Reading Assignment: Matthew 16:1-12
Main Idea: Unbelief of two kinds
Key verse: Matthew 16:4
Two parts to this passage:
1. Test: The religious leaders came to test Jesus, motivated by their unbelief.
2. Trust: The disciples failed to trust in the Lord for His care and provision.
Prayer:
1. Stubborn unbelief: Confess where there may be a heart that rejects Christ with an unwillingness to believe and repent. Seek the Lord’s mercy and ask for a changed heart.
2. Struggle to trust: Confess where there may be a struggle to depend on the Lord’s ability and willingness to provide and care for us.
Transcript
Let's pray and we'll dig into the word of God together.
Our Lord, thank You for another morning to breathe and live and have our being. Thank You for Your grace that every day sustains us. Thank You for not only our physical life, but our spiritual life, that we can connect with You every day, learn from You, and receive from You strength and wisdom to live anther day for Your glory and honor, and to put to death the deeds of the flesh and to be people who are living in the footsteps of Jesus, Your Son. Thank You for Him. Thank You for His life, His death, and resurrection, and for His presence before You, interceding for us. All of these glorious truths, we have learned from Your word. Thank You for revealing them to us, that we would go through life with heavenly realities filling our hearts and minds, giving us hope for the future and empowering us for the present. Please guide us during this time. Please bless each person here with Your holy word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The next reading assignment is Matthew 16:1-12. The key verse is found in verse 4, which I'll read in a minute, and the main idea is this: Unbelief of two kinds. That's what we encounter in this passage: Unbelief of two kinds. The key verse is verse 4, where Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign.” Kind of a provocative statement. This was Jesus' reaction to the request for signs that was insincere. We’ll get into an explanation of this in a minute. The passage before us comprises of two parts. First, there is the test by the religious leaders and then there is the lack of trust on the part of the disciples, both exhibiting unbelief of different kinds.
First, the test. There was a group of religious leaders that came to Jesus and challenged Him regarding His signs. They wanted to see another sign from Him. The group that had shown up is rather odd, because it's a collaboration of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. This combination is quite strange, because these two groups actually didn't have much in common. The Sadducees were the aristocrats, made-up of high priests and their families. They didn't have much in terms of moral compunction. They also didn't have much in terms of any biblical understanding. Their connection to the Jewish religious life was the temple, through which they deeply enriched themselves. On the other hand, the Pharisees were the regular, normal middle-class people. They were workers; and most of the rabbis, the teachers of the Jews, came from the Pharisees. They faithfully followed the moral code that came down from what we saw previously in Chapter 15, the tradition of the elders, the rabbinic tradition, or rabbinic teaching. So the Pharisees, though misguided, were very serious about trying to be moral. But they were misguided, because they weren't being guided from the Bible, but from these other ideas, tradition of the elders. In any case, for whatever reason, these two unlikely friends decided to collaborate in their attack on Jesus. So they show up and they asked Jesus, “Show us a sign.” Now, by this time, of course, Jesus had performed many, many signs in many different places. And so Jesus is not going to indulge them and give them yet another sign just because they asked. Furthermore, Jesus was aware that these men were not asking for a sign so that they might believe. They were asking for a sign to bolster their reasons not to believe. They came to question Him not to trust in Him. Well, Jesus' response begins with the questioning of their practice. He tells them that they, like the rest of the ancient people, knew how to discern the appearance of the sky and ascertain what the weather would be. The ancient people did this. They looked up at the sky. If in the evening time the sky was red, then they knew the weather would be fair. If in the morning the sky was red, then they expected that there would be a storm coming in. He essentially says this: “you know how to read the skies to determine the weather, but you are unable to read the signs that I performed, nor are you able to decipher the prophecies that I have fulfilled.” Clearly, Jesus performed many signs. In fact, He will perform one last sign which He calls the sign of Jonah. That sounds a little bit cryptic, but if you remember from Chapter 12, Jesus explains what this sign would be. In the same way Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so it will be with Jesus. This is talking about His death, burial, and resurrection. Well, the religious leaders were unwilling to believe. They saw Jesus's past signs, and of course they will see more signs (from the sky darkening and the earth quaking) at Jesus's death, and they will also recognize that Jesus's body goes missing on the third day after His death, signifying His resurrection. They will also witness the sign of the Pentecost Day, when the Holy Spirit comes and the disciples do extraordinary things. But in spite of all these things, they refused to believe. Jesus's life was filled with prophecy fulfillment. I won't go through the many, many prophecies but I will just mention one. The time of Jesus' life was predicted as the time of the Messiah by the prophet Daniel. This is given to us in Daniel Chapter 9, and if you recall those recent studies, you will remember that the timing of the arrival of the Messiah was already announced. Jesus' point here is that their practices were all skewed. Instead of recognizing Jesus as the Messiah based on the miraculous signs and His fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, they were essentially playing dumb. They were acting like they really didn't see the signs. And so here they were, asking for a sign. But Jesus won't indulge them in this. Because the fact of the matter is that the religious leaders were already decided. They already determined to reject Jesus as the Messiah. This is to say, even if Jesus were to perform another sign at this juncture, they still would not believe.
There is another amazing sign Jesus performs a little bit later in Jesus's ministry right up against the final week of His life, which was the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead; and the religious leaders knew that Lazarus had been raised from the dead. But they still would not receive Jesus’ teaching. They would not forsake their sins and put to death their sinful desires and live in obedience to Christ. They refused to follow Him. They refused to honor Him and worship Him as the Lord. They wanted to continue in their own sinful and godless lifestyle. And they would continue to do this even if they knew the gospel was true. This is quite astonishing, but this is the doctrine of sin in the Bible, that the ultimate reason why people do not believe is not because they don't have enough evidence, it's because they're not willing to listen to God. And this was the heart of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They did not request for a sign so that they would believe. They requested for a sign to challenge Jesus and to give themselves more reasons not to believe. The request for a sign came from an evil heart as Jesus pointed out. In verse 4, this is what Jesus called them, “an evil and adulterous generation.” Why did He call them this? Because they were evil, in that they were unwilling to believe in the God who created them, who came down from heaven. They were also adulterous in that they were infatuated with their own selfish, sinful and godless living, and they were not going to let go of these evil desires. They were attracted to something else other than the Holy God, and in this sense, they were an adulterous generation. As I mentioned earlier, Jesus points them to one sign, the sign of Jonah, which is His resurrection from the dead. There is so much to be said about Jesus' resurrection from the dead, but the New Testament is the testimony of eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection. In the same way that today in the Court of Law, a verdict will be reached based on the testimony of people, so it is with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In fact, there is a book written recently by a cold case investigator. I'll give you a reference if you ask me offline. You may ask, what is a cold case? A cold case is a criminal case where the people involved, the witnesses or even the suspect, had already died. A cold case investigator would dig through whatever evidence and testimonies were remaining and they would review all of these to get to the bottom of the case. Well, this man was trained in determining what actually happened in the past, and he took that same approach and applied it to the resurrection of Jesus. He examined all the testimonies of the New Testament as well as some ancient secular sources, and He became a Christian, even though he was a skeptic before. He came to realize that the testimonies were rock solid, and any reason to doubt the testimonies were dispelled by the demonstration of the testifiers’ honesty and trustworthiness. It's a fascinating book. Again, I'll give you the reference if you're interested in reading it. But Jesus says that His resurrection from the dead is the ultimate sign of His identity as the Son of God.
The main point here is that sometimes people ask for a sign, not so that they would believe, but so that would continue in their rebellion against God and give themselves an excuse to continue living a godless life. This was the condition of these religious leaders. They had already seen the signs Jesus performed. What more would another sign do for them when they ignored all the signs before? They requested for a sign to cover up for their true and evil intentions. The human heart can be this evil in its state of unbelief.
The second story has to do with the disciples, and I call this section trust. The disciples should’ve trusted in the Lord, but they fail to do so. As you will recall, at the end of Chapter 15, there was the feeding of the 4000. Now that's the second time that Jesus had fed the multitudes (He first did it in Chapter 14). Well, they move on from that scene and come down from the mountain. They go over to the other side of the sea, as you would recall from the end of Chapter 15. Jesus now made a cryptic statement, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Now, when Jesus made this statement, He meant that the disciples should be guarded against the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The idea of the leaven in the Old Testament was a metaphor for an evil and deceptive influence. In the same way that leaven would make the dough rise and make it look bigger than it actually was, so leaven is deception that skews the truth. Jesus uses this metaphor to warn the disciples about the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. But the disciples didn't recognize this at all. Instead, they were overly concerned about having enough food. They were preoccupied with their need of provisions. And so when Jesus said those words, they were saying to themselves, “Oh Jesus said that because we forgot to bring the leftover bread from the other side of the Sea of Galilee.” Jesus, of course, knows what they were talking about and so He rebukes them for worrying about food. He had already at least on two occasions, fed the multitudes with the miraculously multiplied bread. In Mark's Gospel, the rebuke is given even more strongly than here. There Jesus says, “Do you not see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart?” What Jesus means is this, that based on how He had already taken care of them and provided for them in the past, they should have trusted in the Lord that He is both willing and able to provide and care for them. To doubt either the Lord's ability or His willingness to provide is to have a hardened heart.
And so you have the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who are quite unwilling to believe and repent, and they just wanted to challenge Jesus. That's unbelief of a wholesale rejection of Christ. And then you have the disciples here, who, though they've seen the demonstration of Jesus' care, they struggle to trust in Him for this. That’s unbelief of another kind, the unbelief of independence. These are relevant matters to pray to the Lord about.
First of all, if you sense that perhaps you have an unwillingness in your heart that refuses to repent and believe and follow Christ, that is a stubbornness of heart, like the religious leaders, that rejects Christ. This is a serious condition; but even if that is you, I would encourage you to beg Jesus for mercy and ask Him to change your heart. I don't know what else we can do when we find ourselves in that situation where we love our sin, comfort, and selfishness and therefore we reject Jesus' words. The only thing I can think to do is to confess your sinfulness and cry out to Jesus for mercy.
If, on the other hand, your struggle in faith is more about failure to depend on Jesus for His care and provision, then confession is still the right response to the Lord. It is still unbelief, just at another level, and seek the Lord’s forgiveness and His help. It is indeed sin to distrust the Lord. But you know, it is for sins like these that Jesus died. Therefore, we can go to Him and find restoration through the blood He shed for sinners, and then repent. Remember that Jesus told us to seek first God's Kingdom and His righteousness, and that all these other things will be added to us. Like Jesus taught us in Matthew 6, look at the birds of the air and see how God takes care of them. Look also at the grass of the field, how He clothes them with flowers in the springtime. Recognize God always takes care of His creation. Why would He not take care of His own sons and daughters in Christ?
There are many things to pray for here. I think every believer struggles to trust in the Lord as we should. And as Jesus points out to the disciples, it is the evidence of a hardened heart. And you know, when we are struggling with distrust in the Lord, we must absolutely confess them to the Lord and repent of them; and we can do so, because there is more grace in Christ than there is sin in us. Well, that's it for the lesson today. Let me pray for us and we'll wrap it up. Our Lord, thank You for your patience with us and that there is an avenue toward forgiveness and restoration in Christ. We pray that You would forgive us for our lack of trust in You, how we worry about things and make foolish decisions out of a lack of trust in You. And Father, if there is any among us with a stubborn heart that is unwilling to repent and trust in Christ, we pray that you would show them Your mercy. Thank You, our Lord, that there is a pathway forward for anyone who is willing to come to You and that Your grace is sufficient and that anyone who comes to You humbly, seeking for forgiveness and restoration and a change of heart, You grant it, because You are a God of mercy. Thank You for Your precious words to us. Thank You that You really do care for Your people. Even as Jesus provided for the multitudes and the disciples, so Your care for us is still here today. In our hearts we long to trust in You, and we depend on You for the ability to do so. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Well, that's it for today. Lord bless you all and see you on Friday.