A Woman and Her Dough

Just to review from the last post, the next mini-parable is the following:

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Let’s apply the same principles we’ve looked at in the past to this current parable.

P’SHAT

There appear to be some similar attributes to this parable as the previous one (exactly as we would expect). We seem to have the same picture of something small being planted and having massive, unstoppable impact. Once you plant the yeast in the dough, it’s going to do its work. Also, it appears to be counter-intuitive. Yeast (leaven) is ALWAYS a picture of sin in Jewish thought. While Judaism is full of paradox and what is called “double-point truth,” this does not appear to be one of those cases. Leaven represents sin. And the kingdom of heaven is like… leaven?

The p’shat of this teaching lines up to bolster the teaching in the previous parable.

REMEZ

But, if we are becoming more Jewish in our ability to interpret rabbinical teachings, we have to start asking the question: Where have we heard this before; where is this in the Text?

The image of a woman baking a large amount dough would definitely strike familiarity in the mind of a Jewish learner. Especially if we translated the passage correctly (you will likely sense my smirk here). The passage here says “sixty pounds,” which does better than the NIV of 1984 did, but it still misses the better reference. Some translations will add a footnote pointing out that the Greek says “three measures,” or even “three satas.” This would be appropriately heard as “three seahs.” Does this ring a bell yet? Try Genesis 18:

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 

He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”

“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” 

So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”

A woman who bakes leaven into three seahs of flour? Sixty pounds? Have you ever tried to make sixty pounds of flour into bread? Jewish tradition teaches that the story of Sarah and her three seahs was miraculous. The rabbis say that when you are willing to be generous and hospitable to a stranger, God will equip you to do unbelievable, even miraculous, things.

DRASH

So what would the deeper teaching be here? The kingdom of heaven is like a woman and three seahs of flour. Jesus seems to be saying, “You know that day when Abraham and Sarah radically served the stranger? You remember how Sarah was willing to bake sixty pounds of flour for people she didn’t even know? That’s the kingdom.”

Link this parable up with the connected parable before it and you have a stunning teaching.

The Kingdom begins small, but it is unstoppable.

The Kingdom is counter-intuitive.

The Kingdom is a small seed that grows into a tree to bless the outsiders.

The Kingdom is a woman who was willing to show radical hospitality to a stranger.

And now the disciples have much to chew on. And so do we.

A Crazy Farmer and His Mustard Seed

The next two mini-parables will provide us with an opportunity to put the content of our last post to work. Jesus tells two that seem to be connected and told as a pair together. They read in Matthew 13 like this:

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Now, let’s go about applying the principles of p’shat, remez, and drash to these teachings.

P’SHAT
There appear to be some general principles lying on the surface of the first parable. Jesus seems to be teaching directly that the kingdom of heaven does not come with trumpets and crashing explosions (you may remember our “two-part vs. three-part eschatology” conversation). Instead, the kingdom starts as something small and unimpressive, yet these small kingdom investments have HUGE potential. Not only this, but the context of a mustard plant/tree helps, as well. Please note, even deep contextual study that opens up our understanding of a teaching is still dealing with the p’shat level of interpretation.

Mustard in the world of Jesus is akin to the most obnoxious weed in your neck of the woods that you just can’t get rid of. (What is it for you? I know for those of us here in the Northwest, thistle is a huge problem.) Mustard in this part of the world cannot be stopped; you can burn it, poison it, or pull it up, but this plant that spreads through the root system is nearly impossible to exterminate. A farmer who plants mustard seed in his field would be a laughingstock. Is Jesus teaching that the kingdom of heaven is counter-intuitive, foolishness to the world around it? At the very least, Jesus is teaching that the kingdom of heaven, if planted well, is unstoppable.

Not only this, but there are two different kinds of mustard in the world of Jesus. One form of mustard is a plant, like a vine which spreads along the ground. The second is a large shrub that is actually considered a “tree” in their world. Jesus starts His parable with the plant and ends it with a tree. This is problematic, because the two mustards are different entities; the one doesn’t become the other. So what is Jesus saying?

You may remember from our study in Genesis that questions or problems like these are often intentional indicators that there might be more going on. When you get questions like these as a student, begin looking there for the…

REMEZ
The true beauty of living in the information age is the incredible tools at our disposal for Bible study. Once you are aware of where you want to start looking and/or what you want to start looking for, you are simply a keyword search away from finding incredible treasures (in this regard, biblegateway.com is your best friend).

Consider what you might find if you did a search for a tree in which birds come and rest in its branches. You might find a passage from Ezekiel 17:

“ ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.

“ ‘I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’ ”

This brilliant connection would help us discuss the…

DRASH
What is Jesus’s big idea in this parable? The prophesy of Ezekiel 17 is speaking of a day when the people of God might fulfill their calling to be a blessing for all nations. In the greater context of Ezekiel, it becomes clear that the birds of the sky are the Gentiles.

It becomes a better and better assumption that Jesus is teaching the kingdom of heaven is this small, counter-intuitive movement of God that cannot be stopped. It starts small, but has incredible potential. But what exactly are we talking about? What are the seeds that need to be planted? The disciple who knows his Text might immediately deduce that Jesus is suggesting generosity and love toward the Gentiles might be what the kingdom of heaven is all about.

But we may want to look at the sister parable to see if this is reinforced. Can you think about what the p’shat, remez, and drash of the parable of the yeast might be? Will the two parables be connected as we suggested earlier?

We’ll look at that in the next post, but this will be some great homework to chew on.

Jewish Hermeneutics

The next parable Jesus tells will be the parable of the weeds in the wheat. This parable will be “explained” later by Jesus, so I’ll wait to unpack it until then. I believe this package of teaching is supposed to be heard in a particular order, so I will work hard to keep it in place. However, this does provide the perfect break to talk about the art of Jewish hermeneutics — especially with regard to parables — and bring a whole new understanding to how we read the parables and teachings of Jesus.

First, we need to state that a parable is not designed to make the teaching easier, but “harder.” This helps us understand why Jesus, when asked why He taught in parables, essentially answered, “So that people won’t understand.” Key to understanding learning in an eastern context is realizing that an easterner believes if something can be learned by DISCOVERY, it is understood so much better than through EXPLANATION. This means that a good eastern teacher is going to bury the truth in a process of discovery. This requires a certain level (and expectation) of work; not everyone will be willing to engage learning in this way. But for people who are willing to do the “digging,” they will unearth treasures the teacher has buried. And because of the process of discovery, those truths will do so much more work than they would as simple propositions.

To serve this end, rabbinical Jewish teaching has “levels” of interpretation:


P’SHAT
P’shat is a surface-level reading. The p’shat meaning of a parable is the one that is the easiest to discern and has the shallowest depth. Most Christian Bible students are familiar with this level of teaching and nothing else. The truth that is found on a p’shat level can be incredibly profound and profoundly applied. There are many good preachers and teachers who can take p’shat-level teaching and make it come alive and dance in a way that is a blessing to others. This is a gift of the western world and we should rejoice in it. Such a statement brings up a couple of points:

There is nothing wrong with p’shat. Even though the learner on this level is swimming in the shallow end, there is nothing wrong with the meaning that can be mined from a p’shat reading of the Text. The deeper levels are not “more true” or “more inspired” than p’shat. The different levels will not contradict each other. As western Christianity has proven, we can spend centuries in this level and not exhaust the truths it contains.

If a person does not know their Text, p’shat is all they are left with. This makes the preceding paragraph even more of a blessing. Understanding Jewish hermeneutics does not make the student more “learned” or give them special access to special truths that aren’t available to the ignorant. This is a good thing, as 90% of Christian teaching, exegetical interpretation, and expository preaching are based on nothing more than p’shat.


REMEZ
However, for the Jewish student who has put their time into the Text — who has the Text memorized — the rabbi has hidden a special treasure that is unlocked with a familiarity of the Text. The rabbi buries what is called a remez into the teaching; remez is a Hebrew term that means “hint.” And the remez is going to link the student to a passage in the Hebrew scriptures that will give context to the deeper meaning the teacher is driving at. In short, once a student has interacted with the p’shat reading of the Text, their intimate knowledge of the Text allows them to follow the “treasure map” (the remez) to the…


DRASH
Drash is the idea of “truth hidden in story.” Once a student has found the “hint” in the Text, they are given tools that are going to help them unlock and understand the deeper meanings of the rabbi’s teaching. It should be noted here that the remez in a teaching is always up for debate. Oftentimes, there might not be only one remez intended for the teaching. In light of this, it stands to reason that the drash is never a simple idea either. Please do not confuse these levels as some form of “Bible Code” — it is not. There is not some hidden proposition found by applying a code. In fact, Jewish hermeneutics demands the interaction of more than one student. The remez and the drash have to be discussed, examined, and critiqued as a group for the process of discovery to take place. That is why learning is done in the context of a havurah, or a group of disciples.

The parable is designed to confound and perplex. The parable is a form of teaching that is provocative and difficult. It is not a teaching method that is supposed to bring surface clarity to the material. In fact, the parable often confounds the reader into even more wrestling. But that is the point. All of these disciples, wrestling with the parable, are now wrestling with the Text. What more could we ask for?


SOD
While we won’t discuss this level at the moment, it also bears mentioning that the fourth and deepest level of Jewish interpretation is sod. Sod is connected to “mystery” and cannot be learned or taught. Sod is a supernatural gift from God (or we might even say the Holy Spirit). An example of this would be Peter’s great confession (Matthew 16) where Jesus remarks that “man has not revealed this to you, but only my Father who is in Heaven.”


This whole discussion is designed to help us realize there is so much more under the surface of Jewish teaching than we realize. There is still so much more to learn and so much more to hear. Again, we are confronted with the need to know our Text and greatly increase our familiarity with the Old Testament. I am not going to try to convince you of this in this post — I will let the parables themselves do the teaching and the compelling. But I will raise a question:

If we do not understand the deeper levels and ultimate intentions of Jesus’s teachings, how can we call ourselves His followers?

Which Soil?

Matthew 13 ushers in one of the more famous chapters in the gospel of Matthew — the chapter of parables. Jesus will tell a series of parables that each begin with the assertion that “the Kingdom of Heaven is like…” We will have much more discussion on the art of parables and how the mechanics of parables work, but Jesus begins this set of teachings with the famous “parable of the sower.”

Right off the bat, we should recognize this isn’t actually a parable of a sower, but the “parable of the soils.” As the context (and even Jesus’s explanation) makes clear, the sower is, in fact, God. The variable of the parable is the soil and not the sower; therefore the point of the parable would not be that we are the ones sowing seed, but that God is sowing the seed. Yet time and time again, I encounter the teachings around this parable to be people are going to respond differently to your seed-sowing.

Let us be clear: The parable is not a reaffirmation of all the things you believe; the parable is a challenge to us to be changed and refined.

Second, it would be helpful to know Jesus is simply following a very common template used in rabbinical teachings. Rabbis would often refer to what they called “the four different learners” in their teaching. Some examples we know of are the “sponge” (takes in everything; keeps everything), the “funnel” (takes in everything; keeps nothing), the “strainer" (takes in everything; keeps the bad), and the “sieve" (takes in everything, keeps the good). Another example would be the quick learner/slow doer, the quick learner/quick doer, the slow learner/quick doer, and the slow learner/slow doer. The point of these templates is to ask the question: which learner are you?

The point of the parable is the challenge to consider which soil you are.

Jesus even goes on to explain the parable. There are four soils:

THE PATH: Doesn’t understand; the evil one snatches it away.
THE ROCKS: Understands, but has no depth; cannot withstand hardship.
THE THORNS: Understands, but cannot let go of idolatry.
THE GOOD SOIL: Understands and does, producing a crop.

Which soil are you?

But even the disciples’ question is informative. They ask Jesus why He teaches in parables and He answers with a cryptic quotation from Isaiah 6, simply saying, “I teach them in parables so that they won’t understand.” Wow. Thanks, Jesus.

But even that is a great teaching point. Jesus’s larger point in the parable appears to be that the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven is such that people have to do the work of “tilling their soil” so they can receive the seed being sown. If you aren’t willing to prepare your soil, then it’s really easy to have ears that cannot hear and eyes that cannot see.

How will you prepare your soil if you are THE PATH? Look at Hosea 10: 

Sow righteousness for yourselves,
    reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground;
    for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes
    and showers his righteousness on you.

Be generous; sow tzedekah.

How will you prepare your soil if you are THE ROCKS? See Isaiah 5:

Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw
    and as dry grass sinks down in the flames,
so their roots will decay
    and their flowers blow away like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty
    and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.

Do you want/need deep roots? Put your resources in the law of the LORD Almighty (see also Jeremiah 17 and Ezekiel 17 for discussion about building deep roots).

How will you prepare your soil if you are THE THORNS? Check out Jeremiah 4:

“Break up your unplowed ground
    and do not sow among thorns.
Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
    circumcise your hearts,
    you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
or my wrath will flare up and burn like fire
    because of the evil you have done—
    burn with no one to quench it.”

Turn away from your idolatry — the idols of worry and wealth — and put your faith into action.

It appears Jesus is inviting the people to prepare their soil. Of course, it will require some work and you may have noticed I pulled all of my thoughts from the Text. And if I know anything about farming (and I don’t, but I have experienced this firsthand in Israel), the preparation of your soil is something that must be done each year, all year long.

I have some work to do on my soil.

He who has ears, let him hear.

The Sign of Jonah

A little later in the narrative of Matthew, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees to show them a sign. Jesus’s response is one that I think is taken for granted and glossed over far too often.

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.”

We often read this passage and think to ourselves: Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ request by saying, “You want a sign? No. The only sign you are going to receive is the fact that I’m going to be in the tomb and rise again after three days. That’s all the sign you’re going to get!” While there is certainly some truth in this reading, it misses the depth that lies at the heart of what this rabbi says to these Torah-trained teachers.

First, while the connection of “three days and three nights” to the resurrection is obviously there, this would not have been Jesus’s original teaching point. I think there are many tongue-in-cheek inferences to Jesus’s resurrection by Matthew that all the readers are going to catch as they read this gospel on the other side of Jesus’s resurrection; but as we’ve seen before, a prophetic teaching will not make an empty (or cryptic) statement about the future that could not be interpreted by the present listeners. Whatever Jesus is saying, it has to find its primary meaning in what the audience can glean and learn from the reference. So Jesus has to be saying something else about Jonah that is disconnected from His own resurrection.

Second, this typical interpretation misses and ignores the rest of the paragraph — namely, the mention of Nineveh and Queen Sheba — which is clearly an intentional reference by Jesus. Whatever we do with Jesus’s teaching, it needs to make sense of these two references.

So what was Jonah known for? As we looked at earlier, Jesus has already used Jonah as a great teaching point regarding Jonah’s ministry to the Gentiles. Jesus says the only sign that the Pharisees should need is “the sign of Jonah.” What was the sign of Jonah?

Why will Nineveh rise at the judgment and condemn that generation? Because they heard the preaching of Jonah and repented. Why was the Queen of Sheba referenced? Because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of the LORD.

Jesus responds to the Pharisees: “You want a sign? The Gentiles are believing this stuff! Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah and the Gentiles are repenting at the preaching of the Kingdom of God now! This is exactly what your Scriptures tell you will happen! Sheba came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon; and the Gentiles are coming to hear from me! Someone greater than Solomon and Jonah is here and you’re missing it!”

Jesus’s answer is rooted in Text. His claim is that the very thing the prophets spoke of and sought out was happening before their eyes and they were missing it.

This story always gives me pause. I must ask whether or not I’m missing the obvious. I think of how often I hear people trying to explain away how “non-believers” can do good things. We go to great lengths to explain how all the people who aren’t wearing the right labels are not “in the Kingdom of God.” And I wonder how many times we set up camp with the Pharisees and ask God for things that are already happening around us.

Rob Bell likes to say, “What you look for, you will find.”

If we look to find the world corrupt and falling apart, we will find it. If we look for all the broken places and things that exist in disharmony, there are plenty of examples to see. If we look for everything that’s wrong and all the ways people mess up, failure abounds around us. What we look for, we will find.

But if we look for the Kingdom of God bursting forth in all kinds of places we’d never expect; if we try to find light shining in dark places; if we stay attentive to the work of God in people who don’t wear the T-shirts — I wonder if we would find God more than ever. I wonder if there are signs of Jonah all over our world, and we are missing it.

What we look for, we will find.

I want to look for — and be surprised by — God.

An Explosive Kingdom Realized

However, don’t be deceived into thinking that Jesus is particularly fond of putting John the Baptist in his place. He is not. He turns to the crowds and appears to be a little riled up after His interaction with John’s disciples. While John’s disciples are leaving (making the reader think that they still might be within earshot), Jesus begins quite the monologue:

As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written:

“ ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way before you.’

Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

That would be a pretty good epitaph to have on your tombstone. Jesus is far from dissing a cousin, a good friend, and a possible rabbi. But then, Jesus offers a teaching confounding many Bible students to this day:

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Violently advancing? Violent men take hold of it? I thought the kingdom of God was like a mustard seed and we were on a mission to love our enemies, be on a mission of mercy, and offer forgiveness. Violent men?

While the Greek is translated correctly here, some context will be rather helpful. The Greek word that is used here is biastes. It is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word pratz. There was a young Hebrew boy in the Old Testament who was named after pratz; we translate his name “Perez.” Perez was one of the sons of Judah and Tamar. You may remember the story (found in Genesis 38) where Tamar becomes pregnant with twins. As the first son begins to emerge, they tie a red cord around his wrist; the marked wrist disappears back into the womb and the second twin “explodes” out of the womb ahead of the other. They named him “Exploder” or Perez.

This is one case where I believe we find evidence that Matthew was written in Hebrew. If this passage was contracted from Hebrew, the word here would be pratz. This would mean that an appropriate understanding of this teaching would be that the kingdom has been “exploding” and “explosive” men take hold of it.

It’s a nice theory, Marty, but you don’t get to arbitrarily make decisions about translation.

No, but there’s more evidence in the Text. Jesus says that people who have ears should hear — a rabbinical clue that Jesus has buried something from the Text in His teaching. He says that John is the “Elijah who was to come.” One of the main passages that speaks of this “Elijah to come” was found in the prophesy of Micah. This is especially interesting, since Jesus just finished teaching on Micah earlier. The prophesy reads like this:

“I will surely gather all of you, Jacob;
    I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel.
I will bring them together like sheep in a pen,
    like a flock in its pasture;
    the place will throng with people.
The One who breaks open the way will go up before them;
    they will break through the gate and go out.
Their King will pass through before them,
    the Lord at their head.”

God speaks of gathering His people together who have been penned up in captivity. A gathered flock of sheep that have been penned up in a sheepfold for some time are a real antsy bunch. Some of us may have experienced letting a herd of cattle out into pasture after a long haul or a season in another overgrazed pasture. The “one who breaks open the way” could easily be read in the Hebrew as NOT the same person as the King/LORD mentioned later. In this picture, the “Elijah to come” will be the character who kicks open the gate of the sheepfold. The gate “breaks open” and the sheep “break through” the gate.

The word for “break open” and “break through”? Pratz.

The kingdom is EXPLODING FORWARD and EXPLOSIVE MEN take hold of it. Jesus casts the vision of God’s people in His day like a flock of sheep in a sheepfold. “From the days of John the Baptist until now…” John has come to kick open the gate of the sheepfold and ever since he started his ministry, people who have been waiting for the kingdom have been breaking forth — exploding forward — to do God’s will.

It leads to an observation that the Kingdom isn’t something we sit back and contemplate intellectually in a classroom (although there is a time and place for that). The kingdom is something that is explosive and it’s something that explosive people take part in. We don’t lazily strut through the gates of the kingdom. We don’t prance into the way of God. It’s something that we should be champing at the bit to take part in, just waiting for the opportunity to rush out into the open fields.

It’s an explosive kingdom. Am I an explosive participant?

An Explosive Kingdom

**Before you read this post, I recommend going back and refreshing your memory on the "Tavilah T'Shuvah" conversation. This is actually the follow-up post to the questions posed there.

The next story in Matthew is the story of John the Baptist questioning Jesus’s identity. The whole episode is quite confusing to the reader as it appears as though John’s faith is starting to waver on the identity of Christ.

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

It seems like John is not sure about who Jesus is anymore. The same guy who declared to the crowds the identity of Jesus is now asking Him who He is. But the passage does give us a few clues; it tells us John asks this question in response to hearing about “the deeds of Christ.” What is it that John has heard about?

Well, if we use the gospel of Luke, we find that Jesus may have just healed the centurion’s servant, and this appears to have rubbed John the wrong way. A further study of John’s identity will help us understand his frustration. If we happen to be correct that John the Baptist was shaped by an Essene community, then John would carry the popular eschatology of his day. I often refer to this eschatology as the “two-part” Jewish eschatology of the first century. The Jewish conversation about eschatology revolves around their understanding of “ages.” There is the Age of This World (“This Age”) and the Age to Come (the Kingdom of God).

The popular eschatology of their day was to believe that God (or Messiah) would bring forth the Kingdom of God with glory and splendor. Messiah would come and usher in the Kingdom, call the world to repentance, and deal with evil. The Age of This World would come to an end in judgment and wrath, and the Age to Come would remain for eternity.

There was an understanding, however, that I refer to as the “three-part” eschatology. This understanding was that Messiah would come to usher in the Age to Come, but he would not kick out This Age for a time. There would be an era where the two ages co-exist. It is clear that this is Jesus’s understanding of Jewish eschatology in His teachings. Where John spoke of Jesus coming with an ax at the root of the tree and a winnowing fork in hand to purge God’s threshing floor, Jesus spoke of weeds and wheat growing together. Where John spoke of fire and judgment, Jesus spoke of planting mustard seeds. You may remember us posing the question of whether or not John’s worldview was correct; it’s now time to return to that conversation.

Jesus has some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that Jesus is, in fact, the one who is to come. The bad news is that John has his eschatology all wrong. In another gospel account, Jesus turns and heals a bunch of bystanders and then turns to share the words that are recorded next in Matthew:

And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Jesus answers John’s question by acting out the Text. In a quote from Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus says that He is bringing the Kingdom, but He’s not bringing the cup of wrath John the Baptist wants Him to pour out on the Romans. Apparently, Jesus’s healing of the centurion’s servant has sparked some frustration in John and John has some words for his buddy Jesus.

But Jesus isn’t done giving bad news. Some scholars have pointed out that Jesus’s answer is strangely void of one theme that consistently appears in the prophets that may be quoted here by Jesus:

“…and the captives will be set free.”

John asks his question of Jesus while he sits in prison. It seems that Jesus’s answer hints at the fact that not only is John’s eschatology in need of an overhaul, but he also isn’t going to see the restoration of God like he planned. He’s going to die in prison.

And now, Jesus’s last statement makes perfect sense, where it never did before:

“And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

This is a hard word to hear. My personal belief, albeit hard to prove, is that John the Baptist was Jesus’s rabbi. If this is even remotely true, then Jesus’s interaction with John in this story is a true test of John’s character, belief, and trust.

We are not told how John responds to the news, but it does draw a few questions: How would you respond if Jesus told you that your entire worldview, your theology, and your core beliefs, were off? What if He corrected you to a worldview that didn’t excite you at all and you found completely unattractive? And what if He invited you not to take offense at His correction?
How would you do?