John MacArthur on the synagogues of our Lord’s era

This year’s Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Epiphany — January 22, 2023 — was Matthew 4:12-23.

It was about the beginning of our Lord’s ministry in Galilee and His calling of two sets of brothers to be among His Apostles, to be fishers of men: Andrew and Simon Peter as well as John and James.

Verse 23 says:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Jesus, as did the Apostles after the first Pentecost, particularly Paul, taught in the synagogues regularly.

John MacArthur describes these houses of worship and their additional functions in ‘The Healing Work of Jesus’ which he preached in 1978.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine.

MacArthur begins by commenting on the verse itself and how it fits in with Matthew’s Gospel as a whole, with its theme of Jesus as the Messiah, the King of Kings:

Let’s look at verse 23: Jesus began on the right plan.  “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.”  Now here we come right to those two dimensions of messianic credentials: His words and His works.  Let’s look at some specifics here.  “And Jesus went about,” that’s an interesting verb.  I want to stop for a minute; it’s an imperfect tense verb, and when you have the imperfect it doesn’t mean it’s less than perfect. It’s just a term used for something that’s continuous action in the past tense.  It means that He was constantly going about, the idea of a constant endeavor.  You might even translate it, “He was continually going around” – incessant effort is the idea.  And really what you have in verse 23 – hang on to this thought – is a one-verse summary of the whole Galilean ministry.

Now notice, Matthew will take this one-verse summary and expand it in chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, so that those chapters to come – 5 through 9 – are an expansion of verse 23.  In fact, His words are the subject of chapter 5, 6, and 7.  His works are the subject of chapter 8 and 9.  So Matthew simply introduces those two elements here and then he begins to expand them in the next section, verses 5:1 through 9:38.  First, 5, 6, and 7 – His words – the great truth of the Sermon on the Mount that was absolutely shocking, devastating, and divine. And then His mighty works and miracles, chapters 8 and 9.

So He went all over the place incessantly and constantly, and you’ll notice it says, He “went about all Galilee.”  He was moving all the time.  Now “all Galilee” is a strong expression.  The term “all” is a very strong term, and when it says “all” in this sense it really does mean in a comprehensive sense …

The point is this: that to cover 204 villages and to move around through all of that mass of humanity required much time and constant travel and Jesus was busy.  Somebody figured out just to touch every town, moving at a rate of one town a day, is gonna take a half a year, and that would be only if you stayed one day in each place …

And so Jesus moved about.  He was going to touch as many as He could.  It was important that the whole of all those people – and remember they were Jew and Gentile mixed, and even the Jewish ones had been exposed to Gentile culture.

That is because Galilee was along the trade route to and from Africa.

The local synagogue was the heart of the community:

First of all it says, in verse 23, “Teaching in their synagogues.”  Within Galilee Jesus chose to kind of center His ministry in the synagogues.  Now the synagogue was the most important institution in the life of any Jew.  Keep that in mind.  It was the most important institution.  It is very like the church is to you, you that are Christians. You love the Lord Jesus Christ, you’re active at Grace Community Church, you’re involved here – this is the most important institution in your life.  Your family is here, your kids are here, your friendships are here, this is your life.  No different in those days.  The whole of Jewish life centered around the synagogue.  In fact, in some cases it would be even more intense because even the politics of life and the economics of life – you traded there, you learned to sort of match up your businesses with people of like trade because they sat according to trade.  It was everything to the Jewish people.  In fact, the worst thing that could ever happen to a Jew was to be unsynagogued.  Aposunaggos, “to be unsynagogued” was it.  And you see, that’s exactly what happened when a Jew became a Christian.  He was dis-fellowshiped from the synagogue.  It was vital.  That’s why the whole book of Hebrews is written.  It was written to Christians, but also there are warnings throughout that book to certain Jewish people who were so afraid of being unsynagogued that even though they believed the gospel, they wouldn’t receive Christ.  This synagogue was the key to their life.

He describes the physical location of the synagogue:

In most cases, the synagogue was built on a hill, using the most prominent hump in the city of the little town, and every town had one.  And there would be the synagogue, and it would be the highest place in the city and usually would be distinguished by a tall pole shooting up in the sky so that everybody could focus on that.  It was as familiar a sight to go into a Jewish town and see a synagogue spire as it is to go in the middle of New England and see a little church spire in the little villages.  It’s common.

Sometimes, if there weren’t any hills, they would build along the river and the bank of the river, and very often they built synagogues without a roof.  They just let their worship go up to God … the synagogue they’ve uncovered in Capernaum and have reconstructed really doesn’t have any roof.  We don’t know if it did or didn’t have one or what kind of one it had, but it was where they gathered.

This was the pattern of worship:

Divine worship was held in the synagogue every Sabbath, every Saturday.  Sabbath ran from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, and on the second and fifth day of every week they had special services, every Sabbath they had special services.  Of course, they had special services every festival day, all the feast days and all the special days.  Now basically when they came together on the Sabbath, if it wasn’t a special day, this is how the format went: first there was the reading of the Law and the reading of the Prophets by certain people who were called upon, and then there were prayers offered by the leader, and then there were responses by the people.  They would respond with amens and various praises to God.

Following that there would be an exposition of some text of the Scripture, and that went all the way back to the return under Ezra and Nehemiah.  When they read the Scripture – You remember in Nehemiah? – “and then Ezra the scribe stood up and gave the sense of it” – expository preaching is not something new in this generation.  It is the kind of preaching in the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, and it is historically what the Jews have done in their synagogue, first the reading, then the prayer, and then the exposition.  And it was interesting, if there was a visiting dignitary or a visiting rabbi, he would be given the right to speak the exposition very often. And that’s where, of course, Paul moved right into the synagogue and used some Old Testament text and took off.  That was very common.

This is how the synagogue was organised and how it ruled over the community:

The affairs of the synagogue were administered by ten men; basically, ten elders of whom three were called the rulers of the synagogue.  They acted as judges.  They would admit proselytes or not admit them.  They settled issues.  There was a fourth ruler called the angel of the church who was sort of the chairman of the board.  There were others who were called servers who carried out the direction of the three and the one.  There was an eighth one, according to Jewish tradition, that was the Hebrew interpreter who took the ancient Hebrew and translated it into the vernacular.  There was a ninth one who headed up the theological school.  And by the way, every synagogue had a theological school in it.  And there was a tenth one who interpreted the theological school instructor stuff because it was usually over the heads of the people.  So they had this whole organization, this incredible structure.

Listen, the synagogue became the court of law, and any disputes or court problems or civil things, they came there; their judgment was made and execution was even pronounced.  Listen, you know the Roman government only took away from the Jews the right of execution at the time of Jesus.  They could do everything else.  They could run their own affairs.  The only thing they couldn’t do was take somebody’s life.  That’s why they had to take Jesus to the Romans to have Him crucified.

… They ruled their own affairs.  And as we see, the small villages and towns in the time of Jesus, they would have their own court of law.  Also the synagogue was a public school for boys, and the little boys would go there, in their childhood, and learn the Talmud.  And further, the synagogue was a theological school for the men.  So this was the center of the whole concentration of Jewish life.  And when Jesus went there to that place, He would be stepping right into the midst of Israel.

The temple in Jerusalem differed from the synagogue, as it was only there where sacrifices and monetary offerings could be made:

Now there’s a vast difference, remember, between the synagogue and the temple.  There’s only one temple, and that is at Jerusalem.  That’s the only temple.  There isn’t one there now, as you know, not since 70 A.D. when Titus came in and wiped it out.  But there was only one temple, but wherever there was a small colony of Jews, wherever there was a handful of Jewish men, they could start a synagogue.  And so they were every place, and they were the platform for Jesus, and they were the platform for the apostle Paul.

By the way, the temple was not a place for teaching, and the temple was not a place for preaching, unless like Jesus you happened to stand up in there and take off.  The temple was a place for offering sacrifice and making offerings.  But the synagogue was a place of teaching and preaching.  It was essentially a preaching/teaching place.  In fact, the church today pretty well has modeled its patterns after the synagogue.  Now we still have Jewish synagogues with us.  There’s one right down the street, only now they call it a – What? – a temple. But it isn’t, because there’s no blood sacrifice being offered there.  It’s simply a synagogue, a gathering place.

MacArthur describes how Jesus made use of the synagogues for His teaching:

Well, Jesus took advantage of the opportunity for any dignitary, any visiting rabbi or teacher, to have the opportunity to speak.  And so Jesus would go in the synagogue and He would teach – Why? – because this would reach the heart of Israel.  Listen, the most zealous people for God were in the synagogue.  That’s where you’d find the true hearts, if there were any in Israel.  That’s where the remnant would be, wouldn’t they?  They’d be there worshiping the true God in the best way they knew how. So Jesus went where they would listen to Him, where they would hear Him – the synagogue.  And He would go in, and He would teach the Scripture.  That was His pattern – to open the Scripture, to give exposition.  This is exactly what He did throughout the pattern of His ministry.  Even when He was in Nazareth He broke open His whole ministry by doing an exposition on an Old Testament scripture that referred to Him.  Even in the Sermon on the Mount He kept referring, “You have heard it said, and the Scripture says, and I say,” and He’d take off from there, either from a scripture of God’s authorship or from some ancient tradition that they had held to. Jesus would move off from there to do the exposition and turn the whole thing to Himself.

And so Jesus was teaching in the synagogues.  By the way, the word didask has to do with didactic, instructive relating of truth.  The word concentrates on the passing of information.  The word emphasizes the content, the passing on of information.  That’s what Jesus did.  And by the way, His method, I’m quite confident, was expository, taking the text and out of it teaching the principles.  I really believe this is the greatest way to preach and teach the Word of God.

Proclaiming, MacArthur notes, is different to teaching:

Secondly, it says in verse 23, “Not only was He teaching in their synagogue, but He was also preaching the gospel of the kingdom.”  Now this is a different word – kruss – and it means “to proclaim,” and it concentrates not so much on the didactic method, the relating of truth, the content, as it does on the very voice, the very style of proclamation. And it simply means “He heralded it out,” “He cried out.”  Often about Jesus you see the word ekraxan, “he cried out.” That’s preaching.  Teaching is where there is the careful, instructive relating of content.  It’s kind of from the mind to the mind.  Preaching is the crying out, the impassioned cry of Jesus Christ to the people.  And there it wasn’t so much in the synagogues, although He did both there as well, and the two are mixed up in His ministry so you can’t separate ’em.  There was never teaching without preaching, and there was never preaching without teaching, but the preaching is the crying out.  It is the heralding of the gospel.

Some have said preaching is the heralding of the gospel and teaching is the explaining of the gospel that’s been heralded.  Jesus did both – preaching, making a public announcement.  William Hendrickson, who’s a great commentator, says this:  “Between preaching and teaching there is a difference.  Though it is true that good preaching is also teaching, the emphasis is nevertheless not the same.  Preaching means proclamation.  Teaching, on the other hand, indicates imparting more detailed information regarding the proclamation that was made,” end quote.  That’s the idea.

… The proclamation is what is called the krugma, and the teaching is what is called the didach.  You may see those terms sometime in your reading, and there’s never any good krugma without didach.  It doesn’t do any good to proclaim something if you don’t explain what it is.

MacArthur points out that Jesus avoided teaching about the socio-political issues of the day. He focused only on the kingdom of God:

Look at it in verse 23, the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom.  This is what He was always talking about, always.  He was always talking about this.  In fact in Acts chapter 1, after He had risen from the dead, until He ascended, He had 40 days with His disciples, and it says in verse 2 of Acts 1, “Until the day in which he was taken up after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments unto the apostles whom he’d chosen: to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs” – now watch this – “being seen by them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”

From the time He began His ministry in Matthew right here, to the time that He was silenced in His ascension, He never spoke of anything other than the kingdom of God.  He never got dragged into social issues that were unrelated; He never got dragged into politics, into revolutions, into economics – He spoke of the kingdom of God.  And it’s a great pattern.  I feel in my heart I need to follow that kind of pattern.  Sometimes people ask me why I don’t say things about this and that and the other thing, and I guess maybe it’s because Jesus, until He was taken up, spoke to them the things concerning the kingdom of God. And if that was His priority, then that’s going to be my priority.

Jesus began His ministry gently by speaking of the good news of the Gospel: repent and be saved. As He neared the end of His ministry, however, He began to pass righteous judgement on wilful unbelief:

… first of all, the word “gospel” means something simple, good news, good news.  It’s good news and the world is full of bad news – Isn’t it? – all bad news.  This is the only good news, really good news.  The teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ was filled with good news.  You know something interesting?  Listen to this: John the Baptist’s preaching is never called good news, never.

Now maybe it was good news, and maybe it might have been called good news, but it never is.  I began to think about why.  Perhaps it is because the note of judgment is so strong, the ax is laid at the root, the winnowing fan is moving, the fire is consuming, and John fired out so much judgment and so much condemnation and cried for such repentance that maybe his message was too strong to win the gracious title “good news.”  But it really was good news, wasn’t it?  It’s kind of like the deal you’ve gotta have bad news before you get good news. But I think the reason John’s is never called good news is because there never really was good news until Jesus arrived.  There never really was any good news until Jesus came.  And it is Jesus who is said to preach the good news.  John was saying, “Get right, repent, get ready, and avoid judgment.”  And then Jesus came along and gave the other side of it, and come to Me and I’ll take you to heaven.  That was the good news.

After the Messiah had encountered more and more of the hypocrisy and more and more of the hostility of the hierarchy of Israel, His preaching became even more stern than John’s.  You know that?  But at the very beginning there was no strong word of condemnation.  Jesus didn’t come saying there’s going to be an ax, and there’s going to be a winnowing fan, and there’s going to be a fire consuming you.  You don’t hear that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  That comes later.  It was just the good news.  And what is the good news? – the kingdom, the kingdom.  That God is going to establish His rule.  That we can be a part of God’s dominion, that as Paul said we can be translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son, that our sins can be forgiven.  Listen, the gospel of the kingdom is the same gospel preached today.  It’s just the message of salvation.

The good news is this: God has a kingdom; He wants you to be a citizen; here’s how.  That’s the good news.  Oh, it has all kinds of ramifications, as we’ll see as we go through Matthew.  But it’s the good news of salvation because that’s the way you get in His kingdom.  Once you’re in it has all kinds of features.  There is the element of the kingdom now in us in the Holy Spirit.  There is the element of the millennial kingdom for a thousand years on earth.  There is the element of the eternal kingdom and glory in the new heaven and the new earth forever with God.  It has different facets and wondrous things that we’re gonna see, but for now all we need to know is that the good news is that God has a kingdom and you can be in it.  You can be a part of it.  That’s good news.

I’ll tell you the alternative is pretty sad, isn’t it?  These people had long had a weariness of being in the kingdom of Rome, before that the kingdom of the Greeks, before that the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, before that the Babylonians.  And even when they tried to do it on their own with their own kings, it was nothing but debauchery and evil.  And the very fact that there could be a kingdom with God was what they had longed for.  This was good news.  Jesus was saying, there’s a way to escape.  There’s good news, there’s a kingdom, and the good news is you can be a part of that kingdom.  How?  What is that good news that gets you into the kingdom?  First Corinthians, chapter 15 and verse 1, tells us.  Here’s the gospel which I preach to you – listen – “For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received” – here comes the good news – “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures…that He was buried…that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”  That’s the gospel, folks.

The good news is this: Jesus died for you.  He rose for you.  Your sin is paid for.  Your eternal life is purchased, and you can be in God’s kingdom.  That’s good news, isn’t it?  And that’s what Jesus came preaching and teaching.  The plan of salvation is the good news.  Oh, He didn’t cover all the ground early on here.  He just simply announced, “I’ve got good news.  God has a kingdom for you.  God has a kingdom for you.”  In fact it would have been an earthly kingdom if they had believed, wouldn’t it?  If they had accepted Jesus as their Messiah, and they’d have been saved there, and the nation Israel had repented, and come to Christ, their kingdom would have been right then and there. 

It should be noted that everyone who heard Jesus understood the powerful accuracy of His teaching and preaching:

The words that He preached; “no man” – the officers had it right – “ever spoke like that man spoke.”  His words about the kingdom for three years went across the land of Israel.  They should have known.  It should have been obvious.  To some it was.  Listen to Luke 4, verse 22, “And all bore him witness.” This was when He was preaching in Nazareth.  And by the way, He did an exposition of an Isaiah passage; took Isaiah and just cracked it open for them.  Isaiah 61 – preached a sermon off of that text, and then they listened, and finally, in verse 22, they “bore him witness, and wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’”  I mean, “these words coming from this guy who grew up in our town, the son of a carpenter.”  Verse 31, “And he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and he taught them on the sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.”  And in verse 36, they said, “What a word is this!”

In Matthew chapter 24, I think it’s verse 35, He said this: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”  He spoke an eternal word, a powerful word, like no one ever spoke.  They could never confound Him in His words. They could never trap Him in His words. They could never stump Him in His words. They were literally devastated by His words.  They were so powerful that they were literally thrown down in their own tracks when they tried to encounter Him and catch Him in His words.

I pray that John MacArthur’s exposition on our Lord’s preaching and teaching bring His words to life for us, if they have not done so already.