Matthew 16:1-12, “Surrendering Our Demands on Jesus”

Have you ever had to make a shift in your life? A shift is a little different than a change in plans. You can have a plan that is moving along, but a shift is needed to gain speed or slow down or change directions to keep the plan moving forward.

When God makes a shift in His plans, are we ready to make the shift with Him? What if that requires letting go of expectations we have of Him? If we are following Jesus, are we letting Him lead or do we make demands on Him that keep us from walking in new life?

The Shift

As Pastor Dave told us last week, this section of Matthew shows us a shift in the ministry of Jesus. His ministry to the Jews is shifting to include the Gentiles. This had been God’s plan all along. He had built a foundation with Israel and now He will begin building on that foundation with new materials. Could the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and the priests who saw themselves as the builders shift with God?

Jesus is also making a shift from ministry in Galilee toward Jerusalem and the cross. Could Jesus’ disciples make that shift with Him? Could they walk in the way of the cross as their path to glory with Christ?

For most of us, we will face a shift in our relationship with Jesus. That shift will challenge our expectations. It might come at the beginning of your relationship. You might be like the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, who held Jesus in contempt prior to investigation, or like the people who demand a sign from God before they will trust Him.

The shift might come later. After you have given your life to Christ, the ways God worked in your life over years past might not be the ways He will work as you grow more mature in the faith. Are you ready to follow Jesus as He makes a shift in the direction He leads you, or will you demand that it must make sense and align with what you already know and what makes you comfortable?

Am we able to follow Jesus as our Head, our Leader, our Master, when He leads in a new direction or wants to teach us something new? Are we able to set aside our expectations to know Him better, even if it makes us uncomfortable? Are we able to surrender our demands on Him and let Him lead?

Surrender Your Demands

The first group we see in this passage that needs to surrender their demands is the religious leaders.

Matthew 16:1 ESV

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

These religious leaders are testing Jesus. Right away, we see their expectations behind this demand. Jesus did not go through the proper channels to get approved for His ministry. Many of them had worked under another teacher for a lifetime before they had been granted their own position of leadership. And this Jesus of Nazareth had not sought anyone’s approval. So, they want a sign from heaven to prove that God had approved of Him.

Now, remember the context from last week. Jesus has just healed the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others. He had fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish and 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. What other sign were they demanding?

Some miracles can be faked, as the wizards of Egypt proved when Moses turned the Nile to blood. But what if He could turn the moon to blood? Lightning and thunder would be sufficient. Stopping a storm or making it rain as Elijah had done might be better.

If you read the gospels, Jesus actually does miracles like these too. But they are usually for His disciples or outsiders with no social influence. Because Jesus isn’t trying to win over the religious power brokers. If they had wanted to know, they could have investigated for themselves. Their problem is not lack of proof that Jesus is sent by God. Their problem is contempt prior to investigation. Their expectations had not been met, so they are looking to discredit, not to believe.

So, Jesus tells them,

Matthew 16:2–3 ESV

He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

What was the signs of the times? Him. Jesus came. And He had brought good news.

Mark 1:15 ESV

saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

God’s kingdom has arrived in Him. If anyone would believe in Him, they can enter the kingdom of heaven. Who you are, wherever you come from, whatever you have done, all are welcome.

And He had been demonstrating the arrival of the kingdom through miracles like casting out demons, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and twice feeding thousands of people with a single bagged lunch. The hangup for the religious leaders was that last miracles of Jesus in Matthew 15 are done in Gentile communities. God is making a shift to a new phase of His building plan. He is expanding the blessings of the kingdom to the Gentiles. That is the shift Jesus was making. It was part of God’s plan all along, and it was long overdue.

The religious leaders don’t seem to be able to make the shift. Their religious interpretations and traditions are more sacred to them than God’s word itself. He told them,

Matthew 15:6 ESV

“So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.”

Or the way He puts it in response to their demand for a sign is,

Matthew 16:4 ESV

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had adulterated their religion with pride in themselves and in their own teachings. So their demand comes from a hard heart. If they do not surrender their demands on Him and make the shift in God’s plan of salvation with Him, they will miss the kingdom.

The sign of Jonah is the sign of the times. A man has been sent by God to proclaim repentance and faith to both Jews and Gentiles. That was the sign the Ninevites saw. A Jewish prophet had preached God’s judgment to them and they had repented and believed and were saved.

We know there is another meaning to Jesus’ words. He would fulfill the sign of Jonah in an even greater way that they could only be fully understood after His resurrection from the dead.

Matthew 12:40 ESV

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 earth.

No one was looking for a crucified and risen Messiah. That is a shift that even His own disciples would have to make. If the Pharisees and Sadducees could not discern from Jesus’ preaching and healing ministry that God had sent Him, they would never believe the even greater sign in His resurrection.

But that is the sign that is critical for His disciples. So, let’s move on to them. After they leave the religious leaders with their hands in the air and their mouths agape, He warns His disciples.

Beware the (Backward) Shift

If Jesus makes a shift in the way He has worked before, it can tempt us to become like the Pharisees and Sadducees. They weren’t able to follow Jesus because they had contempt prior to examination. They had expectations of prophets, and Jesus wasn’t meeting them. They thought they knew who Messiah would be, and Jesus did not meet their expectations.

You and I who know Jesus can sometimes have our own expectations of Him that lead us to make our own demands instead of letting Him lead, and that would be a backward shift in our relationship. The disciples of Jesus in Matthew 16 are about to experience a shift. In the time following this experience, He is going to talk much more about the cross and resurrection than He is about the kingdom coming in power (the stuff they like to hear). Will they be able to make the shift?

Jesus warns His disciples,

Matthew 16:6 ESV

Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

There was some confusion around what this meant because He used the word leaven and they were thinking about the bread they had forgotten to bring. Until verse 12,

Matthew 16:12 ESV

Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Their teaching is that their traditions are the path to acceptance with God. Jesus’ gospel is that He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Him. But through Him, we have full acceptance with God.

Let me share a short personal story. In 2003, God invited me into a season of sweet fellowship every morning at the kitchen table. I heard Him speaking to me like never before. I was hungry for His word and He fed me. He provided me mentors who invested time and wisdom in me. In 2008, all of that stopped working. All the means of grace that had helped for five years were suddenly drying up and were not bearing fruit. God was making a shift in my life. There was an issue around identity that He wanted to prune in me. The result was a much deeper abiding in God’s love for me in Christ. While I demanded that He speak and act in the same ways He had before, I was stunting my growth. When I embraced His silence, and spent some time in that silence and solitude, that’s when He finally had my attention and spoke words of affirmation to my heart, “you are My son whom I love”.

There are countless people with their own story to share of starting out in the Christian life or in ministry thinking God was doing one thing and down the road somewhere He made a shift and they had to let go of their previous expectations to embrace the new way Jesus was leading. Jesus may ask us to make a shift without any explanation at all. Are we willing?

For the disciples who had forgotten to bring bread with them after Jesus fed 4,000 with a few loaves and fish, Jesus reminds them all they need is Him.

Matthew 16:8–10 ESV

But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?

What were they supposed to perceive? That Jesus is their life. If He is leading, wherever He may lead, are they willing to follow without demand or explanation? If He commands us to follow Him on the way of the cross, will we demand an explanation? Will we be able to follow His lead and trust that if He calls us to come and die so that we can live, He will still be our life?

I believe Jesus is leading our church into a shift. When we merged our two churches into one six and a half years ago, we knew we needed to shift to find ways to be a blessing to our community in Jesus’ name. Now that those are becoming established, He is asking us to shift to build on that work with discipleship and strengthening our community groups. These shifts can make a lot of us uncomfortable. But Jesus doesn’t promise us a comfortable life. He will comfort us for life, the life He has called us to live.

This shift will mean more of us getting involved in ministry with the variety of gifts He has given us. It will mean that we all will have an opportunity to learn how to make a disciple of Jesus. It will also mean we might ask your community group to eat together a little more, do fun things together, serve someone together, or include a neighbor in one of your gatherings. It may cost us something. But Jesus is sufficient for our life. He can make seven loaves into seven baskets of bread. He is the bread of life.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

What’s something you are celebrating this week? What is a challenge this week?

What’s a time you had to make a shift in your plans so that they would move ahead? What have you learned from times like that?

What are some expectations you have had of God that He did not meet? What have you learned from that?

What do we learn about Jesus from our passage?

In what way is Jesus the sign Israel needed? Why did the religious leaders miss the sign?

What do we learn about ourselves in this passage? Can you identify with anyone in particular?

How would you summarize Jesus’ words to the disciples in verses 5-11? What is the application for them? What is the application for us?

How will you respond to Jesus this week?

Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?