Well, I lied. I can’t really start out with what the sin is until I understand who it is that needs to be saved. So actually I’m starting in the middle. But, no harm no foul, right? So okay, who is the “his people” that Jesus will save from their sins?

In the previous context, we see that Matthew connects Israel’s exile into Babylon with the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:17). And then without mentioning the return under the Medo-Persian king, Cyrus, Matthew begins to talk about Jesus’ birth, which includes Matthew saying that the events of Jesus’ infancy fulfills two texts (Hosea 11:1 and Jeremiah 31:15) that speak of Israel being in exile. And then when Jesus begins his ministry in Matthew 4:12-17, Matthew relates this ministry as fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 9:1-2) where a light will go to the people in the land of Naphtali and Zebulon who are in the darkness of exile. When Matthew concludes Jesus’ first major discourse (Matthew 5-7) and miracle narrative (Matthew 8-9) with a statement about how the people are like lost sheep and when he sends out his twelve disciples, he sends them only to Israel and not to Samaritans or Gentiles. It seems likely that Jesus’ people are Israelites.

But I don’t think that neither Jesus nor Matthew are defining “his people” of Matthew 1:21 as ethnic Israel for a couple of reasons. First, as Joel Willitts argues, Jesus’ Galilean ministry was Jesus going to national-political Israel, remnant of the ten-tribe kingdom in the north that broke off from Judah and David’s house, and calling them back into the twelve tribe league under his rule and reign. Yes he and his twelve emissaries preached to the disenfranchised Jews of the former kingdom of Israel. But Jesus sent them to the lost sheep of the house of Israel only, not to the Jews in Diaspora or in Judah to the south, to the Samaritans who lived between Judah and Galilee, and not to the Gentiles who live east of Galilee.

But when one surveys Matthew’s text and Jesus’ interaction with Gentiles, we see that for Matthew the kingdom is not limited to an ethnic group. Follow Matthew’s narrative. Matthew 2:1-12 the Magi from Parthia come and worship infant Jesus.

In Matthew 8:5-13, a Roman officer asked Jesus to heal his servant. He demonstrated an amazing faith by saying that Jesus need not come to the centurion’s house to heal the servant, Jesus need only to speak the command to be healed and the servant would be healed–much like an officer gives a command in his unit and it is done, all upon his authority to give that command. When Jesus sees this faith, he not only grants the centurion’s wish for the servant to be healed, he says to those following him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This man’s faith will grant him a seat at the great banquet of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; while those who are supposed to have a seat there will be cast into darkness.

In Matthew 15:21-28, a Canaanite woman (Note that Matthew calls her a Canaanite instead of a Gentile to highlight that she is not part of ethnic Israel, but an enemy of Israel!) asks Jesus to heal her daughter. When Jesus tells her that he has been “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24 NIV) and that, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs,” (Matthew 15:27 NIV) she acknowledges her position before him. She says, “No I do not get to sit at the table as a child, but even as a dog I am entitled to the food that is appropriate for me.” She acknowledges Israel as the people of God and Jesus as their Messianic Shepherd-King, calling him “Lord” 3 times and kneeling before him. She agrees with Jesus’ Israel-centric mission and her place in Israel as a Gentile to be entitled to the Messianic Age. This faith in Jesus to grant her his blessing as a Gentile is what motivated Jesus to grant her request. Jesus is granting the life of the Messianic Age to both Jews and Gentiles

Then in Matthew 21, Jesus begins to confront the religious leadership of Israel and Judah. He tells two parables. In the first parable (Matthew 21:28-32), a father asks his two sons to work in his vineyard. One son said he would not go, but then later changed his mind. The other son said he would go, but never did. Jesus equated the “sinners and tax collectors” to the first son and the Jewish religious leadership to the second son and to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31 NIV).

The second parable (Matthew 21:33-46) is about a landowner who builds a vineyard. He hires some people to care for the vineyard. When he sends some servants to collect his share of the fruit at harvest time, the workers beat and humiliate the servants of the owner. After repeatedly sending his servants, the owner sends his own son thinking they would respect his son. But instead the kill the son, thinking they would be able to keep the vineyard for themselves. Both Jesus and the religious leadership agreed that when the owner comes to collect, he will not only take his rightful due from the harvest but also destroy the hired workers who killed his sons and beat his servants. Then he will hire other servants who will give him his share of the harvest. In conclusion, Jesus tells the leadership that they are the servants and that the kingdom of God is being taken away from them and given to a people who will bear its fruit (Matthew 21:43).

So what can we conclude from this very brief survey of Matthew’s narrative (There is so much more that can be drawn from Matthew 6 and Matthew 16 and Matthew 20) about who it is that Matthew 1:21 is referring to when it says that Jesus will save “his people?” I think that it is those Jews and Gentiles who recognize and believe that Jesus is the Messianic Davidide Sheperd-King come to restore Israel, like the Roman centurion and the Canaanite woman. They are those people who then abandon their own lives for the sake of entering into his kingdom, seeking it instead of their own worries (Matthew 6:33). They take up their cross and follow Jesus, not seeking to preserve their own lives but losing it for Jesus’ sake (cf. Matthew 16:24-27). They are what Jesus called tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. The disenfranchised of Israel who are poor, oppressed, suffering from disease and injury and disabilities. Those are “his people.” He ate with them (Matthew 9:9-13). He identified with them.

So what then are the sins from which Jesus will save them from? That will be the topic taken up in the next post.

I want to focus upon why Yahweh’s messenger tells Joseph to name the baby that is born of Mary Jesus in Matthew 1:21, “And you will name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” What does Matthew intend for his readers to understand when they read this statement? How does Matthew believe that Jesus saved his people from their sins?

Before getting into the text I want to make some observations from the context of Matthew. First, we, the readers, must understand who Matthew has already asserted Jesus is: the Davidic King and the true son of Abraham. This is the main point of the genealogy in Matthew 1:1-17. And so to understand “he will save…from their sins,” must be understood in the context of Jesus as the son of David and the true Israelite, the true son of Abraham.

Second, with the coming of Jesus as the promised son of David, the breaking in of God’s saving reign has come. Jesus ministry, from his deeds and teaching to his death and resurrection, is the invasion of God’s reign into this creation to conquer Israel’s, God’s people, enemies. When we look at Jesus’ ministry, he doesn’t target the Roman occupation or Herod, but rather he goes after disease and demons and broken bodies and poverty. He forgives sin, and that seems to be Israel’s enemy more than Rome or Herod.

Along that line, Jesus radically redefines who and what Israel is. To be a child of Abraham is changed to be located in himself. He recapitulates the journey of Israel from Egypt into the land, except where Israel failed Jesus was faithful. Jesus establishes his church with twelve disciples, the same number of tribes in Israel. Israel was God’s channel through which his blessing was to come to creation. Israel failed to be that vessel and so Jesus, the son of Abraham, becomes that vessel. Thus those who are physically children of Abraham are not part of the true family of Abraham until they become members of the Israel established in Jesus.

Third, we must understand this “he will save…from their sins” in the light of both Jesus’ death and resurrection. Whenever Jesus predicts his own death, it is never occurs apart from him being raised up on the third day. Too often I see “he will save…from their sins” in light of Jesus’ death without the resurrection of Jesus being included in his actual saving his people. It is said to be the sign that Jesus’ death is effective and accepted by God. But Jesus connects his resurrection to his cross work, they cannot be separated. Thus the giving of his life in Matthew 20:28 cannot be reduced down to just Jesus’ death. Nor can his words at the Last Supper about his broken body and shed blood be understood apart from his resurrection because his words anticipate the return of the resurrected Jesus in his Father’s kingdom.

Fourth, I feel like the exile plays a pivotal role in what it means to be saved from sin. Matthew ends the genealogy linking the exile into Babylon to the birth of Jesus and then enters right into the birth narrative of Jesus. Furthermore, Matthew says that Jesus going into Egypt fulfills the prophecy of Hosea 11:1, a text that speaks of God sending Israel and calling her back out of Assyrian exile, as typified by her time in Egypt. The slaughter of the children of Bethlehem being a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15 is also a reference to the Judah’s exile coming to an end and the people being restored under king David and a new covenant that forgives sin. When Jesus goes to begin his proclamation of the kingdom of God, he fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy about Naphtali and Zebulon in darkness seeing light. When he commissions his twelve disciples in Matthew 10, Jesus tells them not to go to Samaria or to the Gentiles but only to Israel and preach the gospel. Only upon his resurrection does Jesus send his followers to the Samaritans and Gentiles as well as Israel. I feel like Matthew wants us to understand that the promised King from David’s line that was to end Israel’s exile via new exodus has come.

So what does “You will name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sin” mean? What is the salvation that the angel is speaking of? Who is it that Jesus will save? What is the sin from which Jesus is to save? And how does Jesus’ death and resurrection play into Matthew’s understanding of these questions? These are the questions that I want to take up in the following series of posts.

In previous posts, I have covered the first three points. In the following post, I want to look at the fourth and final point, which might be the most important point of the four.

4.) Only in Jesus the Messiah was/is/will God’s plan to redeem his creation through Israel to be carried out and accomplished. When one reads Jonah’s story in light of Jesus and the New Testament we learn something very important. That is that not only are the Gentiles under the effects of Adam’s fall, but so is Israel and thus all of humanity has a fundamental sin problem. As Paul wrote to the Romans,

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14 ESV)

So what this meant was that the Gentiles would enter into darkness and express their sin through idolatry and enmity against the people of God. But what this also means, and can be seen in the character of Jonah, is that Israel’s sin would be expressed in her failure to complete the task promised to Abraham and spelled out through Moses. Israel would abuse her privilege as God’s “precious treasure” (Deuteronomy 7:6). She would fail to keep the covenant stipulations and remain faithful to Yahweh, engaging also in the pagan practices of the Gentile nations around her. All this illustrates that all are under sin (Romans 3:9, 23). Furthermore, because Israel failed to keep her covenant obligations and thus bring forth God’s blessing, she is placed under God’s covenantal curse climaxing in her exile by Assyria (722 BCE) and Babylon (587/6 BCE).

So something needs to be done about this. As Paul tells the Galatians in Galatians 3, Jesus enters into the picture so that the curse can be brought to completion and bring Israel through a new exodus, entering into a time of covenant renewal under the promised new covenant. Thus in Jesus, his life and death and resurrection, the blessing of God can come through Israel to the world to redeem and save the creation as God has planned. And the Gospel writers labor to illustrate that Jesus has redefined who Israel is in terms of himself. Thus to partake of the new Israel identity means to partake in the identity of Jesus. One must be united to Jesus and his work.

But let us look at this from another way. Paul says that Jesus is also “the goal of the law” (Romans 10:4). He says that the law was a guardian until the Messiah and faith came (Galatians 3:22-29). The law kept sin in check until Jesus came. Paul sees Jesus as the way God intended to bring about his covenantal blessings to the earth to save his creation and restore the world to its intended position. Jesus was always that means by which God intended to deal with sin and reverse the fall of Adam. Jesus has been the plan all along. Just read Ephesians 1:3-14!

Reading on in Ephesians 2 we see that Jesus does in fact deal with the sin problem of both Israel and the pagan Gentiles. Through God graciously uniting the believer to Jesus’ resurrection by faith, the believer is said to move from death to life in Jesus, created anew as God’s ποίημα (poiema, one can hear “poem” in that term) to perform the tasks that he prepared for both to walk in (Ephesians 2:1-10). But God also completed the law so that the attitude that we saw in 1 Samuel 17 and calling the Philistines “uncircumcised” in a pejorative sense, as if their uncircumcision made them lesser beings, is no longer relevant. Peace has been made between Israel and the Gentiles in Jesus. The law that brought about that hostility has been torn down and a new humanity all together has been created in Jesus death and resurrection (Ephesians 2:11-22). And this was God’s plan, to reconcile all humankind and the whole world to himself through Jesus the Messiah.

Thus it is obvious what must be done from here. God created the world for a purpose, to express his glory in the sense of his beauty. All the amazing animals and plant life are meant to express God’s creative beauty. God created humanity to govern over this creation, representing God to his creation, and to enjoy God through is creation. But in Adam, all of humanity has rebelled against this purpose. And all humanity has been placed under the curse of exile from the presence of God, thus ending humanity’s role as God’s representatives and vice-regents. This curse will reach its climax in hell, the lake of fire and burning sulfur. Jesus has gone through the curse of exile and entered into an exodus out of death and hell through his resurrection. He offers this hope of resurrection to those who would but trust him wholly and look to him as their King and Lord. Will you look to him as your King to lead you through this life and into the new life on the other side of the grave and God’s judgment? Will you trust him to save you from God’s just judgment and condemnation of you by raising you from the dead? As the hymn writer says, “Only trust him, only trust him. Only trust him now. He will save you, he will save you. He will save you now.” Be rescued from sin and enter into God’s new humanity created in Jesus the Messiah. Trust Jesus.

In the first post I looked at how Jonah illustrates and points the reader the character of God see in Exodus 32-34. In the second post, I looked at how in Jonah, God’s desire to relent from executing his judgment upon Nineveh goes back to his purpose to redeem all of creation through the family-seed-nation promised to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. In this post I want to talk about what it is that Jonah most clearly and powerfully illustrates.

3.) Israel had become blinded by her position as Yahweh’s elect people and ignored her function as the channel through which God’s promise to redeem creation, not just Israel, comes into the world. As we saw in the previous post, God’s promise and covenant with Abraham was not so much to create a people to love and redeem but rather to be his instrument through which his redemptive plan and purposes for the entire creation would be executed and put on display. In the God tells Israel when they approach the Mount of God in Exodus 19:6 that Israel is to be “a kingdom of priests,” who will represent the world before the Creator God and offer up worship on behalf of creation while at the same time teaching and instructing the world what it means to live in covenant with Yahweh–defining what a clean/pure life is versus an unclean/impure life.

However, Jonah’s reaction to God saving Nineveh from destruction through the prophet’s preaching shows that this purpose of God is not being realized. When one reads through the history of Israel, particularly in Judges and 1-2 Samuel, one can see a negative view of those peoples outside of Israel beginning to take shape. Consider David’s comments regarding Goliah in 1 Samuel 17:26, “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” This is a couple of centuries before Jonah was called to Nineveh. As the “uncircumcised” continued to oppress the people of God, the Hebrew people began to see themselves and their elect status come to mean an exclusion of the pagan Gentiles and that the uncircumcised should be destroyed because they are the enemies of God’s people and therefore enemies of God himself. They were not being the channel of God’s blessing to the whole of creation.

Consider further Deuteronomy 7:6, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” It is easy to see how Israel and Judah would look down upon the other people and exclude them from taking part of the people of God and God’s blessings. It’s easy to stop reading after that as to why God chose them over all the other peoples, not because they or their ancestors were more worthy, but because it was God’s purpose for Israel and Judah to be the vessels through which the world would be reconciled back to its Creator.

Living in Louisville, KY, I was asked by one of the youth at my church why there were not black people at our church. I’m too knew to the church to know the demographics of the area it ministers in. But it is a good question. And, sad to say, one honest answer is that when looking at the church body, it is mostly middle-class white Americans. And we don’t want to change that and bring in a person from another demographic. I praise the pastoral staff for challenging this attitude while preaching through Acts. But it is sad that it has to be addressed. I also praise the pastoral staff for reaching out to the large Hispanic population that is developing near our church. It is awesome to see that this attitude in Israel that Jonah reflects isn’t being allowed to be comfortable in our church.

Christ’s redemption of fallen man includes not only his obeying the Divine law, making atonement for sinners, or in preparing the way for their salvation. His redemption is also actually fulfilled in the converting of sinners to the knowledge and love of the truth, in carrying them on in the way of grace and true holiness through life, and finally raising their bodies to life, and glorifying them. This is completed by actually pronouncing of the sentence upon them, and crowning them with honor and glory in the sight of men and angels.

It is necessary that Christ should do this in order to finish the work He has begun. Raising the saints from the dead, judging them, and fulfilling the sentence are parts of their salvation. Christ must be appointed Judge of the world, in order that he might finish His work (John 6:39-40; John 5:25-31). The redemption of the bodies of the saints is part of the work of redemption; the resurrection to life is called a redemption of their bodies (Romans 8:23).

It is the will of God that Christ Himself should fulfill that for which he died, and suffered so much. The very reasons He suffered and died were to complete and secure salvation for His people. This final salvation will be obtained at the last judgment, and not before.

When Christ had finished His appointed sufferings, God put the purchased inheritance in His hands to be kept for believers and be given to them at the Day of Judgment

Edwards hits on a really important point. We cannot talk about salvation in terms of the cross and sins being propitiated alone. Our redemption is still incomplete at that point, our salvation still lacking. Our resurrection is vital to our salvation and redemption. Until we are resurrected, judged, and the sentence carried out that is our receiving the glory and honor in being the people of God and members of Christ’s kingdom, we are not saved.

Too often we talk about “walking the aisle and gettin’ saved.” Salvation is a category that includes being raised up to new life on the Day of Judgment and entering into the new heavens and new earth. The walking the aisle is conversion, not salvation. One of N. T. Wright’s biggest problems with contemporary Christianity is that the term salvation has come to equal and mean certain parts of salvation, i.e. salvation = conversion or salvation = justification. Salvation is going from God-hater and being brought into his eternal kingdom in the new Jerusalem on new earth as a God-lover. It’s the whole thing, not part of it. I know that a person who is converted is so assured of his entrance into the kingdom that he is said to be saved. A square is indeed a rectangle. But a rectangle is not a square. I hope we do a better job of keeping this in mind.

2.) God’s promise to Abraham was to redeem all creation, not just Abraham’s posterity, and Abraham was to be the vessel through which this redemption comes. Here I have to admit a heavy influence by N. T. Wright. But consider again Abram’s call in Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV),

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Let us get the flow of the narrative of Genesis to see what this call was to initiate. God creates the universe, heaven and earth and all that is in them. In Genesis 3, humanity was enticed to rebel against Yahweh by taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result God put humanity into exile from his Garden of Eden and put a curse upon all of creation. Humanity degenerated so far into the hold of sin that God flooded his creation so that all but one family was wiped out from existence. Humanity continued in its sin by building a mound to heaven. But they refused to populate the entire earth so God took the one family that lived in one place on earth and confused their language and spread humanity throughout the planet.

As one can see when they see this call that it comes on the heels of the tower of Babel. God is going to take Abram and make him a great nation, a great family. In Abram God was going to send blessing to his creation. The promise of the seed that was given in the Garden of Eden (cf Genesis 3:15) and was passed to Abram. Abram was to be the beginning of God’s move to redeem and restore and save his creation from the curse he placed it under, to reconcile the scattered families back into one family, and to end the rebellion began in Genesis 3. The family that was to come from Abram was to be the channel through which that reconciliation was to occur; the land that Abram’s family was to live on was to begin to end the curse upon the land.

In Jonah, the author reminds us of this cosmic purpose of God that is to come through Abram’s family-nation, Israel. He does so by taking us back to a time when Israel and Judah were strong and Assyria was weak, though still a big boy in the neighborhood of the Ancient Near East. God sends Jonah to Assyria to command their repentance so that God may relent from the destruction of the city. God was going to destroy the entire city and everything in it, from the people to the animals. But it is God’s purpose to redeem all of creation and so Jonah was sent.

Jonah’s character illustrates a profound problem the existed in Israel in his day, and continued until Jesus and Paul’s day in the New Testament era. And that problem is that they believed that Israel was the people that God wanted to save, and that the land that was promised to Abraham was to be the land that was to be redeemed. They lost sight of God’s promise to Abraham was for all the families, not just Abraham’s family. Abraham’s family was to be the vehicle through which God would bless all families by ending the exile and the scattering.

Before getting into any of the points that have been made in the above paragraph, I want to get into the history-vs-parable debate just a little bit. As I was reading this story it suddenly came to me that I’m not certain the power of the story and its message lies in whether or not this story happened in history. The power of the story and its message comes from the narrative itself, from the story that is told. I do lean towards this story being actual history, that these events really did happen in history. But I’m not certain that the debate over whether this is history or not is entirely what the author wanted people to argue over. The message remains the same whether or not it happened in history. The truths this story tells remain timeless regardless if the events are rooted, grounded, and anchored in history or not.

Now on to the points that I listed above.

1.) The story of Jonah shows the character of God, first seen in Exodus 33:19; 34:6-7. Follow along with me in Jonah 4:2 (NET) after Jonah saw that Yahweh did not destroy Nineveh upon the city’s repentance when Jonah preached that God would destroy her for her wickedness.

[Jonah] prayed to the Lord and said, “Oh, Lord, this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish! – because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment.

Take note of the highlighted section of Jonah’s prayer. This is the heart of God. This is who God is at his very core: gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, greatly merciful, and relenting concerning threatened judgment. This has been part of the Torah, Israel’s Law and Instruction for life in the land God promised to Abraham before the Egyptian enslavement. It is articulated in Exodus 34:6-7,

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

This became an important part of Israel’s belief structure as it is often cited throughout her history aside from here in Jonah 4:2. It is cited often in the Psalms (86:3-8, 15; 103:2-13; 116:5; 145:8) as well as in Numbers 14:18-19; 2 Chronicles 30:9; Joel 2:13; and Nehemiah 9:17, 31-32. It was because Jonah knew this to be true that he fled from Israel, Nineveh, and God (or so he thought). He knew that if the Assyrians, Israel’s hated enemy in the Eighth Century BCE, repented of their wickedness, God would have mercy upon them and turn back his wrath and thus spare the city. Jonah wanted the city destroyed. But because God is gracious and compassionate, Jonah knew this enemy would be saved and that just wasn’t acceptable to him.

But I think this is really what the author of Jonah wants to communicate to his readers about their covenant God, Yahweh. They worship a merciful, gracious, and loving God. In Exodus 34 it meant that even though Israel had sinned in the golden calf incident of Exodus 32, God would be merciful to Israel and answer Moses prayer to lead the people into the promised land in the very midst of the people instead of sending someone in Yahweh’s place. Here in Jonah 4, it means that God will relent from judgment against anyone who sincerely repents of their sin and truly seeks out Yahweh, the true Creator of the world–even for a short time as Scripture illustrates to be true of Nineveh and the Assyrians.

The God of Jonah is a God that is willing and ready to forgive. He stands ready to show his love and mercy to those who repentantly approach him. It’s a message that the world desperately needs to hear. It is a message that my heart needs to hear every day. It’s a message the grounds the very gospel that Jesus revealed in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ work and ministry most clearly illustrates to the world the very character and heart of God. As the Psalmist (Psalm 34:8) says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

How comforting it is for saints to know that their Redeemer is appointed to be their Judge. The same One who spilled His own blood for them has determined their ultimate fate. There is no doubt that they will obtain what has cost Him so much to purchase.

Oh, what joy it will be for them on that last day to lift up the…ir eyes and behold the very Person in whom they have trusted for salvation, fled to for refuge, and whose voice they have often heard, inviting them to Himself for protection and safety, coming to judge them.

It truly is a comfort to know that the one who died and rose for me is the one who will pass sentence upon me on the Last Day. I am confident that the Messiah will honor his own death and resurrection on my behalf when carrying out God’s contention against this evil age.

N.T. Wright on Adam and Eve

N.T. Wright on How Our Worldview Impacts Our Reading of Scripture

Then in the second post, Domain and Psalm 72, I discussed the poem in a little bit more depth. But I saw there that the poet prays that Yahweh will expand the borders of the kingdom to include the whole world which would thus bring this saving righteousness of God to the whole world through the king and his kingdom. The wicked of the entire earth will be defeated by God through his king and the righteous poor will be prospered. God grants the king his own righteousness, and then gives the whole world that righteousness by bringing the world under the domain of his king.

In the following post, I want to conclude my look–yes I wrote the first two in August and it’s now March, my timing is off–at Psalm 72, namely Psalm 72:15-19. First let us look at the text,

15 Long may he live;
may gold of Sheba be given to him!
May prayer be made for him continually,
and blessings invoked for him all the day!
16 May there be abundance of grain in the land;
on the tops of the mountains may it wave;
may its fruit be like Lebanon;
and may people blossom in the cities
like the grass of the field!
17 May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!

18 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things.
19 Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory!
Amen and Amen!

The text in this post examines the final petition for the king, the third jussive found in 72:15 (cf. 72:1; 72:8) and the concluding prayer of praise offered up to Yahweh. The petition found in 72:15-17 forms an inclusio of sorts, with vv. 15 and 17 speaking of blessing. There is a progression found here in that 72:15 speaks of the king being blessed and in 72:17 the people are blessed in him and bless him.

First in 72:15 there is the possibility that, “Long may he live,” could also be taken as an vav-imperfect form that expresses purpose/result of the preceding line, 72:14, that the poor is to live long. But the following line, “may gold of Sheba be given to him,” does not follow in that line of thinking. The jussive reading of the verb with the subject being the king, Solomon in this case, goes better. Thus this king who has established God’s righteousness upon the earth is to live forever and receive gold from Sheba. The whole earth is to lift him up in prayer and petition blessing from God upon the king.

In 72:16 we see what happens when God extends his righteousness and justice throughout all the earth, through his king, food becomes abundant and population increases. God provides abundant resources and the people to use them. He prospers the earth and his people.

And thus the poet returns to his theme of blessing the king in 72:17. He prays that this king will live forever with an eternal name. That everyone will in him be blessed and in turn bless the king.

To conclude his poem (72:18-19), his psalm, of prayer the author praises not the king, but Yahweh. He blesses God. Only Yahweh can do such a thing. Only Yahweh can grant the king God’s righteousness. Only Yahweh can expand the borders of the kingdom. Only Yahweh can make the grain abundant the people blossom in the cities. Only Yahweh can. So the psalmist praises God and asks that God fill the earth with his glory. The concluding note echoes Habakkuk, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” (Habakkuk 2:14) and that of Isaiah, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). As God extends his saving righteousness throughout the earth, so to will his honor go forth.