The Gospel of Matthew: Overview | Whiteboard Bible Study

hi I'm Jeffrey and right now we're going to look at what the Gospel of Matthew is all about now the Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and if you're familiar with the Bible then you know that the Bible is divided into two large sections there's the Old Testament and that looks at the relationship between God and Israel and then there's the New Testament which focuses on Jesus and his followers Matthew was the first book of the New Testament and it's really the best possible first book for the New Testament to follow all those Old Testament Scriptures and we'll see why in just a minute but first who is Matthew well Matthew was one of the twelve followers of Jesus and he is traditionally the author of the gospel that holds his name the book itself the book of matthew is technically anonymous there's no point in the story where the author says my name is Matthew and I wrote this story that doesn't happen but church tradition has been pretty consistent in saying Matthew the follower of Jesus wrote this book so that's why we call it Matthew now Matthew was a tax collector we meet him in the book of Matthew and so his job was to collect taxes from people not the most popular occupation for someone in in Israel at his time he's one of the twelve those that close group of followers that stuck with Jesus and plays a role in both Matthew's Gospel and the other books of the New Testament another thing that we should know about Matthew is he was a literary genius because he has put together this wonderful wonderful piece of literature which we're gonna dive into in just a minute but why did he make all this it's good for us to know by analyzing the Gospel of Matthew and seeing what are the themes that he brings up and position his his stories and his gospel we can see that he has a few aims in in making this gospel so he wants to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament this is a reason why Matthew is such a great book to follow the Old Testament because he weaves together this story of a man named Jesus who is greater than all the other heroes of the Old Testament the Jewish Scriptures and he wants to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of those and he's greater than the Old Testament heroes he also wants to harmonize Jesus teachings with the Old Testament Jesus had some teachings that didn't sit very well with the experts of the scriptures in Jesus day but and the church after after Jesus dies and rises again Jesus followers struggle for decades afterwards with the problem of okay so do we how closely do we need to adhere to the old Jewish religious laws and rules and you know how do we how do we fit the teachings of Jesus and his followers into that matthew wants to harmonize of the two he says Jesus teachings are vital they're important they're they're the most important but it doesn't mean that we need to throw out the Old Testament which is a third aim he wants to elevate Jesus teachings by the end of this gospel we're seeing Jesus say go and teach everyone around the world my commandments teach them to observe what I taught as opposed to get everyone to follow the old Jewish law super important and then he wants to show that Jesus is the king of the Jews and the savior of all people well whether they're Jewish or not the Jews were anticipating a coming messianic king someone who is going to lead them throw off all of their oppressors and rule Israel in peace and justice and lead the nations in peace and justice as well and Matthew is saying Jesus is the Messiah but he doesn't necessarily look like how the people expected at his time so that's a little bit of context for who Matthew was and why he wrote this let's look at what he wrote now the book of Matthew can be divided into a couple pretty clear sections you have a prologue or an infancy narrative or a nativity story during the first two chapters and that sets up a lot of the big themes that we're going to be seeing throughout the book of Matthew and then you also have some of those themes really solidly tied together in the end this is where we have the climax or the passion narrative and this is this is when Jesus's ministry comes to this this high point in which Jesus surprisingly dies and then even more surprisingly rises again and tells his disciples what to do about it but in the middle the book of Matthew is positioned around five major blocks of Jesus teaching and there's some narrative leading up to these these blocks of teaching and scholars will call these teaching chunks discourses so you have five major discourses and then stories surrounding them that the T up these the the T Jesus up to make these these teachings so let's jump in and see exactly what's going on in the book of Matthew when we open with a prologue Matthew says right off the top chapter one verse one Jesus is the Messiah and then he also says Jesus is the son of David David was the greatest of Israel's Kings he was a legendary king almost like almost like a King Arthur for the for the Jews of that time he also says that jesus is the son of Abraham and Abraham was an Old Testament hero long long long before David to whom God made a special promise he said Abraham through you I will bless all the nations of the world and then he also says that Jesus is Emmanuel He is God with us which is really important when we when we look at what Jesus does and what Jesus continues to do he presents Jesus as the culmination of Scripture he says that you know he goes into this long genealogy where he says if there was Abraham and then there was Isaac and then there was Jacob and there were all these names it's a long list of names and he says they're all leading up to Jesus and he's very very clever with this list of names because he weaves in themes of prophets and and the Psalms and even Gentiles he he brings up a lot of a couple people who were not Jews but were part of Jesus lineage so he shows that Jesus is the culmination of the Jewish Scriptures and he's also for the Gentiles too and we see that further when even the even the Gentiles from a long ways away the wise men or the Magi travel a great distance to worship a king of the Jews who had just been born now a little bit on that note Jesus is a lot like David he's presented as a new and greater David in the Gospel of Matthew he is the king of the Jews born in Bethlehem and he's also a bit like Moses because when the wise men when those Magi seek this king of the Jews that was born the existing king who is ruling that area of the world says I don't really like this idea of being this promised a new king so I am going to kill all the baby boys and that should solve the problem well that's a lot like what happened a long time ago in the book of Exodus when the the Pharaoh of Egypt said there are way too many Hebrew people in my land and they're getting too powerful so to keep them from having an uprising I'm just gonna kill all the baby boys and that should solve the problem well it doesn't because for Pharaoh one boy escapes and his name is Moses and for Herod the evil King in the book of Matthew one boy escapes and it's Jesus Jesus is like Moses in that he escapes a king trying to kill him and he goes on to be a lot like Moses in the book of Matthew in that he delivers a lot of teaching and Moses was the chief teacher he's the he was the lawgiver for the Jews and Moses is Moses is a prophet that has five books of the Old Testament associated with him the Torah and here in the book of Matthew Jesus has five big discourses his own teachings associated with Jesus so interesting good literary work Matthew and so we have at the end of the prologue we get this idea of Jesus is the king of the Jews and so we have Jesus Kingdom versus the kingdoms of the world Herod and the Jews who are with Herod are working together to kill Jesus and Jesus is the rightful king of the Jews so we have some conflict between the kingdom that Jesus is bringing and the way kingdoms work in the world of Jesus day now let's look at the narratives and teachings in Matthew what we have is five major chunks that take up the majority of the book of Matthew and they deal very closely with the theme of dis sight ship what does it mean to follow the teachings of Jesus and so in the first little book of Matthew we have God endorsing Jesus and then Satan tempts Jesus but Jesus overcomes Satan and people follow him which has Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount the Sermon on the Mount is a speech about what it truly means to follow Jesus next up we have this book of miracles we have a set of three miracles set of three miracles and then a third set of three miracles three threes and in between those sets we have small stories in which Jesus talks about what does it mean to be a disciple and this all leads up to Jesus sending the twelve disciples out to the rest of the Jews to be missionaries so that brings us to book number three where Jesus starts coming into some conflict with people not not all the people of not all the Jewish leaders are on board with this guy Jesus and there are some other folks that have questions about him so you have a bunch of people confronting Jesus and Jesus rebukes that opposition but this is where in the in the middle of this set of five we see a bit of a pivot happening we have Jesus withdrawing from these large groups of people that are opposing him and spending more time with the disciples he physically withdraws into a house so there there are disciples inside the house and there are crowds outside that are trying to listen to him he says my true family is my followers but he also withdraws at an intellectual level at in some ways because instead of direct teaching that the crowds got in the Sermon on the Mount we start getting parables and so he's he's withdrawing a bit into more riddle --is-- territory this brings us into book number four and a big theme in book number four is faith you have people people receiving miracles based on their faith alone there's even one woman who is not Jewish who receives a miracle from Jesus just because she believes he can do it it's a really powerful story and we also look at the disciples lack of faith and really the and also the disciples faith in Jesus we see the faith of the people of Israel and a lot of it comes down to who they believe Jesus is Peter has a revelation and says Jesus you are the Christ the Son of the Living God and in this book we see a lot of Peter this is where Jesus starts to talk about the future of his kingdom which is the church and so we see we see Peter rising in prominence and then we get this teaching on what it means to be great in the kingdom and it's very different from the way greatness works in the kingdoms of Earth whereas in the kingdoms of Earth people have this power struggle where they're trying to they're trying to seize as much power for themselves and be as great as possible Jesus says no this is not how this kingdom works we serve each other we look out for the weakest members of this kingdom we forgive each other and so that's what that discourse is about book number five we start seeing some power struggles within Jesus group we have different different disciples saying so you know I want to be the greatest or you know so two disciples mom it comes to Jesus and says hey can my sons sit on your right and left in your kingdom pretty bold move and then we also have hypocrites confronting Jesus these are Jewish religious leaders who are saying you know we're the ones that that are in really good standing with God Jesus is not they Matthew sets them up as people who say what's right and don't do what's right and whenever they do what's right they're only doing it for show so they're hypocrites and that's when we get the fifth big teaching where Jesus talks about the coming judgement in the kingdom when he when he comes with with his kingdom when his kingdom is fully realized and there will be a day of judgment a day of reckoning and then this leads us into the climax the passion narrative in the the last few chapters of Matthew so Jesus sets up a new covenant like Moses he leads the disciples in a celebration of Passover and Passover was a feast that the Israelites first celebrated when Moses was leading them out of Egypt to the promised land Jesus does this but whereas in the first Passover the people had to slaughter a lamb as a sacrifice to protect them from the coming plague in Egypt Jesus is the sacrifice Jesus is the one who dies at the hands of the Jews and the Roman Empire so big surprise Jesus is the sacrifice not like Moses but even bigger surprise Jesus rises again and after he rises again he comes to the disciples and he gives the the clothes to the book of Matthew which is known in the church today as the Great Commission and so this great commission ties together a lot of the themes that we saw at the beginning in this opening prologue Jesus says all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth so go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all my commands and I am with you always even to the end that statement has a lot of really interesting callbacks because Jesus says all authority is given well Dave he is the son of David but that's a lot more authority than David ever had David was a really strong King Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth God promised that through Abraham all the nations would be blessed and Jesus says go and make disciples find followers of me from all nations so all the nations will be blessed Moses gave people the law and important teachings Jesus gave people five really sets of teaching and you know there's more of Jesus teaching in the rest of the New Testament Jesus says teach them to observe my commands and so he's saying these are my teachings now take take my teachings to the world he is greater than Moses and then I am with you always which is a wonderful way to close it references the opening where Jesus is the Messiah and he's Emmanuel God with us he was with us in in the book of Matthew as he made disciples and taught us and he is with us always even to the end even now so there you have it that's the book of Matthew and that's what it's all about

Channel: OverviewBible

Views: 105,897

Rating: 4.9174852 out of 5

Keywords: gospel, matthew, bible study, new testament, bible, sermon on the mount, great commission, jesus, christianity

Id: 39BUvmddfjU

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018