New Testament Content Overview Lesson 3, page 1

The According to Matthew

Please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 52, because it is from the that we get this idea of “good news.” Look at Isaiah 52, beginning with verse 4:

This is what the Sovereign L ORD says: “At first my people went down to Egypt to live. Lately Assyria has oppressed them, and now what do I have here?’ declares the L ORD , “for my people have been taken away for nothing. Those who rule them mock,” declares the L ORD . “All day long my name is constantly blasphemed. Therefore my people will know my name. Therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it, yes, it is I.” How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news , who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your reigns.” Listen, your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the L ORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, ruins of Jerusalem, for the L ORD has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The L ORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

What is a Gospel? This idea of glad tidings, of good news, is the reason why these accounts of the life of were named . First, I want to talk a little about what a gospel is—not what the Gospel is, but what a gospel is. The word euangelion (the verb form is euangelizomai ) has at its heart a declaration, an announcement. The prefix is the Greek epsilon-upsilon prefix that means “good.” So a eulogy is a “good word” about someone’s life, and the euangelion is good news. Now I want you to see that good news is not just an idea, but it is an announcement about events in history. It is a report of victory in battle. We can think of good news or the announcement of victory as the word that would be sent back to the homeland when an army has prevailed on the battlefield. It brings great joy to the population because a threat to their safety has been overcome. This good news not only brings joy to the homeland, but it also serves as a summons to the conquered. Often, we do not talk about that aspect of good news. The victory of God in the Gospel also has an imperative sense. It is not just declarative in the sense of the announcement of the events of victory through Jesus over the powers of sin and death—if you are thinking about it in terms of a Pauline structure—but it is also a summons to the conquered that they are under new rule. They have a new lord, and so the announcement of victory is the announcement of new management on the earth.

So we have established some Old Testament background on the idea of a gospel from the Septuagint— this translation of “good news” from Isaiah. But also, we have the Greco-Roman context of the report of victory in battle, but now we need to think about a gospel as a particular literary genre. It is helpful to pay attention to the literary structure of texts. Texts have a certain design. Of course, gospels are narratives, so they follow narrative structures with issues like characterization and pacing, use of time and space, setting, points of dramatic tension, and resolution. All the features of narrative are there, but we also have the possibility of thinking about the Gospels as biography , since they focus primarily on one life, the life of Jesus. Bios means “life” in Greek. As we look at other writings about important people, they often include details about the person’s birth, their achievements—particularly their achievements politically or on the battlefield—and how they died. Some features of the Gospels, and particularly of Matthew and Luke, which both have birth accounts, correspond to certain aspects of the genre of ancient biography.

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 2

What about historiography? Historiography has in view not just the life of a particular person, but also the life of a people. Typically it narrates the story of a particular ethnic group or nation, and so there are certain aspects of historiography in the Gospels. We should not just focus on Jesus and His character, which might be the focus of a biography. We are not merely trying to discern from Jesus’ actions and His teaching something about His character. The Gospels have a broader interest as well. They are interested in how people responded to Jesus. In terms of various social groups—His followers, the , the people of the land, the Roman leaders—the evangelists have an interest in how people respond to Jesus. These are the interests of historiography .

If we think about the fact that aspects of both genres are involved, then we should not limit our classification of the Gospels either to biography or to historiography. We should also realize that the Gospels have a unique purpose. The Gospel writers declare a testimony about the significance of the life of Jesus primarily for a particular group of people—the people of God. The Gospel writers are not disinterested, so-called “objective” historians, they are passionate disciples. Thus, they are called “evangelists.” They are advocates of this good news regarding the reign of God expressed through Jesus, the of Israel.

So the Gospels contain aspects of biography and aspects of historiography, but they are also marked by a unique purpose, and so with the gospels we see the development of a new genre. There are other so- called gospels that appear, but (as I said in the previous lesson when we were talking about the canon) those other gospels are not really gospels. They are just collections of sayings. They do not really have a narrative structure to them at all. They are groups of sayings, and they have a very different character.

Situating Matthew’s Gospel There is some question about when Matthew’s Gospel. In terms of the history of the New Testament, Jesus’ death was around 30 AD, and Peter’s death was around 65 AD. It is probably true that Peter’s voice is the voice behind Mark’s Gospel, as some of the early church fathers talked about Mark’s Gospel as “the memoirs of Peter.” If Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written, and accounts for the general correspondence between Mark and Matthew and Luke, then Matthew was written around 70 or 80 AD, at least in part, to deal with some of the pastoral issues that would arise in this difficulty between Jewish Christians in their relationship to the synagogue in the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction at the hands of Rome (70 AD). Matthew and Luke seem to base their ’ life and ministry, for the most part, on the way in which Mark progresses. There is also the possibility of another hypothetical source (Q) that explains correspondences between these three gospels, often referred to as the for their similarities. Eusebius, however, tells us that Papias attributed the earliest collection of Jesus’ sayings to Matthew writing in Aramaic. But, we do not have that text. Papias’ belief in an Aramaic text probably explains why originally Matthew was thought to be the earliest Gospel. Clement and Origen also say that Matthew’s account came first. They are probably basing that on the idea that there was an earlier collection of sayings attributed to Matthew, written in Hebrew.

By the way, the was written anonymously. The text never says who the author is. The title, “According to Matthew,” was added later, but what we see is that the author of the Gospel of Matthew uses good Greek. He was probably well-educated. He was very familiar with and interested in the Old Testament, and he used it in a lot of different ways that we will talk about. He seems to have had no need to explain Jewish customs, like Mark did in his Gospel. Mark explained what these funny habits are, and you would only need to do that for outsiders. Matthew does not do that. He has a familiarity with the Old Testament and uses it in terms of echoes and allusions, revealing a deep familiarity with the Old Testament Scriptures. The author of Matthew also has specific interest in the law. One interesting thing about Matthew’s Gospel that makes it quite distinct is its five sections of discourse. Matthew

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 3 lengthens Jesus’ teaching by comparison to Mark, who is focused on Jesus’ actions. Matthew provides five major sections called the five discourses. It is quite probable or possible that Matthew constructed Jesus’ teaching into five groups as some kind of an echo of the five books of Moses. One view of why Matthew constructed his Gospel this way is that Matthew wanted to present Jesus as the new Moses. Matthew was sensitive to Jewish issues in terms of the use of the name of God. Instead of the phrase basileia tou theou , “the kingdom of God,” typical of the other synoptic Gospels, Matthew typically says, “the kingdom of heaven.” It is a circumlocution. Instead of saying “God,” he talks about where God is, but he means the same thing. The kingdom is a very important theme in Matthew’s Gospel, as is the final judgment. In terms of his , he is very much focused on Jesus as the Messiah, the king of the Jews, whose mission was primarily to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So we can see the interest in matters of Jewish culture and pastoral needs of a Jewish Christian community.

Matthew’s Christology Open your Bible to Matthew’s Gospel and look at the first few chapters. The way it begins is very interesting. We have already talked about the fact that he picks up a story that was already underway . In his genealogy, he focuses on . We can see that the first thing that he says about Jesus is that he is the son of David . This is out of chronological order, because he mentions David before . Of course, Jesus is also a son of Abraham. If you will notice the summary of the genealogy in verse 17, he says, “There were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to Christ.” So, what we have is a literarily shaped chronology that summarizes the genealogy between Abraham and Jesus and summarizes it in a way that accentuates Jesus’ Davidic lineage. Matthew is not interested in telling us every single generation between Abraham and Jesus, but he is interested in giving us the genealogy in a way that will underscore Jesus’ Davidic identity. We see that in the summary in verse 17. There is one interesting thing about the number 14 that could explain why it is accentuated in verse 17. I do not believe in any sort of numerology. There is no secret Bible code to solve. However, it is true that the Hebrew letters for David’s name have the numeric value of 14. It could well be that this is another way for Matthew, in constructing the genealogy, to focus on the Davidic lineage of Jesus.

There are other places in Matthew where the focus is on Jesus’ Davidic lineage. Look at chapter 9, verse 27. In terms of Jesus’ healing, it says this: “Jesus went on from there. Two blind men followed him, calling out, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” We see that in :27, 12:23, and 15:22. Turn to Matthew 15:22. That passage says, “Leaving the place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Caananite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.’ And he did not answer her a word.” Later He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Yet, Jesus calls her a woman of great faith. You remember this encounter with the Syrophenecian woman. Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, and the Messiah of Israel, the expected Davidide, was to do something unique. According to Jeremiah and Isaiah 9 and 11, the Davidic Messiah would set everything right. He would restore a sense of well-being in the land. He would correct injustices that had produced poverty and disease. He would rule righteously. We see Matthew casting Jesus in the role of this eschatological Messiah, the Son of David. Isaiah 35 would be a good reference in terms of the cry for practical help to which the Davidic Messiah would respond.

In Matthew, Jesus is also characterized as the . We have to understand something about this idea of the Son of God. Turn back to the beginning of Matthew for just a moment, because I want to point something out. It is very easy and interesting to see this. Immediately following the genealogy, there is the account of Jesus’ birth, focusing particularly on Joseph—in contrast to Luke, who focuses more on Mary. Then, we have the visit of the Magi, which of course also focuses on Jesus as the One

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 4 who would be born king. This account depicts Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, in verse 4, when Herod asks the question of where He would be born. But notice also the escape to Egypt. Verse 15 says, “And so was fulfilled what had said to the prophet”—he is speaking of Hosea 11:1—“‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’” Then we have the baptism section. Of course, the main thing that is said there, quoting from Psalm 2 and from 2 Samuel 7, is “This is my Son, whom I love, with whom I am well- pleased.” Here is one more example. In chapter 4 we have the testing in the wilderness. The main question there is the question from the tempter, “If you are the Son of God, do this or that.” In each of these sections from chapter 1 through chapter 4, Matthew depicts Jesus as “the Son of God.”

Often we think about that title primarily in terms of Jesus’ divinity, but that is not what Matthew is talking about. Let me say that again. Generally speaking, when Matthew uses the term “Son of God,” he is not talking about Jesus’ divinity. He is talking about 2 Samuel 7. He is talking about Psalm 2. He is talking about the covenantal relationship of the promise to David’s household. God says to the Davidic king, “Today you have become my son.” Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant . That is what Matthew is talking about. He is the Messianic representative of the people of Israel. He is their champion. He is their leader. He is their king. Again, that puts into perspective the fact that the kingdom of God is an earthly reality. It is not just a heavenly reality. His kingdom happens through events in the real world. The references to the Messiah, the Christ, and the Son of David, make it very clear that we are talking about the promise to David’s household, but the same is true of the “Son of God” category.

Now we see this emphasis also from the angle of “the king of the Jews.” I have already mentioned the Magi and the One who would be born king of the Jews, but notice the way Matthew’s Gospel ends. If you turn to Matthew 28, verse 18, you will find the . Often we begin the Great Commission one verse too late. We often begin in verse 19, which says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” But, Jesus’ speech actually starts in verse 18: “Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.’” Turn back to Psalm 2 and take a look at what is going on here. Psalm 2 is a Davidic psalm about the coronation of the Davidic king. We read, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against his anointed one, the Messiah.” Verse 7 says, “I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will give the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your possession.’” This is what the Great Commission is about. It is about the fulfillment of the Messiah’s role of representing God’s good and righteous and merciful rule over all the nations. The Messiah represents God’s intimate rule as a Father and as a shepherd over His people. God’s people includes not only Israel, but also Israel in its vocation as a representative to the rest of the world—the incorporation of the nations into the reign of God, into the empire of God under Israel’s Messiah. So we can see in the way that Matthew chooses to talk about Jesus that he greatly emphasizes the Davidic covenant. He greatly emphasizes Jesus as the fulfillment of the one who reigns over a restored Israel in the Messianic age.

That does not mean that Matthew does not address Jesus’ deity with these titles. I am not saying that at all. I am simply saying that Matthew’s emphasis is on Jesus’ representative role as the Son of David and as the king of the Jews. The Messiah was primarily Davidic in the Jewish mind. Now, as far as a divine figure is concerned, we could talk more so about the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Jesus uses that title, and what is interesting about that title is that it is flexible. Because of the apocalyptic expectations surrounding the idea of the Son of Man, Jesus had to remake that title. He uses it, but He uses it in a way that conforms more to who He is. When He says, “You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds,” that’s from Daniel 7. There is no question about that. That is a divine claim. There are only three possibilities for this figure with the Ancient of Days at God’s throne: 1) he is in the divine council, 2) he

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 5 is a divine emissary, or 3) he is divine himself. According to Daniel 7, the Son of Man is the one whose kingdom will never end.

Now, as I’ve already discussed, various groups of Jews would think about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom in different ways, and different groups would emphasize different things. Some would have more than one Messiah, like we see in the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the things that New Testament scholarship has shown—and sometimes scholars make it even more confusing than it is—is that there was an array of Messianic views that were extant at the time of Jesus. However, the Son of Man is a representative figure. N. T. Wright makes the case that the Danielic Son of Man represents Israel in Israel’s relationship with the nations. I think there is probably something to that, but the Son of Man is a divine, apocalyptic figure as well. That comes out in the book of and other texts.

Matthew’s use of the Old Testament Let us discuss Matthew’s use of the Old Testament. Matthew is unique in that over 10 times he uses this formula, “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying…” This is sometimes called “ the fulfillment formula. ” He uses it in different ways, though. We mentioned the quotation from Hosea 11:1, “You are my son whom I brought out of Egypt.” Now in what way is that so? What is Hosea talking about, and what is Matthew talking about? There is this idea that starts in Exodus 4 and gives background about what it means that Israel is God’s son. The focus of Hosea 11 and the focus of Matthew 2 is, again, not on Jesus’ divinity as the Son of God, but on Jesus as the representative of Israel as the Son of God. In Exodus 4, God says to Israel, “You are my son,” and so in the confrontation between Pharaoh and Moses, Moses talks about Israel in terms of a son’s relationship with God. That is what the prophet Hosea was talking about as well. He paints a picture of a second Exodus. He tells of Israel, as God’s son, coming out of exile like he had come up out of Egypt. Jesus, then, who returns after having avoided Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, returns as the representative of Israel. Again, that is the role of the Davidic king. The role of the Davidic Messiah is to represent Israel in that role as the son of God. That is the sense of the typology of Matthew 2 and the typology of the son of God there.

We also have typology through allusion. We have talked about Jesus as the Israelite but, in chapter 4, notice the quotations in the interaction with the devil in the wilderness. Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy chapters 6 and 8. Matthew 4:4 says, “It is written, ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” Verse 7 says, “It is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” Then we read, “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only,” which is a quotation of Deuteronomy 6:13. What are Deuteronomy 6 and 8 about? Why does Jesus quote this, and where does He quote it? He quotes it during his testing in the wilderness. Deuteronomy 6 and 8 are about testing. Israel tests the Lord in the wilderness by their rebellion. Israel fails the test of the wilderness. Israel is not a good son. But, Jesus passes the test—the test of sonship, the test of covenant loyalty and covenant fidelity—and so we can see the resonance there, the allusion and the typology in Deuteronomy 6 and 8 describes and interprets the testing of Jesus in the wilderness.

Of course, there are other typologies and comparisons with David. In chapter 12, we read that someone greater than David and someone greater than the temple is here. Then we have the fulfillment of the law. Turn to chapter 5. We really need to know two things in terms of Matthew’s focus on Jesus’ relationship to the law. First, Jesus is a second Moses. Notice how He says, “You have heard it said to you […] but I say again.” Jesus is interpreting. He is telling them how to interpret the Old Testament. He is a teacher like Moses, one greater than Moses. Second, He is the fulfillment of the law. So He says, “I did not come to destroy the law.” Matthew 5:17 says, “I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear,

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 6 not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Then He talks about how the disciples’ righteousness should exceed that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. So Jesus is a law-keeper. He is faithful to the law. He may not be faithful to certain traditions about law-keeping that have developed. In fact, He uses that as an opportunity for conflict with the Pharisees, but in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus does this in a particular way.

There is one particular passage that Jesus uses as a hermeneutical standard for understanding and applying Torah. Hosea 6: 6 is the hermeneutical key of how to engage the law. Jesus uses Hosea 6:6 twice in His teaching in Matthew’s Gospel. Turn first to chapter 9, verses 10 through 13. This is the calling of Matthew: “Jesus went on from there. He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him. Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” Of course, that was a violation of traditional notions of the purity laws relating to food. “On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”’” He is quoting Hosea 6:6. “‘I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’” So the Pharisees are grumbling about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, and instead of going to Leviticus 17 and various places in the Pentateuch that are relevant to issues of cleanness and uncleanness, Jesus quotes from Hosea 6. He says, “Learn what this means: God’s mercy is extended to sinners.” Mercy, not sacrifice, takes priority in the law, in Jesus’ view. This is particularly relevant to the Pharisees’ view of the purity laws. In many ways, it subverts their view of the purity laws, based on Hosea 6:6.

Turn to Matthew 12:1-8. This has to do with Jesus’ confrontation over the Sabbath.

Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw them, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” He answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.” [A reference to 1 Samuel 21]. “Or have you not read in the law, on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is the .”

So again, Jesus confronts the Pharisees and their development of various traditions around Sabbath- keeping and what that means. He gives them a hermeneutical key of how to understand it, and He explodes their understanding by quoting Hosea 6:6. So Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses, but one in continuity with his predecessor. Jesus did not come to set aside the law; He came to fulfill the law. The law is fulfilled primarily through the lens of Hosea 6:6 and the understanding that God desires mercy more than sacrifice.

Notice how this confrontation comes to a head in chapter 23. Jesus again confronts the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. Let us look first at the beginning of the chapter. In Matthew 23:1, we read, “Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. You must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see. They make their phylacteries wide and their tassels long. They love the place of honor at banquets. They love to be

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 7 greeted in the marketplace and take the important seats in the synagogue.” Skipping ahead to verse 13, we read, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Skip down again to verse 23. Jesus goes through various other name-calling exercises, and He is not very happy. In verse 23, he says again, “Woe to you, teachers of the law, Pharisees, hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin—but you have neglected the more important matters of the law.” This is interesting, compared to the beginning of the chapter, where he says, “You tie up heavy burdens.” There is irony here—you tie up heavy burdens with all these traditions about purity issues, but you miss the heavy matters of the law, the weightier matters of the law. You miss justice. You miss mercy. You miss faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. Consider this list: justice, mercy, faithfulness. Consider the one right in the middle. Again, there is this idea in Jesus’ teaching: “I did not come to set aside the law, but as we apply the law, the hermeneutical key is Hosea 6:6.”

The Structure and Movement of Matthew’s Gospel Let us talk a little about the structure or outline of Matthew’s Gospel . It is important to think about this. I hope this is something that really bears a lot of fruit for you as you read through the entire New Testament. There is not enough preaching and teaching on large passages or sections of Scripture. We live in a very mobile society. It’s possible, if you do a teaching series on the book of Romans, or the Gospel of Matthew, that by the time you have finished, many of the members of your congregation will have moved away, and many new members will have joined. While we need verse-by-verse, microscopic preaching, we need a lot more macroscopic preaching. God’s people need to see the forest, without losing sight of the trees. Often when we are looking at a particular parable or a particular saying, we lose the broader context. By losing that, a lot of times, we miss what the passage is really about. Thus, it is very helpful for us to understand different views of how the Gospel of Matthew works.

Some have talked about this in terms of the five books . It is true that there is an alternating pattern in Matthew’s Gospel. This was first noticed by Bacon in 1930 in his commentary on Matthew. There is a narrative section, and then there is a discourse. So this is the first of five discourses, with alternating sections of narrative and discourse. Notice that each one of these discourses ends in the same way. We have here a marker. Remember that Matthew’s Gospel is primarily engaged orally. People are not sitting and reading their . They are sitting in house churches, and they are listening to someone read the Gospel to them. In a primarily oral culture, writers send signals about the structure of their writing by repetition. So we have this signal at the end of each one of Jesus’ discourses, “And it happened, when Jesus had finished these sayings…” So we get a sense of one of the markers of the structure of Matthew’s Gospel.

Notice another marker. Jack Kingsbury, who taught me at Union Theological Seminary, noticed this in his outline of the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 4:17 and 16:20, we have these markers that separate three main sections of Matthew’s Gospel. If you turn to Matthew 4:17, we see this same sort of signal. Again, Matthew is repeating things in an oral culture. These are things that are being read more than once, and so the hearers get accustomed to figuring out how these things are structured. Matthew 4:17 says, “ From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near.’” Then in Matthew 16:20, we enter a new section, the last third of Matthew’s Gospel. We read, “He warned his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Christ. From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hand of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day, be raised to life.” So what we see is two interesting markers in this version of the structure of Matthew’s Gospel. The first marks the beginning of His public ministry and shows that His primary message is preaching the kingdom of God. The

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 8 second marks the turn toward the cross and how He begins to focus, then, on the fact that He will suffer many things.

Matthew wrote his Gospel to portray Jesus as Israel’s long-awaited Davidic Messiah and to inspire Jesus’ followers to faithful kingdom service. Things were getting tough in their relationships with their Jewish family members and friends. There was a lot of fracturing going on, a parting of the ways. As a result, Matthew focused on how Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s hope, especially its Davidic hope. He also focused on how that hope now includes the discipling of the nations. Interestingly, there are these hints throughout the book about this theme. We see this in how Jesus talks about the centurion. Jesus talks about the parable of the wicked tenants and how he will give the vineyard over to new tenants. Throughout the book, we have these hints, and then at the end we have the complete understanding, with the Great Commission, of the turning toward the Gentiles and the discipling of the nations.

It is good to know where distinctive passages are located. You want to know where to find the and these parables that are unique to Matthew—the unmerciful servant, the workers in the vineyard, the ten maidens, and the sheep and the goats as part of the . These are important passages, found only in Matthew’s Gospel, as is the word “church.” Of course, Luke wrote a Gospel and the . In Acts, he used the word ekklesia , but as far as the Gospels themselves, the word “church” is only in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17. There is a focus first on Peter— “upon this rock I will build my church”—and in 18:17, the reference has to do with bringing a matter of dispute with a brother to the church’s attention. The final important passage is, of course, the Great Commission. You should know where to locate these important things that are unique to Matthew.

Turn back, just for a moment, to Matthew 4. A very important summary of Jesus’ ministry is found in Matthew 4:23. Matthew summarizes Jesus’ ministry in Galilee this way: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News spread about him all over Syria and people brought to him all that were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed after him.” We have this summary of a kingdom- focused ministry. Notice the focus also in the way that Jesus teaches His disciples to pray in Matthew 6, saying, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So the focus of prayer has to do with the inbreaking of the reign of God. Notice the vision of the eschatological banquet in chapter 8. I just talked about the hint here about including the nations of the Earth. He says, “I say to you that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, , and in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And so the focus, first and foremost, is on the fulfillment of the Davidic promise to the house of Israel, and then, in keeping with Isaiah in particular, the extension of that reign incorporating the nations.

How is it that healings and exorcisms have to do with the kingdom? Why is there such a focus on Jesus as a healer and an exorcist? By the way, He does not cast out any demons in John’s Gospel. It is interesting that there are no exorcisms in John’s Gospel. We will talk about that later, but there is a big focus in Matthew and Mark and Luke on confronting demonic powers, on healing the lame, the blind, and the lepers, and also on meeting with sinners. Now “sinners” is an interesting category. We have to understand that “sinners” is a Jewish category. It is the outsiders on the inside. This is a way of saying to Jews, “You are not acting like Jews. You are not acting rightly.” It is a way to marginalize and ostracize, for moral reasons, those who are not behaving in ways that are in keeping with someone’s views of

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary New Testament Bible Content Overview Lesson 3, page 9 covenant faithfulness. We begin to see that develop also very strongly at Qumran: “We do not want anything to do with the sinners. The sinners will not be incorporated in any way at Qumran.” The sinners are not pagans. We are not talking about the pagans. Everybody knows that they are a lost cause. No, sinners are Jews, but they are tax collectors and prostitutes. They are people who touch dead bodies, people who are unclean. So when we think about Jesus’ kingdom ministry of healing, we understand that the lame and the blind could not go in to worship. The woman in her menstrual period could not go in. Where is the place on the Earth where God’s reign is most poignant? It is in the temple. That is the place where the footstool of God touches the Earth. “Heaven is my throne; the earth is my footstool.” The mercy seat is where God’s footstool is. So in order to come into the presence of God, people had to be healed. They had to be delivered from the demons. They had to be forgiven of their sins and incorporated into full covenant membership. It is like people who have been put under church discipline for bad reasons, and now Jesus is saying, “Bring them back. Bring them in.” They are being restored, so Jesus’ kingdom ministry restores people to full covenant functionality, to worship, to full participation with the covenant people of God.

A good memory verse for Matthew, of course, is the Great Commission. As we go through this course, I will point out the verses that are really important to know. This is one of them. This is one you should know, not only for missional reasons, but for liturgical reasons as well.

Some of you may be wondering about why scholars believe that Mark is earlier than Matthew, especially since Matthew was one of the twelve apostles and Mark was not. Why does Matthew use Mark and not the other way around? It is a good question. One of the reasons that some people think that Mark was first is that Mark is the shortest, and, as I indicated earlier, it gives an outline of Jesus’ ministry that Matthew and Luke both seem to follow. It makes sense that if Matthew was interested in Jesus as teacher, which he seems to have been, that he would expand on that in relation to the outline of Mark. That is part of the rationale. Another reason why people put Matthew more in the 80s instead of the 60s is that he seems to be addressing the final rupture with the synagogue. Peter died under Nero, so he died in the 60s. That is another reason why, if Mark was using Peter’s account, he had to have written his Gospel earlier rather than later. So those are the issues about the order of the synoptic Gospels.

The two-source theory is that Mark is the source for Matthew and Luke and that there is a hypothetical source called “Q” that represents the sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke agreed on that are not in Mark. I have problems with this, because we have no evidence of such a document, so it is only a hypothetical document. A lot has even been written about a so-called Q community, all of which is sheer speculation. Now, as we will discuss later with reference to John’s Gospel, it is clear that we have reliable traditions from a different source. So the way I prefer to think about Gospel sources is that you have a pool of men and women who were eyewitnesses in some way connected to the events of Jesus, and several different streams flow out of that pool. Some of them come together in different ways, as you might expect them to, yet different ones emphasize different things, like witnesses summoned to give account in court.

© Spring 2008, Greg Perry & Covenant Theological Seminary