Week 35 Matthew 3
Matthew uses the phrase kingdom-of-heaven fairly frequently and a question I have is: what’s the kingdom-of-heaven?
I know that I can try answering that by reading through the gospel of Matthew. But what I’m wondering about today is what kingdom-of-heaven meant to a regular guy in the audience who was listening to John or Jesus talking about it.
Matthew says that John the Baptist would stand there out in the wilderness with a crowd of people listening to him and he’d say: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I wonder about what a guy thought when he heard that the kingdom-of-heaven was at hand?
He could think one of two things. He could think: “I know the kingdom-of-heaven is coming…but what I didn’t realize was that it’s right-around-the-corner!” Or else he could think something more like I think: “What’s John talking about? What-in-the-world is the kingdom-of-heaven?”
In order for the guy to think the first thing he’d have to already have some notion about what the kingdom-of-heaven was. If the kingdom-of-heaven wasn’t a (commonly) known thing then John would be talking gibberish. But people didn’t ask: “what’s the kingdom-of-heaven?” It’s like they already knew.
So two things I’d like to know are 1) what did people already know and 2) how (exactly) did they know it?
(To search that up I think I might need to do a quick review of the OT.)
Note: quote from Matthew 3:2 (NASB)