Water & Mountains Conclusion
closing remarks about Matthew 14-25
Over the past 5 weeks, I’ve been tracing several themes throughout Matthew Chapters 14-25. I’ve seen how Matthew used water and mountains to describe the process by which we either become children of God or sons of hell. This process involves enduring the hardships brought about by “religious leaders” (people who establish man’s ways as God’s ways). God’s children give up all our earthly wealth for the least of these and follow Jesus unto death.
If you’ve missed the previous blogs summarizing these chapters, here are links to those.
Summary
While I believe Matthew continues these themes before and after these chapters, I’m stopping here for now. However, these blogs needed one final post to put everything together. So here you are: Matthew Chapters 14-25 summarized.
Chapters 14-17: Jesus’ path of travel goes up and down. He goes up mountains, preaches, heals, and feeds people, then he crosses a body of water where he &/or his disciples are tested, often by religious leaders. This pattern of mountain-top experiences followed by watery testing times seems to map out how we follow Jesus. We eat his teaching. He heals us. Trials from religious leaders test our faith. We see Jesus transfigured into our lives; we proclaim him Messiah; and then we’re tested to see if we’re following an earth-conquering-Gentile-ruling Messiah like the religious leaders were hoping for or are we following a sacrificial surrendering Messiah who is willing to give everything for the sake of God‘s children.
Chapters 18-20: This process of taking in Jesus and being tested is like being born again. It’s a way we pass through the waters of baptism into God’s new family. We become children, servants, and the least of these who learn to cut out sin from our midst. We cut out sin in order to pursue the lost. By giving up power, wealth, and our own lives we leave behind our 99 to pursue the one lost child. One person, even if he sins against us again and again, is worth more than all our earthly wealth.
Chapters 21-23: This process is how we are cleansed of the world’s ways as seen through Jesus’ cleansing of the temple. The religious leaders, who were using God’s temple as their base of operations to rob and trick God’s people, are like salesmen poised to deceive and trip up God’s people. They use God’s law, God’s people, and God’s temple to make themselves great. Christ’s followers must be washed clean of those tendencies. The old temple must come down and this is done by allowing Jesus to cleanse us in giving up everything for others.
Chapters 24-25: Each person follows Christ by enduring these cycles of watery-trials and mountain-top refreshment until God gathers his elect. The cycles bring about the end times. It goes like this: false messiahs try to deceive us, we experience trials, these trials separate the sheep from the goats, and then when God’s fruit is made manifest in our lives, our end comes. Those who have counted the cost, use God’s wealth for kingdom purposes, and who treat the least of these like Jesus himself will live eternally with Christ.
What we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what we loose on earth will be loose in heaven. Amen.
To read more scriptural analysis like this, click a link below.