Lecture 5: Interpreting Matthew: The Nazarene, the Kingdom, and the Sermon on the Mount

The lecture, section by section

1. He shall be called a Nazarene

   Matthew 2:23 says the settling in Nazareth fulfilled what was spoken through the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene, yet no Old Testament passage says it. Some hear Nazirite, but Jesus did not live the Nazirite life; he came eating and drinking and was slandered as a glutton and a drunkard. Some hear the branch, the netzer, which even Carson calls at best a discrete allusion, too subtle a sound-link to carry the verse. Essex is settled on the third reading, and the clue is the plural: every other fulfillment formula in these chapters cites the prophet, singular, but here it is the prophets. Matthew appeals not to one text but to the tenor of the prophets as a whole: that Messiah, when he came, would be despised, humbled, of obscure background. To be a Nazarene, from an unmentioned village in Galilee of the Gentiles, was exactly that, the contempt Nathanael voices in John 1, can anything good come out of Nazareth.

2. The kingdom drawn near, and the wrath even nearer

   John's first word is, repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near, and his next recorded words to the Pharisees and Sadducees are, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Drawn near means close at hand, standing ready, the same verb used when Jesus has come near Jerusalem but not yet entered it. Set against the era's chart, the logic of the preaching emerges: if the kingdom is close, the wrath that precedes it is closer still, which is why the call to repent carries such urgency, and why Jesus closes the Sermon on the Mount with houses that must stand when the storm of judgment comes.

3. The liberal positions: ethics, Schweitzer, and Dodd

   Three positions dominate outside evangelicalism. The first makes the kingdom personal and individual, an ethical reality that enters the one who obeys the prophetic ideals, the root of the social gospel. Against that syrup Albert Schweitzer insisted the kingdom of John and Jesus was the Old Testament's own eschatological kingdom as contemporary Judaism understood it, a reading Essex calls the right road, except that for Schweitzer Jesus was a mere man who, when Israel refused him, threw himself on the wheel of history and died mistaken; the quest for the historical Jesus ends in a wrong but radical revolutionary. Dodd answered Schweitzer with realized eschatology: pressing Matthew 12:28, if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you, he taught that where Jesus is, the kingdom is, with no future manifestation at all.

4. Ladd and McClain: the two evangelical answers

   Against this backdrop two evangelical works appeared almost simultaneously and without reference to each other: George Ladd's studies culminating in The Presence of the Future, and Alva McClain's The Greatness of the Kingdom; Essex says, do not preach Matthew without them. Ladd worked by word study and concluded the kingdom has two aspects: inaugurated spiritually at Christ's first coming, the famous already, and awaiting full manifestation at his return, the not yet. Ladd died a premillennialist, but his scheme serves amillennialists like Hoekema equally well once the age to come is located in the new Jerusalem, so a commentator's holding position D does not reveal his eschatology; Hagner, Blomberg, Carson, and in his own way MacArthur stand broadly here. McClain instead traced from Genesis onward a mediatorial kingdom, God's authority exercised on earth through human mediators, from Adam to the New Jerusalem.

5. The one-kingdom view, and the kingdom delayed

   Essex holds McClain's one-kingdom view, with Toussaint: the kingdom John, Jesus, and the disciples preached is the Old Testament's prophesied kingdom, and for reasons: it is never explained, so its content must come from texts like Daniel 7, the son of man given dominion over the nations; the message is restricted to Israel; the disciples nearest to Jesus are still expecting the earthly kingdom on the road to Jerusalem in chapter 20; and the rewards of the righteous await the future kingdom, in the Beatitudes and at the judgment of chapter 25, come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. After the rejection of chapters 11 through 13 the kingdom is never again said to have drawn near; the parables reveal a sowing, a counter-sowing, and a separation at the end of the age. The kingdom was delayed, not dissolved. Nor does this make the cross an afterthought: Messiah was prophesied as suffering servant as well as Davidic king, Israel's rejection was God's means of fulfilling those Scriptures, and Matthew's very first Old Testament citation joins the Davidic heir to the one who will save his people from their sins.

6. The Sermon on the Mount: seven approaches

   Essex surveys the proposals. Soteriological, the sermon leads to salvation: but it opens to disciples who have already believed. Penitential, MacArthur's view, the sermon as law-work exposing sin to drive hearers to Christ: the same objection stands. Ecclesiastical, the constitution of the church: but the disciples are not yet viewed as the church. Kingdom ethics, principles of the coming kingdom already spiritually operative. The dispensational manifesto, the constitution of the future kingdom only: but Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, your kingdom come. Schweitzer's interim ethic is, again, on the right track. Essex lands on the historical approach: Jesus teaches disciples raised on the Pharisaic reduction of the law what the law truly requires, for their sanctification, as they await a kingdom drawn near with the wrath to come before it.

7. Reading the sermon in place

   The sermon's own structure confirms the reading. The body runs as an inclusio from 5:17, do not think I came to abolish the law or the prophets, to 7:12, for this is the law and the prophets. The Beatitudes turn to the second person, blessed are you when men revile you, and the present tense, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is a realistic present: not the rewards now, but the assurance now, heirs and citizens of the kingdom even while persecution runs its course, the note Paul strikes in Acts 14, through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom, and in Romans 12, live now as those transformed for the age to come. By the conclusion the multitudes have gathered, and the closing challenge reaches them: build your life on me and my words, the only footing that survives the storm.

8. And the sermon today

   Does the sermon still speak to believers this side of Matthew 28? Yes, by application rather than by identical situation. We do not carry a gift to the altar, call a brother raca, or swear by Jerusalem; as with the Old Testament law, the sermon must be, in Essex's word, dejudaized to its enduring principles, which remain sanctifying truth for heirs of the kingdom, kingdom living here and now. That is why a message on prayer from Matthew 7 can rightly be preached to believers today, provided the original historical setting governs the application.

9. To fulfill all righteousness

   At the baptism John resists, I need to be baptized by you, and Jesus answers, permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. The proposals multiply: identification with sinners; baptism as a figure of the death that brings righteousness, which stumbles on the us and the timing; messianic anointing; submission to the law of Moses, which never commanded baptism. Essex takes righteousness in its simplest force: God's righteous standard, God's will. This is God's will for me now, to receive your baptism, and for you, to give it; Jesus opens his ministry as the one completely submissive to whatever God says, the very obedience the temptation will immediately test, with Hagner and Carson adding that this obedient will is the beginning of the salvation God had promised.

10. The kingdom suffers violence

    In chapter 11 Jesus honors John as the greatest born of women, yet the least in the kingdom is greater: entrance into the kingdom outranks any status the present age can confer. Then the crux: from the days of John until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. The verb may be middle or passive, the sense positive intensity or hostile violence. Some, MacArthur among them, read both halves positively: the kingdom forcefully advancing, seized by intense and disciplined disciples. But the context is opposition, from the vipers of chapter 3 to the blasphemy of chapter 12, and one saying is unlikely to use violence positively and negatively at once. With the majority, Essex reads both negatively: the kingdom's representatives, John in prison, Jesus, the sent disciples, are being attacked, and violent men, the religious leaders, are trying to seize the kingdom for themselves some other way than faith in the King, the very grasping the parable of the vineyard will expose.

1. The prophets as a whole promised a despised Messiah from a despised place, and Nathanael's sneer proved them right. Where are you tempted to judge God's work by the prestige of its address, and what does Nazareth say to that instinct?

2. Essex reads the Beatitude's present tense as assurance: heirs of the kingdom now, rewards at its coming. How would living from that assurance change how you endure being reviled, overlooked, or opposed for Christ's sake?

3. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness by doing whatever God said, beginning with a baptism he did not need for himself. Where is simple submission to God's revealed will the next step of obedience in your own life?