#Matthew 3

[judahmaccabees]

[s-o-a-p-ing]

MATTHEW S.O.A.P. ~ CHAPTER 3

Monday, 2/19/24

SCRIPTURE:

"...and saying, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near! ~ Matthew 3:2

OBSERVATION:

The Kingdom of Heaven has come near!

"...HAS..."

Not, "Is coming..."

Not, "came..."

"HAS come near! IS ALREADY near!"

EXCLAMATION POINT!

APPLICATION:

Repent, because...

Produce fruit consistent with repentance... (verse 8)

PRAYER:

Saving Father God - I seek Your forgiveness for looking off towards Your coming kingdom instead of focusing on its nearness... Help me to turn from my distractions and selfishness, and produce the fruits of the Spirit You have made available through the grace and redemption offered through Your Son Jesus... In His powerful and healing Name, and for Your glory and praise...

Yours, in Him...

𝖌

<))><

[nsfwbible]

‘The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’

Painting by Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini Verdi), 16th century, via the Detroit Institute of Arts

[megafadingcollectormiracle]

The Fruit, the Seed & the Church

The Fruit, the Seed & the Church

Once there was a man who went out to sow grain. 4 As he scattered the seed in the field, some of it fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some of it fell on rocky ground, where there was little soil. The seeds soon sprouted, because the soil wasn’t deep. – Matthew 13: 3-5

The parable talks about the farmer’s seed and the receiving ground. As preachers always talks about the…

[reedreadsgreek]

Matthew 3:13-17

13 Τότε παραγίνεται ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰορδάνην πρὸς τὸν Ἰωάννην τοῦ βαπτισθῆναι ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ. 14 ὁ δὲ Ἰωάννης διεκώλυεν αὐτὸν λέγων, Ἐγὼ χρείαν ἔχω ὑπὸ σοῦ βαπτισθῆναι, καὶ σὺ ἔρχῃ πρός με; 15 ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν, Ἄφες ἄρτι, οὕτως γὰρ πρέπον ἐστὶν ἡμῖν πληρῶσαι πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην. τότε ἀφίησιν αὐτόν. 16 βαπτισθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εὐθὺς ἀνέβη ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος· καὶ ἰδοὺ ἠνεῴχθησαν [αὐτῷ] οἱ οὐρανοί, καὶ εἶδεν [τὸ] πνεῦμα [τοῦ] θεοῦ καταβαῖνον ὡσεὶ περιστερὰν [καὶ] ἐρχόμενον ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν 17 καὶ ἰδοὺ φωνὴ ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν λέγουσα, Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα.

My translation:

13 Then Jesus arrives from Galilee to the Jordan toward John to be immersed by him. 14 And John tried to prevent him, saying: "I have need to be immersed by you, and you come to me? 15 But Jesus answered and said to him: “Let it go, for it is fitting, thus to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John let it go, 16 and Jesus was immersed immediately. And after coming up from the water, Look! the heavens were opened, and he saw holy breath coming down as a pigeon, coming onto him. 17 And Look! a voice out of the heavens saying: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Mounce translates διακωλύω (verse 14) as “hinder, restrain, prohibit”; Biblehub.com has “obstinately prevent or utterly prohibit”. If you just used Biblehub, you might think the word has a much stronger connotation than maybe it really does. The words “tried to” are supplied and not in the text; one way the imperfect tense behaves is called the “tendential” and indicates things that people attempt but don’t actually complete. John wasn’t actually stopping Jesus, but he tried to.

ἀφίημι (verse 15) is a versatile verb. It is often translated “I forgive”, but literally means “I send away” and thus figuratively “I let go”, “depart”, “permit”, “forgive”, et al. If you just memorized it as “forgive”, then it looks like Jesus is telling John, “Forgive!”, which would be weird! But no, he is telling him something like “permit it” or “let go (of your objection)”.

περιστερά is the word for either pigeon or dove, so I translated it “pigeon” because that is more funny if you always pictured a dove your whole life.

Mounce has εὐδοκέω (verse 17) as “I think well, approve, consent, take delight or pleasure in”. God approves, takes delight in, and is well pleased with Jesus, and he hasn’t even started his ministry yet! This is quite an endorsement for the bystanders to ponder, although the text doesn’t explicitly say that everyone heard it as well as Jesus. “He saw” is in the 3rd person singular, not plural, so if only Jesus saw the spirit, maybe only he heard the voice.

[biblereadings]

Matthew 3 and 4

So...I totally forgot to sit down and do my reading for yesterday. But it’s something I’mm working on. So today we’re going to do yesterday’s reading and continue from there. 

Anyways, today has been a rather good day. I had a long nap this afternoon and slept extremely well last night. I even read a whole book. (I got sucked in. I don’t know if this was really a good thing when I probably should have done something more productive. But now I’m sitting in the Student Union.

I actually just came from a very short bible study (We’re using The Purple Book) and it was our first meeting. It went rather well, using several verses from several parts of the bible to more fully explain what exactly Jesus dying on the cross did beyond the simple, he saved us from our sins and gave us eternal life. I don’t have a completed opinion on the Purple book yet, but as we continue I’ll let you know if I like it or not.

Now onto Matthew 3 and 4. We’re going to take these two separately. They’re a bit more complex than 1 and 2 were. 

Matthew 3 starts by introducing John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. He was preaching out in the wilderness of Judaea. He wore camel hair as clothing and ate wild honey and locusts. It was weird. But, that was part of what brought people to him. He was pretty much hated by the Pharisees and Sadducees (Which I didn’t know who the Sadducees were. They’re basically Pharisees who only believe in a certain part of their bible of the time while Pharisees believed in all of it.) John basically called the two groups out on their hypocrisy and called for them to repent. Then Jesus came to John, asking to be baptized. John, who knew that Jesus was the messiah, asked him if it was right since Jesus was meant to baptize everyone (including John) with the Holy Spirit. Why would John need to baptize Jesus? He was perfect. But Jesus saw it as helping to further his Father’s message and said it was right and so he was baptized.  As he was baptized God sent the Holy Spirit down and claimed Jesus as his own, and said he was well pleased with him. 

That’s the end of Matthew 3. It’s once again a very matter of fact telling that John baptized Jesus and God claimed him publicly as his own. The way it’s written was rather confusing so I pulled out my study bible to see what it had to say on the matter and it actually provides 4 reasons why Jesus felt he needed to be baptized. “He was personally confessing the sins of the nation...he was showing support for what John was doing; he was inaugurating his public ministry and he was identifying with the penitent people of God, not the Pharisees.” I had never actually thought of the baptism of Jesus as anything more than he was just following tradition and God told him to, but these reasons make a lot of sense. Especially since later in that line, my study bible says he did it out of obedience to God, not because he needed it for his sins since he had no sins. 

Matthew 4 starts with Jesus going into the desert where he was tempted by the devil and resisted every time with a word of God falling from his lips. Then he began actually ministering to people. He left Nazareth and fulfilled the prophecy that Isaiah said about the coming messiah and where he would travel. As he was traveling and preaching, he saw the fishermen “Simon called Peter” and his brother Andrew. He called them to be his disciples. He then saw James and John in his travels and called them to him as well. He then went throughout Galilee and taught, preached, and healed. He spread the gospel to all that would hear it and gained a rather large following from Galilee, Judaea, Jerusalem, and beyond Jordan. 

This part of the reading is showing us the foundations of Jesus’ ministry. He has gained his first 4 disciples and a larger following from his teachings. Many people are actually listening to what he’s saying as well as wanting to follow him and to know him. He has rebuked the devil, showing his knowledge of what God wants and has said in the past. It doesn’t really go into any specific sermons that he gives just yet, but it has shown the starting immediate effect of his teachings on the everyday people and how much they appreciate it and are following his word. 

I think that’s all for today’s study. Hopefully, I’ll remember to write a post tomorrow :) I should. Anyways, farewell and have a blessed and beautiful morning/afternoon/evening/night whatever it may be for you! Until tomorrow!

[bro-god-is-good]

[wordsofpeace]

Theophany

And when Jesus had been baptised, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ Matthew 3: 16-17

Here is the “Theophany.” Sometimes it is called the Epiphany (Богоявление in Russian and Θεοφάνεια in Greek). This is the Revelation of God, the moment when God - Father, Son, and Spirit, are made present and real in the text. I can begin to explain how I understand this ‘mystery,’ but I won’t. This is one just for you. God is made real to us in the Church and in our lives. As the voice from heaven calls out in this passage it is a revelation of himself to each of us. Listen to it yourself, meditate on what it all means to you, and explain this one for yourself.

[strollingthroughchapters-blog]

Matthew 3: Pleasure Before Works

Although it is not mentioned in Matthew, the baptism of Jesus happens at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. This means that God’s declaration of pleasure over his Son is not a merit-based, earned statement of praise. Up until this point, Jesus was reading scripture and following after God, and being in fellowship with his Father. God was not pleased because Jesus he started programs, healed a hundred people, and cast out legions of demons. God was pleased because Jesus was communing with him.

Jesus did not earn God’s pleasure.

Perfect Jesus, thank you for living your life the way you did. There are so many times where I don’t know what to do or don’t know what I should tell people. Thankfully, you came as a baby and lived as a man so that we may have the most perfect example to live by. If it takes a hundred times, always bring me back to this - that the Father’s pleasure is not based on what I do.

[andrewdangiowhite]

In These Days

I preached this sermon on December 4, 2016 at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunk, ME.  The readings for the day may be found here.

It is a mark, I think, of God’s deep and abiding sense of humor that we are starting our relationship together in the midst of Advent.  After months and months of waiting, knowing we are coming together, the day is finally here, and we are still waiting.  We know that waiting is a lot of work!  From my family’s end, waiting has meant saying goodbye to churches, friends, and family, packing, cleaning, finding a home, packing, moving, and one magical day, I’m told, unpacking.  On your end, the wait has been longer; a time of grieving the end of a rich ministry, of listening, healing, and carefully discerning where God is calling St. David’s next, and finally of preparing to welcome Sara and me and Maggie and Charlie, which you have done and are doing so generously, and for which we are grateful.  Waiting, you and I both know, is not a spectator sport.  But now that that wait is over, of course, we wait together.  And we wait for something far greater than a new rector, a new church.  We are waiting for Christ, waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven, and we wait no less actively.  For we don’t just wait in Advent; we prepare. And so what better Advent companion than John the Baptist?  What better reminder of how to wait than the one who cries out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”  “In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.’”  In those days.  It’s a little literary transition, a way of telling us that in Matthew’s Gospel we are jumping ahead from the magi and Nazareth to this wild, locust-eating preacher in the wilderness.  In those days.  There is potency and excitement in those words; they mean that something new is happening, that God is up to something, that a new age is dawning.  In those days. In these days as in those days, John the Baptist’s words are for us in our waiting, in our preparation.  And John has some hard words about how to wait, how to prepare.  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!  Repenting - not just feeling sorry for our sins, not just trying to be better than we were, but turning around, having a new mind and heart.  Repentance begins with looking closely at our lives, becoming aware of the ways in which we are falling short so that we can choose a different path.  Where have we hurt, rather than healed?  Where have we broken down, rather than built up?  Where have we held silent, rather than spoken the truth?  We may well feel sorry for our sins, we will certainly try to be better than we were.  But it does not end there.  Repentance isn’t ultimately about what we’re leaving behind, it’s about what we’re getting ready for.  It’s about the reign of God, the new reality that is coming, the dream that God has for all of us, so beautifully described in Isaiah, where “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”  That is the world that is coming; the world for which John calls us to prepare ourselves in these days. And in these days we are waiting together; we are preparing together for that world, for Jesus, the one who is coming, bringing a baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  The theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes that “the new age begun … requires that the chaff in our lives be burned away.  That fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, is the fire of a love so intense that we fear its grasp.”  It’s not that our repentance brings the kingdom; it’s that the kingdom has come and is coming, and so our repentance, our new life is necessary.  The chaff in our lives is to be burned away by the refining power of God’s love.  The lifeless parts of our lives and our world are to be cut down so that what is life-giving may flourish.  The love of God is about to be unleashed in Jesus; empowering us and emboldening us to live lives of fearless love, if we’re ready.  In Advent, we make ourselves ready; we prepare for the coming of Christ. I am honored to be a part of your waiting, your preparation, here at St. David’s.  I look forward to walking with you as we discover where the love of God has been unleashed in our lives and in our community.  I look forward to dreaming with you of what God might do here, and to working with you to be a part of it.  I look forward to being with you in the day-to-day and week-to-week life of a Christian community, as we break bread together, work together, cry together, laugh together.  There will doubtless be bumps and challenges along the way, but together, I pray that we will draw closer to the refining love of God in Jesus, that our chaff might be consumed and we may be made new. For in the end, what we do together isn’t about me, or about St. David’s.  It’s about the unleashed love of God in Jesus, the new world for which we wait in this season.  And so we repent. We prepare. We wait.  For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.

[jonithetentmaker]

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is Near!

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is Near!

Matthew 3:1 begins by telling us that John the Baptist is preaching in the Desert of Judea.  We are told John declares over and over again… “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Just like a town crier. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew is quick to inform us again that this fulfills the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy. “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for…

[toofittoqwit]

Lessons from Matthew 3: John the Baptist Baptizes Jesus

We saw in the previous lesson the powerful salvation message of John the Baptist. And now as John is explaining these truths to the people in his presence, here comes Jesus, the Messiah and the Savior of the world.

He tells John to baptize Him and John declares before Jesus and the people that he is not qualified to baptize the Savior of the world. In fact, John suggests that Jesus instead baptize him. But Jesus responds to John by saying it is right, it is fitting in fact, that John baptize Jesus. The purpose is so that all righteousness would be fulfilled upon its completion.

And so John consents.

John the Baptist Baptizes Jesus

This raises the question why did Jesus, the perfect man who knew no sin, need to be baptized? It was not for the public admission of the repentance of sin for He knew none. Then why?

Jesus’s baptism validated the work that John had been given to do. It identified Jesus with His people and sinners, the very people He came to save. And, it ushered in the inauguration of Jesus’s public ministry before the people.

Verse 16 tells us that as soon as Jesus was baptized, he came out of the water. At that moment, heaven opened up and John saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and lighting or resting upon Jesus. An official proclamation from heaven came forth, declaring that Jesus was God’s own Son, whom the Father loved and with Him God was well pleased.

Jesus’s baptism presented Him as the long-awaited Messiah and was confirmed by God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Thus not only John the Baptist, but God our Father bore witness to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and also as the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

And because of John’s witness, many sinners trusted in Jesus Christ and thus he fulfilled God’s purpose and plan for his life.

Can the same be said about you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts about our study of Matthew chapter 3.

[mount-olivet]

John the Baptist preaches repentance

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” - Matthew 3:2

“Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” - Matthew 3:9

“As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” - Matthew 3:11

[reedreadsgreek]

Matthew 3:7-12

7 Ἰδὼν δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ Σαδδουκαίων ἐρχομένους ἐπὶ τὸ βάπτισμα αὐτοῦ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν, τίς ὑπέδειξεν ὑμῖν φυγεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς μελλούσης ὀργῆς; 8 ποιήσατε οὖν καρπὸν ἄξιον τῆς μετανοίας 9 καὶ μὴ δόξητε λέγειν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, Πατέρα ἔχομεν τὸν Ἀβραάμ. λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν ὅτι δύναται ὁ θεὸς ἐκ τῶν λίθων τούτων ἐγεῖραι τέκνα τῷ Ἀβραάμ. 10 ἤδη δὲ ἡ ἀξίνη πρὸς τὴν ῥίζαν τῶν δένδρων κεῖται· πᾶν οὖν δένδρον μὴ ποιοῦν καρπὸν καλὸν ἐκκόπτεται καὶ εἰς πῦρ βάλλεται. 11 ἐγὼ μὲν ὑμᾶς βαπτίζω ἐν ὕδατι εἰς μετάνοιαν, ὁ δὲ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἰσχυρότερός μού ἐστιν, οὗ οὐκ εἰμὶ ἱκανὸς τὰ ὑποδήματα βαστάσαι· αὐτὸς ὑμᾶς βαπτίσει ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ πυρί 12 οὗ τὸ πτύον ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ διακαθαριεῖ τὴν ἅλωνα αὐτοῦ καὶ συνάξει τὸν σῖτον αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν ἀποθήκην, τὸ δὲ ἄχυρον κατακαύσει πυρὶ ἀσβέστῳ.

My translation:

7 But seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his immersings, he said to them: “Offspring of vipers! Who suggested/ instructed/ warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore make fruit worthy of repentance 9 and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have father Abraham.’ I say to you that from these stones God can raise up children of Abraham. 10 For already the axe is laying at the root of the trees; therefore each tree not making good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I immerse in water for repentance, but one is coming behind me who is stronger than me, whose sandals I am not worth to carry; he will immerse you in holy breath and fire. 12 The pitchfork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor and will gather together his wheat into the barn, but he will burn the chaff with inextinguishable fire.

Almost all English translations say “brood of vipers”, which was always lost on me until now. A brood are the children of an animal. The word γέννημα simply means “offspring” or “child”. So, John is not saying, “You snakes, you have gone astray from your parents’ ways!” Rather, he is saying, “Your parents were snakes, and you are just like them!” 

The word for “inextinguishable” is ἄσβεστος, which of course is where we get our word asbestos, a material used in fire-proofing before it was determined to cause lung cancer. It is a little ironic, because asbestos is not inextinguishable, it is non-flammable, which is kind of opposite. Oh well. 

[sirbamfalot-blog1]

Yochanan the Immerser was like, “Master, what are you doing!? You should be dipping me!”

Yeshua was like, “Nah, you got this.”

What a cool dude!