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When Jesus calls us to serve, he doesn’t just mean servant leadership; he means servant “helpership” that puts others’ needs first [Matthew 20:17-19; 20:20-23; 20:24-28] Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 20:17-28 When Jesus calls us to serve, he doesn’t just mean servant leadership; he means servant “helpership” that puts others’ needs first. Image provided by Wix. Tom Faletti July 5, 2025 Matthew 20:17-19 Jesus plainly foretells his crucifixion This is Jesus’s third prophecy of his Passion. He reveals more each time. In chapter 16, he said he would suffer and die and be raised. In chapter 17, he added that he would be betrayed. Now, he fills in more details. Jesus’s first prophecy of his Passion (Matt. 16:21) had already mentioned Jerusalem. What are the various things Jesus now says will happen to him in Jerusalem? He will be handed over to the Jewish leaders; they will condemn him to death; they will hand him over to the Gentiles; the Gentiles will (a) mock him, (b) flog him, and (c) crucify him; and he will be raised on the third day. Why do you think Jesus takes the Twelve aside to tell them this, and why do you think he keeps telling it to them repeatedly? The crucifixion was so horrible that he wants them to be prepared – especially the leaders of his group. This is the first time he indicates the manner of his death: crucifixion. How might the disciples have reacted to that? Crucifixion was a horrific, excruciating form of execution that was assigned to serious criminals, rebels, and slaves in slave rebellions. It was designed to totally subjugate the person and cause them great and lengthy suffering. It was also designed to humiliate them. So the disciples would have been horrified. In Matthew’s Gospel, we have seen Jesus minister to Jews and Gentiles, so it is ironic that both Jews and Gentiles will be involved in his execution. This is the first time Jesus says explicitly that Gentiles (i.e., the Romans) will execute him. Throughout European history, Jews have suffered discrimination and maltreatment at the hands of Christians, with major pogroms attacking whole populations of Jews in 1096, 1189, 1254, 1348, 1492, 1881, 1938-1945, and many other times. People who lived 1,000 years or more after Christ were absurdly charged with somehow being responsible for his death. In light of that history, why is it so significant that, while Jesus said that the Jewish leaders would condemn him, he made it clear that it would be non-Jewish people who would mock and scourge and crucify him? The crucifixion is so much a part of our telling and retelling of our faith that we have probably lost the horror of it. Is there something in this prophecy that you think you should take less casually or take less for granted? Explain. Matthew 20:20-23 Special honor for James and John? Who makes this request? Note: This is not some random, foolish woman. The mother of Zebedee’s children was one of the women who fearlessly stood by the cross as Jesus was crucified (Matthew 27:56). She was also possibly the sister of Jesus’s mother Mary (looking at the information in John 19:25 and comparing the lists of the women at the foot of the cross in the various Gospel accounts leads to this possible conclusion). James and his brother John, along with Peter, hold a special place among the apostles. They are the ones who are invited to accompany Jesus when he is transfigured. But it might be helpful to sort out the men names James. There are three Jameses in the New Testament: James, the brother of John, was an apostle. James and John are known as the sons of Zebedee and, in Mark 3:17 as the “sons of thunder.” They are the ones who in this passage ask to sit at Jesus’s right and left hand when he comes into his kingdom. This James is sometimes called James the Great. He was martyred around A.D. 44, executed by Herod in In Acts 12:2. He may have been the second Christian martyr, after Stephen. James the son of Alphaeus was also an apostle. He is sometimes called James the Less (perhaps because he was shorter, or just because he was less prominent). James the brother of Jesus becomes the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, as seen in Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18 and Galatians 1:18-19. He is sometimes called James the Just. Several ancient sources suggest that he was martyred in Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple, perhaps in A.D. 62. What does the mother of James and John ask for? In the Gospel of Mark, James and John make the request directly. Some scholars have observed that Matthew rarely writes anything that makes any disciple look bad. Here, the way he tells the story, it is their mother who makes the request. Considering that they accompany her and readily answer Jesus’s first question, do you think they agree with their mother’s request or are embarrassed by it? Explain. When they ask to sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom, what do you think they think they are asking for? What does this tell you about them? They were ambitious, but also zealously loyal to Jesus and wanted to be as close as possible to him. Jesus tells them they don’t understand what they are asking for. Why? What is the “cup” (verse 22) that he asks them if they are ready to drink? Why do you think they are so sure they are ready for it? Jesus says they will drink his cup. What do you think that means? James was an early martyr (Acts 12:2), but John lived a long life ending in a natural death in Ephesus. So what is the “cup” for them? Why is Jesus unable to grant their request? If there are these right and left seats in heaven, and given Jesus’s upside-down approach to humanity, is it possible that the people who will sit on his right and left are people at the bottom of the social scale? Would that surprise you? Explain. Note that, although Jesus corrects James and John’s thinking in the next passage, he does not rebuke them for their request. What is your best guess as to why not? We will look at the other disciples’ reaction in a moment, but let’s think about how this passage might speak to us in our lives. When or how might we have inappropriate or misguided ideas about what God should do for us? In what ways might we get caught up in the glory of believing in Jesus and lose sight of the fact that we are called to take up our crosses? Matthew 20:24-28 The one who wants to be great must be a servant How did the other apostles feel when they heard about James and John’s request? How does Jesus describe the way the rulers of the Gentiles treat other people? In our day, what does it look like when people in authority “lord it over” others? In Jesus’s kingdom, if you want to be great or first, how must you treat others? What does it mean to be a servant (Greek diakonos ) of others? To serve means to work for or minister to others, to attend to the needs of others or wait on them (as Martha did, when she pointed out to Jesus that she was “serving” while Mary sat at Jesus’s feet). What does it look like when we are doing that? When we are serving, we are trying to help others achieve their goals or are trying to meet their needs, not our own. How can we, in practical terms, follow this teaching? How can we be a servant of others? My father was the one who, at every church event, always stayed after to put the chairs away and sweep the floors. That might be one example. What is the attitude of a servant toward those he or she is serving? In typical Jewish rhetorical fashion, Jesus makes his point in two different ways. First, he contrasts “great” with “servant”: if you want to be great, you must choose to be a servant. He then sharpens the point by taking those concepts to their extreme: if you want to be “first,” you must be a “slave” (Greek doulos ) – i.e., if you want to be at the absolute top, you must choose to be at the absolute bottom. Jesus is not endorsing slavery – he is making a point about God’s upside-down view of the world: If you want to be at the absolute top, then in God’s kingdom you must be willing to be at the absolute bottom of the ladder of social status. What does this say to you about the Christian life? What does this say to you about your life? Look at verse 28. How is Jesus as a model of servanthood? People who are placed in positions of leadership are called to serve even while filling those positions. What does verse tell them about what “servant leadership”? If you had to capture in a word or phrase the concept of what it means to serve others, without using the word “servant” or the word “slave,” how would you describe what it looks like to serve others, from Jesus’s perspective? One possible answer, among many, is: Work for the good that others seek, not just the good you seek, and put what is good for them first. (How would you answer?) In verse 28, Jesus says he is giving his life as a “ransom for many.” The word “ransom” usually means a price paid to free a person, but when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint, the word “ransom” was used in places where the Hebrew communicates the ideas of God’s liberation without implying that any payment has been made – for example, in Exodus 6:6; Psalm 77:16 in the NABRE, which is 77:15 in the NRSV and most other translations; and Isaiah 43:1 and 44:22. The idea is probably the same here: that Jesus will give up his life to liberate or free others ( New American Bible, revised edition , Matt. 20:28 fn. ). In verse 28, the word “many” is not signaling that some people are specifically excluded ( New American Bible, revised edition , Matt. 20:28 fn. ); it is merely explaining the difference between “the one” (the servant who brings freedom) and the “the many” (who are freed and also called to be servants). In verse 28, Jesus says he came to give up his life to free many people. In what ways does Jesus’s act of giving up his life free us? In what ways can we help free others by being a servant to them? Take a step back and consider this: Women have faced a long history of being stereotyped and confined to subservient roles. This can complicate their effort to respond to Jesus’s call to service. Is Jesus calling them to be a “doormat”? No. Does Jesus support discrimination and inequality? No. Women have a right to speak up for themselves when they do not receive respect and to seek equal treatment. They can do that and still respond to Jesus’s call to be a servant. Throughout history, men have been primed to think of themselves as leaders and to seek positions where they can direct others. They may sometimes unconsciously assume that women will take greater responsibility for the service work – food preparation, childcare, etc. When they hear the word “service,” they may tend to think mainly of ways they might “serve” others by being leaders in the positions at the top. But sometimes, we are called to servant “helpership,” not servant leadership. The challenge for many men is to get past the historical and cultural assumptions that expect them to serve at the top, so that they can also embrace opportunities to serve others from below, in the supporting roles that help others thrive and lead. How can we transcend cultural stereotypes and assumptions, and embrace the heart of a servant who is willing to be “last” in the eyes of the world, imitating Jesus’s self-giving service? How might God like to see you respond to this call to service today? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Are you serving others and helping to lift their burdens, or seeking attention and honor for yourself? Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 23:1-12 Are you serving others and helping to lift their burdens, or seeking attention and honor for yourself? Image by Sai Madhav, provided by Unsplash via Wix. Tom Faletti August 19, 2025 ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Previous Matthew Index Next

How many times must I forgive someone who does something wrong to me over and over again?  How is God a model for the answer? Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 18:21-35 How many times must I forgive someone who does something wrong to me over and over again? How is God a model for the answer? Lawrence W. Ladd (fl. 1865–1895). Parable of the King and His Servants . Circa 1880. Cropped. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Public domain, via Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/parable-king-and-his-servants-14161 . Tom Faletti June 29, 2025 Matthew 18:21-35 Forgiving others; giving and receiving mercy In this parable, Jesus tells a story that has multiple layers. But it starts with a question from Peter. What does Peter ask Jesus and what is he really a sking? Let’s remember the context for this parable. In the previous passage, Jesus has just said that if your brother sins against you, you should approach your brother about it; and if your brother listens to you, you will have regained a brother. But Peter is thinking ahead. He is saying to himself: Suppose my brother apologizes and admits he was wrong, and I forgive him; but then he goes and does it again. How many times do I have to forgive him? What is Jesus’s initial answer? Jesus says either 77 times or 70-times-7 times, signaling a number larger than one would try to count: an unlimited number of times. Here is why scholars disagree as to whether Jesus said (70 plus 7) times or (70 times 7) times. In English, we have a word for two times (twice) and a word for 3 times (thrice), but we don’t have words beyond that. In Greek, there is a word formation that can be used for any number: five-times, seven-times, ten-times, etc. Peter uses that word formation to ask, Seven-times? Jesus uses the same word formation with seventy (seventy-times) and then follows it with the word seven. So in the Greek, Jesus’s answer is: Not seven-times, but seventy-times seven. Is “seventy-times seven” equivalent to our “seventy-seven” (i.e., seventy and seven, 77)? Or is it equivalent to our seventy times seven (490)? Scholars don’t agree on the answer. But the specific number isn’t the point. The key is that it is a large number. How do you think Jesus wants Peter to interpret Jesus’s answer? Is he saying Peter can count 77 times (or 490 times) and then stop forgiving, or is he saying something else? What is the point of Jesus’s answer? Jesus may be remembering an exchange in Genesis 4:23-24. In Genesis 4:15, God says, “If anyone kills Cain, vengeance will be taken against him sevenfold” or “seven times as much.” In 4:24, Lamech says, “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, / then Lamech [will be avenged] seventy-sevenfold.” The Jews did not have a word for infinity, and seven was seen as a number representing perfection, so seventy-seven might have suggested double-perfection, unlimited perfection – or in this case, unlimited revenge. Jesus turns it on its head, using the concept of seventy-seven for unlimited forgiveness. What does this exchange say to us? What does it say to the church? This interaction between Peter and Jesus follows immediately after the instructions about how to deal with someone in the church who is doing something wrong, and the giving of the binding and loosing power to the church. How are the previous passages and this passage related? Jesus tells a parable to bring his point to life, and he chooses numbers that make it extreme. We miss his extreme exaggeration in the translations. What happens in the first part of the parable? What does the king do, what does the slave request, and how does the king respond? Although many translations say “servant,” Matthew uses the Greek word for a slave ( doulos ), not the word for a servant ( diakonos ). At the time of Christ, perhaps 20% or more of all the people in the Roman Empire were slaves. Slaves in the Roman Empire often performed very high-level jobs with a great deal of responsibility, unlike the situation in the American and European colonial slavery systems. In the second part of the parable, what does the slave do, what does the fellow slave request, and how does the first slave respond? In a parable, the key elements of the story stand for something else of a spiritual nature. Parables often use an everyday human situation as a metaphor for a spiritual truth about God or God’s interaction with people. In this parable, who does the king represent? Jesus tells this parable when Peter asks how many times he must forgive someone. Matthew is trying to use Jesus’s teachings to guide his community in how it should handle conflicts. Considering that context, who does the first slave stand for? In our own lives, who does the first slave stand for? The slave owes 10,000 talents. A talent was worth 6,000 denarii, where a denarius was roughly a day’s wage for a laborer ( The New Oxford Annotated Bible , Matt. 18:24 fn., p. 1773). This means that the value of one talent was the value of nearly 20 years of wages for a common laborer or soldier. If we translate that value to our time, the value of one talent, translated to the wages of low-skilled workers in the United States today, would be somewhere between $275,000 and $600,000 (as of 2025; the range is so wide because different jurisdictions have widely varying minimum wages). But this slave owed 10,000 talents . That is a sum of money comparable to something like $5 billion today. How does the meaning of this story change when you understand that the first slave owed $5 billion in today’s economic terms and was forgiven? What does the forgiveness of such an enormous sum say to us? The second slave owed 100 denarii. A denarius was the standard wage for a day’s work for a common laborer ( The New Oxford Annotated Bible , Matt. 18:28 fn., p. 1773). In terms of the minimum wage scale in the United States in 2025, 100 denarii would be somewhere between $5,800 and $12,000. The second slave owed something like $10,000 in today’s economic terms. When you understand that, you realize that the debt was not trivial, even though it was tiny compared to the first slave’s debt. What does the king expect the first slave to do, when he is owed $10,000? Now remember the context for this parable: Jesus is talking about forgiving others who have hurt us. Even when the offense is big, what is he telling Peter and us to do? According to the parable, why should we forgive others? What happens to the first slave? What do his fellow slaves do, and what does his master do? Recall from our work in Matthew 13:1-23 that there is a difference between a parable and an allegory: “A parable is not an allegory; an allegory is a story in which every possible detail has an inner meaning; but an allegory has to be read and studied : a parable is heard . We must be very careful not to make allegories of the parables, but to remember that they were designed to make one stabbing truth flash out at a man the moment he heard it” (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2 , p. 63). This parable is not a theological exposition on how God judges people. Jesus is describing what an ordinary, human, perhaps cruel and sinful king would do. In that human scenario of a king, the slave might be tortured for two reasons: to get the truth out of him as to where he is hiding the money he claims he does not have; and perhaps to extort payment from family members who would not want their loved one tortured. God doesn’t act like that. But we have to ask: How do you think God deals with people who fail to show mercy, and why? Why might it be impossible to live with God in heaven if you do not forgive others? How is forgiveness a fundamental characteristic of God, making it impossible to be like him and live with him if we lack that characteristic? Are there other Scriptures that echo this teaching that God does not forgive those who do not forgive others? Yes. Consider these passages: Matthew 6:12,14-15 (forgive us our trespasses; if you do not forgive, neither will your Father). Matthew 7:1-2 (with the judgment you make, you will be judged). Mark 11:25 (when you stand praying, forgive, so that your Father may forgive you). Luke 6:37-38 (forgive and you will be forgiven; with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you). James 2:13 (judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy). Read these passages on forgiveness. Why does God care so much about whether we are merciful and forgiving? We are called to be like God, and he is merciful and forgiving. We owe God a big debt that he has chosen to forgive. Yet we are often harsh and unforgiving toward those who sin against us, as the slave is harsh and unforgiving toward those who owe him money. God wants us to be like him. In Matt. 18:35, Jesus tells us to forgive “from the heart.” What do those extra words “from the heart” mean, and why are they important? When have you forgiven someone who has hurt you, when it might have been difficult? How did it happen? What difference did it make? What does this parable suggest about how we should deal with those who sin against us? What is this passage calling you to do differently, or how is it calling you to think in a different way? Now let’s connect this parable to the previous passage about dealing with someone who has done something wrong to us. If we take this parable to heart and apply it to the cases where we have been sinned against, how often would we be likely to take an offender before the entire local Christian community? How would Jesus want us to deal with situations where we think someone has done something wrong to us? Consider again Peter’s original question: How many times must I forgive someone who sins against me? What do you think Jesus’s response is? Take a step back and consider this: Just because a person is a Christian doesn’t mean they find it easy to take Jesus’s teachings about forgiveness to heart. According to a survey of Christians conducted by the Barna Group in 2019, 27% of practicing Christians can identify someone who they don’t want to forgive, and 23% can identify a person they can’t forgive ( Barna Group ). The offenses against them may have been great, so I am not judging them. Yet forgiveness appears to be a fundamental attribute of God that he wants us to embrace. For many people, merely receiving a command from God to forgive does not make it easy to do so. Perhaps we can become more like God in this attribute if we try to think like God and be like God all the time, not just when we hit a point where it is difficult to forgive. It might also help if we can see the invitation to be like God as a great privilege, rather than as an order or a requirement that we must fulfill in order to be forgiven or to get to heaven. God has sent each of us a personal invitation to be like him and to receive his Spirit to empower us so that we can think, speak, and act in ways that are in accord with his character. It is a gift to get to be part of Team Jesus: the people who are invited to live, moment by moment, in the presence of God. How can we embrace that opportunity more fully? How does it feel to be invited to live a life that is always united with God? Is there someone you struggle to forgive? How would Jesus like to help you forgive that person? What is one step you can take to allow God to further transform your mind and heart so that you are more like him in everything you think, say, and do? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Herod seeks to kill Jesus, which is why Jesus ends up as a refugee in Egypt, and then in Nazareth. Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 2:13-23 Herod seeks to kill Jesus, which is why Jesus ends up as a refugee in Egypt, and then in Nazareth. Image by NEOM, provided by Unsplash via Wix. Tom Faletti February 13, 2024 Matthew 2:13-23 Jesus becomes a refugee, avoids a massacre, and ends up in Nazareth Matthew tells this part of the story to help us understand how Jesus could be the Messiah even though he grew up in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem. Why does Joseph take Jesus and Mary to Egypt? When the angel tells Joseph to “flee,” the Greek word for flee is pheuge , which is related to our English words “refuge” and “refugee.” It was common for Jews to hide out in Egypt if they were in trouble or in danger in Judea; there were Jewish communities in a number of Egyptian cities, so they would not have felt totally alone. Still, it was a long way from home. Jesus began his life as a refugee. Fortunately, Joseph and Mary did not have to convince a skeptical government that the family was worthy of asylum status. God was willing to become not only a human, not only a poor person, but a refugee. How does that help us understand the inherent dignity of refugees and the importance of being welcoming to them? The “fulfillment prophecy” that Matthew cites in verse 15 is not actually about Jesus or the Messiah. It was a statement from Hosea 11:1 about the fact that God called his “son,” the people of Israel, out of Egypt, long ago. Matthew repurposes it, perhaps to try to convince Jews that there is a huge amount of evidence in the Hebrew Scriptures pointing to Jesus. Matthew might also be thinking that Jesus’s experience of being brought out of oppression is a foreshadowing of our own experience of being brought out of oppression by Jesus. Matthew’s frequent use of these “fulfillment prophecies” leads some scholars to conclude that Matthew is picking out Old Testament prophecies and then creating stories to fit them. There is no evidence that he is doing that. Rather, it appears that he is organizing the stories he knows about Jesus and then searching the Old Testament to see if it has “prophecies” that might fit with those events. The stories come first; not the prophecies. When the wise men do not return to him, what does Herod do? Bethlehem was not a large town, so scholars think this would have been a slaughter of perhaps 20 or 30 children. While not large in number, all the children killed by Herod would have been deeply mourned by their mothers and fathers. Some scholars think the killing of the innocents is inspired by Pharaoh’s killing of the first-born sons of the Israelites before the exodus from Egypt, but again if Matthew created the story for that purpose he could easily have made the connection explicit and he did not. The “fulfillment prophecy” in verse 18 is from Jeremiah 31:15, where the original verse is about the Israelites being forced into exile by the Babylonians. It is followed by prophecies that the people will return from exile. Ramah was 5 miles north of Jerusalem, so it was 10 miles from Bethlehem. Rachel’s tomb was thought to be in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Matthew puts that all together and sees Jesus. Where do you think God was, as this was happening? God allows humans to do a lot of evil things, without intervening. Why do you think that is? God is guiding us to be people who as fully as possible reflect God’s image. If he intervened every time something bad happened, we would not be able to learn the lessons of our actions and would not grow to spiritual maturity. Also, we might stop trying to be our best selves, figuring that God will make things better if we mess up. Allowing us to do evil is the price that must be paid for giving us the chance to grow and mature and be great: to take on the mind of Jesus, to be the Body of Christ to the world, to live in the power of the Spirit. Jesus escapes from a tyrant by going to Egypt and then returning when the tyrant is gone. How does this connect with Moses’s escape, as an infant, from a pharaoh who was a tyrant in Egypt, and the Israelites’ later escape from a tyrant pharaoh in Egypt? The words “go . . . for those seeking the child’s life are dead” (2:20, NRSV) echo the Lord’s direction to Moses to go back to Egypt because the Pharaoh who wanted to kill him is dead (Exodus 4:19), setting up a possible linkage between Jesus and Moses: Jesus is the new Moses, leading his people out of oppression and giving them a new Law. When Herod dies, why doesn’t Joseph go back to Bethlehem? Joseph is afraid of Herod’s son Archelaus, who is given the southern territory including Jerusalem and Bethlehem by his father. Joseph had good reason to be afraid of Archelaus. Archelaus was so oppressive and hated so much by the Jews that he was eventually deposed from his position by Rome. Recall that Herod’s roots were in Idumea. Archelaus had roots in Idumea and Samaria, so he was even more suspect of not being a real Jew, and he treated the Jews so horribly that this suspicion was confirmed in the people’s minds. For example, Josephus tells us that in one of Archelaus's first official acts, 3,000 Pharisees were killed in response to an uprising protesting his father’s last act of oppression in Jerusalem. Joseph goes north to Galilee, to the town of Nazareth, a place far away from Jerusalem and not under Archelaus’s jurisdiction. Matthew’s final “fulfillment prophecy” in this chapter (verse 23) cannot be found in the Old Testament. Scholars have searched and never found anything that matches. So we don’t know what Matthew had in mind here. The closest thing is a prophecy before Samson is born that Samson will be a “nazirite” (Judges 13:5), but that is not the name of a place. Perhaps Matthew was inviting a connection to the nazirites, which were Israelites, including Samson and Samuel, who consecrated themselves to God, never drank alcohol, and never cut their hair, among other strict practices (Numbers 6). But the connection is flawed, since Jesus didn’t live an ascetic life and refrained from the demonstrations of human strength that Samson excelled at. Other scholars point to a possible word-play as Isaiah 11:1 talks of a “branch” arising from the stump of Jesse, and the Hebrew word for “branch” is netser , which sounds similar to the beginning of the name Nazareth. Since Jesus fulfilled in his own person some prophecies that were addressed to “Israel,” some scholars think this word-play hinting at the branch that arises from Israel is in Matthew’s mind. All of these are nice ideas, but we don’t know what Matthew had in mind; so this suggested quote remains a puzzle. Even if we don’t expect God to communicate to us nowadays through dreams, how is Joseph a role model for seeking guidance from God? When you figure out what God is asking you to do, do it! ; make yourself open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit; trust that God has a way forward for your life; take care of those around you; be aware of what is going on around you in the world, but don’t be paralyzed by it. Joseph settles his family in Nazareth. What do you know about Nazareth as a place to live and work? Joseph might have seen that he could find good work in the area of Nazareth, especially in Sepphoris, 5 miles away. This is explained in Raymond Brown’s one-volume biblical commentary: “Joseph, involved in the building trade, probably settled in in Nazareth, because he could find abundant work in neighboring Sepphoris, which Herod Antipas was rebuilding as his capital at that time” (Benedict T. Viviano, O.P., “The Gospel According to Matthew,” The New Jerome Biblical Commentary , par. 15, p. 636). Historians say that Sepphoris, though a Jewish city, did not join the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule in 66 A.D., suggesting that it took a more cosmopolitan rather than strictly Jewish approach to life under Roman occupation. How might this choice of a hometown have affected Jesus as he grew up? Although Nazareth was a small town, it was not a backwater. Besides being just 5 miles from Herod Antipas’s capital at Sepphoris, it was nestled in the fabric of trade routes to faraway places. It was only 15 miles away from the major international north-south Roman highway that ran through Israel along the Mediterranean coast from Syria to Egypt. Nazareth was also the crossroads of two smaller highways that served as trade routes, one starting at Ptolemais on the coast (modern-day Acre, Israel) and running southeast to Samaria, and the other running northeast through Nazareth to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, a city founded by Herod Antipas (see “Palestine in the time of Jesus, 4 B.C. - 30 A.D.: (including the period of Herod, 40 - 4 B.C.),” Library of Congress , https://www.loc.gov/item/2009579463/ ). As a result, Jesus, as a growing child and as a young man, would have been exposed to other cultures and a bigger world even while living in his Jewish village. This is all we get from Matthew for the “Christmas story” – very little compared to what we have from Luke. What important points about the background, birth, and infancy of Jesus are provided to us by Matthew? Jesus is Son of David, son of Abraham, Son of God due to his virgin birth, Emmanuel (“God with us”), perhaps a new Moses, born in Bethlehem, and raised in Nazareth. His birth story shows how the hand of God protects a little one so that he can grow up and save us, and the first people to recognize that this little one is great is a small group of Gentiles, a bit of foreshadowing that continues to play out as Matthew shows that the gospel is for Gentiles as well as Jews. How do you see the hand of God working subtly but decisively to bring good out of evil in these stories? How do you see the hand of God doing the same thing in your life? Do you think Matthew succeeds in making his point that Jesus fulfills the messianic prophecies even though he grew up in Nazareth, not Bethlehem? Explain. What can you take from this story of the wise men, Herod, Joseph, and Jesus to strengthen your faith or your approach to God? Take a step back and consider this: God could have chosen anywhere in the world for his Son to be born as a human. He could have selected a “chosen people” anywhere. He could have chosen any time in history for his coming. God chose this particular people, whose particular history placed them in this particular place in the world at this particular time. At this particular time, the Roman Empire made it easy to spread a message far and wide. Growing up in Nazareth would place Jesus among people who could both nurture him in the monotheistic culture of Judaism and also expose Him to the rest of the world, and living at a minor crossroads could help him tailor his message to speak to both Jews and Gentiles and prepare the way so that his followers could use their location in the midst of the Roman Empire to take the gospel ultimately “to the ends of the earth.” You also live at a particular time, in a particular place, among a particular people, at a crossroads of particular relationships and opportunities. God desires to work through you to share some piece of his good news with some particular people by your words and actions. How is God calling you to use the embedded realities, relationships, and crossroads of your life to bring his good news to others and make the world more like the kingdom of God that it was meant to be? What is God calling you to do next, where you are? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

God patiently waits for us to bear fruit and asks us to be patient with those around us. Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 13:24-53 God patiently waits for us to bear fruit and asks us to be patient with those around us. Mustard plants. Image by Manuel from Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/fall-mustard-field-mustard-field-4568733/ Tom Faletti June 5, 2025 We are in the middle of a series of parables of Jesus that Matthew has gathered together in one place. For the next parable, the disciples later ask Jesus for an explanation and get one. We will look at the parable and the explanation together. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 Good seed and weeds There is a weed called darnel that looks like wheat in its early stages of growth, but that is poisonous to humans when it matures. This is what the parable is talking about: that you can’t tell at the beginning whether a plant is wheat or darnel. What do you find most striking in this parable? What do the owner’s slaves want to do, and why does he tell them not to? This parable is often thought to be talking about the church. What is the message for the church in the owner’s restraint? If you try to weed out the sinners, you may get it wrong and also weed out good people. Notice that the owner is very steady and confident, while the owner’s slaves are flustered. What does this tell you about our faith? In the parable, the entity who messes up the owner’s field is called an “enemy” (verse 28), and in verse 39 Jesus calls that enemy “the devil.” To what extent do you think the devil is at work trying to mess up the good harvest of the kingdom of God? Jesus says that the seed represents “the children of the kingdom” (verse 38). Notice that this is different than in the previous parable, where we are the soil. Here, we are seed, which God has sown in the world. Seed is sown so that it can produce a harvest. What kind of harvest do you think we are meant to produce? In this parable, the weeds are people. In the simple terms of the parable, wheat doesn’t turn into weeds, and weeds can’t turn into wheat. But in real life, people have the ability to change. What can happen that might make someone turn from being more like a weed to being more like a good seed? What might happen if we are too quick to get rid of the weeds – the sinners? Do you think that one reasons why God doesn’t want to pull up the weeds until the end of the age is because people can change? If so, how what is the message for us in the owner’s restraint? How are we doing in fulfilling this teaching? This parable teaches that there is an ultimate separation of the good and bad at the time of the harvest. What criteria are used to decide who is separated out of God’s harvest? In Jesus’s explanation of the parable, who is responsible for the ultimate separate of the wheat from the weeds, the good from the bad? What does that say to you? There are many answers to this question. Some people see in it a message that God holds everything in his hands, so we can trust him. Do your part. Nurture the harvest, don’t prematurely limit it. What is the message for us in knowing there is a final judgment? Is it more of a warning or an assurance? (You may find in your Bible's footnotes that some scholars think the explanation of the parable in verses 36-43 did not come directly from Jesus but from the early church. There is no way to know this, one way or the other. But either way, the explanation is part of the inspired canon of Scripture, so it doesn’t really change anything. I would like to think that the disciples were, at least sometimes, self-aware enough to know when they were lost and ask for explanations.) The parable we just looked at is the first in a series of parables where Jesus begins by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like (or can be compared to)….” That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a particular element of the parable that represents the kingdom. Rather, it means that the actions in the parable resemble in some ways what happens in the kingdom. Jesus is saying: The way things happen in the kingdom of heaven is sort of like the situation where…. A parable is not an allegory; you can’t compare every element of the human story to a specific spiritual element. Rather, we need to look for the overall message of the parable. Some scholars think the key point of the parable itself (verses 24-30) is the need for patience: don’t try to kick all of the sinners out of the church – that’s God’s job at the end of time. Others think the key point is in Jesus’s explanation (verses 36-43), where those who cause sin and do evil face ultimate judgment. What is the key point you take from this parable? Notice that in the end, “the righteous will shine like the sun” (verse 43). Picture yourself shining like the sun in the kingdom of heaven. What is your response to that image? What can you do now, to help you shine like the sun in the kingdom of God? Matthew 13:31-35 Mustard seeds and yeast The mustard seed was used as a reference for a very tiny size. The mustard seed grew to as high as 10 feet in Galilee. Jesus is not claiming that mustard seeds literally turned into giant trees – exaggeration is a common feature in parables and other kinds of stories in Jesus’s time. But Luke uses the word “garden” in Luke 13:19, where Matthew says field (13:31), and the mustard seed turned into a very large bush in a garden, large enough to tower over other plants in the garden. Jesus’s goal was to contrast the size difference, from tiny seed to large bush, not to present a botany lesson. In Matthew 13:33, where Jesus refers to “three measures” of flour, the unit of measure he uses is the sata . Three sata is the equivalent of around 9 gallons, or 144 cups. So he is referring to a huge amount of flour be leavened by the small lump of leavened dough that served as the “yeast” or leavening agent when Jews made leavened bread. What is the meaning of the parable of the mustard seed? What is the meaning of the parable of the yeast? What do these parables tell us about the kingdom of God? What does this tell you about what God is doing in our world? What do you think our role is in this kingdom that is growing so large? We are called to do our part. Even a small act, a small word, can have an influence and make a difference. Is there a lesson here for us when we try to start new efforts to promote the kingdom of God? Are we, in effect, planting a mustard seed? What does that tell us? How is leaven or yeast, which transforms a lump of unleavened dough into something more, an apt metaphor for the kingdom of God? Notice that leaven here is treated as a good thing, whereas in other situations it was considered as something that represented sin. Jesus used every example available to him to make his points. In verse 35, Matthew quotes from Psalm 78:2 to explain Jesus’s use of parables. But in the second half of that quote, he makes an extraordinary claim about Jesus. What is he saying Jesus does? Matthew says that, even though Jesus is speaking in parables, he is revealing things that have been hidden since the creation of the world. Earlier we were told that Jesus speak in parables so that people have to make an effort, open their ears, and soften their hearts if they want to understand Jesus. Matthew is saying that those who don’t make that effort are missing out on truths that humans have not had access to since the world was created. If Jesus’s parables contain such deep truths, how should we respond to them? Matthew 13:44-50 A treasure, a pearl, a net What do the parables of the treasure and the pearl tell us about the attitude we should have toward the kingdom of God? Give the kingdom of God your full effort and support. Most of us are not going to sell everything we have tomorrow. What does it look like in practical terms to give the kingdom of God your full effort and support? In the parable of the net, Jesus again shifts the focus to the final judgment. What is his point? All of the parables are told in figurative language. People sometimes seize on one or another element of a parable and try to take it literally. Seed, yeast, fire, etc. are all figurative illustrations to teach deeper truths. The deeper truths are that God is building a great kingdom and patiently tolerates a lot of evildoing while it is germinating, that participation in that kingdom is the greatest treasure one could have, and that there will be a final judgment that separate those who have embraced God’s kingdom from those who have not. The language in all of the parables is figurative. What do you think the final judgment will be like? What do you think the “separation” of good and evil people will look like in the final judgment? Matthew 13:51-53 Using both the old and the new Matthew concludes this collection of parables with a parable about using all of the revelation that God has given to us. In this closing parable, Jesus compares a scribe to a head of a household. What is the comparison? What is the “storeroom” (NABRE) or “treasure” (NRSV and most other translations)? What do the “new” and the “old” stand for? In verse 52, Jesus refers to a “scribe.” Some scholars think that in Matthew’s church people entrusted with the ministry of teaching may have been identified as “scribes,” so that this passage might be aimed partly at them. In a broader sense, Matthew himself could be seen as a “scribe” who brings forth treasures from both the “new” teachings of Jesus and the “old” teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures. We too, have access to the treasures of God’s kingdom. In what ways are we called to bring forth “treasures” from both the “old” and “new” parts of our faith? Take a step back and consider this: These parables, taken together, present an interesting image of the believer: producing fruit but not prematurely forcing out those who are not doing the same; giving up everything for the kingdom but not separated from the wicked until God does the separating at the end of time. What attitudes and virtues can help us find this balance of being all-in for Jesus but not trying to be the judge who separates out those who don’t? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Prayer in difficult times: Can you learn from Jesus’s example and keep in mind the bigger picture of your life? [Matthew 26:36-46; 26:47-56] Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 26:36-56 Prayer in difficult times: Can you learn from Jesus’s example and keep in mind the bigger picture of your life? Unidentified artist (Flemish, 17th century). The Taking of Christ . Circa 1620. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Public domain, https://collections.mfa.org/download/34311 . Tom Faletti September 17, 2025 Matthew 26:36-46 The agony in the garden of Gethsemane They left the city after singing a hymn (v. 30). In the seder, Psalms 115-118 were sung after the meal. They walked out, across the Kidron Valley, to the Mount of Olives. There, they go to a garden known as the garden of Gethsemane. “Gethsemane” means “oil press,” so perhaps there was an oil press there for gathering oil from the olive trees that grew on the Mount of Olives. Jesus decides to go away from the big group to pray by himself. Who does he ask to come with him? How does Jesus feel? What is Jesus’s first prayer (v. 39)? What is Jesus’s second prayer (v. 42)? How is the second prayer different from the first? The first prayer is more focused on the possibility that “this” might be avoided; the second prayer is more focused on how to deal with it. The first prayer suggests the possibility that Jesus’s desire might conflict with the Father’s will; the second prayer is focused entirely on doing the Father’s will. How can Jesus’s prayer be a model for us when we are facing difficult circumstances? Jesus knows (vv. 45-46) that his betrayal is about to be put into action. How would you describe his state of mind? How do you think God feels about the difficulties you encounter? What is his state of mind as you face difficult circumstances? What does this time in the garden of Gethsemane tell you about your relationship with God? What is Jesus inviting you to do? Matthew 26:47-56 Jesus is arrested, the disciples resist and then desert him Judas’s act of betrayal involved telling the chief priests where they could find Jesus away from the crowds, in order to arrest him without enraging a crowd. How does Judas greet Jesus? How does Jesus greet Judas? What does it tell you about Jesus, that even in the act of being betrayed, he calls Judas “Friend”? In verse 51, how does one of Jesus’s disciples respond? John 18:10 tells us that this disciple was Peter. Considering that Judas came with a crowd armed with swords and clubs, what does this tell you about Peter? How does Jesus respond in verse 52? What does “those who take up the sword die by the sword” mean to you? How might that statement guide you in your life? What does Jesus say about angels in verse 53? In verse 54, Jesus says that the Scriptures say it must happen this way. What does that mean to you? In verse 55, Jesus gets a bit testy with the crowd regarding their method of arresting him. What is he implying about their motives? In verse 56, Jesus repeats that all that is happening is fulfilling the Scriptures. How does it affect your faith, knowing that parts of the Old Testament gave witness to what would happen to Jesus even though the Old Testament authors did not comprehend the fullness of what they were writing? Jesus sees these specific events in his life as part of a bigger picture, the bigger story arc of his life. What can you do to keep in mind the bigger picture of your life when you are facing difficult circumstances? Matthew ends this section by noting that at this point the disciples fled. Jesus has just made it clear that he is not going to resist what is coming. Can you stick with Jesus in your life even in times where God is not going to protect you from suffering or illness or rejection or death? What will you need to do in order to be ready to stick with him, and not run away, when the difficult times come? Take a step back and consider this: It is amazing to think that God guided a variety of prophets over a period of centuries to write down things that had meanings they could not have fully comprehend. Often, they wrote things about their own times that could be seen later as also applying to Jesus. Other times, they wrote things that were directly prophetic in nature, but they had no idea when, how, or through whom those things would come to pass. Yet God honored their unique voices and free will in those books. He did not just turn off their brains, put them in a trance, and dictate words to them. We hear the voices of the authors in the Word of God, even while we hear the Author behind them. God also allows us to make free decisions about what we say and do, and yet when we allow ourselves to be guided by him, he does things that may have implications and impacts we never dreamed of. Where have you seen the hand of God in your own life, guiding you in your present to bring you to your future without dictating your decisions for you? Does this make it easier for you to trust God about your future? Explain. Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Everyone can participate: Sharing and living the good news. [Matthew 28:11-15; 28:16-20] Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 28:11-20 Everyone can participate: Sharing and living the good news. Image provided by Wix. Tom Faletti May 31, 2024 Matthew 28:11-15 The guards’ dilemma As we discussed in Matthew 27:57-66, it is not clear whether the guards were Roman guards or Jewish guards. If they were Roman guards, it is hard to understand why they would have gone to talk with the Jewish chief priests. If they were Jewish guards, some observers wonder why they would have been concerned that the governor Pilate might cause them trouble; but one can understand their desire to avoid looking like they were derelict in their duty. On balance, it seems more likely that the guards were Jews, but we do not know. In verse 28:11, Matthew says the guards told the chief priests “everything that happened” or “all that had happened” (NRSV and NABRE, respectively). What in particular do you think the guards said? What plan do the chief priests and elders come up with to address what happened? Why would the guards need to be paid a large sum of money to say this? The chief priests might have been seen as guardians of the Torah or Old Testament Law, but now they have constructed a lie, in direct violation of the Torah, to avoid confronting a new truth that confirms the truths Jesus spoke that they already rejected. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible describes the story concocted in verse 15 as: “A desperate fabrication by the Jerusalem leaders. Their bribe of the Roman soldiers illustrates how willful blindness hardens the heart to resist uncomfortable truths, even in the face of evidence” ( Ignatius Catholic Study Bible , fn. to 28:15, p. 60). Why is it that people sometimes sacrifice the truth to maintain the status quo? In what ways might we be at risk of resisting uncomfortable truths? Consciously or unconsciously, people sometimes choose to ignore evidence that disagrees with what they think. This can happen in matters of spiritual belief, religious observance, political analysis, business practices, social expectations, and family relations. How might we be at risk of resisting uncomfortable truths in these areas of our lives? How important is it to you to know the truth, to believe what is true, and to speak “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” regardless of the consequences? Matthew 28:16-20 The Great Commission Where do the disciples go? In Matthew, mountains are places where important things happen – for example, the Sermon on the Mount. We do not know what mountain this is. It could have been the mountain upon which Jesus was transfigured (Matthew 17:1-8). The rest of what happens in this passage occurs after they “saw” him. Why is seeing important for believing? In what ways does seeing the Lord in action give us strength to do what we are called to do? What do you think it means when Matthew says they worshipped him but some doubted? This could be an oblique reference to Thomas’s doubting before he saw the Lord (John 20:24-29) or others doubting the resurrection. If so, “some doubted” might be a parenthetical comment, not a statement of what happened after “they worshipped him.” The point is that worship was not the automatic or immediate reaction of everyone. Harrington suggests, “Their doubts (v. 17) may involve the possibility of having such an experience at all or the propriety of worshiping Jesus” (Harrington, The Gospel According to Matthew , p. 113). Matthew does not tell about any ascension of Jesus into heaven. Perhaps he thought that was implicit. Or perhaps he thought that how Jesus returned to the Father in heaven was of little importance compared to the importance of the material he is ending with – that Jesus’s followers were directed to spread the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20, often called “the Great Commission”). Go back and re-read the first part of Matthew 28:7 and 28:10. Back at the tomb, what is the first thing the women were asked to do? Why was their task of sharing important, even though they are not among the “eleven” here? Some people have big roles that draw a lot of attention. Some people have smaller or less visible roles where they pass along the word of God in a quiet, unobtrusive way or perform other necessary but often unnoticed tasks. God uses different people in different ways. All of the roles are important. What are some ways that you might be being called or used by God in behind-the-scenes ways to help spread the good news of Jesus? How might you honor those who do the behind-the-scenes work that help make the more public and visible work of God possible? Sometimes a simple, quiet word of appreciate goes a long way. In verse 18, Jesus says that “all authority” (NRSV) or “all power” (NABRE) has been given to him. What does this mean? As he walked the earth, the fully God but fully human Jesus was restricted in space and time, and as a human exercised only limited power on earth. Having risen from the dead, he has been given, by the Father, all power and authority in heaven as well as on earth. “All authority” means that he can do whatever he chooses to do, and no other power can stop him. Notice that the Great Commission (verse 19) begins with “therefore,” meaning that it follows from Jesus’s statement about his authority in verse 18. Why does the Great Commission flow from Jesus’s authority? Do we live our daily lives as though this is true, that all authority or power has been given to Jesus? Explain. In verses 19-20, what does Jesus tell the disciples to do? What is the significance of baptizing people? What is the role of baptism in our faith? When Jesus tells them to teach people to obey everything he commanded, what do you think is included in the “everything”? Where would you look for the content of what should be taught? Matthew has been making it clear throughout his Gospel that the message of Jesus is for all people of all nations, so this ending is not surprise. As early as chapter 2 (vv. 1-12), Jesus is worshipped by Gentiles (the wise men/Magi). In Matthew 4:24-25, we see Jesus’s message reaching beyond the Jews to people in Gentile territory. In Matthew 8:5-13 he heals the servant of a (Gentile) centurion. In chapter 15, Jesus is teaching and healing Gentiles more broadly. So these final verses are the culmination of a message Matthew has been stressing throughout his Gospel. How important is the universality of the gospel to the Christian faith? How central to the faith is the idea that the gospel is meant for everyone? Different faith traditions think about the Great Commission in different ways. Some consider it to be particularly a charge for the original disciples. Some see it as a mandate for the Church as a whole, but with different people called to different tasks and not all people called to evangelize. Some consider it a command directed toward all Christians. What role do you think you are called to play in spreading the good news and making disciples? Do you think we, the Church as a whole, are doing enough to bring the gospel to “all nations”? Explain. Verse 19 is probably the clearest statement of belief in the Trinity found in the New Testament. This Gospel was probably written in the 80s (AD), which shows that even as early as then Christians recognized that God needed to be described in terms of three Persons. Some skeptics like to claim that the idea of the Trinity was created in the 300s under Constantine. This is simply not true. Although some of the final doctrinal language was worked out then, Matthew 28:19 shows that the concept of the Trinity had already been around for more than 200 years before the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 codified the doctrinal language we use to describe the Trinity. How does talking about God in terms of all three Persons of the Trinity help us to get to know God better? Do you find yourself relating more to one of the Persons of the Trinity than another – for example, do you focus more on God as Father, or relate more to Jesus than you do to the Holy Spirit? What value might there be in trying to relate to God in all three Persons of the Trinity? In verse 20, Matthew ends his Gospel with an assuring statement. What does Jesus say? Considering how daunting it might seem to spread the good news to the entire world, how is this statement comforting? How might Jesus’s assurance that he is with us always be an encouragement that spurs us on to greater efforts? Where in your life right now do you need to hear these words: “I am with you always,” even to the end of time? If you had 30 seconds to tell someone the core of the gospel, what would you include in your short testimony or witness or summary of what the Christian faith is all about? If someone asked you why they should care about Jesus – what difference does it make – how would you respond? Conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel Look back through the entire Gospel of Matthew before answering these two questions: What do you think Matthew wants his readers to do in response to his account of the life and teachings of Jesus? Please don’t stop at something simple like, “He wants us to believe.” Yes, of course he does. But what would that look like? What does he want us to do or how does he want us to live our lives as our response to Jesus? What is your favorite story, quote, or teaching from Matthew’s Gospel, or what part of this Gospel strikes you as most important or most meaningful, and why? [If you are studying together in a small group, ask everyone to respond to at least one of these questions and perhaps both, starting with the first questions and then moving to the second question after everyone who wants to share on the first question has done so.] Take a step back and consider this: Matthew’s Gospel is a call to “go” and “do” – to help those in need, to share the good news, to live a transformed life. Matthew is not content with words; he wants to us to put our faith into action. That is the core of his Gospel. Matthew hopes his Gospel will help us understand at least 5 things: First, Jesus seeks to transform our thinking in response to his downside-up view of the world, to see things from the perspective of those at the bottom of the social scale. Second, Jesus calls us to make changes in how we live our everyday lives, in order to be all that God intends us to be and not just avoid breaking the rules of the Law. Third, Jesus expects us to help those most in need and recognize that when we minister to them, we are ministering to him. Fourth, Jesus calls his followers to share with others what he has taught them and help people become part of the kingdom of heaven. Fifth, this message is meant for all people in all nations, not just an exclusive group or those we like or get along with easily. The good news is for everyone. The kingdom of heaven is open to everyone who responds. This is a visionary life we have been called to, and we have been given the privilege of receiving Jesus’s invitation to live it fully, with him. We can’t do everything, everywhere, all at once. As you end this study of the Gospel of Matthew, what is one thing you might consider doing differently starting right now – perhaps, focusing on one change you can make in how you think, how you live, who you help, how you share, and who you welcome in the life you have in Christ? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

If we try to make sense of God based on our human limitations, we will misunderstand the Scriptures and the power of God. How can the Scriptures guide us to a bigger picture? Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 22:23-33 If we try to make sense of God based on our human limitations, we will misunderstand the Scriptures and the power of God. How can the Scriptures guide us to a bigger picture? Image by Frank McKenna, provided by Unsplash via Wix. Tom Faletti August 18, 2025 Matthew 22:23-33 The Sadducees and whether there is a resurrection This is the second in a series of 3 challenges Jesus faces when he arrives in Jerusalem – this time from the Sadducees. The Sadducees believed only in the Torah – the first 5 books of the Old Testament, which Christians sometimes refer to as the Pentateuch, which is Greek for “five books.” The Sadducees did not consider the books of the prophets authoritative, nor did they accept the wide body of oral tradition that the Pharisees adhered to. Since the Torah does not suggest that there is a resurrection or an afterlife, the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection. The Sadducees tended to be wealthy. They made up a major portion of the political leadership among the Jews and tended to be collaborators with the Roman occupation. But those characteristics do not seem to be relevant here, where the question revolves around their religious beliefs. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection and an afterlife. They not only believed in an afterlife of the soul (as, for example, the Greeks believed); they also believed that our bodies are raised. They pointed to passages later in the Old Testament that provided varying degrees of support for such a position. Here are some of those passages: Isaiah 26:19 says, “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.” Ezekiel 37:1-14 describes a vision of a valley of dry bones. The bones come back together and regain flesh and skin, breath enters them, and they come to life. Although in the passage itself the image is of a new Israel being restored after the exile to Babylon, Jews (and later, Christian commentators) saw it as a sign or foreshadowing of individual resurrection. Daniel 12:2 says that after a time of terrible persecution, “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Psalm 73:24-25 says, “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward [or, in the end] receive me with honor [or, into glory].” This could merely mean that the psalmist will be restored, in this life, after when the difficulties he faces are over, but some saw it as a description of entering into God’s realm like Enoch (Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11-12), both of whom are described as being taken up to God without dying first. The Sadducees, who don’t believe in an afterlife, approach Jesus with a puzzle that they think shows the foolishness of believing in a resurrection. What is the problem the Sadducees pose? There is a commandment in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, that directs a man to marry his brother’s wife if his brother dies childless, so that through the first child of that union the brother will have a legal heir. Genesis 38:7-11 gives an example of a refusal to follow this command. Both of these books are part of the Torah, the limited part of the Hebrew Scriptures that the Sadducees acknowledged. The Sadducees imagine a series of brothers marrying the same woman, each dying before any offspring is produced, and they ask: Whose wife is she in heaven? In verse 29, Jesus tells them they are wrong (misled, led astray) for two reasons they don’t know the Scriptures and they don’t know the power of God. How is knowing both of those critical to the spiritual life? In verse 30, what does Jesus say about how they are thinking incorrectly? Jesus says there is no marriage in heaven, because in heaven people are like angels. It is important not to misinterpret the statement that humans are “like angels.” Humans in heaven are “like angels” in the sense that, like angels, they live forever and don’t need to engage in sexual reproduction in order to produce offspring and keep the family line alive (see New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV , Matthew 22:30 fn., p. 1780). This does not mean we are like angels in other ways; for example, unlike angels, we will have a body in heaven. Angels are a different kind of creature than humans. They only have a spiritual nature and don’t have a body or a material nature. Although Jesus frames his answer in terms of the Sadducees’ underlying assumption, common at the time, that the point of marriage is to carry forward the family line. This should not be misinterpreted to mean that that is the only purpose of marriage. St. Paul, and theologians and everyday believers throughout the centuries, have seen much more in marriage, in addition to its function of continuing an individual’s family line and ultimately propagating the species as a whole. In verses 31-32, Jesus turns specifically to the Scriptures. We might expect Jesus to focus on how they are wrong in not accepting the parts of the Old Testament that the Pharisees accept. Instead, in verse 32, Jesus quotes from Exodus 3:6, which is in the Torah, the part of the Old Testament that the Sadducees do accept. What does God say in Exodus 3:6, and why does Jesus argue that this indicates people do live on after death? In Exodus 3:6, God says, “I am” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They must be alive, because otherwise God would have said, “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before they died. The fact that he is still their God indicates that they are still alive. God is the God of the living, not the dead. The Sadducees are wrong about the Scriptures partly because of their crimped reading of the Torah. They think marriage works the same way in heaven as on earth, which shows that they think that heaven isn’t all that different from earth. Why is thinking that heaven is like earth such a big error, not just with regard to the question they asked but in our understanding of heaven more generally? Jesus also says the Sadducees are wrong about the Scriptures because they have not noticed a key statement by God in their Scriptures that presupposes that people do live on after death. What does this tell you about Scripture study? Now let’s come back to the fact that Jesus says in verse 29 that the Sadducees are also wrong because they do not know the power of God. What is it that they are missing about God’s power? They think that God is limited by what we understand from our human perspective. They think he is only powerful enough to create physical lives, which come and go. They don’t think that God has power over death and can extend life beyond death. At a fundamental level, they don’t understand how powerful God is. They underestimate God. In what ways do we tend to act like God is bound by human limitations or underestimate God’s ability to transcend problems that stump us? There are a lot of different threads in this exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees. What insights does this passage give you about God, or heaven, or the resurrection, or the Scriptures, or yourself? Take a step back and consider this: It is possible that the Sadducees didn’t really want to think of God as having a power and perspective that transcended theirs and could cut through their conundrums. They were very invested in their own power and comfortable with their own ways of seeing things. Accepting a God who transcends their power might have forced them to rethink some of the ways they were using their own power. How does our own desire for power affect our responsiveness to the power of God? How does our belief that we have power, at least in some areas of our lives, sometimes make it harder to appreciate the Scriptures and the power of God? Where, in your own life, do you need to let go of your preconceived notions about God and his ways? And replace them with what? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Jesus offers the same salvation to all – high or low, early or late – and asks us to adopt his attitude, which is that many who are last will be first. Can we embrace his approach? Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus offers the same salvation to all – high or low, early or late – and asks us to adopt his attitude, which is that many who are last will be first. Can we embrace his approach? Lawrence W. Ladd (fl. 1865–1895). Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard . Circa 1880. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Public domain, via SAAM , https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/parable-laborers-vineyard-14162 . Tom Faletti July 4, 2025 Matthew 20:1-16 The parable of the vineyard owner and the laborers; the last shall be first This parable can be interpreted on many different levels, which we will explore; but first, we need to understand what actually happens in the story. Jesus tells a story about a landowner and laborers, but according to the first few words of verse 1, what is this parable really about? The kingdom of heaven. What does the landowner do early in the morning and what does he do at various times later in the day? How much does he agree to pay the first group of workers? A denarius was the standard daily wage. It was enough for a man to feed his family the next day. If he didn’t get a daily wage, his children very possibly might go hungry. Do the laborers agree to receive that wage? The landowner’s actions and the laborers’ actions were perfectly normal for that time. Workers who did not have a steady job would go to the marketplace and hope to be hired for a day’s work. When the harvest was ready, landowners needed a large number of people to bring in the crop quickly. Rain or other weather problems could ruin the crop, and it could go bad if it is left in the field too long. So the landowner needed everyone he could get. At the same time, the economic lives of common laborers were very precarious: they never knew from day to day whether they would be able to eat the next day – it all depended on whether they found work that day. We see this day-labor economy in many places. Where I live in the nation’s capital, I have often seen groups of day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot hoping they can get some work for the day. When the landowner goes back to the marketplace later in the day, he finds more workers. What wage do they agree to? They agree to his offer to be paid whatever is right, or righteous, or just. The Greek word here is díkaios , which is often used to distinguish a “righteous” person from a sinner. He’s saying to them, I’ll do the right thing; I’ll treat you right. Why do you think the laborers accept that vague statement? By the time he is hiring more workers at the end of the day, he doesn’t even talk about money. He just tells them to go work and they do. Why do you think they go work without any agreement about money? They are just grateful to no longer be standing around. A little pay would be better than no pay at all. When it is time to pay the workers, the landowner starts with the workers he hired last. Jesus tells the story this way to make a point. He is not saying this is how a boss would act or should act. It is a device he is using to make his point. How did the workers hired first react when everyone had been paid? Did the landowner cheat the workers who were hired first? Now let’s dig deeper. Level #1 Remember that this is a story about what (verse 1): the kingdom of heaven. So who in the parable stands for what in the kingdom of heaven? The landowner represents who? The workers hired first represent who? The workers hired last represent who? The landowner is God. The first group of workers is probably the devout Jews who keep challenging Jesus, people who have been devoting their lives to God from their childhood. The workers who come later are perhaps the “tax collectors and sinners” that Jesus has been welcoming into his kingdom, or perhaps Gentiles. What is the point Jesus is making about the kingdom of heaven? As we connect the story to the kingdom of heaven, what is the “pay” the workers receive? We are saved by grace, not be our works, so what is the “pay”? If the answer is “salvation,” what does that mean? Now, Matthew might have included this story to make a point about devout Jews and “sinners,” or about Jews and Gentiles. What would the point be? Different people say this in different ways, for example: All people receive the same salvation; all people receive eternal life; all people receive access to God. In verse 13, when the first group complains, what does the landowner call the one he responds to? Jesus calls him “Friend.” What does Jesus’s use of the word “friend” in verse 13 tell us about his attitude toward those who challenge him because they don’t like his egalitarianism? The workers who started in the morning could be interpreted as those who developed a commitment to Jesus from their childhood, in contrast to those who came to faith in adulthood or even at the very end of their lives. For that interpretation, what would the point be? Do people receive a greater reward from God if they come to faith earlier in life? They get to live more of their life in communion with God while they are still alive, but do they receive a greater salvation? Can the point of the parable be applied to other comparisons people might make? For example, is the reward of salvation greater for the speaker at a church event, compared to the person who provides the refreshments, the person who puts away the chairs afterwards, or the person who just comes in, listens, and goes home? In what ways do those things matter and in what ways do they not? Conclusion #1 : All who work for God will receive the same salvation: forgiveness of their sins and life forever with God – regardless of whether they came to God early in life or later. God saves all who work in his kingdom and loves all of them. Level #2 The reaction of the laborers who started first, when they see what the other workers are paid, is why Jesus told the story in the order he did. If he had said that the landowner paid the early workers first, those workers would never have found out that the workers who came last were paid the same amount, and we would not have been able to see their attitude toward the other workers. What is their attitude toward the workers who came later? The landowner implies that they do not have the right attitude. Why is it that attitude a problem? A BIG NOTE OF CAUTION: Some people are bothered by this story because they think that paying the workers who come late the same wage as the workers who start early will encourage laziness . They are bringing their own biases to the story. The story does not say that the workers who were hired later were lazy people who slept late and only came to the marketplace at the end of the day. The story says they were “idle,” but it does not use that word pejoratively. It doesn’t say it was their fault that they hadn’t found a job. It doesn’t even say they showed up late. They could have been waiting all day for someone to hire them. The story doesn’t say the landowner hired all of the people who were looking for work early in the morning. Perhaps the landowner originally thought 20 workers would be enough to bring in the harvest, but as the day progressed, it became clear that he needed more, so he went back to the marketplace. They might have been there from the beginning. Or perhaps some workers were taking care of a sick member of the family in the morning, or were themselves sick, or were testifying in court that morning, or were burying a loved one. If we choose to see them as lazy, we are injecting our own biases into the story. Jesus does not say they were lazy or at fault in any way. This leads us to consider the attitudes of the various groups of workers. At the beginning of the day for the first group of laborers, when they first encounter the landowner and their relationship begins, what do you think is the attitude of the first group of workers toward the landowner and the work they are getting from him? It's a contract – you pay me the normal wage, and I will work for you. Notice that when they challenge the landowner, they inject a sour note into their relationship with the landowner. When the second group of workers first encounter the landowner and their relationship begins, what is their attitude toward the landowner and the pay he is offering? They choose to trust him that he will be fair. When the later groups first encounter the landowner and their relationship begins, what do you think their attitude is toward the landowner and the pay they are likely to get? They also trust him. They don’t know what they will get, but they trust that the landowner will pay them something reasonable. Which attitude better reflects what God hopes to see in his followers? Why? What does this tell us about how we should feel about having the privilege of working in God’s vineyard, of being a member of God’s kingdom? It calls us to humility. If you’ve decided to work for God, trust him and don’t second-guess what he is doing with other workers in his kingdom. Conclusion #2 : Our attitude towards other people and their access to salvation can sour our relationship with God and with each other, and can even taint our thinking about the privilege of being in a relationship with God. There are two more levels of application to look at: This landowner recognizes that all people should have what they need for their daily bread. The last shall be first. God actually seems to care more about those who the world cares less about, because the world cares less about them. Level #3 The Catholic Church has a long history of concern for economic relationships in society and has developed an extensive body of teaching, often called “Catholic social teaching,” regarding how to apply Christian principles to social issues, especially issues related to God’s desire for justice. (And many other denominations have similar teachings.) One of the core principles in Catholic social teaching involves the dignity of work and the rights of workers. Two of the ways that Catholic social teaching develops that principle are relevant to this passage: (1) That everyone has a right to work, and (2) that everyone has a right to a living wage for their work. How do you see those principles affirmed in this passage? How might these principles be put into practice in our society? Ever since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the Catholic Church has called for a minimum wage that is high enough to allow a worker to cover the basic needs of the worker and his or her family. Some people call that a “living wage” to distinguish it from a bare minimum wage that is not high enough to support a family. Ensuring a right to work – that everyone who desires to work can find a job – is a more difficult policy challenge, but some governments do more than others to try to ensure that everyone seeking work can find a job. Do you see ways that we are falling short of these goals for work, and what can we do about it? Conclusion #3 : We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but God also asks us to try construct our societies so that people can work for their daily bread and other basic needs. Workers have a right to work and a right to be paid enough to cover the basic needs of themselves and their families. Level #4 Now let’s look at a final point here that is often given little attention. Jesus says almost the same thing right before and right after he tells this story. In Matthew 19:30, he says, “But many of the first will be last, and the last, first,” and Matthew 20:16 is similar, without the “many”. This is a different point than the point about salvation being given also to those who come late. What is added by making this declaration about the last and the first? What does “first” mean? First in what? The only way to make sense of this is to interpret the “first” to mean those who are first in the eyes of the world – highest in status, wealth, sex appeal, fame, applause, followers on social media, etc. What does “last” mean? Last in what? In what ways are we – you and I – last? In what ways are we first? Notice that in Matthew 19:30, Jesus says, “ Many of the first will be last, and the last, first.” Why do think he qualifies it with “many,” as though it will not be true of everyone? What kind of person who is “first” in the eyes of the world might not be “last” in the kingdom of heaven? And what kind of person who is “last” in the eyes of the world might not be “first” in the kingdom of heaven? If everyone receives the same salvation by grace as a gift from God, does it make sense to talk about first and last? What is Jesus trying to tell us when he says, “The last shall be first”? What does it tell us about how God thinks? Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “The first will end up even with those who were last, and the last will finally catch up.” What does this tell us about God’s perspective? God sees things differently than we do, in his downside-up view (see God’s Downside-Up View of the World , with additional Scripture passages in God Takes a Downside-Up View of the World ). As God sees it, those who are seen as less important or further behind in this life are all the more of concern to him. If you ever find yourself thinking that you have more of a right to God’s favor than someone else, he might tell you that you’re missing something and someone else has moved ahead. Conclusion #4 : If you want to know what God is thinking about, what perspective God is looking from, look from the bottom up, because God is noticing what things look like from the bottom, from the people who are “last” in the world’s eyes. He wants all of us to see the world from his upside-down view – to understand that many of the last will be first. Looking over the whole parable and Jesus’s closing comment, what does this passage tell us about God? What does it tell us about God’s attitude toward us? What does it tell us about how we should live? Are you a Christian because of the reward you will get – the “pay” that comes when you die or at some other point in your life? Or are you a Christian because of the relationship and the privilege and the joy of participating in God’s work? Explain. Take a step back and consider this: It can be very hard for us to think as God thinks. We get too focused on ourselves. This parable reminds me of a poem by Shel Silverstein: God’s Wheel by Shel Silverstein God says to me with kind of a smile, “Hey how would you like to be God awhile And steer the world?” “Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try. Where do I set? How much do I get? What time is lunch? When can I quit?” “Gimme back that wheel,” says God, “I don’t think you’re quite ready yet.” (Source: Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic , HarperCollins, 1981, p. 152.) What are some ways that we tend to think we know better than God what he should do in our world? It is hard to see our own blind spots. Do you have any idea where you tend to think you know better than God? What can you do to more fully take on God’s perspective on our world? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

How can we recognize when we are focusing on little things that are of less importance and missing the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness? Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 23:13-24 How can we recognize when we are focusing on little things that are of less importance and missing the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness? Image by Sheldon Kennedy, provided by Unsplash via Wix. Tom Faletti August 21, 2025 Matthew 23:13-24 (Part 1 of Matthew 23:13-36) Read Matthew 23:13-36 Jesus denounces the scribes and the Pharisees for their hypocrisy In Matthew 23:13-36, Jesus pronounces 7 woes upon the scribes and Pharisees. The word usually translated “woe” has a meaning that communicates sorrow as well as anger. Wiliam Barclay tells us, “There is righteous anger here, but it is the anger of the heart of love, broken by the stubborn blindness of men” (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2 , p. 318). Jesus is speaking these stern words of judgment with a heavy heart. Part 1 Verses 13-14 It is not surprising that, of all the groups that opposed Jesus, Matthew retains this denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees, because those were the two groups that lived on after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and opposed the work of Christian communities such as Matthew’s that included both Jews and Gentiles. What is the first thing Jesus denounces the scribes and Pharisees for? In what ways do you think they were doing that? Are there ways that we might unintentionally block people from entering the kingdom of heaven or be an obstacle to other people’s faith? How should we act to avoid being an obstacle to other people’s faith? Sometimes, the problem is a desire to try to push everyone to conform to one for how to live the faith, so it may be helpful to try to avoid being controlling or judgmental. Instead of trying to corral or force people, we can seek to love them into the kingdom of heaven. Note: Most modern translations leave out verse 14, in which Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of devouring widows’ houses. It is not in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of Matthew, but it is in the corresponding passage in Mark; so it may have been added by a copyist who pulled it from Mark 12:40 rather than being in the original version of Matthew. Verse 15 What do the scribes and Pharisees do that leads to the second woe? Judaism is not today thought of as a proselytizing religion. However, in the 1 st century, before the destruction of Jerusalem, Jews encouraged Gentiles to join them as “god-fearers" – people who accepted the Jewish moral law and belief in one God – and Pharisees sought to convince them to convert fully to Judaism through circumcision and acceptance of the full Law with all its detailed rules regarding foods, etc. In Matthew’s time, Pharisees wanted Christians to embrace the whole Jewish Law; so verse 15 might have resonated even more for Matthew’s readers than for Jesus’s original audience. Every Christian denomination seeks converts. What’s wrong with what the Pharisees were doing? Barclay says it well: “The sin of the Pharisees was that they were not really seeking to lead men to God, they were seeking to lead men to Pharisaism” (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2 , p. 321). In our time, how might Christians sometimes be more focused on converting people to their “side” or their flavor of Christianity than to God? How are we vulnerable to focusing more on winning people to our “party” – our part of the body of Christ or even our political party – than to God? One of the ways we see this happening in the United States is people putting politics before religion. Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, author, and American Baptist pastor, says that between 2005 and 2020, political scientists observed a “pretty significant revolution” in people’s thinking. Previously, political scientists thought that “religion was the first lens and then politics lived downstream of religion” – i.e., that people chose their religion first and then decided how to vote based on their religious views. But now, he says, “we recognize that politics is the master identity, and . . . that people pick their religion [or denomination or local church] based on their politics. It’s not the other way around” (“ Faith and the Faithful in the 2024 Election ”). Given that our faith should be the primary guiding light for our worldview and everything else should come second to that, this finding is troubling. Verses 16-22 Recall from Matthew 5:33-37 (in the Sermon on the Mount) that Jews in Jesus’s time were casual about oaths, arguing that unless an oath directly invoked God it didn’t “count.” Here, Jesus may be quoting them, or he may be using exaggeration to show the foolishness of their hypocritical hair-splitting. What is the point of Jesus’s response to the Pharisees’ game-playing about which oaths “count” and must be honored? Jesus is pointing out that the things they say don’t “count” – the Temple, the altar – are more important than the things they say do count. Furthermore, in verses 20-21 he suggests that it all goes back to God, so all of it “counts.” Perhaps the real issue here is whether you should need to swear by anything in order to assure someone that you are telling the truth or will fulfill your word. When should people be able to count on your words being trustworthy? What does it say about us if we are focused on when we might be able to slip out of an oath based on a technicality? In Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus told his followers that they should never swear an oath by anything. Should you ever need to swear an oath, other than in a court of law or official document? Explain. Verses 23-24 Jews were directed in the Law of Moses to tithe from the produce they harvested (Lev. 27:30-32). Jesus indicates that the scribes and Pharisees are so zealous about collecting the whole tithe, or tithing of their entire gain, that they demand that people tithe even from their garden herbs (mint, dill, and cumin). If you have ever owned a basil plant, imagine if an advocate of tithing asked you to give to the church one-tenth of your “harvest” of basil, besides your tithe of your income. That’s what Jesus is criticizing here: they were trying to calculate the tithe down to the basil leaves, while ignoring more important matters. Is there anything wrong with tithing from even your smaller gains? In verse 23, what are the “weightier” matters of the Law that Jesus says they should be more focused on? Jesus identifies justice, mercy, and faithfulness as “weightier” matters than the tithing of mint. (The NABRE uses the word “judgment,” but “justice” may be a more appropriate translation that better captures the meaning of the word today.) What does it mean to practice “justice”? Justice means is to give to God what is due to God and to give to people what is due to them as people made in God’s image. What does that call us to do? What does it mean to practice “mercy”? One way to think about mercy in a modern context is to think about the use of discretion to balance the possible harshness of strict justice. Legal systems often ask judges to use discretion in deciding what is an appropriate way to deal with the circumstances of an individual case. What does it mean to practice “faithfulness”? (Note: Some translations say “faith” or “fidelity,” but in today’s language “faithfulness” probably better captures what Jesus is saying.) Why are justice, mercy, and faithfulness “weightier” than detailed tithing? Jesus does not reject tithing. He says that they should focus on the weightier matters “without neglecting the others” – i.e., without neglecting tithing. Does Jesus want us to tithe our mint and basil? How can we balance Matthew 22:21 – where Jesus tells us to “give back to God what is God’s” – with Jesus’s overall objection to the zeal with which the Pharisees focused on details? The Pharisees might say, “We haven’t neglected the weightier matters. We tithe of everything because of our faithfulness to God.” What point are they missing? In verse 24, Jesus refers to gnats and camels. Both are identified as “unclean” in the Law of Moses (Lev. 11:41-43 and Lev. 11:4), so Jews were supposed to avoid them. Pious Pharisees poured their drinks through a cloth to strain out any possible gnats. Jesus accuses them of straining the gnats out of their drinks while swallowing camels. What is the meaning of this metaphor? What are the “gnats” they we might become unnecessarily focused on in our day? In other words, what are the little things we might have a tendency to focus on that don’t really matter very much in the grand scheme of our faith, but that might draw our attention away from more important things? What are the “camels” – the big, important things – that we might be overlooking in our focus on gnats? This could be considered personally and also societally. Societally, we might fail to address weighty matters such as hunger, homelessness, racism, etc. Individually, we might fail to address issues such as paying fairly those who work for us, avoiding unkind or abusive words that hurt other people, doing our fair share of the chores, showing mercy to other people when they are not perfect, etc. You can probably add good examples of your own. Throughout this denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus repeatedly calls them “hypocrites” (see verses 13, 15, 23 ,25, 27, 29). What is a hypocrite? “Hypocrite” is actually a Greek word. That word was used to describe actors in the theatre. They play a part that is not who they really are, so they are pretending to be something they are not. The meaning of the word then expanded to the more general meaning we have for it today. How does their behavior make it appropriate to describe them as hypocrites? How are we at risk of falling into hypocrisy in our day? Take a step back and consider this: It is easy to become critical of the scribes and Pharisees and miss the ways we also put our focus in the wrong places. It is also possible to go to the other extreme and adopt a worldview that unconsciously says that no details matter – that anything goes. God calls us to find the balance that allows us to stay focused on justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matt. 23:23). What are the big things that you think matter most? What can you do to make sure you stay focused on those big things and don’t get distracted by little matters that aren’t as important? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Jesus chooses a particular place – Galilee – to begin his ministry. Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 4:12-17 Jesus chooses a particular place – Galilee – to begin his ministry. Image provided by Wix. Tom Faletti March 22, 2024 Matthew 4:12-17 Jesus starts his ministry in Galilee Why does Jesus leave the area around the Jordan River where John had been baptizing? The geography is important here. What region does Jesus begin his ministry in? What city does he move to? What body of water is he near? What is your impression of Galilee? Galilee was not a large place. Roughly 50 miles north-south by 25 miles east-west, its size was around the size of the small state of Rhode Island. The northern part of Galilee was more mountainous and remote; but the southern part, which included Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth, was not the isolated place that many think it was. The sneer against Galilee in John 7:45-52 was not about Galilee being culturally backward, but rather about the alleged lack of evidence that the messiah could come from there, combined with the belief among Pharisees that Galileans were less devoted to following every detail of the law. Even Nathanael's jibe in John 1:46 – “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” – must have reflected mainly a local rivalry since John 21:2 tells us that Nathanael came from Cana, which was less than 5 miles from Nazareth. We have tended to misinterpret these comments to think that Galilee and Nazareth were more remote and insular than they actually were. Nazareth itself was probably a small village, but in a region, Galilee, that was actually a crossroads for international travel. It included two capital cities, Sepphoris and Tiberius, both founded by the local king, Herod Antipas, and many people spoke both Greek and Aramaic (Eric Meyers, Professor of Religion and Archaeology at Duke University, “Galilee,” From Jesus to Christ , Frontline , Apr. 1998, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/galilee.html ). According to the Jewish Roman historian Josephus, it contained 204 villages with a population of 15,000 people or more and was the most fertile part of the Jewish lands with an enormous agricultural output (William Barclay, Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 , p. 65). According to Josephus, Galilee was full of people who “were ever fond of innovations, and by nature disposed to changes, and delighted in seditions” (as quoted in Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 , p. 66). At the same time, they were courageous and “more anxious for honour than for gain” (also p. 66). Galilee was surrounded by Gentile territory to the west, north, and east, and by Samaritans to the south. The original meaning of “Galilee” was “circle”: The term “Galilee of the Gentiles” in Matthew 4:15 comes from Isaiah 9:1 and refers to the fact that Galilee was encircled by Gentile nations. Galilee had been conquered several times over the centuries and repopulated with Gentiles. When Israel regained independence for around 100 years, from the successful revolt under the Maccabees in the 160s BC until they were conquered by the Romans in 63 BC, that region was turned back to Judaism. However, Galilee was not as insular as Judea to the south (Barclay, Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 , pp. 66-67). Many people were bilingual, and the openness of Galileans to different cultures might have made it a good place to grow up for someone who would eventually preach a message intended for all people, not just Jews. Why do you think Jesus leaves his hometown of Nazareth and goes to Capernaum? John the Baptist was arrested by Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas’s capital cities were in Galilee, not far from Nazareth. From a practical perspective, Capernaum might have been safer, with easy escape across the Sea of Galilee if needed. From a ministry perspective, Capernaum was a large commercial town that offered a larger audience and a different pool of people from which to draw his early disciples. Jesus did not just make a quick visit to Capernaum. He “made his home” (4:13 NRSV) or “went to live” (4:13 NABRE) there – the Greek word implies that he took up residence in a house there. Why might he choose to start gathering disciples in a commercial fishing town on the sea, rather than in his hometown? This town was at the north/northwest end of the Sea of Galilee, a large fresh-water lake. Moving here moves Jesus closer to Gentile territory (on the other side of the lake). It also brings him into the commercial area around a very large body of water. The Sea of Galilee was 13 miles long and 8 miles wide, and 680 feet below sea level, which made it a warm area ( The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 , pp. 70-71). With Jews on the west and Gentiles on the east, and a high degree of commercial activity, this was a place where people might have been especially open-minded about his mission to all nations. Matthew offers a fulfillment citation from Isaiah 9:1-2. What does that Old Testament quote tell us? This Old Testament quote tells us several things: First, Galilee is mentioned in the Old Testament as a place where God will do something significant. Second, Capernaum in Galilee is in the Old Testament territory of the tribe of Naphtali, so this is part of God’s plan for the salvation of Israel. The Old Testament passage was actually about a prophesied restoration after the fall of the nation of Israel to Assyria in 722 BC. Matthew sees Jesus as fulfilling that prophecy and bringing light to those in darkness. In what way is Jesus’s arrival like the dawning of a light in the darkness? In what ways do you find Jesus to be a light in your life? Matthew provides only a partial quote from Isaiah. The passage contains other well-known messianic prophecies, including, “a child is born to us, a son is given to us”; he will be known as “wonderful Counselor, Mighty God”, etc. (Isaiah 9:6); and he will establish the throne of David in justice and righteousness forever (Isaiah 9:7). Matthew is signaling to at least the Jewish members of his audience, who would know their Hebrew Scriptures and the messianic prophecies, that Jesus is the Messiah. In Matthew 4:17, what did Jesus preach in his early preaching? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (NRSV) or “is at hand” (NABRE). This is exactly, word for word, John’s message. It might have been seen as gutsy to take up the message of someone who had just been arrested by the local king. One might wonder how John’s followers reacted when it appeared that Jesus was claiming John’s mantle by taking his message, given that Jesus was not in John’s inner circle. It didn’t take long, however, for Jesus’s message to develop further than John’s. Do you think Jesus meant the same thing as John by this message of repentance? What does it mean when it says he “proclaimed” or “preached”? What would that have looked like? The Greek word is the word for a herald’s proclamation from a king (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 , p. 69), so the word signals a high degree of authority. What does it mean to you when Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven “has come near” or “is at hand” (Matthew 4:17, NRSV and NABRE)? We might think of the kingdom of God as any place where God reigns. The word “kingdom” indicates sovereignty – that the place where God is sovereign, rather than flawed humans, is entering our sphere in a new way. We can now live our lives under his reign. Note that in Matthew, Jesus refers to the “kingdom of heaven,” whereas in the other Gospels it is the “kingdom of God.” Scholars have sometimes tried to find a distinction between the two, with little success. The best explanation is that Matthew is more sensitive to the ways that Jews talked. Jews at that time avoided saying the word “God,” so Matthew uses “heaven.” It is quite possible that Jesus also used the word “heaven” and that the other Gospels, with less concern about this Jewish desire to avoid saying God’s name, might have used “God” to make it more clear precisely what the term means (see Benedict T. Viviano, O.P., “The Gospel According to Matthew,” The New Jerome Biblical Commentary , p. 639, and H. L. Ellison, “Matthew,” The International Bible Commentary , p. 1123). (The Gospel of Matthew does, however, use the term Kingdom of God four times, in 12:28, 19:24, 21:31, and 21:43.) As we go through the Gospel of Matthew, we want to hang onto this idea that Jesus is describing what the world looks like when God is acknowledged as sovereign and allowed to reign. How can you make space for the kingdom of God to be “at hand” in your life? What is something new you learned today about Jesus, and what difference does it make? Take a step back and consider this: In some ways Galilee might have been the perfect place for the boy Jesus to grow up, to prepare him for his ministry. He would have been raised in a Jewish village in a region that was culturally diverse, where the Jewish language was spoken but also the Greek language that was the common language of a vast empire that dominated a large swath of the Earth. He would have been exposed to different cultures, and those experiences would have prepared him to craft a message that could reach not only Jews but people of diverse backgrounds. God used that breadth of experience effectively. Similarly, God can use the experiences of your past to prepare you for opportunities for ministry in your life now. As you look back on your life, how has God used events from your past as preparation for opportunities you had to serve him later? Are there events from your past that you are still hoping God will use in support of future opportunities for service? Those hopes might be good things to bring to God in prayer. Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next

Suffering is coming for Jesus, and he calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him Previous Matthew Index Next Matthew 16:21-28 Suffering is coming for Jesus, and he calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. James Tissot. Rétire-toi, Satan [Get Thee Behind Me, Satan] . Between 1886 and 1894. Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Get_Thee_Behind_Me_Satan_(R%C3%A9tire-toi_Satan)_-_James_Tissot.jpg . Tom Faletti June 17, 2025 Matthew 16:21-23 Jesus predicts his passion for the first time, and Peter objects This the first of 3 predictions of Jesus’s passion (see also 17:22-23 and 20:17-19). What does Jesus say will happen to him, and at whose hands? The elders, the chief priests, and the scribes will cause him great suffering, and he will be killed. What will the ultimate outcome be? On the third day he will be raised. The elders, the chief priests, and the scribes made up the Sanhedrin, the council with political authority over the Jewish people, under the Romans. He says that they will cause him suffering, but he doesn’t say that they will kill him. As we know, the Romans killed him, not the Jews. When Jesus says that the elders, chief priests, and scribes will cause him to suffer, he is describing the Sanhedrin, the political body made up of political, economic, and religious leaders of the Jewish society. Jesus’s passion begins with a political body and ends with the Roman government – political leaders, not the crowds of ordinary people. How does that affect or shape your image of Jesus’s death? Notice that Jesus doesn’t include the Pharisees in the list of those who will cause him suffering. The Pharisees were like a religious or social group within the overall society. Most Pharisees were ordinary people, not members of the political or religious leadership. The political leadership, in particular, tended to be Sadducees, not Pharisees. Why do you think Peter “took him aside” to object rather than saying something in front of the other disciples? What is Peter’s objection? How is what Peter says wrong? There are several different elements in Jesus’s response. First, he says, “Get behind me,” implying that Peter is no longer following him. In what sense is Peter no longer following Jesus when he says this? Peter is trying to lead Jesus instead of following him. “Satan” is a Hebrew word meaning “adversary” or “accuser.” Over time, it came to be used as a name for the devil: for example, when Jesus is tempted in the desert, he calls the devil “Satan” in Matthew 4:10. When Jesus calls Peter “Satan,” he is using a Hebrew word that means “adversary.” In what way has Peter become Jesus’s adversary, like Satan who tempted him in the desert? Jesus’s command to Peter is, “Get behind me, Satan,” not “Get out of my sight!” What is the significance of the fact that Jesus put it this way? He is not telling Peter to leave him, only to stop trying to lead Jesus in the wrong direction. Jesus also calls Peter a stumbling block or obstacle (the Greek word is skandalon ). What does it mean when someone is a stumbling block? This is Peer’s first attempt to “bind” – to say what should or should not happen – and Jesus says, No. You need to let me lead you, not have you lead me. Have you ever unintentionally been a stumbling block to someone else? When you realized it, what did you do about it? Jesus says that Peter is not thinking as God does but as humans do (literally you are not thinking of the things of God but of the things of man). What does this mean? We face real problems and challenges, and we need to think in order to deal with them. How can we think about those things in a way that reflects the thoughts of God and not just human thinking? How can you recognize when your mind is stuck on human things rather thinking about the things of God? Matthew 16:24-28 Everyone is called to carry their cross In verse 24, Jesus says there are 3 things we must do if we want to be followers of Jesus. What are they? What does it mean to “deny” yourself? A useful footnote in the New American Bible, revised edition says that “to deny someone is to disown him (see Mt 10:33; 26:34–35) and to deny oneself is to disown oneself as the center of one’s existence” ( NABRE , Matt. 16:24 fn. ). To deny yourself is to live your life according to the principle articulated by Rick Warren in the first words of his book The Purpose-Driven Life : “It’s not about you” (Warren, p. 1). This doesn’t mean you are not important. It just means that everything about you must be seen in the light of the cross of Christ if you want to reach your full purpose. To deny yourself means to always be asking: What is God trying to do here? Based on the answer to that question, I might need to not do something, because it might get in the way of what God is trying to do here. That doesn’t mean that what I might have wanted to do is inherently wrong or evil, only that it doesn’t fit the circumstances if the goal is to have God’s will be done. What does it mean to “take up your cross”? What is that a metaphor for? Luke adds the word “daily” (Luke 9:23). It’s not a one-time decision; it’s a way of life. What does it mean to “follow” Jesus? We’re not following him from town to town as the disciples were. What does it look like in practical terms to “follow” Jesus in our time? It is easy to say that we are taking up our cross while we keep living mostly for ourselves, so Jesus goes on. What does he say about “saving” and “losing” our lives in verse 25, and what does it mean? Most people don’t face the threat of death for following Jesus. What do you think he means by “losing” our lives? This could mean many things, such as not putting yourself first, not focusing on yourself and what you might get out of a situation, but focusing instead on what God is trying to do or would like to see happen. In what ways might we be trying to “save” our lives rather than “losing” them for Jesus’s sake? Jesus says something very similar in Matthew 10:38-39. Is there something you might be trying to hold on to, that might be keeping you from following Jesus more fully? In verse 27, Jesus tells us that when he returns he will give back to each person according to what they have done. This teaching that that there will be an accounting of people’s lives at the end of time – how is that good news from a good and loving God? Note that Jesus describes his return and the Last Judgment in similar terms, with much more detail, in Matthew 25:31-46. How do you feel about the fact that, when Jesus returns, he will give back to people according to what they have done? How, if at all, does this passage make you want to adjust anything about how you live your life? For many people, denying yourself and taking up your cross is hard. It sometimes gets easier with practice. How can you develop in your ability to do this, so that it becomes more of an instinct and less of a struggle? Some people find themselves in situations where they just keep deny themselves, giving, giving, giving, and people around them continually take advantage of them. Are there times when following Jesus does not mean denying yourself to satisfy people who constantly take advantage of you? How would you discern when that might be the case, and still be true to the point of this teaching? In verse 28, Jesus says that some people will not die until “they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” This cannot be a reference to the coming of Christ at the end of the world. One interpretation is that it refers to the time when Jesus comes back after his resurrection. In what ways is Jesus present in his kingdom now? Anywhere that God’s rule is acknowledged and followed, the kingdom of God is present. The kingdom of God is growing and spreading, and we help to spread it and help it grow by our actions and words. There are other interpretations of verse 28. Some scholars see it as a reference to Jesus’s transfiguration, which happens in the next passage, but there are no angels in the transfiguration story. (There are angels present in the resurrection story). Some scholars argue that there is a difference between the coming of the Son of Man and the coming of the Son of God (Brown, p. 190), and that we are in the era of the kingdom of the Son of Man now, whereas we will see the coming of the kingdom of God when Jesus returns in glory at the end of time. Another interpretation focuses on the fact that Mark phrases this sentence differently. In Mark 9:1, Jesus says that some people will not die until “they see the kingdom of God coming with power,” which could be referring to when the Holy Spirit comes, at Pentecost and in the later life of the Church. Take a step back and consider this: Up until this point, it must have been wonderful being a disciple of Jesus: there had been some modest opposition but Jesus had handled it easily, and Jesus had been doing exciting and powerful things that they got to witness and sometimes participate in. But now, things have suddenly turned darker. Jesus has started saying that he will suffer and be killed. How could the one who had the power to command even the wind and the waves, who could walk on water, who could heal any disease brought before him – how could he possibly encounter any opposition that he couldn’t stop with a simple command? And when Peter challenged what he said, Jesus had responded with the sharpest rebuke they had ever heard from him, followed by a stern teaching they didn’t entirely understand but that didn’t sound fun: that they needed to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. Follow him? They understood that part. But deny themselves and take up their cross? What did that mean? Those of us who were raised in the faith might have had a similar journey. When we are children, most parents and teachers don’t dwell on the “deny yourself and take up your cross” part of the faith. And it might be downplayed to adults who are exploring the faith for the first time, for fear that they will be put off by it. Yet it is central to the Christian faith. How do we deal with the truth that Christianity calls us to self-sacrifice? When you are telling people about what you believe, is the part about denying yourself and taking up your cross part of the story you tell? Why or why not? How important is this teaching to a full and mature understanding of the faith? How can you not only follow this teaching but explain it to others in a way that communicates the beauty and the joy of giving your whole self to Jesus? And is that something you need to work on for yourself? If so, how? Bibliography See Matthew - Bibliography at https://www.faithexplored.com/matthew/bibliography . Copyright © 2025, Tom Faletti (Faith Explored, www.faithexplored.com ). This material may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration, for nonprofit use, provided such reproductions are not sold and include this copyright notice or a similar acknowledgement that includes a reference to Faith Explored and www.faithexplored.com. See www.faithexplored.com for more materials like this. Previous Matthew Index Next