October 24, 2025 • 26 mins
JesusX30 Challenge—Scene 16: THE REFINING FIRE
1. Key Texts
Mark 7:1–30—Purity Laws, Syrophoenician Woman
Matthew 15:1–28—What Defiles, Gentile Woman’s Faith
Mark 8:1–33—Feeding of the 4,000, Peter’s Confession, Jesus’ Rebuke
Matthew 16:13–26—Peter’s Confession, Call to the Cross
Isaiah 29:13—“This people honors me with their lips”
Deuteronomy 8:3—“Man does not live by bread alone”
2. Outline / Notes
Date & Place
• Late summer 28 AD, northern Galilee and borderlands.
• Jesus expands his campaign beyond Jewish territory—crossing into Gentile regions.
Main Accounts
A. Purity–Redefining Holiness
• Pharisees confront Jesus about ritual handwashing.
• Ritual purity had become a badge of faithfulness under foreign rule—a way to preserve Jewish identity.
• Jesus quotes Isaiah 29.
• He turns the purity system inside out.
• “Thus Jesus declared all foods clean.”
• Jesus dismantles the system that decides who has access to God based on external rules.
B. The Gentile Woman – Faith Beyond Boundaries
• Jesus travels north into Tyre and Sidon—Gentile territory.
• A Syrophoenician woman begs for her daughter’s healing.
• Jesus tests her with a hard saying: “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
• She replies, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”
• Her humility and persistence reveal profound faith.
• Jesus honors her: “For this saying, your daughter is healed.”
C. The Feeding of the 4,000
• In the Decapolis, Jesus repeats the feeding miracle.
• The symbolism: twelve (first feeding) = Israel; seven = fullness of the nations.
• Even the word for “basket” (spuris) shifts from the Jewish term (kophinos) used earlier—hinting at Gentile context.
• God’s table has no borders.
D. The Blind Man of Bethsaida – Partial Vision, Gradual Clarity
• In Jewish territory, Jesus heals a blind man in two stages.
• First, partial sight: “I see people, but they look like trees walking.”
• Then full sight: “He saw everything clearly.”
• Disciples are like this man—seeing, still blurry in understanding.
• Spiritual vision often comes in stages, not instantly.
E. Peter’s Confession and the Rebuke
• In Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks, “Who do you say I am?”
• Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
• Jesus affirms—but redefines it: “The Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, and be killed.”
• Peter rebukes Jesus—he can’t accept a suffering Messiah.
• Jesus responds sharply: “Get behind me, Satan.”
• The temptation is the same one from the wilderness.
• Jesus calls all followers to the same path: “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”
3. Exegetical Insight
• Greek katharizō (“to make clean”) in Mark 7:19—Jesus redefines ritual purity.
• “Children’s bread” (Mk 7:27) = covenant blessing; “dogs” (kynaria) = diminutive, suggesting “house dogs,” not total rejection.
• “Seven baskets” (Mk 8:8) echoes Gentile inclusion—seven nations of Canaan (Deut. 7:1).
• “Get behind me, Satan” (hupage opisō mou) = “fall in line again as follower.”
4. Reflection Questions
• What “purity systems” or boundaries still shape how you think about holiness?
• Where might Jesus be asking you to cross a line—geographically, socially, or spiritually?
• How do you respond when God’s call challenges your assumptions?
• When have you, like Peter, said the right thing but misunderstood what it meant?
• What would it mean for you to take up your cross—not symbolically, but in practice?
5. Action Step / Challenge
• Read Mark 7–8 slowly, paying attention to the shift to the Gentiles.
•
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Have you ever had a moment of clarity, like something just
clicked? One of those aha moments, only
to realize later that you were still missing the point?
Maybe you said the right words, or you took the right step, but
deep down your assumptions hadn't really changed.
That's where we find the disciples in this scene.
(00:30):
Peter finally puts it into words.
Jesus, you're the Messiah, the son of the living God.
It's the it's the moment that they've been building toward
everybody. You you can imagine all the
disciples around or are like, wow, he really said it out loud.
But almost instantly it becomes clear even though they're using
the right vocabulary to describeJesus, they're still trapped in
(00:52):
the wrong framework. What's up everybody?
I'm Tyson put off. This is scene 16 of the Jesus
X30 challenge. And in this episode, we're going
to follow Jesus into some of themost intense and eye opening
moments of his, his campaign in the northern area of the
Galilee, from purity debates andGentile miracles to mountains of
(01:16):
glory. And he rebukes Satan.
And this scene is all about refinement.
The previous scene was about sifting where Jesus thinned out
his following of disciples. And now he starts to refine
things because from here on out,it's just going to get more
intense, more dangerous, and he needs to have full assurance
(01:37):
that his disciples are ready forwhat's ahead.
But this scene also is going to force you and me to ask, what
assumptions are we still holdingon to?
Even after we've confessed who Jesus is, even after we claim to
follow him and believe in him, what assumptions are we still
holding about him that may not align with who he really is?
(01:57):
So there are moments in any movement when the heat really
gets turned up, when clarity comes not through calm
explanations but through pressure, when something gets
burned away and what's left is either real or not right.
And that's exactly what's happening in this scene.
Jesus is beginning to separate those who are drawn to the
Kingdom from those who are stillclinging the systems and
(02:20):
expectations. They can't survive the fire.
This isn't about theology or miracles anymore.
This is about refinement and it's it's personal.
So we're still in the Galilee, technically the northern edges
of it, near the Borderlands around the sea, just before
Jesus makes his final turn S toward Jerusalem.
And at this point in that campaign, things are heating up.
(02:42):
The crowds have grown. Jesus has sifted them.
So he still got some really fired up followers around him.
The tensions are growing with the religious authorities and
political authorities, and they're nearing a boiling point.
And now the disciples are about to be pushed into a deeper
understanding of what this wholething is really about.
(03:04):
And it all begins with a confrontation about purity.
The Pharisees come to Jesus witha challenge.
They've noticed that his disciples are eating without
performing the proper hand washing rituals.
It's it's not a matter of hygiene, but it's a ritual of
cleanness. And in their world, these
traditions weren't optional really.
They had they had become the markers of covenant
(03:25):
faithfulness. So they demonstrated that you
were one of God's people, and especially under Roman
oppression, maintaining these types of purity laws had become
a way to preserve identity and to resist assimilation into the
broader worldly cultures of the time.
We do this because it helps us stay and look and identify as
(03:47):
different from everyone else. So it made sense on that level.
So when Jesus doesn't play along, the leaders see it as
more than disrespect. But this is a threat to their
their own identity and survival as a people more broadly.
And Jesus's response is is direct and devastating.
(04:07):
And he quotes Isaiah and he accuses them of honoring God
with their lips while their hearts are far away.
And then he turns the whole purity system inside out.
And he tells the crowd that it'snot what goes into a person that
defiles them, but what comes out.
What matters isn't what you eat or touch.
It's about what you harbor in your heart and how you treat
others. OK, This is the theme of his
(04:27):
entire message in public campaign for us.
That sounds obvious, right? Especially Christianized world.
We look at all these rituals that the that the Jewish people
did in Jesus day and and we criticize them as being what we
call legalistic right? That term sound familiar, but
but in that setting, that's not what this is about.
(04:49):
And it's not Jesus criticizing the rituals themselves, because
Jesus himself performed most of the Jewish rituals.
He didn't do some of them at keymoments because he was trying to
generate controversy like like he is here.
But Jesus was a Jewish man doingJewish things.
OK. So it wasn't that that he was
upset about. It was the way these were being
(05:10):
used to oppress, to keep people out, to push people out who who
maybe didn't have the means, didn't have the right
opportunity, opportunities to dothe rituals in the way that some
expected them to do. And then those, those people
were being pushed to the marginsor they were, they were being
kept out of the temple worship or kept out of the synagogues.
(05:31):
And that's where Jesus says enough is enough.
It's not about that. It's about how you treat people.
It's about what's in your heart because what's in your heart
leads to how you treat people. So in that setting, what Jesus
is doing is radical. And again, he's not just
questioning traditions, he's dismantling a whole, an entire
system of access to God. If what defiles a person comes
(05:56):
from within jealousy, greed, slander, pride, then purity
isn't about staying separate from unclean things.
It's about confronting what's broken inside ourselves and
inside our culture and community.
And that's not just a change in the rules, It's a, it's a, it's
an entire redefinition of holiness itself.
So Mark adds a line in his description of what's going on
(06:18):
here that makes the implicationseven clearer.
He writes, thus Jesus declared all foods clean.
And that that little sentence ishuge.
It signals a turning point. Jesus isn't building his
movement on categories of clean and unclean, or one nationality
versus another nationality, or one way of approaching God
(06:38):
versus another way of approaching God, or sacred
versus secular. He's creating an entirely new
system in this moment, and he's not saying you can't practice
this way. He never once says that.
He's saying your way of practicing isn't the only way,
is what he's saying. And he's saying if your way of
practicing misrepresents God or prevents someone else from
(07:01):
getting to God the way they're trying to do, then you're
overstepping your bounds. And so he's basically creating a
system, a new new system, a new society, a new way of
worshipping, a new way of going about being human.
So right after this, Jesus puts this message into action.
(07:21):
He leaves the Galilee and he enters into Gentile territory.
He goes N toward Tyre and Sidon with these are Phoenician cities
on the coast. They're outside of the usual
boundaries of his campaign. And in that region, he meets a
woman, and she's Greek. She's 0, Phoenician by
background, and she comes to Jesus begging for help.
(07:42):
She says my daughter is tormented by a demon and in a
moment of kind of a symbolic act, not not a not a moment that
demonstrates a lack of compassion, but instead it's
sort of a symbolic act to to, tomake a statement to those who
are around. Jesus sort of brushes her off at
first. He says it's not right to take
(08:03):
the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.
And it's a pretty harsh line. And it's it's kind of
uncomfortable to hear. And I've heard it misrepresented
in in some pretty bad ways. But this woman doesn't back
down. That's part of the key to this
interaction. And she says even the dogs eat
the crumbs that fall from the table.
(08:25):
At that point, the whole conversation shifts.
Jesus's approach to her and his demeanor shifts.
And Jesus turns from making thiskind of snide, harsh remark
against her to praising her faith.
And he says, hey, your daughter is healed.
And something shifts, not just for her, but for the movement
itself. That Gentile woman becomes the
(08:47):
first person in this scene who fully understands the generosity
of the Kingdom. The elite had rejected Jesus
over matters of hand washing. But this outsider, this foreign
woman, this one, this woman who's not one of us, she gets
it. And Jesus honors her faith.
And not only that, but he heals her daughter, delivers her from
(09:08):
this demon. It's a powerful moment and it's
one that I think shows us something essential about how
Jesus operates. He's not just crossing into
Gentile territory geographically.
He's expanding the kingdom's reach.
He's showing his disciples. He's showing all of those who
are following him and looking onthat faith isn't about
ethnicity. It's not about nationality, it's
(09:29):
not about citizenship. It's not about status or ritual
background or economic wealth orpolitical affiliation.
There are no boundaries that exist in Jesus Kingdom and there
are certainly no boundaries thatwe can establish to keep one
person out or to push one persondown or to separate Jesus from
(09:50):
from those who love him. And he says this woman's faith
outshines all of yours. And from there he goes on to
travel through the region of what we call the Decapolis.
It's another Gentile heavy area east of the sea.
And he continues to heal. He opens ears, he he restores
the broken. The Gospels say the people were
(10:12):
astonished beyond measure. And they don't just marvel at
his power. They praise God because of what
he's doing and because of Jesus.Even among the Gentiles, the
works of Jesus are revealing thetrue nature of God.
So these are people who don't follow the God of Israel, who
now recognize the power and the reality of the God of Israel.
And then in another moment that mirrors an earlier miracle,
(10:36):
Jesus feeds another huge crowd. This time it's 4000 people and
the details are different and and some of those matter.
First feeding had 12 baskets leftover which is symbolic maybe
of the 12 tribes of Israel. This one has seven baskets
leftover, which is a number often used in Jewish texts to
(10:57):
refer to the fullness of the nations.
Even the word for basket is different here than it was
before. The Greek word spurice instead
of coffinos which is a type of basket typically used by non
Jews in Jesus's day. So the message that is being
communicated and here is pretty clear, this Kingdom is for
(11:17):
everyone, and Jesus isn't just saying it, he's enacting it.
I think we as modern day Christian interpreters, we have
to hear Jesus say it explicitly in order for us to say, OK,
yeah. And even then, I would say we
tend to ignore a lot of what Jesus says explicitly.
But even when he doesn't in a situation like this, he's
(11:39):
actually enacting what he's trying to communicate to his
followers, including us. And disciples are, are still
trying to catch up. They're they're understanding,
but it's coming in stages. And Jesus seems to know that if
this is part of of what he's dealing with in his campaign,
it's, it's this process of expansion and inclusion and its
(12:00):
tension with the elite. And it's also just like trying
to keep his disciples from just like throwing in the towel
because it's too confusing. So the earlier scenes showed
Jesus as this provider and king.This scene is a fire.
It's a testing ground. It's a place where a lot of the
assumptions are continuing to beburned away, just like they were
(12:23):
in the previous scene. What type of king is Jesus?
He burned away a lot of assumptions and
misunderstandings. Same thing is taking place here
and I think that is not just a look at the dumb disciples.
They just can't get it. I think this this speaks to us
as well because I think all of us carry around some version of
the Pharisees impulse. We all build systems.
(12:45):
We all like systems that are already in place, whether those
are religious systems in the form of your denomination or
your, your tradition, political systems, whether that's
Republican, Democrat, this or that political system, social
systems. We like to hang out with people
we know and then we look at the others and the other crowds and
we think, oh, they're different from us.
(13:05):
So, so let's keep them at Bay. And we, we like the systems that
we're a part of, right? That's external systems, but we
also have internal systems too. We draw lines around holiness,
don't we? We like to make holiness
something that I fit into, but that people who do things
differently or look different from me or whatever it is
(13:28):
believe different from me. They don't do holiness quite
like I do. We make lists about who
qualifies for holiness and who fits and who doesn't.
But Jesus keeps crossing those lines.
He heals the wrong people. He praises the wrong people.
He invites the wrong people in. And then he reminds his
followers. And he reminds us, too, that
(13:50):
what really makes someone clean or unclean or a follower or not
a follower isn't typically what we imagine it to be.
It's not their background, it's their heart.
It's their loyalty. The woman from Tyre got it.
The crowds in the Decapolis knewthis.
But it's it's weird. But the disciples, the ones
(14:11):
closest to Jesus, still don't get it.
They still have to have their eyes open and, and Jesus will
oblige them. That's what he's going to do
next. They go on this kind of world
tour, not really, but geographical crossing some some
boundaries. And they come back to Bethsaida,
back on the Jewish side of the lake.
And some of the people bring a blind man to Jesus, begging him
(14:32):
to to touch him in healing. And Jesus does something a
little unusual. He takes the man outside of the
village away from the crowd. And this is interesting.
This is the only two stage healing in the entire gospels.
You remember this story. So Jesus spits on the man's
eyes. He lays hands on him and he
asks, do you see anything? And the man answers, I see
(14:55):
people, but they look like treeswalking around.
So Jesus is not alone. There are people witnessing
this. And so he does it again.
He lays hands on him again and this time his vision is fully
restored. OK.
It takes two tries at this, though.
I think this is fascinating because I think Jesus does this
on purpose. He knows his disciples are
(15:15):
there. He knows the responses he's
getting to this point. He's trying to sift and refine
his followers and and really teach them at this moment and
prep them for what's about to happen to him and to his
movement. It's going to get tough.
And there's something deeply symbolic happening here too.
So this isn't just about the blind man, it's about the
(15:36):
disciples. So they've seen so much by now.
They've seen miracles, they've seen feedings, teachings.
Jesus has gone to battle againstthe the forces of chaos in the
form of the sea 2 Times Now, Matthew 8, Matthew 14, and he's
defeated at both times. He's cast out demons.
He's just completely rocked their world on so many levels,
(15:56):
but they still don't see him clearly.
They're, they're like this man. They're partially healed, but
still blurry. They see it, but they still
don't, not clearly. And Jesus knows it.
And rather than rush them to clarity, he continues to walk
them through the process. I think sometimes understanding
(16:18):
needs to happen in stages. You can't just expect
understanding to happen all at once, but it needs to be a
continual process. And I think that's a piece of
it. And I think the other side of it
is as soon as you think that youunderstand it well enough,
that's when Jesus says you don'tget it.
(16:40):
The disciples have have started to get it.
They declared him the Son of God, but they still don't get
it. And I think that spiritual
vision, it's not instant and it's not permanent.
As soon as you think you know itall, you don't get it.
If we believe in an eternal God infinite, the second we have a
(17:04):
grasp on Him, or we think we do,the second we think we get it
completely, that's the second wehave missed the point.
And that's part of the message Jesus is enacting in this
healing. And I think he knows that with
regard to his disciples, just like with us, it's not this
instantaneous thing. This understanding is shaped by
(17:25):
repeated encounters and small revelations and slowly letting
go of what we think we know. Even when we're right, there's
always more to know. And that process reaches a
breaking point when Jesus leads him N to Caesarea Philippi.
I think he chooses Caesarea Philippi because Caesarea
Philippi is a Roman city and it's loaded with imperial
(17:47):
symbolism. There's shrines to Caesar
around. There's temples to pan the Roman
God. There's a hot spot of Roman
religious political power. Exactly the kind of place that
represents everything oppressiveand idolatrous about the world
they lived in. OK, but it's also beautiful, but
it also represents everything Jesus is against.
(18:08):
It's here in the shadow of thosealtars where Jesus turns to his
disciples and he asks them a pointed question.
Remember this? Who do you say that I am?
And the disciples fumble throughsome answers where some say John
the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say one of the prophets.
And in other words, they know Jesus is special, but they
(18:30):
haven't put a finger on it yet. And then Peter steps up and he
says this. Remember, Peter, he says you are
the Messiah, the son of the living God.
That's a breakthrough moment. Finally, one of them says it.
Not just a healer, not just a prophet, not just a teacher, not
just a master, not just rabbi, Messiah, son of the living God.
(18:54):
And Jesus affirms it. And then immediately Jesus has
to continue teaching because as soon as Peter thinks he's got
it, that's the moment where Jesus, realizing Peter doesn't
get it. Still, immediately Jesus starts
redefining what all of this confession that Peter just just
proclaimed, what it actually means.
(19:15):
So the very next thing he tells them is that the Son of Man must
suffer, must be rejected, must be killed, and then he's going
to rise from the dead. OK.
He starts to explain what this is, what that all means.
This is what it means to be the Messiah, the anointed one of
God. And this is where Peter, who a
moment ago got it, had this aha moment blessed by God.
(19:38):
Yes, this is where Peter starts to collapse and misunderstand
it. So one moment he's confessing
Jesus as the Messiah, the next he's pulling Jesus aside.
This is in Matthew 16. And he's saying, hey, hey, hey,
hey, Jesus, huh. Suffering.
No, I will never let you suffer.That's not going to happen.
You might think that that's that's going to happen.
(20:00):
I'm not going to let it happen. The point is that suffering
doesn't fit Peter's framework for messianic victory.
Suffering doesn't fit within that framework.
Weakness doesn't fit within thatframework.
Suffering means you're losing loss, losing defeat.
(20:22):
That doesn't fit within the way Peter understands the Messiah.
Someone who's anointed by God doesn't lose.
Someone who's anointed by God wins.
Someone who's anointed by God isthe victor, not the victim.
And Jesus says, huh? And he says, get behind me,
Satan. And this is harsh, but it's,
it's very revealing. Peter isn't being malicious.
(20:43):
He's being sincere. He's trying to protect Jesus.
He's trying to protect the mission.
He's trying to keep Jesus on a path to victory, to triumph.
When we go and we take, we stormthe city and we take over
Jerusalem and we oust the Romansand we install God back in the
temple. And in doing so, though, he's
unknowingly echoing the same temptation that Jesus faced in
(21:04):
the wilderness. Do you remember that at the
beginning of Jesus's public campaign when he goes out into
the wilderness for four, 30 daysand he's confronted by Satan,
Jesus was tempted by Satan to seize the crown without the
cross, to have the power, without the pain, to to be given
the keys to the Kingdom by just stepping into the world's
(21:27):
already established powers and power structures.
And Jesus recognizes that voice for what it is in in the words
of Peter. And he knows that that's a
distortion of who Jesus is as king and the nature of his
Kingdom. And he says, get behind me,
Satan. And Jesus goes even further.
He turns to the crowd and he just says it says it pretty
(21:48):
clearly. If anyone wants to follow me,
let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.
And this isn't a message that's gonna garner a lot of positive
followers. If I have a product I'm trying
to sell, a health product that'sguaranteed to make you less
healthy, lead to suffering, that's not gonna sell.
(22:13):
The crowds are expecting Jesus to say something Messiah like
king like, like let's go fight Rome, take up your sword and
let's go kick them out of our house.
But instead he comes along and he says, take up your cross and
follow me. And if you're not willing to do
that, then you are not one of myfollowers.
And the meaning of this is pretty intense.
Not for us because we wear crosses on jewelry.
(22:35):
We were across necklaces and in earrings.
And the cross for us has been sanitized just like Jesus has
been sanitized and spiritualize,like the cross was spiritual.
Jesus went and he died for my sins on the cross.
And it was, it's the symbol. And he really suffered on it.
We admit that and we talk about his physical suffering.
But the cross in the ancient world was a brutal method, not
(22:57):
only putting someone to death, but of torture.
And it was a tool that was used by empires to make sure that you
know how strong we are and you don't mess around in our
territory. And if you do, if you try to
rise up against us, if you try to rebel, if you try to break
our rules, you will end up on a cross.
And Jesus is literally saying, hey, if you don't sacrifice
(23:21):
yourself for my sake, you can't be one of my followers.
Once again, Jesus is making the point clear.
As soon as you think you have, you have me figured out.
You've missed it and I think that's just the real theme of
this entire scene, isn't it? The fire has been lit.
Jesus is refining. He's purifying systems,
(23:43):
boundaries, expectations and andeven the disciples understanding
of who he is and what it means to follow him.
Nothing shallow will will survive the journey ahead.
Jesus knows this the scene Luke mentions that at this at a
certain point, he turns his facetoward Jerusalem.
He knows that the path from hereon out ends in Jerusalem, and
(24:08):
nothing that's in Jerusalem is going to be easy, not for him
and not for his disciples. But in all of this, Jesus knows
that what he's doing, his tactics, his demonstrations, his
declarations are starting to work.
He's starting to create this core with his disciples and
those closest to him that's going to survive.
(24:30):
I think he's starting to become more confident that even though
they're going to falter at the end and they're gonna abandon
him when he goes and gets arrested and is put on the cross
and they're all gonna scatter. But I think he understands that
the bigger picture is starting to take shape and that all of
what he's doing is starting to work.
(24:50):
It's one thing to call Jesus theMessiah, to believe in him, to
believe that that's what he is. It's another thing to follow him
when that Messiah walks straightto the cross and demands that
you and I take up our crosses like him and follow him.
Peter's confession is is more ofa breakthrough, but it's not a
(25:11):
finish line. It's not the end.
He sees something that's true, but he doesn't quite get what
that means. He says it.
Yeah. The confession.
Yeah. Yeah.
He he gets that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the
living God, but he doesn't quiteget what that means.
And I think that's an issue thata lot of us are facing right
(25:31):
now. We look at Jesus and we say the
right things and we confess, yeah, he's the Messiah.
He's the Son of God, He's the Christ.
He's my Lord and Savior. And Jesus says, yes, you're
right, you're blessed by God, but you missed the point.
I think a lot of us are stuck inthat tension where we also know
the verses, we know the take up your cross.
(25:53):
We know the love of your neighbor.
We know the love of your enemy and, and the commands that Jesus
gives us on what it looks like to follow him.
And, and we're stuck in this, this tension.
And I think Jesus is, is trying to move us situation by
situation, encounter by encounter, scene by scene, from
(26:13):
just saying it to understanding it, from from just seeing trees
walking around to seeing things clearly.
And I wonder the next time Jesusasks you or me, who do you say
that I am? If we confess correctly, if we
were to write down with pen and paper what we mean by that, what
would that Jesus look like? What would it mean that we say
(26:36):
Jesus is the Christ Lord, Savior, Son of God?
Lego mod. Go and learn.
Come back for scene 17 of the Jesus X30 Challenge.
Have you ever had a moment of clarity, like something just
clicked? One of those aha moments, only
to realize later that you were still missing the point?
Maybe you said the right words, or you took the right step, but
deep down your assumptions hadn't really changed.
That's where we find the disciples in this scene.
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Peter finally puts it into words.
Jesus, you're the Messiah, the son of the living God.
It's the it's the moment that they've been building toward
everybody. You you can imagine all the
disciples around or are like, wow, he really said it out loud.
But almost instantly it becomes clear even though they're using
the right vocabulary to describeJesus, they're still trapped in
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the wrong framework. What's up everybody?
I'm Tyson put off. This is scene 16 of the Jesus
X30 challenge. And in this episode, we're going
to follow Jesus into some of themost intense and eye opening
moments of his, his campaign in the northern area of the
Galilee, from purity debates andGentile miracles to mountains of
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glory. And he rebukes Satan.
And this scene is all about refinement.
The previous scene was about sifting where Jesus thinned out
his following of disciples. And now he starts to refine
things because from here on out,it's just going to get more
intense, more dangerous, and he needs to have full assurance
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that his disciples are ready forwhat's ahead.
But this scene also is going to force you and me to ask, what
assumptions are we still holdingon to?
Even after we've confessed who Jesus is, even after we claim to
follow him and believe in him, what assumptions are we still
holding about him that may not align with who he really is?
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So there are moments in any movement when the heat really
gets turned up, when clarity comes not through calm
explanations but through pressure, when something gets
burned away and what's left is either real or not right.
And that's exactly what's happening in this scene.
Jesus is beginning to separate those who are drawn to the
Kingdom from those who are stillclinging the systems and
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expectations. They can't survive the fire.
This isn't about theology or miracles anymore.
This is about refinement and it's it's personal.
So we're still in the Galilee, technically the northern edges
of it, near the Borderlands around the sea, just before
Jesus makes his final turn S toward Jerusalem.
And at this point in that campaign, things are heating up.
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The crowds have grown. Jesus has sifted them.
So he still got some really fired up followers around him.
The tensions are growing with the religious authorities and
political authorities, and they're nearing a boiling point.
And now the disciples are about to be pushed into a deeper
understanding of what this wholething is really about.
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And it all begins with a confrontation about purity.
The Pharisees come to Jesus witha challenge.
They've noticed that his disciples are eating without
performing the proper hand washing rituals.
It's it's not a matter of hygiene, but it's a ritual of
cleanness. And in their world, these
traditions weren't optional really.
They had they had become the markers of covenant
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faithfulness. So they demonstrated that you
were one of God's people, and especially under Roman
oppression, maintaining these types of purity laws had become
a way to preserve identity and to resist assimilation into the
broader worldly cultures of the time.
We do this because it helps us stay and look and identify as
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different from everyone else. So it made sense on that level.
So when Jesus doesn't play along, the leaders see it as
more than disrespect. But this is a threat to their
their own identity and survival as a people more broadly.
And Jesus's response is is direct and devastating.
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And he quotes Isaiah and he accuses them of honoring God
with their lips while their hearts are far away.
And then he turns the whole purity system inside out.
And he tells the crowd that it'snot what goes into a person that
defiles them, but what comes out.
What matters isn't what you eat or touch.
It's about what you harbor in your heart and how you treat
others. OK, This is the theme of his
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entire message in public campaign for us.
That sounds obvious, right? Especially Christianized world.
We look at all these rituals that the that the Jewish people
did in Jesus day and and we criticize them as being what we
call legalistic right? That term sound familiar, but
but in that setting, that's not what this is about.
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And it's not Jesus criticizing the rituals themselves, because
Jesus himself performed most of the Jewish rituals.
He didn't do some of them at keymoments because he was trying to
generate controversy like like he is here.
But Jesus was a Jewish man doingJewish things.
OK. So it wasn't that that he was
upset about. It was the way these were being
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used to oppress, to keep people out, to push people out who who
maybe didn't have the means, didn't have the right
opportunity, opportunities to dothe rituals in the way that some
expected them to do. And then those, those people
were being pushed to the marginsor they were, they were being
kept out of the temple worship or kept out of the synagogues.
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And that's where Jesus says enough is enough.
It's not about that. It's about how you treat people.
It's about what's in your heart because what's in your heart
leads to how you treat people. So in that setting, what Jesus
is doing is radical. And again, he's not just
questioning traditions, he's dismantling a whole, an entire
system of access to God. If what defiles a person comes
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from within jealousy, greed, slander, pride, then purity
isn't about staying separate from unclean things.
It's about confronting what's broken inside ourselves and
inside our culture and community.
And that's not just a change in the rules, It's a, it's a, it's
an entire redefinition of holiness itself.
So Mark adds a line in his description of what's going on
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here that makes the implicationseven clearer.
He writes, thus Jesus declared all foods clean.
And that that little sentence ishuge.
It signals a turning point. Jesus isn't building his
movement on categories of clean and unclean, or one nationality
versus another nationality, or one way of approaching God
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versus another way of approaching God, or sacred
versus secular. He's creating an entirely new
system in this moment, and he's not saying you can't practice
this way. He never once says that.
He's saying your way of practicing isn't the only way,
is what he's saying. And he's saying if your way of
practicing misrepresents God or prevents someone else from
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getting to God the way they're trying to do, then you're
overstepping your bounds. And so he's basically creating a
system, a new new system, a new society, a new way of
worshipping, a new way of going about being human.
So right after this, Jesus puts this message into action.
(07:21):
He leaves the Galilee and he enters into Gentile territory.
He goes N toward Tyre and Sidon with these are Phoenician cities
on the coast. They're outside of the usual
boundaries of his campaign. And in that region, he meets a
woman, and she's Greek. She's 0, Phoenician by
background, and she comes to Jesus begging for help.
(07:42):
She says my daughter is tormented by a demon and in a
moment of kind of a symbolic act, not not a not a moment that
demonstrates a lack of compassion, but instead it's
sort of a symbolic act to to, tomake a statement to those who
are around. Jesus sort of brushes her off at
first. He says it's not right to take
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the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.
And it's a pretty harsh line. And it's it's kind of
uncomfortable to hear. And I've heard it misrepresented
in in some pretty bad ways. But this woman doesn't back
down. That's part of the key to this
interaction. And she says even the dogs eat
the crumbs that fall from the table.
(08:25):
At that point, the whole conversation shifts.
Jesus's approach to her and his demeanor shifts.
And Jesus turns from making thiskind of snide, harsh remark
against her to praising her faith.
And he says, hey, your daughter is healed.
And something shifts, not just for her, but for the movement
itself. That Gentile woman becomes the
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first person in this scene who fully understands the generosity
of the Kingdom. The elite had rejected Jesus
over matters of hand washing. But this outsider, this foreign
woman, this one, this woman who's not one of us, she gets
it. And Jesus honors her faith.
And not only that, but he heals her daughter, delivers her from
(09:08):
this demon. It's a powerful moment and it's
one that I think shows us something essential about how
Jesus operates. He's not just crossing into
Gentile territory geographically.
He's expanding the kingdom's reach.
He's showing his disciples. He's showing all of those who
are following him and looking onthat faith isn't about
ethnicity. It's not about nationality, it's
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not about citizenship. It's not about status or ritual
background or economic wealth orpolitical affiliation.
There are no boundaries that exist in Jesus Kingdom and there
are certainly no boundaries thatwe can establish to keep one
person out or to push one persondown or to separate Jesus from
(09:50):
from those who love him. And he says this woman's faith
outshines all of yours. And from there he goes on to
travel through the region of what we call the Decapolis.
It's another Gentile heavy area east of the sea.
And he continues to heal. He opens ears, he he restores
the broken. The Gospels say the people were
(10:12):
astonished beyond measure. And they don't just marvel at
his power. They praise God because of what
he's doing and because of Jesus.Even among the Gentiles, the
works of Jesus are revealing thetrue nature of God.
So these are people who don't follow the God of Israel, who
now recognize the power and the reality of the God of Israel.
And then in another moment that mirrors an earlier miracle,
(10:36):
Jesus feeds another huge crowd. This time it's 4000 people and
the details are different and and some of those matter.
First feeding had 12 baskets leftover which is symbolic maybe
of the 12 tribes of Israel. This one has seven baskets
leftover, which is a number often used in Jewish texts to
(10:57):
refer to the fullness of the nations.
Even the word for basket is different here than it was
before. The Greek word spurice instead
of coffinos which is a type of basket typically used by non
Jews in Jesus's day. So the message that is being
communicated and here is pretty clear, this Kingdom is for
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everyone, and Jesus isn't just saying it, he's enacting it.
I think we as modern day Christian interpreters, we have
to hear Jesus say it explicitly in order for us to say, OK,
yeah. And even then, I would say we
tend to ignore a lot of what Jesus says explicitly.
But even when he doesn't in a situation like this, he's
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actually enacting what he's trying to communicate to his
followers, including us. And disciples are, are still
trying to catch up. They're they're understanding,
but it's coming in stages. And Jesus seems to know that if
this is part of of what he's dealing with in his campaign,
it's, it's this process of expansion and inclusion and its
(12:00):
tension with the elite. And it's also just like trying
to keep his disciples from just like throwing in the towel
because it's too confusing. So the earlier scenes showed
Jesus as this provider and king.This scene is a fire.
It's a testing ground. It's a place where a lot of the
assumptions are continuing to beburned away, just like they were
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in the previous scene. What type of king is Jesus?
He burned away a lot of assumptions and
misunderstandings. Same thing is taking place here
and I think that is not just a look at the dumb disciples.
They just can't get it. I think this this speaks to us
as well because I think all of us carry around some version of
the Pharisees impulse. We all build systems.
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We all like systems that are already in place, whether those
are religious systems in the form of your denomination or
your, your tradition, political systems, whether that's
Republican, Democrat, this or that political system, social
systems. We like to hang out with people
we know and then we look at the others and the other crowds and
we think, oh, they're different from us.
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So, so let's keep them at Bay. And we, we like the systems that
we're a part of, right? That's external systems, but we
also have internal systems too. We draw lines around holiness,
don't we? We like to make holiness
something that I fit into, but that people who do things
differently or look different from me or whatever it is
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believe different from me. They don't do holiness quite
like I do. We make lists about who
qualifies for holiness and who fits and who doesn't.
But Jesus keeps crossing those lines.
He heals the wrong people. He praises the wrong people.
He invites the wrong people in. And then he reminds his
followers. And he reminds us, too, that
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what really makes someone clean or unclean or a follower or not
a follower isn't typically what we imagine it to be.
It's not their background, it's their heart.
It's their loyalty. The woman from Tyre got it.
The crowds in the Decapolis knewthis.
But it's it's weird. But the disciples, the ones
(14:11):
closest to Jesus, still don't get it.
They still have to have their eyes open and, and Jesus will
oblige them. That's what he's going to do
next. They go on this kind of world
tour, not really, but geographical crossing some some
boundaries. And they come back to Bethsaida,
back on the Jewish side of the lake.
And some of the people bring a blind man to Jesus, begging him
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to to touch him in healing. And Jesus does something a
little unusual. He takes the man outside of the
village away from the crowd. And this is interesting.
This is the only two stage healing in the entire gospels.
You remember this story. So Jesus spits on the man's
eyes. He lays hands on him and he
asks, do you see anything? And the man answers, I see
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people, but they look like treeswalking around.
So Jesus is not alone. There are people witnessing
this. And so he does it again.
He lays hands on him again and this time his vision is fully
restored. OK.
It takes two tries at this, though.
I think this is fascinating because I think Jesus does this
on purpose. He knows his disciples are
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there. He knows the responses he's
getting to this point. He's trying to sift and refine
his followers and and really teach them at this moment and
prep them for what's about to happen to him and to his
movement. It's going to get tough.
And there's something deeply symbolic happening here too.
So this isn't just about the blind man, it's about the
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disciples. So they've seen so much by now.
They've seen miracles, they've seen feedings, teachings.
Jesus has gone to battle againstthe the forces of chaos in the
form of the sea 2 Times Now, Matthew 8, Matthew 14, and he's
defeated at both times. He's cast out demons.
He's just completely rocked their world on so many levels,
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but they still don't see him clearly.
They're, they're like this man. They're partially healed, but
still blurry. They see it, but they still
don't, not clearly. And Jesus knows it.
And rather than rush them to clarity, he continues to walk
them through the process. I think sometimes understanding
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needs to happen in stages. You can't just expect
understanding to happen all at once, but it needs to be a
continual process. And I think that's a piece of
it. And I think the other side of it
is as soon as you think that youunderstand it well enough,
that's when Jesus says you don'tget it.
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The disciples have have started to get it.
They declared him the Son of God, but they still don't get
it. And I think that spiritual
vision, it's not instant and it's not permanent.
As soon as you think you know itall, you don't get it.
If we believe in an eternal God infinite, the second we have a
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grasp on Him, or we think we do,the second we think we get it
completely, that's the second wehave missed the point.
And that's part of the message Jesus is enacting in this
healing. And I think he knows that with
regard to his disciples, just like with us, it's not this
instantaneous thing. This understanding is shaped by
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repeated encounters and small revelations and slowly letting
go of what we think we know. Even when we're right, there's
always more to know. And that process reaches a
breaking point when Jesus leads him N to Caesarea Philippi.
I think he chooses Caesarea Philippi because Caesarea
Philippi is a Roman city and it's loaded with imperial
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symbolism. There's shrines to Caesar
around. There's temples to pan the Roman
God. There's a hot spot of Roman
religious political power. Exactly the kind of place that
represents everything oppressiveand idolatrous about the world
they lived in. OK, but it's also beautiful, but
it also represents everything Jesus is against.
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It's here in the shadow of thosealtars where Jesus turns to his
disciples and he asks them a pointed question.
Remember this? Who do you say that I am?
And the disciples fumble throughsome answers where some say John
the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say one of the prophets.
And in other words, they know Jesus is special, but they
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haven't put a finger on it yet. And then Peter steps up and he
says this. Remember, Peter, he says you are
the Messiah, the son of the living God.
That's a breakthrough moment. Finally, one of them says it.
Not just a healer, not just a prophet, not just a teacher, not
just a master, not just rabbi, Messiah, son of the living God.
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And Jesus affirms it. And then immediately Jesus has
to continue teaching because as soon as Peter thinks he's got
it, that's the moment where Jesus, realizing Peter doesn't
get it. Still, immediately Jesus starts
redefining what all of this confession that Peter just just
proclaimed, what it actually means.
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So the very next thing he tells them is that the Son of Man must
suffer, must be rejected, must be killed, and then he's going
to rise from the dead. OK.
He starts to explain what this is, what that all means.
This is what it means to be the Messiah, the anointed one of
God. And this is where Peter, who a
moment ago got it, had this aha moment blessed by God.
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Yes, this is where Peter starts to collapse and misunderstand
it. So one moment he's confessing
Jesus as the Messiah, the next he's pulling Jesus aside.
This is in Matthew 16. And he's saying, hey, hey, hey,
hey, Jesus, huh. Suffering.
No, I will never let you suffer.That's not going to happen.
You might think that that's that's going to happen.
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I'm not going to let it happen. The point is that suffering
doesn't fit Peter's framework for messianic victory.
Suffering doesn't fit within that framework.
Weakness doesn't fit within thatframework.
Suffering means you're losing loss, losing defeat.
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That doesn't fit within the way Peter understands the Messiah.
Someone who's anointed by God doesn't lose.
Someone who's anointed by God wins.
Someone who's anointed by God isthe victor, not the victim.
And Jesus says, huh? And he says, get behind me,
Satan. And this is harsh, but it's,
it's very revealing. Peter isn't being malicious.
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He's being sincere. He's trying to protect Jesus.
He's trying to protect the mission.
He's trying to keep Jesus on a path to victory, to triumph.
When we go and we take, we stormthe city and we take over
Jerusalem and we oust the Romansand we install God back in the
temple. And in doing so, though, he's
unknowingly echoing the same temptation that Jesus faced in
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the wilderness. Do you remember that at the
beginning of Jesus's public campaign when he goes out into
the wilderness for four, 30 daysand he's confronted by Satan,
Jesus was tempted by Satan to seize the crown without the
cross, to have the power, without the pain, to to be given
the keys to the Kingdom by just stepping into the world's
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already established powers and power structures.
And Jesus recognizes that voice for what it is in in the words
of Peter. And he knows that that's a
distortion of who Jesus is as king and the nature of his
Kingdom. And he says, get behind me,
Satan. And Jesus goes even further.
He turns to the crowd and he just says it says it pretty
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clearly. If anyone wants to follow me,
let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.
And this isn't a message that's gonna garner a lot of positive
followers. If I have a product I'm trying
to sell, a health product that'sguaranteed to make you less
healthy, lead to suffering, that's not gonna sell.
(22:13):
The crowds are expecting Jesus to say something Messiah like
king like, like let's go fight Rome, take up your sword and
let's go kick them out of our house.
But instead he comes along and he says, take up your cross and
follow me. And if you're not willing to do
that, then you are not one of myfollowers.
And the meaning of this is pretty intense.
Not for us because we wear crosses on jewelry.
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We were across necklaces and in earrings.
And the cross for us has been sanitized just like Jesus has
been sanitized and spiritualize,like the cross was spiritual.
Jesus went and he died for my sins on the cross.
And it was, it's the symbol. And he really suffered on it.
We admit that and we talk about his physical suffering.
But the cross in the ancient world was a brutal method, not
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only putting someone to death, but of torture.
And it was a tool that was used by empires to make sure that you
know how strong we are and you don't mess around in our
territory. And if you do, if you try to
rise up against us, if you try to rebel, if you try to break
our rules, you will end up on a cross.
And Jesus is literally saying, hey, if you don't sacrifice
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yourself for my sake, you can't be one of my followers.
Once again, Jesus is making the point clear.
As soon as you think you have, you have me figured out.
You've missed it and I think that's just the real theme of
this entire scene, isn't it? The fire has been lit.
Jesus is refining. He's purifying systems,
(23:43):
boundaries, expectations and andeven the disciples understanding
of who he is and what it means to follow him.
Nothing shallow will will survive the journey ahead.
Jesus knows this the scene Luke mentions that at this at a
certain point, he turns his facetoward Jerusalem.
He knows that the path from hereon out ends in Jerusalem, and
(24:08):
nothing that's in Jerusalem is going to be easy, not for him
and not for his disciples. But in all of this, Jesus knows
that what he's doing, his tactics, his demonstrations, his
declarations are starting to work.
He's starting to create this core with his disciples and
those closest to him that's going to survive.
(24:30):
I think he's starting to become more confident that even though
they're going to falter at the end and they're gonna abandon
him when he goes and gets arrested and is put on the cross
and they're all gonna scatter. But I think he understands that
the bigger picture is starting to take shape and that all of
what he's doing is starting to work.
(24:50):
It's one thing to call Jesus theMessiah, to believe in him, to
believe that that's what he is. It's another thing to follow him
when that Messiah walks straightto the cross and demands that
you and I take up our crosses like him and follow him.
Peter's confession is is more ofa breakthrough, but it's not a
(25:11):
finish line. It's not the end.
He sees something that's true, but he doesn't quite get what
that means. He says it.
Yeah. The confession.
Yeah. Yeah.
He he gets that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the
living God, but he doesn't quiteget what that means.
And I think that's an issue thata lot of us are facing right
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now. We look at Jesus and we say the
right things and we confess, yeah, he's the Messiah.
He's the Son of God, He's the Christ.
He's my Lord and Savior. And Jesus says, yes, you're
right, you're blessed by God, but you missed the point.
I think a lot of us are stuck inthat tension where we also know
the verses, we know the take up your cross.
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We know the love of your neighbor.
We know the love of your enemy and, and the commands that Jesus
gives us on what it looks like to follow him.
And, and we're stuck in this, this tension.
And I think Jesus is, is trying to move us situation by
situation, encounter by encounter, scene by scene, from
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just saying it to understanding it, from from just seeing trees
walking around to seeing things clearly.
And I wonder the next time Jesusasks you or me, who do you say
that I am? If we confess correctly, if we
were to write down with pen and paper what we mean by that, what
would that Jesus look like? What would it mean that we say
(26:36):
Jesus is the Christ Lord, Savior, Son of God?
Lego mod. Go and learn.
Come back for scene 17 of the Jesus X30 Challenge.
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