Matthew’s Explanation of the “Messianic Secret”

One of the big topics in the Gospel of Mark is what is known as the “Messianic Secret”. Over and over again in Mark, Jesus tells people not to tell others about who he is. This happens up until Mark 8 when Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is and Peter says he is the Christ or Messiah. It seems kind of strange for Jesus to tell others not to tell people about what they have seen until half way through the book. Some believe the reason for this is because Jesus didn’t want people to misunderstand his mission and follow him for all the wrong reasons (to receive food like when he fed the 5000 in Mark 6) (Jesus 101, p 22).

I was reading in Matthew today and it looks like Matthew actually gives an explanation as to why Jesus told people not to tell. It has to do with fulfillment of prophesy from Isaiah 42:1-4. Here is what Matthew tells us in Matthew 12:13-21,

¹³ Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴ But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

God’s Chosen Servant

¹⁵ Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. Many followed him, and he healed all their sick, ¹⁶ warning them not to tell who he was. ¹⁷ This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

¹⁸ “Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
the one I love, in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
¹⁹ He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
²⁰ A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
²¹     In his name the nations will put their hope.”

Am I reading that right? Why haven’t I read anyone just offering Matthew’s explanation and why have so many tried so many other explanations if it is right there? Maybe this has been mentioned in commentaries dozens of times and I am just ignorant. This link seems to say the prophesy isn’t about the secret but instead points back to Jesus (in that instance) being unwilling to engage the Pharisees. I did a little more poking around and the Holman Bible Dictionary offers this as a possibility. Thoughts?

New Free Study Uploaded – Parables and the Kingdom of God

I just uploaded a new 13 lesson series on the parables of Jesus entitled “Parables and the Kingdom of God”

Here are the stats on free curriculum on this blog:

• 937 total lessons
• 2996 total pages
• 75 lesson series
• 20 contributors
• 60,000+ pdf downloads!

If We Follow Jesus’ Model We Will Do More Than We Say

Talk is a multi-gazillion dollar industry. Facebook, twitter, email, texts, phones, television, movies all have one thing in common…people talking. But catch the very last verse of the Gospel of John, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” He didn’t say Jesus said many other things (which I am sure he did) but that Jesus did many other things. Too often we get caught saying without doing. Saying something is certainly a lot easier than doing something but at the end of the day it isn’t what we talked about that will matter, it is what we did.

So let us not be consumed by unproductive conversation. Rather, let us be busy doing the things that have to do with eternal life. Imagine if you did one thing for the kingdom before you allowed yourself one tweet, blog post or facebook comment…What might this world look like? Which is more important vs which do we spend our time on?

Do We Recognize Redemption When It Happens Right in Front of Us?

In Luke 7 Jesus is in the house of Simon the Pharisee. While they are reclining at the table a “sinful” woman comes in and anoints Jesus, first with her tears and then with some perfume she had brought with her. Luke tells us she had learned that Jesus was in the house and she knew exactly where she needed to be and what she needed to do. We know that because she came prepared with a bottle of perfume. First she wept at his feet and began putting her tears on Jesus’ feet. Then she started kissing his feet and poured perfume on them. I am sure this was quite uncomfortable for those who were there watching this unfold but what made it even more difficult for them was who the woman was who was doing all of this. She was a “sinner”. The worldly part inside us tells us that sinners and Messiah’s shouldn’t mix. But the part inside us that says things like that has it all wrong. There was no better place for her to be, in all her sin…in the messiness of her life than in the presence of Jesus Christ. What as happening was redemption right in front of their eyes but they were too blind to see it.

In order to open their eyes to the significance of what was happening before them, Jesus tells them a story about two men who had much debt. One guy owed a year and a half’s wages and the other guy a month and a half. The lender forgave them both. Jesus asks them, “Now which of them will love him more?” The obvious answer is the one who owed more. It seems like Jesus is saying that this woman actually loves Jesus more than they do. Ouch. In the story, Jesus doesn’t get into why they owed all of that or all the bad decisions they had made that led up to that point. The lender doesn’t owe explanation to anyone when it comes to forgiving debt because forgiving debt rarely makes sense from a worldly perspective. From Jesus’ perspective it makes all the sense in the world because Jesus came to bring redemption to a world full of the debt  and weight of sin and death and release us into a great freedom that we find only through Christ.

What is most frightening about this story is that all of this was unfolding before Simon and company but they couldn’t see it. Jesus was trying to open their eyes so that they could understand the significance of it all. Are there things Jesus is trying to open our eyes to see accurately? There are a few questions for us that come out of all of this. The first question we must ask ourselves is this, are there times we pre-judge people? Second, are you currently holding someone’s past against them? Third, how do we make our attitude toward people we have a hard time with the same attitude Jesus would have toward them?

Let us have eyes to see things clearly like Jesus did so that we can rejoice when Jesus rejoices and mourn when he mourns. Let us never get the two confused so that we weep when Jesus rejoices or rejoice when Jesus mourns because that means we are seeing things from a worldly perspective and not as Jesus sees them.

Jesus, Seeds and our DNA

I have been writing small group material on the parables and I was surprised to see how many of Jesus parables are about seeds. You have the parable of the sower, the mustard seed, the growing seed, the wheat and the weeds and so on.

In these parables, the seed usually represents God’s Word. When it gets in the soil produces something because that is its kingdom DNA. Like DNA It is designed to produce life, to grow and to reproduce itself…that is what DNA does. God’s plan for humanity is carefully written on every strand…every seed that hits the ground. It is a powerful, graceful and beautiful thing. It is God’s vision for where he is taking this world and the redemption we find in Christ Jesus.

If you ever get a good close look at a seed, they often resemble the plant they will become. I can’t help but think about how that parallels how we become confirmed into the image of Christ as we seek him in faith.

John 12 and 1 Corinthians 15 give us one last insight on this. Seeds must die before they can bring life. So it was with Christ and so it is with us. Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him. Paul tells us in Romans 6 that our baptism is death to self and resurrection with Christ. Once the seed penetrates your heart, this all becomes part of your spiritual DNA.

Glimmers of God’s Perspective

Two years ago last month I got an email from my mother. She had forwarded an email from the church office back in Alabama that a dear friend had passed away. I was stunned. Sammy couldn’t have been much more than 40 years old. I checked my email later in the day and the strangest thing happened, my mother had forwarded to me all the past emails that had been bouncing around since Sammy’s accident all the way up to the last email about his death that I had already read.

The first email said he was in a wreck and that the whole congregation needed to pray that he would recover.  There were more. One email said he was getting better and that doctors were hopeful. The next would say he had taken a turn for the worse. Up and down his struggle for life went and the emails chronicled his journey toward death. There were moments of hope and there were moments of sorrow. I am not usually much of a crier but reading all of that certainly did a number on me.

I cannot tell you how strange it was to know your friend had died and read that initial emails with that in mind. Usually you read these emails as the events unfold but this was different. I was listening back in on emails that had been sent in the days prior already knowing that the end result was his death. It got me thinking about God’s perspective on everything. When we go through these things, God already knows how it is going to turn out. He already knows how the last email is going to read (more on that in a minute). There isn’t anything that is going to catch God off guard. He already knows everything. Psalm 139:1-4 says,

¹  O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord.

Isaiah 55:8-9 puts it this way,

⁸ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God is amazing and incredible. What am amazing blessing it is to be made by God, loved by God and sustained by God. God is answering prayers we don’t even know how to ask! (Rom 8:26-27). Paul says the end result of it all is that God will work good for those who love Him! (Rom 8:28). So let us live with confidence that God knows how this whole thing is going to turn out and while some times seem like they are full of despair Psalm 30:5 tells us that mourning may last for a night but rejoicing always comes in the morning. Let us remember that in Christ we are new creations, a new dawn has come and we are to be people who find joy in the midst of suffering and who find peace in the middle of the storm because God already knows how it is all going to work out. Not even death can stop Him!

Let me let you in on a little secret…I want to tell you how the last email regarding this whole messed up world of sin and death reads. Here is what it says…

“Death has been swallowed up in victory” – 1 Cor 15:54

What if we read these words and then started living our lives through that lens? We can conclude the same thing Paul concluded a few verses later…” Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Seeking Simplicty

When we lived in Memphis we used to knock doors on Saturday mornings for the bus ministry at an apartment complex in Millington called Flag Manor. One door we knocked on a regular basis was the apartment of an older couple who had an adult son who was mentally challenged. His name was Ricky. Ricky came on the bus for a while. He didn’t understand too much of what was going on but he sure enjoyed being with everyone. One day Ricky told us he wanted to be baptized. We weren’t really sure how much Ricky understood so another minister and I sat down with Ricky and talked with him about his faith, Jesus Christ and what baptism meant. The best we could do to find out what Ricky believed was to ask him some yes/no questions. What he made clear was that “yes” he understood Jesus was the Son of God, “yes” Jesus died for his sins and third – “yes” he wanted to be baptized. How do you argue with that? So we baptized him.

I am positive Ricky will never have a doctrinal debate with someone and I am sure Ricky won’t understand why we do all the things we do. I am also positive that Ricky has a love for God and trusts God to see him through. What amazes me is that Jesus doesn’t call us to be like the teachers of the Law, who knew every intricacy of scripture but whose knowledge didn’t always translate into a closer walk with God. In Matthew 18, Jesus called his disciples to be like the little children, really…like Ricky.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

² He called a little child and had him stand among them. ³ And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

The first thing that jumps out at me is that Jesus uses the word “change”…that implies most of us aren’t there yet. Something needs adjusted in order to obey Christ on this one. I think what Jesus was getting at when he said that wasn’t about knowledge. I think it was about the heart. Jesus wasn’t condemning Bible study or growing in your faith. Jesus was warning against having a heart of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness instead having the heart of a child, one of total dependency upon God even for our daily bread. So we have our discussions, we fine tune our doctrine, and we work out all sorts of details on things from scripture and write lengthy commentaries detailing all sorts of interesting minutia…but at the end of the day God uses the simple to shame the wise. So don’t get caught up in the complex…seek the simple.

Let me conclude this post with some words of wisdom from Paul in 1 Corinthians 1,

“²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not —to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. ³¹ Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18…Three Short Verses, Three Powerful Commands

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 packs three important commands into three tiny verses. Paul wrote,

“¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray continually, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

What Paul wrote here is more than just three easy memory verses. Paul tells us three things that he expects Christians to do on a continual basis. It isn’t just that Christians need to occasionally rejoice or be “part-time pray-ers” or give thanks under selective circumstances. Paul says these are three things to do always, continually and in all circumstances. Instead of give you more things to think about I want to ask you to do something. I am going to give you three lists to rejoice over, pray over and give God thanks about.

Rejoice:

• That God has created you
• That God has saved you
• That God sent Jesus for you
• That God loves you unconditionally
• That God has supported you through His church/people
• For the people God has put in your life
• What else would make your list?

Pray

• For guidance in your decisions
• For the church to grow and reach more people
• For God to keep working on your heart
• For greater wisdom
• For greater boldness
• For the words to say to those who need God
• What else would make your list?

Give Thanks

• For whatever circumstances your life is currently in, whether it seems good or bad
• For the way God has sustained you up to this point in your life
• That God will continue to sustain your life
• To God for family and friends
• To God for whatever blessings you have…they all came from God
• For God’s patience, mercy, and grace
• What else would make your list?

It is important we make a regular habit out of doing these three things.

Will Willimon on The Parable of the Mustard Seed

“Jesus was preaching one day, preaching on the kingdom of God. ‘The Kingdom of God is like…It’s like a tiny mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. but if you plant that tiny seed, water it, care for it, it will germinate and grow, and grow—and produce a weed about a foot high.’

The dumbfounded disciples surely said, ‘Well, Jesus, that’s really impressive. We don’t like thinking of the church as a weed.’

‘Pity,’ says Jesus, ‘I guess God is impressed by different things than you are.’

The challenge of being an evangelistic preacher is the precarious willingness to allow God to use us to assemble the church, which is often a church we would not have assembled if assembling a church were only a matter of methods of church growth rather than a matter of God’s grace.

One reason why I’m for growth is that evangelism has a way of making Christians out of those who are already in the church as we are shocked by the folk God calls to be the church.” – The Intrusive Word, 106

The Difference Between Being Visionary and Being a Pioneer

We like visionaries who can see past where things are right now to something better. They are the ones who can see through all the clutter to see with clarity what could be. It is important we have people like that. What is even more impressive is someone who implements vision. Some can see the possibility….others blaze the trail. That is the difference between a visionary and a pioneer. One can see it. The other takes steps to making it a reality.

Take the invention of flight. DaVinci could envision it centuries before it took place. He could see it clearly in his mind. He just didn’t have the means or understanding to make what he was drawing come off the page and actually fly. A few hundred years later you have a bunch of guys you have probably never heard of who started innovating. Otto Lillenthal invented gliders that could fly but were unpowered. Samuel Langley gave gliders power in 1891. His powered model plane flew a full ¾ miles! More than 10 years later came the Wright brothers. They knew what had been done before and knew that what had been done in the past didn’t achieve a meaningful goal. If you goal is to hang glide at the mercy of the wind then the problem is solved. If your goal is to watch model planes fly in random directions then the problem was solved. But if you want people on planes that have power to go and the ability to steer to a specific location…that hadn’t been done. That was the problem they were addressing. They weren’t pioneers because they made the first plane. That had already been done and was old news. What made them pioneers in flight was that they did combined three things no one else had put together in a way that solved a real problem and evolved into an enormous industry today.

What moves Jesus from the category of visionary to pioneer is his authority, ability and passion to move things in the direction of God’s vision (of course God was empowering this whole thing which makes him far more than a visionary himself). Jesus didn’t just talk restoration. He embodied it, practiced it and passed it on to capable people. Jesus didn’t just talk resurrection. He was the first fruits from the grave. Jesus didn’t just give a heavenly hope. He came from there, showed us the way and then returned.

Hebrews 12:1-3 says,

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus,the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Jesus blazed the trail and asks us to follow. Too often we like to blaze new trails. We like to innovate. That can be good and must be done at times. I fear that those pursuits can often distract us from the simple truths and core values of Jesus Christ. Pioneers are easy to spot because there is a visible trail between where we are and where they are taking us. Will we walk that path or try in vain to forge a new one? The best way to get in tune with Jesus’ path is to get hungry for the Gospels again. Read them. Soak them up. Then embody them personally.