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Lesson Objectives
- To read Matthew 8-10 with understanding.
- To understand the Old Testament background and allusions in Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’ healings and other miracles and the growing tensions with the scribes and Pharisees.
- To understand how Matthew uses evocations of select Old Testament prophets to convey that in Jesus, the long-anticipated “restoration” of Israel has begun.
II. Mercy, Not Sacrifice
A. Holiness Exceeding the Pharisees’
In the narrative section of his second book, Matthew shows Jesus "doing" what He said He had come to do - fulfilling without abolishing the Old Covenant Law (see Matthew 5:17-19).
He is announcing the Kingdom of Heaven which, as He said in the Sermon on the Mount, would entail a holiness that exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes (see Matthew 5:20).
Not coincidentally, His work incites fierce opposition from the scribes (see Matthew 9:3) and the Pharisees (see Matthew 9:11), who conclude that Jesus is an agent of "the prince of demons" (see Matthew 9:34).
In this conflict, Matthew wants us to see that the ritual prescriptions of Moses’ Law were originally meant as means to an end - to purify Israel of the idolatry it was so prone to (seeJoshua 24:14; Ezekiel 20:7-8; Acts 7:39-41), to draw the people closer into their covenant relationship to God, and to prepare them for their vocation as a light to the nations (seeIsaiah 42:6; 49:6).
Even within the pages of Moses’ law, it was foreseen that one day God would "circumcise" the people’s hearts (see Deuteronomy 30:6). The prophets later awaited that day, when God would write His Law on the hearts of the people (see Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:25-27).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, in effect, interpreted the Law as a "law of the heart," turning Moses’ commandments about murder, adultery, oath-swearing "inside out." He showed that these and other commandments weren’t intended so much to compel external obedience as to train the heart in the ways of the Father (see Matthew 5:21-36,48).
By His healings since coming down from the mount, Jesus continues His divine reinterpretation of the Law of Moses, focusing not on the commandments but on the ritual system.
The Pharisees and scribes, as Matthew presents them, have mistaken the Law’s ritual prescriptions as "ends" in themselves. They have used the purity Laws to exclude or marginalize many types of people from the life and worship of Israel - and consequently from the Fatherly mercy of God. These ritual exclusions functioned as a kind of collective punishment, barring whole classes of people branded as "sinners" from every hoping to know the redemption and blessing of God.
B. Learning From the Prophets
Jesus’ opponents never do understand what He means when He enjoins them: "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’" (see Matthew 9:12; 12:7).
He was sending them back to something the prophet Hosea said (see Hosea 6:6). Clearly He is saying that the Pharisees, in upholding the laws of ritual and sacrificial purity, had failed to grasp the inner purpose of Law and sacrifices - to teach mercy and compassion for the sick and the sinner. They have failed in the mission God had given to Israel - to be the divine teacher and physician to the nations.
But He is also inviting his opponents - and us - to consider the full context of the passage quoted by Hosea.
First of all, Hosea is another of the prophets who foretold the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel. In a time when the kingdom of Israel was divided, Hosea prophesied against the faithlessness of Ephraim, the tribe that symbolized the Northern Kingdom, and how it had degraded and violated God’s covenant through sacrificing to idols (see Hosea 4:13-14;8:11-13). He also decried the failings of Judah, the tribe that symbolized the Southern Kingdom (see Hosea 5:5,10,13).
Notice that Hosea’s sixth chapter begins with the people turning to God for healing and the binding of their wounds (see Hosea 6:1-3). But God finds their faith "like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away" and says they never listened to the prophets He sent to teach them (see Hosea 6:4-5).
This is the immediate context for the line that Jesus quotes about mercy and sacrifice.
Certainly Jesus is telling His opponents that God desires not external worship and obedience, but a merciful and loving heart. But isn’t He also, by this Old Testament context, implying that the time of restoration is at hand and the Pharisees and scribes, like Ephraim and Judah in Hosea’s time, are guilty of rejecting God’s prophet (see Hosea 6:6)?
Other Lessons
- Lesson One: Learning to Listen for Echoes: A New Approach to the New Testament
- To understand how important the Old Testament is to reading and interpreting the New Testament.
- To learn what “typology” is and to appreciate its significance for reading the New Testament.
- To understand the relationship between the writers of the New Testament and other first-century Jewish interpreters of Scripture.
- Lesson Two: Son of David, Son of Abraham
- To read Matthew 1-2 with understanding.
- To learn the Old Testament history and background behind the quotations and allusions used in the prologue to Matthew’s gospel.
- To gain a fuller appreciation of Matthew’s depiction of Jesus as a “new Moses.”
- Lesson Three: ‘Not to Abolish, But to Fulfill’
- To read Matthew 3-7 with understanding.
- To understand the Old Testament background and allusions in Matthew’s depictions of John the Baptist, the Baptism of Jesus and His temptation in the wilderness.
- To understand the crucial importance of Jesus’ summary in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
- Lesson Five: Riddles of Rejection, Rock of Foundation
- To read Matthew 11-18 with understanding.
- To understand the Old Testament background to Jesus’ teaching in parables.
- To understand the deep Old Testament context by which Matthew conveys that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah and the Church is the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom.
- Lesson Six: David’s Son, David’s Lord
- To read Matthew 19-28 with understanding.
- To understand the Old Testament background to Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, His Passion and death.
- To understand the deep Old Testament context by which Matthew conveys that Jesus is the long-awaited “Son of David” and the “Son of God.”