Messianic Prophecy 3 - The Old Testament In Matthew

Last week, we took a look at the way many Christians use (or, some would say, misuse or abuse) the Old Testament to try to prove to the world that Jesus is the Messiah, or the one promised and foretold by the Old Testament, and I focussed on how Christians have used the Book of Genesis in particular, even though Genesis is not a prophetic book. I said that we should probably restrict ourselves to how the authors of the New Testament use Old Testament writings to make their point about Jesus rather than just flailing away and trying to force prophecies of Jesus into Old Testament texts that have nothing to do with Jesus, just because they “kind of” sound like something described in the New Testament about Jesus’ life. So today I want to start looking at how the New Testament authors see Jesus being revealed in the Old Testament, and this week I want to look specifically at Matthew and how he handles the question.

 

Matthew, I think, is in some ways the most important Gospel when it comes to seeing how the Old Testament can be properly used to establish the validity of Jesus’ claims because Matthew has traditionally been seen as the “Jewish” Gospel – it was a Gospel that seems to have been written primarily to the Jewish community in an attempt to prove to the Jewish Community that Jesus was the Messiah they expected. So Matthew makes very extensive use of Old Testament prophecy and other writings to demonstrate how Jesus fits into the Jewish messianic expectation. It’s actually kind of difficult to establish exactly how many times the Old Testament is cited in either Matthew or any other New Testament writings. The authors, after all, weren’t writing modern academic papers; they didn’t include footnotes or cross references. Sometimes they’ll helpfully say something like “it was written in Isaiah the prophet.” But at other times they’ll make a reference without specifying exactly where the reference is from, and often it won’t even be a quote from one of the prophets or other Old Testament authors – it will be a reference or an allusion to a writing. So it can be challenging to identify every single instance where Matthew uses the Old Testament to prove a point, and different people who study Matthew will come up with different numbers for just that reason: what one person clearly recognizes as a reference to, say, a Psalm another person won’t necessarily recognize as a reference to the Psalm. A while ago I spent a day poring through Matthew’s Gospel and I identified what I think are 28 references to the Old Testament – some are direct quotes; others are (to me at least) clearly referencing a story from the Old Testament. What I want to do tonight is to reflect on what I think are four basic things that Matthew was trying to do with his references: he wanted to establish that what Jesus was teaching was in continuity with the teaching of the Law and the Prophets (that Jesus hadn’t just come out of left field, so to speak), that Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah, that beyond being the Jewish Messiah Jesus had a role to play in the wider world, and to identify that Jesus was, in fact, acting and teaching in a way that should have been expected of the Messiah. So I asked you to read four passages from Matthew’s Gospel that I want to spend most of our time reflecting on tonight as illustrations of those four themes.

 

The first passage I asked you to read was a fairly lengthy section of the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:21-48. It might be worth pointing out that the entire Sermon on the Mount has a sort of prophetic quality to it. It serves as a call to social justice, and so also something of a critique of the ethics of Jesus’ day and a call to embrace a brand new sort of ethic as the way of God. But I asked you to specifically read this passage because it’s one of the best examples that I think exists in the New Testament showing how Jesus took the traditional teachings of the Jewish faith and, while remaining faithful to them, also re-interpreted them in a way that was revolutionary and that called society to a new way. Some of what Jesus referred to was from what we call the Ten Commandments – so “do not murder” and “do not commit adultery.” Other references he makes are to teachings from other parts of the Old Testament – so “an eye for an eye and a tooth from a tooth” comes not from the CTen ommandments but from a few different places – one reference is from later in the Book of Exodus after the Ten Commandments were given, one reference comes from Leviticus and one from Deuteronomy – notably all from the Torah; the Law. In fact, with only a handful of exceptions pretty much all the “rules” that Jesus chooses to give his own interpretation of in this passage do come from the Torah. There’s a couple from the Psalms and one from Isaiah, but the list is heavy on the Torah. Why? We generally think of Christianity as being concerned with grace and not law (and you get that sense from how Jesus chooses to explain the Law) but why focus so heavily on the Law if that’s not the core of Jesus’ ministry?

 

Well, of course, the Law actually is the core of Jesus’ teachings and ministry – “I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it.” But who needs to be convinced that there is a way to be faithful to the Law that doesn’t demand exacting and harsh expectations and punishments? Remember that both Jesus and the earliest Jewish Christians faced the Pharisees as among their main opponents. The Pharisees were a powerful group in that day, and they were what you might call ultra-legalistic. They had a great deal of influence over the people, and so if Christianity was going to be able to gain any significant foothold within the Jewish community, then it was going to have to find a faithful way of engaging with the Torah and the other legal requirements of Judaism. So Matthew establishes Jesus as a teacher and interpreter of the Torah. He’s not someone who rejects the Law; he cherishes the Law, and in typical Jewish and rabbinic fashion he even plays with the Law in a sense. “Here’s what the Law says, but I’m going to explain to you what it really means.” Remember that last week I said that Genesis was widely regarded in the Jewish community as allegory. In a way, Jesus treats the Torah in a similar way: “you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’ … but I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement.” That doesn’t sound, on the surface, particularly hopeful – who among us has never been angry – but it is Jesus saying that we have to go beyond the mere words on the page; we have to identify the spirit of what’s written. To take an example from outside the Commandments, “You have heard that it was said “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you do not resist an evildoer.” So when Jesus moves outside the Ten Commandments he pushes even a bit harder, saying not only that there’s more there than meets the eye, but that there’s an entirely different way of looking at the Torah. But he’s not unfaithful to the Torah. He knows the Torah, he cherishes it, he tries to establish himself as being in continuity with the Law and the traditional teachings. But he plays the part of “rabbi” – discussing, interpreting, story-telling, teaching. Matthew clearly wants to establish Jesus as a legitimate teacher to whom the Jewish community should listen. The repeated “you have heard that it was said” refrain, followed by a quote from the Torah, establishes that Jesus knew the Torah; he had a right to offer his interpretations of it. This is an important way to use the Old Testament, because if Matthew can’t establish that Jesus knows his stuff, then the rest of what he writes is going to be of very little use.

 

But he wants the rest of what he writes to be of use, and having established Jesus as being in continuity with the teachings of the Law, Matthew now needs to demonstrate that he’s the Messiah – otherwise, Jesus becomes little more than another rabbi or travelling preacher, or possibly a prophet. He does this by looking to the story of John the Baptist. Matthew 11 is a long discourse about the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist, and Matthew opens the discussion with a bold claim, “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing …” So, for Matthew, this is a clear statement of who Jesus was. But he then uses the story of John the Baptist to demonstrate, by using the Old Testament, that his claim is true. First, in vv.1-5, we have the description now given by Jesus of what the Messiah would do. John has questions and perhaps doubts and sends his own disciples to essentially question Jesus, to figure out whether Jesus is the Messiah. And the justification for calling Jesus the Messiah gets summed up referring back to Isaiah’s prophecy about what the Messiah would do: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” This isn’t an exact quote from Isaiah, but it’s pretty close; close enough that the people who hear Matthew would make the connection and say, “Oh! You’re saying that’s Jesus!” Remember that there were no Bibles as we understand the term. There were scrolls, and not really that many of them. You couldn’t turn in your personal Bible to Isaiah 35. Matthew would have to report things from memory. He remembers Isaiah’s teaching about what would happen when God appeared, and he equates it with Jesus’ actions. When you hear these words from Isaiah, he’s saying, you’re hearing about Jesus because Jesus is doing these things. John himself is given legitimacy by being linked with an Old Testament prophet, so Matthew applies Malachi 3:10 to John – “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me,” and those who were familiar with the Scriptures would then also make the association with Malachi’s words in Chapter 4: “I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord.” So Matthew equates John the Baptist with the Elijah promised by Malachi, whose entire purpose would be to reveal the one whom God has sent – clearly, in context, Jesus. And the messianic identity of Jesus is confirmed even more directly by Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which we remember on Palm Sunday, as the crowds hail Jesus as the Son of David – a messianic title. So, Matthew’s use of Old Testament prophecy builds throughout his Gospel until Jesus is finally revealed, through the title Son of David, to be that messiah.

 

Matthew also needs to demonstrate that Jesus is in line with the expectations that the Jewish Messiah would have a role to play beyond Israel – he would, after all, be a king and therefore be in relationship with other kingdoms and other peoples. By the time Matthew wrote, this might have been obvious – the church would have already begun to take Jesus’ teachings into the Gentile world, so if not Jesus himself, at least the movement he founded would be seen as having a role beyond Israel. But how would Jesus be linked to this? In Matthew 12, Jesus has a dispute with the Pharisees about the proper purpose of the Sabbath. The result is that the Pharisees begin to conspire against him, and Jesus, aware of this, is said to have “departed.” Departed where? Matthew doesn’t actually say specifically, although I think we can figure it out both from what Matthew shares next, and by comparing the story to Mark’s version of the story. According to Mark, this exchange ends with Jesus eventually leaving Jewish territory and going to Gentile territory, where he continues his ministry for a time. Matthew seems to make the point that Jesus departed for Gentile territory by offering this incident as a fulfilment of Isaiah 42:1-4: “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope.” That’s pretty much (with some minor differences) a word for word quote from Isaiah, except for the last sentence. Matthew adds that “the Gentiles will hope” in Jesus. That isn’t in Isaiah but it’s a reasonable extrapolation from Isaiah. The prophet says that the Messiah (the chosen or anointed) would have a ministry to the Gentiles. Jesus’ time preaching to the Gentiles, and not unimportantly, the Gentiles growing acceptance of Jesus, is actually seen as a proof that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Matthew had already introduced this idea earlier in his Gospel by quoting Isaiah 9 in Chapter 4, just as Jesus’ ministry is starting: “in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined.” God will reach out to the Gentiles, and they – who didn’t know God – would come to know God; they would see a great light.” Matthew essentially calls on Isaiah to portray Jesus as the light to the Gentiles. Also in Chapter 12, Matthew makes play of the Book of Jonah, not portraying Jesus as the fulfilment of anything in particular, but making the point that, again, Jesus’ work is consistent with the work of God, who had always reached out to the Gentile world beyond Israel, as far back as sending Jonah to preach to Nineveh: “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” Jonah gained Nineveh’s repentance; Jesus is greater. He will be for all the Gentiles. So Matthew links Jesus even with Old Testament stories that aren’t directly messianic, but that tie Jesus to the broader work of God to the entire world.

 

The final theme I’m going to mention is really (I think) Matthew’s attempt to answer the question so many ask – if Jesus is the Messiah, why did the Jewish people largely reject him. Matthew can also explain that from the Old Testament. The Jews didn’t understand Jesus’ teaching; they couldn’t grasp his meaning; they were confused that nothing of what he was doing was what they had been taught to expect. Matthew (like Mark) makes extensive use of parables – so Jesus speaks and teaches through the use of many parables, which many people don’t understand. In Matthew 13:35 Jesus quotes Psalm 78:2 to justify the use of parables in teaching: “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,” and the failure of the people so often to grasp the meaning of the parables is then explained as the fulfilment of a prophetic strain found in Isaiah: “You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes.” It was part of God’s plan that the people wouldn’t understand; this is how, by Matthew’s day, it can be explained why the message of Jesus has become largely a message to the Gentiles and not to the Jews.

 

So Matthew has four broad themes in how he uses Old Testament prophecy, and in how he ties Jesus to that prophecy: Jesus’ teachings are entirely consistent with and are a continuation of the Torah, Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus does have a ministry to the Gentile world, and Jesus’ style of teaching is exactly what the people should have expected from the one sent by God.