Sermon Tone Analysis

Date: 2022-01-30

Audience: Grass Valley Corps ONLINE

Title: The Kingdom is Open

Text: Matthew 4:12-25

Proposition: The Reign of God was breaking in

Purpose: Repent from your sins and turn towards God

Grace and peace

Story of Jesus as told by Matthew, one of his Twelve key followers.

But the story of Jesus starting his ministry begins with John the Baptist calling out one of the Herods.

Remember how Herod the Great had pretty much all of his kids named after him?

Yeah, so buckle up while we jump on the roller coaster ride that is one piece of his family relationships.

One of Herod’s sons was given a family name: Aristobulus.

The Fourth, by the way.

But not being called after his father like many of his brothers were must have seemed like a problem to him, because he named his first three children Herod Agrippa, Herod, and Herodias.

His fourth child, Mariamne, he named after his mother, who had been Herod the Great’s favorite wife before he was tricked into executing her.

That story gets complicated, though, so we’re going to leave it for another time while we talk about the much simpler situation involving Herod, Herod, Herodias, their grandfather Herod, and their uncle Herod the Second, who was also called Herod Philip, but who shouldn’t be confused with Herod the Great’s fifth son Philip who was called Philip the Tetrarch or Herod Philip the Second after his father’s death.

Really.

But when Herod the Great executed his son Aristobulus, he also married his granddaughter Herodias to his brother, her uncle, Herod the Second.

Later, she left, divorcing Herod the Second in order to marry his half-brother, also her uncle, Herod Antipas, who dumped his first wife in order to marry Herodias.

For those of you trying to trace the family connections, this means that Herodias was not just her uncle’s wife, but also her grandfather’s daughter and sister to her husband while being sister to her father and aunt to her brother.

John the Baptist said that this was messed up, so Herod – that’s Herod Antipas, not Herod, Herod, Herod Agrippa, or Herod Philip – Herod had John arrested and held in the dungeon beneath his palace in Tiberius on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.

That was a city he had built to be his capital and named in honor of the Roman Emperor.

But the city was built on an old graveyard and ritually unclean, so devout Jews refused to live there, meaning Herod had to import a population of foreigners, forced migrants, the desperately poor, slaves, and prisoners.

And now, John.

If you open your Bible to Matthew chapter four, verse 12, you’ll see that Matthew simplifies this whole thing by just saying:

12 When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he left Judea and returned to Galilee.

13 He went first to Nazareth, then left there and moved to Capernaum, beside the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.[1]

This is important, according to Matthew, because:

14 This fulfilled what God said through the prophet Isaiah:

15 “In the land of Zebulun and of Naphtali,

beside the sea, beyond the Jordan River,

in Galilee where so many Gentiles live,

16 the people who sat in darkness

have seen a great light.

And for those who lived in the land where death casts its shadow,

a light has shined.”

[2]

Matthew is telling us that this is all connected and that it fulfills this 800-year-old prophecy from Isaiah, what we now call chapter 9 of that book.

What Matthew is quoting are the opening lines of a passage about the birth of the Prince of Peace who was coming to usher in God’s ultimate reign on earth, this promised time when the whole world would be returned to his dominion.

Then he connects that even deeper into the story he is telling about Jesus by telling us that:

17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”[3]

Now, because pastors have misused some of these words over the centuries, let’s do some quick definitions so you can hear what Jesus was saying and not what our current cultural context has implanted in your brain.

We’ll start with “sin”.

The original meaning for this word translates to English as something like “missing the mark” or “not reaching the goal”.

In the Bible, it is used to refer to any way we don’t choose to aim for the target of being who we were made to be.

For example, Jesus told us to love our neighbor, but instead we boosted their car.

Or, rather than living through the pain served to us by life and learning to cope with and be strengthened by it, we choose to self-medicate in hopes of numbing that pain rather than growing to be bigger than it.

Or, maybe we live a morally exemplary life where we never do anything which could be said to be wrong, but we also never reach out to those in need around us, caring for them and binding up their wounds and helping them become what they were created to be.

Or we worry so much about what is MINE and I don’t want to or don’t think I could share it, so I turn you away because you just aren’t worthy to share my meal or to benefit from the resources I could provide or to enter what I consider my land or my country.

These are all things we do that miss the point of being neighbors on this big blue-green ball we call Earth.

Things we do that are contrary to what scripture shows us God wants.

Things we do that tear at the unity we were created to live out.

That’s all sin, and Jesus preached that we need to repent of it.

Which brings us to that church word I’ve heard a hundred people crow at one another in anger, using it as a weapon.

REPENT, sinner!

Repent!

But that isn’t at all how that word should be used.

It certainly isn’t how Jesus is using it.

All it means is to “turn around” or “turn back towards” something.

In this case, Jesus is telling us to turn from our mistaken, self-serving, community-destroying ways and turn back towards God’s ways of unity and peace.

Why would we do this?

Because, Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

Well, actually, Kingdom is kind of an oversimplification.

What he said is closer to declaring that God’s reign or rule has begun to break in to become the dominant government over and in all.

He’s calling us to allegiance to the Creator.

He’s asking us to choose to follow the king.

And, though we may not realize it, Matthew was speaking to something that was happening in his day which the people would have heard and repeated and prayed for as if they wanted it to happen.

Which they did.

It was in a prayer which had begun to spread through the population.

Almost a hymn, really.

A song of praise to Holy God, blessing him and asking him to deliver on a promise the people looked forward to being fulfilled.

It went something like this:

May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he created according to his will.

May his kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and int eh lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say Amen.

May his great name be blessed, forever and ever, blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored, elevated, and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessings and hymns, praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say Amen.

He who makes peace in his high holy places, may he bring peace upon use, and upon all Israel, and say Amen.

This prayer circulated at services, growing from congregation to congregation, and it worked its way into common use in daily prayer.

Eventually it would be called the Kaddish and it would be used more and more as a part of mourning, but that took centuries.

At the time Matthew wrote it was a recitation like the Lord’s Prayer would become for the early Christian community.

Everyone knew it and could lead it if they were called on to pray for a group.

It was a praise, but it was wrapped around a prayer and a plea, sharing the hope of the people that this time would come soon, the time when God’s dominion wouldn’t be challenged because his ultimate rein would have come at last, every rebelling quelled, and every injustice dealt with.

It was a promise they had waited to see fulfilled since the days of the Exile, when a prophet named Daniel had lived a life faithful to God and been given visions of the future which he had shared in a scroll which came to bear his name.

Daniel had prophesied there would be four earthly kingdoms and that God’s eternal reign would be born out of the fourth of those.

Those four kingdoms were going to be beasts in their rule.

Vicious, bloodthirsty, oppressive, demanding their way over all others.

By every calculation, the Roman Empire was the fourth beast.

It was time for a new rule.

But God’s reign was going to be different.

It wouldn’t be so animalistic.

Ruled by one who was said to be like a Son of Man, God’s Kingdom was to be focused on deliverance, not warfare; forgiveness, not retribution.

It would begin like a betrothal, sealing God and his people until such a time came for the consummation of the marriage, when his reign would become complete and the last challenges would fall away.

Jesus’ first followers, people like Matthew, believed he was the Son of Man whose appearance would initiate this final stage leading to the Reign – the Kingdom – of God.

18 One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living.

19 Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 20 And they left their nets at once and followed him.

[4]

In those days, if you wanted to become a disciple of a sage or rabbi, you would approach them carefully, usually at their home or their school, if they had one.

Most seekers of this sort would be young men of about 15 years of age.

They would ask about a position and the teacher would question them, sometimes for hours, before deciding if they would be able to follow him or not.

Only the best and most likely to succeed would be chosen.

Traveling teachers did not take followers.

If they were not established enough to teach in one location, they were a journeyman rather than a master.