Book IV of Matthew occupies chs. 13:54 to 18:35 (narrative 14-17, discourse 18). The embedded Old Testament fulfilment formula which identifies its theme is 15:8-9: "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men." False and true confession meet us repeatedly in the narrative section: those whose confession is false take offence at Jesus; Peter becomes the first to confess Him truly at Cæsarea Philippi, and this confession turns out to be the pivot on which the Gospel turns. Those whose confession is true are men and women of faith: even 'little faith' will do, though it must grow. They are the 'True Worshippers,' i.e., the Church, which is the instrument of the Kingdom. This theme is in fact suggested at the beginning (13:54) by the phrases 'His own country' and 'the synagogue.' Matthew is going to concentrate now on Christ among His own - in the worshipping congregation.
The themes of 'False and True Confession', 'Little and Great Faith' and 'Offence' are interwoven so as to make these chapters a 'fugue and variations'; the little faith of the Jews is contrasted with the great faith of the Gentile woman; true confession is illustrated on three levels - intuitional, by revelation, and by divine proclamation; offence is taken by Jews and disciples alike, but not by a Gentile woman (shades of Luke 4:24-30!).
In the overall structure of this narrative section, summarised below, it will be seen that the pattern of the section 'Christ among the Gentiles' echoes the pattern of the section 'Christ among the Jews.' The opening theme of offence is contrasted (the Jewish people and their rulers take offence where the Gentile woman does not); a scene change follows, indicating a change of theme. A summary of the healing ministry is in both sections followed by a miracle which reveals Christ as the Bread of Life, and a rebuke to 'little faith' (with a warning against false confession) is followed by a confession of His divinity. The doublet generates a momentum that reaches its climax in Peter's 'true confession'.
From this point on the pattern changes because Matthew is now ready to unfold the Messiah's progress to the Cross and the Consummation of His earthly work. But the final episode urging disciples to give no needless offence forms an inclusio with the opening episode in which needless offence was taken.
13:53-58 Offence 1 Jesus among the
ruled (His own people) He is met with 'unbelief'
14: 1 -12 Offence 2 Jesus' Herald among the rulers
14:13-14 Messiah's power goes forth to
heal
14:15-21 Jesus has compassion on the crowds and feeds them
14:22-33 Jesus has compassion on His own and guards, guides and
enables them
14:31 'Little faith' rebuked
14:32 First true confession: "You are
the Son of God"
14:35 Messiah's power goes forth to
heal
15:1-9 False Confession (The O.T. theme quote)
15:10-20 Offence is rooted in falsehood
15:21-28 Offence - NOT taken! He is met with 'great faith' 15:28
15:29-31 Messiah's power goes forth to
heal
15:32-39 Jesus has compassion on the crowds and feeds them
16:1-12 'Little faith' rebuked. The 'leaven of the Pharisees' is
'false confession'
16:13-21 Second true confession: "You
are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Revelation)
16:21 "From that time ..." First Passion Prediction
16:22-23 Offence taken to the Way of the
Cross
16:24-28 The Cross leads to the Consummation
17:1-8 The Consummation foreshadowed
17:5 Third true confession: "This is my
beloved Son" (Proclamation)
17:9-13 The confirmation of prophecy
(John = Elijah)
17:14-21 'Little faith' exposed - but it is a seed of 'great
faith'
17:22-23 Second Passion Prediction
17:24-27 "Give no offence
..."
The inclusion of the Gospel's pivot point in this narrative section obviously makes a chiasmic arrangement inappropriate.
The first thing the true worshippers need to recognise is that the Master they have chosen to follow occasions 'offence' to the natural man. They had better understand right from the start that they will come in for their share of it with Him.
1. 13:54-58: If Jesus is rejected at
home, disciples should understand that they may be rejected there
too.
History has borne this out only too tragically. There is often no
place where the new Christian receives such scorn and rejection as at
home. It can be as true in Australia or America as in Bangladesh or
Saudi Arabia.
2. 14:1-12: If Christ's herald John
is beheaded for his testimony, Christians had better be aware the
same sort of thing may happen to them.
Again history has tragically borne this out. John, in Rev. 11:12,
will describe regular Christians as those who "have overcome by the
blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, for they loved not
their lives even unto death." In the book of Revelation, indeed,
'martyr' becomes the equivalent of a true worshipper. It is a simple
fact that in this century more Christians have lost their lives for
their testimony to Jesus than in all the centuries leading up to
it.
It is salutary that Matthew chose this to be the first note he sounded when he set out to convey the Lord's teaching about the Church. In a literal sense, quite apart from the deeper spiritual sense, to follow Jesus is to take up His Cross.
His theme in these two sections is the cost of Discipleship.
A number of causes for the offence which Christ and faith in Him creates is offered in the first two episodes: His rejection in His home town and the beheading of John the Baptist.
i. The scandal of the Lord's humble origins
It is the familiar "Who do you think you are?" syndrome.
Whenever anyone makes a new discovery or a new advance, others are made to feel inferior thereby, and their pride is irked. In particular, we do not like it when someone who has shared life with us at the same level suddenly rises higher than we, whether through achievement or the gaining of some new insight. If someone we played cricket with us in our youth is shot into prominence, we resent it. It is childish and silly, but it is often so. That is the reaction Jesus had to face in His home town. "He's no better than us. Who does He think He is?"
But there is a sense in which it is not hard to see why they should react that way. It is after all a simply astounding thing that God, the great, exalted God of Heaven and Creation, should appear among His creatures looking indistinguishable from them. So really did He 'level' with us, that we took Him to be no better than ourselves, and resented it when He appeared in His true colours. "How can He be from heaven? He's just like us."
But that is a reaction that betrays a fault in us: we have a wrong notion of what is 'heavenly.' The last thing we expect heavenly realities to be is down-to-earth. But when the most exalted heavenly realities - the most exalted heavenly personage indeed - did appear on earth, he looked so very down-to-earth. The glory of heaven is not alien to ordinary levels of earthly life. It 'fits' in the real world. This world is God's creation, and it can bear the 'weight of glory.' (II Cor. 4:17)
The Lord's townsfolk insisted that He be as they: do we? He is one with us, but with a difference. We must allow Him that difference, or He can bring us no salvation. To rescue the man in a pit, the rescuer himself must be above it. And near to us as Jesus is - and He is most blessedly near - He is above us; and far from resenting the fact we should rejoice in it. We should be glad that He is not, in some particulars at least, like the rest of us!
Note: The Paucity of Miracles in the Face of UnbeliefThe statement in v. 58: "He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief" has been variously interpreted.
It is interesting that Matthew says this a little differently from Mark. Mark 6:5 reads: "And He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And He marvelled because of their unbelief. And He went about among the villages teaching." Matthew has changed Mark's 'could not' to 'did not.' Some would have us believe that Matthew 'softened' Mark's language because he could not bear the suggestion that the Lord's powers might have been weakened, even by unbelief. But Matthew and Mark are both saying exactly the same thing in fact.
What they both say is not that peoples' lack of faith rendered Christ impotent, but that it made miracles inappropriate. It is in that sense that He 'could not' do them. He chose not to do them (could not bring Himself to do them), because where faith is lacking, miracles cease to carry the message they are wrought to convey. This gives us the clue to the meaning of the miracles in general: they are done to teach, to reveal Jesus as the Son of God and show us what He came to do. If they fail to carry that message they should not be done. Matthew underlines, not softens the point Mark made by changing 'could not' to 'did not.'
Jesus will not do miracles for us if we will not learn from them to repent of our sins, confess Him as Saviour and Lord, and give ourselves to His obedience.
Mark notes that what Jesus did then was to go on circuit, teaching. Perhaps, if the people listened to His teaching, faith might come to birth in them, and then it might be appropriate to do miracles again. Not that the need to make the miracles carry a message prevented Him from meeting need where it was urgent. He did heal a few folk. He is Lord.
ii. The Scandal of the Herald's Stand
In his telling of John the Baptist's murder Matthew means to say, "This is what may happen to you if you follow Jesus." John gets beheaded, Jesus gets crucified, Christians get ...?
This story will help us understand in a little more depth what it is that makes men enemies to Christ.
1. The fear of exposure
v. 4 Herod could not stand John because John exposed his shame and his guilt.
Jesus and those who follow Him will always do that. We should not expect people to be delighted and approving of us because we have tapped into a powerful source of moral and spiritual vitality. They should approve, because our life is cleaner and sweeter; but they will not. They will react as Iago did to Othello: "He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly." They will hate us for it.
2. To protect their reputation
v. 9 "the King was sorry; but because of his
oath and his guests he commanded John's head to be brought in."
He had to be the tough guy who did not bow for any consideration. No
matter how wrong he was to say it, Herod did not climb down for any
man. It was sheer pride - which turns a man into a devil.
There is a seed of pride like that in us all. It makes us do mean, nasty things. There are people about who simply cannot bear to admit that they are in the wrong. When we will not acknowledge God, we have to be our own God, and it makes unprincipled devils of us. One wishes one could say, "The world isn't like that," but it is. It has Adolf Hitlers and Idi Amins in it. But they are not found only in high places, they are found on factory floors, at office desks and shop counters and in army platoons ... and in churches!
3. To indulge their lusts
v. 6 "The daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask."
Says William Barclay, "Salome must have been young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. There must have been in her an element of shamelessness. Here was a royal princess who acted as a dancing-girl. The dances those girls danced were suggestive and immoral. For a royal princess to dance in public at all was an unheard-of thing." (William Barclay, 'Daily Study Bible: Gospel of Matthew Vol. 2' [St Andrew Press] p. 105)
And Herod was partial to it. His lust was roused and it drowned his good sense. Men love their lusts. Women too. They resent them being threatened, and the summons of the Gospel does threaten them. In his book 'The Great Divorce' C. S. Lewis has a telling picture of a man's struggle with his lusts. A ghostly creature from hell has taken one of the daily bus excursions to the outskirts of heaven, and there he meets one of the 'solid people,' the redeemed souls in heaven: and he longs at once to go over to them. But a little red lizard of lust sits on his shoulder and whispers in his ear, pleading, wheedling, arguing and threatening. And it is almost more than the man can do to let the angel take the wretched thing in his hands and wring its neck. (C. S. Lewis, 'The Great Divorce' [Geoffrey Bles] p. 89 ƒƒ)
Every man knows in his heart that Christ and the following Him will be death to his lusts and the indulgence of them. And when he sees people who shame his guilty indulgence by their conquest of them he would rather see them killed than his own lusts throttled. People want to see Christians fail in that area to justify themselves, so they can sneer: "See, it won't work. This Christ of yours can't make you any better than the rest of us."
v. 12 "And John's disciples came, and
took the body and buried it; and they went and told Jesus."
It took courage, I think, to do it.
But there is a sort of sadness about the terse words: "They came and took the body and buried it." That was the end of it. The shepherd had been smitten and the sheep were scattered. The whole marvellous phenomenon of John - his renewal of the old prophetic tradition, the mighty stirring that had swept through the land - was all over. John was dead and Herod lived; and John's nameless grave was the grave of all his disciples' hopes, and all the life his ministry had stirred.
Or was it ...? I cannot help feeling there is something teasingly piquant about the last phrase, "they went and told Jesus." When they put it all in the hands of Jesus, that was not the end of it. If you wait a little, Jesus will join John in the grave, and then ... the triumph and vindication of all that John had so ruggedly championed will break out of that grave, and be loosed into the world, where it will assuredly come to victory.
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