NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER SIX

Part IV

Now Jesus segues from keeping our fasting and prayers a confidential matter between us and God, to referring to them as an investment in heaven. If we do all these things to impress our fellow believer, then it would be like putting money in a piggy bank. It’s always there for us to use but it is not gaining any interest. Such things are vulnerable to being misused and losing value. But when we use them as opportunities to invest in God’s kingdom, then they are safe to be used and depended on in times of need.

Jesus uses the moth as an example of how things can be destroyed. Even today we associate moths with eating clothes. The truth is, they don’t. It’s the baby moths we should be wary of. These hatched worms derive the proteins they need from keratin. In other words, virtually any organic fiber derived from an animal. And these worms have a big appetite. The full list of things clothes moth larvae can eat is extremely long. Basically they can eat and survive on virtually any natural fiber. They’ve been known to eat wool, cashmere, silk, cotton, linen, fur, feathers, hair, lint, carpets, the bristles of brushes, pet fur and even dust. On top of this, the larvae will also, if no food is present, cut through non-natural fibers like polyester. The fibers these larva eat eventually also ends up becoming a part of the cocoon it spins for itself so it can become a moth. This would suggest that by using a moth, Jesus was pointing to those who latch onto what anything they can find in this world and more or less become parasites. As one winner of a lottery put it about the moths in his family, “I had relatives I never knew or met coming out of the woodwork asking for money.”

It is also noteworthy to focus on the fact that Jesus does not describe these treasures, but He gives obvious clues for us to follow. Moths are insects that destroy cloth, and rust destroys metal. In Jesus’ day a king would fill his treasury with gold, silver and garments made of the best silk and other costly materials. In one Jewish commentary in the Book of Esther, we read that Haman was told: “Make ready, and go into the royal treasury and take from the wardrobe a purple covering, an apparel of fine silk, adorned with fringes and costly stones and pearls, having bells of gold on its four corners, and pomegranates on every side. Bring also from there the great golden Macedonian crown.”¹ So the metaphor of where treasures were kept was something Jesus’ Jewish listeners could relate to, especially the need to safeguard them from being destroyed by parasites and decay.

But Jesus used this to point to another treasury where they could deposit those things they considered precious and irreplaceable, and that was in heaven. We find that Rabbi Levi talks about how: “The Lord will open to you His precious treasure.” He then goes on to say: “And why do we infer that it is in heaven? For it is written: You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place.² Heaven is the place were there is Equality and Judgment and Righteousness,³ As Jewish scholars explain: “This implies righteous actions and is often used in the sense of charity, the treasures of life and the treasures of peace and the treasures of blessings”.⁴ We also see this in a Jewish paraphrase: “And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, you will lie down in the dust with your fathers, and your soul shall be treasured in the treasury of eternal life with your fathers”.⁵

Also, another Rabbi said: “He who fulfills the Law while being poor, will in the end fulfill it in riches; and he who neglects the Law in wealth will end up neglecting it in poverty”.⁶ In other words, if a person, while they are poor, keeps the law by doing what is right, they will continue to do so after they become rich. However, a person who finds no time to keep the Law by doing what’s right when they are rich, won’t change their behavior even after they become poor. And another Rabbi taught: “A man should always teach his son a simple craft and let him offer it to those to whom riches and possessions belong; for poverty comes not from a man’s craft, nor riches from a man’s craft, but all is according to his merit”.⁷

Jesus seems to be saying the same thing. Give God what you have in talent and abilities to help and bless others for His honor, praise and glory, not for your own, and although what you may have is small, you will end up giving Him even more once He rewards you with more. But regardless of what you have, the return on your investment in the Kingdom of God will depend on how much you are willing to invest so God can increase your dividends. There is an interesting section one of Judaism’s Apocryphal writings that reads: “For behold! the day will come when the books will be opened in which are written the sins of all those who have sinned, as well as the treasuries opened in which the righteousness of all those who have been righteous is gathered”.⁸ So our Lord was not introducing some novel story to His listeners about being charitable so that God takes notice.

There is another interesting story in Jewish verbal tradition told by the supervisor of the charity fund: “One day a woman came to him in a year of scarcity, and said to him: ‘Sir, assist me.’ He replied, ‘I swear, there is not a penny in the charity fund.’ She said, ‘Sir, if you do not assist me, a woman and her seven children will perish.’ He accordingly assisted her out of his own pocket. Sometime afterwards he became dangerously ill. The angels addressed the Holy One, blessed be He, saying: Sovereign of the Universe, You have said that he who preserves one soul of Israel is considered as if he had preserved the whole world; shall then Benjamin the Righteous who has preserved a woman and her seven children die at so early an age? Immediately his death order was torn up. It has been taught that twenty-two years were added to his life.”⁹ And in an earlier version of the verbal traditions we read: “These are the things a person benefits from and enjoys in this world, while the principal remains for him in the world-to-come: deeds done in honor of father and mother,[performance of righteous deeds, and acts that bring peace between one person and another. But the study of Torah is equivalent to all of them together.”¹⁰

So again we see that Jesus was not preaching some other worldly philosophy with which the Jews had no inkling or familiarity. He was emphasizing that what they already knew, but somehow they let it slip through their fingers. So He had been sent from the Father in heaven to tell them that knowledge of the Scriptures is not enough, it is carrying out those scriptures that helps one find the will of God. Therefore our Lord did not have to create some new realm of knowledge and insight, but to instruct His followers to comprehend what they saw and heard, instead of walking away and say it is a waste of time. So our Lord becomes a divine psychologist and points out how we become aware of both the need and the options we have to respond.

Verses 22-23: The only source of light for the body is the eye. If you look at people and want to help them, you will be full of light. But if you look at people in a selfish way, you will be full of darkness. And if the only light you have is really darkness, you have the worst kind of darkness.

Here Jesus uses the physical eye to teach a spiritual truth. The physical eye can see an object and allow the mind to appreciate its beauty or usefulness. But that same eye can provide the heart and mind with an object that might become a source of wanting to steal it or destroy it. Here our Lord connects light with spiritual insight, just as the prophet said: “No longer will your sun go down; your moon will no longer wane; for Adonai will be your light forever; your days of mourning will end”.¹¹ And the Psalmist contributed his salvation to the sane light: “For you rescued me from death, you kept my feet from stumbling, so that I can walk in God’s presence, in the light of life.”¹²

I once had the opportunity of watching a debate sponsored by the British Institute of Arts and Ideas, chaired by Roger Rowland Smith, in which Hilary Lawson, a Post-postmodernist Philosopher and author of Closure; Joanna Kavenna, author and writer of Inglorious, and Roger Penrose, physicist and mathematician, author of The Emperor’s New Mind, discuss the subject of “Reality.” The question was, “Is what we see real, or is it just what we imagine it to be?” This is what the writers of fiction depend upon for the reader to do in order to enter their world of make-believe. Consequently, people often use this same concept to view the world around them, trying to make things out to be what they want it to be. The panel all tried to deal with the possibility that there is no single reality, but that we all have our own reality. This is why when we see someone do something that makes no sense in our world, we assume it must make sense in their world.

In this teaching of Jesus, He is trying to tell His followers that no matter what the world looks like to them, there is a reality over which no human has any control, and that is God’s reality. That’s why He came to reveal to us the truth. This allows for people from every part of the world, representing every race, culture and tradition to see the Word of God and have a faith in God and Jesus Christ that is based on that reality. There are so many imagined ideas, philosophies, concepts and beliefs about religion, spirituality, and our eternal destiny in the world today, without the teachings of Christ there would be no clear way to God and salvation. That’s why if we are enlightened to see that our heavenly treasure allows us to give without diminishing our heavenly wealth, then God is please and we are verifying that God has opened our minds to the truth. However, if we see this world and the people in it only as a resource for what we can get, then not only are we walking in the dark, but a darkness for which the world has no light to show us our error and meaningless way of living.

We find this looking at things in a selfless way, a selfish way, and a small way of giving, by seeing what Rabbis had to say about “gifts” or “offerings” for which they instituted the following categories of givers: “A generous person gives one fourth. A medium person gives one fifth, and the miserly person, gives one sixth.”¹³ In a book called, “Tree of life,” they talk about how Adam and Eve viewed the Tree of Life then the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, which represents a person with a “good eye” and one with an “evil eye.”¹⁴ In other words, it’s all according to how you look at it. There is an interesting illustration in Jewish tradition of a man who sells a tree, and the question is: does he just sell the tree, or does the ground it is planted in go with it? If the seller insists on keeping ownership of the ground, he might then claim his part of the harvest. For this, he is to be viewed as stingy. But if he makes no claim to the land or harvest, then he is viewed as a liberal person.¹⁵

So what our Lord is pointing out is not so much the action, but the attitude. He likens this to keeping one’s eyes open looking for the good in everything to the benefit of others. This will let the person live in the light of life. But by peering only for that which benefits oneself, then one will live in darkness, and it’s the worse kind of darkness. It’s a matter of not only deciding which way to go, but once the decision is made, committing to it. However, one should always keep in mind those around them and how that decision will affect others. It’s like something I’m sure most of us have seen on city streets or highways, where people will change direction or turn out of one lane into another without bothering to see where other drivers are. They know where they want to go, but they act as though they are the only ones on the road. Some people live their lives that way. Jesus is telling us to keep our eyes on those around us whenever we make any decision. This will reveal our true attitude in life, that we care about others as much as we care about ourselves.

One very early church Christian writer and Bishop named Gregory Thaumaturgus (AD 213-270), also known as Gregory the Miracle Worker, from Pontus, which borders on the Black Sea, had this to say about our Lord’s words here: “The single eye is sincere love; for when the body is enlightened by it, it emits through the medium of the outer members only things which are perfectly correspondent with the inner thoughts. But the evil eye is pretended love, which is also called hypocrisy, by which the whole body of the man is made dark. We have to consider that deeds meant only for darkness may be within the man, while through the outer members he may produce words that seem to be of the light: for there are those who are in reality wolves, though they may be covered with sheep’s clothing. Such are they who wash only the outside of the cup and platter, and do not understand that, unless the inside of these things is cleansed, the outside itself cannot be made pure. Wherefore, in manifest refutation of such persons, the Savior says: If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! That is to say, if the love which seems to you to be light is really a work meet for darkness, by reason of some hypocrisy concealed in you, what must be your patent transgressions!”¹⁶

I like the metaphor offered here by the Bishop that conforms to what our Lord Jesus told these people with attitudes made dark with evil who try to pretend that it is an attitude illuminated by good. In that case it is like taking a dirty glass, washing it on the outside and think that by doing so the inside of the glass is then also clean. Jesus put it another way, that they were like graves full of dead bones that they whitewashed on the outside thinking that made the decaying flesh on the inside pure and pristine. There are people like that in our world today. They pretend that by giving their time and talent to help others they will be seen as goodhearted and generous, while all the time they seethe on the inside with disgust and make-believe that they want to help. Believe it, some even advertise for others to help out while that not only are paid to do so, but give nothing themselves for the cause. God help us when a church is advertised as having a heart of compassion for the lost, but do nothing to reach out to them.

1 Explanatory Commentary on the Book of Esther, Paulus Cassel points this out in Chapter 6:10-11 (Appendix I, The Second Targum, pp. 238-239).

2 I Kings 8:39

3 Babylonian Talmud, op. cit., Seder Mo’ed, Masekhet Hagigah, folio 12b

4 Ibid., Footnote (58)

5 Targum on Pentateuch by Jonathan ben Uzziel, Section LII Vaiyelek, Deuteronomy 31:16, pp. 655-659

6 Rabbi Jonathan in the Mishnah, op. cit., Fourth Division: Nezikin Tractate Aboth, Ch. 4:9

7 Rabbi Meir in the Mishnah, ibid., Third Division: Nashim, Tractate Kiddushin, Ch. 4:14

8 2 Baruch 24:1

9 Benjamin the Righteous in the Babylonian Talmud, Seder Nezikin, Masekhet Baba Bathra, folio 11a

10 Jerusalem Talmud, op. cit., First Division: Tractate Pe’ah, Ch. 1:1 [B-C]

11 Isaiah 60:20 – Complete Jewish Bible

12 Ibid. Psalm 56:14 (v.13 in NIV)

13 Jewish Mishnah, op. cit., First Division: Zeraim, Tractate Terumot, Ch. 4:3

14 Etz Hayim

15 Babylonian Talmud, op. cit., Seder Nezikin, Masekhet Baba Bathra, folio 37b; (See also folios 71a and 72a).

16 Gregory Thaumaturgus: On Matthew 6:22-23