Competing Visions

Matthew 21: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21&version=NIV

  

            When we turn the page to Matthew 21, the time of the story slows down. The first 20 chapters have taken us from the announcement of Jesus birth to His adulthood in two chapters and they have described His ministry—maybe one to three years—in 18 chapters. Now, the events of the last week of His life occupy 7 chapters, a full quarter of the book. This is the beginning of the climax, and everything is coming together.

            Among the many things we could talk about, the one that really defines this chapter is Jesus’ conflict with the religious leadership of Israel, and that conflict centers around competing visions of God’s plans and purposes in and through Israel. Notice these things.

            First, Jesus is hailed as Israel’s king, establishing His bona fides to speak authoritatively to God’s plans and purposes. Then, He enters immediately into the temple courts and conducts His famous action in the temple. I choose not to call it the cleansing of the temple, because there’s a lot going on there and it’s not 100% clear that we can reduce His action to merely cleansing it. Indeed, I’d go further and say that He is condemning the temple, or, at least, what the current leadership of Israel has made of it. Whatever else we might say, what is clear is what Jesus says, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers’” If you were to look up Isaiah 56:7, the first part of Jesus’ quote, you’d find that the whole verse says, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Israel’s purpose was never just her own glorification; Israel’s purpose was always the blessing of all the peoples of the earth (Gen. 12:3).

            And Jesus keeps making the point. He curses a fig tree, a thinly veiled statement about Israel’s failure to produce the results that God wanted. He tells a story about two sons, one who agrees to work for the father but doesn’t (a stand in for Israel) and one who refuses to work but does (a stand in for the Gentiles). And He tells a parable about wicked tenants in a vineyard, a vineyard that is so thinly veiled that the chief priests immediately know He was talking about them.

            We can draw at least two lessons out of all of that. Let’s start with the bad news. If we want to apply this to the church today, we start by observing that the church that is no longer engaged in mission—the church that is not reaching out with the Good News to its neighbor, the church whose members aren’t concerned to share that Good News—is a church in the same position as Israel. The church exists, Jesus says in Matthew 5, to be salt and light to the world. If the church hides its light or loses its saltiness, it’s lost its purpose. The church dare never lose sight of what God has called it to do.

            On the positive side, though, the church’s purpose is glorious and wonderful. The church’s purpose is to announce that God’s salvation is for all people and it is a salvation that comes by grace. It doesn’t depend on biology or history or personal worthiness. It is purely a gift. In some ways, that’s the heart of Matthew 21. Jesus breaks open what has only been implicit and hinted at in the Gospel, namely, that God’s salvation is for all people, Jew and Gentile. And, as I like to teach our youth, if God’s salvation is for everyone, then it is for you. Good news indeed!