The Gospel According to Matthew "Jesus - The Son of David"

Each book in the Bible gently guides God's people into a more intimate relationship with their Creator, as the Creator knows must occur, for His people to receive Him in the depth of the relationship that He purchased for them, and each day we are covering one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

The Gospel According to Matthew is the first Book of the New Testament as it appears in our Bible. It is not thought to be the first account written, but it is placed first. This series is focused on the progressive nature of God’s Word through the New Testament as it appears in the Bible and how God has arranged it to lead His people into the depth of the relationship He sent Jesus to purchase for them.

God placed a Jewish man, named Matthew, who was looked upon as one of the worst types of sinners, a tax collector for the enemy, first in writing an account of a witness for our Saviour. This, in itself, is a huge obstacle for many of the Jews to overcome, as it is for other people today to come out of their judgemental pride filled ways, but God gave a great blessing to His people by authoring the first book of the New Testament through one of the worst sinners whom He converted into one of His people and used him to write His first book in the New Testament.

God warms His people up to the idea that Jesus is His Son by having Matthew write about Him being the Son of David ten times in his account and showing Jesus’ genealogy being from Abraham along with telling us many of the prophecies that were fulfilled through Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection.

Matthew wrote about wise men coming from the East and inquiring of the earthly ruler where the king of the Jews would be born, who in turn ask the religious leaders, and gets the answer of Bethlehem. God led the wise men directly to the place where Jesus was staying and had His star stop directly over the house. This shows us that God’s people, whom He is leading through their Journey by His light, will ask where their King is and will be pointed to Him even if the worldly leaders or religious people have not found Him for themselves.

Jesus is then shown to live in various countries and regions to fulfill the path that was set before Him as it was foretold by prophecy. He then goes out to John the Baptist to be baptized, and John forbad Him saying he needed to be baptized by Jesus instead, but Jesus said, “it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.”; then John baptized Him. God will have His people participate in His plan, even in ways they do not think they are worthy to participate until He explains it to them.

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness directly after His baptism and tempted of the devil to show His people how to respond to temptation; which is quoting the word of God and following Him instead of falling to the temptation.

John the Baptist was cast into prison, and then Jesus’ started His ministry by traveling through the preset path of teaching, gathering people, and healing them. Many people followed Him because of what He said and did just like people follow others today. Jesus led the people up to a mountain and taught them saying, “Blessed are they who are …” which contradicted the Jewish leader's teachings of their works of the Law earning their way into heaven like many people teach today. Jesus continued His “Sermon on the Mount” instructing people how to live and not look for man’s praise, how to pray, not to worry, not to judge, to ask, seek, and knock for things they knew their Father in heaven knew they needed, to keep focused on the path to heaven, that trees are known by their fruit, and wise men build their houses on a rock (they do the sayings of Jesus). Most of this chapter is easily understood by God’s people today and how it is active in their lives, but one thing that many people miss is the fact that Jesus repeatedly speaks of our Father in heaven. This is the reason the religious leaders of His physical time on Earth wanted to kill Him. They thought it was blasphemy, but this revelation transforms His people’s lives into another existence when they receive the fact that their Father is God who is in heaven.

Matthew now writes about Jesus healing and traveling through the region, giving power to His disciples to go and heal, commanded people to confess Christ or they would not be confessed to God, instructed people to take up their cross, and shared with His people what the reward of service is. These statements are still active today.

John the Baptist, still being in prison, sent people to ask, “Jesus are you the One to come or do we look for another?” after He had already witnessed of Him at His Baptism. This seems to be illogical until we look at our lives and others around us and realize the frailty of our faith until God exercises it through experiential living with Him in a personal way.

Jesus then continues to teach about many things, and He spoke in parables to some people because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not. He shared in public settings many things by parables; then brought His disciples to another place alone and explained it to them privately.

John the Baptist was beheaded, and Jesus continued doing miracles,teaching, and showing signs to the people and speaking out against the traditions of the people showing them the way of God; which angered the religious leaders enough for them to plot to kill Him.

Jesus by this time had foretold of His death and resurrection three times; however, none of the people could understand what He was saying until after He had risen from the dead.

Jesus performs the first “Lord’s Supper”, tells Peter that he would deny Him, prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, is arrested, brought before the council, Peter denies Jesus as was predicted, Jesus was brought to Pilot, Judas hangs himself for betraying Jesus, the crowd of the Jews asks for a notable prisoner to be released instead of Jesus, Pilate’s wife warns him not to have anything to do with Jesus because of a dream she had, Pilot washes his hands and tells the Jews that Jesus’ blood is on them, Jesus is crucified, buried, His tomb was sealed, and they set a guard to watch it.

An angel came and rolled the stone away from the tomb on the first day, told the ladies to go and tell the others that Jesus is risen, and Jesus met them on their way to tell them and told them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, and they shall see Him there.

The guards of Jesus’ tomb were given money to say people came and stole Jesus’ body.

Jesus came to the eleven disciples and told them, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in the earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

The conclusion of Matthew’s account of Jesus the Christ is, Jesus is the clearly the Christ and is proven through the things He said and did, and the prophecy which was fulfilled by His life.

The amazing truth is: this is only the first book of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament which build upon themselves into a deeper revelation of God through His Word.