A Few Thoughts About the Gospel of Matthew

Notes

B1 Basically there are two parts.

C1 Part 1 has the Lord Jesus teaching all the people.

C2 Part 2 has the Lord Jesus emphasizing teaching the 12 Apostles.

B2 The Gospel (Good News) has been given recording the earthly life and teaching of the Messiah—Jesus (Yeshua).

B3 Little is given of his life before beginning His ministry.

B4 His genealogy is given to establish His credentials as a Jew. The rest of the Gospel is His ministry.

B5 He taught the true Law. He interprets it correctly which reveals that the teaching of the religious leaders had been corrupted.

B6 Matthew shows through prophecy and miracles that Jesus is Messiah. Jesus does many, even raising the dead. These are not false signs and wonders that might originate with God’s enemies (satan and evil people).

B7 At first, Jesus is widely accepted by the common people but not the leaders. When the people realize that He is not a conquering King but a suffering Messiah, they largely rejected Him and wanted Him dead. Their solution to problems is the death penalty.

C1 Messiah is prophesied in two comings—one as the suffering Messiah and the other as the conquering Messiah.

C2 Suffering Messiah (conquering death and sin): Isaiah 52:13-53:6 NLT See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. 14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. 15 And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about. Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the LORD's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected--a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. 4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.

C2 Conquering Messiah is coming

D1 He conquers those who rebel against God

D2 He comes as the King of the Universe

D3 He comes to rescue Israel at the end of the Tribulation: Zechariah 14:1-4 NIV A day of the LORD is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south.

B8 His sermons teach the character traits of God and the kingdom of God and its laws.

B9 Jesus teaches in parables because the people have rejected and refused to believe His first messages to repent. They did not believe The Light, so God will still tell them things of the Kingdom but in the style of parables. The Lord still taught them, but parables are punishment for rejecting plain truth.

C1 John 5:40 NIV yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

C2 Hebrews 12:25 NIV See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 

C3 Matthew 12:41-42 NLT The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here--but you refuse to repent. The queen of Sheba will also stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here--but you refuse to listen.

C4 Matthew 12:41-42 NLT The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here--but you refuse to repent. The queen of Sheba will also stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here—but you refuse to listen.

B10 Chapter 24-25 deals mainly with prophecy during the Tribulation. Most of it has not happened. These are not signs of the Rapture.

B11 His is successful in His role as Redeemer.

C1 He predicts it: Matthew 26:2 NLT As you know, Passover begins in two days, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.

C2 He initiates the New Covenant.

D1 With Israel:

E1 Ezekiel 37:26 NLT And I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant. I will give them their land and increase their numbers, and I will put my Temple among them forever.

E2 Jeremiah 31:31-33 NLT The day is coming," says the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife," says the LORD. "But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the LORD. "I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

E3 Jeremiah 32:40 NLT And I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good for them. I will put a desire in their hearts to worship me, and they will never leave me.

D2 With Christians: Matthew 26:27-29 PickNT And taking the cup and giving thanks He gave it to them saying: "Drink of it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood, that of the new covenant, that which is being shed on behalf of many for forgiveness of sins. 29 Furthermore, I tell you that I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

E1 It is correct to read “New Covenant.”

E2 Wilbur Pickering in his translation notes writes: Here, and in Mark 14:24, perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of inferior quality, omit 'new' (as in the NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.). The original reading, as also in Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25, is new covenant.

D3 The relationship between the New Covenant (Matthew 26:28), the Church (Christians), and Israel (Jews): Rodney Decker is quoted by Tommy Ice: The New Covenant, prophesied in the Old Testament to be made with Israel, was ratified at the Cross and implemented as a replacement of the Mosaic Covenant. It is presently the basis on which anyone relates to God and it governs the life of all believers. The church, though not a formal partner of the New Covenant, participates in the covenant both as a subject of its rule of life and as a recipient of promised Abrahamic Covenant blessings for Gentiles that have come through the Seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ. 

C3 He dies suffering for sins, paying the penalty for our sins, and shedding His blood for our sins:

D1 Matthew 27:46, 50 NKJV And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" ... And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.

D2 Colossians 1:13-14 PickNT who delivered us out of the dominion of the darkness13 and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have the redemption through His blood,14 the forgiveness of our sins. (Pickering has this textual note: Through His blood" is omitted in some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, but the 60% include the best line of transmission. Without the shed blood of God's Lamb, we would have neither redemption nor forgiveness. Praise God for the Blood).

C4 He is buried: Matthew 27:59-60 NKJV When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed.

C5 He is risen: Matthew 28:5-6 NKJV But the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. "He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

C6 His success

D1 Hebrews 7:25 CSB Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them. 

D2 Hebrews 9:11-14 CSB But Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. In the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), he entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God? 

Matthew 28:18-20 WEL Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. 19 “Therefore, go, disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 20 “Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and lo, I am always with you even to the end of the world.” Amen.