Christ in Matthew

Matthew opens the New Testament with a register of names, and every name is doing work. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (v. 1) gathers the two great promises of the Old Testament into one Person - the seed of Abraham in whom all families of the earth were to be blessed (Gen. 12:3), and the son of David to whom the LORD swore, thy throne shall be established for ever (2 Sam. 7:16). The line is arranged in three sets of fourte…

Matthew 2 is the first time the nations come to Christ, and they come while His own city sleeps. Wise men out of the east arrive in Jerusalem asking, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him (v. 2) - and Matthew sets their eager seeking against Herod, who was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him (v. 3), and against the chief priests, who can quote the very prophecy and never stir from the city: And thou B…

Matthew 3 stands at the threshold of the gospel, where the long-promised forerunner steps out of the desert to make ready the road. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, and saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (vv. 1-2). Matthew names him at once as the fulfillment of prophecy - The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight (v. 3; Isa. 40:3) - the messenger Malach…

Matthew 4 sets the Son of God down in the wilderness, the same place where Israel was tested forty years and failed, and where the first man met the tempter in a garden and fell. Jesus fasts forty days and is met by three temptations - command that these stones be made bread (v. 3), cast thyself down (v. 6), all the kingdoms of the world for one act of worship (vv. 8-9) - and answers every one with a word out of Deuteronomy, the book of Israel’s own wilderness: It is writt…

Matthew 5 opens the Sermon on the Mount, and the Gospel text here is the Christ Connection from first verse to last. A King goes up into a mountain and sits down to proclaim the life of His kingdom - one greater than Moses, who gives not a fresh law against the old but the law and the prophets brought to their full meaning: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil (v. 17). The apostles say plainly what He is to t…

Matthew 6 stands at the center of the Sermon on the Mount, and its center is a relationship: Jesus teaches His people to pray Our Father which art in heaven (v. 9). The whole chapter turns on that address. The Father which seeth in secret watches the hidden giving, the closet prayer, the unannounced fast, and Himself rewards it (vv. 4, 6, 18); the Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him (v. 8); the Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things…

The Sermon on the Mount ends, and the whole close is the words of Jesus Himself - which is to say the Christ Connection runs through every line. He gives the great open invitation: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (v. 7), grounding it in the Father’s heart - if evil men give good gifts to their children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (v. 11). Luke reco…

After the Sermon on the Mount Matthew gathers a cluster of miracles that all answer one question: What manner of man is this? (v. 27). A leper kneels - Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean - and Jesus does the thing the law forbade, He touched him , and the touch does not defile but heals: I will; be thou clean (vv. 2-3). The pattern of the gospel is already here - the Holy One reaches into uncleanness and makes it clean, as it is written of the Servant who would b…

Matthew 9 is a chapter of healings, and in the Gospel the healings are not the point beside the Christ Connection - they are the Christ Connection, each one a window onto who Jesus is. It opens with a paralytic let down before Him and a sentence no rabbi would dare: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee (v. 2). The scribes are not wrong about the rule - This man blasphemeth (v. 3), for, as another Gospel puts it, who can forgive sins but God only? (Mark 2:7). Je…

Matthew 10 is the great sending chapter, and from first verse to last it is the Master commissioning His servants to carry His own authority and His own message into the world. He gives the twelve power against unclean spirits… and to heal all manner of sickness (v. 1) and sends them to preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand (v. 7) - the very word He Himself had been preaching. The risen Christ would later state the pattern outright: as my Father hath sent…

Matthew 11 moves from a prison cell to the open invitation of the gospel, and at every step Jesus is naming Himself. John the Baptist sends from Herod’s prison the question, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? (v. 3), and Jesus answers by the works the prophets had foretold of the Messiah: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them (…

Matthew 12 unveils the authority and the gentleness of Jesus in the same breath, and the New Testament keeps both together. Over the sabbath disputes He makes a claim only its Giver could make - For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day (v. 8) - and twice presses His own greatness: in this place is one greater than the temple (v. 6); a greater than Jonas is here… a greater than Solomon is here (vv. 41-42). The Lord of the sabbath is the One who calls the we…

Matthew 13 is the gallery of kingdom parables, and the Sower stands at the head of it: a sower goes out to scatter seed, and the same seed meets four kinds of ground - wayside, stony, thorny, and good. Jesus names the seed Himself: the word of the kingdom (v. 19); and the Gospel names the One scattering it, for He went about all the cities and villages… preaching the gospel of the kingdom (Matt. 9:35). The parables are not random; they are the mysteries of the kingd…

Matthew 14 sets the cruelty of a frightened king against the compassion of the true King, and ends with the disciples on their faces: Of a truth thou art the Son of God (v. 33). The chapter is itself a portrait of Christ. He is moved with compassion toward the leaderless crowd (v. 14), and feeds five thousand from five loaves and two fishes - He looked up to heaven… blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples (v. 19), all eating, all filled, twelve bask…

Matthew 15 moves from the lips to the heart, and Christ is at the center of the whole movement. When the scribes press their tradition of the elders (v. 2), He answers with Isaiah’s ancient word and applies it to the very men in front of Him: This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me; but in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men (vv. 8-9). It is the same indictment H…

Matthew 16 is the hinge of the Gospel, and the Christ Connection is not buried in it - it is the whole chapter. At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asks Whom say ye that I am? (v. 15), and Simon Peter answers with the bedrock confession of the faith: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (v. 16). The word rendered Christ is ho Christos , the Anointed One, the long-promised Messiah - and Jesus says this truth was not worked out by human reasoning but given: flesh and blood…

Six days after Jesus first told His followers plainly that He must suffer and be killed (Matt. 16:21), He takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, and for a moment the curtain is drawn back: he was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light (v. 2). This is not glory borrowed or newly given but glory unveiled - the glory as of the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14), the majesty an eyewitness on this very…

Matthew 18 begins with a question about rank - Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? (v. 1) - and answers it with a child. Jesus sets a little one in the midst of grown men and says, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven… Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest (vv. 3-4). The kingdom belongs not to the impressive but to the small, the dependent, the low…

Matthew 19 is the gospel itself moving through four scenes, and Christ stands at the center of each. When the Pharisees come tempting him about divorce, He answers by reaching past the legal debate to creation’s own design: he which made them at the beginning made them male and female… they twain shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (vv. 4-6) - grounding the dignity and permanence of marriage in the God who joins, and…

Matthew 20 gathers four scenes that all bend toward one sentence. A householder pays the labourer of the eleventh hour the same penny as the one who borne the burden and heat of the day , and answers the murmuring of the early workers, Friend, I do thee no wrong… Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (vv. 13-15) - a portrait of grace that gives the undeserving the same gift and scandalizes those who counted th…

Matthew 21 is the opening of the passion week, and from the first verse every act of Jesus is a claim about who He is. He sends for a colt and rides into Jerusalem in exact fulfillment of the prophet: Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass (v. 5; Zech. 9:9), and the multitudes spread their garments and cry, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord (v. 9; Ps. 118:25-26). This is th…

Matthew 22 is a chapter of questions, and every one of them circles back to a Person. It opens with a king who made a marriage for his son (v. 2) and sent his servants to call the bidden - and the gospel invitation is exactly that, gone out first to those who would not come (v. 3) and then into the highways to gather all, both bad and good (vv. 9-10). One man is found not having a wedding garment and is speechless (vv. 11-12), for the feast requires a covering the king him…

Matthew 23 is the last thing Jesus says in public before the cross, and from its first line to its last it is about Him. In the middle of warning against teachers who love titles and chief seats, He sets down one quiet rule that reorders everything: be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren… he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himse…

Matthew 24 is the longest stretch of Jesus’ own teaching about the days to come, and from beginning to end it points to Himself. He leaves the temple, foretells that not one stone will be left upon another (v. 2), and on the Mount of Olives takes up the disciples’ double question about the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world (v. 3). His answer is full of warning - take heed that no man deceive you (v. 4), wars and rumours of wars (v. 6), the beginning of sorrow…

Matthew 25 is the close of Jesus’ final discourse, and every part of it is about Him - His coming, His reckoning, His throne. He is the Bridegroom whose arrival cannot be predicted and whose door, once shut, is shut: they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut (v. 10), and so the charge falls on every hearer - Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh (v. 13). He is the Lord who goes into a far…

Matthew 26 is the threshold of the cross, and from its first line Jesus is already moving toward it with open eyes - after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified (v. 2). Here the Gospel text simply is the Christ Connection. At the Passover table He takes the bread and the cup and binds them to His own body and blood: Take, eat; this is my body… this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remiss…

Matthew 27 is the chapter the whole Gospel has been bending toward, and from first verse to last it is about the death of the innocent for the guilty. Judas throws down the silver with the verdict on his own deed - I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood (v. 4) - and Pilate, finding no fault, washes his hands and says, I am innocent of the blood of this just person (v. 24); twice over the world declares Him guiltless even as it kills Him. A guilty man name…

Matthew 28 is the climax to which the whole Gospel has been moving, and it is the Christ Connection entire. The body laid in a sealed tomb is gone, and the announcement is the foundation of all Christian hope: He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay (v. 6). This is the gospel Paul says he received and delivered first of all - that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again…