![]() 4-7), Jesus steps onto the scene announcing the arrival of God’s Kingdom. He created a parallel to the five books of Moses, presenting Jesus as Israel’s new, authoritative teacher who will fulfill the storyline of the Torah. ![]() This also explains why Matthew structured the center of the book into five main parts that highlight Jesus’ teaching. Matthew is claiming that Jesus is the promised greater-than-Moses figure, who will deliver Israel from slavery, give them new divine teaching, save them from their sins, and initiate a new covenant relationship between God and his people. 4), and went up onto a mountain to give new teaching, most of which focused on the Torah (chs. 3), entered the wilderness for 40 days (ch. 2), passed through the waters of baptism (ch. Like Moses, Jesus came up out of Egypt (ch. You can see right away two of Matthew’s key themes in the introduction (Jesus is the Messiah and God with us), but Matthew also wants to show how Jesus is like a new Moses. He is God with us, the God of Israel embodied as a human. More than that, Jesus’ conception was by the Holy Spirit, and he was named Immanuel, which amounts to a claim that Jesus is no mere human. After that, we come to the famous story about Jesus’ birth and how it fulfilled the Old Testament prophetic promises about how the nations would come to honor the Messiah who was born in Bethlehem. Matthew opens with a genealogy of Jesus that highlights him as the messianic son of David and the son of Abraham who will bring God’s blessing to all of the nations. Each of those sections concludes with a long block of Jesus’ teaching.Ĭhapters 1-3 set the stage by attaching Jesus’ story right onto the Old Testament Scriptures. The book of Matthew has been designed with an introduction and a conclusion that act as a frame around five clear sections in the center. Jesus is God with us, or in Hebrew, Immanuel Jesus is a new, authoritative teacher like Moses Jesus is the Messiah from the line of David Matthew wanted to show how Jesus is the continuation and fulfillment of the whole biblical story of God and Israel, so he emphasizes that: Matthew has collected and arranged all those into an amazing tapestry and designed his account to highlight certain themes about Jesus. For about 30-40 years, the apostles orally taught and passed on their eyewitness accounts of Jesus along with his teachings that they had memorized. ![]() While the book itself is anonymous, the earliest reliable tradition links it to Matthew the tax collector, one of the twelve apostles that Jesus appointed, who appears in the book himself (Matt. This is one of the earliest official accounts of Jesus of Nazareth.
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