Peter Misselbrook's Blog
Aug 21 2019 - Jeremiah 26:1-16 – Jeremiah threatened

False prophets were proclaiming a message the people wanted to hear – "Everything will be alright. You are God's chosen people; he would never raise his hand against you. God will not allow Jerusalem to be destroyed. You will continue to live at peace."

Jeremiah, however, had been called by God to deliver an unpopular but very necessary message. He was commanded to go and stand in the temple courtyard and declare:

This is what the Lord says: if you do not listen to me and follow my law, which I have set before you, and if you do not listen to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I have sent to you again and again (though you have not listened), then I will make this house like Shiloh and this city a curse among all the nations of the earth. (vv. 4-6)

Jeremiah was bringing them a warning and calling upon the nation to turn from its evil ways and return to singlehearted devotion to the Lord before it was too late.

But his message was not appreciated by his hearers. Instead of thinking carefully about what Jeremiah had said and considering their own ways, priests, prophets and all the people seized Jeremiah saying, "You must die!"

The apostle Paul warns Timothy that he will encounter times in his own ministry when people do not want to listen to the word of God. "Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3). Nor is the situation any different today. Whenever people feel compelled to share an unsettling and uncomfortable message – whether that is the gospel message of sin and salvation or warnings about the dangerous effects of man-made climate change – there will always be others who will seek to gain a popular hearing by telling people not to worry, it will never happen.

The officials of Judah were summoned from the royal palace and assembled in the New Gate of the temple. The priests and prophets hauled Jeremiah before the officials saying, "This man should be sentenced to death because he has prophesied against this city. You have heard it with your own ears!" (v.11). How would you have felt in Jeremiah's situation? How might you have responded to the charge being brought against you? I suspect that if it had been me, I would have sought to refashion my message in a way that might make it more acceptable to the city officials.

But Jeremiah, rather than becoming defensive, goes on the attack by repeating the same message:

"The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and this city all the things you have heard. Now reform your ways and your actions and obey the Lord your God. Then the Lord will relent and not bring the disaster he has pronounced against you." (vv.12-13).

He then adds that if they kill him they will sin further in shedding innocent blood. He has only spoken the words the Lord had given him to speak. This seems to have got through to some of his hearers for we read, "Then the officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, ‘This man should not be sentenced to death! He has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.’" (v.16). The city officials and the ordinary inhabitants of the city seem to have drawn back from shedding the blood of one who has simply brought them the word of the Lord, but the religious leaders, priests and prophets, seem reluctant to let Jeremiah go free.

The same was true with the ministry of the Lord Jesus. The common people heard him gladly and even the Roman officials seemed reluctant to put him to death, but the priests and the Pharisees seized him and stirred up the crowds to join them in calling for his death.

Father God, we thank you for the message of your judgment and salvation that is to be found in the Lord Jesus. Keep us from trimming our message to please those to whom we speak. Help us to pass on faithfully the message you have given us in your word.

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Aug 21 2020 - Matthew 1:1-2:12 – The story of Jesus the Messiah

As I mentioned on January 7th when writing of Luke's Gospel, when I started secondary school (more than fifty years ago now), I was given an Authorised (or King James) Version of the Bible. Some passages were produced in small print. The suggestion, I suppose, was that these were not as important as the rest – or at least, not such good reading. Matthew begins his account of Jesus with a genealogy – a section of “small print”. Not, we might think, the most promising way to start.

But the genealogy in Matthew is more than a human family tree. It traces the hand of God from promise to fulfilment. Matthew's account begins with Abraham. God chose Abraham from among all the inhabitants of the earth and promised to bless him. More than that, he promised that through him and his family all nations on earth would be blessed. Jesus is the fulfilment of that promise. He is the Saviour of the world; the one who brings the blessing of God to a cursed creation.

The promise to Abraham was God's answer to a world gone wrong; God's answer to Adam's disobedience. Humankind, male and female, were created that they might together bear God's image and rule over God's creation with loving care reflecting that of God himself. They were intended to be a source of blessing to God's world. Through disobedience they/we have enslaved God's world. God promised that from the descendants of Abraham he would raise up a king over his people. This king would be God's Son; one who would reign in God's name and bring blessing to all those under his shepherdly dominion. David seemed for a while to be such a king. But, like Adam before him, he too fell short of all that God intended him to be. Jesus is David's greater son. Jesus is the Son of God; the fulfilment of God's promises. He is God's anointed king. He is the Messiah, the Christ.

God's promises to Abraham and to David find their fulfilment in Jesus. Through all the twists and turns of history indicated in this genealogy – through human unfaithfulness, even adultery and murder – God is bringing his plans to fulfilment. The mess of human sin does not defeat the plan and purpose of God. Jesus' parentage includes an act of adultery between one of the fathers of the Children of Israel and his daughter-in-law (Judah with Tamar). It includes a foreign woman who was a prostitute and a liar (Rahab), a woman who was from a foreign nation that owed its origin to an act of incest (Ruth from Moab, descended from Lot's drunken coupling with his daughter), and from an act of adultery and murder by Israel's greatest king (David with Bathsheba). It is precisely in and through this mess of human sinfulness that Jesus is born as Saviour of the world. It is precisely such a world – thank God – that Jesus came to save.

Matthew presents his genealogy in the form of three lists, each of fourteen generations. One spans the period from Abraham to David; the second, the period from David to the Exile to Babylon; the third, the period from the Exile to the advent of Jesus Christ. Jesus fulfils the promises of God to Abraham. Jesus is the Messiah, the King of all the earth. Jesus is the one who has come to rescue his people from captivity and bring them (and all creation) "into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

There's nothing "small print" about the purposes of God in history.

Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus, the Saviour of the world; the one in whom history has a new beginning. Help us to see more of his character and glory as we work our way through Matthew's Gospel. Open our eyes to see that you continue to work out your saving purposes through people like us and help us daily to worship and serve the Lord Jesus.

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Aug 21 2020 - Introduction to the Gospel According to Matthew

Who wrote this Gospel? 

The earliest descriptions (about 125 AD) of this, the first of the Gospel accounts in our New Testament ascribe it to Matthew (also called Levi, a converted tax collector and one of the twelve, cf. Matt 10:3; 9:9-13; Mk 2:14-17). Ancient testimony from Papias (circa 110 AD) suggests that Matthew first wrote in the Hebrew tongue (in Aramaic?) and that many others then used this material as a source. No record has been found of an early Aramaic or Hebrew version of Matthew's Gospel, leading Gundry to suggest that Papias meant simply that Matthew wrote his gospel for a Jewish readership and in a Jewish idiom.

Matthew probably composed his Gospel some time in the latter 60s, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

What is special about Matthew's Gospel?  

Matthew is keen to show how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament; he includes over sixty explicit quotations from the OT, more than twice as many as any other gospel. In particular, Matthew asserts that Jesus came to fulfil the law rather than to destroy it. Blomberg writes, "Christ's fulfilment of the Law, analogous to his fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, suggests that he is the one to whom all of the Scriptures pointed and for whom they prepared. God's will can now be understood only by following Jesus and adhering to his teaching." Central to this fulfilment theme is the theme of the kingdom – the kingdom of heaven (the kingdom of God) has come.

On the one hand Matthew includes sayings which suggest that Jesus' ministry was to the Jews alone (10:5-6, 23; 15:24), yet it is Matthew who records Gentile Magi coming to worship the Christ Child (2:1-12), recounts parables which predict the demise of the current Jewish leadership (21:18-22:14, including prediction of the removal of the kingdom from the Jews 21:43), and the Great Commission to take the Gospel to the nations (28:18-20). For Matthew, the Gospel is Jewish in origin but is good news for the whole world. The cross marks the turning point in that it is the climax of Jewish rejection of the Christ just as the resurrection marks the commencement of God's mission to the nations.

Matthew alone records specific teaching of Jesus concerning the church, emphasising the fact that the church, the community of those, both Jew and Gentile, who believe in Jesus the Christ, is now the community of the people of God, rather than ethnic Israel. He also emphasises the controversies between the Jewish leaders (particularly Pharisees) and Jesus, perhaps reflecting the particular concerns of the Jewish Christians for whom he wrote. Graham Stanton suggests that Matthew is writing for a church that has broken away from Judaism but is still in rigorous debate with "the synagogue across the street."

Matthew's Gospel is carefully constructed. The narratives in Matthew are generally more concise than those in Mark's Gospel but Matthew includes other material. In particular, as well as the opening chapters about Jesus' ancestry, conception and infancy (chs 1-2) and closing chapters concerning Jesus' resurrection appearances and commissioning of the disciple (ch. 28), his Gospel includes five major sections recording Jesus' teaching (5:1-7:29; 9:35-10:42; 13:1-52; 18:1-35; 23:1-25:46), each concluding with a similar refrain. Donald Guthrie comments, "It has been suggested that Matthew's fivefold scheme was patterned after the fivefold character of the books of the Law."

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Peter Misselbrook