Jan. 07, 2024

Revealing who Jesus is and what He came to do.

Matthew Lesson 28 Study Questions

1.    Then the Pharisees and Sadducees: Their working together showed a deep fear among the religious leaders. The Sadducees and Pharisees were long-standing _______, and the fact that they came together against Jesus shows they regarded Him as a ________ threat.

2.    The Pharisees were not a political party and were prepared to live under any government that would leave them alone to practice their __________ the way they wanted to; the Sadducees were ___________ and collaborated with the Romans to keep their wealth and power.

3.    You cannot discern the signs of the times: Jesus said this of the religious leaders of His own day regarding the signs of His first coming. There were ____________, ___________, and evidence that should have made it clear to them as signs of the times that the Messiah had come.

4.    It is because we have taken no bread: This was a strange concern after Jesus had, in the recent past, miraculously fed both crowds exceeding 5,000 and 4,000 people. The disciples didn’t understand Jesus at all here and His use of ________ as a metaphor.

5.    Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? Jesus did not ask this question because He didn’t know who He was, or because He had an unfortunate dependence on the opinion of others. He asked this question as an introduction to a more important _________ question.

6.    . Who do you say that I am? It was fine for the disciples to know what others thought about Jesus. But Jesus had to ask them, as individuals, what _____ believed about Him.

7.    You are the Christ, the Son of the living God: Peter knew the opinion of the crowd – while it was complimentary towards Jesus – wasn’t accurate. Jesus was much more than ______________ or _________ or a prophet. He was more than a national reformer, more than a miracle worker, more than a prophet. Jesus is ___________, the Messiah.

8.    Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven: Jesus reveals to Peter that he spoke by divine __________, even if he didn’t even know it at the time. In this, Peter was genuinely ________ – both by the insight itself and how it came to him.

9.    On this rock I will build My church: The words this rock have been the source of much controversy. It is best to see them as referring to either Jesus Himself (perhaps Jesus gesturing to Himself as He said this), or as referring to Peter’s ___________ of ____ Jesus is.

10.    I will build My church: This is the first use of the word _______ in the New Testament (or the Bible for that matter), using the ancient Greek word ekklesia. Significantly, this was well before the beginnings of what we normally think of as the ________ on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.

11.    And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it: Jesus also offered a promise – that the forces of death and darkness can’t _______ against or _______ the church. This is a valuable promise in dark or discouraging times for the church.

12.    And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven: The power for binding and loosing is something that the Jewish rabbis of that day used. They bound or loosed an individual in the application of a particular point of the law. Jesus promises that Peter – and the other apostles – would be able to set the ___________ authoritatively for the _____________ community.