We joined 15,000 of our closest friends last night to watch two undefeated teams, Odessa Permian (as in “Friday Night Lights”) and Abilene High, play at Shotwell Stadium. The game had been promoted in this week’s Sports Illustrated. It’s hard to describe what that experience is like. We came up on the short end of a 28-21 game, however, breaking AHS’s eight-year dominance over Mojo.
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Have you ever noticed how Matthew’s gospel blocks together the words of Jesus? If you’re reading Mark with a red-letter Bible, it’s constantly red-black-red-black-red-black. But in Matthew there are large chunks of the red. Scholars have noted that it probably isn’t accidental that there are five of those teaching sections (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25) — likely corresponding to the five books of the Law.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the fulfiller of and authoritative interpreter of the Law. All things point to him, as you can tell immediately from the genealogy and from the many statements that say “and so was fulfilled.” Often, these “fulfillments” are surprising — until you understand how Matthew understands the Old Testament and Jesus.
E.g., Isaiah 7 had said that a young woman (a Hebrew word that doesn’t necessarily mean a virgin) would conceive and give birth to a son. It was a sign that applied to the people in the looming days of the 8th century. But now, Matthew says, those words find their deepest sense in the one who was born of a virgin. (He uses a Greek word that specifies that THIS young woman is a virgin.)
Similarly, when Joseph and Mary take their newborn to Egypt because of the madman Herod the Great and then return after Herod’s death, this fulfilled the words of Hosea 11:1: “out of Egypt I called my son.” But when you’re reading Hosea, it’s clear that’s a reference initially to the exodus. However, now in a deeper sense they point to Jesus, the one who fulfills all those dreams.
He came as the faithful Israelite. He was the new Moses. (Maybe it’s not an accident that Matthew moves from Egypt to water to desert to teaching — the same as you find in the story of Moses.)
Here now is the one who speaks authoritatively. Here is the one who fulfills God’s dreams for Israel. All of scripture points to him.
Bible Study Fellowship is doing the book of Matthew this year. Last week we started the Sermon on the Mount. We had an amazing discussion on how the ideas of salt and light play out in life. It was fabulous. This week we are looking at 5:17-20 which is exactly what your post is about. The scriptures point to him. One of our questions involved looking back through OT scriptures and identifying those that so obviously point to Jesus. Those five big teaching blocks were pointed out on the first week as we looked ahead at the entire book. I also personally love the seemingly double references like the one from Hosea about “out of Egypt”. It just makes the Word so purposeful and real. Consider this a plug for BSF. If you’re looking for a place to truly study the Bible in depth with people of varied backgrounds, BSF might be that place!
That was an amazing game last night. Was it really 15,000?
Thanks, Amy. Yes, Kevin, it really was 15K. All decked out in black (school color for both Permian and AHS).
I’m really bummed my Warbirds lost, but I know Coach Warren will have this team back and ready to make a deep playoff run, which is what it’s really all about. But, congrats to Mojo for their return.
Shotwell Stadium holds about 15,000 when packed out and if you had some endzone folks, it goes over that. Correct me if I’m wrong Mike, but some of the epic Cooper/AHS games in the past decade have swelled Shotwell to well over 15,000.
Dear Preacher Mike, you said -
“But now, Matthew says, those words find their deepest sense in the one who was born of a virgin. (He uses a Greek word that specifies that THIS young woman is a virgin.)”
The Greek word ‘parthenos’ can mean either a young woman or a virgin. Matthew was quoting Isaiah 7:14 where the Hebrew word ‘almah’ means ‘young woman of marrying age.’
Therefore to translate Matthew’s ‘parthenos’ as ‘virgin’ is incorrect. It means no more than it meant in Isaiah 7:14.
Mike,
About a month ago I started reading Matthew and remembered that I am always blessed when I read ‘Righteousness Inside Out’, so I’m reading it again for about the 5th or 6th time since I got it in Red River, NM many years ago. I love the way you have opened my eyes time and again to the real law of God, which is Love and it is always pointing to Jesus.
Just wanted to tell you that ‘Righteousness Inside Out’ not only helped me to start my own faith journey, it has helped me to remember my humble roots when I start to get prideful.
Thank you for writing it.
I love the way Matthew tells the story. How he wrote so that Israel would have no doubt that Jesus was indeed their long-awaited Messiah. The early Jewish believers could have used those assurances, I imagine. Jesus as the New Moses is such an awesome concept.
15K for a high school football game. Wow!
Vynette - You might want to argue that Matthew was wrong about Jesus’ birth by a virgin. But you won’t find much support that the Greek word doesn’t mean virgin.
This is interesting about Matthew’s interpretation of the Hebrew prophets. But is his interpretation any better than anyone else’s? Is he “right”? Isn’t he taking some prophecies out of context?
Mike,
That ‘parthenos’ can have varied meanings is confirmed by Genesis 34:2-4. Shechem raped Dinah, yet the Septuagint refers to her as a ‘parthenos’ after the fact - “his heart desired Dinah, and he loved the damsel (LXX: parthenos) and he spoke tenderly to the damsel (LXX: parthenos).”
But aside from arguing the finer points of word meanings, we can look at the larger picture.
The Hebrew prophets realised that if God’s promise to King David was to be fulfilled, then the messiah must be a descendant of David - of David’s flesh and blood.
The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke were written to prove this very point, not to record a virgin conception or a virgin birth…or any form of Incarnation. Matthew provides his genealogy to demonstrate that Jesus was not the son of Joseph (for a very compelling reason that has absolutely nothing to do with virgin-birth)while Luke records that, after much diligent searching, he found out the truth about Jesus’ biological father and provides a genealogy to prove Jesus’ descent from King David through the paternal line and his right to claim the title “messiah.”
As we can see from Matthew’s gospel, he sets out to portray Jesus as the microcosm of the macrocosm, as living out individually all the significant milestones of Israel’s history. Nowhere in the Old Testament is there any hint of a virgin birth - such ideas belonged the Gentile world, not to the Israelite.
Matthew’s gospel was written especially for an Israelite audience and for him to make use of a non-existent prophecy to bolster Jesus’ claim to messiahship would have rightly exposed him and his writings to ridicule.
And of course, there is the evidence from church fathers such as Jerome that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew and that what we have in our hands are copies of an inferior Greek translation.
Vynette,
Is it not the Sacred Name group that insists that there is an original manuscript of the New Testament written in Hebrew and that what we call the New Testament is, in your words, an inferior Greek translation from the Hebrew? Or am I confusing this group with another?
Kathy,
I have no knowledge of the ‘Sacred Name’ group. What I do know is that Jerome wrote “Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle first of all the Evangelists, composed a gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters, for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. Who translated it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Beroea to copy it…”
Jerome went on to add, significantly, “…it is to be remarked that, wherever the Evangelist makes use of the testimonies of the Old Scriptures, he does not follow the authority of the seventy translators (LXX) but of the Hebrew.” (Catal. Script. Eccl.)
However, we do not have to rely on ancient witnesses to the existence of Matthew’s Hebrew original - Papias, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius or Jerome - because as Claude Tresmontant, Father Jean Carmignac, and many other eminent scholars have convincingly and irrefutably demonstrated, the gospels of the New Testament were written originally in Hebrew, or compiled from Hebrew notes, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Paul’s letters were also in circulation well before the destruction.
The writings of these scholars have been dismissed or ignored by the majority of their peers for two simple reasons:
(1) it is considered rather simple-minded to believe in prophecy, to believe that Jesus actually predicted the destruction of the Temple, and yet these same scholars will credulously and confidently assert the “deity” of Jesus of Nazareth; (2) many eminent past and present reputations are at stake.