Matthew 16:1-12

Remember His Sufficiency
Book of the Bible
Matthew
Speaker
Tony Ferguson
Sermon Date

Jesus' ministry must be making quite the impact if we see the Pharisees and Sadducees come together to request a sign from Jesus. Jesus always threatens man made religion because He offers direct access to God. Jesus' ministry was filled with proofs that He was indeed the Messiah that the Scriptures foretold, so He rebukes the religious leaders for their willful hypocritical blindness.

As they headed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the disciples forgot to bring bread. When Jesus then warns them of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they think He's reproving them for their forgetfulness. Jesus uses their misunderstanding to make it very clear that He doesn't depend on their resources, but that they are completely dependent upon Him. Jesus reproves the smallness of their faith, not the smallness of their resources. We should always remember the Jesus is all sufficient for the work He calls us to.

Description of the book of Matthew

As you come to the New Testament the first three books you encounter (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are referred to as the "synoptic" gospels. They are called the "synoptic" gospels because for the most part, they have a "similar view" of the life and ministry of Jesus. Though they account for much of the same narrative regarding the life and ministry of Jesus, they are not identical, nor are they intended to be. They assemble the accounts in different contexts, and contain different amounts of detail, but they are all important. God always seeks to establish a matter on the testimony of 2 or 3 witnesses, so having these 3 synoptic gospels about the life an ministry of the Son of God is in no way redundant.

Matthew’s gospel communicates to us the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus in the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. From His lineage, to His birth, to His miraculous ministry, to His teachings, to His crucifixion, Matthew will time and time again point out that these things happened “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet…”.