Bible Brad

Matt 16

6 min read

  • For context: Matt 17 is The Transfiguration (around the time of the feast of Tabernacles = roughly October) and takes place “…after six days…” from these events **

1. The Pharisees and Sadducees Demand Signs

  • We have signs but they require interpretation that can only come from discernment (comes from the Holy Spirit) or experience
  • What is the sign of Jonah? Three days and three nights in the belly of a whale:

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earthMatt 12:40

2. The Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees

  • Pharisees = legalism (more merciful than Sadducees but opulent observers of man-made laws)
  • Sadducees = Hellenism (a blending of Judaism and Greek religion and politics; essentially luke-warm Christians that think they are more righteous than those they run with)
  • We are told to beware religious doctrine as it can cloud God’s word in our life. Rather we should lean on the spirit as a source of truth
  • Jesus immediately calls them faithless - reminding them that he’s got them covered physically. He is talking in metaphor and of spiritual matters

Application and Questions

  • Beware the doctrine
  • How do you apply this?

3. Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ

Context: some time seems to have passed. Not clear entirely how much

  • Peter proclaims that Jesus is the son of the living God, not just a prophet but THE prophet

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.Deut 18:18-19Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.Acts 3:22

  • Calls “Peter” (masculine) meaning “part of rock” by the feminine form meaning “a rock”. His Hebrew name, Kefa, meant a small rock, roughly the size of a hand
  • “On this rock” is referring to the rock that Peter just proclaimed: that Jesus is the son of God. Jesus is the rock
    • 1 Cor 10:4 - Jesus is the spiritual rock in the desert
    • 1 Cor 3:11-18 - Jesus is the foundation)
  • Binding (forbid) and loosing (permit) is discussion around judgments and is to apply to fair, biblical judgments. This is not giving Peter the scales of justice nor giving him (and subsequent popes) the authority to dictate to men what God says is right and wrong for each day-and-age

4. Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection

  • See first point
  • Peter stands up for Jesus but Jesus understands what needs to happen. That is, that he be taken and inspected by the religious elites, found to be without blemish, and killed for our transgressions

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilightExodus 12:3-6

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world

Transclude of John
1:29

Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.”John 19:4

Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.Leviticus 16:21–22

All we like sheep have gone astray;we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on himthe iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,so he opened not his mouth. … Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;he has put him to grief.Isaiah 53:6,-7,10a

Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us”1 Corinthians 5:7

And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain… Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne… saying with a loud voice: ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!’”Revelation 5:6, 11

“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”Matt 16:18

  • Some who are standing here won’t taste death? Huh?
  • The transfiguration? He brings three disciples with him to show them himself in glorified form

“And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.”Matt 17:1-2

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