Sermon Tone Analysis

MAKE SURE TO READ THE COC COMMENTARY

Almost Everyone has a Favorite Apostle

I Want to Run a Little Survey

Raise Your Hand if Your Favorite Apostles is:

Matthew

Thomas

John

Paul

Peter

I Expected the Majority to Be Either Paul or Peter

Paul, Because We Know a Lot About Him…

And He Wrote More Books than Anyone Else

Peter, Because He is Someone We See Ourselves in

We can Relate to Him with His Ups and Downs/Successes and Failures

But Did You Know that Peter is Not His Real Name?

Jesus Gave Some of the Disciples Nicknames?

Peter’s Real Name is Simon

Mark 3:16 (NASB95)

16 And He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom He gave the name Peter),

Up to this Point, Matthew has Called Him “Peter”…

More Times Than He has Called Him “Simon”

Why Did Jesus Give Him the Name, “Peter”

That’s Just the Thing, We Haven’t Been Told

As Far as We Know, Jesus Called Him this for Absolutely No Reason

But That’s Not Really How Nicknames Work, is it?

My Grandfathers on Both Sides of My Family…

Were Known for Giving Nicknames to Everyone

Some of Them Seemed Completely Random…

But They Weren’t

They All had Meaning Behind Them

The Same is True for “Peter”

There is a Powerful Meaning Behind Why Jesus Gave Him that Name

And We are Going to Find Out in Our Text

We have Reached the First Climax of the Book

We’ve Been Following the Ministry of Jesus in Galilee…

Since Chapter 4

We’ve Seen Him Work Many Miracles…

And Teach Many Things About His Coming Kingdom

Matthew’s Point in Showing Us All this…

Is to Prove to Us that Jesus is the Christ/Messiah

But Up to this Point…

No One has Explicitly Said that

That’s All About to Change

And One of Our Favorite Apostles is About to…

Solidify Himself as a Leader Amongst the Kingdom Movement…

Because He is Going to Be the First…

To Outwardly Acknowledge the True Identity of Jesus

Matthew 16:1-20

Matthew 16:1–4 (NASB95)

1 The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Jesus, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven.2

But He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’3

“And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’

Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?4 “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.”

And He left them and went away.

Already, We See Something Strange

The Pharisees and Sadducees Were Working Together to Test Jesus

This is Strange Because These 2 Sects Don’t Like Each Other

They had Very Little in Common

They had little in common, but it could be said that they both stood for the old ways as against Jesus, whom they saw as a dangerous innovator.

They apparently reasoned that it was better to combine to discredit him; that done, they could resume their normal opposition to each other with which they were familiar and which represented the old paths.

Matthew has 14 references to the Sadducees (Mark and Luke 1 each, Acts 5, and they are mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament); it accords with his interest in this group that he alone mentions them in connection with this incident.

This is the only place in the New Testament where they are mentioned outside Judea.

They were a comparatively small party with a great interest in the temple.

The two groups came testing Jesus, where the verb mostly has a bad meaning, testing with a view to failure.

It signifies that they were not sincere in their seeking a sign.

They evidently thought that Jesus could not produce it, and their intention was not so much actually to see a sign as to show people that Jesus could not produce one.

Now they made a request for a sign (see on 12:38) from heaven.

In the Synoptic Gospels the word is mostly used in the sense of wonderfully impressive miracles accrediting the person who performed them

The Pharisees enjoyed the support of the people; the Sadducees controlled the political power in Jerusalem.

Together, they were formidable opponents of Jesus.

Verses 2–3 present a comparison between the signs of the sky and the signs of the times.

As clouds move from west to east, the dawn sunlight will tint them in the west, portending rain as the day progresses.

In the evening the same phenomenon suggests that the clouds have almost disappeared, bringing good weather instead.

We preserve this proverb today with the rhyme: “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

Red sky at night, sailors delight.”

If the Jewish leaders can recognize what the weather is likely to be by the appearance of the sky, why can they not recognize the dawning of the kingdom of heaven and the messianic age by what Jesus does and teaches?

Jesus has already provided plenty of signs to this end.

It is interesting that this dubious text is the only New Testament occurrence of the phrase signs of the times, often used today in relation to eschatological predictions, but here referring to discerning the significance of Jesus’ earthly ministry (particularly such ‘signs’ as have just been recorded in 15:21–39).

Jesus’ point is that the Jews could predict the weather based on simple observations, but they could not discern the presence of the kingdom of heaven through His miracles (“the signs of the times”

Mark 8:15 has “Herod” instead of the “Sadducees,” but since the latter, unlike the Pharisees, were the group that had made its peace with the Roman Empire and its client rulers, both versions mean approximately the same thing.

In a different context, Luke 12:1 has Jesus refer to “the yeast of the Pharisees” as hypocrisy, which should explain why he warned against their teaching here, a point Matt 23 will elaborate in much greater detail.

Since the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees is grouped together, and since the two sects disagreed on so many specific points of law, their common “yeast” may be their more general rejection of God’s will for people to respond to Jesus with discipleship.

Hyperconservatism and hyperliberalism in contemporary religion and politics also share the common features of dogmatism and judgmentalism and remain an insidious threat to the true church of Jesus Christ.

Leaven was a piece of last week’s dough used to make this week’s dough rise, and it lends itself to metaphorical uses for something that works away unseen but in the end produces considerable effects.

It may be used of a moral tendency, normally in the New Testament for an evil tendency (cf. 1 Cor.

5:6–8; Gal.

5:9), although the parable of the leaven is an exception (13:33).

Jesus is warning his hearers to be on their guard against the insidious and pervasive influence that the Pharisees and Sadducees represent (in the Marcan equivalent we have “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” [Mark 8:15], which is difficult but also points to evil influence; Lenski points out that one of Herod’s wives, Mariamne, was a daughter of the high priest and reasons that the high-priestly party, the Sadducees, “must thus be classed as Herodians,”

Because they forgot to bring any, they think that Jesus must be warning them against buying food from these groups of Jewish leaders.

For little faith, see on 6:30.

It is a favourite term of Matthew, here substituted for the charge of lack of understanding and hardness of heart in Mark 8:17–18.

There may be an underlying Aramaic play on words in v. 12b, given the similarity between “teaching” (ʾamîrʾā) and “yeast” (hămîrʾa).

It is curious that teaching is singular when followed by of the Pharisees and Sadducees, for the two groups had many differences and in fact were strongly opposed to one another.

Thus the Pharisees put a great deal of emphasis on the “tradition of the elders” with its stress on the written and oral law, whereas the Sadducees would accept nothing but the law written in the Bible.

The Sadducees were politicians; they were a comparatively small, but wealthy, aristocratic party, very anxious to work with the Romans.

The Pharisees were not politically minded but would live under any government that allowed them to practice their religion.

But in different ways both were conservative, and over against Jesus and his followers they might be said to be united and form a unit.

At the very least they were linked by their inability to see that Jesus was the Messiah, by their hatred of him, and by their determination to overthrow his teaching if they could.

Having crossed the lake, Jesus and his followers head upstream along the Jordan River to its headwaters near Caesarea Philippi, approximately twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee.

Formerly known as Paneas, a center of worship for the Greek god Pan, the city recently had been renamed by Philip the tetrarch in honor of himself and Augustus Caesar.