The Kingdom of God

This post is a bit difficult, but I believe that my readers will be able to grasp its meaning.

Just skip the Greek, and you should still be able to get the meaning. Feel free to comment.

The role of the people of God within God’s Kingdom is consistent in terms of the qualifications of the constituent groups placed within it. While the spiritual leaders of the old covenant had the same mission as their new covenant counterparts, they failed to keep God as the focus of their lives. This situation resulted in their replacement with the leaders of the new covenant. This chapter demonstrates the cause of this replacement through an exegesis of the announcement in Matthew 21:43, highlighting the evidence of their degradation found in the temples and Oral Law. The chapter concludes with a summary of the findings.

Exegesis of Matthew 21:43

Jesus proclaims to the “chief priests and elders” (Matt 21:20) in Matthew 21:43, “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it” (διὰ τοῦτο λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἀρθήσεται ἀφʼ ὑμῶν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ δοθήσεται ἔθνει ποιοῦντι τοὺς καρποὺς αὐτῆς). The chief priests and elders consisted of the Sadducees and Pharisees, who knew they were the intended subject (Matt 21:45). Hagner affirms that διὰ τοῦτο refers to the preceding parable, which is reminiscent of Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard (Isa 5:1–7) concerning YHWH’s care as he prepared the nation to produce the fruit of righteousness, but received wickedness.[1] 

David Turner asserts that Isaiah 5:1-2 and Matthew 21:33–34 follow the same pattern of six steps the beloved/landowner takes to transform a hill into a vineyard.[2] He further asserts that vine-growers are the leaders of Israel.[3] This point receives further validation when the religious leaders understand that Jesus’ parable was about them (v. 46). For those who see national Israel as rejected here, it is the vine-growers, not the vineyard, that the landowner rejects. While R. T. France affirms that the “focus is undeniably on the Jewish leaders,” he follows this statement with the assertion that “their rejection involves the rejection of the Jewish nation as a whole.”[4]  When one considers the parallel in Isaiah 5, this notion becomes untenable. The kingdom of God is God’s rule over believers, not unbelievers. It is also his salvic mission which involves turning unbelievers into believers. When one considers the nature of the kingdom, such assertions become dubious. The nation of Israel is God’s creation, and God does not reject his creation.

In Isaiah’s parable, the people go into exile because they lack knowledge (Isa 5:13). Teaching God’s word was the responsibility of leaders, but they failed to do so. Jesus’ parable relates how a landowner ends the tenancy of vine-growers who did not give the product of the vineyard and will rent it to other vine-growers who will (v. 41).[5] The word translated "rent" denotes a lease. The landowner retained ownership, and the vine-growers were replaceable. Jesus says that just as the landowner changed vine-growers, God would take the leadership of his kingdom from them and give it to another people. Israel would no longer be the unique people of God. Their leadership would no longer lead the visible manifestation of God’s kingdom, for they failed to properly lead the mission of God, which Isaiah’s parable also demonstrates. They failed to produce the fruit of the kingdom, deeds in accordance with godly living.[6] Such obedience in leaders led by God into ministry also produces the fruit of converts. Jesus gave the disciples similar instructions concerning the fruit in his parable of the vine (John 15:1–11).

The word ἔθνος denotes “a body of persons united by kinship, culture, and common traditions.”[7] This term often refers to Gentiles, but another sense of the word is a group foreign to another. This description fits the Church because it stands in the fulfillment of the covenants. Dennis Duling asserts that “it seems better to think of this particular ethnos as an alternative leadership association.”[8] It proclaims the Gospel, which is the actual, rather than the shadow, of what God ultimately intended as a way of restoring the Imago Dei. However, the change of leadership does not affect ethnic Israel nor God’s promises. God has not rejected his people, whom he created, as Paul exclaims Λέγω οὖν, μὴ ἀπώσατο ὁ θεὸς τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; μὴ γένοιτο (Rom 11:1). The phrase μὴ γένοιτο is an absolute negation of the premise concerning the rejection of ethnic Israel. Contrary to Reymond’s opinion,[9] the replacement is of failed leaders by a new group of leaders, not the replacement of Israel as the people of God. These spirit-empowered leaders would direct the mission of the kingdom.

The end of Israel’s leadership and the beginning of the Church’s leadership occurred after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus gave the formal statement of this mission to the Jewish leadership of the Church in the Great Commission (Matt 28:10). From this point forward, the preaching and reception of the Gospel create and add to the component of the people of God called the Church. The question remains: What was the cause or causes that led to this replacement?

The cause centers on the production of the fruit (τοὺς καρποὺς) of the kingdom and concerns the redemption of the soul and the perseverance of the redeemed. Those in leadership are to encourage this through their teaching of God’s word, including his law. Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard highlights the consequences of faulty leadership, but their faulty leadership is not the root cause of the problem. The root cause lies within them, as Jesus told the Pharisees who looked clean outside, but inside were “full of robbery and self-indulgence” (Luke 11:39). The Law of Moses and the temple were essential to the life and practices of the redeemed, serving as witnesses to those who heard the word and saw the contrast between life among the unredeemed in Israel. The testimony to the root cause lies in changes to these entities—one visual and one taught—that are key to understanding the loss of the kingdom.

The Temples as Visual Indicators

All of the temples had an inner court where priests served in the holy place and the Holy of Holies. The primary difference was in the outer court. The first place of worship was the tabernacle. God gave Moses the design in Exodus 25–27. It had an undivided courtyard and a single gate on the east side (Exod 27:9–18). The same pattern appears in the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6:33–36), Ezekiel (Ezek 42:8–9), and the temple of Zerubbabel, but Simon the Just and Herod made significant changes.[10]

While Simon the Just enhanced the structure and left the outer court unchanged, Herod divided the outer court into separate courts for ritually clean Jewish men, women, and Gentiles.[11] In the same section, Josephus in Antiquities 15.65 states that the court of the Gentiles had “an inscription, which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death.” God’s design, which the first three temples followed, provided the worshipper with a consistent and universal vision of approaching God. Herod’s design, however, segregated worshippers, creating division within the congregation.

Since Herod altered the design given by God, he relied on the authoritative oral law promoted by the Pharisees to do so. According to Jewish tradition, God gave the oral law as well as the written law to Moses. The Mishnah states that this law was passed down through generations, from Joshua and the elders to the prophets, the men of the Great Synagogue (post-Ezra leaders), Antigonus of Soko, and finally to Hillel and Shammai.[12] This section of the Mishnah calls for a fence around the Law. Later, the Mishnah says that “tithes are a fence around riches; vows are a fence around abstinence; a fence around wisdom is silence.”[13] Therefore, it is no surprise that the spiritual leaders of Israel saw the oral law as equal to the Law of Moses.

The Oral Law as Taught by Spiritual Leaders 

 Joseph Rosenbloom asserts that the Pharisees believed the Pentateuch contained a two-fold law.[14] They discovered the oral law through careful reading of the written law, using what they considered the proper interpretive tools. They took the closed Torah and made it open to endless interpretation by what eventually became the Sanhedrin. There, they found opposition to their approach. The origin of the oral law occurred during the Second Temple period, which spanned from the construction of Zerubbabel’s temple to the destruction of Herod’s temple (515 BC to 70 AD).

In the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees were their counterparts. The Sadducees strictly adhered to the Torah, while the Pharisees took a more flexible approach to Judaism. Daniela Piattelli affirms that “the Sadducees are said … to have had their own Book of Decrees … which provided rulings on different forms of capital punishment … Meggillat Ta’anit [second century BC] attributes the ban on writing down the ‘Oral Law’ to opposition to this Sadducean Book of Decrees.”[15] The Sadducees were the priestly ruling class descended from the line of Saddok.[16] The Sadducees, the ruling group of Zadokite priests, resisted the more flexible approach of the Pharisees; they relied on a fixed Torah and supported their position of power based on the Aaronic priesthood. Concerning the Torah, rabbinic sources show that “the two groups differed on purity, temple practice, inheritance, and damages.”[17] The determination of the content of oral law began with the Sanhedrin and was later compiled in three stages: the Mishnah, the Palestinian Talmud, and the Babylonian Talmud. This chapter uses the Babylonian Talmud because it is the most widely used. These steps meant that “no matter what secular conditions would confront Jews anywhere in the world at any future time, the content of Judaism could be altered in a structured, divinely-guided way.”[18] On the surface, this reasoning seems sound, except that the guidance came as human opinion rather than divine guidance.

The oral law not only provided flexibility to the usually strict written laws, but it also permitted actions that contradicted the written law as well as those that fell short of it. Over time, the oral law gained more influence than the written law because it was viewed as the living word for the present day. In Talmud Bava Metzia 59b, the story of Akhnai’s furnace illustrates the rabbis’ perspective on the oral law, even in the face of God’s voice from heaven. A man named Akhnai made a new clay furnace from an old one and asked the rabbis whether the new furnace was kosher. The rabbis were determined to say no, but Rabbi Eliezer offered three arguments supported by miracles, including a voice from heaven. Rabbi Joshua argued that the “Torah has already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a heavenly voice.”[19] The story later says that God laughed with joy and said, “My sons have defeated Me.”[20] The Talmud refers to such heavenly voices as a Bath Kol, בַּת קוֹל.[21] The dependence on such a voice began when “Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel; nevertheless, they made use of Bath Kol.”[22] From the story of Akhnai, it is apparent that this voice differed from the voice of God when he spoke to the prophets, for others heard the Bath Kol.

In the story of Akhnai, the opinion of man defeats God, and that makes God happy. If this were the way some spiritual leaders thought of God, it is no wonder he replaced them. The intent of the oral law, to maintain Jewish identity, was noble; its execution was flawed. While maintaining the connection with their Jewish roots, they forgot God, who gave those roots to them, and exalted man’s words above his. When Jesus declared himself on the same level as God in Matthew 26:64, the Sadducees pronounced him a blasphemer. Adela Yarbro-Collins affirms that the Sadducees subscribed to a broad definition of blasphemy, namely, claims to be divine or possess divine power.[23] Should not the Pharisees’ attribution of their command over God’s be considered blasphemy as well? The reasoning behind this lies within the oral law—the Talmud in Mas. Sanhedrin 61b discusses the penalty for willingly bowing to one who sets himself up as a divinity.[24] Israel Knohl asserts that “there cannot be a man who is a ‘son of God.’”[25] By placing the oral law on the same level as God’s commands, the Pharisees require people to “bow” to their law and commit blasphemy and figuratively break the second commandment (Deut 5:7) concerning the making of an idol.

An instance of their setting aside God’s commands for their own occurs in Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees in Mark 7:9–13. In this case, the Pharisees misapply their own tradition. Mishnah Nedarim 9.1 forbids vows that break the commandment to honor one’s parents.[26] This episode exemplifies the flexible attitude that the Pharisees took toward the oral law. Since those designing and building Herod’s temple did so according to the oral law, it is also possible that they applied a flexible approach to that as well.

This section on the Kingdom of God explains why there are two groups within God’s people instead of just one. While God gave the nation of Israel good, holy, and righteous laws, their spiritual leaders—the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes—overruled those laws with their own opinions. The mission of the Kingdom of God is to save all who accept His love and follow His commandments. These leaders ignored the law. God’s response was not joyful laughter but their rejection and replacement by ethnic Israelites who follow Christ. Evidence of this can be seen in the temples they attended and the oral law they taught. The oral law caused all the nation’s troubles, including their rejection of the Messiah and the destruction of the temple. It was the driving force behind the need for the Church, as only new leaders could bring the Gospel of the new covenant and the Law of Christ to a hurting world. The future fulfillment of Israel of God within His people remains. This fact further confirms the existence of two distinct groups of redeemed persons within God’s people.

[1] Hagner, Matthew 14-28, 623.

[2] David L. Turner, “Matthew 21:43 and the Future of Israel,” Bibliotheca Sacra 159, no. 633 (January 2002): 49.

[3] Turner, “Matthew 21:43,” 53.

[4] R. T. France, “Old Testament Prophecy and the Future of Israel: A Study of the Teaching of Jesus,” Tyndale Bulletin 26, no. 1 (May 1975): 64.

[5] Hagner, Matthew 14-28, 623.

[6] Dennis C. Duling, “Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, and the Matthean Ethnos,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 35, no. 4 (December 2005): 138.

[7] Walter A. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick Danker (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ἔθνος.

[8] Duling, “The Matthean Ethnos,” 141.

[9] Reymond, “Traditional Covenantalism,” 44.

[10] H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1991), 45.

[11] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston (Seattle, WA: Biblesoft, 2005).

[12] Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 446, https://archive.org.

[13] Danby, The Mishnah, 452.

[14] Joseph R. Rosenbloom, “Jewish Responses to Crisis: Success and Failure,” Revue de Qumran 12, no. 1 (1985): 91.

[15] Daniela Piattelli and Bernard S. Jackson, “Jewish Law During the Second Temple Period,” in An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 23–24.

[16] Jack N. Lightstone, “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents,” in In Quest of the Historical Pharisees, ed. Jacob Neusner and Bruce D. Chilton (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 290.

[17] Lightstone, “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents,” 285.

[18] Rosenbloom, “Jewish Responses to Crisis: Success and Failure,” 12.

[19] Emanuel Deutsch, Complete Babylonian Talmud (English) (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1874), 5849, http://archive.org/details/CompleteBabylonianTalmudEnglish.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of The Talmudic and Geonic Periods, vol. 2 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), s.v. בּת קָלָא.

[22] Deutsch, Complete Babylonian Talmud (English), 4637.

[23] Adela Yarbro-Collins, “The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament (Leuven) 26, no. 4 (December 2004): 379.

[24] Deutsch, Complete Babylonian Talmud (English), 6852.

[25] Israel Knohl, The Messiah Confrontation: Pharisees Versus Sadducees and the Death of Jesus (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), 86.

[26] Danby, The Mishnah, 274.