Lecture #6 - Miracles and Disciples (Matt. 8:1-12:2)

In this section Jesus is beginning the conquest of Caanan.  He takes on death, leprosy, demons, the temple system, (Matt. 10:7-8) Jesus and his twelve disciples begin the prophetic and priestly cleansing of Israel.  We need to learn that when Matthew is picking which miracles to tell us about (under the influence of the Spirit) and Jesus is picking which miracles to perform and how (under the direction of the Father) that Matthew is making an argument and Jesus is being a prophet.  These aren’t random stories.  Try and remember to read the gospels like a political cartoon or an SNL skit (Senator Kennedy chopping down a cherry tree “I can not tell a lie, Bush did it”). We  tend to think of the miracles as proof of Jesus’ divinity, we know that he was God because he did miracles, but there are many people that did miracles, and we don’t think that any of them are God.  Instead, think of the miracles as a combination of verifications of his authority to speak for God and as prophetic actions themselves (how do we know that the kingdom of God was arriving in the ministry of Jesus? Because Jesus was cleansing Israel “if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God is upon you.”  Jesus was acting out prophecies.

Matt. 8:1-4 – Jesus makes a Leper clean, which is more than healing him.  Jesus is doing something that was supposed to only happen at the temple.  This would be like your butcher giving you a drivers license.  Jesus, by touching the man, is offering changing his judicial status in the people of God. (judicial/health/spiritual status).  Jesus is offering something apart from the temple that you were only supposed to be able to get at the temple, a restored place in society.

8:5-13 Jesus heals a gentile’s servant and begins his case against Jerusalem.  Before v. 11-12 there were veiled threats, but from now through Ch 25 there are many explicit threats to the safety of Jerusalem and the Israelites.

14-17 Jesus heals Peter’s wife’s Mother and the demon possessed and sick line up to be healed.

His next miracle is when he calms the wind and the waves.  This is an odd story because it is like Jonah.  Jesus is asleep while the storm rages, they wake him up, but instead of throwing him overboard, he rebuked the wind and the waves and then there is a great calm.  But it also made the disciples realize that they did not quite realize who they were dealing with. (This miracle and the commanding of demons do have a place in the argument for Jesus’ incarnation).

Next Jesus goes into a gentile country and meets two naked gentiles possessed with devils and Jesus sends the demons, by their own request, into pigs who then go crashing into the sea.

9:1-17 Jesus then returns home and heals a paralytic after telling him that his sins are forgiven.  Jesus is doing some more temple abrogation.  To get forgiveness of sins you needed to go to the temple, but Jesus just grants it on his own authority.  He is acting as if he himself is a replacement for the temple and priestly system.  This is why they thought that Jesus was blaspheming by forgiving his sins and why Jesus goes into the cryptic saying about new wine in an old wine skin.  Jesus came offering himself as a replacement for the temple offering his table fellowship as covenant restoration, his touch as judicial covenant renewal, his word as the declaration of God. By eating with Jesus, you were restored to the covenant, by touching Jesus you were renewed to the covenant.  By hearing and believing Jesus you were brought back into a right relationship with God.  Jesus was abrogating, or setting aside the temple and offering himself as the one that was and did all that the Temple was and did.

We see this when Jesus then immediately goes and eats with publicans and sinners Jesus is making a claim about himself.  The Pharisees refused to eat with sinners.  They saw themselves as righteous because they had separated themselves from the sinners of Israel.  These sinners did not keep the strict ritual purity laws of the temple or the extra laws of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees fasted, even the disciples of John the Baptist fasted regularly.  Both groups wanted Israel to be restored to it’s place of prominence as the apple of God’s eye, so they are separating themselves from the sinners who won’t come out from among the sinners so that God will restore Israel.  But Jesus flips the attempt of the Pharisees at righteousness on its head.  They say that Righteousness and restoration come when you don’t eat with sinners, he claims that Righteousness and restoration come when sinners eat with him.  They claim that Israel will be restored when people seek God in the temple, Jesus Claims that the restoration of Israel is happening as sinners seek God in Jesus.  They claim that the God’s people will finally be restored to their place of providence when they take their sacrifices to the temple like God told them to, and Jesus tells them that they were not listening when God told them what to do. “But go and learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  “Jesus was offering himself as a replacement for the temple.  If you want forgiveness, don’t go to the temple, come to me.  If you want restoration, don’t Go to the temple, come to me.  If you want to be made clean and restored to the community, don’t go and sacrifice a bird and then wash you clothes, come to me.”  Jesus was not just a teaching good manners.  Jesus was reconstituting Israel around himself.  He was abrogating the temple.  He was offering himself as the new socio-religious and political center of God’s people.  In fact, he was threatening the temple because it was filled with corruption and uncleanness.  The temple system was old, and if you tried to fill it with the new wine of the new heavens and the new earth, it was going to burst.  The temple could not hold the glory of the newness of life that Christ was bringing, so it had to be destroyed.  

This theme of restoration continues with the next three miracles.  Remember that these miracles are like political cartoons.  Jesus is acting out his prophecies like Elijah, Ezekiel, or Jonah.  Jesus heals a dead child and a woman with an issue of blood twelve years.  Both thing that would have made him unclean.  The woman was legally and judicially dead, the girl was actually dead, and the law forbade that either be touched, but instead of Jesus being made unclean, the women were made clean.  Jesus is reconstituting Israel around himself and he has the power and the authority to do it.  Jesus continued to go around casting out demons and healing and preaching the good news of the kingdom.  Then he calls his disciples; His twelve disciples.  What do you suppose the prophetic action of calling twelve disciples would mean to a first century Jew?  
Jesus then gives them power to go throughout Israel and divide it with miracles and the preaching of the coming of the kingdom of heaven (v. 7, 21).
v. 23 (Dan. 7:13) Jesus says here (and later more explicitly) that he is going to be vindicated on earth IN THE SIGHT OF HIS GENERATION as the son of man.  God will vindicate him and that vindication is his resurrection and then the destruction of Jerusalem.  The disciples are going to be chased around for a while, but they will be rescued and vindicated before the eyes of those that pierced Jesus.  Within Israel there will be great division (10:34-36 and it begins during Jesus’ ministry) and it will eventually lead to the destruction of Jerusalem (more on that later).

1-15 This is the first mention of Jesus calling twelve disciples.  By calling twelve disciples to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, Jesus is broadcasting his intentions.  He is making a new Israel.  This scene in Matthew is concerned with the present and future state of the old Israel, and the conflict between the old and the new.  Jesus calls the twelve and then sends them into the old Israel, telling them to be careful not to enter a gentile or Samaritan house, because this first cleansing is for the house of Israel.  Israel will have the demons cast out, but because there will be no repentance
16-23
24-31
32-42

CH. 11 Jesus finishes instructing his disciples and the disciples of John the Baptist come and question Jesus (read 11:2-6).  Jesus then turns to the multitude and completely aligns himself with the ministry of John, including the prophecies of Woe (a tree that won’t produce fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire) and Jesus adds to those prophecies of doom and expands them.  These cities are the cities that Jesus grew up in, and he upbraids them severely for having not believed and adds severe warnings about a coming judgment, but ends with one of Jesus’ most famous invitations to follow him.  

Ch. 12:1-21 Matthew then proceeds to tell a story about the Sabbath problems that Jesus had.  The disciples and Jesus were walking through the wheat field and grabbing heads of wheat and popping them into their mouth and the Pharisees flip.  Jesus responds (12:6-8) then goes into the synagogue and performs another prophetic miracle, there was a man with a withered hand and he says, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?  Jesus heals him and that is the final straw for the Pharisees, from here on in the story there are three distinct factions in Israel that are all organized around what they understand the kingdom to be, the Sadducee/Herodians, the scribal Pharisees, and Jesus and his multitude.  And according to Matthew, this means that the gentiles were about to come in.

Lecture #5 - The Sermon on the Mount - Oct.14th

We often think of biblical law as something restrictive, and it is.  It restricts us from committing sedition against the King.  But we don’t often see the positive side of the law. “If you love me keep my commandments (Jn. 14:15).  Love fulfills the law (John 15:10, Romans 3:31, 1 John 5:3, Prov. 29:18). God is love, and Jesus is God.  Jesus is the law of God incarnate.  He himself is what the law was talking about. The Old Testament law was given for many reasons, but one of them was so that the Israelites would not miss the law when it was incarnate and walking among them.

 The law can not give life because the law is a description of life.  The law is a description of Jesus. And it is a description of the life of those that have the life of Jesus living in them because they are united to Christ.  When Jesus stands upon this mountain as a new Moses and gives us the new law, he is giving us grace and blessing, because without it we would not know how to love Him. The Sermon on the Mount is, among other things, a description of the character of Jesus over against the character of the Israelites (in particular the scribes and Pharisees) in the first century. The Sermon on the Mount is a description of Jesus’ life, since he lived what he commanded. It is also a call to be Jesus’ disciple in a particular way. By following him, being like him, and having the same type of effect in the world that he has had.  

Matt. 4:25-5:2   
25And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.
1And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
2And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Jesus gathers this multitude at the bottom of a mountain and goes up and turns around and opens his mouth.  This should remind us of Moses with his multitude gathered at the bottom of Sinai. Jesus even fasted the same number of days as Moses in order to cement the implications (Deuteronomy 9:9 When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:). Jesus is reenacting this scene and placing himself in the role of Moses and his followers in the role of the Israelites of the exodus, Herod in the role of Pharaoh and the scribes and Pharisee in the role of the hard driving taskmasters.  Jesus has come as the new Moses to offer freedom from slave drivers (including the Devil), rest for weary laborers, a land in which to worship God in spirit and truth, and a new kingdom law.


Beatitudes

The Beatitudes are a sort of Ten Commandments of the New Testament.  The Sermon on the Mount is a correction. Not a correction of the Old Testament Law.  Instead it is a correction of how the Israelites in Jesus’ day are misunderstanding the Old Testament Law.  He has picked out specific places that 1st century Jews, and in particular the scribes and Pharisees, were misconstruing and misunderstanding the law in such a way that caused them to miss out on who Jesus was.  The OT law was a perfect description of Jesus. The Israelites without faith were misunderstanding the law, so they were missing Jesus.  

How is the Sermon on the Mount a description of Jesus?

v.3 Jesus, by joining himself to the church, by completely identifying himself with the sinful people whom he was redeeming became poor in spirit even to the point of death on a cross.  The Jews had no category for a Messiah that identified and ate with sinners and tax collectors, they wanted a messiah concerned with the purity laws that separated people, not a messiah that identified with sinners, even to the point of dying for them.

v. 4 Jesus came and mourned over Jerusalem, mourned before the cross, mourned at the death of his friend Lazarus; Jesus came mourning, though the Israelites expected a triumphant king to charge in with an army, not a king who wore a crown of thorns.

v. 5 Jesus is meek.  The Pharisees expected to inherit the earth through force and “cleanliness” or forced cleanliness, but Jesus was going to inherit the earth through obedience to the Father, (aka. meekness)

v. 6 Jesus hungered and thirsted after righteousness where the scribes and Pharisees wanted a bureaucratic, outward righteousness, they were just white washed tombs.  The did not have the inward life that desires to do right (i.e. righteousness).

v. 7 Jesus was merciful.  The Pharisees thought that if they showed mercy that they were keeping Israel in exile.  They thought that they needed to be as strict as they could in keeping everyone else in line and then God would rescue them from exile.

v. 8 Jesus was pure in heart; he had no guile in him.  He only sought justice and mercy and peace.  The Pharisees were so interested in “keeping the law” that they forgot to love their neighbor, which of course meant that they weren’t in the least bit interested in keeping the law, which told them to love their neighbor.

v. 9 Jesus came to bring peace, he did not come to bring war the way that the Pharisees thought the messiah would.  Jesus said that whoever seeks to live by the sword will die by the sword.  The Pharisees/zealots sought to bring life back to Israel by the sword, and they died by the sword.

v. 10 -12 – a man hung from a tree was a man under a curse.  The Israelites thought that their Savior-King (Messiah) was going to be a physically triumphant king that would charge in and kick out the Romans because they did not realize that their real problem was Sin, Death, and the Devil.  Jesus came and was persecuted when it looked the fate of Jesus looked the bleakest to Israelites and they thought that he was destroyed, he was actually coming into his kingdom.  John and James asked to sit on his right and left hand when he came into his kingdom, but God put two thieves on his right hand and on his left.  

v. 13 -18 – where the Israelites refused to be a kingdom of priests, Jesus was the perfect high priest.  Where the Israelites refused to bring the light to world and be salt for the nations, Jesus gave himself for illumination and preservation of the whole world.  Where the Israelites refused to stand between the world and its God and seek their reconciliation, Jesus stood between God and the nations and died of the cross to bring them together.  This would have of course made some think that he was destroying the law (v. 17), because they misunderstood what the law was teaching, that was why they were missing Jesus.  Instead, Jesus was fulfilling what the law had always been about, which was the final reconciliation of the whole world by means of the nation of Israel.  God became the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not to exclude the world, like the Pharisees thought, but to eventually be reconciled with the whole world through Abraham’s seed, the nation of Israel and through Jesus.

v. 19 -20 – and anyone who will not do these eighteen previous verses will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.  If you continue to refuse this law, like the Pharisees won’t (v. 20) then you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven (which is not heaven, but is the rule of earth by Jesus)

Jesus verses the Pharisees

Jesus is explicitly teaching in opposition to the common teaching of his day.  The “traditional” interpretation was not actually the traditional interpretation.  Jesus was a reformer of doctrine.  The particular doctrines are ones that was confusing the population on his identity.  So these are the particular laws that the population was misunderstanding that were causing them to not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.  

v. 21 – 26 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time . . . but I say unto you – As long as I don’t kill anyone I won’t be in danger of judgment, but Jesus says that if you get angry and curse at your brother you are in danger of the fires of hell.  The Pharisees taught  that the spirit of the law was to not murder, But Jesus taught that the spirit of the law was the unity of the brethren.  This is a description of what Jesus was like, he did not just refrain from murdering, but came unifying enemies and bringing peace

v. 27 – 32 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time . . . but I say unto you Even some of the Romans were astounded and sickened by the prevalence of sexual immorality.  The Pharisees tried to solve the problem by stopping the adultery. We see, with the woman caught in adultery, when the one who has not committed adultery is invited to throw the first stone, that you were hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t committed adultery.  There was one sect of Pharisees that were called the Bleeding Pharisees because they were so intent on avoiding lust that they walked with theirs eyes down and covered.  But Jesus is saying that the spirit of the law is

v. 33 – 37  Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time . . . but I say unto you The third commandment, to not take the Lord’s name in vain, Jesus takes and explicates the Spirit of the law.  It means be a truth-teller.  Be trustworthy with the facts.  Let your communications be Yea, yea or nay, nay.  And what did Jesus do?  His communication was Verily, verily… He did not come swearing and making oaths that what he said was true, He would merely say verily, verily  

v. 38 – 42 Ye have heard that it hath been said . . . But I say unto you Eye for an eye, which is a law that is meant to limit the governments rights in terms of the maximum allowable punishment for a crime, had been turned into a justification for personal revenge.  Jesus says that the law instead insists on giving up yourself and your “rights” for the good of others.  Jesus gave up all the rights and privileges of being the only begotten and eternal son of God for the good of others. They compelled him and he went the extra mile carrying his own cross. Jesus was anything but stingy even with His own person. He gave himself away for the good of others.

v. 43 – 47  Ye have heard that it hath been said . . . But I say unto you the Pharisees taught that you needed to love your Israelites, but you could hate the Romans.  They were continuing to turn the light that God had given them in on themselves, but Jesus said no, you must love your enemies.  And Jesus loved his enemies.  When we were still sinners Jesus died for us.