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Matthew Chapter 28
1. Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.
The language as far as when this occurred is difficult. Some claim that this says that they actually went on the Sabbath. Yet I find it impossible to believe that the women would have been planning to prepare the Lord’s body with spices on the Sabbath day, for that would have been work, and no good Israelite woman would have broken the law in such a way even to decorate the body of her Lord. Yet the language here in Greek indicates that they came “on the first of the Sabbaths.” What does this mean? I believe that this is a reference to the seven Sabbaths they were to count after the Passover until they got to the feast of Pentecost fifty days later. The language here indicates that this was the first day counting down to Pentecost, in other words the first day in reckoning the Sabbaths until that day. Thus, it was indeed on the day after the Sabbath, Sunday, that they were coming, and not on the Sabbath itself. Different people might disagree with this and have different views about what the Greek means here. I must go back, however, to the fact that their actions indicated that this could not have actually been the Sabbath. Luke 23:56 tells us that they waited until after the Sabbath to visit the tomb. This is enough for me, and whatever the strange language here might mean, it cannot mean that they came to the tomb on the Sabbath. Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Chapter 27 Continued
33. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull,
Golgotha is an Aramaic name, Aramaic being the common language in Israel. It means “Skull Place;” the Hebrew was Gulgoleth. Since dead bodies or blood defiled a place ceremonially, any time a dead body was buried or blood was spilled (in the sense that a person was killed there) on a piece of land, that land became infamous for being an unclean place. Apparently someone had found a skull in this very place where Jesus was crucified, and thus the place came to be called “Place of a Skull” to warn all Israelites that that place was unclean. It did not have to look like a skull or be shaped like a skull, as some have speculated. Since it was an unclean place already, it was an ideal place for the Romans to crucify prisoners without angering the Jews.
The word translated “skull” here is translated “Calvary” in Luke 23:33, the only place this word appears in our translation. Yet the Greek word is kranion, not Calvary. Calvary comes from the Latin word for a skull calvaria, so this is another word we inherited from the Roman church, and is not a Biblical name for the place at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Chapter 27
1. When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death.
The Lord’s trial had taken place in the middle of the night. “Morning” here signifies daybreak or dawn. At this time, these leaders come together to take counsel. They decided it was not enough for them to just condemn Him, or even to execute Him. They wanted to have Him killed in the most public, humiliating way possible. That they would murder Him was already decided. The counsel here was how to do it.
There are five times we read of these leaders taking counsel in Matthew: 1. How they might destroy Him in 12:14. 2. How they might entangle Him in His talk in 22:15. 3. How they might put Him to death, here. 4. How to spend Judas’ returned blood money in 27:7. 5. How to hush the soldiers’ report in 28:12.
Notice once again that it is the chief priests and elders of the people who did this. As for the common people, they, as a whole, loved Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, these things were done while they were sleeping. How many evil things are likewise done in our day while good men are “sleeping”!
Matthew Chapter 26 Continued
36. Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.”
Following their usual nightly routine, they come to this place called Gethsemane to pray. The word for “place” here is the Greek chorion, meaning a field or a farmstead. Gethsemane means “An Oil Press,” which would not be an uncommon thing to find at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Mark in Mark 14:32 calls it “Gethsemane” as well. Luke 22:39-40 calls it a “place” at the Mount of Olives. John 18:1 is the only passage that calls it a “garden,” meaning actually an orchard, though John does not name it as Gethsemane. Thus we make a composite name when we call it the “Garden of Gethsemane.”
The Lord intends to pray. This is the typical Greek word for prayer, proseuchomai. Some find it very difficult to explain how the Lord could pray and yet still be God. This is communication between the Source and the Outflow. Otis Q. Sellers noted regarding this, “When my hand pains me, it cries out to me and says, ‘Do something.’ If I cut my hand, the burst of pain and the spurt of blood say, ‘Do something.’ So I have to do something for my hand, and yet my hand is me. And so if we have a concept of God as the One Who has expressed Himself and declared Himself, then we will understand this without difficulty.”
Matthew Chapter 26
1. Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to his disciples,
The “sayings” it speaks of include chapters 24 and 25, which are both part of the same discourse. This was a single, great teaching session of the Lord to His disciples.
2. “You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
Once again the Lord tells His disciples what is to soon take place. This is the fourth prediction of this we have in Matthew. The details this time are 1) It will happen during the Passover celebration. 2) He will be betrayed. 3) He will be crucified. In the third prediction we had both betrayed and crucified, but this is the first time He reveals exactly when: during this Passover celebration. One has to marvel how it could be that they were not ready for what happened. Yet perhaps this is not so strange. When we don’t understand something and it bothers us, we all like to shut such unhappy things out of our minds. Not wishing to accept their Master’s words, the disciples no doubt did their best to forget them.
“The Passover” is that great festival God gave the nation of Israel, celebrating the fact that they were delivered from slavery in Egypt when the angel of death destroyed the Egyptian firstborn but passed over the houses with the blood. At this Passover, the Lord is going to be betrayed or delivered up to crucifixion. Of course this was done by Judas, who took payment to betray Him to His enemies. Yet the religious leaders of the land also betrayed Him. These were meant to promote justice, and yet they betrayed Him by giving Him the exact opposite. All rulers are traitors to their trust when they do this.
Matthew Chapter 25
1. “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
The way the parable of the ten virgins has been dealt with is an example of some of the problems in Christianity: there is far too much preaching, treating passages as grist for a sermon mill rather than in the light of the truths God sought to teach. There is also far too much seeking for things to frighten men into conformity, and this portion has been used for this purpose as well. It has been used as if it were referring to conditions today, and it is not.
The word “then” that begins this chapter shows that this is a picture of the kingdom of heaven at a specific time. The Lord told many parables about the kingdom of heaven at different stages in its development. This one is spoken of the days leading up to the Parousia and the consummation of the eon, continuing right on from His answer to His disciples in chapter 24. This has nothing to do with the dispensation of grace or our course of action at this present time. It has nothing to do with the beginning of the kingdom, or the course of it. It has to do with the close of the kingdom, when many are deceived when false prophets and false christs arise. We must interpret this parable according to this time frame.
Matthew Chapter 24 Part 3
29. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
What happens next happens immediately after the tribulation ends, with no time in between. Bullinger points out this is a reference to the Old Testament, pointing to Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4. These events sound like terrible things, but consider Paul on the Damascus road, when at noon the Lord Jesus appeared to him with a brightness greater than that of the sun, according to Acts 26:13. Compared to the light the Lord gave, the sun would have appeared dark. That is how the sun is darkened here: by contrast with the much greater light of His presence on earth.
There is no doubt about this being figurative. The sun, moon, and stars in this passage are figurative for the governmental leaders of those days, just like the sun, moon, and stars are figures for Joseph’s family in his dream recorded in Genesis 37:9-10. They will be disrupted by the coming of the Lord, and their glory will so pale in comparison to His that it will be like the sun going out and the moon failing in light. “Powers” here are dunamis, those having inherent power. These are heavenly rulers with great power given them by their Creator. Yet many of these have fallen and rebelled, and are our primary adversaries today, Ephesians 6:12. These will not hold their authority forever, but shall fall at this time. Again this is not a terrible thing, as it might appear at first. Rather it is a wonderful thing, for it is a result of the light of the Lord shining in its full glory on earth at last! These are the outward signs just before the actual arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ to be personally present upon the earth for a thousand years. Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Chapter 24 Part 2
21. “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.
“Then” refers to when the people living in Judea see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place and flee to the mountains. The “beginning of the world” is the Greek arches kosmou, meaning from the beginning of the orderly system or arrangement. We typically have to ask ourselves, “Which world?” In this case, we would think the world of mankind since Adam. “No, nor ever shall be” contains the two Greek words for “no,” ou and me, together, which forms the strongest possible Greek “no.” There shall by no means be a time of tribulation like this before that time, nor after.
There is no article here, though this is what most people call “the Great Tribulation.” This brings this important matter before us of the Great Tribulation. There has always been a certain type of preacher and a certain type of preaching that has as its aim the frightening of men into believing the truth. Stories of great and terrible woe are meant to lead people to come trembling on their knees to God in order to escape the terrible fate that is in store for them. In times past, preachers used to speak of the torments of hell, making up many terrible tortures and inventing many heartless cruelties in their attempts to bring men to a place of repentance before God. In more recent times, the idea of the unpardonable sin has been used, and men are made to greatly fear this unpardonable sin and all it may entail. Now in this passage we come to another of these topics that is used by preachers to bring people into great vexation and fear, and that is the topic of the great tribulation. Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Chapter 24 Part 1
1. Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.
Now the Lord went out of the temple. This was the last time He would visit the temple before His trial. Bullinger thinks this is a different prophecy from that in Luke, which was apparently spoken in the temple before He went out of it. Now His disciples approached Him, the Greek word being proserchomai, which we have pointed out occurs many more times in Matthew than in the other gospels. We have suggested the idea of approaching the king in this, the book that presents Christ as the King of the Jews.
The disciples intended to point out the greatness of these buildings. The Greek word here is hieron, meaning the temple grounds, and not just the holy building. The temple was not, as many today think of it as having been, just one building. Rather, it was a whole complex of buildings, or a campus, if you will. It included not only many building, but also many outdoor courtyards and the like. Bullinger says this consisted of the courts, halls, colonnades, towers, and “wings.” The whole temple grounds had been expanded and beautified by Herod, so the temple at that time is sometimes called “Herod’s temple,” although the main temple building had originally been built by Ezra. This temple complex was indeed one of the wonders of the ancient world. In fact, one historian of the day is quoted as saying that you have not seen a beautiful building until you have seen the temple at Jerusalem! In the Old Testament, the temple is called “the Beauty of Holiness” (see Psalm 29:2 and II Chronincles 20:21, for example). This was indeed an amazing structure, and so we can well understand why the disciples would have been eager to show their Lord its wonders. Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew Chapter 23
1. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples,
Having spoken to the scribes and Pharisees directly, He now speaks to the crowd and His disciples. Yet He is speaking to them about the scribes and Pharisees, and these wicked men are still very much in the audience and hearing what He is saying.
2. saying: “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.
The word “seat” here is the Greek kathedras, meaning a seat of authority. Our word cathedral comes from this Greek word. The cathedrals of men are not the true seat of God, for He only ever chose one building on earth to place His name there, and that was His temple in Jerusalem, which does not now exist. The cathedrals of men, then, are not the Lord’s seat. To the church, the cathedral is the seat of the bishop, a seat of power of a leader in a man-made religion.
What the Lord means here is that they had taken the position of royalty in Israel. To be in Moses’ seat was really to be the ruler of Israel. These scribes and Pharisees had the rule and authority in Israel. Moses was in actual fact a king, as he was absolutely in charge of the people and answered to no one but God Himself. This was the position the Pharisees had chosen to take for themselves, and so they had taken to themselves Moses’ authority. They were very similar to more modern organizations like the Catholic Church, who took for themselves the place of authority second only to God’s. Read the rest of this entry »
Precepts 