Nevertheless, there also appears to be a deeper significance to the five discourses. N. T. Wright has noted that in Second Temple Judaism Torah was viewed in many circles as the living Word of God. It represented a means (particularly in Pharisaic circles) of entering into the divine presence, equal even to that of the temple.254 If this is the case, then the parallel between the five theophanies and the five discourses makes sense. Jesus is the living Torah, and therefore the presence of God with Israel. He is not the one who merely speaks with God “face to face” (as Moses did), but is in fact the very presence of God. Gerhard Barth agrees, remarking, “The presence of Jesus in [Matthew’s] the congregation is here described as analogous to the presence of the Shekinah . . . the place of Torah is taken by . . . Jesus; the place of the Shekinah by Jesus himself.”255
In keeping with this, Matthew also describes the Name of Jesus as taking over the position of the divine Name in the Old Testament: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (18:20). Charles Gieschen asserts that passages like these in the New Testament suggest that for early Jewish Christians the divine Name properly belonged to Jesus along with the Father.256 Therefore, just as the temple was the location of the divine Name and presence in the Old Testament (2 Sam 7:13), Jesus as the divine Name and presence now takes over the position of the temple. For this reason, the Church is also the eschatological temple, because it is the locus of the divine presence. The Church is the place where Jesus’s Name (i.e., presence) is manifest in Word and sacrament.257
In support of this reading, there is evidence that Matthew structures his gospel around an inclusio of Name and presence.258 At the beginning of the work, Joseph is informed that “you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). Matthew then cites the prophecy of Isaiah: “they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us” (v. 23). At the end of the gospel, the divine Name is repeated to the disciples: “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19).259 Again, the Name is linked to the divine presence: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20).260
This makes Jesus’s rejection as a prophet much more serious than those of the Old Testament. The final rejection of Jesus and the crowd’s acceptance of Barabbas is in fact nothing short of the rejection of God’s own person. Jesus is not just one of the prophets who possesses the Word of God, but the Word himself. As the parable of the vineyard indicates (21:33–40), Jesus is the culmination of the rejection of prophetic mediation. Again, much like the worship of the golden calf, such rejection seeks alternative false mediators, in this case in the form of Barabbas.261 As an insurrectionist, Barabbas (“son of the father”) also claims to be one who can bring the kingdom of heaven, the content of Jesus’s new Torah of law and promise.262 Nevertheless, even in their rejection of Jesus, God’s faithfulness succeeds. At his trial, those who condemn him demand that “his blood be on us and on our children” (27:25). We are reminded of the fact that Jesus’s own blood is that of the “testament” (26:28) and that the Servant of Isaiah, the new Moses, would sprinkle the nations (Isa 52:15), much like Moses did when he ratified the Sinaitic covenant in Exodus 24. In effect, their rejection of the promise of the gospel paradoxically means its ratification through his bitter, innocent suffering and death.263
As God returned to his people, Jesus is also the one who fulfills the Old Testament promises of rest. In recounting Jesus’s genealogy and human origin, Matthew highlights that Jesus is a descendent of Abraham and of David (Matt 1:17). He thereby implicitly suggests that Jesus is a fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Davidic testaments, both of which promised rest from Israel’s enemies. It should also be observed that in giving Jesus’s genealogy, Matthew makes the number of generations symbolic of the eschatological rest that Christ brings. The evangelist tells us that there were forty-two generations between Abraham and Christ. The symbolism here appears to be associated with the numbers seven and six in the genealogy, in that the number forty-two is six times seven. Seven is of course the number of the original creation. Six would be the number of creation minus the extra day of Sabbath. This final “seven” is then inaugurated by the birth of Jesus. This seems to suggest that Jesus’s forgiveness brings a new creation and a new Sabbath. Just as Christ is the eternal Word of God (i.e., the living Torah) who was the agent of the old creation, he stands at the beginning and enacts a new narrative of creation. In this regard, David Scaer has also pointed to the fact that the first words of the gospel are BIBLOS geneseōs, suggesting the beginning of a new Genesis.264
Jesus’s life not only has the goal of a new Sabbath, but is also itself the presence of that Sabbath. Throughout the gospel, Matthew repeatedly introduces the theme of the messianic Sabbath. It should be noted that many Second Temple Jews held that when the Messiah came there would be an age of Sabbath paralleling the seventh day in Genesis 1.265 Jesus brings the rest of this messianic Sabbath. He himself is the Sabbath and he offers rest: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (11:28–30).
What is the content of this rest though? If Jesus comes to complete the “seven” and “six” with the final “seven” of new creation, then his ministry is not only one of re-creation, but also Jubilee. By adding a final seven to the forty-two generations, we get forty-nine, the year of Jubilee in the Old Testament (Lev 25). This is a fulfillment of the eschatological Jubilee of Daniel 9. For this reason Jesus also tells his disciples to forgive their brothers “seventy times seven” (Matt 18:22), the number of Daniel’s great Jubilee.266 As the bringer of universal Jubilee, Jesus brings the true rest of the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus can offer this eschatological Sabbath rest because he is the true presence of God with Israel. He is the new and true Temple. Therefore his disciples enjoy the same perpetual Sabbath that the priests do: “have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” (12:5–6). Fletcher-Louis suggests that the rationale for this judgment on Jesus’s part is the Second Temple Jewish belief that due to God’s own presence in the temple, the priests enjoyed a perpetual Sabbath.267 For this reason, priests could engage in labor on the Sabbath, because being always in the midst of perpetual Sabbath they would otherwise never do any work. If this is the case, it means that Christ himself is the new Temple and thereby also the presence of God with Israel. The Temple, as we recall, mediated both God’s holiness and his forgiveness of sins to Israel. Jesus therefore does the same.
Jesus is not only the true presence of God with Israel, but also the true recapitulator of Israel. Peter Leithart has noted that not only do the words BIBLOS