Devotional Grist – Page 7

A Few Thoughts on the Kingdom of God

In its simplest expression “The Kingdom of God” refers to the rule and reign of God consistent with His eschatological and redemptive intent to restore the Cosmos, thus destroying all competitive Kingdoms.

It should be seen as distinct from the general idea of God’s sovereignty though it includes the idea of God’s general sovereignty. The distinctness is found in the fact that this rule and reign of God is in direct connection to His triumphing over all other competing Kingdoms in the globalizing of His Redemption.

The essence of Jesus’ teaching ministry focuses on the theme of the kingdom of God. That this is so is seen in Mark’s Gospel in reference to how the Lord Christ characterized His ministry.

^{Mark 1:14 “}Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The phrase “Kingdom of God” is found in sixty-one separate sayings in the Synoptic Gospels. Were we to count phraseology that is synonymous with the “Kingdom of God” our count of “Kingdom of God” language would increase to 85 references. Obviously this theme is of major import.

Indeed so important has this concept been that more than a few scholars have labeled it as the theme of the Bible. In other words they will read all of Scriptures with the “Kingdom of God” as the organizing theme by which Scripture is held together and rightly interpreted.

Illustration — Beethoven’s fifth symphony with it’s four note motif. Heard in every movement of the symphony save the 2nd. Not possible to understand Beethoven’s fifth apart from hearing how everything connects to that motif.

The Lord Christ never didactically defines the “Kingdom of God.” He will repeatedly use metaphor and similes to say what it is like. What is going on with the phraseology is that the Lord Christ is taking an already well known concept and is filling it with meaning.

So, our Lord did not invent the phrase, but built upon existing Old Testament teaching. A few examples,

Psalm 145:11 – 13 — ¹¹They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
    and tell of your power,
¹²to make known to the children of man your^[b] mighty deeds,
    and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
¹³Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

Psalm 103:19 — The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.

Isa. 45:23 — “Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
²³By myself I have sworn;
    from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

Dan. 4:³How great are his signs,
how mighty his wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and his dominion endures from generation to generation.

Zech. 14:9 — ⁹And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

This is far far from exhaustive. The point is that when the Lord Christ came saying “The Kingdom of God is at hand” the people listening would not have said … “What’s a ‘Kingdom of God.’

The importance of the idea is seen by the its usage at Key junctures

When John the Baptist comes preaching — “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” ( Matt 3:2 );

Likewise, as we mentioned at the outset, the Lord Christ says much the same — Mk. 1:14-15 / Mt. 4:17 / Lk. 4:42-43

“The time has come… The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

When Jesus teaches His disciples to pray He teaches them to ask — “thy kingdom come” ( Matt 6:10 )

In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Christ in describing his people says of those poor in Spirit, of those persecuted for righteousness sake that “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” a Jewish circumlocution for “Kingdom of God” — Mt. 5:3, 10.

Just before the Cross our Lord Christ can say during the Lord’s Supper,

“I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day whenI drink it anew in the kingdom of God”

It is used repeatedly in the parables of Jesus as we find it here.

Debate concerning “Kingdom of Heaven” & “Kingdom of God.”

When Dispensationalism came upon the scene, for years they tried to argue that there was a difference between the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and the “Kingdom of God.” In order to satisfy the demands of their system which require that the Jews get their own Kingdom the Dispensationalists said that the “Kingdom of God was here now in Spiritual form, but “the Kingdom of Heaven” is going to come after once the Millennium begins in our future. This future Kingdom would be physical and would include Christ having a throne in Jerusalem to rule from. However, they have had to retool this thinking since it has become clear that “Kingdom of Heaven” is used interchangeably with “Kingdom of God.”

The account of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19 includes Jesus’ words saying, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23). In the very next verse, Jesus exchanged the term “Kingdom of God” for “Kingdom of Heaven”, and said this, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew’s Gospel uses “Kingdom of Heaven” as opposed to “Kingdom of God” because it was written to a Jewish audience. Such an audience avoided using the word “God” out of a sense of such usage being inappropriate. In desiring to protect the name of God from all possible violation they used circumlocutions.

Now having laid this much out and having noted that the Kingdom of God in its essence is the rule and reign of God consistent with His eschatological and redemptive intent to restore the Cosmos we would note that the idea of the “Kingdom of God” remains a hotly debated subject in the Church in terms of how it should be exactly understood.

Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is a political entity. Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is only a Spiritual reality with its manifestation primarily identified with the Church. Some want to contend that God’s Kingdom is only a Future prospect. Some want to contend that the Kingdom of God is not future but is already present. While others will just say that Jesus was mistaken and wrong in His idea of a Kingdom of God.

We will spend our time this evening considering these various understandings.

As we consider the text this morning we see two points emphasized

I.) In the Parable of the Growing Seed what is Emphasized is God’s Intent and Ability To Grow His Kingdom apart from our Meddling

As we come to this we must keep in mind that this is a parable. A parable is different from an allegory. In a allegory there is a great deal of busyness where we seek to identify all the varied characters with their corresponding meaning.

An allegory is what the prophet Nathan gave to King David when rebuking him for the Bathsheba affair. Nathan, comes to David and tells him about a rich man with many flocks who takes a poor man’s only lamb to serve to his guests. Of course in Nathan’s allegory Bathsheba is the ‘lamb,” Uriah, her husband, represented the poor family with that one lamb. David was the rich villain who owned scads of sheep but decided to steal the one loved lamb of the poor man in order to satisfy his desire. Allegory.

Here we have a parable. The parable doesn’t work the way a allegory does though it may have allegorical elements. What a parable is trying to do is to establish one main overarching point. And the point here in Mark 4 — a parable unlike many others inasmuch as Jesus doesn’t explain it — is that God grows the Kingdom absent of our involvement apart from sowing the word.

Taking the seed to be the Word of God, as in Mark 4:14, we can interpret the growth of the plants as the working of God’s Word to extend His reign and rule over men. By the growth of God’s Kingdom men are swept in. The fact that the crop grows without the sower’s intervention means that can God accomplish His purposes even when the sower is absent or unaware of what God is doing. The goal is the ripened grain. At the proper time, the Word will bring forth its fruit, and the Lord of the harvest (Luke 10:2) will be glorified.

The truth of this parable is well illustrated in the growth of the early church: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Just like a farmer cannot force a crop to grow, an evangelist cannot force spiritual life or growth on others.

2oth Century Dutch Theologian — —Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom

[The] absolutely theocentric character of the kingdom of God in Jesus’ preaching…implies that its coming consists entirely in God’s own action and is perfectly dependent on his activity. The kingdom of God is not a state or condition, not a society created and promoted by men (the doctrine of the ‘social gospel’). It will not come through an immanent earthly evolution, nor through moral action; it is not men who prepare it for God. All such thoughts mean a hopelessly superficial interpretation of the tremendous thought of the fullness and finality of God’s coming as king to redeem and to judge.

Now, this does not mean that we as God’s Kingdom people work contrary to God’s Kingdom expansion. We do labor has God’s workman in God’s Kingdom but we do so realizing that God Kingdom expands because of God’s initiative, action and activity. When the Kingdom grain has ripened it will be God who gets all the glory.

The point of the Parable of the Growing Seed: “The way God establishes His Word authority in the heart of His people is mysterious and is accomplished by Divine appointment apart from human agency.” Ours is to be faithful in what God has called to in His Kingdom remaining confident that God’s already present Kingdom will come.

Actually, this ought to encourage us. It sometimes seems that the redemptive rule and reign of God is so diminished. It seems as if there is so much working against God’s rule and reign. Yet this parable reminds us that God will reap a harvest of His Kingdom expansion and He will do so simply because that is His intent. Nothing can stand in His way. The Kings of the earth may conspire against Him but God will have His Kingdom Harvest. No weapon formed against Him can overcome Him and His intent. No conspiracy can overcome His divine conspiracy to redeem the Cosmos. The inevitable growth of God’s Kingdom is as certain and as natural as a seed giving up its fruit once planted.

So … we should not despair, be discouraged, or despondent. God is growing His victory garden and we are part of that Kingdom garden and He has made us farmer citizens in His Kingdom.

II,) In the Parable of the Mustard Seed the Emphasis is on the inevitable vast expanse of the Kingdom

This likely has a couple OT referent points.

In Ezekiel 17:22-24, God plants a tiny cedar twig on a high mountain of Israel and that twig becomes a large and fruitful tree under whose branches every kind of bird will find shelter.¹ The birds there symbolize the nations that flock to Israel’s God on the glorious day of the Lord. This word-picture in both Ezekiel and Mark envisions the day when God’s sovereign and life-giving power will embrace the whole world–good news indeed!

In Daniel 4:21 the metaphor found here of “birds of the air may nest under its shade” is used to describe how the nations will find shade under a metaphorical Tree which stands for Nebuchadnezzar. In both Daniel and here thre is more than a hint of world wide dominion. “The birds of the air may nest under its shade,” likely is pointing here to the fact that the Nations will come under the dominion of god’s Kingdom.

Don’t miss though the emphasis found in the idea that what becomes dominant starts out as minuscule.

It is easy to see this as the life of Christ. Christ is the Kingdom mustard seed that starts out tiny and then expands so that the Nations come it and find rest under His shade.

Application

1.) Whatever may appear to us now, we needs know that Christ’s Kingdom has the inevitability of victory.

Marxism taught and teaches,

“the victory of the proletariat [is] inevitable.

Meaning that Marxism will win out. S0me have opined that this plank of Marxism more than any other plank is what accounts for the success of Marxism’s spread.

But this was stolen from Biblical Christianity. It simply is the case instead that the victory of Christ and His Kingdom is inevitable.

The truth of this can sustain us in dark times … in persecution … in trial. Tears may last for the night but joy cometh in the morning.

The Good Shepherd

Contextual BackgroundThe context for the text this morning grows out of the sustained and continued conflict of the Lord Christ with His enemies, the Pharisees. This particular conflict starts in John 9 with Jesus healing the man born blind. Much of what is said in this passage this morning reaches back to that conflict. That this is intense verbal conflict can be seen by the fact that this incident is sandwiched between attempts to stone the Lord Christ (John 8:59; 10:31).

^{John 8:59}Then took they up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the Temple: And he passed through the midst of them, and so went his way.

^{John 10:31}Then the Jews again took up stones, to stone him.

It would do well to remember that the Pharisees were the ruling religious and cultural elite at the time. They were what we today would call “the Establishment.” This Establishment was a ruling order whose goal was to operate in the name of the Law to destroy the law in order to justify and cloak their own twisting and violation of the law.

At this point of the conflict the Lord Christ has just engaged the formerly blind man who He had healed and who had been excommunicated by those who opposed Christ. The Lord Christ receives this outcast “sheep” as His own and talks about the blind who can see and the seeing who are blind (9:38f). This outrages His enemies who see the insult in Christ’s words.

The Lord Christ then illustrates this whole particular conflict with the Pharisees that takes place in John 9, with the words we find in John 10 as He contrasts images of the true, good shepherd (Himself), on the one hand, and the thieves and bandits who oppose him on the other; the false shepherds, who do not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climb in by another way, who do not have the best interests of the sheep at heart; they steal, kill, and destroy, while Jesus, who is metaphorically both the door to the sheepfold and the shepherd of the sheep, offers abundant life.

This is then the context of the text before us.

We should say at the outset that the Lord Christ has put on display for us here a couple realities already. The Lord Christ in this passage is

Judgmental — He has assessed the situation and has determined that those who are opposing Him are false shepherds. Every time the Lord Christ speaks of Himself as “The good Shepherd” the Pharisees would have understood instantly the implication of themselves as being false shepherds. The comparison of this idea of false Shepherds had a long OT History.

In Ezekiel 34 God complained of false shepherds

Woe be unto the shepherds of Israel, that feed themselves: should not the shepherds feed the flocks? ³Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool: ye kill them that are fed, but ye feed not the sheep. ⁴The weak have ye not strengthened: the sick have ye not healed, neither have ye bound up the broken, nor brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost, but with cruelty, and with rigor have ye ruled them. ⁵And they were scattered without a shepherd: and when they were dispersed, they were devoured of all the beasts of the field.

Because of the false shepherds God promises a time when a Good shepherd will come

^{Ezekiel 34:22}Therefore will I help my sheep, and they shall no more be spoiled, and I will judge between sheep and sheep. 2³And I will set up a shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David, he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.

So, the Lord Christ, in positing that He is the promised Good shepherd. He is, at the same time, given the immediate context, adjudicating that the Pharisees are false shepherds, or merely Hirelings. I point this judgmental disposition of the Lord Christ out in order to place a counter weight to the constant sniping one will often hear that Christians shouldn’t judge.

This idea of the absolute necessity to judge is all over this passage. It is not only Christ who is judging His false shepherd enemies here but the idea of judging is contained in the truth of vs. 5

⁵And they (Christ’s sheep) will not follow a stranger, but they flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.

You see. The sheep judges the voices that it hears. It knows the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows. The sheep judges between voices.

Fellow Christians — My fellow Sheep — we have to judge. All through our lives we have to judge. Now our judgments are to be made with charity and are not to be self-righteous. Further, we should gather all the facts so that we do not make “unrighteous judgments,” but we have to judge.

Isn’t our lack of judging rightly a great fault of the Church today? Our problem is not that we are too judgmental but that we aren’t judicious in the slightest. The sheep who comprise the visible Church today seem to have very little discernment at all for they follow almost any voice that is raised.

And yet our Lord Christ says here that sheep will not follow the voice of the stranger. The Lord Christ says here that the Sheep know His voice and follow Him. This perhaps suggests how vast the necessity is within the Church to do Evangelism and Apologetics. If it is really the case that sheep of Christ will not follow the voice of a stranger and yet so many sheep in the visible Church are following voices of strangers then the only thing we can conclude, it seems, is that those sheep who are following the voices of strangers are not sheep and so need to be evangelized.

As we consider vs. 11-18 we note a clear theme here. The theme here is that the goodness of the Noble Shepherd is demonstrated by the cost that He bears. The “good Shepherd lays down His life.” This phrase is repeated 5 times between vs. 11-18 and suggests that this is the theme of these verses.

Read in light of the cross this emphasis thus has a soteriological emphasis to it. The Good Shepherd demonstrates His love for the Sheep by doing all to keep the flock. Unlike the hireling or false shepherds the Noble Shepherd consistent with His calling (cmp. vs. 18) prioritizes the flock. When we deal with the accusations of old slewfoot … when we are burdened by our Sin … we need to keep in mind that the Good Shepherd gave His life for the flock. In the giving of His life for the flock there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are resting in the offices of the Good shepherd.

We might also employ here a greater to lesser argument. If the Noble Shepherd will do the greater work of laying down His life for the Sheep will He not also do all the lesser works that a Shepherd does with respect to the Sheep? If the True Shepherd will lay down His life for the Sheep, will He not also provide for, care for, and protect the Sheep?

This is an important point to note because Sheep are notoriously frightful and skittish beasts. And so we are. When we are tempted to be frightful and skittish we must remind ourselves of the Good Shepherd and how He keeps His own. He is the Good Shepherd. He will not abandon us nor leave us defenseless. Because we are His flock He will continue to care for us come what may.

This good Shepherd who lays down His life is more than merely a Shepherd though. This good Shepherd is divine. The divinity of the good Shepherd is already hinted at by the fact that Christ is the Divine Shepherd spoken of in Isaiah 40:11. There we find the promise of the Divine King

¹⁰Behold, the Lord God will come with power, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall guide them with young.

This note of the Divinity of Christ as the Good Shepherd is sounded throughout this passage with the 4 “I am statements in 7, 9, 11, and 14 and made most explicit in 10:30.

³⁰I and my Father are one.

So this good Shepherd who lays down His life for the Sheep is a Divine Good Shepherd. This is a passage then I would go to in order to set forth the fact that the Lord Christ was very God of very God were I dealing with someone like a JW or a Muslim.

We should note the echoes that we find here of the truth of the particularity of the Atonement. Christ is going out of His way to insist that there are sheep that hear His voice and follow Him and sheep who do not hear His voice and do not follow Him (cmp. 26-27). Further, the Lord Christ says here that He lays down His life for those sheep who know Him (10:15). This pushes us to observe that the death of Christ was particular only to those Sheep that have belonged to the Shepherd from all eternity. Christ did not die for those who were not, nor ever were, nor ever would be His Sheep.

To insist that the Lord Christ died for those who were not His sheep, and never would be His Sheep would be to insist that the death of Christ failed in its intent, and in its design to protect His sheep. It is to insist that God had an intent and design that failed. But if God had an intent and design that failed then that would require someone or something that caused God to fail in His intent and design. Whatever or whoever caused God’s intent and design to fail then would at that point be greater than God and so God would be no God. The good Shepherd who lays down His life for the Sheep gathers only the Sheep that for whom He died.

What else might we say here concerning Sheep and Shepherd?

Well, He knows his own (and loves them, 13:1). And they know him (10:14) ( see also 10:4). This is a statement that was put on display by the man born blind who at the end embraces Christ (9:38). This reciprocal knowing is placed in parallel with the knowing intimacy between the Father and the Son (15). What is being communicated is that just as there is this harmony of interpersonal knowing between the Father and the Son so there is a interpersonal harmony of knowing between the Sheep and the Shepherd.

Of course this knowing here, though never less then a mental understanding, is more then that. This knowing implies a fondness and a relational standing. I might say “I know my accountant.” This is more of a mental understanding. I can also say “I know my Son.” In that knowing there is more then mental understanding. In God’s knowing of us there is a intimate knowing that includes a commitment of Redemption, and the preserving of us on His part.

Now, don’t miss here an important fact. If the sheep know the Shepherd and if the Shepherd knows the Father then by necessity the Sheep know the Father. Here is the great truth that the only way to know the Father is through the Son. There is no knowing God naked. If God is to be known by the believer it is only as mediated by Christ. The knowing of the Father is only done by the knowing of the Shepherd.

Considering the other sheep of 10:16

Not of this fold — This fold doubtless refers to the fold of Israel.

What is being communicated here is the intent of the Gospel to go to the Nations.

They will hear my voice — Irresistible Grace

One Flock …. One Shepherd —

Unity and diversity here.

The diversity is found in the reality that the sheep who are to be gathered in the future are from other folds. There are distinctions between folds. Israel and the Nations are distinct.

The unity is found in the fact that these diverse folds will form one flock with one Shepherd.

The way I read this unity in diversity is that in the flock of Christ (Unity) will be many folds comprised of different nations (Diversity). There will be a Spiritual Unity comprised of Nations that are diverse by God’s creative work. The One and the Many is thus satisfied and we avoid both a Unity that gives a amalgamated Unitarianism and a diversity that would yield the war of all against all.

There is thus a Missionary impulse here. We are to be aware that the Gospel is to go to the Nations. Woe be to the person who suggests that Christ is not available for some people or nation.

Jonah & The Charge Of “Racism”

The post below was inspired by this sermon though I have collected other information and it is in my own words.

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=419151036335

Many in the Evangelical world (those who write commentaries and those who preach) insist that Jonah’s sin for not wanting to go to the Ninevehites is a early world example of the Racism that God hates. For example, John Piper does just that in this quote from one of his sermons. Piper here has imagined God speaking to the prophet Jonah ,

“Jonah, forsake your racism. Forsake your nationalism and follow me.”

Earlier, in the same sermon, Piper had explicitly said,

“Jonah was a racist, a hyper-nationalist. He did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew God would have mercy on his enemies.”

Now, Piper isn’t alone in this error of reading the 20th century sin du jour back into the ancient world and on to the Prophet Jonah but he is a glaring example of it.

We should note here that “Racism” has become the sin that most preachers love to hammer. It is a politically correct sin to hate and it makes for great points among the Politically Correct indoctrination crowd. It’s become so bad that I have in my memory a ordination from years ago where the candidate up for ordination, though knowing literally nothing regarding the doctrine of the Christian faith, passed the exam because he could impressively denounce racism.

Now, the points for calling Jonah Racist that many of the commentaries give are as follows,

1.) Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh.

This by itself proves that Jonah was a Racist. If Jonah hadn’t been a Racist he automatically would have had no problem in going to Nineveh.

2.) Jonah did not want the Ninevehites to Repent.

This is construed to mean that Jonah did not want them to repent because he was an evil racist.

3.) Jonah was disappointed and angry when Nineveh did Repent.

This clinches the “Jonah was a Racist” argument.

However, when examining matters more closely it may be that modern commentaries and modern preachers like Piper are wrong.

There are ways of understanding that allow us to not call Jonah a “Racist.”

Jonah’s sin is not found in his putative “racism” but in his falling into the sin of Rationalism. Jonah lifted his well intended reasoning above God’s Revelation. God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh. That is all Jonah needed in order to go. Instead Jonah reasoned that God would be dishonored by his going to Nineveh and by the Assyrians repentance. Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he knew that God would give repentance to Assyria (Nineveh) and Jonah reasoned that would detract from God’s glory if the God haters who were not God’s people repented while the Northern Kingdom who Jonah labored in calling to repentance did not repent. Jonah understandably believed that if those who were not God’s people repented it would blacken God’s glory because those who were God’s people (Northern Kingdom) did not repent. Jonah had labored all his life in Samaria among his own people calling for repentance with no fruit. Those of the Northern Kingdom were God’s people. It was there that repentance should have been expected.

Secondly, Jonah did not want “to be the instrument that God would use to bring Nineveh to repentance, because such a action would make Jonah look like a traitor to his own people. The rabbis held a similar position. According to M. Avrum Ehrlich, many rabbis concluded that “their actions (Nineveh’s repentance) would show the Hebrews to be stiffnecked and stubborn.” Another Midrash explains that “Jonah… chose to disobey God so as to save his own people.”

So, contrary to modern evangelicalism’s knee jerk insistence that Jonah was a racist, we might instead see Jonah, whose sin was not Racism, as committing a sin of a rationalism that found Jonah lifting his own ratiocination above God’s explicit command. Jonah’s sin was born of two instincts gone wrong,

1.) A wrong headed desire to protect God’s glory that defied God’s explicit command
2.) A desire to protect his own people, born of love now misguided, from being shamed

This great affection of Jonah’s for his people is something that was shared by others in God’s Revelation. Paul could say in Romans 9,

¹I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the holy Ghost, ²That I have great heaviness, and continual sorrow in mine heart. ³For I would wish myself to be separate from Christ, for my brethren that are my kinsmen according to the flesh,

And Moses uttered this same desire, that somehow his death may be the propitiation for his people when he said in Exodus 32:32, “Therefore now if thou pardon their sin, thy mercy shall appear: but if thou wilt not, I pray thee, raise me out of thy book, which thou hast written.”

So if we are going to fault Jonah, let us fault him for the proper reason. Jonah’s fault was found not in some kind of 21st century version of racism. Jonah’s fault was that he loved his conception of God and God’s glory above the God of the Bible. Jonah was zealous for God’s glory according to his fallen human reason as opposed to being zealous for God’s glory according to God’s command. Secondarily, Jonah’s fault was that he loved his own people, just as Paul and Moses had done, above loving God’s command. Jonah’s sin was the sin of a wrongly directed love. Jonah’s sin was not the sin of a wrongly directed hate. Not wanting to go to Nineveh had to do with Jonah’s falling into the same kind of Rationalism that Adam and Eve fell into when they lifted their reason above God’s command.

In God’s economy the repentance of Nineveh was a delay to the upcoming judgment on Israel by the Assyrians. Jonah should have known the prophecies of Amos (3:11) and Isaiah (7:17) concerning the upcoming Assyrian invasion.

^{Amos 3:11}Therefore thus saith the Lord God, An adversary shall come even round about the country, and shall bring down thy strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled.

^{Isaiah 7:17}The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy Father’s house (the days that are not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah) even the King of Assyria.

Jonah knew that these Ninevehites would repent as a result of this missionary trip (Jonah 4:2).

^{Jonah 4:2}And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? therefore I prevented it to flee unto Tarshish: for I knew, that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

Jonah should have been keenly aware that the generation which would invade Israel would be a generation who would have returned to its wickedness (Isaiah 14:25).

^{Isaiah 14:25}That I will break to pieces Assyria in my land, and upon my mountains will I tread him under foot, so that his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden shall be taken from off their shoulder.

This would mean that the same generation which heard Jonah’s message would not be the generation which would invade Israel, because Israel was not invaded by a righteous nation, but rather by an evil nation. This means that the Assyrian invasion would happen, at its earliest with the succeeding generation. As such God’s grace to Nineveh was God’s grace to the Northern Kingdom as Ninevah’s repentance would therefore buy Jonah and the Northern Kingdom some time and would give his own people, Israel, perhaps another 40 – 100 years (the time of a generation) to repent before God.

Jonah should have trusted to God’s reasoning and not his own fallen reason.

Jonah’s sin was not racism. Jonah’s sin was rationalism. Before we try to out think God we should remember Jonah’s attempt to do so. We should remember that obedience to God’s explicit command is our charge above our thinking that obeying God would lead to bad consequences. We should remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways and that God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

Recapitulation in Matthew 2:13-23

Introduction

Concept of Recapitulation.

Read Text

God is giving another Exodus of His people who have suffered under another King who has again murdered their children in hopes of keeping Israel oppressed. Like the first Exodus under Moses the leadership of the 2nd Exodus is led by one who escaped the wicked King’s murderous designs.

There is thus re-capitulation going on here in Matthew’s Gospel. Just as Israel of old was persecuted but delivered by the child (Moses) who had escaped the Tyrant’s persecution so the God has granted another Deliverer to Israel by another deliverer who likewise has escaped the Tyrant’s persecution.

So, what Matthew is doing here is a retelling of Israel’s story. Jesus is the greater Israel who is repeating Israel’s drama. In Matthew’s Christology Christ is faithful-obedient Israel where Israel was unfaithful and disobedient. In Christ there is a final Exodus with a faithful deliverer.

Matthew is thus giving us Literary clues that all that God intended with Israel was now coming to pass in Christ.

There is continuity then with the OT except at this point the recapitulated covenant story is marked by the success of God’s suffering servant Messiah as opposed to the failure that OT Israel had been. This success of the suffering servant Messiah is what makes the covenant now a “new and better covenant.”

That this is the purpose of Matthew is seen in the genealogy with which he opens his book. Jesus, descendant of Abraham, descendant of David, is the culmination of true Israel. Indeed Jesus is the TRUE Israel and as the true Israel He recapitulates the story of Israel so that Matthew wants us to see Jesus as Israel.

This recapitulation motif is underscored by the fact that Jesus is taken down into Egypt. When finally Jesus returns from Egypt there is then a connection to Israel’s ancient History of coming out of Egypt.

Matthew is giving us a literary and redemptive history akin to the work of the Pointilist Artist at the end of the 19th century. Pointilism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. This is what Matthew is doing with his Gospel. He is painting His Gospel with small distinct dots of narrative in such a way that when one looks at his Gospel they see points of contact with Israel’s history so that the two together form one History. Matthew thus is not only a literary Pointilist but he is also one of those artists who gives you two works in one work.

You know the kind I’m speaking of. We’ve all seen those pictures that if you stare long enough at them you being to see another picture. Matthew is giving us two pointilist pictures. One is of OT history but the other is of Jesus participating in that History now fulfilled and culminating in Him.

In our text today we have that not only here with the parallel’s between Moses as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants and the Lord Christ as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants (2:16) but we have it also in the fact just as OT Israel was God’s son and came out of Egypt (2:15) so the Lord Jesus is God’s embodiment of Israel who is called out of Egypt.

This recapitulation continues in vs. 18 where Mt. quotes from Jer. 31:15. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, sees Jerusalem being sacked by the Babylonian invasion and with that sacking he sees the judicially innocent children being slaughtered by the Heathens. The prophet Jeremiah imagines, with his poetic vision, that Rachel, the wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph (who would be associated with Israel through Ephraim and Manasseh) and Benjamin (Judah), is weeping for her descendants, her children. Rachel is thus, for Matthew, the OT epitome of Israel’s mothers who are now weeping for their children brutally massacred by another occupying force. For Matthew then, the Lord Christ is thus caught up with not only Israel’s Exodus but also in the great historical event of their Exile.

However, there is a note of promise here also for Jeremiah’s lamentation is in the middle of four chapters, Jeremiah 30-33, that are filled with comfort and consolation and joy. Jeremiah 30-33 gives us a prophetic vision of hope though as well as misery. Jeremiah will speak of a Messianic age to come when the new and better covenant will bring in everlasting peace and righteousness. Despite all the despair that Jeremiah records there is a promise of a time when sins will be forgiven, the Holy Spirit poured out, and eternal life present. That time that Jeremiah had spoken of has now come but what Matthew wants to do is that he wants his readers to see that the Lord Christ, as the new and better Israel, bringing a new and better covenant, shares in the brokenness of Israel’s redemptive History. He is the Deliverer saved from the Pagan King. He is part of the history of Israel’s Exile. Matthew is identifying Christ’s History with Israel’s redemptive history.

This recapitulation is also seen in vs. 23. When the Lord Christ is eventually led out of Egypt back to Israel his family settles in Nazareth. The scorn for Nazareth is seen later in John’s Gospel when one of the future disciples asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” upon hearing that Jesus came from that hamlet. Nazareth was to Israel what Burr Oak might be to Michigan or Longtown might be to South Carolina. Every state has there Nazareths. Remote nowhere hamlets occupied by those considered untermensh by the elite. Nazareth was a no account village in a no account region (Galilee).

But Matthew, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration is going to use that origin of residence of Jesus to exercise another example of Historical recapitualation. Matthew tells us that the Lord Christ “being called a Nazarene,” is a fulfillment of the prophetic word. The problem comes though that you can exhaustively search the Prophets and will find nothing that explicitly says that the Messiah will come from Nazareth.

So … how do we handle that.

Well, we suspect that what Matthew is doing is that he is appealing to Isaiah 11.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit

Here is the connection.

In the Hebrew the word for Branch in Isaiah 11:1 is neser (nay-tser) and to the hearing it sounds like “Nazareth.” The connection is that just as a branch (nay-tser) from a stump is a humble and lowly origin so the Lord Christ as Messiah coming from (nay-tser) Nazareth is one from a humble and lowly origin. The Lord Christ as the Messiah is Isaiah’s nay-ster (Branch) hailing from nay-ster (Nazareth).

Of course this is all typical of the way God often works. Throughout the OT he takes people from the backwaters of life … the people who are of lowly estate … the people the elite consider the poor white trash and he uses them to change the course of History. Jesus was a mere (nay-ster) Branch, from (nay-ster) Nazareth.

Here there is prophetic fulfillment and recapitulation. In terms of prophetic fulfillment Jesus not only shares Israel’s History but He is the one whom Israel’s History is pointed. In terms of prophetic fulfillment The Lord Christ is the lowly branch (the remnant / Isaiah 6) — the only thing left of the great Kingdom of Israel that God cut down with the captivity. The fact that Jesus hails from despised Nazareth is consistent with a lowly branch being all that was left of a great Kingdom.

However, like the context where the Jeremiah passage is taken that records Rachel’s weeping there is in the Isaiah 11 context where the branch language is taken a great amount of hopefulness. There in Isaiah 11 you also find the record of the Messiah becoming King that rules over a re-creation of peace,

10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush,[b] from Elam, from Babylonia,[c] from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.

12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.

In these verses (Mt. 2:13-23) then we find pointilist recapitulation. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the greater deliverer who escapes the blood-lust of a wicked King. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as one who goes down into Egypt because of travail and comes out of Egypt to peace. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the weeping of Mothers in his time in Israel, during the time of Herod, parallels the weeping of Mother’s in the Babylonian slaughter. The Lord Christ recapitulates Israel’s history has being the foretold lowly nay-ster (branch) who comes from lowly nay-ster (Nazareth).

What Matthew is communicating is that the one has come who is the embodiment of all that Israel was intended to be. Messiah IS Israel.

Application

1.) Herod was a paranoid madman. He executed one of his favorite wives as well as at least three of his sons.

In view of such executions, the emperor Augustus reportedly quipped, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son”

Those who begin by hating THE Child end by hurting children. Hating God and God’s Revelation leads to hurting people. If people will be ungodly they will act inhumane. Herod is the proof-text for this but not the only proof text. Adam and Eve hate God and His Revelation and so turn on each other. Cain hates God and His Revelation and so turns on Abel.

2.) Iraneus “Against Heresies” posits that the babies of Jerusalem killed were the first Christian martyrs.

3.) With the played out drama of Herod’s maniacal slaughter it is not beyond reason to suggest that as the Word is Incarnated in Christ so the anti-word is Incarnated in Herod. At the very least, I think we are to see here the long warfare that God spoke of in Genesis between the seed of the woman (the Lord Christ) and the seed of the Serpent. The Serpent, via Herod, lashes out to strike the seed of the woman but He misses due to God’s providence.

4.) The slaughter and Christmas

There is, in the combination of the Triumph of the Christ child’s escape with the slaughter of the innocent the reminder that hope should not be buried in the context of calamity. For those who live with tragedy and sorrow in lands that know something of persecution and slaughter there is, in Matthew’s Christmas account the understanding that midst untold sorrow and suffering God’s plans are not being snuffed out. Hope remains. It is a bitter-sweet consolation coated in God’s severe mercy but a consolation all the same.

5.) Already a fulfillment of

Luke 2:34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Jesus Speech Pattern to Pharisees

I.) The Players

A.) Pharisees (37) — The Instructors

The Pharisees were the Talmud Traditionalists of their time. They were the ones who were uber concerned with their wrong notions of the law not being violated. Their problem wasn’t their zealousness. Their problem was that their zealousness was misdirected since they had twisted God’s law into the Talmud to suit their ends.

The word “Pharisee” may very well be derived from a term which means “to separate,” and so they viewed themselves as above the rank and file. They were the religious elitists of the day. You would not find them among the rank and file sinners of the day because they were do good for them.

Luke 15 “Then came unto him all the Publicans and sinners, to hear him. Therefore the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, He receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”

The origin of the Pharisees as a sect seems to have been in or around the second century B.C. They soon became detached and distant from the political regimes (the zealots, for example, would have brought about change through revolution). The Pharisees sought to produce spiritual holiness and spiritual reformation. They recognized that Israel’s condition was the result of sin, specifically a disobedience to the Law. It was their intention to identify, communicate, and facilitate obedience to their twisted version of God’s law, thus producing holiness and paving the way for the kingdom of God to be established on the earth. The problem was that they had, over centuries, inserted man’s law in place of God’s law so that they were more concerned with formalities than they were with righteousness. This disagreement over the law (Talmud vs. Torah) was the reason why Jesus clashed with them over and over again.

Pharisees believed in the inspiration and authority of the Scripture as they had twisted it to fit their traditions. They believed in the supernatural, in Satan, angels, heaven (the earthly kingdom of God at least) and hell, and the resurrection of the dead. Their error was in the fact that they were twisting God’s law and that they were using the law unlawfully as a means to curry God’s favor.

If God’s Law was the Constitution the Pharisees were the Supreme Court and much like our own Supreme Court for over a Century now has been twisting the original meaning and intent of our Constitution the Pharisees were twisting God’s Law in favor of their own fever demented imaginations.

And so instead of being the first to recognize the Lord Christ as God’s Incarnate Law-Word, they were the first to reject Him. Rather than turning the nation to the Lord Christ, they sought to turn the nation against Him.

We should note here that a person is not a Pharisee all because they are convinced they are right. A person is not a Pharisee all because they have a standard which they seek to uphold. A person is a Pharisee when they depart the revealed God of Scripture and His Law-word in favor of a god made in their own likeness with their own autonomous own law word, all the while insisting that they are representing God.

B.) Lawyers (Experts in the law) — Instructors of the Instructors

The Lawyers were a subset of the Pharisees. They were the cream filled center to the Pharisaical Oreo Cookie. They were those who were the informed hub around which all the Pharisees found their orbit. They were the Jedi Masters and were teachers of the Pharisees.

And so the audience of our Lord Christ were the cream crop of learned men. These men were the gatekeepers of the Hebrew culture. In our culture today they were the Hollywood moguls. They were the High level politicians and judges. They were the movers and shakers of our publishing houses. They were the nationally known televised Journalists and their producers. They are the Nationally renown clergy at our Mega Churches

And the truth be told they are too often you and I.

So this is the audience of our Lord Christ and he intends to pick a fight but only because these folks have been picking a fight with God for centuries.

C.) What do we learn here?

We learn that there is a people and a time and a place for direct words.

And who are the people for whom the direct words are reserved? Well, if Scripture is any indication it is the people who twist God’s Word. It is the people who alter the meaning of God’s word AND who think they are doing God a favor by doing so.

Quoting Rev. Doug Wilson here from his book “The Serrated Edge,”

“We are to be kind to one another. Sheep are to be kind to sheep. Shepherds are to be kind to sheep. But if a shepherd is kind to wolves, that is just another way to let them savage the sheep (60).”

If a Pastor sees wolves savaging Christ’s sheep the Pastor has a role to resist the wolf. If the Pastor doesn’t, The pastor is unfaithful. Unfaithful to the sheep. Unfaithful to the wolf. And unfaithful to the Sheep and Wolf owner.

Now, quoting Wilson again,

“…we must be careful not to be hasty in imitating [Jesus], since His wisdom is perfect and ours is not. It is therefore good to take counsel with others. Related to this, sharp rebukes and the ridiculing of evil practices should seldom be the first approach one should make, but usually should follow only after the rejection of a soft word of reproach, or when dealing with hard-hearted obstinacy displayed over an extended period of time.”

When all of this is taken together it is incredibly difficult to discern. Is now the right time to say something? Should I bide my time and wait? Would there be a better time in the future?

And keep in mind in all this that if there is a sin of being too harsh and jagged in speech there is also the sin of being to soft and effeminate. If we can sin by saying too much we can sin by saying to little.

And now remember that God’s enemies always love it when we say too little and are too soft and effeminate.

II.) The Issue (vs. 37) — The Law

Occasioned by Washing = Ceremonial Washing

The washing here was not for hygienic reasons but for ceremonial purity. It was thought that the hands could accidentally come in contact with all sorts of things that were ritually unclean and so punctilious Jews would wash their hands potentially defiled hands so as not to contaminate their food. This is an example where their oral law was going beyond Scripture. One of the treatises in one of their books chronicling the oral law covers details of hand washing, such as how much water is to be used and how many rinsings are necessary and other arcane details.

This issue comes up in a different place,

Matthew 15:1 Then [a]came to Jesus the Scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,
2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders? for they [b]wash not their hands when they eat bread. 3 [c]But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?

In both of these places we see that the Lord Christ takes the opportunity to lay into his opponents over the issue of how they are handling the Law. In both texts the sin is the fact that they are being so punctilious about comparative minutia while ignoring the substantive and explicit word of God.

In Matthew they are ignoring God’s law as to their responsibility to parents to the end that they can do what they want with their money. Here in Luke they are ignoring God’s Law that requires justice and the Love of God in favor of ceremonial and ritual washing.

Make no mistake though … the problem that the Lord Christ goes full throttle on is the seeing how the Pharisees are manipulating the Law so that they come out looking good.

The problem is not the Law. Indeed, in the Matthew passage Jesus even says that they should have obeyed the comparative smaller portions of the Law but without violating the comparatively more significant part of the law. His problem is not with people who honor God’s law. His problem is with people who say they honor God’s law all the while dishonoring it.

The Lord Christ was opposed to Lawlessness in the name of lawfulness.

We should note here that since Law is a inescapable category it is always the case that lawlessness comes in the name of some kind of lawfulness. When we set aside the law of God we will always take up the law of man. So, consequently antinomianism is really impossible, for whenever we are against God’s law we will always be in favor of some other law, even if it is the law that teaches it is impermissible to say that anything is not impermissible.

Pharisees and Teachers of the Law come in all shapes and sizes. And we probably do best on this subject when we start with ourselves. Who of us have a complete understanding of God’s Law? Who of us doesn’t twist God’s law to our end and purposes. Behold, Pharisee and Hypocrite is a title we do all well wear to one degree or another.

Having said that we must recognize that whole cottage industries have been spun in the Modern church by denying God’s law in one way or another.

There are those who deny God’s Law because they say Jesus ended the Law with His death
There are those who deny God’s Law because they say it was “culturally conditioned.”
There are those who deny God’s Law because they say that most of it should be seen as an Intrusion Ethic
There are those who deny God’s Law applies to Christians as they engage in the Public square

This is the age in which we live and one wonders, given how out of sorts the Lord Christ was over the Pharisaic twisting in the 1st century how out of sorts He is now with the Modern Church.

III.) The Communication Methodology

A.) Audience

Before we can choose a methodology of communication we have to know our audience. Jesus did not always speak the rough way he speaks here to all people, though this is not the only time he speaks this jaggedly with people. As one reads the NT we readily see that Jesus spoke to different people in different ways.

Few examples,

Luke 7:37 And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought a box of ointment. And she stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment…. 48 And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven thee.

Luke 8 (Woman with a blood issue) And he said unto her, “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace.”

Mark 7 – Syro-Phoenician woman — Request to cast devil out demon from daughter

27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be fed: for it is not good to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.

So, what we note here is that the Lord Christ gauged his communication with people according to the audience he was encountering. And because that is so, we must at the very least pray that we will have the wisdom to likewise know how to assess our audience and so how to communicate.

There are other considerations as well. There is the matter of the setting or context in which we find ourselves. You might not say something to someone at a formal dinner that you would say to them at a ball game. You might not say one thing to a Judge in his courtroom that you would say to him out of his courtroom. You might not say one thing to someone in the context of a funeral that you might say to them in the context of a wedding.

What we want to note here though is that direct language in a public setting is not always the wrong play as Jesus demonstrates here.

B.) Motive

Love for the listener. Love for the eaves-droppers (those listening in). Most importantly … Love for God.

There will be those who read this passage and conclude that Jesus is mean here. I do not conclude that. The Lord Christ is giving to these men exactly what they need to hear even if recoil over what is said to them. The Lord Christ is demonstrating the Love of the Father to these men.

C.) Protestation (vs. 45)

“Teacher, when you say these things you insult us also.”

I’ve always been amazed by this passage. There is an implicit plea here to go easy. Be nice. Don’t include us in your harsh judgmental “woes.”

But instead of slowing down in the face of this plea, the Lord Christ, accelerates. It is as if the only purpose of this plea, in the text, is to serve as a speed bump that does not work.

What can we say? Only that He knew what they needed to hear and how they needed to hear it.

IV.) The Consequence (vs. 53)

Conclusion

Having said all this we can not forget the other side of the equation

Scripture presents “lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” Eph. 4:2, as the normative state of affairs in the body of Christ. Scripture does take account of other people’s feelings. Consider Paul in these passages.

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, 8 so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well… But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. 1 Thess. 2:7-8, 17

II Cor. 1 So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? 3 I wrote as I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. 4 For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.

And yet this same Paul could write that he wished the enemies of the Gospel would go all the way and castrate themselves. And then turn around and say,

Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore such a one, in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.

And so, we are often left in these matters begging in prayer for the Wisdom to know how to engage. To know what the proper word is and the proper way it should be said.

God grant us forgiveness when we fail and the grace to ask for forgiveness.