We can understand the failure of the Pharisees and Sadducees to perceive the signs of the times. They were unable to understand because they would not understand. It is exactly why people are unable to believe on Jesus Christ today: They do not want to believe. What really is incomprehensible is the dense minds of the disciples. To reapply the title of a movie, the Pharisees may have been spiritually “dumb,” but the disciples were “dumber.” They were dumber because they had every reason to understand.
Category: Heads Up (Page 10 of 36)
Articles written by Pastor Steve for the White Mountain Independent newspaper
Every chapter of the Bible is important, but you know what they say about all persons being born equal: “Some are equaler than others.” So also with the Bible. Some chapters are more important than others, though all are important. Matthew 16 is one of these “more important” chapters. It is the central chapter in Matthew’s account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or to put it another way, it is the high point in Jesus’ teaching and the disciples’ growth in spiritual understanding.
In Matthew 15 the story of Jesus’ response to the Canaanite woman is followed by an account of His feeding of four thousand people near the Sea of Galilee, much as He had fed a somewhat larger group earlier. What are we to make of this story?
It is not only Jesus’ silence that seems to be a problem in Matthew 15. It is also the words He used when He spoke to the woman. His first words were, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and He followed that “politically incorrect” statement with the explanation, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
Nothing troubled the religious leaders of Israel more than becoming ceremonially unclean, and nothing made them more unclean than contact with “unclean” Gentiles. Yet in this next section of Matthew, Jesus leaves Israel to enter Gentile territory, where he helps a Gentile woman.
The last of the three conversations in Matthew 15.1-20 is between Jesus and His disciples, and it seems to have been private. The disciples come to Jesus to say that the Pharisees were offended by His teaching. Of course, they were offended by His teaching! Self-righteous persons are always offended when we speak of their sin or their inability to please God by their own corrupt and wicked efforts. Truth is resented. The disciples thought they had to clue Jesus in. He knew the situation very well, of course. He replies now with even stronger teaching.