Matthew 13 (part 2)

 I already did a blog post about Matthew 13, but this week we covered that chapter in Come Follow Me and I wanted to record a couple of additional insights I gained this week. 

One podcaster (I think Mike and Bryce on Talking Scripture) mentioned that the parable of the sower should be called the parable of the soils. The sower and the seed is the same in each instance.  The thing that is different is the quality of the soil.  I just wanted to point out here that "people as soil" is not a new idea.  It is an image that has been around since the very beginning of the Bible.  If you remember from my post about Genesis  Adam's name comes from the Hebrew word for tilled earth.  When Adam disobeys God and partakes of the forbidden fruit, God says to him, "for dust through art, and unto dust shalt thou return."  In other words, when Adam is not obedient, he is unproductive soil.  That is basically what Jesus is saying here, except in more detail.  I think contemporary listeners would have made the connection, even if Jesus was speaking Aramaic, because they would have been used to associating Adam with the earth. 

Another podcaster (I think it was the Follow Him podcast) mentioned how almost all the parables in this chapter portray the growth of the Kingdom of God in hyperbolic terms. For a seed to bring forth 30 fold is a good yield, and 100 fold is almost impossible. The mustard seed parable is about something small growing into something great. The merchant sells ALL he has to buy the pearl of great price, and the other man sells ALL he has to buy the field with the treasure. When I was reading the passage about the leaven hidden in three measures of flour (Matt 13:33) my dictionary said that the word that is translated "measure" σάτα equals about three gallons. At first I thought that was one gallon each, but it is three gallons each or about 9 gallons. That's a lot of loaves. 

So why such exaggeration?  Maybe it was just the style of storytelling that was common in that culture in that time period. Other parables have this kind of exaggeration, e.g. the mote and and the beam, the 1000 talents of debt. etc. Another possibility is that Jesus knew that from this small group of believers a religion would start that would spread to all the quarters of the earth, and last through millennia. How many Christians have lived on the earth? This was one conversation on one hillside in a small country in the middle east, and here we are blogging about 2000 years later. Whatever "exaggerations" he may of made about the growth of the "kingdom of heaven" they were gross underestimates.

I spent so much time listening to and thinking about parables about wheat, tares, leaven and bread this week that I got up early and made bread to take to my primary class. 

Seeking for a Sign

 In Matthew 12 some Scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus "Master, we would see a sign from thee."  and Jesus answered, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas." (v. 39) And then he goes on to talk about the story of Jonah.  I addressed the idea of the "adulterous generation" back when we were studying Jeremiah.  As I said then, I don't think that Jesus was thinking about individual marital infidelity here.  He is calling on the idea from the Old Testament, that God's relationship with Israel is symbolized as a marriage, and that when Israel follows other gods, they are being adulterous.  If someone is a believer in the God of Israel, they don't need a sign, but those who are doubting and wandering seek a sign. I don't think Jesus would have used this image if he were speaking to gentiles. 

It is interesting that Jesus uses the story of Jonah as a sign for his own life and mission.  Jonah was not the most exemplary prophet in the Old Testament. When God called him to preach to his enemies, he tried to run away.  It was only after he was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights that he repented and went to Nineveh to preach. So how is Jesus' ministry like Jonah?  

There is a good paper on the BYU studies website  by David R. Scott, that highlights the parallels between Jesus and Jonah. I will just touch on my favorites.  

First, Jonah's name יוֹנָה means "dove".  So when Jesus said, "no sign will be given but the sign of Jonah" he was acknowledging a sign that had already been given at the time of his baptism, when the spirit descended "like a dove" (Matt 3:16).  

We see another connection to the story of Jonah when Jesus calms the sea. In the story of Jonah, the boat was tossed in a storm, but Jonah was asleep.  (Jonah 1:4-5)  Jesus was also asleep in the boat in the storm. Whereas Jonah caused the sea to be calm by letting himself be tossed into it, Jesus calmed the sea of Galilea through the force of his will. 

The similarity that Jesus highlights is that Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, and Jesus would be three days in the heart of the earth. (v. 40) and just as Jonah would emerge, unharmed, after the three days, Jesus would emerge from death, whole and glorified. Something to remember is that both Jonah and Jesus willingly sacrificed themselves to save others. 

There is a lot more in the referenced paper, but the last thing I want to mention is that when Jonah emerged from the the belly of the great fish, he was sent to preach the gospel to a gentile nation, and they accepted it more readily than anyone would have expected.  After Jesus arose from the tomb, he told his disciples to go into the world, "and teach all nations"  (Matt 28:19).  As history shows, the gentiles accepted the gospel of Jesus more readily than the Jews ever did.

The disciples probably didn't see all these connections at the time.  In fact, they were probably baffled by Jesus' response because they didn't really understand yet what Jesus would have to do to enact the atonement.  Clearly, however, over the years Matthew figured it all out, since most the the parallels I mentioned come from verses in the book of Matthew. 

Principles of Hebrew Poetry in the Gospels

 As I was teaching my little Sunday School class about the Psalms last year, I talked about how, in Hebrew poetry, people "rhyme" ideas rather than words.  In other words, people would say something once, and then say it again a little differently.  As I was reading Matthew 13 in Greek this week (I am reading Matthew in Greek straight through instead of following the Come Follow Me), I realized that Matthew does the same thing here.  He groups verses with repeating themes and images. 

In Matthew 13, Jesus starts out with the parable of the sower.  After he is done the apostles ask him why he speaks in parables.  He goes through a fairly long discussion of about how they have eyes and can't see, and ears that can't hear.  Finally, in Matthew 18 he gets to the interpretation of the parable of the sower. 

In the interim of the telling of the parable and its interpretation, Matthew repeats ideas just like in the Old Testament poetry:

vs. 11 and 12 go together, key word "given"

vs. 13 and 14 go together, key words "hearing, seeing, perceiving"

vs 15 and 17 go together, key words "heart/desire, seeing, hearing"

I always thought this little interlude passage was a digression from the parables meant to explain why Jesus taught in parables.  As I read it this time through, I came to realize that this digression is actually an interpretation of the meaning and importance of the parable. How can the "evil one" snatch the seed/word away? Why does the seed in the stony place wither in the sun? Why does the seed in the thorns get choked?  It is because the people choose not to hear and obey. "because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."

The rest of the parables in this chapter build on this theme.  They all explain why people either open or close their hearts to the doctrines of Christ. The parable of the wheat and tares explains why the Lord allows both truth and error to exist in the world. The parable of the mustard seed shows how opening one's heart to a small piece of truth can lead to that truth growing up and filling one's heart.  That is the same message in the story of the hidden leaven. The need to search for truth, and its value when found is portrayed in the parables of the lost coin and the merchant seeking pearls. The need to sort through the good and bad doctrines, and accept the good is shown in the parable of the fish in the net. 

It is interesting that the very long chapter ends with the story of Jesus being rejected in his own home town. It illustrates all that Matthew has been talking about why people reject Christ's doctrines.  You can almost hear Matthew say, "well, yeah, case in point."

Redeeming the Unclean

Matthew records several miracles that Jesus performed after the Sermon on the Mount.  Of course, Matthew acknowledges that Jesus performed many miracles and many healings (Matt 8:16), but Matthew chooses specific miracles because they affirm the Jesus supersedes Old Testament ideas of the Law.  

I think the fact that Matthew recounts Jesus healing a leper first is no accident.  The issue of leprosy is thoroughly covered in the book of Leviticus, which dedicates two whole chapters to the subject.  Lepers were the epitome of what it meant to be unclean.  Even by touching a leper, Jesus became ritualistically unclean so the fact that Jesus touches the leper to heal him is significant, especially when the next story about Jesus healing the servant of the centurion shows that Jesus could heal with a word instead of a touch. In the podcast, Unshaken, Jared Halverson gives a lovely explanation about how the ritual of cleansing of a leper from the book of Leviticus is a beautiful foreshadowing of Jesus' life and mission. (Lev 14:1-9)

In the next chapter Jesus heals a woman with an issue of blood (Matt 9:20-23).  Having an issue of blood makes a person unclean, (Leviticus 15:25).  Then Jesus goes into the house of the ruler of the synagogue, he raises his daughter from the dead by, again, touching her (Matthew 9:25).  Touching a dead body was another way to become unclean (Numbers 19:11-12). The one who touches a dead body was unclean for seven days and had to do two cleansing rituals. In each of these cases Matthew is showing us that Jesus is cleansing what the Law called unclean, without becoming unclean himself.  

There are other tangential references to unclean things in these chapters.  Jesus heals the servant of a Gentile, someone who would be considered unclean because he presumably worshiped other gods. He heals a man possessed of devils, who lived in a grave yard.  That's a double whammy reason to be considered unclean. Then the unclean spirits went into pigs, who ran into the sea and died.  There is hardly anything more unclean than a dead pig. 

John develops the idea of Jesus being able to clean the unclean when he recounts Jesus' discourse on the Living Water (John 7: 37).  Jesus says that out of him will flow living water.  John is also the gospel writer that mentions that when the Romans pierced Jesus' side with a spear, water literally came out (John 19:34). Living water was flowing water, like a stream or a river.  According to the Mosaic Law, in the most serious cases, people who were unclean were commanded to wash themselves with living water. When Jesus says that living water comes from him, he is saying that he, through his atoning sacrifice, is the way that we can be cleaned. 

This all goes back to the idea that Jesus didn't come into the world to heal people of their physical challenges.  He did heal many, but his main purpose was to save their souls from hell through the atonement.  His atonement was the great cleansing event that all the Mosaic Law foreshadows.