We discuss Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate and the final hours of Judas Iscariot’s life after he betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities.
Messenger: Brian Hupp
We continue our verse-by-verse study through Matthew with Peter’s profession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah/Christ at Caesarea Philippi
By His sacrifice of His own life on the cross in our place, Jesus has redeemed us out of slavery to sin and the curse of death that sin brings with it. But our justification by the shed blood of Jesus is just the beginning of the process of sanctification through which God is perfecting us into the image of Jesus to make us ready for the culmination of His redemption of us unto eternal life. As we pass through His sanctification we will experience times of great triumph, but we will also go through periods of spiritual drought and outright rebellion against God – possibly even falling back into those same sins out of which Jesus first rescued us. In such times, our great enemy will attack us with lies – even causing us to question our salvation in Christ. But Jesus our Redeemer also stands ready in such times to be our great Restorer – bringing us back into fellowship and continuing His process of sanctification within our hearts by the power of His indwelling Spirit striving against the weaknesses of our fleshly selves.
Some of the Sadducees and Pharisees demanded a sign from Jesus to demonstrate the He is the Hebrew Messiah, but He refused to give them a sign and departed from them. Later He warned His disciples to beware the “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They thought that He was speaking about the leaven of earthly bread, but He chastised them saying to remember His provision of bread in the feeding of the 5,000 and later the 4,000. Then they realized that He wasn’t speaking of actual leaven, but the spiritual leaven that is symbolic of the sinful false teaching of Israel’s religious leaders. Of course, the same warning is applicable to the false teaching in the Church today.
Matthew 15 records some miracles performed by Jesus – casting a demon out of the daughter of a gentile woman of Tyre, and feeding 4000 in the region of Decapolis.
As we read God’s Word, it is helpful for us to have a mental picture of the locations of the places mentioned in the Biblical text, their positions in the land relative to each other, and the distances which separate them from each other. So it is worthwhile to spend a little time looking at maps of the Middle East region, the Levant, the State of Israel, and the province of Galilee.
In Matthew 15:1-20, Jesus was challenged by Pharisees from Jerusalem about why His disciples did not wash their hands before eating. Jesus turned their accusation back around asking why they imposed a man-made tradition on the people that led them to disobey the 5th Commandment to honor father and mother. Then Jesus explained to His disciples that it is not the physical cleanliness of what we allow into our mouths that defiles us, but the evil words we allow out of our mouths from the fullness of our hearts which defiles us.
On the night He was betrayed to die on the cross in our place so that we might be forgiven of our sins and restored into fellowship with God, Jesus gave His disciples “a new commandment” that we love one another, saying that people would recognize that we are His disciples through the love we exhibit for one another. But exactly how do we show this love that Jesus has commanded for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul tells us that our love for one another must be genuine, and gives some concise characteristics of this love in Romans 12:9-17.
This is a re-recording of the message shared with the adults at our 2023 VBS. Our children are continually beset by a lying attack from our great enemy Satan. As parents, we have a duty to defend our children against these attacks by providing them a solid foundation of Biblical Truth by which they can fight against the lies of the enemy.
On the evening that He was betrayed to be crucified, Jesus commanded His disciples to love one another, saying that by the love we show to one another within our fellowships all the world will know that we are His disciples. The love Jesus commands us to offer one another can sometimes be difficult. We need to offer our brothers and sisters in Christ the fullest measure of grace we possibly can by the power of God’s Spirit within our hearts. Nevertheless, sometimes the love we need to show must be tough love. When our fellow Christ followers stray from the paths of righteousness, we need to admonish them and allow God to use our words and support to guide them out of sin and back into right fellowship with God. More importantly, we need to humble our own hearts to allow God to use our fellow believers to help us in the same way. In this our fellowships are enabled to press forward in service of God’s kingdom together.
