Last week we saw a really interesting interaction between Jesus and this Canaanite gentile woman. A person that most Jewish people at that time wouldn’t even consider associating with and talking to, but Jesus does talk to her. This conversation definitely read kind of odd at first glance, but as we worked our way through it I believe we saw this woman’s faith being challenged a little bit by Jesus, but ultimately confirmed amazingly as Jesus exclaimed “GREAT IS YOUR FAITH” near the end of the conversation.
The whole interaction served as a great example to us in regard to the persistence of faith and prayer in our relationship with the Lord. And also, that we shouldn’t be so quick to write people off like many would have with this woman.
But for this week we’re going to start off by reading the rest of chapter 15. It’s a very familiar territory so we’re not going to cover it in depth, but I do want to take the time to read through it together.
Read Matthew 15:29-39
The first three verses are just Jesus still going around and ministering to people and doing the miraculous. And then the next eight verses kind of sound like Deja Vu, but they actually aren’t. This is a completely separate instance of bread and fish being multiplied to heal a massive crowd of people. This is all miraculous, this is part of His ministry, it’s an awesome display of His power, but we have discussed these same sorts of situations and I wanted to be aware of and read these verses, but we’re going to move on to the beginning of chapter 16 today.
Read Matthew 16:1-12
The first statement here in verse one is actually pretty significant. We’ve seen a lot of talk about all of these interactions that Jesus has had with the “Scribes and the Pharisees”, but this is the first time that we see the “Pharisees and the Sadducees” come at Jesus together. And what makes this interesting is that these two groups didn’t really see eye to eye, some would even put them in the class of being enemies of each other. They were both part of the Jewish religious leadership and politics, but their beliefs and their politics were almost completely opposed to one another.
So why in the world are these two groups together in this moment with Jesus?
There’s a really old saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and that’s what is going on here. Both of these groups see Jesus as the enemy and even though they are enemies with each other, at this moment, they are more worried about Jesus. And because of that, they have seemingly joined forces to come and deal with Him.
And how are they doing this?
The end of verse one says that they want Jesus to “show them a sign from heaven”. And this may sound kind of familiar because something very similar to this happened earlier in Matthew. Back in Matthew 12, it was the Scribes and the Pharisees coming to Jesus in Matthew 12:38 which says:
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
A very similar request with one significant difference here in Matthew 16. Obviously slightly different group collaborating against Jesus in chapter 16, but the main difference is that instead of just asking for a “sign” like they did in Matthew 12, they are now asking for Him to “show them a sign from heaven” in Matthew 16. It seems like they learned something from their previous engagement. Jesus denied their request for a sign in Matthew 12, but He still went all over the place doing miraculous things, which should be signs in and of themselves.
But these people had traditions and their traditions said that any sign done on earth could be a work of Satan, it could be a fake, but any signs done from heaven, which means a sign in or coming from the sky would be believed to be of God. And obviously that’s happened before, with things such as the fire from heaven for Elijah and other places. So, these guys think that they are smart with their new request, but Jesus isn’t about to just put on a show to impress these guys and so He begins responding in verses 2 and 3:
Read Matthew 16:2-3
Jesus here is using the weather as an example. They didn’t have all of the technology that we have these days to help predict weather, but they had some general ways of looking at the sky and seeking to determine the weather from the signs of it that they were seeing. And Jesus is like, you bunch of Hypocrites, you put all this effort into the signs of the weather to try to figure that out, but you can’t see the signs of the times that are right in front of you? Which is probably Jesus talking about the fact that the time of the Messiah had now come and they had all of the warnings, all of the prophecy, everything to look out for, and now He’s here, it’s all coming true, and yet they just can’t see it.
Jesus is like how can you see all of that with the weather and you can’t see this?
And so, Jesus gives this group of “frenemies” the same answer He gave the group in Matthew 12.
Read Matthew 16:4
You guys will get no sign except for the sign of Jonah and then He left them. We talked about the sign of Jonah before, but to refresh our memory, Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days before it vomited him on to the beach in Nineveh, and Jesus points to this as a sign for Himself, as He will eventually be dead and buried for three days, before rising and walking out of that tomb. That’s the sign that Jesus says that they are going to get and that’s a really powerful sign.
These guys had everything that they needed, all of the information, the prophecy, the life and signs of Jesus right in front of them, but they couldn’t put it all together, they couldn’t understand the truth that was staring them right in the face.
But even Jesus’ disciples, the people closest to Him through all of this time, even they still struggled as well to understand some of the things Jesus said and did too. There’s a massive difference, in that the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Scribes were all openly hostile towards Jesus in their misunderstanding, while at the opposite end Jesus’ disciples were obviously following Him and supporting Him and His ministry, and even though they didn’t understand all of the time, they were teachable, and they desired to learn and know more. And we’ll see that in these next verses.
Read Matthew 16:5-12
Again it sounds like they got on a boat and took off to another side of the Sea of Galilee, but this time they had forgotten to bring bread with them to eat and then Jesus makes the comment that we see in verse 6:
“Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”
The disciples hear Jesus’ statement here, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand what He is saying to them. And so they start talking among themselves and they are like “is He talking about the fact that we forgot the bread?” This was just so funny to me. These are just a bunch of regular guys for the most part, they haven’t learned everything yet, they hear this comment and instead of trying to clarify it immediately, they just start trying to figure out a logical explanation to what Jesus said.
But this right here is a dangerous moment for anyone in terms of dealing with God’s words. Jesus is God, God was speaking, they didn’t understand, and so they tried to form their own conclusions as to what God was saying. It’s really easy to get things mixed up and messed up when we try to just form our own conclusions for God’s words. They had the huge blessing of God still being right in front of them to explain it, but for us, we aren’t in that same exact situation. There are going to be moments where we don’t know everything, we don’t understand everything, or don’t remember everything, or maybe we’ve heard conflicting explanations of something.
So, what are we to do at these moments?
I want to go to another passage in scripture together to see a good example of what we should do.
Read Acts 17:10-12
In this passage we see Paul and his ministry partner Silas enter the town of Berea. And when they got there, they head over to the local synagogue or the local church to begin preaching about Jesus. But the people of this town are noteworthy. Jesus, Paul, Peter, and all of these other guys had been ministering and preaching throughout many different areas and I’m sure tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people heard these various teachings. But the people of this town set a great example for how we should all take in the teaching of God’s word. They didn’t just listen and go about their life, they weren’t just content with having questions, they didn’t try to just form their own conclusions on things, these people went to the scriptures on their own and tested everything that Paul was saying.
Paul was probably the biggest name in the early church days, he wrote at least thirteen of the books in the New Testament, and yet these people still listened to and tested what he had to say. Verse 11 says that they “Received the word with readiness, but then also searched the scriptures themselves to make sure what Paul was saying was true.” But then we see in verse 12 that they found Paul’s teaching to be on point, and after they heard and after they searched and tested it, it says that many of them believed. They heard what he said, they checked if it was true against scripture, everything lined up, and so they believed it. That’s a great example, that’s what we need to be doing.
You see the disciples back in Matthew 16 were making a simple and completely understandable mistake, but it’s an opportunity for us to learn from.
They had the source right in front of them, they had Jesus. When they didn’t understand what He was saying, they should have just asked Him about it, instead of just trying to come up with some explanation like they are here. All of us are probably at different levels of experience and understanding with the Bible, but there are still probably times for every single one of us that we don’t get something, or we’re just struggling to understand something, and we need to be careful about just jumping to conclusions on things or even just taking any person’s opinion on it at face value.
We always have to go back to the source; we go back to scripture like the Bereans did. Or for the disciples here, Jesus is going to reel it on back, and help them understand. It’s really important to build our foundations right from the source. I think of passages like:
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Not only does this passage explain why scripture is so important to our lives, it also defines the source of scripture, that it comes one hundred percent from the inspiration of God. This truth is echoed in 2 Peter 1.
2 Peter 1:20-21
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
None of this came from men’s minds, but men wrote as they were moved by God to write. That’s why scripture, that’s why the Bible is set apart from all other thoughts and writings of people, because it was authored by God. That’s why when we look for answers about the bible, we look to the rest of the bible to help understand. That’s why when the disciples were trying to figure this out, one of them should have just asked Jesus instead of having the little think tank they had going on.
So, Jesus, obviously understanding what is going on is like “Guys, why in the world do you think I’m concerned about not having bread? Have you already forgotten the miracles of feeding the masses from almost nothing?” He’s basically saying that if I managed to feed all those people from those few pieces of bread, then we’re going to be alright.
But then they have the lightbulb moment in verse 12. When they were just trying to figure it out amongst themselves, without Jesus’ input, they were coming to the wrong conclusion. But when Jesus’ input was brought to the table, then understanding happened. They got it, they understood what He meant now.
After all of this, Jesus wasn’t talking about them forgetting bread, He was warning them about the false teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees. As Jesus has said before, a little leaven or yeast in our terms these days, can leaven a bunch of dough. A little bit of it can affect everything that it comes in contact with.
False teaching is that way, a little bit of it can really start changing the way that we understand God’s words. And as more and more of our understanding gets shifted by that wrong understanding, that becomes a huge issue, because we need to be grounded in truth.
The disciples today were in the middle of a misunderstanding of God’s word and thankfully Jesus jumped in and clarified it. There’s a massive amount of false information out there about the Bible. We need to be so familiar with this that the fakes are easier to spot and avoid. We need to be careful that we don’t just jump to conclusions and make up our own understanding about the things of God. We need to go hear, what God has to say, from God’s word, when we’re seeking to understand the things of God. That’s how this needs to work. There’s of course other helpful people and materials out there, but everything needs to be checked and validated against the definitive truth that we have right here.
The disciples thought He was talking about bread when He was actually talking about false teaching. We need to make sure we’re not that far off on things as well.