Coming of the King: Week 34

Matthew 16:1-12: The Sign of the Kingdom

• 16:1 "tested Jesus" - This is the second time they ask for a sign. The first time in Matthew 12:38, it was because they questioned His authority to overrule their Sabbath traditions. They are not truly in need of a sign - Jesus just got through feeding 4000 in the wilderness with a few loaves and fishes. This time, they are looking for an opening to "crucify" Him - figurative, and eventually literally. The 5000 men who wanted to make Him king was the turning point. The rulers have decided that Jesus needs to be neutralized, and they are testing his defenses.
• 16:2

  Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

  This is accurate in mid-latitudes, including the Mediterranean world. At sunset, these conditions imply a zone of dry, high pressure between you and the sun. Since weather in the mid-latitudes moves mainly west to east, that means a day of clear sailing. The opposite advice applies near the equator and the poles.
• 16:3 "not the signs of the times" - from the King born in Bethlehem, to the departure of the Sceptre from Judah, to the highly ironic "When Christ comes, no one will know where he is from" John 7:27, The religious rulers were ready to believe anything other than the Scripture they professed to believe.
• 16:4 "sign of Jonah" - on the most direct level, the sign of Jonah is the death and resurrection of Christ. This is still the primary sign of the Gospel, and the one denied early on by apostate churches.

  Now that the Messiah has been rejected, the repetition of the sign makes the prophetic doom of the Jewish nation certain. Jonah traveled 3 days to warn Ninevah that judgement was coming in 40 days. Jesus travelled 3 years to warn Judah that judgement was coming in 40 years. Jonah had been preaching to Israel, but they did not repent. He was then sent to preach to the gentiles of Ninevah, and they repented from the king down to the animals. Jesus was sent first to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel".

  The Jews were called to be a light to the gentiles, but they hated and despised the gentiles, and were sentenced to death as a nation. Jonah was called to give light to gentile Ninevah, but hated and despised them, and was sentenced to death. But Jonah's life was preserved in the midst of the waters, and Israel has been preserved in the midst of persecution.

• 16:5 "When they crossed to the other side" - Mark makes clear that this is while they are in the boat crossing to the other side. Mark 8:14
• 16:6 "leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees" - this helps interpret Matthew 13:33, as Christ himself is comparing leaven to evil within organized religion.
• 16:7 What connection between leaven and forgetting to bring bread did the disciples have in mind? Perhaps they thought the leaven was beng so overawed by the Pharisees that they forgot what they were about.
• 16:9 Mark tells us they had one loaf kept on the boat for just such emergencies. One loaf among 13 hungry hardworking men. No way would Jesus provide for them a 3rd time!
• 16:12 The disciples here apply the leaven to false teaching. Paul the Apostle applies it to defiant sin within the church in 1 Corinthians 5:6 Jesus later clarifies that it is the practice, much more than the teaching of the Pharisees that is the problem. Matthew 23:3 "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven." Matthew 7:21