The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Bible - NT - Matthew: Sermon and Woes

The Sermon on the Mount begins with beatitudes, and the Olivet Discourse begins with Woes.  As N. T. Wright and others have shown, the two series are similar in a number of particulars.  The connections between the two discourses continue after the beatitudes/woes section, evident in significant verbal repetition.  To wit:

“Kill”: Jesus uses the verb in 5:21  After that it comes up only in Matthew in 19:18, until we get to 23, where it describes what scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites do (23:31, 35).

“Hell” (geenna): Used 7x in the book, 3x in ch. 5.   It’s found in 10:28; 18:9, and then as the destination of the disciples of the Pharisees and of the Pharisees themselves (23:15, 33).

“Altar”: Found in 5:23-24; 23:18-20, 35.

“Gift”: In 5:23-24, then 3x in ch 23:18-19.

Swearing by God’s throne comes up in both 5:23 and 23:22.

The sermon lays out a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes.  In fact, it is a righteousness that in many particulars directly opposes the “righteousness” of the scribes and Pharisees.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Open mouth

Jesus sits on a mountain and opens His mouth to teach (Matthew 5:2).  The phrasing is unusual; I have found only one place in the OT  where opening the mouth is linked with teaching – Proverbs 31, 26, where it is the excellent woman who opens her mouth with wisdom and teaches kindness.

Earlier in Proverbs 31, the phrase is used a couple of times, not in connection with teaching but in connection with royal judgment.  Kings ought not open their mouths to drink wine and strong drink (v. 4), but they should instead open their mouths to be the mouthpiece for the dumb, to defend the righteous of the afflicted and needy (vv. 8-9).

Which is just what Jesus proceeds to do: As the King on the mountain, He pronounces blessings on the afflicted.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Into the Sanctuary

You are the salt of the earth.  You are a light on a lampstand.  Where does Jesus get this?  From the temple: Salt is added to the animal sacrifices, and in the Holy Place there are lights on lampstands.

Does he ever get into the Most Holy Place?  Yes: In Matthew 5:17-20, He speaks of His and the disciples’ relation to the law, to the tablets of the Torah that are in the ark.  In a sense, the entire sermon thereafter takes place in the Most Holy Place.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Messengers

Herod tells the wise men to search for the Child king, and when they find Him to “bring me word” (apaggelo) so that Herod too might worship.  the verb becomes important at the end of Matthew’s gospel, when an aggelos appears at the open tomb, and both soldiers and women run off to report (apaggelo) the news.

The chief priests and scribes who receive the news from the soldiers don’t come to the tomb to worship Jesus.  They are Herod’s heirs.  But the Twelve receive the report of the women-angels, and at the end of the gospel are doing with sincerity what Herod pretended to desire: Worshiping Jesus.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Joseph’s Wisdom

Joseph of Genesis, son of Jacob, was a dreamer and a sage, an interpreter of dreams.  He was a wise man.

So too Joseph of Matthew, father of Jesus.  The angel addresses him as “son of David” (Matthew 1:20), a title used almost exclusively of Solomon in the OT (1 Chr 29:23; 2 Chr 1:1; 13:6; 30:26; 35:3; Prov 1:1; Ecc 1:1), and exclusively of Jesus elsewhere in the NT.  Jesus is a new Solomon, a sage, but like Son like Father.

When Joseph the “son of David” dreams, we are reminded of the dream of the original son of David at Gibeah (1 Kings 3).  There, Yahweh appeared and promised wisdom.  Joseph the “son of David” also dreams, and is told that the one who is conceived in his fiancee’s womb is Wisdom Incarnate, conceived from the Holy Spirit.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Matthew 1-2

Matthew 1:18-2:23 sorts out into a neat chiasm:

A. Joseph, angel, dream, Jesus born

B. Wise men search for Jesus: to Herod

C. Wise men visit Jesus: dream

D. Joseph, dream flee to Egypt

C’. Herod tricked by wise men

B’. Herod kills children

A’. Joseph, angel, dream, Jesus settles in Nazareth

Sections A, D, and A’ are particularly intimately related.  Each is about a dream of Joseph in which an angel appears.  In all three, Mary and the child are mentioned.  Each includes a fulfillment formula.  In the D and A’ sections, the commands of the angel begins with a command to rise, a “resurrection” command: “Arise and take the Child and His mother” (vv. 13, 20).

Bible - NT - Matthew: The Dreamer

Joseph, human father of Jesus, is a dreamer (Matthew 1:20; 2:13, 19).  In each case, an angel appears in a dream to protect Jesus.  The first dream prevents Joseph from tucking Mary away, and the other two actually save Jesus’ life.

Joseph is a dreamer, like his namesake from Genesis.  Joseph son of Jacob dreamed in order to preserve life: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance” (Genesis 45:7).  Joseph son of Jacob dreams to save Israel; Joseph the father of Jesus dreams to save the new Israel, Jesus his son, Jesus the Son of Yahweh.

Bible - NT - Matthew: All Nations

There’s been a good bit of discussion recently asking whether the Jews are included in the “all nations” to which Jesus sends His disciples.  Is Matthew suggesting that Jesus has abandoned the Jewish mission, and now turns to the Gentiles?  Or are the Jews included among the ethne?

I think the latter.  After all, Matthew has gone to some lenths in the course of his gospel, and especially in his passion narratives, to show that the Jews have lost their distinctiveness and have become one of the nations.

It begins with Herod, a new Pharaoh.  It continues through all the allusions to Psalm 2 in the Passion narratives, all the “gathering together” and “plotting” that occupies the chief priests and elders.  ”Why are the nations in an uproar, and why do the peoples imagine a vain thing?” is not a bad summary of Matthew’s passion narrative.  So when Jesus instructs His disciples to disciple the nations, the Jews are among them.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Joseph and his brothers

Jesus has been lost to the grave, but three days later reappears with all authority in heaven and on earth.  His brothers (28:10) follow Him to Galilee, and find Him on a mountain, where the eleven bow down and worship (28:17).  Some doubt.  Well they might, and not just the resurrection itself.  They might be doubting Jesus’ intentions.  After all, the last time He saw them, He saw their backsides as they fled from the garden.  They’ve all abandoned Him.  Are they about to hear a “Depart from Me, I never knew you”?

No.  They are about to hear a “What you intended for evil, God intended for good, to save all these alive.”  Jesus is the new Joseph, lost and found, humiliated and exalted, now surrounded by His eleven brothers, who prostrate themselves before Him (cf. Genesis 37:9).  He is the new Joseph, revealed to His guilty brothers, reconciled.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Open texts

The Hebrew Bible ends with Cyrus’ decree.  It ends with a new beginning.

Matthew ends with Jesus’ riff on Cyrus’ decree, the great commission.  It too ends with a new beginning.

The Bible ends with the cry of Maranatha.

Though the canon is closed, and the Bible promises a consummation.  But the Bible also continually frustrates our desire to close too quickly.  It continuously opens up again just when we expect closure.   Like an open tomb.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Immanuel

Jesus’ final promise to His disciples consummates the covenantal promise of Immanuel: I will be with you, says the one who is “God With Us.”

What is not so obvious in English is the way the Greek depicts this reality in the word order.  The statement begins with the unnecessary and emphatic first-person pronoun, ego, continues with the prepositional phrase “with you” (meth humon), and ends with the verb, eimi, which can stand alone as “I am.”  Rendering this in English, we’d get: “I with you (I) am.”

Several things.  First, Jesus is clearly playing with the I am of Sinai, the name of Israel’s God.  Second, Jesus’ presence “encloses” the disciples; they are confident in their mission because Jesus is “with them,” but by the arrangement of the Greek sentence, Jesus is also promising to “surround them.”  The disciples (“you”) are nestled within the I . . . am.  Finally, this is a grammatical depiction of perichoresis.  Having been baptized in the Name, the disciples are incorporated into the I am.

Or, to give this a Barthian twist: By the resurrection, God declares that He will not be “I am” unless He is “I . . . am” with us, with us enclosed within the divine life.  He refuses to be God-without-us, but overcomes death in order to be God-with-us.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Doing What Is Taught

In the “great commission,” Jesus instructs His disciples to “teach” the nations to keep all that He has commanded and taught them.  From the first, Matthew shows, there is an alternative gospel, with an alternative form of discipleship, an alternative teaching.  Just as Jesus instructs the disciples to do all He commands, so the Jewish leaders “teach” the soldiers to proclaim an alternative gospel, that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Synagogues of Satan

Chief priests and elders assemble (synago) repeatedly in the Passion and resurrection narratives of Matthew, always with nefarious intent.  They gather to plot Jesus’ death (26:3-4), for Jesus’ trial (26:57), before Pilate to convince the governor to kill Jesus (27:17) and to request a guard for Jesus’ tomb (27:62).

After the resurrection, they gather (synago) one last time.  Out of their first gathering came the payment of blood money to Judas; out of their final gathering comes the decision to pay the guard to spread the lie that Jesus’ disciples had taken the body.

The gatherings of the priests and elders are founded on a lie, a lie reinforced with bribes.  They have become synagogues of Satan.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Chief priests

The word archiereus, “chief priests,” is used twenty-five times in Matthew.  They are always cast in the role of villains.  They first appear as advisors to Herod (2:4), then as the ones who will cause Jesus to suffer many things (16:21).  They appear in person again only in 21:15, when Jesus enters Jerusalem and does wonders in the temple, and from that point they dominate the action.

The 25 uses of the word point to the 25 chief priests in the post-Davidic priesthood – 24 priests, each head of a clan of priests, and the high priest.  In Matthew, the chief priests are like the 25 idolatrous priests in Ezekiel 8:11 and 11:1.  They are the demonic, earthly counterpart to the heavenly assembly of priests in Revelation 4 – twenty-four “angels” who are awaiting the appearance of the Chief Priest, the Lamb.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Angelic guards

Some of the guards from the tomb go back to the city to report to the chief priests “all that had happened.”  Presumably, tbhey said, “there was a severe earthquake, and an angel descended from heaven, and rolled away the stone, and he looked like lightning with garments like snow, and we fell down like we were dead.  Then some women came and the angel told them that Christ has risen” (cf. Matthew 28:2-7).

That is, the soldiers turn evangelists of the Risen Christ.  Matthew underscores the irony by using the verb apaggello, which obviously contains the word aggelos, “messenger.”  This is the fourth time Matthew has used the verb in a few verses.  The women run away from the tomb to “be angels” to the disciples (28:8); as they run along to “be angels” (28:9), Jesus stops them and tells them to “be angels” to the brethren.  And while they are rushing off to do that, the soldiers are entering the city to “be angels” to the chief priests.  Four uses, a hint that there will be angels to the four corners of the world, spreading the report about Jesus’ resurrection.

Some preach from envy, some from strife, some from selfish ambition.  But, in pretense and in truth, Christ is proclaimed, which is a cause for joy (Philippians 1:15-18).

Bible - NT - Matthew: Sermon notes

INTRODUCTION

Jesus death was not the end of His ministry, and neither is His resurrection.  He rises to commission His disciples to carry on His work to the Gentiles.  “Go” said the angel; “go,” Jesus repeated to the women; now, again, “Go” (28:7, 10, 19).

THE TEXT

“Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. . . .” (Matthew 28:11-20).

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Bible - NT - Matthew: First of Sabbaths

Mary and the other Mary come to the tomb on the day “after the Sabbath,” which is the first day of the new week.  It is beginning to dawn and light is beginning to shine.  Now, a new week begins, new light breaks.

But Matthew’s phrasing is even more emphatic on this point.  Literally, the text says that they come to the tomb “after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first of the Sabbaths.”  The word Sabbath is used twice, once to describe the last day of the week, the Jewish day or rest and worship, and once to describe the week itself.  That usage is not unique here; we find it elsewhere in the New Testament.  But it is significant.  This is the day after the Sabbath, but, at the same time, it is also the first of a new Sabbath.

Sabbath doesn’t just mean rest in Scripture.  Within the life of Jesus, of course, the Sabbath was a controversial issue.  The Jews observed the Sabbath by surrounding it with precise rules about what constituted work and what kind of rest was required, and they thought Jesus was breaking the Sabbath by His activities.  Jesus saw the Sabbath as a day for healing the sick, for giving life to the weak and dead, for granting rest to the weary and heavy-laden.  If His resurrection marks the first of the Sabbaths, then it marks the first day of a new age of healing, resurrection life, of rest and relief to the oppressed and down-trodden.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Seated on a stone

The angel rolls away the stone from Jesus’ tomb and takes a seat on it.  It’s an enthronement, but there’s something more.

In Exodus 17, Moses sits down on a stone while Aaron and Hur hold up his hands.  Joshua fights in the valley below, filling the ground with Amalekites.

So too, the angel sits on a stone, surrounded by guards who are like “dead men,” as the greater Joshua conquers death.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Great stones

Jesus’ body is placed in a tomb and a “great stone” rolled in front of it.   Can He move the stone?

That is to say: Is He truly a greater Jacob, who set up a stone where angels descended (Genesis 28:18), who rolled away a large stone to open a well for Rachel the shepherdess (Genesis 29:10)?

That is to say: Is He truly able to tear down temples, leaving not one stone on another?  Is He greater than Solomon, who can cut and form stones for a new temple?

Easter answers Yes: This Jesus, the rock that the builders rejected, can move whatever stones He likes.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Heaven and Earth

Heaven and earth are key themes in Matthew’s gospel (see Jonathan Pennington’s Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew).  The two words are used in combination eight times in the gospel, and those uses fall out into a nearly chiastic pattern:

A. Heaven and earth pass away, 5:18

B. Will done on earth as in heaven, 6:10

C. Praise Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 11:25

D. Keys of kingdom of heaven (heaven/earth/heaven/earth/heaven), 16:19

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