Very good to be with you all this morning. We are now coming in our study of the scriptures, our study of being people of the book, to the exciting time where we transition from the old covenant to the new covenant. So I have the privilege to talk about the first book of the New Testament as it appears to us, the gospel according to Matthew. So we only have an hour to discuss this gospel, and as with many of the books, you just really can't do justice to that in that amount of time. So that's not my goal this morning. My goal is not to exhaustively, comprehensively present the book to you or all of its meaning and message. If you're looking for that, you're going to be disappointed. The purpose of our time is that we might be better readers of the Book of Matthew as we read it on our own, as we hear it read, as we come to hear preaching on it, as by God's providence we are right now. My goal is just to give us some help in approaching the Book of Matthew. You see up on the screen the suggested verse for memory that's also written on the handout that I've given to you all there in the back. And it is, Jesus said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And this verse I think is of many verses we could have selected for memory. This is perhaps one of the verses that I think is near the heart of the book of Matthew, and that is because The response of Peter is the good confession that he hopes that all of his readers will make as they read the book. So that is the verse that I commend to you for memory to help open this book of Matthew to you. But before we begin, let's open in a word of prayer. Our Father, in many ways and by many men, you have spoken through the prophets. But now, in this time, you have spoken to us through your son. We thank you that our Bible does not end at Malachi, but that we have a glorious, wondrous New Testament that is open before us. And we give you praise that the story, which is largely meaningless and lacking fulfillment, you have brought to completion, and that in our day, we get to rejoice in the fruits and see the fulfillment of your great salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. We look forward to opening this in the weeks to come, Lord, but I pray for your help that as we turn our attention to the book of Matthew, that you would speak through your word to us, that you would be exalted in the minds of teacher and hearer alike. And we ask this in Jesus' name and for your glory. Amen. Well, we are beginning with the gospel according to Matthew this morning, but I felt it would be appropriate just to give a very brief general overview of what is a gospel. Just the question, not taking that for granted. What is a gospel? The word euangelion is the Greek word. This has several different usages. Sometimes it's not really clear what do people mean when they use the word gospel. In our day it could be gospel music, it could be the gospel, or it could be the gospel according to Matthew. Well this also had a usage in the older Greek as well. So this comment from Burkoff is helpful. In the older Greek authors, the word euangelion, or gospel, signified a reward for bringing good tidings. Also, a thank offering for good tidings brought. And in later Greek, it became to be called as the actual news itself. It indicated the news itself and not just the reward for the messenger. And finally, it was employed to denote the books in which the gospel of Jesus Christ is presented in historic form. That's what we have before us this morning. Just more description of what is a gospel. It's a unique form of literature. We think of it as historical books, but there are some unique elements to a gospel that makes it unique even among historical books. It is first and foremost good news. It is the wonderful answer to all the questions that the Old Testament raises for us. It is good news. It's based upon eyewitness testimony, as all the historical works in the Bible are. It is true historical narrative centered around Jesus Christ, his teaching, and his death and resurrection. It's not comprehensive biography and this is where perhaps some modern readers are a little bit confused by the Gospels and their presentation. It's not comprehensive as though we would pick up a biography on George Washington where it deals with every single facet of his life and how it developed into the things he did throughout his life. Those are usually what characterize modern biographies. It's not a comprehensive biography. It is arranged somewhat topically, and this is important, it's not 100% chronological. So there are some events in the Gospels that seem to be recorded as though they are occurring at different times, perhaps the same event. And that's a question as it comes to certain events such as the clearing of the temple. When did that occur toward the beginning or the end of Jesus' life or did it occur twice? This is some of the questions that New Testament scholars raise. But what's important for our purposes is that not everything you read in the Gospels is necessarily chronological. And that's not a problem. That might be a problem for modern biographers, modern readers, but that's not a problem for the New Testament writers and shouldn't be for us either as we look at the book. It also assumes, this is very important, it assumes familiarity with the Old Testament, especially the book of Matthew, which as we'll see was probably written to early Jewish Christians. But this is not to say that it doesn't say anything at all to those who are not familiar with their Old Testament. If you close your Old Testament and just read the gospel, you're missing so much of the glorious nature. There's so much that the gospel writers assume that we know from the Old Testament that will be open for us as we are familiar with our Old Testaments. Those are just some of the characteristics. Burkoff sums this up. The gospels are not histories, and he doesn't mean they're not historical. He just means they're not historical biographies. They're not histories as though they're comprehensive histories of the life of Christ, nor do they, taken together, form one history. But what are they if they are neither biographies nor histories? They are four pen pictures, or better, a fourfold portraiture of the Savior, a fourfold witness regarding our Lord. Each one of them gives us a certain view of the Lord, and only the four taken together present to us his perfect likeness, revealing him as the Savior of the world. So, Berkhoff's not saying, again, that they're not historical. He's just saying they're not comprehensive, but they are fourfold portraits of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then, I just want to point out, perhaps many of you are familiar with this language, but there are what we call the synoptic gospels, which just is the combination of two Greek words, which just basically means similar. They're similar in structure, they're similar in many of the sayings that are included there, and many of the ways the material is laid out. But there are some differences even among those. The synoptics are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And then John really sort of stands out on its own. It doesn't follow the same geographic pattern, for example. All the synoptics really have the introduction to Jesus' ministry, perhaps birth narratives, and then they move to Jesus' ministry in Galilee, and they culminate in his ministry in Jerusalem. All the synoptics read like that. John is different because John shows that actually Jesus was visiting Jerusalem quite often throughout his life, just as many obedient Jews were doing. So there's just a different way they present the details, but the synoptics have perhaps a lot more in common than the book of John in terms of the structure. Just briefly, the question, why are there four gospels? Perhaps you've never thought of this. I think this is an interesting question. We can't answer this completely with certainty, but there are some helpful things that perhaps we can glean from this question. Many scholars have attempted to answer this question. I think we can say there are some general reasons which we can identify from the text themselves that are as to the unique purpose of each gospel. And I think Burkoff is helpful here as well. He says, Matthew wrote for the Jews, early Jewish Christians, and characterized Christ as the great king of the house of David. I think that's largely a summary of the purpose of the book. And we'll talk more about that as it pertains to Matthew in a moment. Mark composed his gospel for the Romans and pictured the Savior as the mighty worker, triumphing over sin and evil. And Luke, in writing his gospel, had in mind the needs of the Greeks and portrayed Christ as the perfect man, the universal savior. John, composing his gospel for those who already had a saving knowledge of the Lord and stood in need of a more profound understanding of the essential character of Jesus, emphasized the divinity of Christ, the glory that was manifested in his works. And I just want to commend to you, I don't know if he's right about everything, I find this very interesting. This is David Alan Black's Why Four Gospels, he asked that question directly. He has some very interesting things in here. Again, some of them perhaps are speculation based on what we know about the New Testament books and perhaps some inferences that we make. But I just want to commend this to you. It's not a very long book. little, maybe less than 100 pages, but it's very interesting. What it does is it, while it may not be correct in all the things that it says, it gets you thinking about the relation of the Gospels to one another with the data that we know, not some scholarly consensus out there somewhere in modern scholars. but actually kind of gets at what do we know from the text and try to reconstruct sort of the environment that these Gospels, it kind of opens up to us perhaps some of the meaning of the Gospels that we've not thought about in that way before. So I commend this to you. But his thesis is really to argue for the following development of the Gospel writers. And this is the order that they wrote their Gospels. So that was Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John. It's slightly different from the way it's ordered in our English Bibles, but this is his thesis. I share this just because I think this is helpful in kind of understanding the message of the Gospels and how they fit together. This is his thesis. Matthew was composed to meet the urgent needs of the primitive church of Jerusalem, to announce fulfillment of those passages of Holy Scripture from Moses and all the prophets. Luke 24, 27, to demonstrate that Jesus had literally fulfilled all the prophecies about the Messiah. And he says of Luke, Luke was written at the request of Paul to meet the urgent need of his Gentile churches to have their own manifesto, a presentation of the gospel nuanced to suit the mentality of the Hellenistic world. Of course, Luke was a traveling companion of Paul. According to Black, Mark was actually a series of could have been a series of homilies that Peter delivered in Rome and he utilized sections of both Matthew and Luke in his discourses and he has a lot of things that he brings out here to kind of base this claim. John's intention in supplementing the other gospels was to confirm and deepen the faith of his readers in Jesus as the consubstantial, same substance, Son of God, and thereby to ensure that by their faith they may obtain life. So is Black right in all that he says? I'm not sure, but I commend this to you just as a helpful work to perhaps consider. Moving on to Matthew specifically, first the title, author, and date of the gospel. Matthew does not name himself as the author, such as maybe Paul does in his epistles. He says Paul the apostle. Matthew does not give his name per se. But from the earliest days, the gospel has been circulated under the title according to Matthew. And there's really no reason to doubt that Matthew is the author of the gospel that has his name. Matthew was a tax collector called by Jesus to leave his occupation and follow him. You see the text there. He's acknowledged in all three gospels. All three tell the story. All three of the synoptics tell the story of Matthew's call from his tax collecting office. Except there's one key difference between those accounts. He was called Levi by Mark and Luke. And in his own gospel, he records his name as Matthew. But it's clear that that's the same person. He just had two names, like John Mark or Simon Peter. There were two names that Matthew was known by. Now, just a little bit about tax collectors. I think this is perhaps helpful. Tax collectors in the first century, perhaps some of you are familiar with this. I think it's helpful just to bear this in mind. Tax collectors, also some of your translations say publicans, that was the other name for a tax collector. They charged tolls and taxes on behalf of the Roman government. So imagine if we were occupied by a foreign agent, let's say Canada was over us and occupied the United States of America, and they hired some of our countrymen to collect taxes from us. Okay, and then the tax collectors would prepay their taxes, and then they'd have to make up whatever they had paid to Rome in collecting from their countrymen, and also make their living. So you could see the potential problems of having a foreign agent collecting taxes from us, the people who live in the land, and also charging a little bit extra for the sake of our services and perhaps sometimes a lot more. So that practice rose to a lot of corruption and greed and really tax collector in the time of the New Testament is just synonymous with greedy, profligate Gentile. It's about the worst kind of thing you could be called to be like a tax collector. And that's seen in a couple of places in the Gospels. That's what Matthew was prior to his call. There's no, as far as the dating, there's no clear date or specific reference point given in the text to give us a very tight date of when this was composed. We know it was composed prior to AD 70 based on the internal evidence. It seems like the temple is still standing. It seems like this is written to an early congregation for many reasons. There's even, I think, the great possibility that it's written very early and perhaps in the 50s AD. But it's definitely by 70 AD. Through 19th centuries, Matthew was almost unanimously considered to be the gospel that was written first. And that's the view that I hold. If you read modern commentaries, they almost unanimously now approve of that Mark wrote first. But I think we're safer on the tradition of that Matthew wrote first, what the church has believed through most of its history. But that's something you can look at your own if you're interested in that. As far as the setting and audience goes, you can see here the temple mount in Jesus' day there in that picture. The setting of Matthew, Judah is under Roman occupation. And there's a lot of things, we've just moved from Malachi to Matthew. There was a very nice tight development of the political, social, cultural development that was going on in the background through all those prophetic works that many of the men have pointed out to you. But now we've kind of gapped 400 years from the end of Malachi to Matthew. A lot has changed, and that's called the intertestamental period. We are not going to be discussing that, but I recommend that to you as a student of the scriptures to just have some kind of knowledge and just read a little bit about what happened in the intertestamental period. In a nutshell, Judah had been released and freed from Persia to build a temple. They were independent for some time, but now they have come under the occupation of the Romans. The Romans now occupy Judah, and they are subject to them, pay taxes to them, they're under their rulers. Rome appoints their own rulers, and this is the situation that Jesus is ministering into. Jerusalem and its temple had been enlarged by the Herods or the Idumeans, which someone had pointed out to me recently that that Idumean actually refers to Edomites. So I don't know a whole lot about that, but apparently the Herods were descendants of the Edomites who were really acting as king over Jerusalem and Judea at this time. They had enlarged the temple. what is called the Second Temple, if you read about this period of time, it's called the Second Temple period because it is the Second Temple that was started by Zerubbabel and was now enlarged to the present form that it was in under Herod. Sadducees are the party from which came the high priests, and this was really an aristocratic class, a priestly class, but The text sees them as liberals, really, and that's seen clearly through their denial of the resurrection and many other clear things which are alluded to. But they seem to be the aristocratic ruling class, but they're a very liberal class of Jews. The Pharisees are an influential party, though they don't have the same power, it appears, as the Sadducees. They are very influential among the people because they're seen as conservative. amongst people. They defend the resurrection of the body. And they also teach the law with great fervor. So they were those who taught the law and Jewish tradition, a class that had arisen sometime in the intertestamental period. So during this time, all that boils down to very high political and social tensions. And there's a lot of unrest that's not necessarily told to you as you pick up the book of Matthew. It doesn't give you a bio of all the terrible tension, but you can certainly see it. There are mention of zealots. One of Jesus' disciples was a zealot. Well, that was probably a class of people who wanted to overthrow the government and were taking measures to do that. to some extent. So there are zealots and there are people being crucified for sedition against Rome. Perhaps if you were a Jew making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem you probably would have seen a crucifixion along the highways on the way to Jerusalem perhaps. There were times I know in history where hundreds of Jews at one time were crucified for their role in conspiracies against Rome. This is all going on in the time of the Lord Jesus and not necessarily It's alluded to, but it's just helpful to know that basically Judea is really a ticking time bomb of tension as Jesus comes on the scene. And this is really obvious when you consider some elements of the text. Then there is, through all this, a very high anticipation of the Messiah, of the prophet. of the Son of David who is prophesied to come. And we see this in many places throughout the Gospels. I've only selected a few here. The first of them, Herod and all Jerusalem, Herod the Idumean, perhaps Edomite, is troubled Have you ever thought about that? The Magi come and they say, where is the one who's been born King of the Jews? These Gentiles come to Jerusalem and they say, where's the one born King of the Jews? We've seen a star and we want to worship him. And Herod and all Jerusalem are troubled, greatly troubled at this news that this prophesied Messiah has arisen and a star has appeared. They obviously have some anticipation, and Herod goes to his experts in the law and gets more information about this. There is an expectation there that there is this Messiah coming. And Herod and all of Jerusalem, we understand that to be perhaps the leaders of Jerusalem, are troubled that, oh, we've known this event is coming, and it's going to shake up our hold on power. So we want to put a stop to this. And of course, Herod then issues the decree to have all the young men or young babies killed. to try to intercede and stop this prophecy from coming true. Then we see in John's gospel, Andrew, after he encounters the Lord Jesus, he says, he first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which also means Christ. So there's anticipation there in Andrew. And the woman, this is a Samaritan woman, so not even a woman who's in who's properly Jewish in that sense, or who even reads the scriptures the same way. They had their own Pentateuch, their own version of it. Even she says, the woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming. You is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. There are many other examples of this, all the comments of the crowd. Is he the one that's to come? Is he the prophet? Is he the Messiah? So there's this great fervor to have a Messiah come on the scene. to deliver the Jews from this occupation, to deliver them from their tribulation, their humiliation, all that they've suffered from the exile all the way to the first century. This Messiah will come and he will restore us as owners of our land. He'll restore the Messianic office, which is king. Messianic just means anointed, which really just points back to Judah's kings. descendants of David. So they are looking for this king to come and deliver back to them the kingdom of Israel. This is behind a lot of what causes much of the sedition and execution of zealots as well. Just briefly about the structure and purpose, and then we'll move into some of the main themes. Now, I'm gonna give you an outline here of the book of Matthew that's also there on your paper. I picked this one because I thought it was fairly representative and also it was more concise in nature and more short, so I think that's helpful for that purpose. But this outline is arranged really geographically. Jesus' movement, his introduction, his movement to Galilee and then his movement to Jerusalem and all the things that happened there. There are other ways, I think, legitimate ways to outline the gospel. Some could take up like four or five pages, perhaps, but this one I think is very helpful. The first head here is the introduction to Jesus and his mission. That's from chapters 1 to 4. And that includes a prologue and genealogy. This also includes the birth narratives that really introduce us to who Jesus is. And even as you saw that text about the Herod and the wise men, what they knew him to be and all of those birth narratives really show his coming on the scene as the Messiah prophesied by scripture. He is the one who was prophesied by Hosea out of Egypt. I will call my son. And that's accomplished even through his fleeing to to Egypt from Herod's clutches. Then there's John the Baptist and Jesus teaching in the wilderness, chapters 3 to 4, or sorry, Jesus testing in the wilderness, chapters 3 to 4. Then you have his ministry in Galilee, chapters 4 to 18. There's kingdom proclamation. This is the second half of chapter 4 all the way through the end of chapter 7. This is largely the Sermon on the Mount. But it also has Jesus there in 4.12. That's where he begins his teaching ministry of the gospel of the kingdom, Matthew calls it. Then you have kingdom demonstration, and a lot of his miracles are done here and kind of clustered here from chapters 8 to 11. A lot of the miraculous things that he does is clustered in this section. So I think this is aptly described here as kingdom demonstration. And what he's doing in all those miracles is demonstrating that he has the sovereign power and authority not only over Israel, but over the whole world. He's the one that makes the winds and the waves stop. What sort of man is this who even has power over the sea? He has a lot larger claim than just Palestine. He has the whole world is his claim, and he has power and sovereign power over it all. So those miracles really show not just the news of his kingdom, but demonstrate his power and the power of his kingdom that has come among men. Then there is his identity, his church, rejection, and restoration. I've added there in italics something that I felt needed to be added to this outline. This is from Beal and Glad, by the way. You see the citation there. This is from chapters 11 to 18. And this includes, I added his identity and his church because I think it's perhaps at the heart of the book, where the identity of Christ is not just revealed to us, but it's confessed by the Apostle Peter in a way that I think is very, very important. And it's also where the transfiguration, you see the transfiguration in this section. where Jesus is revealed, the veil of humiliation is lifted just for a moment for the three apostles that are with him. He's flanked by Elijah and Moses, showing his identity. And then there's the confession by Peter. It's also a section where his church is discussed in quite a bit of space as well. He is building his church, which is his kingdom. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And he also discusses how the church is to deal with sin and restoring a sinner to the body and how to deal with discipline of a member. But there's also in this section a great deal of rejection of Christ. That marks the beginning of the section. where Christ is being rejected by the religious leaders, by others, by even his own family as well. And then restoration deals with sort of the back half of this section where there's a lot of instruction concerning forgiveness, restoring a man to the body of Christ, to the church, and so forth. So that's 11 through 18. Then 19 through 28 is Jesus' ministry in Judea and in Jerusalem. There is the triumphal entry, judgment on the temple prophesied, and the Olivet Discourse. And all of this is from chapters 19 to 25. I'll speak a little bit more on the Olivet Discourse just in a moment. Then there is the Last Supper and Betrayal, which is chapters 26 and 27, and the Crucifixion and Empty Tomb in 27 and 28. And we could add the Great Commission as well to that. So I think that's a helpful outline, summing up the text there. Another thing that's typical about the Book of Matthew, or perhaps unique about the Book of Matthew from the other Gospels, is that a lot of the narrative seems to fit around five major discourse blocks, or speeches, that the Lord makes. And after every one of these discourses, we find the words, something to the effect of, and it came to pass when Jesus had ended, or made an end of, finish these sayings, et cetera. This kind of marks, it's kind of a literary marker that marks these five discourses as really unique. It's not the only text blocks where Jesus speaks in the gospel, but it is, they are unique in that sense, and things seem to be fitted around them. So the first of these is the Sermon on the Mount. And Pastor Ben is currently preaching through that, so I'm not going to say a lot about that. There is a charge to the apostles in chapter 10, where he sends the apostles out and gives them directions. Then there is the parables of the kingdom, where Jesus expounds the significance and meaning of the kingdom of God by means of parables. This is not the only chapter where he gives parables. They are found in other places as well, but there is a cluster of them all in one place in chapter 13. Then there's the discourse on the church, chapter 18, various things concerning the church and God's kingdom. And then there is the Olivet Discourse, which is chapters 23 to 25, where Jesus speaks concerning the eschatological elements, concerning the final judgment, but also the destruction of the temple as well. And that spans three chapters there. So those are the five discourses, and I've included those in your notes as well. But then moving to the purpose of Matthew. Matthew places Jesus of Nazareth at the center of the story of the Old Testament. And it's very, very appropriate that Matthew is the first New Testament book right after the completion of the Old Testament. And that's really what he does. He places Jesus of Nazareth at the center of the story of the Old Testament. Israel's institutions, events, and individuals prophetically anticipate Jesus and his ministry. He is the climax of the history of redemption and the long-awaited ruler of Israel, the son of David and true Israel. Yet Jesus is more than a king. He is Emmanuel, Israel's God in the flesh. Matthew desires that his largely Jewish readers affirm their belief in Jesus as the crucified Lord and follow him all of their, in all their ways. And this is from the story we told. This is a helpful book, by the way, if you're interested in reading more about the biblical theological themes throughout the New Testament. This just goes book by book and discusses a biblical theological view and introductory matters of every book of the New Testament. It's a helpful book. We'll move now into main themes. I'm only going to go through two of them, but there are certainly more to be said. But I will discuss two of them this morning to consider. The first of these is the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. And you see there a picture of a wheat field with some weeds there. We'll come back to that at the end of the section here. This phrase, gospel of the kingdom, comes from Matthew 4.23 and also a few other texts as well. And Matthew 4.23 says, and he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. The gospel of the kingdom. And it's also found in chapter 9 verse 35 as well as 24.14. Kingdom is a central theme in the book of Matthew. Kingdom occurs 55 times, and of those 55 times, 32 of them occur as the kingdom of heaven. And then five times it occurs as the kingdom of God. And I do believe kingdom of heaven is unique in that sense to the book of Matthew. I don't think it's used as often or at all in some of the other gospels who use kingdom of God more frequently. Jesus is immediately asserted as the Davidic heir in chapter one, verse one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And it's very, very easy to read right over that, isn't it? The genealogies, what's the point, what's the purpose? Matthew tells you if you are awaiting a Messiah, if you are languishing under sin and Roman occupation, to hear these words as a Jew, Old Testament, familiar Jew would be just such sweet, sweet words. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. What does that mean? What's the significance of that? Well, Genesis 22, 18, the Lord has said to Abraham, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. because you have obeyed my voice. So he speaks about the offspring. In the surrounding text and the other times the Lord appears to Abraham, he said, kings are going to come from you. And of those kings, the offspring is going to come and he's going to be a blessing to all the nations. Second Samuel 17, beginning in verse 12, this is the promise to David, what we call the Davidic covenant. The Lord says, I will raise up your offspring, again offspring, after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. These are two of the most central promises to the anticipation of the coming Messiah, the King, that he will be the one who fulfills the promise to Abraham, and he will fulfill the promise to David. And his rule will not be as so many other kings prone to sin and put down by occupiers, by usurpers, even by his own sin. But he will have an eternal kingdom. He will be great David's greater son. It was Matthew's purpose to convince the Jews that Jesus was the Christ or the Messiah, the great Davidic king promised by the prophets. He knew that if this could be shown clearly, they would be one for the savior. And this purpose is very evident from the gospel. This is the purpose of his gospel. Matthew sets forth the risen Christ as the king to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. And his kingdom is the church which the gates of hell will not prevail against." That is the gospel of the kingdom. There's a lot more that could be said on that. Just for the sake of time, we're going to move on from that. However, I do want to say before we move completely from the subject of the gospel of the kingdom that the gospel of the kingdom does come in a way that is very unexpected to Jesus' contemporaries. and very surprising to them. While some had concluded that the coming of the Messiah would bring the immediate and glorious restoration of Israel, Jesus comes in a glory that is veiled by humiliation. So many were expecting the King is going to come. He's going to lead this glorious movement to defeat the Romans and overthrow the Romans. And we're going to be free, and we're going to worship and serve him, or we're going to serve him and worship our God. That was the thought. But this is not exactly the way that it happened in the view of these who had that expectation. We see this, I think this is a helpful chart. This is in Beal and Glad's book. the story retold. This represents the contemporary expectation of the eternal kingdom. I have one chart in your notes, two charts here. This is the first one, which is not in your notes. But you see the gray there, that's Israel's history, or the old age. And sort of this expectation that people had was, I'm sorry, then you see the latter days, which is the red and the green. The expectation that people had is the tribulation really is this period between the exile and now our Roman occupation. All of these sorrows that the Jews have experienced, all of this trouble, this being subject to foreign rulers, is going to come to an end when Messiah comes. He's going to reestablish the kingdom and usher us into the new eternal cosmos. This appears to be the understanding of Jesus' contemporaries when he comes on the scene. But Jesus does something that's unexpected in speaking of the kingdom in a different way. And this is in your notes here, this is the eternal kingdom in the overlap of the ages. And you see here just a different representation of that chart. Israel's history is the old age, that's still gray. Then you have the cross, which I think is not just the cross, but the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It ushers in this kingdom that is to come. But what's unexpected to many is that the tribulation actually is happening at the same time as this kingdom is revealed. And really the humiliation and cross of Christ is sort of the beginning of this period of tribulation that's going to come as the Lord establishes his kingdom, he inaugurates it, he raises up the church as his kingdom people, and they experience tribulation throughout the church age until he returns again in glory and ushers in the new eternal cosmos. This is unexpected, I think, by Jesus' contemporaries. I think it's a misreading of the prophets. I think ample evidence is given to this that Jesus' ministry will sum up all of Old Testament history in his suffering, his death, his humiliation, but then his being raised into glory. So I don't think this was unable to be foreseen by the prophets. I think the prophets foretold this, but it was not what the Jews of that day wanted to hear. There will continue to be suffering in the midst of this kingdom being established. This inauguration of the kingdom is not the same as the consummation. We still await the consummation of that kingdom. And the suffering that Jesus endured, his church will also continue to endure as well. And I think this is so key, this chart is so key for Matthew's gospel, I think for Paul's eschatology, I think throughout. It's very, very important to understand these sort of exhortations and the points that they're making in there. So the kingdom of God has come and it has been inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The kingdom continues to grow amidst trial and tribulation until it is consummated at the return of Jesus Christ. And this is seen very clearly in one of the parables Jesus presents and in many other places, but specifically the parable of the wheat and the tares. Jesus says that the field is the world and there are seeds that are sown by the Lord, the owner of the field, and an enemy comes and spreads wicked seeds, tares, in the midst to sabotage this field, to destroy it. And the servants ask him, should we root up these tares? He says, no, let them grow up together. lest you uproot the wheat as you try to uproot the tares. And so they will grow all together until the end of the age. And I think this parable is really a paradigm for the way the church age continues on until the return of Christ in a time where the kingdom expands, but tribulation continues all the way till Christ returns. So that is something about the gospel of the kingdom. A lot more can be said on that. But we need to move on because there's another theme that I think is really, really important as well. And that is the phrase, this was to fulfill. And if you read the Gospel of Matthew, you see this phrase appear many times. This was to fulfill the word of the prophets. Sometimes he says this about things that don't seem like they were prophecies. So it's an important one to understand. Central to Matthew's gospel is the theme of Christ's recapitulation. That's a really big word. It's really hard to say that in English. Every single part of that word is very important. Recapitulation is the summing up. It's the summing up of all things in him. That's the word that the apostle uses as well. But that word is important because Christ is, in some sense, reliving the history of Israel. in a way that he fulfills it and completes it. So he's actually, Matthew records all these events where Christ is really summing up and summarizing all these events in Israel's history and fulfilling them in himself. This is very prominent in the book of Matthew and important to understand what's going on. Central to his gospel is the theme of Christ summing up the history of Israel to the end that he thus redeems and fulfills it. He does this as a second Adam, the second Adam, true David, faithful son of Abraham, and obedient Israelite, in order that Jew and Gentile may be reconciled to the Father. Now Matthew often reveals this by using the words, the formula, this was to fulfill. You see this many times. But he does not always use that formula to do this when this is happening. If you read the Gospel carefully, you'll begin to notice that many patterns emerge in Jesus' life and ministry which are familiar to those who are more intimately acquainted with the Old Testament. The more you read your Old Testament and the more you read the Gospel of Matthew, you begin to see more things that Jesus is summing up and recapitulating in himself. These patterns are obvious when referred to directly as a citation, yet there are perhaps hundreds of similar allusions which are really more implicit. These allusions are intended by Matthew to support the major theme of his gospel, that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the whole history of Israel. So let's just think about this and give some examples of this. First, there is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, where the word there is the genesis of Jesus Christ, right there in chapter 1, verse 1. This immediately brings parallels to mind of the Genesis of creation. Now you have the Genesis of Jesus Christ, and it tells the genealogy in the same way that Genesis does, giving the generations of. So that points us back to Genesis and shows here's the fulfillment of all those things anticipated, the seed that was to come, all the way back to Genesis 3.15. This is that seed, the offspring. Jesus, as Moses, was delivered from infant death. And as Israel, he was brought out of Egypt. You can see that in chapter two. Just as Israel had done, Jesus underwent baptism in the Jordan River because it was fitting to fulfill all righteousness. Israel went through the Red Sea. There was a baptism in the Red Sea. They also went through the new generation. After the wilderness generation died off, they go through the Jordan in like fashion, pointing back to what God had done in their deliverance from Egypt. He delivers this new generation symbolically in the same way through the Jordan River. Jesus also is baptized in the Jordan River. And he says it's fitting to fulfill all righteousness. Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years, so Christ was led into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil. And unlike the wilderness generation, unlike Adam and Eve, he triumphed over the devil, unlike what they did. Christ ascended a mountain like Sinai to explain the heart of the law of God with authority. We're seeing this right now in Pastor Ben's exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. The law misinterpreted by Israel's leaders needed to be explained again to the people. The heart of the law needed to be explained. That's Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7. Jesus performs miracles like those recorded in the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. You know, there's a lot of different miracles that the gospel writers depict the Lord Jesus doing. Have you ever wondered why there are certain miracles that are recorded and not others? It's said that he did many miraculous things. Why did they record the ones that they did? Well, there's a reason. I think selection of these particular things implies meaning. Well, some of the reason that some of them are included are to show the direct fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And in this case, to show that Jesus is the greater Elijah, he is the greater Elisha. And we see Jesus here performing miracles like those recorded in the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, but his miracles are escalated to a degree. They're much greater, and they're done from his own power and his own authority, and not by praying to the Lord, but by simply speaking. So we see this in his healing of a leper, Matthew 8, and Elisha did that with Naaman the Syrian. Healing the servant of a Gentile official, Matthew 8. A child restored from death is in Matthew 9. And it's actually recorded in very similar language to the raising of the dead child, both in Elijah's ministry and Elisha's ministry as well. Now, what's very significant about that is that's the only three times that ever happened that we know of. So there's very obvious affinity. between Jesus and the prophets, Elijah and Elisha there in those. He multiplies loaves. Perhaps something you may be surprised at, that Elisha multiplied loaves as well. But of course, Jesus does this to a greater degree than Elijah, showing the greater power of the Lord Jesus. As Joshua led the conquest of Canaan, Jesus cast out demons from Israel. Now what's interesting about this is that word ekbalo that's used for cast. That's the same word that the Greek Old Testament uses for casting out the Canaanites from the promised land. So whereas the Israelites were casting out Gentile pagans, The Lord Jesus comes and he also casts out, but he casts out devils, he casts out demons. His authority is not just over the physical inhabitants, but over all the inhabitants. He's sovereign over the demons and he casts them out of the land. The one greater than Jonah wakes up from sleep in the boat and has authority in himself to calm the raging sea. If you don't hear the echoes as you read that passage where Jesus is sleeping in the boat, Jonah was sleeping in the boat, and the Gentiles come to him and say, why are you sleeping? The disciples, it's almost exactly the same. They come, why are you sleeping? But he doesn't have to cast himself in the water. He speaks. And that same kind of raging wind, which just reminds you of that storm in Jonah, that great tempest, is calmed by his own authority and his own power. The one greater than Solomon, whose wisdom couldn't be confounded, he opened his mouth in Proverbs." And you see that as you read the Psalms and you read the Proverbs and you go back to the Gospels, you kind of get the sense that Jesus is often speaking in Proverbs and Psalms. Many times he does this. He knew it so well, it just flows out of his mouth in many of the things that he says, echoes of the Psalms and the Proverbs. Jesus, just as the persecuted prophets, spoke woe, oracles, to the religious leaders. You see that in chapter 23. The one greater than Israel's temple, who would raise up the temple again in three days. As David, he was the suffering, wilderness king, pursued to death by enemies who wanted to prevent him from his rightful kingship, kept him out of Jerusalem, just as David was kept out of Jerusalem and betrayed and persecuted. And just as David, he was betrayed by his close associate. Jesus bore the suffering of the people of God as the prophesied suffering servant to fulfill the scriptures of the prophets, yet who was raised to sit at the right hand of power to fulfill Psalm 110. Now there are so many other examples of this. We just don't have the time to consider them all. I think this is representative. But I hope you see that a major theme in Matthew's gospel is Jesus summing up and bringing to completion the Old Testament. He relives its persons, events, and institutions in his own life, death, and resurrection. And he does this to bring them to perfection and completion. And this is important because this is the way that Matthew chooses to reveal the glory of Jesus Christ. It's very important. It's not just in what he says directly about Jesus. very explicitly. But the glory of Christ is seen most clearly in what he is demonstrated to be as the substance and fulfillment of Old Testament shadows and types. You can perhaps think about this like the white garment that Jesus is wearing at the Transfiguration as the eyes of the Apostles are open to behold his glory. As you understand your Old Testament and look at Jesus Christ in the new, the shadowy figures and types that he fulfilled become to you a brighter evidence of his glory. The better you know your Old Testament, the more glorious your Savior appears. This is the way he's revealed by Matthew. May the Lord open our eyes and cause us to love the whole word of God. as it reveals to us our glorious Savior and shows us the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection. And we have, I think, about two minutes. There's no hymn of the month, so if anyone has a question or a comment, you are welcome to make it. Yes? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, he was saying that another theme is Immanuel, God being with us, and he listed many of those texts which discuss that. Thank you. Blake. I'm hoping I'm not drinking too much. I've noticed in the Gospel of Matthew, there's a big focus on Christ's birth. But then when you get to the Gospel of Luke, there's a big focus on John the Baptist. Was there a particular reason why it's ordered that way? You would say maybe because of the high Yeah, do you mean John, how John gives more focus to John the Baptist as the beginning? Oh, I see. Yeah, yes. OK. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, the accounts are similar. in that there's similar events being recorded. There's definitely a lot more detail given concerning John the Baptist, Zechariah's prophecy, then you have like Anna seeing the Lord as well. There's a lot more details in the infancy of Jesus Christ in the gospel of Luke. Yeah, I'm not sure I have a good answer for that, but that is a good, that is a true observation that there's a lot more given. And Luke has purposes for those things. So thank you. Will Rex answer that question? Yes, yes. Rex is going to be doing Luke. And you can remember that one for when you start. All right, well, it's 10-10. Thank you so much. You're dismissed.