Hidden from the Wise

[Music] okay there Jesus is talking about in these verses they're kind of mysterious right and they're a bit cryptic so let's try to unpack them the first part of this teaching is known as Jesus's Thanksgiving prayer we don't get very many examples of Jesus speaking directly to the Father in prayer in the Gospels I mean think about it for a second Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer but that's him teaching the disciples how to pray we never see Jesus praying the Lord's Prayer where do we see him praying well we see him praying in the Garden of Gethsemane in the Gospel of Matthew Mark we see in Luke we see him praying to the father and his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17 but we don't often get glimpses into Jesus's prayer life so to speak so in this case we have what's called the Thanksgiving prayer where Jesus cries out in in a prayer of thanksgiving and joy that God has done something is an interesting pray says I thank you Father Lord of Heaven and Earth that you've hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes or to infants it might be a better translation today so um what is he talking about so the context of this saying is immediately after Jesus has visited the Galilean cities of corazon and Bethsaida and they have rejected him they've rejected the gospel so he's just finished rebuking them telling them that if the mighty works done in their cities by Jesus had been done in Sodom or entire and sighed and these were wicked Gentile cities that they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and sat cloth and ashes but these Galilean cities had not repented so in that context here Jesus is offering this prayer of thanksgiving to the Father it's kind of paradoxical basically a prayer that God has hidden the truth from the wise and the learner the proud and revealed it to infants in other words ravindra veal dit to those who are like little children who are humble right and so the language Jesus uses here is interesting when he says I thank you Father you've hidden these things the Greek word there is crypto group doll which we get the word cryptic from so we know what that means that there's certain something that's been covered up and then he says I thank you that you've revealed them to infants to little ones and the Greek word there is Apocalypto we get the word apocalypse from that a revelation and unveiling of some heavenly reality some invisible reality is being unveiled is is being revealed so what's this invisible reality that Jesus is talking about what is this invisible reality that's being hidden from the proud and revealed to the humble well it's the very next verses the mystery of Jesus's identity when he says all things have been delivered to me by my father and then these amazing words no one knows the son except the father and no one knows the Father except the son so let's pause there for a second what does that mean in context think about what Jesus is saying there no one knows the son except the father if you look at Jesus public ministry one of the most interesting things about his ministry one of the most curious things about his ministry is that people have all kinds of opinions about who he is right you know some say he's John the Baptist some say he's Elijah others say he's one of the prophets right but they all keep missing the mark they don't really grasp the true mystery of who he is who is he in his deepest essence who is he as a person he is the eternal son of the Father he's the Divine Son of God he's not just the Messiah he's not just the new Moses he's not just the new Solomon he is the eternal and preexistent divine son of the father right so it's the mystery of his divinity and what Jesus is saying here is no one knows that really knows that except for the father and then the flipside of that is no one knows who the father is except for the son now that's a pretty radical statement to think about it for a second you could ask how can Jesus say that you've got the whole Old Testament and got all of the Jewish Scriptures here that have been a revelation of God to his people right wouldn't you think that the Jewish Scriptures the Old Testament revealed God as a father I mean on certain occasions God is compared to a father in the Old Testament like in the book of Deuteronomy or in the book of Sirach you see images that compare God to a father but Jesus here is saying something deeper he's not saying that God is just like a father he's saying that in his deepest mystery the first person what we call the first person the Trinity is eternally the father of the eternal son right in other words God isn't just creator he isn't just judge he isn't just Lord but from all eternity he is father and who is an eternal relationship with the divine son in other words what Jesus is getting at here is no one knows the mystery of the Trinity unless that mystery be revealed to them okay so what happens is when Jesus being rejected by these Galilean cities they're not just rejecting the Messiah or the king of Israel the long-awaited king there was rejecting this great mystery of the Trinity itself of the divine sonship of Christ and if you have any doubts about that you can look at what he says there no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him again the Greek word there is Apocalypto to unveil this mystery it's an invisible mystery that it has to be unveiled and you can see that that's what Jesus means here if you go to another passage in the gospel but this isn't for this Sunday but it's something we're thinking about you'll recall the famous passage in Matthew 16 13 to 18 where Jesus asks the disciples who do you say that I'm sorry who do men say that the son of man is and the disciples say well some say John the Baptist others say Elijah others one of the prophets but Jesus turns to them and says who do you say that I am and Peter steps up and says you are the Christ the Son of God and remember how does Jesus respond to that confession of faith in His divine sonship he says to Peter flesh and blood has not revealed this to you I park a loop do the same verb unveiled this to you but my father who is in heaven so let's pause there for just a second what essentially Jesus is teaching here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church will later go on to describe as the mystery of the Trinity in paragraph 2 37 of the Catechism it says that that the Church's doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery in the strict sense in other words it's a truth about God that we couldn't know just through our own rational power by looking at the world and using logic and reason and philosophy to try to figure out we couldn't know that God was an eternal Trinity of persons unless he revealed that to us he has to show that supernatural mystery to us we can't grasp at it their own power it transcends our ability to know it unless God shows it to us and that's what Jesus is getting in here he's saying he's not focusing on the third person in the Trinity yet and he's not focusing on the Holy Spirit yet he's just focusing on the mystery of his eternal sonship and the eternal Fatherhood of God right because remember from all eternity God is not creator okay from all eternity God is not judge those are things that God does in time through creation in Salvation history but from all eternity God is Father Son and Holy Spirit that's not just what he does that's who he is in his deepest mystery and that mystery is the mystery of who God is in himself and he has to show that to us so this passage here is really important the Gospel of Matthew because it is one of the key doctrines of the key passages for the doctrine of the Trinity which we celebrate on the Feast of the Holy Trinity uh I also bring it up because it's one of the key passages that show us that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus isn't just a prophet he's not just the Messiah he's divine so sometimes you'll hear people say that Jesus is only divine in the Gospel of John he's not divine in Matthew Mark and Luke well that's just false and this passage proves it that Jesus is talking about a sonship a kind of sonship that is eternal that is exclusively known to the Father alone right and that is unique in relationship with the father there's no other son of God like Jesus is the Son of God and no one can know that mystery until God reveals it to them in fact some scholars have actually called these verses they call them the johan ein thunderbolt or in other words this verses of Matthew's Gospel sounds like it's coming from the Gospel of John because it's so clearly a divine son of God it's so clearly Trinitarian in its formulation [Music]

Channel: Catholic Productions

Views: 21,843

Keywords: Brant Pitre, Catholic Productions, Jesus' Divinity, Hidden from the Wise, Gospel of Matthew

Id: huFj9HNs-EU

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020