One of the reasons Matthew is keen to show Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophetic expectation is that God’s work always begins with God’s people. As Paul would later write, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” Paul understood that God’s plan starts with God’s people – always has and always will. That includes salvation from the human condition of sin.
In Christ’s time then, the solution to humankind’s sin problem had to start with the Jewish people – the people group that God called out from Babel to carry His Name across the earth. Not that God was playing favourites, or would restrict His plans to that one nation. Matthew and Paul both understood that though salvation would be first brought to the Jews, it could not remain there. It must go beyond them to the Gentiles (non-Jewish) world, just as judgment would start with the Jews and go beyond them to the non-Jewish world. As Paul writes, “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.”
Knowing those facts is key to reading Jesus’ sending of the newly commissioned apostles. Without it, we find our present culture’s aversion to discrimination informing the reading of Scripture. But our culture should never inform Scripture. Scripture must inform culture. So when we read of Jesus’ instructions, let us not jump to the conclusion that God is racist or discriminatory. Rather, God is orderly. He starts with His own household first.
“These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.””
One commentator writes, “Matthew is here preparing, from the perspective of Jewish concerns, for the affirmation of Gentile mission to which he will reach in 28:19. Jesus comes as, in the first instance, a thoroughly Jewish and restrictedly Jewish messiah… The separate mention of the Samaritans has no independent significance: these people considered to be of doubtful Israelite extraction are introduced only as a way of insisting with considerable tightness of definition on a restriction of mission to ethnic Israel. In this respect Jesus is presented as having impeccable Jewish credentials.”
In other words, that is not just important to Matthew’s primarily Jewish readers. It is of value to us all that Jesus is rightly seen as one who upheld the Law, honored the Abrahamic covenant and fulfilled Scripture.
God, who is above the culture of all people groups, works through the culture of all people groups. Not only to save, but to restore. Not only the people, but the very cultures that they identify with; First that of the Jew. Then that of the Gentile!
Amen.
All the blessings of Israel are summed up in Christ.
William Wordsworth
APPLICATION: Thankfulness
Let us thank God that the blessing of God came to Israel first. For in His doing so, Israel is made into an example for the rest of humankind.