Jesus has been teaching and preaching and ministering. He’s been healing. He’s been casting out demons and so on and so forth in the Israelite towns throughout the Promised Land.
And as he’s doing that, the Spirit is working in the hearts of everyone who hears him. The Spirit is working on the hearts of everybody listening. The Spirit is working to break through the walls around each person’s heart. The Spirit is working to draw people to Jesus, to lead people to faith in him, and to compel people to repentance and to begin following him as his disciples, to become kingdom workers on behalf of his mission to find the lost and the broken and the hurting and the struggling and introduce them to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
That is what we become when we become followers of Jesus.
So Jesus is on this mission, going around the towns of Israel to proclaim the good news that this Savior we’ve been waiting for is here.
The Kingdoms of This World Revolt Against the True King
As we pick it up here in the story, the mission of Jesus runs into a roadblock.
There are going to be people who reject us and oppose us and persecute us and even try to kill us because we are doing God’s kingdom work, because we are proclaiming God’s kingdom message, because we are representing Jesus here in the world.
People are going to hate us just like they hated him. People are going to attack us just like they attacked him. If we live the truth and proclaim the truth and live out the truth, people are going to hate us for it, and they are going to do whatever they can to stop us.
And that happens right here in Matthew 14 when John the Baptist is arrested and then executed.
King Herod, one of the rulers of this fallen and broken world, one of the rulers, one of the authority figures in our fallen kingdom, in our broken kingdom, in our wicked kingdom of this world, he arrests John the Baptist for calling out his sin, his injustice.
He arrests John the Baptist because John the Baptist spoke out against some of the wicked and rebellious things that Herod was doing.
So John the Baptist is languishing in this prison cell. John the Baptist was confused. He actually even began to doubt because Jesus hadn’t raised up an army to come and break him out of prison, but Jesus said, “That’s not what I’m here to do.”
And so John the Baptist is in this prison cell, and then the day of his execution comes, and he’s beheaded.
John the Baptist is killed for speaking the truth. He’s imprisoned for speaking the truth. He is dragged before a court for speaking the truth.
The false, broken, wicked, fallen authorities of this world, the kingdoms of this world, revolt and rebel against the true King, Jesus.
And that is true not only of the political authorities. It’s also true of the religious authorities.
These Pharisees and Sadducees, these scribes, these law experts, these Herodians, the religious experts in Herod’s court, and so on and so forth—these are the entrenched religious powers in Israel.
They see Jesus. They hear Jesus. They hear the message that he is preaching and teaching. They see all the ways that he doesn’t fit their very narrow definition of Savior and King and Messiah and God, and they wholeheartedly throw themselves into doing everything they absolutely can to oppose him and stop him.
They reject Jesus. They oppose Jesus, and they pour out their persecution on Jesus. As we see throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they actively try to kill Jesus.
When Religious Authority Leads People Away From God
On this particular day in Matthew 14 and 15, they see his disciples eating without ritually washing their hands.
They see his disciples eating without going through the traditional ritual washings. It was a purification ritual that the Israelites would typically do before eating. They believed that if they ate anything before ritually washing their hands, that it would be unclean.
They see his disciples eating without having ritually washed their hands. They see Jesus eating without having ritually purified his hands, and they come and they say, “Look at this. See this? Look, they don’t follow the traditions of the elders. They don’t follow the commands of the elders. They don’t follow the rules that we, as the religious authorities here, have made and set out for all of you.”
These are the religious authorities here in Israel, but instead of embracing Jesus and becoming his first and greatest followers, they reject and oppose Jesus, and now they actively try to put a spoke in the wheel of his ministry.
And so these religious authorities reject the true King, and not only that, they lead other people astray.
They lead other people away from Jesus, and they don’t just lead other people away from Jesus. They lead other people away from true godliness, true obedience, true worship, true faithfulness.
Jesus confronts these religious leaders as they are complaining about the fact that he and his disciples don’t ritually purify their hands before they eat, and he says, “You guys actively lead Israel away from God’s will.”
He says, “You guys create rules that actively contradict God’s desire and God’s design for us to live.”
He says, “Here’s an example. Case in point: God created us to honor our father and our mother. God created us to honor our parents. God created us to honor our elders. God created us to honor the vulnerable in society in the form of our aging parents, who can no longer take care of themselves. God called us to take care of them some way or another, to meet their financial needs, to meet their needs for food, to meet their physical needs. Care for your father and mother.”
But he says, “You guys, you Pharisees, you Sadducees, you entrenched religious authorities in Israel, you made up a new rule called Corban.”
Now, Corban was a way of getting out of having to take care of your parents. You could make a donation to the temple. You could make a donation to the religious leaders. You could make a donation to the Pharisees or the Sadducees, and in exchange for that donation, they would say, “You are no longer obligated to care for your aging parents.”
They say, “The money that you would have spent caring for your aging parents has been given to the temple.”
He says, “You guys are actively teaching people to look for loopholes so they don’t have to do what is truly important: caring for the vulnerable, caring for your parents, caring for the elderly. You are creating new rules in order to get out of following what God literally asked us to do, to get out of following God’s good design.”
And the worst part about it is that when we rebel against God’s good design and desire for us, we are failing to reflect his character.
God’s commands for us are all about reflecting his goodness and reflecting his glory, reflecting his compassion, reflecting his holiness.
When we care for the vulnerable, the elderly in society, we are reflecting the God who cares for the vulnerable.
When we honor our father and mother, care for our father and mother, we are reflecting the character of the God who cares about our aging father and mother, who cares about their struggle and their suffering, who cares enough to see to it that they are taken care of.
So these entrenched religious authorities of this world are not only rejecting and opposing Jesus, but they are actively teaching people to wander away from God’s true design and desire for them.
And so you see the way that the fallen and broken authorities of our fallen and broken world have twisted everything.
Jesus Images True Authority
And yet Jesus shows up, and he images true authority.
Jesus walks in and he demonstrates true authority.
He is the mirror opposite of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
He is the exact opposite of the false authorities of this world.
He demonstrates his true authority.
He is the true King of this world.
He is the true authority over this whole world.
Jesus bears God’s kingly authority over all things, and he demonstrates that true kingly authority in three ways.
1. Jesus Has Authority to Turn Scarcity Into Abundance
Number one, he shows that he has the authority to multiply food.
He has the authority to turn scarcity into abundance.
He has the authority to provide for the people of God.
He takes the bread, and he takes the fish, and he starts breaking the bread, breaking the loaves, and it just keeps multiplying.
If you were an Israelite there at that moment watching all of this play out, your mind would immediately go back to the story of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land with no way to grow food, no way to find water, no way to feed themselves, no way to support themselves, and they were in danger of starvation on their own.
And yet God made manna.
God made bread rain from the sky so they had something to eat.
And when they complained that the bread wasn’t good enough, he made birds. He made quail—that’s a Southern delicacy, right? He made quail fly in, fall from the sky, and then just die so they could pick the feathers off, roast the quail, and have a protein-rich diet.
That is God using his authority over the created world to protect and provide for his people.
And in the same way, Jesus uses the kingly authority of God over the created world to multiply this manna, multiply this bread, and multiply this meat, this fish, to provide for the people who were there listening to him.
2. Jesus Has Authority Over the Sea
Number two, he demonstrates that he has God’s kingly authority over the elements.
He has the kingly authority of God over the sea itself.
He walks on the water.
There’s not much else to be said about that.
The ocean obeys him.
The ocean hardens its surface so that its King can safely walk to his next destination.
3. Jesus Has Authority Over Sickness and Death
And number three, he has, once again, God’s kingly authority to heal.
He heals the sick.
He gives sight to the blind.
He gives hearing to the deaf.
He gives mobility to the paralyzed.
He casts out demons.
He raises up the dead.
He has God’s kingly authority over sickness and health and life and death.
He is imaging true authority to the point that when Peter lays eyes on all of this, he says:
“Truly you are the Son of God.”
—Matthew 14:33, WEB
What Does “Son of God” Mean?
Now, that term, “Son of God,” has confused more people than I have fingers to count, which, I mean, that’s not that impressive because I have 10 fingers. That’s not counting very high. That’s preschool counting.
But that title, “Son of God,” has confused more people than any of us have fingers to count.
It’s a common question.
It’s a very good question.
A lot of times people say, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is Jesus God, or is he the Son of God? Because you can’t really be—you can’t be Ryan and the son of Ryan at the same time, right? Like, if I named my son Ryan Jr., then he is Ryan, but he’s a different Ryan, right? You cannot be you and also your son at the same time.”
“Son of God” is a title.
“Son of God” is a first-century title.
It’s an ancient Jewish title.
It is an Old Testament title.
We’re going to see the title “Son of God” come up a lot over the course of the Old Testament.
“Son of God” was a title that they used to describe the rightful King over Israel.
When Peter calls Jesus the Son of God, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has clicked for Peter yet that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, that he is God the Son, that he is the only begotten Son of the Father.
When Peter calls Jesus “Son of God,” he is saying:
“You are the true King that we have been waiting for. I truly get it now. I truly see it now. I truly believe it now. You are not just King over a plot of land. You are not just King over a group of people. You are King over the wind and the waves. You are King over the ocean itself. You are King over the created world and the bread and the fish therein. You are King over sickness and health, and you are King over life and death. You are my King. I accept you and embrace you and submit to you as my King. You truly are the Son of God.”
Jesus Is Not the Kind of King They Expected
But here’s the thing: Jesus is not the kind of King that they expected.
Jesus is not the kind of King that they were looking for, because just as Peter begins to realize he truly is the Son of God, the true King over Israel and over all creation, the masses are starting to get it too.
They say, “This is the Messiah, the King we’ve been waiting for.”
And so the masses start trying to forcibly crown Jesus as King.
The masses try to crown Jesus as King over Israel instead of Herod.
They say, “Herod is a false king over Israel,” which is true.
They say, “Jesus is the true King of Israel,” which is true.
But they say, “Now it’s time for us to bum-rush him, put the crown of Israel over his head so that he can rule as an earthly king, so that he can raise up a great Israelite army, so that he can use that great Israelite army to go conquer Rome, to go start a revolution, to go overthrow the Roman government and take over the Roman Empire.”
They say it’s time to crown Jesus King so he can raise up an army, turn Israel into the new world empire, and go force every other nation, every other people group, every other tribe out there in the world to be subject to us, to be subject to the great empire of Israel instead of that great empire of Rome.
That is what the Israelite masses were looking for in a Messiah.
That is what the Israelite masses were looking for in a King.
That is what the Israelite masses were looking for in a Savior.
They didn’t want to be saved from their sin.
They wanted to be saved from Roman oppression, and then they wanted to go become the oppressor.
They wanted to go conquer every other nation and make every other nation have to sit down at their feet and serve them.
They didn’t want to be any better than Rome.
They just wanted to be the new Rome.
But that is not what Jesus has in mind, and so he refuses to let them crown him as an earthly king.
He says to Pilate:
“My Kingdom is not of this world.”
—John 18:36, WEB
That doesn’t mean his kingdom is not in this world, but it means that his kingdom is not like this world.
His kingdom doesn’t work the way this world’s fallen and broken and wicked kingdoms work.
His kingdom works through peace.
His kingdom works through redemption.
His kingdom works through restoration.
His kingdom works when the lost are found.
His kingdom works when the broken are restored.
His kingdom works when the hurting are healed.
His kingdom works when the struggling are lifted up.
That is how his kingdom works and expands and grows and rules.
And so he refuses to let them crown him as an earthly king.
Literally, when they try to bum-rush him so that they can forcibly make him King, he gets in a boat and he starts sailing away.
He sails away from earthly kingship.
And yet that doesn’t mean he doesn’t do kingly things.
Jesus carries out his kingly ministry every single day of his life as a human, but his kingly ministry looks so different than they expected.
Jesus Begins Smashing Their False Ideas About God
And we get a glimpse of his kingly ministry here in Matthew 14 and 15 because, by his kingly power and authority, Jesus starts smashing some of the lies that the Israelites grew up with.
Jesus uses his kingly power and authority to start smashing some of the falsehoods they’ve been taught by the earthly kings and the earthly religious authorities.
He redefines two of the lies that the Israelites have grown up with.
He tackles two ways that the Israelites have fundamentally misunderstood God’s will and God’s ways.
He corrects two ways that the Israelites have fundamentally misunderstood God’s commands and God’s law.
So in the Old Testament, God gives a law to the ancient Israelites.
There were 613 rules and regulations and laws, and those laws were good.
But the nation of Israel consistently misunderstood those laws, misapplied those laws, abused those laws, turned those laws into something totally different than they were ever meant to be.
Those laws were meant to give people life.
Those laws were meant to set people free.
Those laws were meant to protect the Israelites.
They were meant to help the Israelites reflect God’s goodness and God’s glory and God’s compassion and God’s holiness.
But they took those laws, and instead they turned them into something that kills.
They turned those laws into something that drains.
One of the ways they did that was by taking the laws, expanding the laws, and turning them into extremely rigid, suffocatingly difficult burdens.
Specifically, they took these laws that God gave that were about something called ritual cleanness and ritual uncleanness, and they turned it into a life-draining burden.
What Really Makes Us Unclean?
So in the Old Testament, God declares certain foods to be ritually unclean.
He declares certain things to be ritually unclean.
If you eat certain foods, then you have to ritually purify yourself.
If you touch certain things, you have to ritually purify yourself.
He creates a whole system of purification and so on and so forth, and it’s unbelievably complicated.
But what we need to understand is this:
Jesus comes and he says those laws about cleanness and uncleanness were not about what goes into you.
They were not ultimately about what you touch.
They were not ultimately about what you eat.
They were not ultimately about any of those things.
Those laws about cleanness and uncleanness were meant to help us understand that because of our sin, we are unclean.
Because of our sin, we have been defiled.
Because of our sin, we have been made impure, and so we need to be cleaned, cleansed with something greater than just a ritual cleaning.
We need to be purified with something greater than just a ritual purification.
We need to be cleaned from the inside out.
“I am going to clean you and purify you. I am going to undefile you. I am going to make you clean and make you pure from the inside out through the cross. I am going to go to the cross, and I am going to make you clean by my blood poured out for you.”
And so he tells the Pharisees and the Sadducees, “It does not matter if people ritually wash themselves before they eat. That makes no difference.”
And he says it does not matter if you’re a Jew or a Gentile.
Gentiles are not unclean.
Jews are not clean.
What makes you clean is not whether you are a Jew who’s been purified or a Gentile who hasn’t.
What makes you clean is if you have faith in me, your Savior and King and God, your Messiah.
We are made clean through Jesus Christ.
When we place our faith in him, when we repent, when we submit to him, when we throw ourselves on his mercy to be redeemed and restored, Jesus makes us clean.
He makes us pure.
The Canaanite Woman and the Faith That Makes Clean
And so as he is passing through, this Canaanite woman, this Syrophoenician woman, this Gentile woman who grew up in a Gentile pagan place, she follows him and she says:
“Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is severely possessed by a demon!”
—Matthew 15:22, WEB
“I’ve been watching you. I’ve heard about you. I’ve seen you, and I know you are that Savior that the Israelites have been waiting for, and I want you to be my Savior too.”
And Jesus says, “Okay, are you serious about that?”
He kind of tests her to see if she’s for real, to see if she means it, to see if she’s serious.
He says:
“It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
—Matthew 15:26, WEB
“You know, it’s not good to give the crumbs at the table to the dogs. It’s not good to give the crumbs that are meant for the children—that would be Israelites—to the dogs—that would be Gentiles.”
Why is he saying that?
Is he insulting her?
No.
Here’s what’s happening.
At that point in time, Israelites were persecuted by the Roman government.
They were persecuted by the Gentiles.
They were persecuted by the people in the surrounding nations.
The Israelites were the underclass.
The Israelites were treated like dogs, and the Romans referred to them as Jewish dogs.
So what is Jesus doing?
He is talking to this woman, this Gentile who, in most situations, would have, I guess you could say, like, a greater social standing than a Jew, a greater level of power than a Jew.
As a Jew, Jesus is the one who is the underclass in this situation, but he says, “It’s not good to give the food that is meant for the Israelite children to the Gentile dogs.”
He says, “All your life, you’ve treated the Israelites like dogs. Now you’re coming to an Israelite and asking for help. You sure you’re willing to do that? You sure this isn’t beneath you?”
She says:
“Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”
—Matthew 15:27, WEB
Essentially, she’s saying, “Look, I don’t care about any of that stuff. I don’t care about the fact that you’re a Jewish dog. I don’t care about the fact that I’m a Gentile, whatever. I want to submit to you. I want to make you my King. I want to make you my Savior.”
She says, “I want my King to be this Jewish dog, this Israelite dog.”
She’s humbling herself in front of this person that yesterday she could have easily mocked and bullied and pushed around.
And Jesus says:
“Woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you even as you desire.”
—Matthew 15:28, WEB
And so he heals her daughter, and she is redeemed and restored.
Faith in Jesus, Not Ethnicity, Makes Us Clean
What is happening here?
By his kingly authority, Jesus is saying, “Gentiles like her are just as clean as Israelites like you. She’s been made clean by her faith and repentance. You need that same faith and repentance if you want to be clean too.”
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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