Friday, May 29, 2009

Matthew 21 and 22

Chapter 21

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the colt, the people treated him in the way that only kings were treated.  The fig tree is symbolic of the religion and its leaders.  It is essentially dead and not bringing forth any fruit and will be destroyed.  It must have really disturbed the Pharisees that Jesus, who by their account had not been trained as a rabbi or anything else, had no authority and yet he did all of these miracles and taught doctrine they couldn't refute.  And yet they were supposed to have the authority, but could work no miracles by the power of their priesthood and saw their doctrine poked with holes time and again by the Savior.  He was making them look like fools in front of the people and they were powerless to do anything about it.


Chapter 22

According to Elder McConkie, if the Pharisees, Sanhedrin, and Sadusees had understood the Savior's parable of the wedding feast, the would have understood that (1) Jesus was declaring he was the Son of God, the Messiah, (2) that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, (3) the Jews would be rejected as the people of the covenant, (4) the gospel would be taken from them and given to the gentiles, and (5) only the righteous will be saved.  All of those things happened.  With verse 21, where the Savior says to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's, I like what Elder McConkie says, Caesar should be given the coins that bear his image.  And God should be given the people who bear is image in their souls.


I forgot one last thing in Chapter 22.  One of the pharisees or sadducees who was a lawyer asked the Savior what the greatest commandment was, and the Savior said in 37-39 that it was to Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  And the second was like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

The Jews wore a little container on their arms called a phalactery and in this was a little scroll of paper that had these two commandments, which the Savior had given to Moses 1400 years ago.

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