God With Us: Themes from Matthew

Top Highlights

“But Matthew took pains to point out that Jesus the King included in His heritage prostitutes and aliens. This speaks not only of His immense humility, but points to the fact that He came to ‘save his people from their sins’ (Matt. 1:21), and to be the Lord and Saviour not only of Jews, but of men and women without racial distinction, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that in him all peoples on earth would be blessed (see Gen. 12:1–3).” (Page 12)

“Second, there is an unmistakable contrast between the enthusiasm of the Gentile Magi and the reception afforded Jesus by His fellow Jews and by the half-Jewish monarch Herod.” (Page 16)

“Matthew takes great pains to show how the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus the Messiah took place in fulfillment of the Scriptures. He is interested in demonstrating that Jesus is indeed the Son of David, the Son of God, the promised Messiah; but equally, he wants to make clear how most people’s expectations of what the Messiah should be were woefully inadequate.” (Pages 7–8)

“Repentance is neither simply feeling sorry for one’s sins, nor a merely intellectual change of mind about them. It is a radical change of direction, a transforming turn around of the entire person. It involves will and thought and emotion and action, and issues ‘fruit in keeping with repentance’ (3:8).” (Pages 23–24)

“Jesus Christ. He is the climax of Old Testament expectations and the foundation for New Testament Christianity. Here in this Gospel is the dramatic change of covenant—when the old covenant gave way to the new, when the sacrifices of the Temple were replaced by the sacrifice of the cross, when the law of Moses was outstripped by the teaching of Jesus.” (Page 8)