Reading the Old Testament in the New: The Gospel of Matthew
Lesson Four
Healing and Restoration
Lesson Objectives
1. To read Matthew 8-10 with understanding.
2. 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.
3. To understand how Matthew uses evocations of select Old Testament prophets to convey that in Jesus, the long-anticipated "restoration" of Israel has begun.
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Lesson Outline
I. Down From the Mountain
a. Matthew's Second Book
b. Bearing Infirmity and Sin
II. Mercy, Not Sacrifice
a. Holiness Exceeding the Pharisees'
b. Learning From the Prophets
III. The Identity of the Law-Giver
a. The Divine Bridegroom
b. In the Storm-Tossed Ship
c. The Shepherd King
IV. Study Questions
I. Down From the Mountain
a. Matthew's Second Book
With this lesson, we start the "second book" of Matthew's Gospel. It consists of a narrative section that tells ten miracle stories (Chapters 8-9), followed by a sermon that Jesus gives to His newly chosen Apostles (Chapter 10).
In the section immediately preceding, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew depicts Jesus teaching with authority - as the definitive interpreter of the Law of Moses, bringing that Law to its "fulfillment" (see
Matthew 5:17). In these miracle stories, he shows Jesus coming down from the mountain and "acting" with authority. His deeds in this section continue His interpretation of the Law of Moses, revealing the fulfillment of the Law in the communication of God's mercy and forgiveness of sin.
On the surface, these stories demonstrate Jesus' command over sickness, the demons, the forces of nature, and even death. But Matthew provides a deeper Old Testament context for Jesus' actions. In effect, he is offering an inspired commentary on what Jesus is doing, showing how His actions relate to God's redemptive plan for Israel and the nations.
b. Bearing Infirmity and Sin
The most dramatic events in this second book are the healings. Jesus not only heals, but
touches people whom, under the Law, were considered ritually impure or "unclean" - a leper (see
Matthew 8:2-4), a dead girl (see
Matthew 9:18-19,
23-25) , a woman with chronic menstrual hemorrhaging (see
Matthew 9:20-22).
Notice how frequently in these chapters the Gospel emphasizes this "touch" of Jesus (see
Matthew 8:3,
15;
9:21,
25,
29).
Touching lepers, corpses and menstruating women, especially, was thought to defile a person and make that person, too, ritually unclean. More generally, the Jews, especially the Pharisees, believed that they were defiled by any contact at all with a broad category of people defined as "sinners."
To explain what Jesus is doing in these healings of word and touch, Matthew employs a formula citation from Isaiah (see
Matthew 8:17;
Isaiah 53:4).
By His touch of the untouchables, Matthew explains, Jesus is "fulfilling" Isaiah's prophesy that God would send a Suffering Servant to take on Israel's infirmities and diseases (see
Matthew 8:16).
In Isaiah's prophesy, the physical infirmities borne by the Servant are a sign of Israel's sin (see
Isaiah 53:6,
12;
Psalm 107:17). In the same way, then, Matthew wants us to see these healings of Jesus as signs that Jesus is taking on the sin of Israel and extending to Israel God's mercy and forgiveness.
This is made more explicit when He heals the paralytic (see
Matthew 9:1-8). Note that Jesus does not say, "
I forgive your sins." He speaks in a voice sometimes called "the divine passive." He says: "Your sins are forgiven."
Matthew has already told us that Jesus' mission in coming into the world was "to save His people from their sins" (see
Matthew 1:29). These works of physical healing in Chapters 8 and 9 prepare for and symbolize in a powerful way the spiritual healing - the forgiveness and reconciliation between God and man - that He will enact on the Cross.
Jesus isn't pronouncing the forgiveness of sins so much as He is announcing it. Still, what He is saying is so radical - that atonement for sins can be made outside of the Temple system of sacrifice - that His shocked enemies call it "blasphemy" (see
Matthew 9:3).
But there is a larger context that Matthew evokes in quoting this passage from Isaiah.
In Isaiah, the call of the Suffering Servant was seen as ushering in the restoration of all Israel from exile and servitude, and the extension of the blessings of Israel's salvation "to the nations...to the ends of the earth" (see
Isaiah 49:6).
Throughout this section, we'll see Matthew's using his Old Testament allusions to announce that Jesus has begun Israel's restoration and with it the offer of salvation to the nations.
This is the undercurrent in the story of Jesus' healing of the centurion's servant (see
Matthew 8:5-13). Marveling at the centurion's faith, Jesus delivers a promise charged with Old Testament echoes.
He pictures the twelve exiled tribes being gathered from east and west (see
Psalm 107:3). He evokes the heavenly banquet the Messiah was expected to bring (see
Isaiah 25:6-9). He alludes to God's promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (see
Genesis 22:18;
26:3-5;
28:14) - promises that include all nations sharing in the blessings of Abraham's descendants. He also uses a figure of speech ("grinding of teeth") used in the Old Testament to describe that attitude of the wicked, those who resist God's saving plan (see
Psalm 37:12;
112:10).
From this rich array of Old Testament imagery, Jesus makes a blunt point: Those non-Jews like the centurion who have faith in Him will find a place in the kingdom of heaven, while the natural "sons of the kingdom" - the children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - if they refuse to believe, will find themselves cast out.
II. Mercy, Not Sacrificea. 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 (see
Joshua 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 (see
Isaiah 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 ProphetsJesus' 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)?
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