Jesus is the true messenger of God who spoke three explicit parables of judgment upon the Jews (Mt. 21:28-22:14). In the end, the Jews did not repent. They challenged Him. They embarrassed themselves. And instead of admitting their error they remained silent and awaited their cursing.

Introduction
In an atomic weapon, a handful of neutrons cause a chain reaction ending with the vaporization of entire cities and the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. The chain of events happens sort of like this. A free neutron is released in the presence of Uranium atoms. Once it collides with one of those atoms, it enters Uranium’s nucleus causing it to become so unstable that the atom will split. When this happens, 3 additional neutrons are set free that end up colliding with three additional atoms of Uranium. The process occurs again netting 9 free neutrons, and before long (roughly six hundred billionths of a second) an uncountable amount of nuclear reactions will have occurred unleashing unimaginable havoc in all directions. No matter how quickly the chain reaction occurs, it would not be possible without specific sequential events that magnify in intensity.
Similarly, God unleashed a chain reaction upon unstable Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago. Based on specific sequential events that increase in intensity (detailed in Matthew 21-23), Jesus collided with the leadership of the city and the result was a city reduced to ash and rubble. Today, we jump right into the middle of that reaction and notice four specific events that occur from the end of Matthew 21 to the end of Matthew 22 that set the stage for this implosion.
The Ones Reduced to Rubble
While a deeper treatment of the issues is well in order, I must briefly summarize how this escalation is unfolding. Matthew 21 ends with an incredibly provocative statement by Jesus that has massive implications for how the events transpire in Jerusalem. He says:

Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, This became the chief corner stone; This came about from the Lord, And it is marvelous in our eyes? 43 Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. 44 And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.

Jesus is not only accusing them of being ignorant of the Scriptures, such as Psalm 118 where this quote comes from, but He is also demonstrating how they will be the ones to reject Him, and that He will be the stone upon which God’s Kingdom will be built. This is why Jesus can look at the Pharisees and Scribes and say that the Kingdom will be taken away from them and given to another people because they will be crushed under the weight of the rock of ages and scattered like chaff to the four winds in Judgment.
This kind of judgment language goes well beyond the typical evangelical interpretation, where the Jews simply made a poor choice. That line of thinking might view the Jews in the same league as every other unbeliever who weighed the evidence, was not convinced, and chose wrongly. Or, if you are Calvinist, they were not elect and acted like every other reprobate who ever lived. But this is not what is happening here. These are people who had the kingdom and were losing the kingdom, which is not true for unbelievers in general.
Jesus uses verses 43 and 44 to remind the Jews of promises made in Daniel 2, where God will cut our an eternal rock (Da 2:34), who will strike a brittle kingdom (Da 2:43), that will topple and crush the empires of antiquity to dust (Da 2:35a), that will scatter them like chaff to the ends of the earth (Da 2:35b) and will be the inauguration of God’s true kingdom (Da 2:44) that will end up capturing the entire world and bringing it under the dominion of God (2:35, 44-45).
Jesus is telling them that He is that rock sent by God. He is showing them that He is the one who will not only bring God’s Kingdom to all the nations but will do so by striking them, crushing them, and scattering them to the ends of the earth. This is exactly what happened when God used Rome to end the nation of Judah and we are living in that eternal Kingdom that Christ Himself created. We see again that His coming is for the salvation of some and the judgment of others.
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Written by Matthew S. Harmon |
Thursday, July 4, 2024
Simply put, Jesus teaches in parables to demonstrate the need for divine revelation to understand the mysteries of the kingdom and to reveal the spiritual condition of his listeners. Both of these realities are grounded in his understanding of Isaiah 6:9–10.

Although Jesus was not the first to use parables in his teaching, his extensive use of them was a distinct feature of his teaching style. But why? Some suggest that he simply harnessed the power of story to enhance his teaching. But Jesus himself explains why he used parables, and he grounds his explanation in a network of Old Testament texts, with Isaiah 6:9–10 as the star of the show.
Grasping Jesus’s purpose provides valuable lessons for our understanding and proclamation of the gospel.
Lest They Turn
Jesus’s explanation for why he teaches in parables is embedded within the parable of the sower and soils. (Although this parable is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, we will focus on Matthew’s version.)
The parable comes at the beginning of an extended section of parables focused on the nature of God’s kingdom (Matthew 13:1–52). After Jesus tells the crowd the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–9), the disciples ask him privately why he speaks to the crowds in parables (Matthew 13:10). Jesus responds by highlighting their privileged position as disciples: God has chosen to reveal the secrets of the kingdom to them (Matthew 13:11–12, alluding to “mystery” language used in Daniel). He then directly answers their question:
This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. (Matthew 13:13–15, citing Isaiah 6:9–10)
Jesus’s statement that he teaches in parables alludes to Psalm 78:2 (which Matthew cites explicitly in Matthew 13:35), but the sensory malfunction language (ears that do not hear, eyes that do not see, hearts and minds that are dull) anticipates the quote from Isaiah 6:9–10. Why does Jesus turn here to explain his purpose to the disciples?
Unseeing Eyes, Unhearing Ears
In its original context, Isaiah 6:9–10 is part of God’s commission to Isaiah as a prophet. In response to seeing Yahweh exalted on his throne, Isaiah responds to Yahweh’s question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” with an emphatic, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:1–8). Verses 9–10 then give the content of Isaiah’s message to rebellious Israel. God commissions him to denounce their spiritual deafness, blindness, and hardness of heart — the realities that keep Israel from responding to God’s call to repentance and restoration.
This was not a new response for Israel. It had been this way since Moses’s day, who used similar sensory malfunction language to describe Israel (Deuteronomy 29:2–4). Elsewhere, Scripture connects this sensory malfunction language to the effects of idolatry. Those who worship idols become like them, having eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, and hearts that do not understand (Isaiah 44:9–20; Psalm 115:3–8).
But when Jesus cites Isaiah 6:9–10 and applies it to the listening crowds, he is doing more than simply identifying a recurring pattern in redemptive history.
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Written by Jason K. Allen |
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
We are called to be advocates, not just affirmers. We are called to be articulators, not just adherents. Compromise usually begins with silence. It ends with disavowal. And we must have an ear for the silence. Yes, each of us will have different ministry passions or commitments. But we must keep before us an ever-present awareness that these issues are being threatened by the day, in our families and in our churches, and we must be those who are willing to confidently and cheerfully speak and advocate to these great truths, especially as codified in the Danvers and Nashville Statements. Silence often is deafening.

My first encounter with the Danvers Statement and CBMW was in the late 1990s. I was a young man in college, and I was at my church, a rather large Southern Baptist church, and I was talking to a staff member in his office, and I saw on his bookshelf a big, thick, blue book that said Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. There were two names on it: Wayne Grudem and John Piper. I had heard the latter name, not the former. But I had never heard of the topics to which that book was addressing. And I asked the staff member, “What is this book about?” And he said, “Well, it’s about complementarianism,” and I responded, “What in the world is that?” And he began to unpack it just a little bit to me that summer afternoon, and I stood there really mystified by the whole reality. I grew up in a conservative home and a conservative church, and I knew that generally, men were supposed to lead in the home, and in the church, and that women were not to preach, but little more than that.
As a college student in the late 1990s, the whole topic struck me as an awkward anachronism, a doctrinal hot potato, an angular, often inconvenient truth to which we were to hold. But I sensed then that men and ministers both would speak of these things only when necessary, and then do so only uncomfortably. And when it was necessary to speak to them, it would usually be with some glib, throwaway line along the lines that, “When we got married, I told my wife I would make all the major decisions, but in 30 years of marriage, there has never been a major decision!” That was my encounter and my understanding of complementarianism in the late 1990s.
Then you move into the early 2000s, and a huge surge of awareness — thanks to CBMW primarily — took place. The TNIV pushback even had leading voices arguing for a return to the phrase and the concept of “biblical patriarchy,” a call to recover that term. That concept and the room seemed set. And it seemed as though this renewal of Reformed theology, the New Calvinism, that complementarianism was really part and parcel of that movement. Yet over the past five to ten years, it seems to me that we have had a swing of momentum: self-inflicted wounds; moral failings by leaders; crudeness and rudeness on social media and other places; militant egalitarianism that is always on the hunt for a complementarian to shoot down. All of this and more presents those of us who are complementarians with significant challenges.
Then we come to my own denomination — speaking of challenges — the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In recent years, the issue has become fever pitch. It really burst just a few years ago when Beth Moore tweeted in the lead-up to Mother’s Day that she would be preaching. And that set off a conflagration. Then, of course, more recently, Rick Warren announced an exegetical breakthrough, not just permitting women to preach and to lead in the church, but necessitating they do so.
Before us now is the Law Amendment that many of you have heard about, and read about — an admittedly blunt instrument, but seemingly a necessary one. And some of those opposed to it are making the argument that sounds something like this: “This is a red herring in our convention, because only a handful of churches are in danger of being afoul of the BF&M 2000. But if we adopt it, we will alienate an intolerably high number of churches that would then be outside of the BF&M 2000.” Well, which is it? We are a free church denomination, and we understand that swapping inconsistent nomenclature is part of that cooperation. We seek to find reasons to work together, not to come apart. But our response should be to educate, not to excuse, to reaffirm and rearticulate, not to shrug off, not to say things like, “On the one hand, these issues are rooted in the created order, but as long as we do not violate it too often, then it is no big deal.”
Four Observations on the Lay of the Land
In what follows, I will make four observations as I see the lay of the land, and then bring six words of challenge to card-carrying complementarians.

America Is Spiraling into Greater Darkness than Any of Us Fully Realize

I was in the United Kingdom recently for our acquisition of a Spurgeon collection at MBTS. I was in the London area in a car with a minister from there. We were at a red light, and to the left of the light was a large building with a sign. On the sign was a man — clearly a man with large muscles and a beard, exuding masculinity in every way by the muscles and the facial hair — wearing lingerie. The minister said to me, “You know, Jason, America has exported that to us.” It struck me at that moment not only was he right, but he was tragically so, because until very recently we were on the receiving end of such exports: Europe sent us their nonsense. Now we are sending ours to them. We used to be the arsenal of democracy. We used to export virtue. Now we are the arsenal of hedonism, exporting perversion.

The Greatest Threat to Complementarianism Is Not That We Fail to Persuade the Culture, but That We Fail to Persuade Our Own Families and Churches

In the lead-up to America’s interest in World War II, FDR famously observed that to be the President in these times required that the President be the Educator in Chief. And for us in the room who love our sons, daughters, spouses, congregations, and extended family, my great concern is not so much that the culture will not hear and heed, but that our own loved ones and our own churches are not hearing from us, and thus not heeding accordingly the clear teachings of Scripture.

There Is No Mushy Middle

Stop trying to find the mushy middle. If you want to see people looking for it, you do not have to attend a feminist conference these days. You just have to attend ETS. But there is, in the final analysis, no mushy middle. That phrase first hit me over a decade ago when I had just moved to Kansas City.
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