Matthew
16 consists of three blocks: a warning about the “yeast” of the Pharisees,
Peter’s confession of Jesus, and Jesus’ prediction of His passion.
To
start, a word about the yeast of the Pharisees. Jesus compares the teaching of
the Pharisees to yeast because of the way that yeast works: you only add a
little bit, but it makes the whole loaf swell slowly over time, so slowly that
from minute to minute you hardly even notice it. That’s how false teaching
works, too. It’s insidious; you hardly
even notice that it’s warping the truth.
Here’s
a thing I’ve observed: in seminary and especially in graduate school, we learned
quite a bit about philosophy. Many people are inclined to think that philosophy
is a weird, irrelevant discipline, but a student of it can see how ideas that
begin in the ivory tower slowly work their way into the popular mind. Several
phenomena that we see in our world today—the reduction of our politics to power
games, the bending of reality in regard to gender fluidity, the reduction of
truth to personal preference—all these ideas are the consequences of modern philosophy.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but philosophically it’s important to
understand where ideas came from, and theologically it’s important to stay
connected to the Scriptures in order to weigh our thoughts against the one,
true standard of belief. Otherwise, well, it’s like yeast…
Second,
Peter confesses Jesus. The question, “Who is Jesus?” is a driving concern in the
Gospel. Here Jesus asks it point blank, “Who do people say I am?” and “Who do
you say I am?” Peter, in a moment of God-given clarity, declares Jesus “the
Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That confession is the rock on which Jesus
says He will build His church. It’s a theme through the whole letter of 1 John,
too, that the essential doctrine of the faith is the coming of the Son of God
in the flesh. I think sometimes modern Christians don’t have much use for
doctrine, so conversation about the incarnation seems esoteric and difficult to
them. “Just tell us how to live,” seems a much more contemporary desire from
the church. But if we take Matthew (and 1 John and other places) seriously, we
discover that we cannot begin to understand how to live until we’ve really
grappled with questions of who Jesus is and what He did.
And
what He did is the third block in chapter 16. No sooner has Peter declared Jesus
the Messiah than Jesus declares what it means to be the Messiah: the Messiah
must suffer, die, and be raised to life again. Predictably, Peter objects
because everyone knows that the Messiah is supposed to lead Israel to a glorious
restoration of her fortunes, and being crucified is abject loss. But Jesus
insists: in order for His church to have authority to bind and loose sins, the
Messiah must first earn the forgiveness of sins by His death and resurrection.
Everything hinges on it.
Today
is Maundy Thursday, and although we won’t get to Jesus’ death in these devotions
for another week and a half, I hope you’ll tune it tonight and tomorrow and
Sunday. These observations remind us what is central and foundational to our
faith: Jesus, the Son of God suffered and died for our forgiveness and rose in glorious
victory that we might live. (Tonight, we’re livestreaming on Facebook Live at 7
pm. We’ll have a recorded service with a sermon on our website and Facebook
page by noon tomorrow. Good Friday Tenebrae will also be on Facebook Live at 7
pm on Friday. Easter’s recorded service will be posted early Easter Sunday.)
Interesting to read how Martin Luther had to overcome the Church's obsession with Aristotle in his time. Feels similar.
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