Thursday, October 11, 2007

Matthew 2

I thank God for Tom Wright who has labored over the scriptures and history for years. He has learned to read the bible, quite possibly, from the perspective of the first century Church. I can't stress enough how extremely important it is to consider what the early church might have understood when reading scripture. If you think about it for a minute, I believe you would agree, there has been a lot of events; time, philosophy, historical events etc... that have occured since the text was written. If not careful we can let these events shape our worldview and our interpretation of scripture. Thanks to people like Tom Wright, we can now approach the Word of God from a historical perspective in order to get a more accurate interpretation of scripture. No longer will I read the bible from the ego-centric perspective that has so subtly crept into the Church today. I encourage you also to remove yourself from the equation when reading and ask this question. What is the author saying to the original recipient? Then and only then will we have something worthy of applying.

Now with that being said, lets move on to our study of Matthew 2.

We see here in chapter 2 after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the time of King Herod, the Magi from the east came to Jerusalem looking for one that was born king of the Jews. These men were quite possibly astrologers and astronomers, who recognized, based on the alignment of the planets, that a king had been born to the Jews. When King Herod caught wind of this he and all Jerusalem were alarmed. You see old King Herod had become very powerful and along with his power came paranoia. He was extremely jealous of anyone that threatned his rule. So he assembled the chief priests and experts of the law and asked where the Christ was to be born. In Bethlehem of Judah, they said, "for it is written this way by the prophet: 'And you are in no way least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.' " After learning of this Herod privately called the Magi to himself and found out from them when the star had appeared. He then sent them to Bethlehem to find the child. He lied to them and said let me know when you find them so that I might go and worship him. They left old Herod and followed the star until they found the child with Mary his mother. They bowed down and worshiped him and gave him gifts fit for a king. After being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they left and returned by another route.

In this passage we see, the Magi who were not of Jewish descent and were quite possibly from Persia, even though they were not his people, God gave them knowledge of the birth of the promised King. They chose then to seek him out and worship him. I believe Matthew includes this in his story so that the Jews of his day would understand God's intentions. And that is, that He desires all men, not just Jews, to know him.

Since the beginning, God wanted to be revealed to all the World, and Israel was supposed to be the people to do just that. However, due to Israel's dereliction of duty, God himself became man in the person of Jesus, and assumed the duties of Israel, to become light to the whole world. Because of this, we might now become salt and light to the world. This reminds me of the verse in John 12:32 "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." This could very well be why Matthew included this in his story. To show God's desire to draw all men to himself.

More to come on this later...

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