Jesus and the Temple

The Sermon’s Context and the Glory of Christ in Matthew 17

Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel. What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service.

And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself. We truly believe that it's important for the Christian Church to have an engagement in the public square with the Word of God.

So we thank you so much for partnering with us to send this out across the world. I just wanted to say something before you actually watch this, and that is that I'm not your pastor. Though I'd love to be, I am not your pastor.

And it's very important as you're watching this, you know that it's God's design for individual Christians to be part of a local Christian Church under the care of qualified faithful biblical elders. And so as much as we love all of you watching these sermons, and we're thankful to God that God uses them to bless you, to encourage you, I do want to encourage you as a minister of the gospel to get plugged into a local body of believers, particularly, I think important, a reformed church would be best.

But we want to encourage you to get plugged into a solid biblical church where you can fellowship, where you can worship, where you can serve, where you can be connected. That is vitally important and actually a biblical command.

And so as much as again, as we love for your participation, your partnership, and we are so thankful to God that he's using these in your lives, we want to encourage you to get plugged into a local church.

You can, though, actually partner with Apologia Church as we proclaim the gospel and provide a defense of the biblical gospel all around the world. You can do that by going to ApologiaStudios .com. You can partner with us by becoming All Access.

When you do, you help to make all of this possible, and you get all of our TV shows, our after shows, and Apologia Academy, all of that, and you're a part of all that God is doing with us in the world to proclaim, herald the gospel of the kingdom.

You can partner with us. And I want to say one last word about that. Do make sure that none of your giving and partnership towards Apologia Church interferes with your giving, your worship, your tithes, your offerings to a local body of believers in your area.

So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. So this is a powerful section of scripture. Matthew chapter 17, of course, comes after chapter 16. Jesus has fed the multitudes.

He's now confronting his generation for their sin. And, of course, the epic moment when Jesus in 16 asks his people, his followers, who do men say that I am? And Peter has that moment that is recorded for us for time and eternity where he says, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God.

Acknowledgement of who actually they're dealing with. This is the son of the living God. And Jesus, of course, makes promises that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. Jesus begins to actually tell his people that he's going to die and rise from the dead.

He has that moment with Peter where Peter is there acknowledging who he's dealing with. This is the son of the living God. And yet the son of the living God says, I'm going to die and rise again. And Peter instructs him, no, it won't be that way.

And, of course, Jesus says the source of this is not from God. He says, get behind me, Satan. You're mindful not of the things of God, but of men. And, of course, Jesus then begins what he's been doing throughout the gospel, according to Matthew.

And that's warning them of this impending judgment. That some of them aren't going to die. They're not even going to taste death before they see the son of man coming in his kingdom. This is something that's going to take place in their lifetime.

And, of course, in that moment in Matthew 17, as it opens up, we see the heavens split for just a second, just a moment in the lives of the apostles. They go up to this mountain with Jesus, and then they get to see just a glimpse of the glory of Jesus.

This is the God-man, 100 God. He's not limited as God. He's fully, by nature, God himself, tabernacled among us. John gives the perfect explanation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

Really sad about that? Are you excited about that? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.

And without him, nothing has come into being. And it says, of course, that powerful statement from John, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the monogamous theos, the unique and one-of-a-kind God, who is in the bosom of the Father.

He has made him known. That's who we're dealing with. That's Jesus. And the disciples get just a glimpse where the physical realm sort of tears for a second. Moses and Elijah appear up there on that mountaintop.

Jesus keeps telling his people, something greater than the temple is here, something greater than Solomon is here, something greater than Jonah is here. They're hearing it, but like most humans, like us, they just can't begin to comprehend it.

And so Jesus has this amazing mountaintop experience, not like our summer camps and youth camps. This is a real mountaintop experience that you really can't recover from. You will come down different for good from this one.

The transfiguration, Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets. These are men who are revered by God's people. These are the ones that God gave his revelation through, Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets.

But yet something greater than the law and the prophets is here, Jesus. He comes shining forth in vivid, bright glory.

And they are confused.

They don't know quite how to handle this. So the first thing he says, let's build something for Moses. We'll give him his due. We'll sort of set up a little thing here as a memorial for Moses and then Elijah.

And then of course you, Jesus. And this is a powerful moment because it doesn't happen that often. It doesn't, it really doesn't throughout scripture from the beginning to the end. You don't have a lot of moments where God actually speaks from heaven in such a way that everybody gets a chance to hear it.

But you have this moment where the father actually speaks from heaven. Like let's build something. Let's acknowledge Moses, the law and Elijah, the prophets. And of course you, Jesus, another prophet from God.

And the father actually condescends for a moment to actually speak into reality, our existence. And he says, this is the son of my love. Listen to him, right? He's not just one prophet among all these prophets.

This is the son of the living God, the eternal son of God who has been an intimate fellowship and relationship with the father from all eternity. And the father hears what they're saying. And he says, this is the son of my love.

You listen to him. And the response of the apostles is I think something we could all probably understand. God just spoke from heaven. What does that even sound like? I was listening to an audio Bible this week of this passage, sort of just getting it in my mind, meditating on it, thinking about it.

And in the audio Bible, the guy was actually reading through the text,.

Very good voice.

But then when it got to like certain characters, he would play those characters, right? Like he'd get to, you know, the people in the day and his voice would change to like, hey man, like, you know, it would just, you know, it just sort of switched off.

But then he got to the part here in Matthew 17 where it's actually God speaking from heaven. I was kind of like, how's this guy gonna do God's voice? And it was just, it was horrible. It's like not what I would have imagined like God's voice.

But the point is whatever it sounded like, they recognize the voice of their creator instantly and it caused them to be afraid. They heard the voice of God and they were terrified. They were afraid of what they heard.

I think we can all embrace that. I mean, there's nothing shameful in that. That's probably how we would react as well. But what I love about that moment, I'm just highlighting it for a second. The father says, this is my son, listen to him.

Jesus goes and he touches them. Their response to their father's voice was terror, fear. I think unhealthy fear. They're not recognizing just what Jesus does for them, between them and the father. So Jesus goes and he touches them and he says this.

He says, do not fear. You see, Jesus takes away our fear. The relationship of fear that I think we instinctively have between us and our father. By the way, I'm not diminishing what God says in his word about the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

That's reverential awe, right? But they're in a moment of terror and fear, right? They don't even want to approach in any way. But Jesus is our mediator between us and the father. It's not Moses and Elijah.

They couldn't mediate for us like Jesus does. Of course, there's fear when you have those two standing between you and God. But with Jesus now, Jesus can touch us and removes the fear of our relationship to our father.

Now he takes it away. Jesus says, don't be afraid. Now, what happens next in this text in 17, I just want to walk you through it. Of course, we've talked about it many times. Jesus tells him, don't tell anybody about this until the son of man is raised from the dead.

And then the disciples ask a question about Elijah the prophet. Why does the Bible say that Elijah the prophet must come first? Jesus has instructed us, told us. That's John the Baptist. Elijah called people to repentance.

John the Baptist is the Elijah who was to come. He will restore all things. They rejected him. And then of course, Jesus has that moment in Matthew 17 where you have this young person who is suffering terribly.

He's throwing himself into the fire and into the water. There's this demonic identification that, by the way, we did a message on this before. There's, if you want, if you study angiology and demonology, and that's what does the Bible say about angels and demons, you'll see one of the indications of demonic possession is self-harm, self-harm, an obsession with darkness and death and self-abuse and self-harm.

That is spiritual attack, first and foremost. Well, this is happening, and the disciples can't understand, how come we can't cast out this demon? And Jesus tells them, because your little faiths, it's because of your faith, because you don't trust.

By the way, it's a nickname of Jesus for his followers. He called them little faiths. That doesn't exist anywhere else that we know of in antiquity. It's a nickname Jesus had for his people. You can read it in the Greek.

It's little faiths. He called his people little faiths. You guys are little faiths. He said, how come you can't do it? Because your little faiths. And he tells them about their faith, like a grain of a mustard seed.

You'll say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it'll move. Jesus now tells them he's going to be killed, and he's gonna be raised from the dead. So we already have all these marks of divinity throughout the Bible.

Old Testament is explicit. The Messiah is God himself. Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 through 8. We have Micah chapter 5, verses 2 and on. The eternal God is coming to Bethlehem. The everlasting God is coming to save us.

The mighty God, El Gibor. And then you have in Matthew, all these marks of the divinity of Jesus. You already see him searching people's hearts, knowing their thoughts, giving sight to blind people. You see him manipulating the created order itself by walking on water.

You see Jesus doing everything that only God can do. And you see it just in these passages themselves, the spaces we've just been in, 16 and 17. Casting out demons, authority over the demons, healing people, feeding the multitudes, searching people's thoughts, breaking through nature itself, his glory in the transfiguration.

It's all there. Now, verse 24. When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two drachma tax went up to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the tax? Now, of course, really important to understand what's going on here.

This is not the question that comes later in Matthew 23. We're going to get to the question of taxation and is it hashtag theft? We're going to get to that.

Absolutely.

We're going to discuss that. We're going to do a really important teaching on that. This is not Roman tax. These are not the hated tax collectors like Matthew. These aren't the ones that people thought were turncoats.

These aren't the Jewish people working for Rome, collecting taxation for Caesar that people thought were wicked, that were extorting people. These aren't, this is not the IRS. These are actually Jewish people, respected people, loved people, liked people that are collecting a tax for the Jewish temple.

So this is a tax that's a Jewish tax for the temple, for the priesthood, for the services in the temple. And so that's really important to get. This was a loyalty tax to the temple. This was a voluntary tax.

It was an annual tax of two drachma. Drachma essentially is a denarius. And so if you can put it together in your mind, two drachma. One drachma is about a denarius. A denarius is about a day's wage. So if you could think about this, watch.

This is really important in terms of taxation. This was not coercion. This was not oppressive. This was totally voluntary. This was something people could do out of the goodness of their own hearts to pay for the temple, the services, all the stuff that was going on.

This was not something done through coercion. It was totally voluntary from the heart. Loyalty to the temple. But what's interesting is it was annual and it amounted to about two days work. So this voluntary tax only amounted to about two days of work throughout the entire year given up for the temple itself.

Only two days of work. If you get what I'm trying to say in terms of taxation, and gifting, and voluntary, it only amounted to two days of work. And you could do it or you could not do it. These guys are not oppressive.

They're just asking the question, does your master, does the teacher, does he actually pay the temple tax? Now, what's interesting again is that it was voluntary and it was annual. But here's where it goes off the rails.

Human beings do this a lot. As soon as you give human beings the opportunity for taxation, it doesn't always work out so well.

Amen?

Yes.

The tax here was voluntary and annual, but it was based upon, and this is where it gets interesting, it was based upon a temple tax from Exodus 30 verses 11 through 16. You can read about it in 38, 25 through 26, Nehemiah 10, 32 through 33.

I'm not going to go over them today. I'll just give you what was it about. This was a temple tax that was only done when there was a census. So it was not annual. It was actually very, very rare. Whenever there was a census of men, those men would actually pay a particular tax.

It wasn't a lot of tax. It was for the service of the temple. It was just sort of an add-on. But what they were doing in this day is they actually changed that custom and law. And they said, well, let's not do it when a census is taken.

Let's do it annually. So now we go from a census on rare occasions to now let's do it annually every single year. But here's what we'll do. We'll say that it's voluntary. This is not something that we're going to coerce people into.

We're going to demand of them. We're going to say it's voluntary, but let's get it every single year. Taxes every year on the temple to keep this thing functioning and working. So what's really important to get is that this was that voluntary tax annually, about two days of work given up for the temple itself.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. And this is where, watch, if you get this part now, you're going to understand just how dramatic this is in this passage and how glorious it is. Watch, that Jesus says, the sons are free.

Believe me, that means so much. And you really have to meditate on this passage and really think about it in context to get what exactly is Jesus teaching here? The sons are free.

So what?

They don't have to pay taxes. So who does pay taxes to the temple? Unbelievers? Can you hold on to that for a second? Just consider that for a moment. If Jesus' point in this passage is that the sons of the king don't have to pay the tax because they're free, then does that mean that Jesus is saying that the unbelieving Jews fund the temple and the services and the sacrifices?

So what?

The believers don't fund the temple? Is that what you're saying, Jesus? No. And hang on to find out why. We need to think about what's happening now in relation to Jesus and the temple, because Jesus' relationship to the temple is actually, in the first century, kind of shaky in the eyes of the people who are watching Jesus and his ministry.

I want you to consider for a moment that these people are not working for Rome. They are Jews supporting the religious worship of Jews, the temple, the sacrifices, the priesthood. They're saying, this is just us being Christians.

It's us just being Jewish followers of Yahweh. That's all it is. We're just trying to make sure this thing gets funded. That's all this really is. And so here's the question. Is Jesus, is he Jewish? Does he not care about the temple?

Is Jesus hostile to the priesthood? Is he hostile to the temple itself, to the sacrifices? We're on kind of shaky ground, because if they don't understand Jesus' message, then they might actually think that Jesus is in opposition to that temple in a way that's unhealthy.

We need to talk about Jesus and the temple. Jesus has a famous moment with the Jews. It's in John 2, verse 19. John 2, verse 19. And Jesus says this to them. He says, you destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.

But there's kind of something powerful about that. First and foremost, is he's predicting his own death and resurrection. And powerful, too, is that he's saying that he raises himself up. By the way, this is sort of a sidestep here on the Trinity.

The Bible says this. God raised Jesus from the dead. It also says the Father raised Jesus from the dead. It also says Jesus raised Jesus from the dead. And it also says the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.

There's the working of the triune God in Scripture, right? Jehovah's Witnesses struggle with that particular passage. This, by the way, put this in your toolbox for the Jehovah's Witnesses, okay? In John 2, verse 19, Jesus says, destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.

They don't believe that Jesus was raised physically, and they don't believe that he raised himself. So, you're welcome. That's a powerful one. John 2, verse 19. Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.

So, he's predicting his own death and resurrection. But watch this. He just called himself the temple of God. Do you understand how earth-shattering, worldview-changing that is for the Jews? That's the temple.

There's where the Holy of Holies is. There's where the animal sacrifices are. This is where God resides with us on earth. This is where we go to meet with God and to worship God. And Jesus says, I'm the temple.

I am what this pointed to. This was just a stepping stone. This was just a symbol for you to understand who I really am. Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. Come to me, the temple.

Someone greater than the temple is here. But notice that he says, destroy this temple, and in three days, I'll raise it up again. There might be sort of a hint in that. A hint that Jesus is also, in that moment, kind of threatening their temple.

He's threatening their temple. He does predict the destruction of their temple. And is Jesus here saying something with a double meaning? Not only is he the temple and he'll raise himself up, but is he also kind of hinting at the destruction of their temple he's going to destroy?

He says in Matthew 12, 6, go there, just back up a few pages. In Matthew 12, verse 6, as he's talking about the Sabbath, the Pharisees, in verse 2, say, Here we go. Doesn't mean a lot to us today because we don't understand that world.

We don't understand the temple and its meaning and significance to Jewish worship and life. And God had prescribed so much that he called them to do in terms of temple ordinances and priesthood. And then Jesus comes in and says, something greater than the temple is here.

What could that possibly be? Something greater than the temple? Is there anything greater than the temple but God? That's probably what a Jew would have thought. One first century author, when he referred to the Jewish temple, he said it was so glorious.

The way that it was set up, it was just laid out with gold all around it. He said at a certain time of the day, if you were off from the distance, in the distance from the temple, if the sun was shining on the temple, it looked like a glowing star set on the earth itself.

So if you were watching from a mountain far away, it looked like an actual star was glowing in Jerusalem.

That's what it looked like.

How could something be greater than that? Jesus says, I'm the temple. Destroy this and I'll raise it again. He says something is greater, something greater than the temple is here. And keep your finger there in 12 and just look over near the end of chapter 12, starting in verse 38.

Look what he says in verse 38, 1238. And some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except for the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, watch, for they repented of the preaching of Jonah.

And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. See what Jesus is doing? He's instructing them. All that's passing away. Elijah and Moses listened to Jesus. Something greater than the temple. Something greater than Solomon.

Something greater than Jonah. Jesus is the supreme revelation of God. This is what it was all pointing to. Everything that you have memorized, everything you have practiced with temple and Jerusalem and sacrifice and priest, all the stories, Moses and Elijah, all these stories are finding their fulfillment in Jesus.

He is the pinnacle. He's at the crown. He's at the top. And Jesus keeps telling them something greater. But notice, this creates conflict.

This is what you're going to get.

When these guys come asking for an answer to a question, Peter, does Jesus have any loyalty to the Jewish temple? Does Jesus pay his temple tax? Is Jesus opposed to this temple? Is he in opposition to it?

Is he a loyal Jew? Does he worship Yahweh? And Jesus says he's greater than the temple. And he actually predicts the destruction of the temple. You can see it creates shaky ground. Another text. You know the story, John chapter 4.

You can just write that down. The woman at the well. Jesus is at the well with this woman. He knows her life. Another mark of the divinity of Jesus. He knows exactly who she is. He knows that she doesn't really have a husband at the moment.

He knows her life before she's introduced herself ultimately to Jesus. And she asks him a question. She says, you know, you guys say that you have to worship there on that mountain. Jerusalem at the temple.

That's where you say you have to worship. And Jesus says what to her? He says, the hour is coming. When the true worshipers of God will do what? They'll worship him in spirit and in truth. They won't say it's over here or over there.

Because see what Jesus does in our new covenant? Is he obliterates this geographical location thing with the worship of God. Where it's in Jerusalem at temple in that location. You see what we have now in the heavens is so much greater.

It's the city of God. It's a temple that can never be destroyed. It's not just here or there. Somebody can come and destroy this entire building we're worshiping in. And you know what it does to our worship?

Nothing. Nothing. If God ever gave us money one day to buy our own building and we actually had a building. If that passed away, it means nothing. It's completely just incidental. You see the true worshipers of God worship him in spirit and in truth.

And the true faith isn't a faith that's simply designated to one location. The kingdom of God is spreading throughout the entirety of the earth. It's not just one spot. Because Jesus changes all the categories.

In Matthew chapter 21 now. Move there. Jesus' relationship to the temple. Matthew 21 verses 12 through 17. This is where it gets more interesting. Jesus cleanses the temple. 21, 12. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple.

And he overturned the tables of the money changers. And the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer. But you make it into a den of robbers.

Jesus does something that not just anybody can do. You have to have authority to do this. You have to be a priest to do this. He was baptized, anointed by John the Baptist as a priest. That's what that was all about.

And Jesus goes into the temple. And he actually, as a priest, he cleanses the temple. He cleanses it. You got Jesus saying, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up. Something greater than the temple is here.

It's not going to be here or there. Spirit and in truth. And he goes into the temple. He starts cleansing the temple. Whipping people. So much for the hippie surfer happy Jesus of the 21st century evangelical church.

Jesus would never offend. Jesus would never be confrontational like that. Jesus is just a God of love. It's total 21st century social justice warrior hippie Jesus, right? Totally a false Christ. Jesus goes in and whips them out of the temple and cleanses it.

So they have to be thinking about Jesus. Well, is Jesus even Jewish? Is he even for the temple and the law itself? Jesus seems in some ways kind of hostile to this whole situation. And of course the promise, and you can read this in Matthew 24 verses 1 through 2.

Same gospel. You can see Matthew's driving together one clean point. Matthew 24 verses 1 through 2. Jesus, after he declares woes on the religious establishment of his day, he tells them that they're going to be desolate.

He tells them they're going to be destroyed. It says in verse 1 of chapter 24, Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, listen, listen, you see all these things, do you not?

Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. So what is Jesus' relationship to the temple? He's cleansing the temple. He's saying he is the temple.

He says he's greater than the temple. He's calling people to come to him, ultimately over and above temple. And he promises that that temple is going to be destroyed, not one stone upon another before that generation all passes away.

And brothers and sisters, just a little bit of whetting your appetite, it happened exactly as he said. It was destroyed. They did set fire to it and it was taken apart, stone off of stone within that generation.

But what is Jesus' relationship to the temple? So they come to Peter and they're saying, is he a loyal Jew? How's he feel about the temple? Is he going to pay the temple tax? No obligation. It's not through coercion.

We're not going to beat you up. We're not going to put something on your house, a lien on your house. We're not saying this is a coercive tax. We're saying totally voluntary. Are you a loyal Jew? Where are you out of the temple, Jesus?

Now what's interesting is if you look in Matthew 17, Peter speaks a bit out of turn. He has a habit of doing this. He sticks his foot in his mouth a bunch. But before you judge him, look in the mirror.

So Peter doesn't want his master, the teacher, to be seen as somebody who's not a loyal Jew. So when they say, is Jesus a loyal Jew? Does he pay the temple tax, the annual tax, just two days' salary, that's all.

Does he pay that annual tax to fund this whole operation? What do you say? Is Jesus a loyal Jew? And Peter goes, what?

Yes!

Right?

Of course he's a loyal Jew. Of course Jesus is loyal to the law of God and the temple. He told us in Matthew 5, verses 19 and on, do not even begin to think I've come to destroy the law and the prophets.

I have not come to destroy them but to fulfill them. Jesus couldn't possibly be opposed to the temple. So what do I think? Yes, Jesus pays the temple tax.

Yes.

This is where it gets interesting. So if you read Matthew 17, they ask the question, does your teacher not pay the tax? He said, yes. Didn't bother asking. Just, yeah. And when he came into the house, this is great, I love this.

And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first.

That is so awesome.

And you can almost totally miss it. Because you're just reading fast and getting mellow-headed and you forget what just happened. He's somewhere else talking to people about the temple tax and he walks into the house and then Jesus immediately talks to him.

Simon, what do you think? From whom do the kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others? He already knew what was going on. It's so crazy. Jesus, he's God and man, but he has limitations because he's finite in this moment and it's totally complex and incomprehensible how you could be fully God and all-powerful and all-knowing.

But sort of lay aside some of those prerogatives and you're limited as a man. But in these moments, Peter walks to the door. He's probably thinking in his head, I wonder what Jesus is going to say. And then Jesus wasn't even there and Jesus says, Simon, kings of the earth, they take taxes from their sons or from strangers?

Peter must have been tripping. He must have been like, whoa, you already knew.

How'd you know?

Because you're God. But what's interesting, just a couple things. Peter was wrong. Jesus is not obligated to pay the temple tax and Jesus has a much more important lesson to teach about the temple. But Jesus spoke first.

Jesus searches the heart. I want you to see it just in this one text because watch, Matthew's the author and Matthew is doing something. He's telling a story. He wants you to understand certain essential things about Jesus and I want you to see what he says in the same text.

So just get ready with me to go kind of quickly. Matthew 9, 4, just move back to Matthew 9. Look how Matthew's telling the same story. It's not just a one-moment thing. In Matthew 9, verse 4, there's a moment where Jesus heals the paralytic.

I got it right that time. Getting into the boat, he crossed over and came to his own city and behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, this man is blaspheming. But Jesus, what's it say? Knowing their thoughts. There's a moment where Matthew shows Jesus searches the heart. Now move over to Matthew 12, verse 25.

Another instance, 12, 25. It says, knowing their thoughts, he said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste and no city or house divided against itself will stand. Jesus knows their thoughts.

Matthew 26, verse 10. 26, verse 10. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, knowing their thoughts, why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.

So Matthew is telling you a consistent story about who Jesus is. That he searches the heart, that he knows people's thoughts. Which, of course, for a Jew, that is only indication of one thing. This is God among us.

In Psalm 26, verse 2, it says, examine me, O Lord, and try me. Test my mind and my heart. In Psalm 44, 21, would not God find this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Psalm 139, you know when I sit down and when I rise up, you understand my thought from afar.