Reading: Matthew 9-10, Psalm 85

Yesterday we read about how everything Jesus instructed his people in had to do with the condition of their hearts. Then we saw Jesus go out and demonstrate his authority over, well, pretty much everything. Disease, demon, the weather. Today we a more direct demonstration of Jesus’ authority over the physical and spiritual, with the addition of his authority over sin and death. Once Matthew has thoroughly communicated his message about how Jesus is the highest authority that there is, we see him recruit his team for changing the world and give them their marching orders.

Matthew has set us up to understand that Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is pretty easy to miss if we read his book as snippets of good instruction and short stories. When we zoom out and look at the overarching story that Matthew is telling, we can see it all goes back to his first line: Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Matthew is telling a royal origin story, and we are now in the thick of that story. We heard his birth narrative. We saw his anointing and confirmation in the baptism of John. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared the values and means of membership in his kingdom. Now he is out among the people demonstrating what kind of Kingdom comes from a King like him. So far we have a kingdom in which lepers are cleansed, the sick are made well whether near or far, nature is tamed, and demons are cast out. Not a bad start. But it is only a start.

Jesus takes his kingdom authority one step further with the paralytic man. Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. In the kingdom of this King, sins are forgiven. When that causes consternation among the observers, Jesus reaffirms his authority by removing the man’s paralysis. This is a pretty wild claim that Jesus is making. Previously in the Story we have been reading, the human problem was pretty much a done deal, with some means to restore the ability to intercede with God directly preserved through the Day of Atonement. Forgiveness was a matter of transference- sacrifice an animal, and the priest will make atonement. The high priest carried the sin and guilt of Israel until the Day of Atonement, when they are sent away into the wilderness. This was the understanding of guilt, shame, and the destructive power of humanity gone wrong. Either sin was dealt with in this way, or you get Genesis 3-11: murder, oppression, violence, death, destruction, and division on a mass scale.

Then Jesus shows up and says: My son, your sins are forgiven. Let’s not short sell the enormity of what Jesus is asking these people to believe. He has the authority to do something always reserved for God alone, and that even he only does under very specific circumstances. The consequences for getting this wrong were huge. If the crowds, and Matthew’s audience, we going to believe this, there needed to be some serious evidence that Jesus had the authority he claimed to have. So he raises a little girl from the dead. In this King’s kingdom, there are no dead people.

When you have a revolution, there is invariably opposition. Jesus has proven to many of the people that he is, in fact, the Messianic King. I mean, the guy is literally going around raising the dead and declaring the forgiveness of sin. It is a pretty big deal. But there are those opposed to the new order this would represent.

Think back for a minute to the very beginning of the Story. After the flood, the Great Creation Reboot, God set up some rules about life and sent the humans out to rule the earth anew. But it went badly, and before you know it we have the tower of Babel and the beginnings of a new age of violence that led to the Reboot in the first place. So God starts over with one dude, a Chaldean named Abram. Two generations later there are these twelve sons, each of which become a whole tribe over a few hundred years. God says he will make them A kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation. They are to demonstrate what the human race can be to a terribly broken world.

It doesn’t work out super well, which is the story of the entire Hebrew Scriptures in a nutshell. But look now at what Jesus is doing. He has demonstrated the New Creation- a kingdom in which there is no disease, no natural disasters, no blindness, no deformity or damage, and no death. He has unwound the Curse, and shown his people a world without the human problem. But they won’t take it. So he starts over with twelve guys. He calls them laborers for the harvest. He gives them the authority he has, and tells them to go to their people, the people of Israel, and demonstrate the Kingdom of Heaven to them. Then he predicts that they will not listen, and gives them instructions on how to behave when they are reviled for their gift of the Kingdom. They are to demonstrate what the human race can be to a terribly broken people. Sound familiar?

There is a lot that could be said about the instructions that Jesus gives his disciples here and how it relates to those who swear their allegiance to King Jesus today, but that is not the purpose to which I am writing right now. What seems abundantly clear to me is that Jesus is constituting a new kingdom of priest and holy nation. He is creating, from the remnant of Israel that the prophets spoke about, a new Israel, that will ultimately have a new heart. A people who will have the Law written on their hearts. The calling of the disciples begins the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 30, the great restoration of God’s people. It marks the beginning of the end of the covenant with Moses, as God is fulfilling all his promises, leaving room for the inauguration of the New Covenant promised through Jeremiah and Ezekiel. This new people of God will carry the declaration of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world, bearing witness to what humanity can and should be. Of course, without the presence of the King, the Kingdom is never complete… and that is why this is not the end of the book of Matthew.