“And go quickly, and tell his disciples, ‘He is risen from the dead, and lo, he goes before you into Galilee. There will you see him.' Lo, I have told you.”
The angel than tells the women that they are to go with all speed and inform the disciples that Jesus is risen from the dead and that He will go before them into Galilee where they will see Him. He wants His appearances to them to be free from the trammels of the old Jerusalem. They must speed joyously on their way (as the Magi speeded joyously to Bethlehem) knowing that He will be there before them. ‘Goes before' indicates, not that He will lead them, but that He will go ahead, like a shepherd might leave his flocks with under-shepherds and go before them in order to ensure that the way ahead is catered for. And there, He assures them, He will see them.
‘Lo, I have told you.” In other words, ‘I have now passed on the message that I was sent to give, and my responsibility is now at an end.'
In the light of Luke's and John's narratives this whole verse contains a remarkable statement, for we all know that Jesus actually first appeared to His disciples in Jerusalem, although John does then speak of an appearance in Galilee (John 21). Matthew on the other hand only and quite deliberately details Jesus' appearance to the disciples in Galilee. Furthermore there would be no purpose in the words we find here if Jesus had not wanted them to see that as His intention.
The first idea that we can quickly dismiss is that Matthew did not know about the other resurrection appearances. Those were so well known that Paul could delineate them in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 in a way which showed that he expected a general knowledge of them, and that as far away as Corinth. They would necessarily be meat and drink to the early church. Matthew was far too close to Jerusalem, and too much in the hub of things, not to be aware of what had happened there. He would after all have been rubbing shoulders day by day with people who remembered it vividly from the earliest days. He was not an unknown, living in a remote backwater far from Jerusalem.
The only possible genuine explanation, apart from that of an unseemly parochialism which fits ill with the remainder of the Gospel, is that he firmly believed that the appearance in Galilee which he describes, was the crucial one originally intended by Jesus, and that the others were only preliminary, and were actually the result of the disobedience and unresponsiveness of the disciples because of their lack of belief. In other words that Jesus' original intention was that He would appear to them in Galilee, and that that was only thwarted by their remaining in Jerusalem. Unless the angel was mistaken this must have been so. This view also appears to have been held by Mark 16:7 (and therefore by Peter). Had they believed they would immediately have set out for Galilee on hearing the news from the women. It was because they did not do so that Jesus appeared to them in Jerusalem. Once again the disciples had let Him down.
(It is true, of course, that this raises the old question of sovereignty and foreknowledge, but we cannot work on that basis. From that point of view everything that happens is ‘within God's will'. But that does not exclude the fact of man's responsibility for his constant disobedience. The truth is that the same disciples who failed Him in the Garden, also failed Him initially in their response to His resurrection. It is a further indication of how grace in the end triumphed over weakness).
The great importance of this, and the reason why Matthew insists on sticking to what was anticipated in the original plan, is that it indicates (and indicated to his Jewish Christian readers) that Jerusalem was not intended by God to be seen as the source of the new Israel, and the centre to which all should look. That source (if there was to be a source, see John 4:21-22, and note that no indication is given in Matthew of the exact whereabouts of the mountain) was rather to be seen as Galilee where Jesus had walked and preached, and where the great light had first shone (Matthew 4:16). The new Israel was to be free from the ties of old Jerusalem and rather be connected with the heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:22-31; Hebrews 12:22). It was to be remembered that Jesus was a Galilean, a Nazarene. He was not to be seen as an extension of Jerusalem, and what Jerusalem now stood for, but as One Who was meek and lowly in heart with a message freed from Jerusalem's ties. Compare how after His birth and exile He returned not to Jerusalem but to Galilee (Matthew 2:22-23). That Galilee was to be seen as the source of light had been long planned (Matthew 4:16; compare Isaiah 9:2).
It is true that Jerusalem was indeed to be the place from which God's instruction would flow out (Isaiah 2:2-4), but once that had been accomplished Jerusalem was to be put aside. Luke brings out the same message, in a different way, in Acts. For Jerusalem finally rejects the Apostles (Acts 12) and Paul (Acts 21:30), even though for a while they would still meet in Jerusalem (Acts 15). And God finally seals it by the openly declared destruction of Jerusalem.
Even today many Christians cannot get away from the clutches of Jerusalem and they thus make it central in their prophetic schemes. It is, however, time that we consigned the earthly Jerusalem religiously speaking to where God consigned it, to the dust, while the idea of it as found in prophecy should be consigned, again where God consigned it, to Heaven (Galatians 4:22-31; Hebrews 12:22). But those who cling on to the old Jerusalem are a reminder to us of how God carries on His work despite our stumbling and our failing which often bring such harm on the work of God. We all cling on to cherished ideas which misinterpret Scripture. It is true that out of the new chaos He produces the new creation. But the suffering often resulting from such disobedience continues.