Law & Grace - Introduction to the Gospel of Matthew
Vern Peterman · Mar 27, 2011
Law & Grace, No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926230121094

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Brad read for us here from Matthew 10 verse 1 and then verses 5 and 6. The reference there, speaking of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and then Matthew 15, again, the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We'll address that here shortly. Just to kind of give us some perspective, we've for some months now been looking at Exodus through Deuteronomy and this theme of law and grace. We spent a couple weeks looking at the book of Joshua along that theme, and last week we looked at the book of Isaiah.

We'll now be turning a corner. This will occupy us for some months to come. This is the book of Matthew. we'll be going through the entire book of Matthew as a part of our Law and Grace series. And so we'll begin that today. We're going to do that by an introduction. So welcome to the Gospel of Matthew and our study of that.

As we begin exploring this verse, one of the things that I think will be valuable for us to just kind of get in our perspective is As you turn the page to the Gospel of Matthew, it is a huge and momentous turning point in Scripture. It's a pivotal turning point. This is a gospel as written by the Apostle Matthew. It is strategically placed there at the head of the New Testament, the 40th book of the New Testament. We could say, however, and this may seem puzzling, that the Gospels are the last of the Old Testament books. Now what do I mean by that? You'll soon see. There is comparison and contrast. This is a table that is also included on page one of your handout here.

If we were to compare the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, And this is based not necessarily on the statement of who they are targeting, but observing each one. There is Matthew written, as we will continue to see, written specifically to a Jewish perspective.

One of the things we pointed out last week in our study of Isaiah is these angelic creatures. And I notice we still have a few of the supplemental handouts available from last week. There are the four living creatures which are shown in Isaiah, in Ezekiel twice, and the book of Revelation. But from Ezekiel chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 4, the first of those living creatures is the lion. So here it represents Christ as the Lion of Judah, He being the King of Israel, the King of the Jews.

Mark, the book which follows, is written to a Roman mindset. One of the things you find throughout the book of Mark is there is a sense of immediacy. Mark will write, immediately Jesus went. Jesus was one who got things done, who accomplished things.

And so the creature symbol is the ox or the calf. In other words, this is a beast who gets things done, who accomplishes work. The Gospel of Luke, written to a Greek mindset, presents Jesus as the man, the full humanity of Christ, And the Gospel of John presented to all with the theme stated in the book that you might believe. And the eagle is the creature symbol represented in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation chapter 4, representing Jesus deity, which comes out strongly in the Gospel of John.

Now this book, Matthew, as we've said, is written to the Jews. It shows evidence of being written to these people, we could call them Israelites, Jews is actually a later term, and Hebrews, so any of those terms fit. Each of those terms are synonymous even though they have a different emphasis in each one.

It begins, this Gospel of Matthew, with a very Jewish genealogy. No other Gospel begins with such a Jewish and strongly Jewish genealogy. It begins like this, the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Now, you have on your handout here this, this record book of the genealogy of Jesus, in the original language, that is the Hebrew, that name would have been Yeshua, or we would pronounce it as Joshua. It means God saves. The Messiah. In Hebrew, the Hamashiach, or the Greek, as we've tended to adopt, Christos, or made into the form of Christ. It means, in any form, the anointed one. The anointed one.

The son of David. That is, there was a promise made through the prophet Nathan to David, promising that there would be a descendant from him that would reign. And so being the son of David, it is a fulfillment of the promise made to David that Christ would come reigning on the throne of David. The son of Abraham. He's of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The lineage of promise. The lineage of covenant.

You see, until the 70 AD destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jews could They could go into this temple area and assemble. They could make up a genealogy from the documents that were there. They could copy it down. And they could also check genealogies. If someone said, I'm descended from this person or that person, I'm of this tribe, you could prove it and demonstrate it. It impacted things like inheritance. It impacted the roles that you would have according to tribe in the nation of Israel.

And they were there made available at the temple. And what you see here is a kind of an angular look into the inner temple area. In the front you see what's called the Court of Women, actually only Jewish women and the men were allowed. There were still some Jewish people excluded. For example, a person who was illegitimate. of illegitimate birth for 10 generations was excluded from this area. But there in the back part was the area where the priests worked. Only the Jewish men who are qualified were allowed to go back there with them. Off to the very right hand part, however, was where they kept the records of genealogies.

My reason for pointing that out here. And so, people could go in and check those genealogies. That's why, for example, in Hebrews chapter 7, it says there, it is evident that Jesus was of the tribe of Judah. Why would they say, is evident? You could go there and check. Check the records for yourself. Which also gives us a clue as to when Hebrews was written. So here you have, that's that part there, right?

And there will be the records and the claim from Hebrews 7.14.

Now, Jesus tells the twelve disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Isn't that interesting? Now, did he continue to do that? No. But here, during the time of his earthly ministry, especially early in Matthew chapter 10, He told them, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In fact, he told them, don't go, as was read here, don't go to even a road that leads to the Gentiles, don't go to the Samaritans, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Jesus himself, as Brad read for us, says that he himself was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He said this at a time when a Canaanite woman was pleading for his attention and for him to do some things for her. So both in Jesus' direction to the disciples when he sent them out two by two, and we'll talk about that in more detail when we get to Matthew 10, as well as Jesus' own response to what was he sent for, he was sent to the Israelites, to the Jews, to the Hebrews first and foremost.

Now where did that term lost sheep come from? And you have this on a slide on page 1. The lost sheep of Israel comes from Jeremiah 50 verse 60, although there are a few other passages. My people, Israel, that is verse 4 makes it clear that my people is referring to Israel, have become lost sheep Their shepherds have led them astray.

They have made them turn aside on the mountains. They have gone along from mountain to hill and have forgotten their resting place. See also all of Ezekiel chapter 34 which is focused upon the still coming reign of Christ. That's Ezekiel 34 11 and 16 says, For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out. I will seek the lost, bringing back the scattered.

So, only in the land of Israel to the people of Israel. Jesus, it's very interesting, apart from his brief stay as an infant, where he was in Egypt, he spent his entire life, from any record that we have, and certainly his entire ministry, only within the area either that was taken by Israel or was promised to Israel, even if they never took it. He occasionally, in that instance with the Canaanite woman as one of those instances, went outside of Israel. Why? Because it was still in the land of Israel. Isn't that interesting? He went to places that were supposed to be Israel's.

In Matthew, we'll see that Christ is going to direct the people of Israel to the original law of Moses. This is a theme particularly that shows up in Matthew chapter 5, the first part of what's called the Sermon on the Mount. We'll see that when we get there. He would say, you've heard that it was said, but I tell you, right?

He corrects what they have stated and strips away all the additional traditions. Some of the traditions added to scripture, some of the traditions took away from scripture, and some of the traditions simply distorted what scripture said. Any one of those cases, he would say, go back to the original word. Do not, do not get all caught up in the additions and subtractions and distortions.

So he pointed the Jews to the law, to the law and to the law again and again. Another set of words that we're going to be encountering, Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. Only the Gospel of Matthew uses the term Kingdom of Heaven. It does so 32 times. Very interesting. The other Gospels don't contain that phrase. Nowhere else in Scripture does that phrase come up except here. We'll take a closer look at the two terms for the Kingdom certainly later on in our study. That'll be a part of several different chapters as we look at it.

But the main reason for Matthew to replace the usual expression, Kingdom of God, with Kingdom of Heaven is because the Jews didn't want to risk saying the name of God in vain. So they would say, instead of Kingdom of God, they would say Kingdom of Heaven. So Matthew alone used this euphemism, replacement language, to replace the name of God, which is a point of habit and concern among the Jews. Therefore, evidence that he wrote this book to the Jews, directed to the Jews.

We still carry that same euphemism in our own language. Isn't that interesting? In our own culture, we will say, heaven knows, instead of God knows. We will say, oh heavens, my heavens, or oh my heavens, as replacement So even in our own culture, we have tended to carry that on. Or, for heaven's sake, instead of using the name of God, we will use heaven or heavens as a replacement, as a substitute. And that's not all. Another one aside from that, and I don't want to spend too much time on it, but, oh my goodness, goodness knows. We use the exact same terminology, but with goodness as a replacement. So we actually have carried on and even extended that custom, if you will.

So who was this guy, Matthew? Who was this fellow that wrote this first book? He is mentioned in the other Gospels and is mentioned at the beginning of the book of Acts. Who was this guy? He was one of Christ's twelve disciples that he chose at the beginning of his three years of ministry. So he was one of the original twelve.

This name Matthew is actually, we call it a contraction, we might call it a nickname. It's a contracted or shorthand version of Matathias, which means gift of God. So the name Matthew was sort of the easier to say handle that he was given. He was also called Levi, and you can understand using a shorter term such as that as well. He was the son of a man named Alpheus. We don't know a whole lot else about him, but that was his father. This comes out of Mark 2 and also out of a passage in Luke that we'll see here. Matthew had been a tax collector for the hated Romans. Now think about this. The Romans come in. First of all, you imagine the Jews, these filthy pig-eating Romans. And the filthy pig-eating Romans come up with all sorts of other vile customs and start telling Jews what they can and can't do. As a matter of fact, restricting the free carrying out of the Law of Moses.

And the Romans came in and they instituted a tax system which was extremely heavy. And interestingly enough, the tax revolts that started from actually before the time when Christ was born and carried on into the subsequent decades actually started in Galilee. The tax revolts started in Galilee, the place where Jesus called many of his disciples. And so the Romans were hated and loathed so much that this would be the place to start their rebellions and to reject the Roman tax system.

Think of what they had. They had the usual support of the temple, then they had the usual support of Herod and Herod the Great and all the family that he established, and then they had the Roman government to support. They were tired of it. There was nothing left by the time all of them took their taxes. So Matthew had been a tax collector for the hated Romans, the loathed Romans.

So here is Jesus otherwise known as, excuse me, calling Matthew otherwise known as Levi, who called him as recorded in Luke 5, 27 through 32. After that he, that is Jesus, went out and noticed a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he left everything behind and got up and began to follow him. So he left it apparently completely. Levi gave a big reception for him, that is for Christ, in his house.

And there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. In New Testament times, this term, tax collectors and sinners, was a rather standard phrase among the Jews for the morally worst of the worst. So imagine, here is Jesus who comes to Matthew, part of this crowd, part of this group that is the worst of the worst. And he calls him, and in order to celebrate Jesus calling him, matter of fact, you could even call it a retirement party, right? To celebrate, what does he do? He invites all his tax collector friends to commemorate this end of one career and the beginning of another. And of course a great many thought that was very disgusting. So Matthew was from where? Well, he was from Capernaum at the north end of the Sea of Galilee.

And you no doubt have recalled that name and let's take a look at it here. Here is a space photo. This is the way God sees Israel, I guess. But nobody in the Bible ever saw it, but we get to see it. Here is the Sea of Galilee at the north end, and the Dead Sea at the south end, and between is the Jordan River. So that's our general geography.

We're going to zero in on the Sea of Galilee to get a little better look. And so here is the Sea of Galilee, again taken from space. And by the way, Andrew, I guess he's back from Afghanistan, he told me that he rode around the Sea of Galilee when he took a little vacation from his military duties and rode around the Sea of Galilee. And he said the people that rented him the bicycle said most Americans don't make it anyway. So here's the Sea of Galilee.

And it is here at the very north end where Capernaum is located. Capernaum right at the north end just to the west of where the Jordan River upstream of the Sea of Galilee flows in. It's an area with dark basalt rock and so actually it's been excavated. Here's another view at the north end of the lake and it kind of gives you an idea. Capernaum in the context of other places. Off to the east would be Bethsaida, where Philip was from, and off to the west would be the place where Jesus, it's called the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. Here's a closer look.

It's an archaeological park. All of Capernaum has been excavated. You can see some evidence of some of the walls left over in some of the houses. It was a fairly densely constructed place. Instead of it being wide open, all the things were close together.

What remains there, near the center and off to the right, is the remains of a second century synagogue built on the foundation of the synagogue that was there. during the time when Christ and Matthew and Peter was there. As a matter of fact, that structure that's closer to the edge of the water there is called St. Peter's House. It is not known for certain, however, it appears likely that that was St. Peter's House. So here he is.

Since Capernaum was the trade center for Galilee's fishing industry, or at least for the north part, Matthew collected taxes from there. He would sit there at kind of a main entry gate and anybody who went in and out, they would be taxed for anything that they had that was on the list of items that were taxable, fisheries and animals and products of various kinds. So here's Matthew taking down records of who had paid what tax and keeping that on file. When Matthew is called by Christ to follow him as a disciple, Matthew seems to, from the description, to simply have left his place as a tax collector.

He didn't seem to go back part-time or try to fit in being a disciple. He committed entirely his time, from any appearance here, to being a disciple. He followed Christ during his three years of ministry as his disciple, and then as an apostle in the church.

Matthew didn't have the same dating system we now use. He didn't write the book and then put at the bottom or at the top or the top of each page the exact date AD, because they didn't have such a system. Such a system was not actually developed for many centuries later, the one we use now.

And a date of about 40 to 60 AD, some would put it a little bit later. I'm inclined to actually put it earlier. But about in that range. Now, what that would mean is it was not like immediately after these events that are recorded, but actually some years later.

Now there are more than 1,400 theories about how these synoptic Gospels, that is the first three Gospels, were produced from one another from some other document and put together, you will be glad to know we won't be going over all 1,400 of those theories this morning. Okay. Matthew appears to have written in Greek from some written records, but also some memorized sayings and histories from others. Now before you think, yes, Vern, but memorized histories, aren't those kind of flaky and subject to error? Not so much, and here's why. It was the pattern of a disciple in Jesus' time, and these disciples would be no exception, they would actually drill one another with the memorized sayings of their rabbi.

So you can imagine, let's take something that you very likely know, you know, we would say, you know, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. Okay. And so far that all sounds real familiar. Okay.

But if I said instead at the end, and to the Republicans that I can't stand. You would say, wait, wait, wait, something's wrong there, right? Why? It's because, and have we memorized it? Yes. It's because I messed up with some words at the end, right?

And you would recognize that. Well, that's the way these disciples were about the things Jesus said. They would go, you can imagine, they'd get up early in the morning and they'd be walking along the Sea of Galilee and they would drill one another about, they would say things together, one person say and the other person check it. So there was that. And there also may very well have been things that they did in fact write down.

So Matthew compiled these things from the various sources. Even early in the Gospel of Matthew, times when Matthew himself was not there, how did it come about that he had the history of what took place surrounding Christ's birth and the Magi? He would get these accounts from others. Imagine carefully sitting down with Mary and asking, okay, how did this take place, and to get the account from that.

The translation from Hebrew and Aramaic is apparent in some portions of the Gospel of Matthew, and very occasionally Latin as well, and we'll try to point out some of those as we go along. Now, what happened to Matthew later on? Now that's very interesting. The only Apostle whose death is actually recorded in scripture is the Apostle John's brother James Acts chapter 12 where he was killed with a descendant of Herod by a descendant of Herod the Great ordering his death and so that's the only one recorded all the other deaths of the Apostles are are recorded outside of scripture in some way. The reliability of the accounts varies.

With Matthew, he was last named in the New Testament in Acts 1.13, chapter 1. And that in fact is the last time a number of the apostles are named. It's in fact the last time that the name of Mary, Jesus' mother, is mentioned there in Acts chapter 1. After that, he's only referred to as one of the Apostles, that is speaking of the Apostles in general. Last mentioned in the book of Revelation, chapter 21, second to the last chapter, where he is not named, but he's mentioned as one of the Apostles. Now Acts was written by Dr. Luke, so Dr. Luke would have recorded Matthew as one of these 12.

Outside of the Bible, that is from records outside of the Bible itself, Matthew is said to have gone to Parthia. Parthia was the empire just to the east of the Roman Empire. It's the place where it had taken over as empire from when many of the Jews had gone to Babylon some centuries before.

So many Jews remained there. Actually, several of the apostles are said to have gone to that area. Why? It's because many of them spoke Aramaic, and guess what was the native language in that area where many of the Jews remained from centuries before? Aramaic. And so they would easily have been able to go there and tell them about Jesus.

Many of those Jews would also have the Old Testament as background to receive the Gospel from. The written tradition, again outside of Scripture, is that Matthew died in Ethiopia He, according to the account, had wooden stakes being driven through his body, and that is what he died from. What's very interesting is that the account says that he was yelling out the gospel with his last words. He was yelling out the gospel as they were driving the stakes through his body.

So we could ask, what does the Gospel of Matthew have to do with us? It was written about the Jews, about Jesus who was, as he himself said, sent to the Jews, should we think, why should I bother with this? It's all written to the Jews, what does it say to me? Should we just dismiss it?

Only the last part of the book, after all, does speak to the church. Jesus is talking to the disciples and he begins telling them in the last part of the book, mostly in the very last chapters, about the church. Much of the rest of the book, the first half and then some, is directed to the Jews. Only at the end, as a matter of fact we can say this of all four Gospels, only at the end is the message directly said to address the church.

This is what we meant when we said previously we could say that the Gospels are the last of the Old Testament books. Why? Because much of each of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, much of those books is directed to the Jews, as was much of the Old Testament.

That's what we mean by that. So, what does the Gospel of Matthew have to do with us? Well, next Sunday we'll explore the approach to the Gospel of Matthew. How are we going to look at it so that we know what and how to apply what's written there? That is, let's take for instance, even of the books that are written to the church, we would still have to ask, is this written to me? Let me give you a for instance.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy. He sent him to Ephesus to correct the false teachers. Now, is that directed to you? Do you need to pack your bags and get on a plane to Ephesus right now in order to be obedient to God? No, we must take a look at it and say, is this directed to me? Or if not, how do I apply this? So we always have to ask that question. The same thing could be said of the book of Titus. He sent Titus to Crete to appoint elders. Should all of us do that? Got anybody volunteer? Go to Crete to appoint elders?

No. We always have to ask the question, what is written directly to me And if it's not written directly to me, how do I apply it? And we'll be taking a look at the book from that perspective as we look at it this next week. When we look at things as we will that say, for example, here is the Law of Moses and you must live by the Law of Moses. Does that apply to you? We always have to ask those questions. Jesus is the King of the Jews. Does that mean he is our king? We have to ask that question, don't we? So it'll be a very valuable study for us to take a look and examine.

How do we determine what's written to us and what's not? We want to avoid the extremes of, on the one hand, taking everything as directly stated to us. Or, on the other hand, saying no, that's written to the Jews and therefore dismissing everything. Either one of those extremes is a problem, isn't it?

We must take a look at the content of what is written in the book of Matthew and say, what did God intend for us to listen and to understand? And we need to do that with consistency, don't we? So that's what we'll examine this next week. We'll begin our study of Matthew, actually in more intensive detail, two weeks from now. And we'll actually continue this for some months to come. I haven't written the whole schedule out, so it may even continue until next year. We'll see. OK? All right.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we begin to take a look at this gospel of Matthew. We see in it recorded the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to earth the first time. The time when he came to present the gospel to Israel, the gospel of the kingdom. The time when he came to die for our sins and to be buried and to rise again, the time when he came to establish the apostles of the church, those who would be given responsibility to establish the church.

And so we thank you for that, Lord. We thank you for what you have laid out in front of us here. We have some tremendous weeks and months of insight here should you wait so long to come for us. I would just thank you for that. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.