Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 1-4.

When John the Baptist was preaching he preached “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  Later, Matthew tells us that after John was imprisoned Jesus began preaching exactly the same message.  We normally teach that Matthew did this to show that John had come to prepare the way for Jesus.  We are not wrong to think that because that was indeed part of Matthew’s message in today’s passage.  However, we miss the similarity between what John says when he condemns the religious leaders for putting their trust in being Abraham’s descendants and things that Jesus said later in His ministry on the same subject.  Matthew was connecting Jesus to a line of teaching among religious Jews of which John the Baptist was a part.  What the original readers of Matthew’s Gospel would have known that we had forgotten until recently is that John the Baptist did not arise out of nowhere to begin teaching.  The Bible mentions two major Jewish religious traditions of the time of Jesus: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  With the discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls we learned that there was a third major Jewish religious tradition, the Essenes.  A comparison of what the Dead Sea Scrolls tells us of some of their practices suggests that John the Baptist was part of that tradition.  Matthew knew this, as did those to whom he was writing.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 1-4.

I had originally not intended to write anything about the genealogy of Jesus which Matthew gives here, but then I was thinking about the fact that Matthew mentions five women in Jesus’ ancestry: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.  He lists all of them by name, except for Bathsheba.  Matthew tells us that Solomon’s mother had been Uriah’s wife.  In other words, he didn’t want us to miss the scandal around David and Bathsheba’s relationship.  In fact, there was a scandal associated with everyone of the women Matthew mentions here.  Tamar pretended to be a prostitute in order to become pregnant with a twins by her father-in-law.  Rahab was a prostitute.  Ruth was a Moabitess, about whom the Law of Moses said their descendants should not be eligible to enter the Tabernacle, or Temple, for ten generations.  Mary was unmarried when she became pregnant (even though this was a virgin birth, it was still a scandal).  Matthew’s audience would not miss the scandal concerning those four, but they might think about Bathsheba only from her role in King David naming Solomon as his heir.  Matthew made sure that we would not miss the scandal concerning Bathsheba.  He wanted to make sure that we realized that God can, and will, use those we consider improper.  If these women were acceptable ancestors for the Son of God, what makes you think God won’t use you for something wonderful?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 1-4.

One of the things we often miss in reading the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, is the way in which Jesus’ ministry was connected to what was going on in Judaism at the time.  The Gospel of Matthew was written in attempt to convey the connection between Christianity and Judaism in a manner convincing to Jews.  Which brings me to Herod and why he and “all of Jerusalem” were disturbed by the arrival of the Magi looking for the newborn king of the Jews.  I think that, in part, Matthew included this account because it reminded his readers about the political instability of this region.  Most of us are familiar with the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid dynasty based out of Antioch on the Orantes (a city located in what is now Turkey) to establish the Hasmonean Dynasty over Judea.  What we generally are unaware of is the many civil wars fought among the Hasmoneans.  To a large degree those civil wars were fueled by disputes over the proper way to worship God.  Fights between Jews who had adopted the cultural practices of the Greeks (Hellenists) and those who supported more traditional cultural practices.  Further, it is clear from the stances on these issues taken by the various Hasmonean rulers that the conflicts were more about different factions than about specific religious practices.  Herod the Great had been made king over Judea, in place of the last Hasmonean, by the Romans and despite his cruelty brought a period of stability.   Since Herod was an Idumean who had converted to Judaism, he had brought a sort of peace among the factions.  So, the various leaders of Jerusalem had to be alarmed by the news of the birth of a new king…especially since they knew he was not being put forth by their own faction.  While the various factions hated each other, and fought each other for power, they were united in opposing Jesus because His very existence was a threat to their power.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 1-4.

So, we finally get to the New Testament on the 3rd day of the 10th month.  Make of that what you will.  Everything I have read about the Gospel of Matthew says that he appears to have been writing in order to keep Christianity grounded in Jewish tradition.  This suggests to me that even though I would not read the Old Testament prophecies they way he did that much of the Jewish community of the First Century did (even if they did not apply the prophecies to Jesus, they saw them as applying to the Messiah).

As I read this I was thinking about how I was going to write something tying together all of the important things in this passage.  Then I got to Matthew’s introduction of John The Baptist and decided that I was going to focus on that.  Many people came out to hear John’s preaching.  They heard his message and it struck them to the heart.  So, they confessed their sins and were baptized.  When the political leaders realized what was going on, they too went out to hear John.  Except they were not there to hear the word of God.  They were there to harness the popularity of John The Baptist for their own political ends.  John The Baptist was having none of it and he called them out for their hypocrisy.  He told them, and the rest of the people listening, that it was not enough to put on the appearance of righteousness.  We need to hear that message today.  We need to both make sure that we do not fall into the trap of trying to use the show of righteousness for our own ends and call out those who are doing so.  As Jesus is quoted later, we will be judged by the fruit which we produce.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 1-4

As I was reading Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth and Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt I was struck by something interesting.  I have frequently seen the family (Joseph, Mary, and Jesus) compared to refugees, poor people with just what they can carry on their backs and on the back of their donkey.  I have never questioned that image because it fits with how I think of Jesus’ family going to Egypt.  However, Matthew tells us that the wise men had given Jesus (and, let’s be honest, at that age they really would have been giving it to His parents) gold, frankincense, and myrrh just before the family began their journey to Egypt.  That means that Joseph and Mary were not destitute refugees when they went to Egypt.  In fact, they were relatively well to do at that point.

In addition, reading Matthew’s account of John the Baptist and Jesus’ interaction with John the Baptist struck me differently than I had ever thought of it before.  Typically, we have read this passage as showing John the Baptist as a unique figure who previewed Jesus’ coming.  While there is truth to that and things we can learn about our relationship with God by looking at it that way, I believe there is more to it than that.  We know now that John the Baptist was part of a larger religious movement, perhaps even the leader of that movement, which is only mentioned in the Gospels in connection with John.  Those for whom Matthew was writing would have been familiar with that religious movement to one degree or another.   I believe that Matthew included this account to make the connection between Jesus and that movement.   With his account of John the Baptist, Matthew is placing Jesus in the midst of a Jewish tradition which emphasized faithfully following God.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 1-4

Matthew starts his account of Jesus’ ministry by establishing the prophetic basis for believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Chosen One of God.  Matthew also makes the case that God revealed Jesus’ Divine mission in other ways (that is the purpose of including the account of the wise men).  Actually, all of this passage up until Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness serves the purpose of placing Jesus’ ministry in the context of God’s working at the time.  First, Matthew establishes that Jesus is descended from David.  Then he shows the divine nature of His birth.  He follows that up by showing how God revealed Christ to those who worshiped Him who were not Jewish, and the threat which Jesus was to those in political power.  The account of John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism by him ties Jesus to the Jewish religious revival movement of the Essenes (perhaps the only Jewish religious group of the period without a strong hint of hypocrisy about it).  There are other things we can learn from what Matthew wrote here, but his primary purpose in including these elements was to thoroughly establish Jesus’ ministry in Jewish religious traditions.

Even Matthew’s account of Jesus calling His first disciples fits into the Jewish religious context of the time.  However, as I understand how someone normally became a rabbi’s disciple in First Century Judaism, Matthew is using this to show that Jesus was a different sort of Jewish religious teacher.  Normally, someone who wanted to study with a rabbi requested to be taken as his student and the rabbi would accept only the best of the applicants.  Jesus, on the other hand, chose His disciples.  They did not choose Him.