MATTHEW 17 – Part 2
After the Transfiguration, as they descend Mount Herman, Jesus swears Peter, James and John to secrecy. He also confirms – in answer to their question – that John the Baptist was a spiritual fulfilment of Elijah, as prophesied beforehand.
On returning to the other disciples and the crowd of onlookers, Jesus learns about the failure of those disciples to deliver a boy from demonic power and to heal him. In Jesus’ hands, failure turns to success! Therefore, in the ‘feedback’ session to those disciples, Jesus puts his finger on the root cause: their lack of faith! By comparing the parallel passage in Mark 9:29, we understand that “This kind [of demon] can come out only by prayer”. By joining those two thoughts, we begin to understand that faith is a product of intimacy with the Lord; as we spend time seeking Him, we hear his words and faith grows in us.
True faith – the sort that has power – is like a mustard seed: it has everything inside it to become the mustard tree that it is destined to be; everything, that is, except water, time, and sunlight. If you have the seed, you have the tree! The key thing, then, is not the size of the seed (the word ‘small’ is not there in the Greek), but the nature of that ‘seed’, and how we nurture it.
Jesus, at the end of Chapter 17, speaks about children and sons. He is painting a picture of inheritance – the King’s sons who rightfully inherit his power and authority. The revelation of knowledge about the coin in a particular fish is a lot of fun and a big surprise, but probably not the main point of the passage. However, the strong implication that we are the sons of God and co-heirs with Christ is the beginning of a vital doctrine that is later taken up and developed further by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:17 and Galatians 4:7.
GENESIS 49 and 50
In Chapter 49, Jacob called all his sons to his deathbed and prophesied a blessing over them one by one. The ‘blessings’ are mixed, showing God’s justice for a mis-spent life in some cases. For example:
Reuben had effectively forfeited his right of the firstborn, many years previously, by sleeping with Bilhah, one of his father’s wives. Simeon and Levi had cruelly murdered the citizens of Shechem, in retaliation for their sister’s rape – and the judgement upon them was to cause them to be ‘scattered’ in Israel; this came to fruition later, when Levi received no land inheritance and Simeon’s population was subsumed within the land area belonging to Judah. Judah is rehabilitated – whether due to his willingness to take Benjamin’s place as a hostage in Egypt, or simply due to God’s grace – and of course he later became the biological forefather of Jesus (in Mary’s lineage).
Some of the brothers had prophecies that described the geographical position of their tribes within the Promised Land, including Dan; the mound of the biblical city of Dan is located at the foot of Mount Hermon in the northeast of the country. This is part of the Land of Bashan, ‘the Serpent’! Joseph receives the greatest blessing: “…from the skies above, the springs below and the mountains and hills”. Finally, Benjamin’s ancestors are described as war-like and aggressive – which became the characteristic of that tribe in the Promised Land.
After all these prophetic blessings, Jacob gave instructions to his sons that he was to be buried alongside his parents and grandparents and with his first wife, Leah – in the cave at Mamre that Abraham had purchased from the Hittites. Then he breathed his last and began that final great journey. See Isaiah 35. Pharoah insisted on the burial being on a grand scale – a state funeral with vast processions and a period of mourning. After the burial, Joseph’s brothers became anxious that Joseph would take revenge on them for their mistreatment of him all those years ago. The now-mature Joseph reassured them that he had forgiven them and that he recognised the sovereignty of God in using their actions to save many lives. (He had already said this to them in 45:5-8). He promised to look after all of them.
Egyptians regarded 110 years as the ideal lifespan – and so would have regarded Joseph as a supremely blessed man. His own family was becoming increasingly populous and indeed so were his brothers’ families; Israel was halfway towards becoming that ‘nation and family of nations’ that God had promised Jacob that he would become. Joseph himself made Israel swear that they would carry his bones out of Egypt one day and bury them with his fathers. It was Moses (Exodus 13:19 and Joshua 24:32) who centuries later fulfilled that oath during the Exodus. Then Joseph died and they embalmed him. This provides a fitting end to the mighty Book of Genesis, which charts the creation, the fall, and the beginning of the redemption of mankind. Joseph’s ultimate ancestor began life in a paradise in Eden, whilst this descendant ended it in a coffin in Egypt!
The Big Picture 