Transcript of Classes on Matthew by John W. Welch, December 2009 to April 2010

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Transcript of Classes on Matthew by John W. Welch, December 2009 to April 2010

Matthew 21-23 18 Mar 2010

(Class welcome and announcements)

Comments Relevant to Matthew at Stake Conference (6-7 March 2010, Elder Oaks)

I sent you an email about our class for tonight, andthefirst thing I asked was, “Did you hear anything in Stake Conference that reminded you of things that we have been talking about in the Gospel of Matthew? Not just in these chapters but in any of the others as well.”If you want to remember just a few things that were said, Elder Oaks told us that we should write things down and actually make some resolutions about things. Sister Martin did you have anything - you are always so faithful with writing down good notes?

(Student) He told us that as members of the Church that we should be ready to bear our testimony at any moment and to bring the Savior into our lives on a constant, daily basis.

Do you think the Gospel of Matthew agrees with that?We have not come to Chapter 28 yet, but after the resurrection, the apostles are charged to go forth and bear testimony throughout the entire world.

(Student) We learned how husband and wife should be equally yoked.

We did talk about the yoke; “My yoke is easy and light” might work there.Anything else you remember.Wasn’t it a great conference?I cannot remember a time when we had standing room only in the Saturday night session and we were certainly well, well rewarded.

(Student) Elder Oaks …the phrase he used was…deeply religious and profound …

Yes!Very good.The Lord wants humility but not ignorance.

(Student) Elder Oaks said about the desires of the heart “Blessed are the pure in heart.”

It is not what goes in, but what comes out, Matthew uses the heart message four or five times, so that was right in keeping with what Elder Oaks had said.

(Student) He talked about Christmas cards. It is really hard to find a good Christmas card.

I saw an email from somebody who had actually sent Elder Oaks a Christmas card saying, “I am not going to make that mistake again.”

(Student) Was it a Christmas card or holiday greeting?

I think it was a holiday greeting.So at least there is repentance here.

(Student) Interestingly, Elder Oaks said this recession is not going to be over soon and that our children and grandchildren will have a lesser standard of living.

We will have to get used to that.

(Student)He quoted Harold B. Lee when he said, “This Church is not a retirement home for the righteous, this is a hospital for the sinner.”

That is why we have “Wards.”Love that one.

(Student) But it reminds me of the Savior saying not just “physician heal thyself,” but also “I am here”

It is in Matthew Chapter 9 where he said, “I am not here to heal the well. The well hath no need of a physician.”Right out of Matthew.That was there.

(Student)Did he not also speak of coming unto Christ? But he really wanted us to follow Christ.

Right. Did you think of Matthew 9? It is just a few verses before this last one, when it talks about Matthew who was sitting there counting at the tollhouse and Jesus said, “Come, follow me.” And he went and followed. He used that very word. Good, good.

(Student)Talking about the Pharisees and hypocrites, he talked about the little boy who looked up at his dad who had been trying to impress the General Authority and asked, “What is going on here?”

How do we spell hypocrisy?That is a strong theme in the Gospel of Matthew too.Out of the mouth of babes, doesn’t it say?Right here in 21, in the temple, the babes?That fits too, doesn’t it?

(Student) He also said thatwe need to be self-starters.

The difficulty that this concept presented, especially for the Pharisees that Jesus lowers the boom on doesn’t he?I underlined in my notes in lots and lots of places. I think you get the point.What we have been studying for the last couple of months with Matthew is very pertinent.It is still the Gospel of Jesus Christ.We believe in the same gospel, the same organization, the same truths that were taught by the apostles, by the Savior himself when he was here, and isn’t it a blessing to have leaders of the Church who are so in tune with these principles.

They were made so relevant to us.Do you remember that Jesus talked about the man who takes out of his closet the old and the new? I recognized that these are eternal principles.They are old things, we all have heard them, but they were given a new flavor, a new presentation that really is timely, that people relate to very well.

I thought of one little note that I had. Elder Oaks started out on Saturday night saying that we are supposed to lead with the iron rod and not beat people with the iron rod.Do you remember that?

(Student) Or ourselves.

Or ourselves.Yes!The iron rod is mentioned in Psalm2 Verse 8 or 9, if you want to open that up you might just want to mark it up. Let me make sure I have the right verse for you. Psalm 2, Verse 9.This is a coronation Psalm, where the King is being set upon his throne on the holy hill of Zion and so on, not completely irrelevant to the triumphal entry, but Verse 9, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.”The word here in Hebrew is break but a biblical scholar, not a member of the Church, pointed out to Latter-day Saint scholars that in the Septuagint, the Greek version, the word for break is to lead not to break.To lead!Thou shalt lead them with a rod of iron is the way it reads in some ancient versions.He thought that we would be interested in that because the iron rod in Lehi’s vision leads you to the tree of life and so I observed that here we have a scriptural example, not to beat or break but to actually lead.Kind of fun!

Let us turn to Chapters 21, 22 and 23 in Matthew. I hope you enjoyed reading them and well, let us look at these texts fairly carefully.

Triumphal Entry

We begin with the triumphal entry.We call this Palm Sunday because as Jesus enters into the City of Jerusalem, people take branches off the trees and lay them in his path to welcome him, kind of like rolling out the red carpet for the coming of their great prophet and leader whom they love and revere.It starts here with the triumphal entry and by the end of Chapter 23, Jesus will be ready to withdraw from Jerusalem, go across the Kidron Valley, on to the Mt. of Olives where he will then weep over Jerusalem and prophesy about its destruction,give a few more final teachings, and then re-enter Jerusalem for the Last Supper.

(Student) Jews welcoming him like he said. It was mainly the Sanhedrin that persecuted him, but the Jews loved him. It was the Sanhedrin that really crucified him.

That is right.That is how I read it and not even the Sanhedrin.We know that there were people in the Sanhedrin who were favorable for Jesus.Nicodemus was one of them and Joseph of Aramathea probably also.He is right there.How else would he have known and been involved?

(Student)It is like the difference between Germans and Nazis…

Yes, exactly. Even the word Jews, the Iudaioi - when John uses it, and he uses it the most of the four Gospel writers, he seems to be using the word Jews not to mean the people in the province of the area of Judea.He seems to be referring to a political party, people who called themselves Iudaioi, or Jews, whatever they were.It is like Pharisees, Sadducees, Iudaioi, Herodians - these were different political parties.All of them are Jews.The Pharisees are Jews, I mean in the sense that we would think of them, so Matthew does not use the word, The Jews in that way, or even very often. Sowhen we say who was it that is the driving engine behind the plot?They have to scheme, they have to try to find a way to put Jesus to death - it is the Chief Priests, a very, very small group.

What does it say about Jesus’ reception?Look at Verse 10.All the city is moved.They are all, wondering, “What is going on?”That does not mean that the whole city is following Jesus, but they are all very interested, and how could you not be?This is the Passover preparation time and all of a sudden,you havepeople shouting and obviously a great tumult, an event, a hullabaloo is coming.People are really getting excited about something.Everybody wants to know who he is.There is a multitude, so there are a lot of people. These are the people lining the streets saying, “Who is he? Who is he?” and they say, “This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth, of Galilee.”So they are receiving him, welcoming himas a Prophet.

(Student)He came on a mule. How many of them realized that that was the symbol of …?

The arrival of a king?

(Student)Like Solomon.How many got that?...

Well, the verse that you are quoting or that you are referring to is verse 5,in which Matthew says “This was done that it might be fulfilled as the prophet had spoken, that the King shall come riding seated on an ass.”

(Student) Meaning kingship?

Morecoming in humility and peace, and as a king.That is what it says, “Thy king cometh unto thee.”That is the prophecy in Zechariah.How many people - your question - would have recognized that?We do not know.I am sure that some did.Lots of people now have a heightened expectation, “Will the Messiah come?”There are people who remember the prophecies at the time of the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus.There are people who knew and followed John the Baptist who had said, “I am here to prepare the way.”Where have those people gone?They went down to Jordan, they were baptized, many of them probably lived in Jerusalem or around because it says the whole land or region of Jerusalem had come down to see John.So there are people who are probably searching the scriptures, there are people who are talking about this.I think there were quite a few who would have noticed that.

It is interesting that Matthew, who was especially alert, any time there is a fulfillment of a prophecy, stops and spells it out for us ignorant folk who otherwise would not pick it up.But Mark and Luke both refer to the triumphal entry. They give the description, but they do not talk about the prophecy.Why not?It says “Thy King cometh unto thee,” so if Luke is writing more to the gentiles, this may be a prophecy that is more pertinent to the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, the city of the great king. Maybe he leaves that out thinking that would not be as relevant to his other audience.I would argue that Luke and Mark do not leave it out because they are not aware of it, but because they have other reasons for not putting it in.

(Student) “These things understood not his disciples at first, but when Jesus was glorified then they remembered it…to some degree they knew what was going on but…afterwards, maybe when they got the Holy Ghost.

That is a good point, and the same kind of thing happens after the resurrection on the road to Emmaus. They begin looking at the scriptures, and they say, “Ah, we now see this has all happened.”I think that isalso something for us to realize.Some people would have recognized that, they would have gotten a hint, they would have known the scriptures, but John may be saying, “This was not something that we schemed.”We did not say, “Let us go and find an ass that he can ride on so that we can fulfill this prophecy.”That looks a little bit too contrived.It is a strong testimony, and I think that is why it says that in the beginning of this, they record that Jesus told them to get the ass. Where do they find this ass?Jesus says, “Go, here, here is what you will find.You will find an ass with her foal - with a colt, and you will ask the owner and here is what he will say...”It was not something that they designed.

(Student) Would you explain what it is for?

Here is what he will say.“The Lord needs it.” Perhaps the owner knew the scripture and thought, “Oh, maybe that is what he needs it for.”I do not know.My point is just that this is a fulfillment and not some kind of retrospective.

(Student)Verse 9 says there were multitudes that went before him and cried “Hosanna to the Son of David.”That indicates to me that “Son of David” was the king, who was also the prophet. The multitudes knew what was going on.

Four times in these chapters, Jesus is called Son of David and, of course for us, that is a great confirmation of his kingly and divine mission but for some people like the chief priests, that is very threatening.

(Student) What was the sacrifice and why symbol of a foal ass?

The sacrifice?Just that. He rode on a young donkey. Why did he have to come riding on this poor little donkey, which was maybe only six months old?It is not a full-grown donkey. Even full-grown donkeys are not that big.Have any of you ever ridden on a donkey?Wayne?Comfortable?Do you put a saddle on a donkey, by the way?No.It is not very comfortable.I had an option to ride a donkey but I preferred to walk, so I cannot really speak from experience on this. I wonder if it wasa colt, a young donkey because it had never been used as a beast of burden.It was in a sense pure.It had never carried any load.This would be its first load.

There is a place where in Deuteronomy Chapter 21 you have a law that Jeannie mentioned.If you go out of your village and find a dead body, and you do not know who has committed the homicide, the law required all of the village to be brought together. You each had to swear that youhad not done it. Then you had to find a calf, a young heifer that had to be female. You had to take it into a little gully, and it had to be one [a heifer] that had “never been wrought upon.”It had never been used for pulling anything or carrying any burden, and that animal was then pure enough that it could be sacrificed to cleanse the land from the pollution of that homicide.

I do not know whether the idea that this is an animal that had never carried something could then somehow symbolize the sacrifice, the pure sacrifice of Jesus that would be taking place only a few days later, that he is being borne by an animal so pure.He is coming into Jerusalem on an animal.Under the Law of Moses,on the day of atonement, what they would do is they would transfer their guilt ]to the sheep, the scapegoat, and then they would drive the scapegoat out of Jerusalem so it is reversing that by bringing in the atoning lamb of God in this triumphal entry.

We call it triumphal, but it is never called that in the Bible.It is not to be confused with the Roman triumph.When you won a battle, you then were entitled to a triumph, which was a great parade when you entered with your soldiers into the city.I do not think that is what is going on here.Your point, Ewan, is that he would have been on a horse if it were that kind of a triumph.It is triumphal however, in the sense that he is being received in honor, ironically, so popularly, so much that, of course people will begin immediately to get very nervous about the situation.

How about the two donkeys? Have you ever seen pictures of Jesus riding and they have him riding on two animals?In Christian literature, Christian art, the artists often actually tried to paint Jesus riding straddling two of these donkeys.Riding one is uncomfortable enough, but it does say that they took their clothes, and so some artist will paint pictures with all the clothes kind of strapped around these two animals, and then Jesus is somehow sitting in the middle on a kind of hammock.Now, I do not think so, but it does say that he came sitting on an ass and a colt - the foal of an ass.There is an and there, which is a little bit odd.The Greek here has the and but the Hebrew reads a little differently, so the two ways to get around this little problem, one is, the (kai) the and in Greek can mean even, so he will come riding on an ass even the colt - the foal of an ass.So it may be emphatic or have a parenthetical there instead of two animals.

(Student)What about the JST version.

That is the second way to deal with it.What does the Joseph Smith Translation say?