Matthew Gospel of | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

September 28, 2026

Obedient Sons: Redux (Matthew 21:23–32; Psalm 78)

Filed under: Faith, Faithfulness,forgiveness,Matthew Gospel of,Psalms,Repentance — Scott Stocking @ 5:11 am
Tags: bible, Christian discipleship, christianity, faith, faithfulness, forgiveness, god, God’s will, Grace, jesus, John the Baptist, Maskîls, maskil, Matthew 21, Obedience, parable of the two sons, Perseverance, Psalm 78, Repentance, spiritual growth, trust in God

I had a busy week with my uncle’s funeral on Tuesday, an Internet outage all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning, and travel to central Nebraska Wednesday night through Thursday. This is an update to a message I preached three years ago (Obedient Sons (Psalm 25:1–9; Matthew 21:23–32) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog) when this gospel passage came up in the Lectionary. Our service planner used the other option for the psalm this time around (Psalm 78), so I repurposed the message to include that psalm instead of Psalm 25. It’s different enough that I thought it deserved its own post. I preached this message on September 27, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha.

What does it mean to trust someone? How does it affect your life when you either learn that you can trust a person, especially someone who might be new in your life, like a new significant other in the life of your kids or grandkids? What does it feel like when someone violates your trust?

Our reading from a few verses of Psalm 78 only tells part of the story of how and why Israel should put their faith in God and proclaim his deeds, so I want to take a few moments here to get a big picture of this psalm, which happens to be the second longest psalm in the collection. But we’re only seeing the more positive and encouraging portion of this psalm. First, it’s 72 verses long—don’t worry, I’m not going to read the entire Psalm.

Second, if you were to look at this Psalm in a printed Bible, you would see it has a “subtitle” of sorts: “A maskîl of Asaph.” A maskîl[1] helps us understand the history of God’s people and how we can act wisely based on our knowledge of that history. Asaph’s maskîls are typically targeted at the community of Israel as a whole, while David’s are more inward and reflective of his own spiritual condition.

Third, and this is most important part to understand about the Psalm that ties in with our gospel passage this morning, pretty much the rest of the psalm that comes after the portion we read this morning recounts many of Israel’s historical failures to walk in the covenant that God established for them in Sinai with the Ten Commandments. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Verses 8–11 of Psalm 78 give us a hint of what is to come after the recounting of God’s miracles in the Exodus in verse 12–16. Let’s listen in:

…a stubborn and rebellious generation,

whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.

⁹The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of battle;

¹⁰they did not keep God’s covenant and refused to live by his law.

¹¹They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them.^[2]

Mixed in with the recounting of Israel’s historic failures are the reminders that God not only punished them, but then forgave them and restored them, only to watch them fail again. It must have been brutal for the readers and hearers to be reminded of this, but sometimes it is necessary to reflect on the low points of our history so we can see how far we’ve come and how much more progress and blessing God has in store for us.

This is the background that ties together our two gospel stories we read this morning. The first passage is an account from the life of Jesus as he encounters the Pharisees and their unfaithfulness. The second is a parable targeted at the Pharisees.

The first story takes place the next day after Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do you remember the first thing Jesus did after his triumphal entry? He entered the Temple courts and threw out the money changers! And what did he say when he did that? “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers,” bringing together two quotes from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Because Jesus’s true father is God himself, and the temple is God’s dwelling place on earth, the Temple is also Jesus’s birthright home. He is the earthly steward of the Temple, not the priests or the religious rulers. Jesus’s first act after entering Jerusalem was to establish his authority over and ownership of the Temple as his rightful home. This sets the stage then, for day two, when the chief priests and the elders of the people ask Jesus where his authority comes from.

It’s interesting in this passage that these religious leaders don’t want to engage Jesus on the Scriptures he cited when clearing the temple. The religious leaders are aware that they’ve been using the temple as an excuse to place a financial burden on the people. Instead of addressing that fact, they try to do what? They try to assassinate his character! Sound familiar? But Jesus, ever the shrewd one with the religious leaders, comes back with a question of his own, which puts them in a pinch. Either way they answer it, they know they’re in danger of losing their power with the people and whatever respect the people may have had for them. Jesus had already said that John represented the return of Elijah, so that put John above the religious leaders in the eyes of the people. If John’s authority was from God, the religious leaders should have believed him. If it wasn’t, the people knew better and would most likely rebel against the religious leaders. Only a nonanswer could save their skins in the short run: “I don’t recall.”

Because the religious leaders couldn’t answer Jesus’s question, which was a perfectly legitimate response in Jesus’s day according to the rules of rhetoric in Greek culture, Jesus deferred the answer to his question as well. Of course, Jesus had already demonstrated his authority at the Temple the day before, but he had also been demonstrating it all along with his healings and miracles he’d done in full sight of the people and the religious rulers. Any attempt to damage Jesus’s character would result in the same backlash to the religious rulers as either of their answers about John the Baptizer would have. Jesus’s response, then, helps the religious rulers save face as well.

Jesus was obedient as a son to his Father by defending both the honor of the Temple and his own honor as the true image of God on earth. In the second story from the Gospel reading today, a parable, we have two sons who in that culture would be expected to do their father’s will when asked. The first one says no but then later reconsiders and decides to go anyway. The second one says he will go but he never does. The first and I think most important point from the parable is that God expects us to do his will. There’s really no hiding from that.

At first glance, you might think the parable is about keeping your word to do what you promised. But then, if the son who said he wouldn’t go never actually went, would he really deserve anything for keeping his word if he didn’t do his father’s will? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But similarly, the son who said he would go but didn’t is in a bit of double jeopardy. Not only has he not kept his word, but he’s failed to do his father’s will as well.

The point of the parable, then, is not how or when you do God’s will, but THAT you do God’s will. Jesus goes on to continue the comparison to John the Baptizer’s ministry that he began in the first part of our Gospel reading. The religious leaders had not heeded John’s warnings to repent, but the “tax collectors and the prostitutes” did believe him and they repented, thus gaining access to the kingdom of God. Their past didn’t matter. God accepts those who humbly come to him in repentance seeking forgiveness.

But the more amazing thing is that, even after the tax collectors and sinners began to repent and turn back to God, the religious leaders still refused to repent themselves! They could see the work of God happening right before their eyes, but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe it. Jesus says earlier in Matthew that his followers would be known by the fruit they bear. Those who do his will bear good fruit. Those who do not do his will bear no fruit or bad fruit.

It’s not clear why the religious leaders didn’t see the importance of John’s (and Jesus’s) message of repentance. The biblical story is full of examples from the patriarchs and other men of faith who repented and went on to do great things for God.

Abraham took Sarah’s slave as a second wife and had a child by her, but God still allowed the line of his chosen people to descend from Sarah.

Abraham and Isaac both lied to kings about their respective relationships with their own wives, but God continued to propagate that family line as his chosen people.

Moses directly disobeyed God’s command, yet God still allowed him to finish his task of leading the people to the doorstep of the Promised Land.

David committed adultery and had the husband of the woman killed in battle, but God still used him to lead Israel to greatness and write numerous inspiring Psalms that are still with us today.

Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, yet God still allowed his wisdom to survive the ages in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

In Isaiah’s day, Hezekiah repented while Jerusalem was under siege, and he witnessed the miraculous fatal judgment upon 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers overnight.

Every single one of Jesus’s disciples, except for John, abandoned him on the night of his arrest, and Peter denied knowing him, yet all except Judas were restored to leadership status by Jesus after his resurrection. Peter went on to preach at the birth of the church on Pentecost. The teaching of the apostles was the standard of the early church according to Acts 2:42.

Paul persecuted the early church and tacitly approved of the stoning of Steven, yet God used him to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, and his letters make up about one-fourth of the New Testament text.

Jesus never promised that the path of following him would be without struggle, effort, failure, and heartache. When he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” we can’t forget that we still have a “yoke” on; there’s still fertile ground to plow, and that takes some measure of strength and effort. In researching this passage, I came across an anonymous Jewish parable that the rabbis used to teach a similar point to this one. It goes like this:

The matter may be compared to someone sitting at a crossroads. Before him were two paths. One of them began in clear ground but ended in thorns. The other began in thorns but ended in clear ground….

So did Moses say to Israel, “You see how the wicked flourish in the is world, for two or three days succeeding. But in the end they will have occasion for regret.” So it is said, “For there shall be no reward for the evil man” (Proverbs 24:20)…. “You see the righteous, who are distressed in this world? For two or three days they are distressed, but in the end they will have occasion for rejoicing.” And so it is said, “That he may prove you, to do you good at the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). (Sifre to Deut. 53).[3]

Following God may have its thorny patches in the beginning, but when we get to the end of the road, the path is clear and welcoming. But if we try to go our own way, thinking that might be the easier way, and never get on the right path with God, we can only expect trouble in the end. The tax collectors and prostitutes realized they were on the wrong path and changed their ways and their destination. I know many of you have been on the right path, and you’ve experienced your thorny times, but you are stronger, wiser, and more dedicated to God for that because you know he is with you and will continue leading your through those times of growth. Your obedience will yield a great reward. I would encourage you to remain firm and steadfast on that path.

We see how the truths of Psalm 78 play out in these two stories from the Gospel of Matthew. If we put our trust in God and allow him to guide us, even through the most difficult times, we will know his reward and his glory. I pray that each of us here will continue on that straight and narrow path that is the road to eternal life. Peace to you all. Amen.

^[1] Here’s what Copilot says about maskîls:

🟦 Asaph’s Maskîls (e.g., Psalms 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83)

Asaph’s style is:

Communal — focused on Israel as a whole, not individual experience.
Liturgical — Asaph was a temple musician; his psalms often fit public worship.
Historical-theological — he interprets Israel’s past to explain its present.
Prophetic — he speaks with covenantal authority, sometimes confronting the nation.

Asaph’s Maskîls often feel like: “Let me teach you what God is doing with His people.”

Psalm 78 is the flagship example.

🟩 David’s Maskîls (e.g., Psalms 32, 52, 53, 54, 55, 74, 142)

David’s style is:

Personal — focused on his own spiritual life, sin, enemies, or suffering.
Devotional — prayer, confession, lament, trust.
Psychological — David explores the inner life of faith.
Experiential wisdom — “Here is what I learned from my trials.”

David’s Maskîls often feel like: “Let me teach you what God taught me.”

Psalm 32 (“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven…”) is the classic Davidic Maskîl.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] Trans. Jacob Neusner, Sifre to Deuteronomy, vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), pp. 175‒76.

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September 22, 2026

Calling All Harvesters: Matthew 20:1–16

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Evangelism,Matthew Gospel of — Scott Stocking @ 3:51 pm
Tags: bible, christianity, faith, god, jesus

I presented this message on September 20, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, Nebraska.

A friend of mine recently retired after spending some thirty years with the same mom-and-pop manufacturing company. He knew everything there was to know about the company, including all the computer system set-up and what the machines needed with respect to maintenance and upgrades. He was the owner’s right-hand man. He did his best to train his replacement, but as you might imagine, it’s hard to replace someone like that.

He’s told me that they’ve called him a couple times after his retirement to help with different things where he may have had some historical knowledge or special expertise unique to the companies policies and capabilities. Being a solid Christian man, he’s obliged. Now I don’t know if they paid him for such consulting, but if I were in his shoes living on a retirement income, and I was the only one who knew how to fix a problem or address an issue, you can bet I’d negotiate for a pretty penny. Not extravagant, but it would have to be enough to make me want to give up a few days off. Sometimes when you need good help in a pinch, that’s going to bump up the cost of that help.

In our parable today, Jesus tells a story about a man who goes out to hire laborers for his vineyard. He doesn’t just go out once first thing in the morning; he goes out four more times to hire laborers, even toward the end of the day. Because it’s a parable, we don’t have any historical details about a fictional story, but I think it’s safe to assume that he really needed to get his vineyard harvested by the end of the day. In this parable, unlike the story I told about my friend, the vineyard owner doesn’t need anyone with special skills; he just needs bodies to get the grapes off the vine. And apparently, the closer he got to the end of the day, the more urgently he needed workers. We don’t know why it was so urgent. Maybe a storm was coming and he needed to save the grapes. Maybe he needed money to pay off debts. Maybe there was a big wedding coming up and he needed wine for the guests.

We’ll never know the answer to why, but maybe that’s the point of the story. As he’s telling this story I’m almost certain the people in the crowd have any number of situations that they could apply the principles of the story to in their lives. Parables are like that sometimes. We don’t get the details because the details don’t matter so much as the application to our respective life-situations.

Before we get into the parable itself, I want to take some time understand the opening line of this parable: “For the kingdom of heaven is like….” But what is the “kingdom of heaven”? Does it refer only to the heavenly realms? Does it refer to the people of God? Or is it some mix of both?

The first thing to note is that the phrase “kingdom of heaven” (ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν^[1] hē basileia tōn ouranōn) is only found in Matthew’s gospel—32 times in 31 verses. The corresponding phrase in the other gospels is “kingdom of God”—14 times in Mark, 31 times in Luke, and twice in John, in addition to four times in Matthew. Because this phrase “kingdom of heaven” is unique to Matthew, I think it’s worth exploring for a few minutes so we can better understand Matthew’s perspective.

The first two occurrences of “kingdom of heaven” are found in Matthew 3:2, spoken by John the Baptizer, and Matthew 4:17, spoken by Jesus. Both of them use the same phrase: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near you.” Both of them use the phrase to kick off their respective preaching ministries. Later on in Matthew 10:7, Jesus instructs his disciples to use the same phrase. But Jesus puts more oomph into the instruction so his followers have a practical, visible way to demonstrate the kingdom of heaven is near: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”^[2] Not that they were counting any of this (maybe Matthew the tax collector was!), but those are measurable events, actual signs of God working and moving in and among his creation.

In Matthew 11, Jesus speaks of this “here-and-now” nature of the kingdom of heaven:

¹¹Truly 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. ¹² 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.^{^[3]}

A few verses later (vs. 16), Jesus would confirm this “here-and-now” nature by asking, “To what can I compare this generation?” In 18:4–5, Jesus compares the little children to the kingdom of heaven:

“Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”^[4]

Matthew 13 contains a series of seven parables that begin with the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…” but Jesus puts this group of parables in a slightly different context. Although all the parables could be considered true to life, Jesus tells his disciples they’re getting something special, something no one else has access to at that time.

“¹⁰ The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

¹¹He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ¹²Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”^[5]

This passage has nothing to do with money, by the way. That last verse may sound an awful lot like, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” However, the passage is about spiritual knowledge and insight. Of course, we see that the disciples themselves have questions about these parables, so they hadn’t gained immediate understanding. Jesus still had to explain a couple parables to them. Most of those parables relate to the coming kingdom, especially to those who are open to it and will inherit it.

They also show that the kingdom of heaven is not a universal promise to all of humanity. As in Romans, there is an emphasis in taking the message to heart and making the commitment to believe in and follow Christ with that “obedience of faithfulness.” We give up everything for the pearl of great price or the treasure in the field. We receive the word with joy and gladness and hand over the worries and cares of this life to the savior, since we are powerless in and of ourselves.

The parable of the net is the most obvious one that has to do with the final judgment, confirming that there will indeed be a separating of the wicked from the faithful at the end. In Matthew 7:21–23 says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²²Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”^[6]

This passage serves as a hinge to take a look at the future aspect of the kingdom of heaven, that is, our actual experience of heaven when our own work on earth is finished. Jesus speaks of this in his encounter with the Roman centurion whose servant was paralyzed:

“I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”^[7]

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins at the wedding banquet. I won’t read the whole parable but I think you remember it well enough. Five of the virgins remembered to bring extra oil, while the other five did not. Those that forgot their extra oil had to go find more at the last minute, and completely missed out on the wedding banquet. All these parables in Matthew 13 suggest that intentional effort is needed to secure your place in the kingdom of God.

So there you have it: the kingdom of heaven embraces the now and the not-yet. It embraces the everyday and the extraordinary. It’s made up of the obvious truths of the kingdom and the not-so-obvious principles “hidden” in the parables. This brings us back, then, to our passage in Matthew 20 about the vineyard owner hiring workers for his vineyard.

I mentioned above that we really don’t have any details about why the owner had to keep going back and hiring laborers. If you think about it, though, this is probably the best way to handle this type of parallel, to leave such details vague and open ended so that the application isn’t narrowly limited to a handful of situations.

This parable itself would seem to be a follow up to Jesus’s final instruction in Matthew 9:37–38 before he commissions and sends out the disciples in chapter 10. Most of you are familiar with this passage:

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”^[8]

The most obvious application, especially in the context of Matthew, is that we are called to do all we can to reach out to those who need to be brought into the kingdom before it is too late. This parable is the last one Jesus delivers before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s why the connection to the Matthew 9 passage I cited above is important. It closes the chapter on Jesus’s general ministry and sets the stage for the final week of his life.

I don’t think there is anything special about the five times the owner went out to hire people. Five is not a commonly used symbolic number in the Bible. The underlying lesson of the story, though, seems to be captured in the final verses of the story, especially when it comes to the order in which the workers get paid. We read that the late-comers got paid a denarius for their work, while the early birds got the same pay as the late-comers.

The final verse in the parable is “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”^[9] Not only does that wrap the parable and give a high-level summary of what it was about, but if you read forward from there, you will see that this principle is important is addressing one final issues among his disciples before he enters Jerusalem.

Immediately after the parable, Jesus makes his third and final prediction of his death. This evidently gets a couple of his disciples (and their mother) to think, “Hmm, if he’s going to be killed, he’ll need a successor. We know just the guys!” In fact, immediately following that death prediction, James’ and John’s mother pleads with Jesus to make them his right- and left-hand men. You may remember that James and John were two of the earliest disciples to follow Jesus, joining their fishing buddies Peter and Andrew. So the mother of the sons of Zebedee figured since they had that kind of tenure being enduring, long-term disciples of Jesus, they deserved the first shot at succession.

Jesus was straight-up with them and said it wasn’t his decision to make who occupied those spots. Jesus went on to say that those who wanted to be great had to be servants. That seems to fit right in with “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” As a further point of emphasis to this principle, Jesus closes out chapter 20 by healing two blind beggars of their blindness. Are these beggars the final two “laborers” Jesus “hired” to proclaim the good news and get the crowd “ripe” for his triumphal entry?

For your own setting here at Mount View, I think this parable of the laborers has an important message. Never give up on reaching out. We have over 75 years of history here, a great history of having a full auditorium on Sunday morning and a vibrant youth group, both of which I experienced in my youth here. If you believe in the mission and the message of this congregation, and I know you do, consider what simple things you could do to help with the “harvest” of souls and bring them into this fellowship.

The harvest is still plentiful and we need more laborers. Let us pray and consider how we can help with that harvest. Amen.

^[1] Aland, Kurt, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Maurice A. Robinson, and Allen Wikgren. 1993; 2006. The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[6] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[7] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[8] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[9] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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September 13, 2026

Love Over Judgment: Romans 14

Filed under: 1 Corinthians,2 Corinthians,Courage,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,forgiveness,Hope,Matthew Gospel of,Repentance,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 4:33 pm
Tags: 1 Corinthians 12:10, 2 Corinthians 10:10, ἐξουθενέω exoutheneō, bible, christianity, church discipline, faith, god, Hebrews 5:14, διαλογισμός dialogismos, κρίνω krinō, jesus, judgment, Matthew 18:15ff, Matthew 7:1–6, ostracism, Romans 14:17–19

I forgot to bring my voice recorder to the pulpit, and I tried videoing my sermon using the Reels app, but evidently Reels has a 15-minute limit, so Meta didn’t save my video at all. So I offer my apologies for not having an audio file. Enjoy the read! Message presented September 13, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE.

Good morning! The Lord be with you!

Well, I had forgotten I was doing the rest of the Sundays in September, so here I am with one more chance to share some insights from Paul’s letter to the Roman church with you. As we read through the passage this morning, I’m sure there were a couple words or concepts that stuck out to you: judging, despising, quarrelling stick out to me, in a negative way. Since the concept of passing judgment is so prevalent in this passage, I think it’s important to take a few moments to dig into the biblical meanings of these concepts.

The word Paul uses for “judgment” (κρίνω krinō) is also the root of our English words “critic,” “critical,” “criticize,” “critique,” and so on. It is also the root in words like “hypocrite” The word can refer to formal verdict from an approved court; discernment between two or more options; an informed opinion about a matter; or a statement of rebuke, whether justified or not, against another individual. One of the definitions for the word in Merriam-Webster is “the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing.”^[1]

The most basic teaching we have about judgment in the Bible comes from Jesus’s own mouth in Matthew 7:1: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” That passage comes from the Sermon on the Mount, so you may be familiar with what comes after it. Here’s Matthew 7:1–6 in full:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. ^[2]

This is the kind of judgment, I believe, that Paul addresses in Romans 14. But the gospels and Paul also deal with a legitimate form of judgment, church discipline. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that this morning, but it is important we have a fuller scope of understanding the concept.

Jesus addresses this in Matthew 18:15ff:

¹⁵“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. ¹⁶But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ^d ¹⁷If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

¹⁸“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. ^[3]

Although the word for “judgment” doesn’t occur in this passage, the implication of such is quite clear. It may start as a one-on-one encounter, but any final decision about ostracizing the offending member for a credible charge of sin must ultimate rest with the local church body.

Paul addresses this as well in 1 Corinthians 5:9–13:

⁹I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—¹⁰not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. ¹¹But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister ^a but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

¹²What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”^[4]

Of course, as a church, we hope we never have to employ this kind of discipline. I’ve had enough experience as a pastor in my career to have seen the sequence of Matthew 18 played out on a few occasions.

But as I said above, Paul isn’t really addressing church discipline issues in Romans 14. What he’s dealing with is a clash of Jewish and Gentile cultures, as I’ve discussed all along in Romans. Let’s take a closer look at that passage.

Paul sets the context of his comments with the first verse of chapter 14: “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions”^[5] as the version in the bulletin says. First of all, the word for “quarreling” (διάκρισις diakrisis) is based on the word for judgment. This reflects the aspect of judgment about having used your own critical thinking skills to form your own opinion about something. It also carries with it the idea of “distinguishing” between good and evil (Hebrews 5:14) and “discernment” of spirits in 1 Corinthians 12:10.

The word for “opinion” (διαλογισμός dialogismos)^[6] is an intensified form of our word for “dialogue.” The NIV translates the word “disputable matters.” In other words, the idea or concept has been thoroughly discussed or thought through, whether in your own mind or by interacting with others, so it’s likely each side is thoroughly convinced of their own view and not open to reconsidering it.

Now if these “opinions” were a matter of faith or proper doctrine, then arguing about them might be a worthwhile exercise, if done peaceably. But the nature of the issues Paul addresses are not matters of faith or orthodoxy. They all seem to be matters related to their respective cultures.

Notice also that Paul is keeping this within the body of Christ in Rome: “Accept the one whose faith is weak.”^[7] He’s not saying they have to accept people in their midst who want to work against the mission of the church. Nor does Paul explicitly define which view he considers “weak.” Your diet doesn’t save or condemn you. The days you consider special (or not) don’t save or condemn you. Whether you eat meat or not is not a matter of salvation. Paul’s only admonition here is that, whatever you believe about these things, you should be “fully persuaded” in what you believe. That reflects the word in verse 1 translated “opinion.” It’s a well-thought position that you’re unlikely to be dissuaded from.

Paul emphasizes another attitude that believers should avoid. This is the idea of “contempt” (ἐξουθενέω exoutheneō)^[8] in vv. 3 and 10. The reading in the bulletin uses the word “despise.” Paul puts this word in the mouths of his opponents in 2 Corinthians 10:10 when they describe his message as something that “amounts to nothing.” It carries with it not only the idea of a lower status, but also of rejection and ridicule as well, in effect, a form of ostracism. We should not treat our brothers and sisters in Christ in this way over matters that have nothing to do with our faith or salvation.

Paul closes out the first twelve verses by emphasizing what is truly important: our fellowship with one another made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each one of us is responsible for our own beliefs and behaviors. Yet we also must realize that we live to encourage and love one another as well. Paul goes on to suggest in verse 13 that acting in these inappropriate ways toward one another is akin to putting stumbling blocks in the way of those who may be weak or wavering in their faith.

Paul defends his own positions on these matters but also concedes that if someone believes differently than he does, then that’s okay too. What matters is that we love one another.

I will close this message with Romans 14:17–19, because I think that is the perfect way to send us out into the mission field today.

¹⁷For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, ¹⁸because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

¹⁹Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.^[9]

Peace to you this day. Amen.

My views are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

^[1] Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003. In Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary., Eleventh ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

^[6] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[7] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[8] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[9] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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August 3, 2026

Podcast Episode: Faithfulness And Righteousness in Christ (Romans Podcast Part 3)

Filed under: Christology,Christology,Ecclesiology,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Greek,Matthew Gospel of,Righteousness,Romans — Scott Stocking @ 9:40 pm
Tags: bible, christianity, faith, god, jesus, Justified by his blood, Matthew 4:1-11, Romans 5:1-11, Romans 5:12-19, Temptation of Jesus

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog, where the word “therefore” is never just a transition — it’s a theological event horizon.

Mara: Scott Stocking brings us two sermons this episode, both circling the same gravitational center: how Christ’s faithfulness, not just our own, is what justification actually rests on. We move from Romans 5 to the temptation in the desert and back again.

Pip: Let’s start with what Paul is actually arguing in Romans 5 and why the word “faith” might be doing double duty.

Justified by Christ’s Faithfulness

Mara: The post works through Romans 5:1–12 as part of a longer Romans study, and the central question it raises is whether “faith” in Paul’s letters refers only to our belief — or also to Christ’s own faithfulness to his mission.

Pip: And the answer, apparently, is both, which changes the weight of the whole argument considerably. The post frames it this way, reading from Romans 1:17: “For in the gospel the Righteousness of God is revealed — from faithfulness into faithfulness, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faithfulness.'”

Mara: What this means in practice is that the “Righteousness of God” Paul invokes isn’t an abstract moral standard — it refers to Jesus himself. Jesus is the Righteousness of God, and his faithfulness to the cross is what makes our justification possible in the first place.

Pip: So when Paul writes “justified through faith” in 5:1 and then pivots to “justified by his blood” in 5:9, he isn’t contradicting himself — he’s showing the two sides of one coin. Christ’s faithfulness is the foundation; our trust is the response.

Mara: The post also tracks a structural shift in Romans that’s easy to miss as a casual reader. In chapters 1 through 4, Paul uses words for faith or faithfulness 27 times and words for life only twice. In chapters 5 through 8, those numbers nearly reverse — 25 occurrences of life and live, and only 2 for faith.

Pip: That’s a deliberate rhetorical gear change, not an accident.

Mara: Exactly — and it lands hardest in verse 8, which the post calls “somewhat profound”: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” No prior cleanup required.

Pip: The historical context sharpens that. Paul is writing to a Roman congregation where Jewish believers had been expelled and were only now returning to find Gentile house churches still thriving — so the unity argument isn’t abstract theology, it’s pastoral triage.

Mara: And perseverance under that pressure is precisely what builds the character and hope Paul describes in verses 3 through 5. That thread connects directly to what Jesus himself modeled when his own faithfulness was put to the test.

Walking in Jesus’s Righteousness

Mara: The second sermon takes up Matthew 4:1–11 alongside Romans 5:12–19, and the framing question is pointed: where Adam failed under temptation, what did Jesus actually do differently, and what does that mean for everyone who comes after?

Pip: The post opens with a comparison most sermons wouldn’t lead with — that Satanism is an oxymoron — but it earns the setup, because the whole argument depends on understanding what Satan is actually after.

Mara: The key move comes in Romans 5:19, quoted directly: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

Pip: So the upshot is that Jesus’s obedience isn’t just a moral example — it’s the structural reversal of Adam’s failure. One act of faithful obedience undoes what one act of disobedience broke.

Mara: The post draws a careful parallel: Satan used the same three categories against Jesus in the desert — appetite, spectacle, and power — that he used against Eve in the garden. Jesus refused each one by knowing exactly what God had actually promised, not the distorted version Satan offered.

Pip: And the post makes the point that what made the crucifixion uniquely effective wasn’t only perfect legal obedience to the Law — it was love. Bulls and goats couldn’t love anyone. Jesus could and did.

Mara: Which is why the post lands where it does: believers are “in Christ” in a concrete sense, baptized into his death, freed from the law’s demands, and called to walk in the righteousness he earned and extends to them.

Pip: Two sermons, one through-line — Christ’s faithfulness is prior to ours, and that sequence matters for everything that follows.

Mara: Romans keeps pulling the thread. There’s still the second half of Romans 6 ahead, so this conversation isn’t finished.

Pip: Neither, apparently, is Paul’s.

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July 31, 2026

Podcast Episode: The Meaning of Baptism

Filed under: 1 Peter,forgiveness,Greek,Immersion/Baptism,John Gospel of,Luke Gospel of,Mark Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Romans,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 8:23 pm
Tags: 1 Peter 3:21, Baptism, bible, christianity, death & resurrection of Christ, faith, Immersion, jesus, Romans 6

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where the Greek is original and the theology is anything but shallow.

Mara: Scott Stocking has been working through one of the more contested questions in New Testament theology: what immersion actually does, what Peter and Paul meant by it, and whether the word itself carries more weight than most translations let on.

Pip: Let’s start with the text that says it most plainly — 1 Peter 3.

Baptism as Event, Not Ritual

Mara: The question driving these posts is deceptively simple: does immersion save, and if so, how does it work — what gives the water any power at all?

Pip: First Peter 3:21 is the sharpest answer in the New Testament, and the post on that passage offers a translation that cuts through the usual hedging: “This immersion now saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not the body-dirt removal immersion, but the clear-conscience-pledge to God immersion.”

Mara: So the power is not in the water itself. The resurrection is the qualifier — it is what carries the person through immersion the way the floodwater carried the ark. Without that phrase at the end of the verse, the whole thing collapses into ritual.

Pip: And the Greek grammar backs that reading up. The relative pronoun at the start of verse 21 is neuter, which means it points back to water, not to the ark — Peter is saying the flood water corresponds to immersion, not that the ark does.

Mara: The post on The Mystery of Immersion picks up that thread and pushes it further, asking whether ascribing salvific power to immersion while calling the Lord’s Table a mere symbol is a theological inconsistency — either both carry mysterious power, or both are symbols.

Pip: That is a genuinely uncomfortable corner to be argued into.

Mara: Mystery of Immersion, Part Two lands the argument more firmly. It reads Romans 6 as the centerpiece of Paul’s entire theological argument in chapters 1 through 11, with immersion as the event that binds Christ’s death and resurrection together in a single act.

Pip: So immersion is not a footnote to salvation — it is, in Paul’s architecture, the load-bearing joint.

Mara: The Part Two post puts it this way: immersion is “the glue that ties the two pillars of the faith together.” United with Christ’s death, the believer receives justification, reconciliation, and a cleansed conscience. United with the resurrection, they bear fruit and share the victory over death.

Mara: And across all three posts, one consistent boundary holds: a purely outward act, the “dunk and ditch” version, accomplishes nothing — the pledge of a clear conscience is what makes the event real.

Pip: From water as typology to Romans as architecture — the question underneath all of it is what it means to be all-in for Christ.

Pip: Three posts, one through-line: immersion is not where the journey ends — it is where it starts in earnest.

Mara: The Greek keeps pulling that thread. More to come.

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May 31, 2026

The Trinity in Creation (Genesis 1:1–3; John 1:1–5; Matthew 28:16–20)

Filed under: Christology,Chronology,Creation,Genesis,John Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Pentecost,Pneumatology,Psalms,Trinity — Scott Stocking @ 9:58 pm
Tags: Daniel 2:22, God Most High, Jesus in Creation narrative, Jesus Light of the World, Names of God, Psalm 8:1-2, Trinity in Genesis

I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church on Trinity Sunday (First Sunday after Pentecost), May 31, 2026. I lay out how the Trinity is revealed in the first three verses of Genesis 1.

Good morning! The Lord be with you!

In our Old Testament reading this morning, the first couple verses of Psalm 8 say this:

¹Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.

²Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. ^[1]

Consider the story of the walls of Jericho, which the Jews Jews destroyed by marching around the city, blowing their trumpets, and lifting up a mighty shout of praise. We also have the story of Jehoshaphat, who put the male choir out in front of the army to sing praises to God as they marched out to war. God is the true King, and when we put him first, good things can happen. Psalm 22:3 in the English Standard Version says, “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”^[2] If you’re used to the King James Version, that verse is translated, “Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”^[3]

This demonstrates the point that our praise is mighty and effective against evil because the God who dwells in that praise as it goes forth from our lips and our lives is mighty. This is God Almighty, God the Father, God the King, the creator of all that is made, even life itself; the giver of breath; the author of wisdom and truth.

We see the might, power, and even the orderliness of God in the creation narrative, for example. But we find much more than that if we consider the broader context of Scripture.

In Genesis 1:1, of course, we have the well known statement: “In the beginning, God (אֱלֹהִים ^ʾělō·hîm) created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible begins with the assumption that God exists. That fact in and of itself has been the source of many questions and debates, the most popular perhaps being “Where did God come from?”

By faith, we who are Christ-followers believe what God has said about himself, that he is eternal and has never not been. For most believers, that’s not subject to debate.

Then there is the question of what vs. 1 means. Is it simply an introduction to the first chapters of Genesis telling us what God is about to do on the “formless and void” earth, or does it describe God creating the earth itself. Did he speak and fully formed planet appear? Was there some sort of “big bang”-like event that scattered material across the expanse of the universe providing the raw materials for earth? Did God create an iron core and place it somewhere where it would attract raw material and gases floating in space and eventually coalesce into a planet that was “formless and void”? How long did all that take? You can see these are not easy questions to answer, because the earth was already there when he began creating on it!

If that’s not challenging enough, we go on and read verse 2 and find out “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Wait, “the Spirit (רוּחַ rû^aḥ) of God”? We haven’t even got an answer to where God came from and they’ve already mentioned the Spirit of God? The word is the typical Hebrew word for “Spirit” that we would expect, but it could also be translated “wind” or “breath.” However, the New Revised Standard Version is the only English version that translates it as “wind”: “A wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” But the overwhelming consensus among translators is that this refers to the Holy Spirit.

Verse 3 is the beginning of God’s creative work of preparing the “formless and void” rock called Earth for life. This happens on the “first day,” so again it should go without saying that the Earth was already there. But on the first day, God doesn’t create anything on the earth. He creates something to illuminate the earth: light. Or should I say Light. What is unusual here is that we’re never told the source of the light. The sources of light in the heavens (the sun, the stars, the moon) aren’t created until Day Four.

So what is this Light? We get some hints in the Old Testament, especially with a couple direct references to God himself being a source of light.

Psalm 104:2–3 says:

²The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent ³ and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.^[4]

Daniel 2:22 says:

²²He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.^[5]

Numerous other Scriptures use “light” to describe God in a more personal relationship with his people. “The Lord is my light and salvation” (Psalm 27:1; cf. Micah 7:8); “The light of Israel” (Isaiah 10:17); “Let the light of your face shine upon us” (Psalm 4:7 et passim) are all examples of this. We can find many other examples of “light” being used in a number of different ways with respect to God, too numerous to mention here.

But let’s go back to Daniel 2:22. “Some Jewish commentators also cite Dan 2:22 as evidence that “Light” is one of the Messiah’s names.”^[6] Psalm 119:105 says “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”^[7] Hmmm, where else have heard something about “light” and “God’s word”? Could it be in the New Testament?

Listen to John 1:1–5:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning. ³Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”^[8]

Even to the casual observer, then, it seems obvious that John is connecting Jesus to Genesis 1, especially 1:3. Jesus is the “Light” that God “created” when he said “Let there be light.” Jesus is the light in several respects: He is the revelation of God’s character in every way. Just like God and the Spirit were already present at creation, so was Jesus. “Let there be Light” is more of a declaration about Jesus as the third person of the trinity.

That’s right. The trinity of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three manifestations of the Godhead perfectly united, is mentioned in the first three verses of the Bible. Lest there be any doubt, we should mention Abram’s encounter with Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18–20 and how the author of Hebrews interprets that in relation to Jesus:

¹⁸Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, ¹⁹and he blessed Abram, saying,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.

²⁰And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.^[9]

Hebrews 7:3 describes Melchizedek as: “³Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.”^[10] All throughout the early chapters of Genesis, we see God revealing himself to individuals, but up until chapter 14, we have no mention of any kind of priest. All of the sudden, Melchizedek appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The text tells us he is the king of Salem, probably the early settlement of Jerusalem, and that “King of Salem” means “King of Peace.” The name Melchizedek itself means “King of Righteousness.”

We have some evidence, then, that there were early followers of “God Most High” (עֶלְיוֹן אֵל ʾēl ʿěl·yôn) in the region. Is Melchizedek, then, the preincarnate Christ if indeed he has no genealogy in Genesis, unlike every other Hebrew person mentioned in Genesis? You’d think we’d have some story of how someone came to be a priest of the Most High God, but we know nothing of his origins. Why do we have a story about God calling Abram to be the progenitor of the line from which the Messiah would be born, but not one about the first priest? Keep in mind that we know Abram’s ancestors from Genesis, but we really don’t know how he came to be separated from the community in Salem where Melchizedek served. I think the Bible intentional leaves that a bit of a mystery for us, as a figure completely independent of Abram’s line validates that the worship of the Most High God is an established practice already when Abram is called.

I think it’s probably going too far to assume that the early Hebrews in Genesis had a fully formed doctrine of the trinity. However, the seeds are planted there to bring that concept to fruition. Even the creation story itself seems to reflect this “three-in-one” concept in more ways then one. Creation takes place in six days broken up into two sets of three: On days One through Three, God creates the environment to support life (light, water, land and vegetation), then on days Four through Six, he creates the inhabitants of the respective environments (sun, moon, and stars; fish and sea creatures; and land animals and critters and mankind).

In Deuteronomy 6:5, Moses exhorts the Israelites to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”^[11] This reflects the trinitarian nature of our own being: The heart is our emotional connection to God and others; the soul is the eternal nature that God places in us, not only our spiritual connection, but also the personality traits that are in some sense innate to our being; and our strength is our body, which will be resurrected in the last days.

As with Pentecost’s call to evangelism, so too our Gospel reading has a similar call founded in the trinity. In fact, it was probably the basis for how Peter closes out his sermon in Acts 2: “¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”^[12]

On this Trinity Sunday, then, let us give praise and thanks for God, the three-in-one, who through Jesus—the priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, the one who has both the fullness of God and has experienced the fullness of the human form in his incarnation, the one who died to pay the price for our sins and rose from the dead to secure our hope for salvation and perfection in heaven—has fashioned us in his image so that we might more fully know God and the blessings he has for us both here on earth and in the heavenly realms. Go forth and share the good news. Amen.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My opinions are my own.

^[1] Psalm 8:1–2. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] Psalm 22:3. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

^[3] Psalm 22:3. The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009. Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[4] Psalm 104:2–3. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] Daniel 2:22. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[6] Martin J. Selman. אוֹר ʾôr. In VanGemeren, Willem, ed. 1997. In New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, 1:325. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

^[7] Psalm 119:105. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[8] John 1:1–5. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[9] Genesis 14:18–20. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[10] Hebrews 7:3. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[11] Deuteronomy 6:5. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[12] Matthew 28:19. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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May 13, 2026

Resurrection: SMGB Resource Guide

Filed under: John Gospel of,Luke Gospel of,Mark Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Resurrection,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 9:23 pm
Tags: Resurrection in the NT, Resurrection study guide

Logos Discount

I’m starting a new series similar to my Lectionary Helps articles. I’m creating a series of topically or Bible-book–reference posts featuring links to my videos and blog articles on the stated topic. As a Logos Affiliate, I’m also including a link to Logos Bible Software (60-day free trial), which is the source for some of the information herein. The Logos link does not imply in any way Logos’s endorsement of my blog or any of its contents. Your feedback is welcome here or in the individual links I’ve provided.

Videos

Rumble:Why I Don’t Want to Be Cremated: A Personal Biblical Perspective

Facebook:Why I Don’t Want to Be Cremated: A Personal Biblical Perspective.

English Dictionary Definition:

res•ur•rec•tion \ˌre-zə-ˈrek-shən\ noun

[Middle English resurreccioun, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin resurrection-, resurrectio act of rising from the dead, from resurgere to rise from the dead, from Latin, to rise again, from re- + surgere to rise—more at surge] 14th century

1 a capitalized: the rising of Christ from the dead

b often capitalized: the rising again to life of all the human dead before the final judgment

c: the state of one risen from the dead^[1]

Tyndale Bible Dictionary

RESURRECTION Act of being raised from the dead, used in the Bible in three different contexts: (1) It refers to miraculous raising of the dead back to earthly life, such as when Elijah raised a boy (1 Kgs 17:8–24), Elisha raised the Shunammite’s son (2 Kgs 4:18–37), Jesus raised both Jairus’s daughter (Mk 5:35–43) and Lazarus (Jn 11:17–44), Peter raised Dorcas (Acts 9:36–42), and Paul raised Eutychus (20:9–12). There is no hint that these resuscitations would prevent future death. (2) It refers most frequently to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (3) It also refers to the eschatological resurrection of mankind at the end of time for punishment or reward (Jn 5:29; cf. Rv 20:5–6).^[2]

Noun

414 ἀνάστασις (anastasis), εως (eōs), ἡ (hē): n.fem.; ≡ Str 386; TDNT 1.371—1. LN 23.93 resurrection (Mt 22:31; Mk 12:18; Lk 14:14; Jn 5:29; 11:24, 25; Ac 1:22; Ro 1:4; Heb 6:2; 11:35; 1Pe 1:3; Rev 20:5; Heb 11:1 v.r.); 2. LN 87.39 rising up, from a lower status to a higher one (Lk 2:34+), for another interp, see next; 3. LN 13.60 rising up, a change for the better (Lk 2:34+), for another interp, see prior^[3]

Verb

482 ἀνίσταμαι (anistamai), ἀνίστημι (anistēmi): vb.; ≡ DBLHebr 7756; Str 450—1. LN 17.7 cause to stand up (Ac 9:41; Ac 2:30 v.r.); 2. LN 23.94 raise to life (Jn 6:39; Mk 16:9 v.r.; Ro 14:9 v.r.); 3. LN 23.59 ἀνίστημι σπέρμα (anistēmi sperma), procreate, bring into being, have children (Mt 22:24+); 4. LN 17.6 (dep.) stand up (Lk 4:16); 5. LN 15.36 (dep.) go away (Lk 4:38); 6. LN 13.81 (dep.) come into existence appear (Heb 7:11; Ac 7:18); 7. LN 23.93 (dep.) live again, come back to life, having been once dead (Lk 9:8; 1Co 15:51 v.r.); 8. LN 39.34 (dep.) rebel against (Ac 5:36)^[4]

Blog Articles and Sermons

Resurrection in the Valley of the Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Resurrection Realities (Luke 20:27–38) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Running the Resurrection Race (Easter 2025; John 20:1–18) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

“I Am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Jesus Wept 2.0 (John 11:32–44) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

What Makes God Weep? | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

^[1] Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003. In Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary., Eleventh ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

^[2] Elwell, Walter A., and Philip Wesley Comfort. 2001. In Tyndale Bible Dictionary, 1121–22. Tyndale Reference Library. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

^[3] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[4] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

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March 25, 2026

Lectionary Help for Palm Sunday

Filed under: Acts,Biblical Animals,Christology,Eschatology,Faith, Faithfulness,Lent,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Resurrection,Soteriology,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 5:54 am
Tags: Donkey, Easter, Holy Week, Luke 22:54-62, Matthew 27:28-31, Matthew 27:5-10, onomatopoeia in the Bible, Palm Sunday

It’s been a busy week with family stuff, so I apologize for the lateness of this week’s Lectionary Help. I’ll offer a few quick helps here since Palm Sunday and Holy Week offer so much material for us to preach on.

In Rigged Trial; Real Redemption (Luke 22:54–62) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, I cover the injustices of the way the Jews used their own “legal” system to condemn Jesus. Everything about the trial before the Sanhedrin was contrary to their own laws and customs. It’s an early example of what we’ve come to call “lawfare” today.

In The Day of the Donkey: Holy Week Events From the Perspective of the Prophesied Donkey | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, I tell the story of Holy Week from the perspective of the donkey who bore Jesus into Jerusalem. I had some fun with that one!

Matthew indicates that Judas threw his blood money back in the temple and hanged himself after betraying Jesus. The pharisees bought the field where Judas hanged himself with that money (Matthew 27:5–10), which is why in Acts 1:18, Peter can say Judas bought the field. It was by proxy through the Pharisees, because they didn’t want their name associated with the title to the land because it was purchased with blood money.

Most scholars believe the description in Acts about Judas’s body bursting open is not a contradiction to Matthew’s “hanging” account. The Acts account comes from Peter to a small group of believers who were already familiar with the full story. It’s likely that Judas’s body started to bloat after he died on the tree and either the rope or the branch it was hanging from broke and caused the gruesome scene.

I also came across the following note on Matthew 27:28–31 in my files:

“The Greek text here has several words with the /pt/ sound or /p/ followed by an unstressed vowel sound. I have to think this is intentional on Matthew’s part to emphasize the mocking (ἐνέπαιξαν, from ἐμπαίζω) aspect of the scene. This passage is a chiasm as well, centering around the mocking (but true) statement, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’”

One final note: Golgotha is likely the exact location (give or take a few hundred feet) where Abraham had taken Isaac to sacrifice him. The Hebrew text where Abraham says “God himself will provide the lamb” can be repointed (i.e., have a different vowel arrangement below the consonants; vowels weren’t added to the Hebrew text until about AD 1000) to say “God will provide himself as the lamb.” Consider the significance of that for a hot minute.

Peace to you as you approach Holy Week and the Easter season.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My thoughts are my own.

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March 22, 2026

Resurrection in the Valley of the Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37)

Filed under: 2 Kings,Elijah,Eschatology,Ezekiel,Lent,Matthew Gospel of,Miracles,Resurrection,Thanatology (Death) — Scott Stocking @ 4:37 pm
Tags: 1 Kings 17, 2 Kings 13:20–21, Acts 20, Acts 9, COVID as exile, Eutychus raised, Exile, Matthew 27:50–54, Tabitha raised

I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on March 22, 2026. I had already preached my best message on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead a couple times here, which was the gospel passage for the fifth Sunday of Lent, so I preached on the OT reading for this Sunday. I give a brief summary of all the “raised from the dead” passages in the Bible before tackling Ezekiel 37 and its context.

Do you know how many stories of dead people coming back to life are in the Bible? When I typed the question into Google to confirm if my own recollection was correct, I confirmed there are in fact ten, count ‘em, ten stories of people rising from the dead. Three of the stories are in the Old Testament, five in the gospels, and two in the book of Acts. Ezekiel 37, which I’ll read here in a bit, is another story of dead bones receiving new flesh and new breath, but it seems to end there. It reads more like a parable rather than an actual historic event, but it does seem to prefigure the story in Matthew 27:50–54 (which is included in the count) about the dead coming out of their tombs and graves the moment Jesus died on the cross.

Allow me to quickly recap the 10 miracles here so we can place the stories in their historical contexts.

Elijah raised the son of a widow in Zarephath during the drought in 1 Kings 17. Not to be outdone, Elisha did the same for a Shunammite woman’s son in Shunem. Nain, where Jesus raised the son of a widow in Luke 7, is located about halfway between Shunem and Zarephath.

Backtracking for a moment, there’s a little-known story in 2 Kings 13:20-21 where Elisha raises another man from the dead, even though Elisha had been dead for a few days! Here’s the account in 2 Kings 13:20–21:

²⁰ Elisha died and was buried.

Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. ²¹ Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.^{^[1]}

Getting back to the New Testament, in the next chapter after the boy from Nain is raised, Jesus raises the dead daughter of Jairus, a synagogue ruler. Of course, we also have Lazarus from our gospel passage this morning.

The most prominent one, though, is Jesus at the end of each of the gospels. He cites the first line of Psalm 22 to remind us that this was all prophesied a long time before his crucifixion. Psalm 22 has many details that were fulfilled in the crucifixion stories of the gospels. In Matthew 27, as I alluded to above, several people came out of their graves. Most scholars who consider that a real event assume that those people were reunited with their families, at least for a short time. It would seem odd for God to bring them back to life only to send them right back to their graves, so some scholars have suggested that they may have gone into glory when Jesus rose from the grave that first Easter morning!

Toward the end of Acts chapter 9, a young disciple named Tabitha who served the poor faithfully became sick and died. This happened in Joppa while Peter was ministering in nearby Lydda. The disciples called for Peter to come. Peter did not hesitate, and after he prayed for the young woman, he looked at her and commanded her to get up! Of course, she obliged and was restored to her community of believers.

Later, in Acts 20, Paul is giving a marathon sermon that went long into the night, and a young man named Eutychus was sitting in a third-story window listening to his message. He fell asleep, fell out of the window, and died. Paul went down and in true Elijah/Elisha fashion, stretched himself out over the young man, and God restored life to him.

These are all the stories in the Bible about people miraculously restored to life after being declared dead. In every instance, with the exception of Jesus, others were around to witness these events. The women who went to Jesus’s tomb arrived shortly after Jesus had risen, because he warned them not to touch him. And given how Jesus was treated on the cross, there was absolutely no doubt that he had died as well.

But there’s one “event” that I referred to earlier that seems to have been a vision for Ezekiel in chapter 37 and not an actual event, although the description seems real enough. The context and historical setting of this chapter is important. Ezekiel is part of the second wave of exiles being transported to Babylon. He had wanted to be a priest, but the exile happened before he could attain that position. Instead, God called him to be a prophet to the exiles and, in the latter chapters especially, to be an encouragement to them in their captivity, assuring them that one day they would be restored to the Promised Land.

Ezekiel proclaims that his role is a Watchman (ch. 33) and a messenger of the Lord, Israel’s Shepherd (ch. 34). He gives Israel and Judah the promise that they will once again be one nation after the exile. In chapter 36, he speaks of hope for the mountains of Israel and the assurance of the restoration of Israel as a nation, the chosen people of God. Ezekiel gives specific enough dates in these chapters that we can know he’s writing around 585 B.C., about 20 years after the first wave of exiles (that included Daniel) was transported.

Hear the words of Ezekiel 37:1–14:

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. ³ He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵ This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶ I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”

⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸ I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

⁹ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” ¹⁰ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

¹¹ Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’ ”^{^[2]}

The imagery is fairly simple to understand. The dry bones represent Israel in exile. They had finally withered up and dried out as a nation because they refused to follow the Lord. They had spent some 500 years in the land and never once did they give the land its rest every seven years. So now they faced 70 years of exile, one year for each of the years the land never received its rest.

God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones to reanimate them. Ezekiel does so, and the bones begin to rattle like a china cabinet in an earthquake. Before Ezekiel’s eyes, he sees tendons and muscles and veins and organs form on these bones and finally a skin covering, and I would even speculate there was hair on their heads and the rest of their bodies. I don’t believe they all looked alike, like a bunch of clones. But there they were. Instead of just bones lying around, Ezekiel saw bodies lying around waiting for the breath of life. We’re not sure how many, but Ezekiel describes it as a vast army.

God then tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the “breath” so that these bodies can be filled with the breath of life again to live. And again, it worked! All these bodies began to breathe and rise to their feet. God closes out this scene by reassuring Ezekiel that God will indeed restore Israel to their homeland. The part about opening the graves and bringing them out again sounds very much like what happened in Matthew 27, when the dead came out of their graves after Jesus’s resurrection. Yet neither of my study Bibles make that connection between these two passages. I did, however, find a couple commentaries that make this connection.[3]^{, [4]}It’s hard not to think of Matthew 27:50–54 as a fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

What is interesting here is that the word for “breath” is the exact same word in Hebrew that is translated “spirit” (as in Holy Spirit) in many other places. This is where I think we can make the connection to our own context today. COVID was a type of exile for churches everywhere. We were all but coerced to abandon meeting together in our familiar church settings and dwell in the foreign territory of “virtual church.” Some churches were connected enough and had enough resources and dedication of membership to persevere through that time. Many smaller congregations, however, did not survive or are still struggling mightily to get back to where they were.

Even before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, we were beginning to see revival take place, especially among young people. God was bringing life to the “dead bones” of those who had previously seen no hope in the church. The younger generation began to see what they had missed after willingly (or was it addictively?) spending hours per day on electronic devices only to have such a lifestyle imposed on them unwillingly by COVID and the powers that be. They didn’t like that imposition and started rebelling against it. Revival is happening because new and long-time believers stopped taking their freedoms for granted after they had them stripped for a season.

God is always moving through his Holy Spirit to bring redemption and revival for those he’s called and who call upon him. As believers, Christ-followers, we’re called to “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”^[5] If we are faithful to our respective ministries and to seeking the Lord with all our hearts, our faith will not return void. We will reap a harvest we may not have anticipated. I heard this the other day from an unlikely source, but it makes a lot of sense: While we are waiting on God, we should do what waiters do: serve.

May God continue to bless your ministry efforts here at Mount View. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] Green, Michael. 2001. The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew 27:32–56.” The Bible Speaks Today. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[4] Mangum, Douglas, ed. 2020. Lexham Context Commentary: New Testament. “Matthew 27:52–53.” Lexham Context Commentary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[5] 1 Timothy 4:2. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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February 22, 2026

Walking in Jesus’s Righteousness (Matthew 4:1–11; Romans 5:12–19)

Filed under: Biblical People,Biblical Studies,Christology,Christology,Courage,John Gospel of,Lent,Matthew Gospel of,Repentance,Righteousness,Romans,Spiritual Warfare,Temptation — Scott Stocking @ 2:37 pm
Tags: Jesus our righteousness, John 8:44-46, Liar, Man shall not live by bread alone, Matthew 4:1-11, Old Adam vs. New Adam, Romans 5:12-19, Romans Study 2026, Satan, Temptation

I preached this message on February 22, 2026, the First Sunday in Lent, Year A.

When you think about it, Satanism, the worship of Satan, is an oxymoron. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. “That’s a weird way to start a sermon, preacher!” Yep, guilty as charged. But seriously, why would anyone want to put their “faith” in Satan when all the evidence points his core nature? He’s pure evil. He’s deceptive. He hates those who worship God. I would dare say he’s more interested in getting you to not worship and serve God than he is having people worship him. But he can ignore those people, because they’re already solidly in his camp.

John says this about the devil when he confronts the Pharisees in the Temple in John 8:

⁴⁴You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ⁴⁵Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! ⁴⁶Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? ^[1]^*

Adam and Eve had a first-hand encounter with Satan in the very beginning. He lied about what eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could do for them. Yes, after eating the apple, they did experience the shame of their nakedness, so at least that much of what Satan said was true, but it was a half-truth at best. The lie that Satan told Eve was “You will be like God.” That was a lie in so many ways, and here’s why:

God is not just omniscient, knowing all that can be known, but he is omnipotent and omnipresent as well. Adam and Eve, relatively speaking, only got a fraction of the knowledge that God had about such things and NONE of the power or presence that God had. Their shame at disobeying caused them to fear the presence of God when God had designed Eden and the world for them to live in his presence. They lost power, because at that point, death became a necessity for survival. An animal would have to die to clothe them. Blood sacrifices became necessary for temporary atonement. And God’s son would have to die to redeem them forever from the curse.

Satan won that first round with God’s precious new creation, but out of that came the first prophecy of Satan’s defeat at the hands and feet of God’s son. It’s no wonder, then, that he thought he could try and pull that off when God’s one and only son came on the scene. If he could get Jesus to stumble, the world would be his, or so he thought.

In the garden, Eve had become convinced somehow that the forbidden fruit “was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.” It shouldn’t surprise us that Satan used those same three categories to tempt Jesus in the desert as in our Gospel passage this morning. “I know you’re hungry for some food, Jesus. Go ahead and turn these stones into bread.” But Jesus knew, unlike Adam and Eve, that there was more to God than producing a little supernatural “manna” to satisfy what must have been an intense human experience of hunger. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Satan tried to trick him by twisting a promise of God into a perversion of wisdom. “Come on Jesus. You know God will catch you if you jump off the top of the Temple here! Imagine the scene when the crowd watches the angels swoop you up at the last second! You’ll be a superhero!” But Jesus knows it is foolish to put God to the test like that, and rebuked Satan with that fact in no uncertain terms.

Satan had one more chance. He took Jesus to a high mountain where he had a “pleasing sight” awaiting him—”all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” But once again, Jesus knew the price was too high to go along with Satan’s schemes, and he knew none of them would bring about what God had promised him when he fulfilled his mission. “You know the commandment, Satan. I will have no other gods before me. He was there to “worship the Lord God and serve him only.” The liar failed at trying to fool the one in whom there was no lie and only truth.

And that was the beginning of the end for Satan. Jesus won that battle, but Satan didn’t give up that easily. He had to switch his focus to others, and most of you know who that would be: someone from his inner circle. The signs would be there early on that something wasn’t quite right with Judas. Even Peter gets some of the blame, but that, it seems, may have been more to his impetuous nature at times, and Jesus had other plans for him anyway.

The power of death was defeated at the cross. I’m sure that was something that Satan actually felt. Jesus had even told Peter that the gates of hell could not withstand the coming of God’s kingdom, and I think for a while anyway, as the church began to coalesce after Pentecost, God and Jesus kept Satan at bay to give the fledgling believers a head start at getting the gospel out.

I want to turn now to Romans 5:12–19, the other New Testament passage in the Lectionary readings today, to look at the results, if you will, of Jesus’s victory over death and how he, as the New Adam, broke the curse brought on by the First Adam, who through passivity allowed his wife to give in to the serpent and joined her in her disobedience. Romans 5 has a powerful message about how you and I can be strengthened in our own faith walk because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in his resurrection from the dead.

Hear what Paul has to say:

¹²Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

¹³To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. ¹⁴Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

¹⁵But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! ¹⁶Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. ¹⁷For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

¹⁸Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. ¹⁹For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.^[2]

Even though Paul says plainly in 1 Timothy 2:14 that it was Eve who was deceived and sinned first (sorry, ladies, I’m just the messenger here), Paul considers the blame for “original sin” to be squarely on Adam’s shoulders. Adam had one command, and he (and Eve) blew it. But because it was a single command and the Law had not come yet, God could not permanently charge Adam with a violation of his law. Instead, they were expelled from the garden because they could not be trusted. That doesn’t mean they weren’t loved, though. God would declare even as he announced their punishment that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

Paul demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled the role that Adam never could. Adam’s disobedience or lack of faithfulness brought sin into the world, but Jesus’s one act of faithful obedience, submitting to crucifixion, is the only act that could defeat the power of sin once for all and bring righteousness to all who would follow him. It took one sin by Adam to mess up things for everybody, but one faithfully obedient savior to restore us to God in his righteousness.

Romans says that Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He earned that designation by fulfilling the whole Law of God. But God still needed that once-for-all blood sacrifice that would make the animal and grain sacrifices of the Old Testament completely obsolete. Jesus was the only one who could be that spotless lamb. But it wasn’t just because of his 100% obedience to the law. The crucifixion had one more element that made it absolutely effective and impossible for the devil to challenge or destroy: It was love, pure and simple.

“For God so loved the world.” Only a perfect man with a fully divine nature who showed us beyond a shadow of doubt how he and his Father loved us in person and face to face could make that sacrifice. The bulls and goats and birds that were sacrificed under the Old Covenant could not ever love us the way Jesus did and does, which is why his sacrifice stands not only above the old sacrificial system, but above every other religion as well. Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was a real person, but he never loved anything about the world that should have mattered to him. He just tried to obtain a state of nothingness, a very selfish goal that no one else, by definition, could help him achieve. There’s no personal connection there and no promise of any help from the supernatural realm. Jesus’s sacrifice was by far the most superior of any that could have happened on this world God created with love, and the only one that can guarantee us eternal life in God’s glorious new kingdom.

As believers, then, know that you are “in Christ” in every sense of the concept. We are baptized “into Christ,” which means we are baptized into his death. So we share in his death so we can be free of the requirements of the law, beneficiaries of grace, and servants of righteousness. As you go forth in the world from here, declare God’s word unashamedly to those who need to hear the hope of his good news. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. *I didn’t say it in my message, but I sure thought about adding: “The Pharisees must have had Jesus Derangement Syndrome.”

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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