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    Exploring the Word of God: Studies in Matthew
    Exploring the Word of God: Studies in Matthew
    Exploring the Word of God: Studies in Matthew
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    Exploring the Word of God: Studies in Matthew

    By Michael D. Morrison

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    About this ebook

    In this lay-level commentary, we look at an overview of the book of Matthew, take a closer look at the Sermon on the Mount, parables about the kingdom of God, and several other notable parts of Matthew. Some chapters are by Tim Finlay and Jim Herst, Paul Kroll, and Joseph Tkach.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrace Communion International
    Release dateSep 16, 2013
    ISBN9781301420513
    Exploring the Word of God: Studies in Matthew
    Author

    Michael D. Morrison

    I grew up in a small town in southern Illinois: Sparta. Our family of seven was religious but did not go to church - instead, we had a Bible study at home every week. I eventually began attending a church after I moved away, and then I went to a Bible college, and eventually a seminary. Now I work for Grace Communion Seminary, an online seminary based in Glendora, California. My interests are the Gospels, the epistles and theology of Paul, and ethics.

    Read more from Michael D. Morrison

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      Book preview

      Exploring the Word of God - Michael D. Morrison

      Exploring the Word of God:

      Studies in Matthew

      By Michael D. Morrison

      With additional chapters by Tim Finlay, Jim Herst, Paul Kroll and Joseph Tkach

      Copyright 2013 Grace Communion International

      Cover art by Ken Tunell.

      Scripture quotations, unless noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

      Table of Contents

      Explore the Gospels: Matthew

      42 Men and Five Women: A Study of Matthew 1:1-16

      The Virgin Will Give Birth to a Son: Matthew 1:18-23

      Matthew 5: Sermon on the Mount

      Matthew 5:17-19 and the Law

      Matthew 6: Sermon on the Mount, Part 2

      Matthew 7: Sermon on the Mount, Part 3

      Matthew 9: The Purpose of Healings

      Matthew 13: Parables of the Kingdom

      More Parables of the Kingdom

      Matthew 16: What Kind of Messiah?

      Matthew 18: Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

      Parable of Workers in the Vineyard

      What Matthew 24 Tells Us About The End

      Matthew 24:20 – Why Pray Not To Flee on the Sabbath?

      About the Authors

      About the Publisher

      Grace Communion Seminary

      Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

      Introduction: This project began in the mid 1990s. The first volume of Exploring the Word of God was published in 1995. We were not able to print any more volumes, but we continued to study and write articles about Scripture. We have gathered these articles and are publishing them as e-books. We hope you find these studies useful and encouraging.

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      Explore the Gospels: Matthew

      By Tim Finlay and Jim Herst

      Who was Matthew?

      Early church tradition attributes this Gospel to Matthew, the tax collector chosen by Jesus to be an apostle (10:3). He was also known as Levi (compare 9:9-13 with Luke 5:27-31). None of the four Gospels actually names its author. It was the message, not who was writing that was considered important.

      What this book means for us today

      Matthew’s Gospel is a call to take Jesus seriously and to follow him. It is not enough to mouth the name of Jesus; we must be his disciples, just as the people of his day had to. Just knowing about him is not enough. Jesus said, Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father in heaven (7:21).

      Discipleship involves following Jesus. This notion of following Jesus suggests that the disciples are to be ‘with’ Jesus (e.g. 9:15; 12:20; 26:38-40) as those who accompany him (e.g. 9:19), align themselves with him over against his opponents (e.g. 9:10-17; 12:1-8) and therefore experience persecution (e.g. 5:10-12; 10:24-25), learn from him (e.g. 5:1 10:24; 13:26), model their lives after his example (e.g. 20:25-28), and come after him by assuming for themselves the journey of self-denial and cross-bearing (10:38-39; 16:24-28; compare 16:24-28) (The Major Characters of Matthew’s Story: Their Function and Significance, David Bauer, Interpretation, October 1992, p. 362).

      Jesus calls upon us to forsake everything and follow him. But he also promises that everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life (Matthew 19:29).

      Matthew wrote a marvelous proclamation of hope in the Messiah. As you read, listen to his clear message: Jesus is the Christ, the King of kings, and Lord of lords. Jesus Christ has gained the victory over evil and death. Your death. Re-dedicate yourself to him. Make him the Lord of your life, even as Matthew the tax collector did nearly two thousand years ago.

      Road map of Matthew

      The Gospel of Matthew has been divided into 28 chapters, and the chapters are divided into verses.

      These chapters and verses are a later addition. They have the advantage of making it easy to locate specific verses, passages and quotations. But they have the disadvantage of interrupting the continuity and theme of the book. Most of the time we access it like a telephone directory rather than read it like a story.

      Matthew wrote his gospel as a carefully organized continuous narrative. It has three major sections, each of which has sub-sections. You may find it helpful to follow this outline to help you navigate as you read through the story for yourself.

      1. The preparation for Jesus’ ministry (1:1- 4:11)

      a. The genealogy of Jesus (1:1-17).

      b. The announcement to Joseph of the birth of Jesus (1:18- 25).

      c. The visit of the Magi to worship Jesus (2:1-12).

      d. The flight of Joseph, Mary and Jesus into Egypt (2:11-23).

      e. The ministry of John the Baptist (3:1-12);

      f. The baptism of Jesus (3:13-17).

      g. The testing of Jesus by Satan in the wilderness (4:1-11).

      2. The ministry of Jesus (4:12-25:46)

      This section is organized into five blocks of narrative interspersed with five long discourses:

      In the Sermon on the Mount (5:1-7:29), Jesus discusses the law, worship and good deeds.

      In the commission to the disciples (9:35-10:42), Jesus expands the scope of his ministry.

      The third discourse (13:1-52) contains seven parables on the kingdom of heaven.

      The fourth discourse provides instructions concerning the community of faith (18:1-35).

      In the final discourse, Jesus pronounces seven woes on the Pharisees, laments over Jerusalem and preaches about the end times (23:1-25:46).

      The five blocks of narrative (4:12-25; 8:1-9:34; 11:1-12:50; 13:53-17:27; and 19:1-22:46) discuss Jesus’ miracles, his superiority over John the Baptist, his disputes with the religious leaders, and further teachings on the kingdom of heaven.

      3. The crucifixion and resurrection (26:17-30)

      a. First, Jesus predicts his betrayal (26:1-5), is anointed at Bethany (26:6-16) and eats the Last Supper with his disciples (26:17-30).

      b. Then Jesus is betrayed by Judas Iscariot (26:6-16) is mocked before the high priest (26: 57-68) and is denied three times by Simon Peter (26:69-75).

      c. Finally, Jesus is tried by Pilate and scourged (27:1-31), is subjected to an agonizing death on the cross (27:32-57) and is buried in a new tomb, which is then sealed and guarded (27:57-66).

      d. But the story does not end there. The tomb is found empty because Jesus has risen (28:1-15), and the risen Christ commissions the disciples to preach the good news in all the world (28:16-20)!

      Matthew and the Second Coming

      Matthew emphasizes the future aspect of Jesus’ work more than the other Gospel writers do. Matthew alone uses the word parousia, which has become the technical term for Jesus’ second coming (Matthew 24:3, 27, 37, 39). Moreover,

      Only Matthew has a series of parables which turn on judgment and which can be interpreted in terms of the second coming. Only he has the parable of the wise and foolish virgins and the shut door (25:1-13); the parable of the sheep and the goats and the final judgment (25:31-46); the parable of the talents and the casting out of the unsatisfactory servant (25:14-30). (William Barclay, Introduction to the First Three Gospels, pp. 170-171)

      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

      back to table of contents

      Forty-Two Men and Five Women:

      A Study of Matthew 1:1-16

      By Michael Morrison

      Many modern readers feel that the New Testament begins in the most boring way possible: a list of unusual and hard-to-pronounce names. However, ancient readers would have found a number of interesting things in this list.

      The ancestors of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

      Abraham

      Isaac

      Jacob

      Judah

      Perez, whose mother was Tamar

      Hezron

      Ram

      Amminadab

      Nahshon

      Salmon

      Boaz, whose mother was Rahab

      Obed, whose mother was Ruth

      Jesse

      King David

      Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife

      Rehoboam

      Abijah

      Asa

      Jehoshaphat

      Jehoram

      Uzziah

      Jotham

      Ahaz

      Hezekiah

      Manasseh

      Amon

      Josiah

      Jeconiah, at the time of the exile to Babylon

      Shealtiel

      Zerubbabel

      Abihud

      Eliakim

      Azor

      Zadok

      Akim

      Elihud

      Eleazar

      Matthan

      Jacob

      Joseph, the husband of Mary; Mary was the mother of Jesus the Messiah.

      List adapted from Matthew 1:1-16. NIV 2011 used in this chapter.

      Women in the list

      Matthew wanted to present evidence that Jesus is the Messiah. Everyone expected the Messiah to be descended from David, so Matthew began by showing that Jesus meets that requirement.

      Biblical genealogies usually list only men. Matthew’s list is unusual because it includes five women. Even more surprising, Matthew did not mention women who were highly esteemed—Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah. Instead, he mentioned women who were somewhat embarrassing:

      1) Tamar, who committed incest. Genesis 38 tells the seedy story. Judah and a Canaanite woman had three sons. The first one married Tamar, but he died before they had any children. Following ancient Middle Eastern custom, his brother was supposed to marry the widow and engender an heir for the dead brother. The second son did not want to do this, and he died. Time passed, and Tamar saw that Judah’s third son was not going to marry her, so she pretended to be a prostitute and had sex with Judah, her father-in-law. Her twin sons became the ancestors of most of the Jewish people.

      2) Rahab the prostitute. When the Israelites were about to conquer the land of Canaan, they sent spies into Jericho, who stayed at the house of a prostitute named Rahab (Joshua 2:1). The king of Jericho wanted to kill the spies, but Rahab helped them escape. When Jericho was destroyed, Rahab and her family were spared (Joshua 6:25). The Old Testament does not tell us what happened to Rahab, but Matthew tells us that she was an ancestor of King David.

      3) Ruth the Moabitess. The biblical book of Ruth says that a Jewish family moved to Moab, and the sons married Moabite women. The men died, and two of the widows moved to Bethlehem. Following ancient custom, a relative

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