As we’ve read previously in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has come as the long awaited King to establish his kingdom among us. What does that kingdom look like? What do its citizens look like? How shall we now live in this new age that Christ has inaugurated with his Incarnation? Jesus tells us in Matthew 5-7. The Sermon on the Mount is a portrait of this new community of disciples that has gathered around Jesus. In particular, this is a portrait of God’s people from the vantage point of God’s law- the final and defintive interpretation of the law’s true intent by the one whose very existence reflects its perfection. As the perfect expression of God’s character interpreted by the new and greater Moses, the moral law of God- seen through the eyes of Jesus- forever binds those who have been redeemed. We learn from the Sermon on the Mount that the Christian message is more than a message of mere forgiveness, glorious as that message is. The Christian message is a message of change, transformation and newness of life for those who are united to the Savior who came to fulfill the law and the prophets for their sake.
Category: Expositions for Morning Worship
Matthew 4: The Temptation of Jesus
I’ve often heard this text preached as a kind of “Defeating Temptation for Dummies” as if it was written primarily as an example for us to follow: “Jesus defeated the devil by quoting Scripture and so should you!” The problem, of course, is that Jesus’ temptation- no less than his birth and baptism- are unique events within this history of redemption that the Bible records. Why was Jesus tempted by the devil? Jesus was tempted by the devil on behalf of sinners subjected and enslaved to the tempters’ soul-ruining influence. Jesus faithfully resisted the devil for the sake of those who are unwilling and unable to live faithfully under the devil’s viscous assaults. Particularly, Jesus enters into the wilderness as the new and greater Israel- fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in order to replicate, in his own perfect divine-human experience, the experience of Israel in the wilderness. Jesus, as the new Israel, succeeds where Israel failed, accomplishing, in that victory, the righteousness Israel failed to secure so that the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16) might be set free. Jesus also enters into the wilderness as the new and greater Adam who, though tempted to question God by receiving food at the hands of the devil, faithfully resists him on behalf of those fallen in Adam.
The condescension of Jesus to stand in the place of his enemies by subjecting himself to the assaults of the evil one is nothing short of astounding and reveals to us something of the unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation. The good news from this text is that sinful, weak, and wavering people like ourselves- people who have not stood firm amidst the assaults of the devil- have a Savior and advocate who faithfully obeyed in their place. The good news is that our great High Priest who was tempted as we are yet without sin (Heb. 4:15), now supplies the resurrection strength our wandering hearts so desperately need when we are tempted. The good news is that the heavenly inheritance attached to obedience has been secured for us by the obedience of the Incarnate Son who will come again, in glory, to fully and finally crush the head of the ancient serpent under our feet (Rom. 16:20), delivering us from the all the temptations we daily encounter. The good news is that if we are united to Christ, victory over the devil has already been won for us by this Incarnate Savior who wears our flesh so that He might succeed where we daily fail.
Matthew 3: The Baptism of Jesus
Why was the sinless Son of God baptized with a baptism of repentance? John the Baptist rightly observes that it is he and not Jesus who should be baptized with water for repentance (3:14). After all, this was a baptism for sinners. Nevertheless, Jesus insists upon being baptized in order to “fulfill all righteousness (3:15).” As R.T. France observes, Isaiah 53:11 describes the servant of the Lord as “the righteous one” who “will make many righteous” by bearing their iniquities. Jesus “fulfilling all righteousness,” therefore, means identifying with the sinners whose sins he came to bear; symbolically uniting himself with the fallen people he came to save; fulfilling, in his Incarnate person, the righteous demands of the law which his people are incapable of fulfilling because of their sin; undergoing, as the new and greater Israel, the end-times exodus on behalf of those in bondage to sin. And as Jesus is baptized, the heavens open, the Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove, and the Father anoints Jesus as the beloved Messianic King (Ps. 2:7-9; Is. 42:1) who will usher in his everlasting kingdom through the suffering of death. Jesus is the perfect and sinless penitent who absorbs the curse for sin in his very flesh so that his people might be set free. The good news for the people of God is that the glorious benediction of the Father which falls upon Jesus also falls upon all those who are united to him by faith. Jesus submits to John’s baptism and receives the benediction of the Father for those whom he came to save.
Matthew 2:13-23- The Politics of Jesus, Pt. 2
In his commentary on this text, Stanley Hauerwas writes “that perhaps no event in the gospel more determinately challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children.” While the message of the Incarnation is good news, it is good news for a world that is broken and marred by unspeakable sin and tragedy, by the politics of murder so starkly put on display before us in this text. The good news of Christmas is not that the people of God are, in this age, delivered from the vicious politics of power hungry politicians threatened by the existence of children. The good news is that Christ has established a kingdom that is greater than the tottering kingdoms of Herod and his kind, a kingdom of resurrection life and peace that will one day supplant all the violent kingdoms of man. Until then, as Hauerwas writes, the church of Jesus Christ stands as a “challenge to those who would kill children,” embodying a politics of life and peace in a culture of death and violence.
Matthew 2:1-12: The Politics of Jesus
In Matthew chapter 2 we find that the coming of the true king illicits a violent response from this vassal king of the Roman empire named Herod. The conflict between the two kings ought not to be missed: Jesus’ coming as the Shepherd-King of Israel, foretold by the prophet Micah (v. 6), is a political challenge to King Herod. The coming of Jesus Christ means the coming of a different kind of politics- a politics of peace, a politics of suffering, a politics of certain victory through cross-bearing and resurrection. The politics of Jesus, therefore, stands as an unsettling threat to the imperial claims of lesser lords- whether it’s Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or Herod or the contemporary rulers of today’s world. The kingdom of God is not a private sanctuary of morality or religious feeling. The kingdom of God is an expanding temple which will fill the whole earth, an assault upon the principalities and powers and rulers of this age united against the Lord and against his anointed. And notice, it’s not King Herod who receives the homage and praise. The wise-men fall down and worship King Jesus. He is the true King, the living God, the Lord of all and we, like the wise men, are called to humbly submit to his Lordship, now and forever.
Matthew 1:18-23: The Birth of Jesus
Matthew here recounts the birth of Jesus Christ and its fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The prophecy is Isaiah 7:14, that “a virgin would conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us” (v. 23). Why is the doctrine of the virgin birth or conception so important? Because it teaches us that in the birth of Christ, God the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit is breaking into our lost and sinful world for our eternal good. In Christ, the God-Man- One Person in two distinct, inseparable human and divine natures- God draws near to us in favor and humanity draws near to God in perfect obedience. In Christ’s person and only there is “God with us,” for all eternity.
Matthew 1: Introducing the Gospel of Matthew
I know that when Pastor Bell ministered among us, he would sometimes incorporate Scripture readings into the service in addition to the sermon text. Historically, Reformed churches have placed a high priority on the public reading of God’s Word since we’re commanded to do this in 1 Tim 4. I thought that as I start ministering among the church, I might revive this practice and begin in the book of Matthew, working through it consecutively week by week, with a few comments to introduce the text.
The book of Matthew was written by Matthew, the Jewish tax collector who became one of Jesus’ disciples (Matthew 9:9-13). It was probably written around 80 A.D. and functions as a training manual for disciples by recounting the words and deeds of Jesus leading up to his death and resurrection. The phrase “a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ” (v. 1) in Greek literally reads “The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ” and it brings to our minds the book of Genesis which records the beginning of the old creation. The point is that Jesus- as the long awaited king promised to David, and the long awaited seed promised to Abraham- has come to bring about a new creation greater than the old creation. And it is on this basis that our lives must now be changed as the people of the new creation, the church of Jesus Christ.
The Pastor's Pen 