Category Archives: Matthew

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Craig’s video series on Matthew

In a series of roughly hour-long FREE videos, Craig lectures on Matthew’s Gospel. Here is a CLIP of the first couple minutes (not perfect filming conditions or the nicest-looking professor,to whom the camera turns after the opening seconds, but hey, it’s free!):

The series is available for viewing free at: http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/DigitalCourses/00_DigitalBiblicalStudiesCourses.html#Matthew_Keener

Ted Hildebrandt filmed me for videos on Matthew, Acts, and Romans for the purpose of making these available free for ministers in parts of the world where in-class education was unavailable. Others can watch them for free also, of course. It’s sort of like taking me for class, but with fewer jokes, no evaluated assignments, and you don’t get any class credit! It’s also harder to know in advance where to skip around on the videos than it is using my commentary. But again: the video is free, so feel free to forward it to many people’s attention.

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Preaching from Jesus’s genealogy

Appropriate for Christmas season: have you ever preached from Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus? Or heard someone preach from it? Matthew opens his Gospel with Jesus’s heritage, which leads right up to the story of Jesus’s birth. Here is a video of Craig explaining salient features of Matthew’s genealogy:

If you prefer a written version to video, see also: Jesus’s genealogy and Matthew’s genealogy

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Building on the Rock—Matthew 16:13-27

When Jesus knows that his disciples understand enough, he asks them about his identity. The setting is significant: Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13; also Mark 8:27) was a predominantly Gentile city known for its worship of the pagan deity Pan. Jesus chooses a Gentile region for the first confession of his identity, prefiguring a mission that will eventually extend to all peoples. It is no surprise that Matthew chooses to include this important information in his very Jewish Gospel, which emphasizes God’s concern also for Gentiles (Matt 1:3-5; 2:1-11; 4:13-15; 8:5-13; 10:14-15, 18; 11:21-24; 12:41-42; 15:21-28; 24:14; 27:54; 28:19).

Many people believed that Jesus was just a great prophet, but Simon Peter declared that he was the Messiah, God’s Son (Matt 16:16). Peter is not the first person in this Gospel to suggest that Jesus might be the promised Son of David—that is, the Messiah (9:27; 12:23; 15:22; later 20:30-31; 21:9, 15). But he is the first to do among those who are Jesus’s disciples, his close followers.

Although Jesus must qualify Peter’s understanding, he first praises it. Only God could reveal Jesus’s identity truly (11:27), and he had done this for Peter (16:17). God had revealed the truth not to the highly educated scribes, but to the comparatively unlearned Peter (compare 11:25).

Jesus promised to build his community of followers “on this rock,” on Peter’s affirmation of (or role as affirmer of) Jesus’s identity (16:18). (Scripture already spoke of God “building” his people, e.g., Jer 24:6; 31:4; 33:7.) Jesus plays on Peter’s nickname here (“Simon” was such a common name it required an additional name to specify which Simon it was). In Greek, petros (“Peter”) means “rock,” and on this petra (“rock”) Jesus would build his church. As Paul says, the church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, with Jesus being the cornerstone (Eph 2:20; cf. Jesus in Matt 7:24-25). But why apostles and prophets? And why Peter, and especially now? Jesus praises Peter here because Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah. Peter plays a foundational role by declaring Jesus as Messiah.

The “gates of Hades” will not prevail against Jesus’s church (Matt 16:18). “Gates of Hades” was a common ancient expression for the realm of the dead. Death itself would not prevail against Jesus’s church; martyrdom—about which Jesus will soon have more to say (16:21, 24-25)—will not stop his work. The holder of palace keys was a major official (cf. Isa 22:22); by confessing Jesus as Christ, Peter would exercise great kingdom authority. Whereas the wrong-headed teachers of God’s people were shutting people out of the kingdom (Matt 23:13; Luke 11:52), Peter’s confession of Jesus was a key to let people in.

After praising Peter’s confession that Jesus is the promised king, Jesus goes on to define his kingship in a way that none of his contemporaries anticipated—in light of the cross (Matt 27:37). Jesus’s Messiahship must remain a secret at that stage in his ministry (16:20), since no one was prepared to understand it. As Christ, Jesus was going to be rejected by the religious and political leaders of his people, killed, and would then rise again (16:21).

Having boldly confessed Jesus’s Messiahship by divine revelation, Peter now denies Jesus’s true messianic mission (16:22)—by satanic revelation (16:23). The good “rock” of 16:18 now becomes a bad rock, “a stumbling block” to Jesus (16:23). A disciple’s role was to “follow” after his teacher (16:24), but Jesus has to command Peter to “get behind” him (16:23; intended figuratively, since Jesus turns to him).

Granted that Peter misunderstands Jesus’s mission, is this offense serious enough to call him “Satan”? Sadly, yes. The devil’s climactic temptation to Jesus in Matt 4:8-9 was to offer Jesus kingship over all the world—if Jesus would bow down to the devil. In contrast to the Father’s will, the devil’s way for Jesus to be “God’s Son” (4:3, 6) was the kingdom without the cross. Jesus responded, “Begone, Satan!” (4:10), and Jesus responds to Peter in the same way, because Peter now echoes Satan’s temptation.

Nor will Peter be the last one in this Gospel to echo Satan. As the devil urged Jesus to prove by some dramatic act that he was God’s Son (4:3, 6), so do Jesus’s mockers at the cross: “If you’re really God’s Son, come down from the cross!” (27:40; cf. 27:43). The scribes and elders mock, “He supposedly saved others; now he can’t save himself. He is supposed to be Israel’s king; let him come down from the cross and then we’ll believe in him” (27:42). In other words, Jesus could get everyone to “follow” him if he offered a more popular way. But it was not the Father’s way, and everyone would still die in sin. Jesus could not save himself if he wished to save others; God’s Son would obey his Father.

This was not the sort of Messiah whom people wanted to follow. The popular idea of the Messiah was a king who would lead his people to victory; that was what Peter wanted. But if Jesus’s messianic mission was the cross, that was also to be the mission of his followers. If we follow, we must follow to the cross: “If anyone wants to come after me, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (16:24).

Condemned criminals normally had to carry their own cross to the site of their execution. Later Jesus’s disciples literally failed to take up the cross and follow him; the Romans had to draft a bystander to do it for Jesus (27:32). Happily, Jesus’s resurrection changed them, and eventually they were prepared to follow him to the death. Jesus is forgiving and he patiently forms us into the people he has called us to be. But as much as he desires to lavish his gifts, such as healing and deliverance, on people, he also cares enough to make us realistic about this world. If we follow the Father’s way instead of the devil’s, we will face suffering. The kingdom without the cross is still a temptation, and it is still a satanic message.

But the promise of God’s reward far exceeds the suffering. It is those who recognize that eternity is longer than the present, who are willing to give even our lives for our Lord if that need arises who will have life forever (16:25-27). We were worth everything to Jesus, and he is worth everything to us.

–Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.

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True Purification—Matthew 15:1-31

Mere religious tradition can blind us to what really matters to God. Those whose honor derives from their religious or social status can resent those who speak truth. But Jesus transcends all boundaries and reaches out to all people. He shows true power to transform that mere religious rituals cannot.

Jerusalem was the dominant city in the region of Judea and Galilee. Jerusalem therefore had the largest concentration of scribes, or teachers of the law, and Pharisees, known for their meticulous concern with biblical laws and Pharisaic traditions. Some of these scribes and Pharisees noticed that Jesus’s disciples did not ceremonially wash their hands before a meal. Because teachers were considered responsible for their disciples’ behavior, these religious leaders challenge Jesus concerning why he allowed this breach of traditional purity (Matt 15:1-2). Their concern was not one of hygiene (which is a valuable thing) but one of ritual purity. (Unlike Mark, who writes mainly for Gentiles, Matthew does not need to explain this custom, which was common among Jews even far away in the Greek world.)

Jesus responds, however, by highlighting the inconsistent values in their religious traditions. Customs are not necessarily evil, and sometimes they can be helpful in avoiding needless offense (cf. 17:24-27); but they must never be allowed to take priority in our lives over biblical principles. Scripture demanded honoring parents (see especially Exod 20:12), which naturally included providing for aged parents (Matt 15:4). Pharisees would have agreed with Jesus on this point. Yet Jesus explains that they value secondary rules in the name of religion so highly that they could ignore someone using religion as an excuse to dishonor parents (15:5-6). They were inconsistent to value human traditions to this extent, because in so doing they valued them above what Scripture, God’s own Word, said (15:3, 6). Thus they were hypocrites, just like those whom the biblical prophets condemned (15:8-9).

The real issue here, Jesus points out, is not hand washing, but condemning others based on merely human rules, while ignoring what God has already explained matters most to him. Scripture reveals God’s heart; it shows God more concerned about love and justice for others (cf. 22:35-40; 23:23) than about mere rituals, especially rituals not even mentioned in the Bible! Because Jesus honors Scripture highly, as “God’s word” (15:6), we should do the same, evaluating our rules by its standards. Scripture’s central ethical concerns have to do not with rituals but with how we treat others. (See the sample prohibitions in 15:19, four or five of the six from Exod 20:13-16, the same passage as Exod 20:12 used above; compare also four of the issues in Matt 5:21-48.)

Jesus’s public reproof of the religious leaders worries the disciples; it seems imprudent to offend society’s powerful (15:12)! Jesus, however, has simply responded to the religious leaders’ criticisms of others; Jesus has been defending his disciples. He explains that the future does not lie with these apparently powerful people; God’s kingdom is about what God establishes, not about what people accomplish by their own religious ideas (15:13-14). The truly wise are not those who come up with their own ideas about God; indeed, even the disciples Jesus had chosen were not always the most intellectually proficient (15:15-16). True wisdom means recognizing that God is by far the wisest of all, and therefore we should accept God’s Word. Divine truth is what God has revealed about himself rather than human guesses about him (cf. 16:17).

Far more offensive than the impurity of unwashed hands, however, was the supposed impurity of the sorts of people that Jewish people deemed impure—Gentiles (15:21-28). Jesus takes his disciples into a Gentile region, and a woman there begs him to deliver her daughter from a demon (15:21-22). In Mark 7:26, Mark calls the woman a Syrophoenician Greek; this means that she belonged to the ruling class of Greeks who now controlled the Gentile cities to the north of Galilee. Many of the common people of this region, however, were descended from the Canaanites displaced by Israel’s earlier conquest. Matthew thus calls her a “Canaanite” (Matt 15:22; cf. two Canaanite women in 1:3, 5)—whom his Jewish contemporaries might view as the most impure among the impure Gentiles! Jesus’s disciples, who like some believers today shared the values of their culture, certainly did not want her around (15:23).

Because Jesus’s initial mission was only to Israel (15:24), Jesus initially puts this woman off in 15:26. Her class might have considered such behavior shocking. This woman belonged to the urban ruling class that heavily taxed the countryside, so that many poor people’s children went hungry at times. Now Jesus was putting “the children’s bread” first, and she, a member of the ruling class, was the outsider! “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs,” he warned. Jewish people considered dogs unclean, Gentiles used “Dog!” as an insult, and even a mere comparison with dogs (as is the case here) could be offensive if someone chose to take it that way.

This woman, however, does not try to maintain her dignity or rank; nor does she maintain ethnic prejudice against the Jewish descendants of the Canaanites’ ancient enemies. Instead, she desperately refuses to give up her daughter’s cause, and humbles herself. She, a Gentile, had already recognized Jesus as Son of David—the rightful king of Israel (15:22). (This is before Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ in 16:16!) Now she is ready to accept her subordinate position beneath him and his people. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs dropped from their lord’s table!” she pleads (15:27). In her Greek culture, dogs could also be household pets; they could eat scraps from the table. In other words, she does not need a big expression of his power; even a little bit is enough to deliver her daughter. Like the Gentile centurion speaking on behalf of his servant, she recognizes that he has more than enough power that even a little will be sufficient (8:8)!

Even though it was not yet time for the mission to the Gentiles (though it soon will be, 28:19), Jesus grants the woman’s request and delivers her daughter (15:28). As he did with the centurion (8:10), so here he commends this Gentile’s faith (15:28). She has expressed faith by recognizing that Jesus is her only hope, and by accepting whatever conditions he might place on her as a sign of his rulership. Jesus responds by setting aside a rule not yet universally abolished so he could respond to her heart. Now it becomes clear, even in advance of the Gentile mission in 28:19, that Gentiles can be delivered by faith, and the impure can be made pure. The greatest purity is not the purity of ritual, but the purity of the heart in Christ (15:11, 17-20). Ultimately, Christ transcends all ethnic and class barriers for those who trust in him, for us who recognize that he alone is our hope.

Jesus goes on to heal the broken (15:30-31) and feed the hungry (15:32-38). He does not depend on the approval of the powerful or the favor of the influential (cf. 15:7, 12), nice as those may have been. Instead he reaches out to the powerless. Ultimately this course will lead to the displeasure of the powerful people (such as some of the aristocratic priests) who exploited the powerless, and would lead Jesus to the cross. The gospel is realistic, warning us that there is a price for meeting desperate needs more than seeking worldly power. Yet Jesus, like the woman in this story, had faith: he depended on the Father alone, and gave his life knowing that the Father would raise him up.

–Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (revised edition, InterVarsity, 2014).

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The banquets of two kingdoms—Matthew 14:1-21

Matthew’s narratives often concretely illustrate his teachings elsewhere. In Matthew 14:1-12, Herod Antipas executes John the Baptist. In so doing, he also violates at least four of Jesus’s six specific examples of sins in Matthew 5:21-48! (Herod Antipas was a son of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus as a baby in Matthew chapter 2; unlike his father, however, Antipas ruled only Galilee and Perea.)

Herod Antipas had arrested John because John’s criticism of Antipas’s behavior embarrassed Antipas. Antipas had concluded an affair with his brother’s wife by marrying her, and Herodias, his new wife, wanted to get rid of John for criticizing them. In addition to the embarrassment, John’s preaching risked political complications for Antipas, though John’s own interest was primarily moral. To marry Herodias, Antipas had to agree to divorce his first wife—but she was a Nabatean princess, and Antipas’s action made him an enemy of Aretas, the Nabatean king. Many ethnic Nabateans lived in Antipas’s territory of Perea, and the last thing Antipas thought he needed was a prophet running around there criticizing Antipas’s behavior.

It was politically dangerous to execute someone the people considered a prophet, yet it was also too dangerous to let him keep publicly denouncing Antipas’s behavior. Thus Antipas took John out of public circulation by imprisoning him in his Perean palace of Machaerus. This imprisonment was not enough for Herodias, however; she wanted him silenced for good. At Antipas’s birthday banquet, she used Antipas’s lust for her own very young daughter Salome to get John out of the way.

Driven by lust, Antipas swore to Salome that she could have whatever she asked; she asked for John’s head on a platter. Think of Jesus’s examples in Matthew 5:21-48: Whoever wants to kill is like a murderer (5:21-22); whoever wants to sleep with another woman is like an adulterer (5:27-28), as is whoever divorces a faithful wife (5:31-32). Jesus also warns against swearing oaths (5:33-37) and Jesus demands loving and serving one’s enemies and oppressors (5:38-48). Antipas treats John as an enemy whom he wants to kill (14:5); Antipas further betrays his wife and becomes a prisoner to his own lust and oaths.

History tells us that Herod Antipas’s choices cost him the very honor and kingdom he tried to preserve. Remember Antipas’s concern about the Nabateans? The Nabatean king, Aretas, defeated Antipas in battle and would have taken his territory from him had Rome not intervened. Galileans murmured that this humiliating defeat was God’s judgment on Antipas for executing John, shaming Antipas even more.

Nor was that defeat the only trouble that Antipas’s marriage to Herodias cost him. In Mark, a drunken and lustful Antipas offered to give away his kingdom cheaply; in the end, his lust did historically cost him his kingdom. Herodias not only insisted on John’s death; she also insisted that her husband petition Rome for the official title of “king.” (Although the Bible sometimes loosely calls him a king, his role as far as most Galileans were concerned, his official title was merely “tetrarch,” as in 14:1.) Finally Antipas petitioned for the title, and the emperor deemed that request treason. Herod Antipas and Herodias lost their rule and spent the rest of their lives in exile.

This narrative about Antipas’s deadly banquet opened with Antipas hearing about Jesus and comparing him with John (14:1-2)—a comparison that warns the reader of the hostility that awaits Jesus. The next narrative, by contrast, opens with Jesus hearing what Antipas has done (14:13), and thus withdrawing further from Antipas’s domain. But whereas Antipas’s banquet led to the murder of a prophet, Jesus offers a different sort of banquet in 14:14-21. Jesus feeds far more people at his banquet than Antipas had—indeed, more than five thousand. Eating with others was like an act of covenant that brought people into a permanent relationship (that was why many religious people criticized Jesus for eating with “sinners” and collaborators with the occupying kingdom; cf. 9:10-11). Antipas’s guests were of high status and he had food (and a head) served on platters; by contrast, Jesus reached out to whoever was willing to become part of his kingdom (cf. 22:9-10).

Jesus fed his followers through a miraculous act like manna in the wilderness or like Elijah or especially Elisha multiplying food. In so doing, Jesus offered a foretaste of a different kingdom, one nothing like Antipas’s. All who hunger and thirst for that kingdom will ultimately be satisfied (5:6).

When we eat and drink together in memory of Jesus’s final meal with his first disciples, we remember that he promised to drink with us again in his Father’s kingdom (26:29). We also remember how much that promised kingdom cost him: “This is my body,” and “This is my blood of the covenant” (26:28). Lustful Antipas abused power at his banquet, killed a man of God, and lost his kingdom. By contrast, our Lord came to serve and to give his life on behalf of others (20:28)—and he will reign forever.

Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (revised edition, InterVarsity, 2014).

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All these things will be added to you—Matthew 6:33

What does Matthew 6:33 mean when it says, “all these things shall be added to you” (NASB) or “all these things will be given to you” (NIV, NRSV)? The context indicates that it refers to basic necessities—food and covering.

Jewish people sometimes used Gentiles—non-Jews, who were usually what they would have regarded as “pagans”—as examples of what upright Jews should avoid. The rest of the world seeks food, drink, and clothing, Jesus says, but you should not seek these things (6:31-32). Instead, Jesus’s followers should seek his kingdom, and these other things—the basic necessities of life—will be taken care of (6:33).

It is probably not a coincidence that Jesus had just taught his disciples to pray first for the agendas of God’s kingdom (6:9-10) and only after that for their own basic needs (6:11-13). In Greek, in fact, “your” is emphatic in the first three lines: “Hallowed be your name, may your kingdom come, may your will be done.” Only after that do we pray for our daily bread, forgiveness, and protection from temptation.

This does not mean that we should not eat. When Jesus’s disciples were going through a grainfield, he defended their biblical right to pluck grain even though it was the sabbath (Matt 12:1-8). When people condemned them for not fasting more, he defended them (9:14-17). When not enough food was available for the crowds that followed him, he multiplied it (14:15-21; 15:29-38). The key issue in all these cases is that people were following him, seeking the kingdom; by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, it is clear to all who follow him that Jesus is the king (28:18).

If we hunger and thirst for righteousness (5:6), we will put God and his work before our own needs. We indeed pray for our daily bread, but we pray even before that for the coming of his reign. Rather than storing up earthly treasures (6:19-21), we store up heavenly ones by meeting the needs of other people about whom God also cares (19:21). God is well able to supply our needs, especially if we are willing to live with the basic things he provides rather than competing with others for status symbols (6:28-32).

Most of the stories we read about God supplying the needs of his people miraculously come in settings like this—where in faith we put God’s work first and sacrifice. George Müller, Pandita Ramabai, Heidi Baker and others trusted God to help them care for orphans; Hudson Taylor, Isaac Pelendo and many Majority World missionaries today have trusted God to help them spread his message. Similarly, Paul and many others have been willing to labor manually in the places where God sent them, even though they could have profited financially more elsewhere; one may think also of businesspeople, physicians and others who bridge barriers for the gospel in various ways that sometimes require sacrifice. Mission is the context of some of God’s provision in Matthew’s Gospel, although the provision may be basic and is often through others (cf. 10:9-11, 40-42).

Jesus himself modeled this lifestyle for us—for the sake of the kingdom he had nowhere to lay his head (8:19-20), as he was often traveling to announce the kingdom and to meet people’s needs. In the end, he was ready to lay down everything for us—trusting his Father to raise him up. Let us put God first and see what he will do.

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Does the New Testament Quote the Old Testament Out of Context?

Some claim that the apostles took Scripture out of context in the New Testament, and that their example authorizes us to do the same. We could respond that, no matter how led by the Spirit we may be, we are not writing Scripture.

But the fact is that claims about New Testament writers taking the Old Testament out of context are mostly overrated. Some passages are fairly straightforward, including some that announce the future reign of a Davidic descendant; these texts, however, are not the issue to be addressed here.

Many times New Testament writers do not give a straightforward interpretation of Old Testament texts. What we need to keep in mind is that this is not always what the writers were trying to do.

Most of the examples critics give fall into one of three categories, none of which authorize us to discover a text’s meaning by ignoring its context. First, when responding to opponents who used proof-texts, the biblical writers sometimes responded accordingly (“answering a fool according to his folly,” as Proverbs 26:5 suggests). Some of Paul’s uses in Galatians might fall into this category (e.g., Gal 3:12). Writers could also use the sorts of arguments popular in their day to make their point, without assuming that this was what a text actually meant. (Thus, for example, Paul emphasizes that “seed” or “offspring” in Gal 3:16 is singular, but he knows very well that it can be a collective singular. He uses the same Greek term for many people in Gal 3:29. If one reads how ancient rabbis often handled Scripture, however, Paul is usually tame by comparison.)

Second, and much more often, the writers simply drew analogies from the Old Testament, using them to illustrate a principle found in those texts or the lives they present. To apply a principle genuinely illustrated in a figure or a text is not to take it out of context; without this method, preaching would become next to impossible for most texts. For example, if a psalm describes the anguish of a righteous sufferer, the principle could apply to Jesus as the righteous sufferer par excellence. (At least with particular psalms, the early Christians probably did also believe that God intended some descriptions that matched this ultimate righteous sufferer more specifically. Nevertheless, that belief would not invalidate a more general application to those who suffer unjustly from others’ enmity.)

Third, and perhaps most often, the texts we think are out-of-context sometimes reflect our own failure to recognize the complex way the writer has used the context. Readers often accuse Matthew of quoting Hosea 11:1 (“Out of Egypt have I called my son”) out of context; they often present this as the one of the most blatant cases of the New Testament writers misunderstanding context. They make this claim because Hosea in context is talking about God delivering Israel from Egypt, whereas Matthew applies the text to Jesus.

But Matthew knows the verse quite well: indeed, instead of depending on the standard Greek translation of Hosea here, he even makes his own more correct translation from the Hebrew. If we read Matthew’s context, we see that this is not the only place where he compares Jesus with Israel: as Israel was tested in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus was tested there forty days (Matt 4:1-2). Matthew also expects his target audience to know Hosea’s context: as God once called Israel from Egypt (Hosea 11:1), he would bring about a new exodus and salvation for his people (Hosea 11:10-11). Jesus is the harbinger, the pioneer, of this new era of salvation for his people.

In the same context, Matthew applies Jeremiah 31:15 (where Rachel weeps over Israel’s exile) to the slaughter of infants in Bethlehem (Matt 2:17-18), near which Rachel was buried (Gen 35:19). But Matthew knows Jeremiah’s context: after announcing Israel’s tragedy, God promises restoration (Jer 31:16-17) and a new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). Matthew compares this tragedy in Jesus’ childhood to one in Israel’s history because he expects his first, biblically knowledgeable audience to recognize that such tragedy formed the prelude to messianic salvation.

Matthew also knows the context of Isaiah 7:14, which he quotes in Matthew 1:23 (see the post on that passage on this website); the context remains fresh in Matthew’s mind when he quotes Isaiah 9:1-2 in Matthew 4:15-16. Matthew is not ignoring context: he is comparing Jesus’ ministry with Israel’s history and the promises those very contexts evoke. He may extend analogies further than we generally do today, but he read the context better than most of his critics have!

These observations are not meant to deny that people can sometimes teach us true principles using texts taken out of context. The point is that we cannot guarantee that the principles we find will be truly biblical if we get them from texts never meant to say those things. If we want to hear what God inspired the first authors to communicate, we need to read their texts in their context. Otherwise we can (and some today do) make texts say anything we want—things that will often run counter to the biblical message and sometimes prove very harmful to others.

See at greater length The Bible in Context, available at: http://www.craigkeener.org/free-resources/

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The riddle about understanding–Matthew 13:3-23

Like many sages in his day, Jesus told parables. Parables were a way to illustrate the principles about which a sage was teaching. Sometimes, however, sages chose to speak in riddles, especially to outsiders; only the most determined students then would figure out the meaning. Wisdom was like a treasure, and it was suitable only for those who were fully devoted to its pursuit.

Teachers often explained their parables. Because parables illustrated points, it made little sense to tell these stories in isolation, without connecting them to the points one was illustrating. The exception would be if those very stories functioned as riddles. Riddles challenged hearers to care enough about their meaning to persevere in exploring them.

One day Jesus told a parable that was meant to illustrate this very point. Most of his audience consisted of Galilean farmers, so they could understand his story on the surface level. What they might not understand was what Jesus meant to illustrate by it. Although ancient Mediterranean farmers sometimes plowed before sowing, sometimes they sowed before plowing; ancient sources document both approaches. Still, to make his point Jesus may stretch the story a bit. In this case, some of the seed got wasted because this farmer knew only the surface of his soil (which would seem unlikely if the farmer had ever worked this land before!)

Some seed was scattered in the open, but birds ate it (Matt 13:4). Then as now, birds were ready to devour farmers’ seed and crops. A second group of seeds sprang up quickly on rocky soil, but because the roots were not deep the grain withered under the hot sun (13:5-6). A third group of seeds was choked by thorns (13:7). If thistles had been cut down rather than uprooted, the farmer might not see their roots in the soil; but by April, they could grow to a meter or higher. Nevertheless, the fourth group of seeds, which did bear fruit, yielded many times more grain than all the seed that had been sown (13:8). A hundredfold harvest was magnificent (Gen 26:12), but even thirtyfold and sixtyfold were excellent. Apart from the fertile Jordan Valley, the average yield for grain in in Judea and Galilee was about tenfold. To reap even thirtyfold was to reap far more grain than one had invested in sowing.

Jesus drew on an ancient farming principle: you do not know which seed or which day’s labor will succeed, so you labor widely (Ecclesiastes 11:3-6). We do not know where our sowing will bear fruit, but we can be confident that the overall harvests will make up for every effort. Some people for whom we labor will not respond, but the word will multiply through others many times over. In the end, it will all be worthwhile.

Jesus’s own disciples did not understand why he spoke to the crowds in parables. Jesus therefore explained that he used parables as riddles to keep the meaning obscure to those who deserved judgment (Matt 13:13-15). The disciples, by contrast, would be blessed with understanding (13:17). It is important, however, to note how they received this understanding: Jesus explained the message to his closest followers (13:18). In other words, understanding was available for those who determined to be close followers, to be disciples. Disciples were not limited to the twelve; Jesus invites whoever wishes to be his disciple to follow him—so long as they are ready to follow to the cross (16:24).

All of this, in fact, is what the parable of the sower is about, as the Lord goes on to explain. Some heard the message about the kingdom but did not understand it, so the devil’s agents stole the message from their heart (13:19). Others were happy to receive the message, but when it brought them hardship, they abandoned it (13:20-21). Still others listened to the message, but other competing interests took priority and the hearers did not become true followers of the message (13:22).

What makes the entire enterprise worthwhile, however, is that some bear fruit many times more than what is sown in them. These are the ones, Jesus says, who “hear the message and understand it” (13:23). Who are those who understand? Not the crowds, who watch Jesus heal the sick, listen to his stories, and then go home. Those who understand are the disciples—Jesus’s followers, who stay to hear his interpretations. They are the ones who persevere when things do not seem to make sense, until they hear the Lord’s explanation. These are the ones who do not simply nod with approval that Jesus is a great teacher, but those who embrace him as their Lord and Savior.

In the context of Jesus’s ministry, the meaning of the parable should have been fairly obvious anyway. Not only did the Pharisees denounce him (12:24), but his own family did not yet recognize the truth of his ministry (12:46-50) and his home town rejected him (13:53-58). Nevertheless, large crowds gathered around Jesus (13:2). The kingdom did not belong to Jesus’s opponents or even (in their current state) to the expectant crowds; it belonged to Jesus’s disciples.

Although the meaning should have been obvious to the disciples, they often needed an explanation (13:36)—and Jesus provided one. That is good news: for those who are truly willing to persevere in following Jesus, Jesus provides the understanding. We are saved completely by his grace; we merely need to value the message and welcome the transformation that it brings.