment and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. Behold, something greater than Jonah is here. That's right. So he's saying to them, hey, the Gentile, wicked Gentiles, repented at the message of Jonah.

Yeah, yeah. And then lets them draw the conclusion, something greater is Jonah. So you know, the parallels between Jonah's experience and Jesus's experience with death and resurrection are extraordinarily parallel, and that's what he's getting at here. And he's saying, I'm not going to give you any sign until the resurrection happens. And that should be enough for you, because that was enough for the Assyrians and they all repented. Well, in another place we know, he told a story where someone said, well, send somebody back from the dead and my brothers will repent.

And he said, nope, even if somebody rises from the dead, they won't. In this particular case, had Jesus said, okay, watch this, and he brought fire down from heaven and like incinerated half the Pharisees. Like Elijah did. Like Elijah did, they still wouldn't believe.

That's the hard heart. That kind of miracle is just not going to do it. So Jesus is going to say, if you want a miracle, I will accommodate you, but it's going to be when I'm dead and I'm resurrected and then deal with that, because that's it right there.

Even Paul the Apostle, when he was writing to the different churches and visiting the churches, you know, he said Jesus's credentials is the resurrection. And so that's enough, actually, right there. And he's saying to these guys right here, that's all you're going to need, but you're still not going to respond. Well, that's all you're going to get. Because they were completely denying and overlooking the presence of all the signs that he had been offering. Right, right. And in this particular case, we said these were enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, they're trying to do something to trip Jesus up, because they think, well, this guy is an imposter.

That's what they're thinking. He can't possibly be the real deal. He cannot have God do something on his behalf, because he's from Satan or something. They call him the Eligible. They accused him of that.

Yeah. So this is not going to happen. So we're going to put him on the spot. He's not going to be able to deliver. And the people are going to be waiting for him to deliver, and he doesn't. And so they'll know he's a fraud.

This is going to work out great. And it doesn't. So he just leaves them.

Just walks away. He just walks away from the argument after dropping that last bomb, nothing except the sign of Jonah. And you know, and I wonder how many people in the crowd who overheard this understood what the sign of Jonah meant. And I think this is kind of, again, an investment for what's going to happen still many months ahead with the resurrection.

Because the sign of Jonah, they know who Jonah was, they know the history, and they know that he was a prophet that was sent, and he preached to the Assyrians, again, classical enemies. Well, that's why I read that passage in 12, because Jesus did say all of that in detail earlier. Right.

He really painted it out for him. Yeah. So says that and walks away. Well, shall we? We need to go on. Let's continue. I'll keep going. Verse five. We're still with the Pharisees here. So when the disciples reached the other side, oh, they're crossing the lake all the time. Crossing the lake again.

Okay. Well, they'd forgotten to bring any bread. They forgot to bring any bread. And so Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they began discussing it amongst themselves saying, well, we brought no bread. I'm sorry, I've got to read it.

This is a forehead slapping moment here. But Jesus aware of this said, oh, you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive, do you not remember the five loaves, the 5,000, how many baskets were gathered or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Head slaps all around. Well, you know, we're just like them. We really are. Because we get so fixed on the surface detail or the concrete thing that we forget that what Jesus has been doing is pointing, I am the bread of life. I am all you need.

I am the one God sent. But I mean, here they are in a place and they forgot to bring any bread. They weren't carrying their lunch.

They got hungry and they said, wow, they don't have any bread. And Jesus says, beware the leaven of the Pharisees. Well, Jesus is still thinking about the exchange he just walked away from. Exactly.

I know, it's continuity here is what it's all about. So when he's talking about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, what's he talking about do you think? The leaven is yeast in case you don't know that.

You need to look that up. And everyone knows that you could take a little bit of yeast and you put it in the flour and stir it up and it gets big. And it puffs. It multiplies.

Up. Yeah. Makes air bubbles. Right, right, right. And you can take an entire stash of, stash, a pile of flour and you can make the entire pile of flour do this.

Contaminate the entire thing with the puffing. There's a lot of imagery that they understood by the way about happening on kind of an invisible way, but in the end you see the results of it and it spreads, it spreads. So that's what we're talking about. So it's contagious. It's like a hidden spreading. So what he's saying is watch out about the hidden spreading influence of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Because all they're concerned about appearance and about acting right, but their hearts were not.

Their hearts were not. Right. Yeah, exactly.

So he's, and he's also saying in a way that what these guys are proclaiming, what the Pharisees and Sadducees are proclaiming is kind of sneaky. It can work its way into you and replicate inside of you. You need to be very careful about your exposure to these guys because it can sneak in and contaminate your batch. So I mean it's really, they understand what's going on. They knew yeast. They understood yeast.

Okay, so Jesus in setting up this conversation, Jesus says, oh you of little faith. Why are you talking about bread? Right.

Why are you talking about, why are you worrying about food? We're not talking about the material world here. We're talking about spiritual reality, right? And we talked a little bit last week about the people that Jesus identified as people of great faith in the book of Matthew. We're both Gentiles. You're right, both Gentiles.

The Eunachian woman, the woman, the Canaanite woman up in Tyre and the centurion who came to him seeking healing for his little servants. They got it. They got it. But here are the ones who should have had this puny, weak, undeveloped. Yeah, and he takes them down in a very straightforward way. Weren't you guys there at the 5,000?

Weren't you guys there at the 4,000? So what are you doing worrying about food? It's like he rubs their noses in it. Yeah, I know. It's just nice and straightforward. But in the end, in the end they got it. It says they understood. Then they got it. Yeah, okay. We're not talking about the leaven in bread. Right.

We're talking about the teaching of the Pharisees and satchets. Ah, so light bulbs go off and they get it. Good. Good. We got there. Okay. Let's move on. What do you say?

Oh, we need to. Now, this is verse 13. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Okay, this passage, and more false religions have been founded upon a misunderstanding of this little paragraph. It just breaks my heart and boggles my mind. You have to be careful, you have to walk through it and do it carefully, but yeah, it's been the source of so many offshoot crazinesses. Okay, but before we get into that, let's talk about Caesarea Philippi for a minute.

Where are they? Okay, well they are, if you're at the top of the Sea of Galilee, which is where we've been doing almost everything, Capernaum and stuff like that, turn directly north and walk 25 miles. I mean, they are up on the edges of what is known Israel, basically.

And that's true today, in fact. It's actually kind of a mountainous region, you go uphill a long ways to get up in that neck of the woods. Yeah, to this very day when you go up to Caesarea Philippi, you're like within spitting distance of Syria and Lebanon's on one side, Syria is there, so you're way up north.

You're just way up north in the center of the country. But Caesarea Philippi, as you can notice by the name of it, it was established as a place to worship Caesar Augustus as a god. And before that, the Greeks used it to worship Pan, the god that they had. And before that, it was used by the Babylonians to worship the Baal god. So there's some very interesting geography, geology in this area. There's a very famous cave where there used to be a statue of Pan and probably some other gods that was actually known as the gates to the underworld.

That's exactly right. This is a very cultic place. Significant place. So Jesus...

It's still there, actually. You can go there today. We've been there, we've taken pictures.

Yeah, you can, but it just has a long history of cultic things going on. So Jesus decides deliberately, deliberately to walk into this place and ask the guys. Who do you say I am? Who do you say that I am?

The contrast is just striking right here. It's exactly the right place to ask this question. Well that's an interesting question anyway, because that is the single question every single one of us must answer. Who do you say is Jesus?

Who is this? And I like how he starts it by saying, so what do the people say that I am? And what they hear, they come up with a list of national reformers in the history of Israel.

Pretty much. People have a large reforming change across, I mean you've got Elijah, you've got Jeremiah, you've got John the Baptist. Guys who made a big impact, turned things around. So they said, well Jesus is clearly a guy who's here to turn things around. So they give him a list like this. The Elijah one's not a bad guess either, because in the last breath of the Old Testament in Malachi, it says that Elijah's gonna come before the Messiah comes.

So that's not a bad guess either, because they're expecting that. Well John the Baptist was the one who was identified as the forerunner, just like Elijah. Right, in the shoes of Elijah, right. So it's an interesting way to start the discussion, but then he really nails it down.

So how about you guys? Who do you say that I am? And sure enough, out of all the apostles, we're not surprised. It's Peter who speaks up, but what he says is just remarkable. Like we've been moaning the fact that through all these miracles they're not getting it. Now they get it. He's the Christ, he's the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Well they have the identifiers right, but I think the implications of that is still not entirely clear.

Yeah, yeah. But he says you are the sent one, you are God's designated heir representative, the one who will inherit, the one who represents the Father of the Living God. Not any of these dead idols that we're standing here looking at. Yeah, they could have that cave right behind them, you know, not like dead pan, but you're the Son of the Living God.

So the distinction is actually quite clear. The first one, Christ, is just the Greek version of Messiah, the anointed one, the one who's been promised and talked about all through the Old Testament, which before the woman up on the coast called the Son of David, one in the same, exactly the same thing, the promised one. But then he adds to that the Son of the Living God. And when you claim to be the Son of the Living God, you are claiming deity.

There's no way around that. You're claiming the character and the familial connection to the Living God. So in saying this pair of phrases, Messiah and the Son of the Living God, it's saying what we're talking about is fully man, the promised superman in a way from God, and God himself deity. Fully God, fully man. If you remember not so long before this, when Peter had walked on the water and got back into the boat, the disciples response was, surely you are the Son of God. So the peg dropped in the hole.

They're still kind of fleshing out what that means. But Peter's the one who speaks up here and says, oh, you are him. Because what had they seen? They'd seen him calm the storm at least twice.

Peter had walked on the water. They'd seen him feed thousands of people from a few loaves. Including Gentiles, which is unspeakable. They'd seen him heal things that were unhealable.

Yeah, yeah. Because that list we had with that other healing on the Gentile side includes healing the blind, which from a doctrinal position in the Old Testament, only God can do that. And he heals a blind man in a very prominent way in John 9 and gets into a lot of trouble.

So yes. He gets the blind man in trouble. And Jesus. And his parents.

Yeah, it's incredible. So I mean, undeniable connections to deity is what we have. Why does Jesus say, blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah? Ah.

What do you make of that? Yeah. Blessed are you, bar means son. Simon the son of Jonah.

Well, what he's clearly saying is that your natural father's not the one that taught you this. Yeah. You see more in there? Well, I'm just wondering, because we had just talked about Jonah and the sign of Jonah. Oh, the sign of Jonah, yeah. Is there something there talking about a hint at the resurrection that he is some maybe little inkling that there's... I've never tied that together, but could be. Well, I didn't either until just recently. And I'm thinking, hmm.

I don't know. Since Jonah had just figured in the account. Yeah, that's true. Not a few paragraphs before.

Well, and Jonah had a remarkable redemptive role with Gentiles. Yeah. So these are the kinds of questions it's okay to ask. Well, they're fun to wonder. And it might lead you to make a discovery in your own putting together of the scriptures. And so you would search out, well, where else did Jesus talk about Jonah?

Do we know anywhere what Peter's father's name was? I mean, you can kind of track down there and see if you can tease out some deeper understanding. Yeah, but in the context here too, what happens in the next phrase, we're talking about fathers.

Right. So Simon, the son of like whoever, but the son of Jonah, anybody saying flesh and blood, that is your own father, has not revealed this to you. But you do have a father who has revealed this to you.

It's your father in heaven. So what you're understanding now is not something that's natural. It's something that's actually supernatural, your understanding and belief in who Jesus is. Well, indeed, Peter had just referred to Jesus as the son of the living God. Right.

And now Jesus is saying, my father who's in heaven has revealed this to you. Yeah. Right. So God, I am the son of God, but he doesn't only talk to me, he communicates with you. And even to this day, when people come to faith in Christ, that faith, that understanding is something that's given by God. Right.

It's not a natural thing that happens. And then after this, Jesus comments on Peter's proclamation and renames him, gives him a new name, calls him Peter, which is petros. It means stone. It means rock. Right.

Little rock. Or if you're confused, sometimes you see him referred to as Cephas. Right. Cephas is just... Which is the Greek term. Well, no, the Greek is petros, is Peter. Oh, the Greek is petros. That's right.

Yeah. It's the Aramaic. Aramaic. So it means the same thing. It means stone, your stone.

Your stone is massive, hell will not prevail against it. So you build things with rocks. Right. But we have the same word, rock and rock in English, but it's not the same word in Greek. It's petros and petra, meaning a rock and bedrock.

A single stone versus a big rock outcropping. Yeah. Right. Solid. Saying basically Peter is going to be an element in the building of this structure with rocks.

Something foundational. Right. Right.

And Peter actually writes in 1 Peter that very thing. Do you have that passage? I don't have it in front of me. No. I've got it. You've got it.

Because you're good. Here's Peter writing himself in 1 Peter 2.4. As you come to him, a living stone, talking about Jesus, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, and you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So that's who he's talking about when he says, I will build my church.

My church. The Greek word is ekklesia, this community of called ones. We're not talking about Jesus building an organization or placing Peter in the position of president or chief CEO. Right. Or necessarily starting a new race or ethnic group like the Israelites are. He's saying this is a gathering of people.

A gathering of people that I'm going to call together. And the gates of hell will not prevail. Well, they're standing in Caesarea Philippi where that big cave was known as the Gates of Hades. Right.

So he's got the best backdrop in the world as an illustration of this. And by the way, the gates of a city protect the city from invasion. So what he's saying is that hell itself has gates trying to protect itself.

No way. Well, you know, the church is going to be taking the initiative and it's going to cross right through those gates. Actually, that leads us into the next statement where he says, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Right. What does a key do? It opens a lock.

It opens a door. Or it locks. That's locked. A lock. Right.

It changes access. Friends, get your concordance and find out where else key and keys show up in the scriptures because it's very rare. There's only a couple of places. One is in Isaiah 22, 22, where it almost is exactly like this. I'll give him the key of the house of David and when he opens, no one will shut and when he shuts, no one will open. Exactly. And then it shows up in Revelation and there's one other place. It's in Luke where Jesus says to the Pharisees, you've taken away the key of knowledge, right?

So you've locked up the knowledge of God. Yep. And they were really talking about access to the kingdom of heaven.

Access. And he's saying, you guys are going to have a key role. Oh, that's a nice pun. Right.

You're going to have a key role. But I want to contrast this. We just had a kerfuffle with the Pharisees. Right. Later in Matthew 23, he says the Pharisees are not doing this. He says, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

Right. It's the opposite of what Peter and the apostles are going to be doing in terms of opening it up. So they're going to be involved in doing the hands on changing of the world and gathering together people and because it says the gathered ones, it really implies not just one racial or ethnic group. It's a mix.

It's a gathering. So he's not giving Peter authority to bind and loose. No. No. It doesn't have anything to do with rendering judgments on people. Right.

Just whatever you recognize is bound, right? This community of the called ones will reflect the character and nature of the king who called them. Absolutely. And we sort of blow up Peter's role in that. Peter did have a prominent role in the church.

Right. He was the one that talked at Pentecost. But Peter's is not the cornerstone, Jesus is. And so, and we are all stones in the building that's built on the bedrock of Jesus as the cornerstone.

Yeah. It's just a, it's a great picture about the role that they are going to take on now as they move forward when Jesus is resurrected. So I encourage you listeners to look into the actual structure of that sentence in verse 19 and 20 about loosing and binding, because it's rendered poorly in English. It's whatever has already been bound in heaven, has already been loosed in heaven. We the called ones into the kingdom of God will recognize and affirm what God has already done.

Yeah. And it's worth noting too, that this was a term that was used all the time with the Pharisees. When someone did something against the law, they were bound.

And if they thought they were not guilty, they were loosed. So he's basically going to say, when it comes to righteousness, you guys are going to be the guys to define that now. Boy our time is up.

We are totally out of time and I'm having a great time. So I hope you join us next time as we continue on in this, we're going to keep pushing on and, and next time Jesus is going to start to turn his face towards Jerusalem and that's just going to just cause hot water like you can't believe. So next time we turn south and we'll do it here on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. That's pretty good. This has been a production of Main Street Church of rhythm city.