At the end of the last series "The Household of God" I indicated that I would begin a series on the subject of "This Good News" based on Matthew 24:14 ...
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Well - most of the writing has been done. It just awaits final editing of some sections.
Today, I will begin the series with this first post.
It has been quite and amazing journey to finally get to write this material. It has been bubbling away for a long time, but I have finally had the opportunity to do the study and research required and to apply fingers to keyboard.
There is no doubt that it will be controversial for some and exhilarating for others. It certainly has radically changed how we view some things and how we as a group of disciples carry out our commissions in our prt of the world
THIS GOOD NEWS
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall
be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end
will come.” (Matthew 24:14)
First, let’s put Matthew 24 in its
context. Jesus has been in Jerusalem and
the surrounding area for some days and spent some of that time speaking with
the Jewish population. Word was getting
back to the Pharisees and Sadducees about what Jesus was teaching and plans
were being hatched to see how they could trap him in what he was saying. However, Jesus was wise to their malice and
got in with his own question. “Whose
inscription is on the coin?” he asked.
This is where Jesus said the famous line, “Then render to Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” [The word Caesar comes from the same root as
the German Kaiser, meaning King.]
The Sadducees (who don’t believe in
resurrection) thought they might trap Jesus with a curly question about resurrection
and divorce. This is where Jesus says,
“You are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry
nor are given in marriage…”
Then he stunned everybody by arguing that
there must be a resurrection – because “God is not the God of the dead but of
the living.” Therefore, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob must be alive – which means there must be resurrection. This silenced the Sadducees, so the Pharisees
had another shot at him, using a lawyer to question him about the law.
Jesus makes the important point that the
whole of The Law and the Prophets (what we call the Old Testament) depend upon
just two ‘laws’ – which are not so much laws as we know laws, but unchanging
foundation principles: ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
soul and mind; and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
At this point, Jesus puts a question to
them: whose son is the anointed one, the
Christ? If they believe their own
scriptures, they have to say he is of David.
So Jesus then asks, on what basis does David call him Lord if he is his
son? Jesus asks, “If David calls him
‘Lord’, how is he his son?” They
couldn’t (probably wouldn’t) answer, and from that day, they stopped asking him
questions.
So Jesus then turns to the Jewish people
and to his disciples and so begins a long teaching session, starting with the
stark truth about the Scribes and the Pharisees. This is where the “woe to you, Scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites…” comes in.
Most of this took place in and around the
temple precinct. At some point, Jesus
leaves the temple and makes his way to the Mount of Olives. This is where he says, “…not one stone here
shall be left upon another, which will not be torn down.” This makes his disciples curious, so they
press him for an explanation – which he gives, at length. Matthew’s record goes on for some time, with
Jesus explaining to his disciples what they can expect in the future concerning
himself, and concerning the nature and the coming of the kingdom of God. Matthew generally uses the term ‘kingdom of
heaven’ where the other gospel writers generally say ‘kingdom of God’.
Jesus uses mostly parables to illustrate
what to expect, but this long session with his disciples is about the glorious
return of Jesus and how to be ready for it when it happens. That’s where the verse at the beginning of
this series fits: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a
witness to all nations, and then the end
will come.” They asked him when
to expect the things he was talking about and he answered them with these
words.
So, my question is, how did the disciples
understand his reply? Was Jesus talking
about what he had just been saying about his return? Was he talking about what we today understand
as the gospel of the kingdom more broadly?
Or was he talking about something else entirely?
Matthew’s own record
would suggest, I think, that he was talking about the gospel (more correctly,
the ‘good news’) of the kingdom more broadly.
Matthew 4:23 says, “Jesus
was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming
the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of
sickness among the people.” This perhaps
also indicates a little more clearly what the gospel of the kingdom
includes. Matthew 9:35 basically says
the same thing. This ministry of Jesus
was mostly in the region of Galilee, around where Jesus’ family was from.
Luke records that Jesus had just finished saying to the
Pharisees – whom he noted were ‘lovers of money’ – that “No servant can serve
two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he
will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
wealth”. The record shows that the
Pharisees were listening to what was going on and scoffing at him, so he turned
to them and said:
You are
those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts;
for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of
God. The Law and the Prophets were
proclaimed until John; since then, the
gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is forcing his way
into it. (Luke 16:15-16)
However, before
we go very far on this journey, it is, once again, important to look at the
words being used and what those words meant at the time and what they mean
today.
And – once
again – there is a problem. And yes –
once again – it appears to be a problem created by church institutions forcing
their definitions and meanings onto the original texts and into the translation
processes when our English bible was first produced.
The Greek New
Testament documents use a particular word in texts like the ones quoted above: euangellion and various
derivatives. This word combines the
Greek word for message or news and the Greek prefix for good. It literally means ‘good news’. However, it is not just any ‘message’; in the
New Testament, this word describes the news of the unfolding of the kingdom of
God in Jesus Christ. Some old English
translations use the term ‘good tidings’ – an old word but a good one.
However, there
is another word altogether which has found its way into the translation of the
bible and into the language of the church and has become a popular word to use
when you want to say that something said or written can be trusted:
gospel. This is not a New Testament word
at all, but an Anglo-Saxon word. It
comes from two separate words combined to form a new word: god + spell. God (as you might expect) is the word
for God and a spell is a story. Literally, ‘gospel’ is the story of God. If that word were in the Greek texts of our
New Testament, it would probably be the word theology: theos + logos – which literally means the story (or
study) of God.
The problem is,
the word theology does not appear in
the Greek texts. The word that is there,
as I said, is euangellion. We use this word in a number of forms: for
instance, the ‘evangel’ is the good news of Jesus; the ‘evangelist’ is the one
who spreads that good news; and to ‘evangelise’ is to spread abroad this good
news.
The word
‘gospel’ doesn’t come from our Greek New Testaments but from the 17th
century church conspiring with the king to interfere in the English translation
of the texts. And it does actually make
a difference. The church gets to define
gospel according to its traditions and its particular proclivities; whereas,
for many hundreds of years prior to that, the word used was different, as was
the understanding generated by the use of the correct word.
I generally use
the NASB translation of the bible because I find it the most accurate in terms
of its translation of words. Although I
admit it is not always the easiest to read.
Luke 16:16 above comes from the NASB, yet even here, it manipulates the
text to include the Anglo-Saxon word gospel, which is not rooted to the Greek
text.
Looking at the
highlighted words in Luke 16:16, there are three ideas: the gospel, the kingdom
and preaching. In the Greek text there
are only two ideas: the kingdom of God; and spreading the good news of it. The text should read: “Until John [the Baptist]
there was The Law and the Prophets [what we call the Old Testament]; since then, the kingdom of God is the good
news being spread abroad.”
If you can, imagine the image of the ‘sower of seed’ – the farmer scattering the seed onto his prepared field.
‘Gospel’ is an
imposed word, inserted into the text to generate and perpetuate a particular interpretation of what is being said in
the New Testament and a particular understanding
of what is to be preached; namely, what the institutions of the church say the
‘gospel’ is and what they want preached.
[For as long as
I can remember, the ‘churches’ do not and cannot agree on what the ‘gospel’
is. Why?
Well, it is not a biblical term; therefore the bible doesn’t define it;
therefore the definition each ‘church’ uses will be its own construct. And even within a denominational grouping of
‘churches’, there will be significant variation and even disagreement as to
what the ‘gospel’ is. I hope by the end
of this study it will be clear what the ‘good tidings’ of Jesus was (and is)
and what was considered the ‘good news’ of the first apostles.]
Anyway, to
return to the verse above: in its context, it seems to have Jesus making the
important point that there has always existed ‘The Law and The Prophets’ and
the Pharisees were masters at using it to externally justify themselves in the
sight of men. But God knows hearts and
knows the hidden, detestable things that lurk beneath the surface of the
Pharisees’ lives. They will be measured
by the full extent of the law they claim to stand for and their
self-justification will demonstrate that they are not right before God. In contrast to this is the reality that,
since John the Baptist arrived, the kingdom of God – the new way of being right
with God and of being part of His household – is available and everyone is
clamouring to get into it.
Some years
later, you will find apostle Paul making this point: “What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue
righteousness, have obtained it – a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel,
who pursued a law of righteousness, has not obtained it.” (Romans 9:30-31)
This presents a
stark contrast: the old written law (which admittedly will never pass away)
which is preached but not practiced by the religious establishment; over
against the kingdom of God as is being announced and unveiled in Jesus. Which are people clamouring to get into?
Now this is not
the only issue here. Looking back at the
text I began with, there is another factor.
The New Testament does actually have a word for the preaching, the
announcing, the heralding: it is the word kerygma
(in both noun and verb forms). A literal
translation of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:14 is, “And there shall be preached
this good news of the kingdom in all the habitable earth for a testimony to all
the nations and then shall come the end.”
Jesus and the
kingdom of God are good news (compared to the ‘bad news’ that existed until
John the Baptist); the good news is available and ‘touchable’ in Jesus
(compared to the unreachable nature of the old law); the good news is now
visible and audible in the life and words of Jesus (compared to the fact that
the Pharisees were not living the law they preached); everyone was clamouring
to get into the kingdom of God (but not into the Pharisees’ Judaism).
And to me, one
of the strengths of this translation – “And there shall be preached…” – is that
it sounds like a King’s edict, which it was at the time. It carries a much stronger sense than simply
translating it “this gospel shall be preached”.
To this very
day, when the same good news is preached, people want in. Some people are resistant to the church’s
preaching not because they are bad people, but because they ‘smell a rat’; they
can identify a scam when it comes at them; they know ‘bad news’ even when it is
being marketed as good news; they are suspicious of ‘snake-oil’ merchants.
The church’s
gospel is much like the Pharisees’ gospel.
Put another way, the church’s story of God is much like the Pharisees’
story of God: it is not God’s story of God and it is not Jesus’ story of
God. It is the story of God that is
based on law and self-justification. It
is the story of God that ended the day Prophet John the Baptist arrived and
announced that God’s new way of being right with him was available in Jesus of
Nazareth.
And when this
good news – as opposed to the fake good news of religion and law-keeping – is preached
in the habitable world as a witness to all nations, then shall come the end.
Before we move
on from here, let me take a moment to apply what I have said so far not just to
the original text on Matthew 24, but also to the other verses I referred to
earlier, in Matthew Mark and Luke.
Matthew 4:23 /
9:35 says: “Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their
synagogues and proclaiming [heralding] the good news of the kingdom, and
healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”
Mark 1:14 says: “After John [the Baptist] had been taken
into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, heralding the good news of the kingdom
of God, and saying, ‘the time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in this good
news.’”
Luke 16:16 says: “Until John [the Baptist] the old
testament was being proclaimed [heralded]; since then, the good news of the
kingdom of God is heralded and everyone is pressing to get into it.”
Cheers,
Kevin.
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