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I was sent only to the lost to the sheep of the house of Israel. Matt. 15:24. § 17. National characteristics of the Jewish people and their messianic aspirations Immediately after baptism, Jesus Christ was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He spent forty days in the desert in complete solitude and fasting. When He was finally hungry, the tempter approached Him. The temptations of Jesus Christ related to the miraculous power that He received at baptism, and were a question of how to use it. In the first temptation, He, as the Son of God, was asked to turn stones into bread to satisfy His hunger. In the second, according to ev. Matthew, when tempted, He was offered to throw himself from the wing (roof) of the church in the hope that He, as the Son of God, would be preserved by the command of God by angels, who would carry Him in their hands, so that He would not strike His foot against a stone. Finally, in the third temptation, the glory of the worldly kingdoms was shown to Jesus Christ from the heights of the mountain, and He was asked to worship the devil in order to receive from him power over these kingdoms, their glory. To understand the meaning of the temptations of Jesus Christ, you need to keep in mind the national characteristics of the Jewish people. From their very cradle, the Jews were the chosen people of God in order to proclaim the glory of the name of the Lord to other nations. They were the custodians of divine revelation, a covenant was made with them by God, and the promises of the Messiah were given to them. In accordance with this calling, the Jews were a highly religious people. Their religiosity was especially expressed in messianic expectations. For the Jewish people in all periods of their historical life, hope in the coming Savior constituted the basis of their spiritual existence: they actually lived by it, they turned to it in grief, they placed their joy in it. The prophets raised the expectation of the Messiah in Israel and did not allow it to rest on external blessings alone; the great disasters of first the Babylonian captivity, then the enslavement of the Persian, Macedonian, Egyptian, especially Syrian, accompanied by severe persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, and, finally, the hated Roman - continuously turned the eyes of the Jews to the coming Savior, “that prophet who should come into the world.” The time of Roman rule was accompanied by frequent disturbances, which were especially remarkable in that the instigators were usually impostors, posing as messengers of God and always finding confidence in themselves from the people. This shows how intense the messianic expectations of the Jews were at the time of Jesus Christ. Of course, they followed the impostors not in the hope of their own strength, but in the hope of help from above. Every extraordinary figure aroused in them the question whether he was the Messiah. This question was raised among the Jews by John the Baptist (Luke 3:15; John 1:19‒20). A Samaritan woman, in a conversation with Jesus Christ, expresses hope for the imminent coming of the Messiah (John 4:25) and suggests to the residents of the city whether He is Christ (John 4:29). He raises the same question among all the people, surprised by His deeds (Matthew 12:23). At that time, the entire atmosphere of Palestine and the countries of the dispersion of the Jewish people was permeated with a premonition of the imminent fulfillment of messianic expectations. But with such tension in religious expectations, the Jews were distinguished by certain national traits that deeply influenced their religious feeling. And above all, they were, as they remain to this day, too attached to external, material benefits. They understood the covenant with God in the sense of a legal contract, a mutual obligation, by virtue of which the Jews had to fulfill the law given by God and had the right to receive external, temporary benefits from God for this. The very fulfillment of the law had the character of external legality, or righteousness. The Jew's concern was maintaining external purity, observing such legalistic deeds that could be counted and externally assessed. Messianic expectations had the same sensual character. From the kingdom of the Messiah, the Jews expected rich evenings, wonderful nutrition, and extraordinary fertility of the land. “Blessed,” exclaimed one of those who reclined with Christ in the Pharisee’s house, having heard His sermon about the reward in the resurrection of the righteous, “blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom of God” (Luke 14:15)! The Jews of Christ’s time remembered that their fathers under Moses ate manna, heavenly bread, and they said to Jesus Christ: “What sign will You give, so that we will see and believe You? What are you doing?" When He answered them that the bread of God is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, they exclaimed: “Lord! always give us such bread” (John 6:30‒34). The well-being of the Jewish people in Messianic times is a favorite theme of Jewish apocryphal literature, especially focusing on pictures of the extraordinary fertility of the earth. In the Apocalypse of Baruch and in the Book of Enoch, the fertility of the earth in the kingdom of the Messiah is depicted as extraordinary: each fruit will bear ten thousand fruits, each vine will bear a thousand branches, each branch will bear a thousand clusters, and one cluster will bear a thousand berries, and from each berry the bark of wine will be obtained. Then the Jews were distinguished by their extreme attachment to the external, symbolic forms of the Old Testament theocracy. Their special calling was connected with these forms; they made the achievement of temporary well-being dependent on the fulfillment of the Old Testament law on external purity and rituals, and therefore they valued these forms and rituals as dearly as they were tied to external well-being. Since the time of the Babylonian captivity, they were zealous implementers of the ritual law and not only observed all its instructions to the smallest detail, but also invented a whole series of additional external rules, which were known to them under the name of the tradition of the elders. Thus, adhering to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews did not eat without thoroughly washing their hands; Having come from the market, they did not eat without washing. There was something else that they decided to adhere to: to observe the washing of cups, tankards, cauldrons and benches (Mark 7:3-4). The exact observance of the law and tradition of the elders served as the basis for the Pharisaic self-righteousness and disdain for those whom they considered sinners. It is easy to understand that with such ritual pettiness, the Jews remained indifferent to the most important things in the law - justice, mercy and faith, and neglected the truth and love of God (Matthew 9:13; 12:7; 23:23; Luke 11:42). To keep their tradition, they even violated the commandments of God (Matthew 15:3-6; Mark 7:9-13). So they honored the Lord with their lips, but in their hearts they were far from Him (Matthew 15:7-9; Mark 7:6-7). In this regard, they expected from the Messiah that He would give theocratic symbolism a universal and enduring meaning, imposing the yoke of the law on all nations and for eternal times, and make it a mystical instrument for sending down from heaven to the Jewish people all earthly blessings, the visible and continuous protection of God. Finally, the Jews suffered from national pride itself. The Old Testament law was given not to individuals, but to an entire people; the Old Testament promises were given to him. The salvation of every Jew lay in belonging to his people, which was secured by descent from Abraham and the fulfillment of the ritual law. Therefore, the Jew, to the same extent that he was attached to theocratic symbolism as a means of achieving material well-being, was interested in the existence and well-being of his people. Just as for the tradition of the elders, the Jews violated the commandments of God, so for the political well-being of their people they were ready to sacrifice human life, violating the commandment to which the whole law and the prophets boiled down: “It is better for us,” said the high priest Caiaphas, the religious representative of the Jewish people, “it is better for us that one man should die for the people, than that the whole people should perish” (John 11:50). The Jews were proud of their descent from Abraham, proud of the knowledge and fulfillment of the law of Moses (Matt. 3:8-9; Luke 3:8; John 8:33; 9:28; Rom. 2:17-23 51. The extreme conceit of the Jewish people is clearly expressed in the following words of the author of the 3rd book of Ezra: “Oh, Sovereign Lord! Out of all the forests on earth and out of all the trees on it you chose only one vine, out of all the built cities you sanctified one Zion for yourself, out of all the many nations you acquired for yourself one people, and you loved them and gave them a perfect law. You created this age for us. About the other nations descended from Adam, You said that they were nothing, but like spittle, and You likened all their multitude to drops dripping from a vessel” (3 Ezra 5:23.25.27; 3 Ezra 6:55.56). The Jews tended to limit the coming salvation to their own people alone: ​​they expected the God of Israel to visit His people and deliver them only (cf. Luke 1:68-69). The Jews were the heirs of the kingdom of the Messiah by virtue of their descent from Abraham, therefore the benefits of this kingdom awaited all Jews without exception: to participate in the kingdom of the Messiah, the Jews would be gathered from all the countries of their dispersion, and even, perhaps, the dead would be resurrected (the book of Enoch, the psalms of Solomon, the Sibylline books). In the kingdom of the Messiah, the Jews hoped to take first place and gain dominion over all pagan nations. And since by the time of Jesus Christ the Jews were politically dependent on the Romans, the closest way of freedom from this dependence was what they expected from the Messiah: they hoped to see in Him their national king (John 6:15). With the coming of the Messiah, they connected a terrible judgment against all their enemies, over all those peoples who, over the course of time, enslaved the Jewish people and caused them suffering (cf. Luke 1:71). It is significant that the pagans knew about the messianic aspirations of the Jews, first of all, as their hope to take possession of the world (Suet. Vespas. IV; Tas. Hist. V, 13). The Jews excitedly and stubbornly awaited the kingdom of the Messiah, but they made faith in Him dependent on certain conditions in accordance with the peculiarities of their national life. In the Messiah they were waiting for a man under the special protection of heaven, endowed by God with extraordinary powers, which would be sufficient to fulfill the hopes of Israel, an almighty miracle worker (Matthew 12:18; 16:1; John 6:14; 7:31). Most alien to the Jewish ideas about the Messiah was the idea of ​​His suffering (John 12:34; Matt. 16:21-22; Luke 24:19-21. 45-46). Without denying themselves, the Jews could not accept the Messiah, who was not protected by signs and was subject to universal human conditions of life and even suffering. In this last case, either the national pride of the Jews or the Messiah was necessarily threatened with death 52 . § 18. The meaning of the temptations of Christ This explains the meaning of the temptations of Jesus Christ in the desert. According to the expectations of the Jews, the Messiah was supposed to be their miraculous nourisher and, of course, personally stand, as a miracle worker, above material dependence. This was the meaning of the first temptation. Then the Jews expected in the Messiah a man who would enjoy the special protection of God in the name of the shrine of the church and Old Testament symbolism in general, and in His kingdom they hoped to see the triumph of the zealots of the Old Testament law. This constituted the content of the second temptation. Finally, the Jews hoped to see in the Messiah their national king, who would bring dominion to the Jewish people, with its theocratic symbolism, over all pagan peoples. This was the meaning of the third temptation. Jesus Christ rejected and could not help but reject the tempter’s proposals. To give in to the hopes of the Jews meant to perpetuate Jewish symbolism, to impose the yoke of the Old Testament ritual law on all people, to abandon the foundation of the spiritual kingdom, instead of serving the national passions of the Jewish people in accordance with the will of God for the salvation of the human race, and to bow to the evil spirit. Jesus Christ responded to the first temptation with humble submission to the natural laws of human life, its natural limitations; to the second proposal He responded by refusing to tempt the Lord with a demand for extreme visible protection; He contrasted the third temptation with refusal to serve the evil spirit of national pride. He did not separate Himself from the society of people, in relation to the conditions of life, so that His divinely filial dignity would become the property of all people. The boundaries of national symbolism must be destroyed to establish a universal spiritual kingdom. Victory over temptations was not a complete evasion on the part of Jesus Christ from the use of miraculous power, according to the will of God; but this was His renunciation of using it for His personal well-being, for personal freedom from the conditions of human existence, as a permanent norm of life, and for serving the national passions of the Jews. He called His followers to spiritual life, to victory over attachment to the world. This renunciation of Jesus Christ did not exclude, but even assumed a temporary manifestation of miraculous power in a sense consistent with the expectations of the Jews, but the purpose of such miracles is the same as constant humility and constant struggle with the demands of the Jews - to raise people’s gaze from the sensual to the spiritual. But if, therefore, Christ’s victory over temptations in the desert was a rejection of the national aspirations of the Jews, then at the same time it prepared for Him death from embittered Jewish pride. The victory of Christ was His supreme self-denial, His willingness to accept death from the malice of the Jews. In order to bestow spiritual divine life on every person and, therefore, on the entire human race, the Lord Jesus Christ had to endure suffering and death from the Jewish people. Universal goals faced particular opposition from the Jewish people; their achievement was conditioned by the fight against the prejudices of a small society inhabiting a small land. Here we encounter one of those combinations of opposites that filled the life of Jesus Christ. Having universal tasks, He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24). What was the unique significance of the Jewish people in relation to the calling of Jesus Christ? They usually answer this question by pointing to the preparedness of the Jewish people for the kingdom of God: the Old Testament time was a preparation for the acceptance of the Messiah of the entire human race, mainly the Jews. And in this answer there is an undoubted grain of truth: the first society of followers of Jesus Christ, His apostles, were chosen by Him from among the Jews. But we must remember that the apostles were taken by the Teacher not fully ready for their ministry, but with the prejudices of their people, from which they were freed only by His teaching and upbringing, and this liberation was accompanied by the fall of one of them, the “son of perdition”; in any case, this society of Christ’s disciples was small in number among the Jews, it was a “small flock”; but the entire Jewish people, as a whole, precisely as a people, led by their leaders, consciously abandoned the Messiah and crucified Him. Undoubtedly, Jesus Christ was sent to the Jews because they were the only people who were clearly expecting the Messiah, but these expectations of the Jewish people were inextricably linked with national prejudices and attachments: of course, the Lord Jesus brought salvation to the Jews first of all, but this people, in the name of prejudices and earthly attachments, could not accept a spiritual king. In his gospel to the world, Christ could not bypass the Jewish people, because their messianic expectations were earthly and sensual, because they harbored in their hearts hatred for the spiritual kingdom. In order to establish a spiritual universal kingdom among people, it was necessary to destroy the shackles that the national pride of the Jewish people was preparing for him, it was necessary to condemn the separatism and pride of the bearers of Old Testament symbolism, and for this it was necessary to reveal this pride in all its depth, to provoke his conscious hatred of the spiritual kingdom, for this it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer death from this embittered national pride of the Jews. In order not only to teach people the kingdom of God, but also to establish this kingdom in their hearts, it was necessary to overcome not only the indifference of ignorance of the pagan world, but also the conscious hatred of the Jews who were proud of their knowledge of the law and the prophets. While bringing salvation to Israel, Jesus Christ also brought judgment to them; but, on the other hand, the long-suffering Jewish people, who did not recognize their Messiah, condemned Him and were condemned by Him, by their very fall served the salvation of the pagans (Rom. 11:11): on the basis of their rejection, on the basis of the condemnation of their material messianic hopes, the true spiritual kingdom of the Messiah arose 53. The Jewish people were the proper environment for the teachings and works of the Messiah because their messianic expectations were colored by national pride and attachment to earthly goods. But sharply differing in this last respect from other peoples, the Jewish people, in their national traits, are representative of the general properties of man, and their history serves as a symbol of each person. The peculiarity of the Jews, in fact, was that among them the considered universal human properties were elevated to the level of national ones and became properties of the people; In addition to this feature in the mood of the Jewish people, every person, regardless of his nationality, can recognize his own mood. Therefore, the victory of Christ in the desert has universal significance; His temptations, like the Jewish mood that caused them, are understandable to us and close to us. In view of this, it is of great interest to delve into the essence of the historical sin of the Jews - the murder of the Son of God. The sin of the Jews was that they were waiting for their Messiah, they wanted to turn the revelation of God in the person of the Son of God into serving themselves, instead of presenting themselves as an instrument of the universal revelation of God. Expecting a simple man in Christ, they believed the revelation of God in Him in the discovery of external divine omnipotence, in the personal possession of divine powers, in which human life becomes illusory. On the contrary, in Christ there was a real revelation of true divine, eternal and spiritual life in the fullness of human existence, He was a true man - the Son of God (Mark 15:39). It was a spiritual revelation of divine life, the fullness of which was directly dependent on the fullness of human life - therefore it was the universal revelation of God in human history. In this regard, it is interesting to observe what significance Old Testament prophecy had in the life of the Jews. It is known that the prophets predicted the coming of Christ in the smallest detail of place, time and signs, and depicted the image of Christ with the greatest vividness. It is also known that the Jews studied the prophecies about the Messiah with extraordinary attention for centuries. So what? According to signs taken from the prophecies, they did not recognize their Savior in Christ. In their messianic expectations, they adhered to true prophecies (for example, Isa. 9:6-7 - about the royal dignity of the Messiah; Joel. 3, Zech. 14 - about the judgment of the Gentiles; Isa. 49:22; 60:4-9 - about the gathering of Israel from the dispersion), and however, their expectations were a perversion of the real meaning of the Old Testament prophecies, so they did not want to know about suffering Messiah (Isa. 53; Ps. 21). Even the best people from the Jews did not understand the true meaning of the Old Testament prophecies, they were senseless and slow in heart to believe everything predicted by the prophets about the suffering of Christ (Luke 24:25-26 cf. Luke 18:31-34; Matt. 16:21-23, etc.). Only Christ Himself opened the minds of His disciples to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45). Thus, the Old Testament prophecy did not achieve its direct goal - to predict the Messiah, which the apostle even raised to the principle: “no prophecy in Scripture can be solved by oneself” (2 Pet. 1:20). In the matter of religion, appearance has no direct meaning: there can be no external signs of spiritual life and external guarantee for the fidelity of religious beliefs and expectations. Old Testament prophecy, in addition to its educational value 54 , had for the Jews the meaning of testing their moral mood: the attitude towards prophecy reveals what is hidden in a person’s heart. The Jews chose from the prophecies about the Messiah what corresponded to their passions and reworked them according to their earthly affections. Waiting for their Messiah and not carrying His true image in their hearts, they paid primary attention to the external signs of His coming (John 7:27.41-42.52), and these signs, despite the fulfillment of the prophecies in Christ, deceived them. For interesting parallels to the above New Testament passages and explanations from Jewish apocryphal and rabbinic writing, see A. Edersheim “The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah” passim et al. A Smirnova “Messianic expectations and beliefs of the Jews around the time of Jesus Christ”, Kazan 1899, p. 190 next. Due to their indicated characteristics, as enemies of Christ, the Jewish people (Israel) are called Jews in the Gospel of John. The name of the Jews is used in the same sense in our study. The Jews were first of all the Jewish leaders (in this case, as opposed to the common people), then the Jerusalemites and, perhaps, the Jews in the ethnographic and geographical sense (as opposed to the simpleton Galileans), and finally, the entire Jewish people who crucified Christ. Throughout all these borders the Jews were distinguished by their utmost contempt for those who were not Jews. The Jews in the gospel history are presented primarily as rulers, headed by a high priest, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees. A scribe, or lawyer, rabbi, teacher of the law is a person versed in the law, its guardian and teacher of the people. The real atmosphere of the scribes is the legends that explain the meaning of the law, complement it and apply it to various cases of life, forming a fence around the law. After the Babylonian captivity, the Jews began to observe the law and its ritual decrees especially zealously; hence the study of the law and its interpretation became the greatest need for them, and teachers of the law became the most honorable and influential persons. The "Great Synagogue", the prototype of the Sanhedrin, was a meeting primarily of scribes. Since the main sphere of their activity was traditions, among them the “eldership” was valued, which had governmental significance under the Maccabees and then passed into the Sanhedrin, headed by a high priest and which was the highest religious institution, mainly with judicial power. The main character of the scribe is love of honor, proud contempt for the ignorant people and hypocritical execution of the law (Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:46-47). In explaining the law, the scribes were slaves to the letter and tradition; they could not distinguish what was essential in the law from the petty requirements of tradition, therefore the question of the greatest commandment of the law was most difficult for them. The legalistic regime imparted extreme pettiness to the life of the Jewish people. The scribe usually stands alongside the Pharisee; often he is a Pharisee, but not always. The Pharisees were a brotherhood or union into which new members were accepted in accordance with certain rituals. The Pharisees set themselves the main task of the strictest observance of the provisions of the law and tradition about external purity and the fulfillment of religious duties - tithes, etc. (Mark 7; Matthew 23 par.). The Pharisees were distinguished by their extreme disdain for the “village people” and removed themselves from the society of sinners. Being extreme zealots of external purity, they neglected the most important things in the law, were lovers of money, fulfilled the law for show, so that their most important feature was hypocrisy. The Sadducees gave preference to scripture over tradition, and adhered to its literal understanding. They sought mainly freedom from the extremes of Pharisaism. They denied the resurrection of the dead and the existence of spirits (Matthew 22:24 par.; Acts 4:1–2; 23:8). These were rationalists. In the time of Christ, the Sadducees are predominantly the upper, governmental, wealthy classes; led an epicurean lifestyle. The Pharisees and Sadducees were at enmity with each other. Thus, there is a deep meaning in the fact that Jesus Christ “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). This is not the “husk” that Harnack speaks of in Op. Wesen des Christenthums. In relation to the "small remainder". You might be interested in: