If everybody remembered their head dressings from last time, then let us proceed into the wonderful and magical world of Matthew’s gospel!
Matthew 1:1 – “The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham…”
What does this term mean? As 21st century Christians, we hear the term Christ[1] or Messiah and automatically ascribe it to Jesus. But to a 1st century Jew, the Messiah was the “anointed one” of God, Yahweh’s agent of salvation to Israel.[2] Messiah would have been the one who God promised would sit on the throne of David forever. According to 2 Samuel 7, God expanded on the already-existing covenant He’d made with Abraham (discussed in the last post) by promising to David that someone from his bloodline would forever have the right to rule Israel. His bloodline would never be cut off. Psalm 89:3-4 sums up God’s promise in this covenant:
“I have made a covenant with My chosen; I have sworn to David My servant, I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations.”
This psalm is referring to Messiah[3]. The one who would be related to David, who would rule Israel forever, the one whose Kingdom would have no end. Messiah was a great big deal to the people of Israel. They’d been waiting on Him for hundreds of years. Matthew says in the very first verse of his gospel, the waiting was over. Messiah had come. This should have been music to every Jewish person’s ears. More than that, the life of Jesus of Nazareth – the Christ of God – pointed directly to the fact that Jesus was the Chosen one because it seems as though at EVERY corner of His life, Jesus was fulfilling Old Testament prophecy – starting with before He was even born!
And it didn’t stop there. Through Jesus’ infancy, from the slaughtering of Jewish infants by Herod the
Catching onto the pattern yet? But wait…there’s MORE!
Not only did Jesus fulfill prophecy, He knew it well – He knew God’s word like the back of His hand. [8]
Let it be made clear: Satan KNEW the word of God during Jesus’ temptation. It’s clear he knows how to pull God’s word from its context and twist it into what he wants it to say. That’s his game – and he plays it well. But Jesus (who is God and the chosen Messiah) knows God’s word better – because He knows the intended context. That’s how He was able to resist Satan’s attempts at making Him sin – by being filled with God’s word to use against attack.
The biggest and (probably more famous) example of Jesus’ knowledge of not only what God’s word said but how it should apply to the hearts of those earnestly seeking to live for God is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In this discourse, Jesus takes the law from what the people of the time thought it meant and broadened it – He deepened it to reach the hearts of people.
Jesus, in the eyes of the culture around Him, flipped the Law completely on its head right off the bat (Matthew 5:1-12 – the Beatitudes[9]). He took the Law in the Sermon on the mount and redefined what it meant to be “righteous before God”, discussing everything from a person’s relationship to and with the world and the people in it (Matthew 5:13-48), to a follower of God’s prayer life and how that should look to the eyes of God rather than the eyes of people (Matthew 6). Jesus takes everything the Jewish people had been using to “clean themselves up for God” and applies it to the INSIDE of a person – focusing on cleaning up the heart rather than the outside.
This has been God’s heart for His people all along – to have hearts soft and available for Him. Hearts that are obedient to Him. Hearts that are faithful and tender to His heart. God is, has always been, and will always be about the HEARTS of His babies. Jesus was the manifestation of that heart – in every word He spoke regarding the existing word of God to His actions in miracle and in self-sacrifice. Messiah was supposed to be the savior for the people – the Savior of Israel. But where the Jewish people expected Him to save them from political oppression – from EXTERNAL danger – Jesus the Christ came to save Israel, as well as the rest of humanity, from the eminent and devastating INTERNAL danger of having hearts that were unrighteous before God. Without Messiah, Israel would never stand a chance in the presence of God – they, indeed, needed a Savior. They still do. Just not the way they thought they did. Which is kind of where we leave off with Israel today.
Now you might be asking yourself (as you slide your yamaka off your head – yes, I’m watching you) what all of that has to do with YOU, and with me for that matter. As Gentiles, how is any of this significant to us?
In the coming posts we’ll explore the aspects of Jesus as Messiah to not only the Jewish people – as proof that God hadn’t given up on them – but how Jesus was the Christ for all people, including the Gentiles. Including me. Including you.
See you next time – stay classy!
[1] For the record, Christ is NOT Jesus’ last name. The Lord is not “Mr. Christ” to business associates, and “Jesus” to friends and family. Christ is a title, synonymous to Messiah – The Simpsons Movie LIED to you. It lied to us all…
[2] Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007) 482.
[3] Dr. Paul Benware, Survey of the Old Testament (Chicago, ILL: Moody Publishers 1988, 2003) 121 – 122.
[4] I recommend that you Google-search Herod the Great. The guy was crazy. Perhaps a brilliant political leader…but crazy. Wikipedia him – see it for yourself.
[5] Matthew 2:18-19, quoting Jeremiah
[6] Matthew 2:15, references back to Exodus when God refers to Israel as His son – inclusive to Jesus
[9] Notice in this section of the text, it almost seems to be oxymoronic. For example: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This, to the original audience, would have been a backward statement BECAUSE they were used to looking at the Law as an outside-in transaction, rather than an inside-out transaction.
Hey! Put a link to part 3...
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