Preliminary Matters on the Study of the Gospel of Matthew

Preliminary Matters

North Suburban Free Church 

Larry Craig

January 2009

1.         The gospels make up almost half of the New Testament.  The gospels tell the story of Jesus four different ways, repeating some of the events in His life four times.  One’s first inclination here is to think perhaps emphasis, saying: This is important.

2.         We worship Jesus as God.  We are told to pray to the Father in His name, but we often talk to Him and the Father interchangeably.  But the only Jesus we know is the Jesus of the gospels.  We say that we have a personal relationship with Jesus, but how much of the Jesus we think we know is like the Jesus of the Bible.

3.         You would think that the gospels would be at or near the center of Christian teaching, but it is not.  Why?  The church is generally uncomfortable with the gospels and doesn’t really know how to understand them.

4.         In no particular order:

            a)         Much of what Jesus says is too extreme for our lives. 

            b)         There is entirely too much emphasis on healing.  And this is not our experience with sickness.

            c)         We don’t know how much of what He says is directed to us.  Is He talking to Jews of the Old Covenant, His unique Disciples (Apostles), everyone everywhere?  Or is He giving the laws of His new Kingdom which He wants to establish on earth at a time to be named later?

            d)         Speaking of which:  was this Kingdom rejected by the Jews and its coming postponed to some indefinite date in the future?  Or did it start with His coming, or at Pentecost, and is now gradually unfolding?

       e)         When Jesus did things, like healing, did He do these things just as a proof that He was the Messiah, or was He revealing the nature and will and person of God to us?  Did He live His life as a perfect human being under the power of the Holy Spirit, or did He live as God in the flesh?  Were His miracles displays of His deity, or were they displays of the Holy Spirit responding to the faith of a Human Being?  In other words, can or should we be able to imitate Jesus in everything or just moral qualities like love, patience, and forgiveness?

        f)         Were the gospels written just to prove that Jesus was the Messiah?   And did Jesus do the things He did for that same reason?  And for those who already believe this, how important is it to keep reading this?  Would this not be similar to a church that only preached sermons to the nonbelievers?

            g)         Similarly, if the good news that Jesus preached is simply that He came to die for our sins so that we can go to heaven when we die, is there anything more to what we need to know now than to love God and to love your neighbor?  Or, in other words, is a Bible class on the gospels similar to repeating 8^th grade for the rest of your life?  Can the gospels be replaced by a 4 Spiritual Laws booklet for most of us?

5.         Though we want answers to these questions, we will read Matthew trying to see what he has to say on these matters, yet comparing his work to the other gospels to get the fullest picture.