Hello everyone, this is Mark Davis and I want to welcome you to the Gospel Explorations podcast where we gather together each week to take time to explore God's Word to learn how we ought to live in this present age. I'm glad you've chosen to spend some time with us today. Let's jump into today's episode. Well, hello and welcome to the first episode of the Gospel Explorations podcast. I am so excited that you've chosen to spend a few minutes with us as we begin to look at some passages of scripture and hopefully become better students of God's word. I've kind of been on the fence about what we should do, how we should get started. And I think a great place for us to start is really just kind of at the beginning. And so we're going to start with a book of Matthew, the first book found in the New Testament. And we're just going to take time and go through it. It might be a slow dive. It might be a long dive, but we're going to take time to kind of dig deep into the book of Matthew to glean some truths from it. Some of my favorite passages and all of the New Testament come from the book of Matthew. I love the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. There's so much truth there. And so I'm super excited to get to that part. Uh, but we're going to start right at the beginning of Matthew chapter one and, uh, and jump right in and take time to look at some of these passages. And, um, so let's get started there. If you have your Bible and you can grab it real quick and open it with us, we're going to look at Matthew chapter one. We're really, I think just for today, we're not going to make these long drawn out podcast episodes. Um, but we're just going to spend 10, 15 minutes, however long it takes. to kind of look at some biblical truths, some things that we can kind of think about and that help us better understand God's word. And so today we're going to just look at Matthew chapter one and look at verse one. So if you've got your Bible, just grab it and let's read that together. It says in Matthew chapter one, starting in verse one, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. You know, it's really interesting. Matthew begins his entire book. are really presenting this theme in the very first verse of his gospel and focuses on Jesus as being the fulfillment of the prophecy of Israel's expectation. You know, this one who they had been waiting for that would be the son of David, the son of Abraham. And Matthew just lays it out there, verse one, chapter one, verse one, he says, Hey, it's Jesus Christ. This is the guy that we've been waiting for. And so he begins. with this account of the life of Christ. And he uses some ancient Greek text, if you will, to talk about this idea of this genealogy of Christ. The first two words of Matthew in the Greek are biblos genisos, which can be translated as the record of genealogy or the record of origins or even the record of the history. And really in this book, we find those things. We have Jesus' genealogy listed for us. We're going to see it really verses two all the way through verse 17. We have the record of his genealogy. We have the record of his origins, where he came from, how he got here. And really in the entire book of Matthew, we have the record of his history. And so Matthew kind of lays out for us this reality of who Jesus Christ is. And, you know, even being a former tax collector, sometimes called Levi, Matthew was sometimes called Levi in other places in scripture, being that he's a tax collector, he has the authority, he has the qualifications, might be the better word, to keep an account of Jesus's life, because as a tax collector in that day, He had to know Greek, he had to be literate, he had to be a well organized individual. And some people believe that he was the recorder, if you will, who took the notes of Jesus's teaching. And it could be said that Matthew followed Jesus and left everything behind except his pen and paper, right? He took it to keep track, to keep record of who this Jesus was. And he used his skills really to compile for us an account of Jesus's teaching. And even when you consider the fact that he was a tax collector, that his job was to gather the tax, he was definitely a person who was hated because the Jews often hated the members of their own race who were servants of those who had conquered them. And so he wasn't necessarily favored or liked among the people. And yet here he is recording for us the very life of Christ. And it's interesting in verse number one, he says, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and he kind of overviews for us the lineage of Christ. He makes some strong connections really to maybe in the Jewish mind. two of the greatest men in the entire history of the Old Testament. You have Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, and you have David, the first king that they really, of course, he wasn't the first king of Israel. That would have been Saul, but he was this, this king whom they, they revered, they loved, and he, he shows this overarching truth of how Christ is the connection. He is the son of David. He is the son of Abraham. And most New Testament scholars, when looking at this passage, believe that the gospel of Matthew was probably not the first gospel that was ever written. I know a lot of times we kind of have in our mind, I don't know, it's maybe an unwritten rule. I don't know why we feel this way, but sometimes we feel like, well, maybe the order of the books in the Bible indicate the order in which they were written. And of course, that's not true. And It probably was not the first of the four, but yet it's really the first among the many gospel accounts in several areas. I think one is the fact that it's a factor that throughout human history, throughout church history, it was one of the first gospels that would ever be listed in a list. in a grouping of the Gospels. And the reality is that it's the only one of the synoptic Gospels who has an apostolic author. You have Matthew, you have Mark, you have Luke, those are the synoptics. And Matthew was the only one who was an actual apostle of Christ. And so we have some of these things. And I think the other thing that kind of indicates why Matthew might be listed first, why it's one of the first given in the Gospels, is that the Jewish pictures, the Jewish flavor, if you will, the Jewish emphasis of the book of Matthew very well kind of makes it a logical transition between the Old Testament Jewish And it kind of bridges some of that gap between the two. And ultimately we understand that Matthew's really thrust here in his, in his gospel is this theme that Jesus is the Messiah who the Israel, who's the nation of Israel have been waiting for. He was the son of Abraham, the son of David. And so there are many indications, indicators. that we find in the book of Matthew that one of the things we realize is that he has an understanding of Jewish culture and as far as Matthew is concerned, his readers also have an understanding of Jewish culture and he doesn't take time to explain these things because he understands that the people that he's writing to, the group that he's writing to already knows and understands. these truths and these realities. And it's little things like he doesn't translate Aramaic terms when he uses them. He often refers to Jewish customs without explaining them. He starts his genealogy with Abraham. That's an obvious one. And he regularly refers to Jesus as the son of David. And he uses the Jewish phrase, kingdom of heaven, more than the phrase kingdom of God. And so We see this very Jewishness, if you will, in the book of Matthew. And yet on the flip side of that, the book of Matthew ends with Jesus commanding his followers to go make disciples of the nations. So it's not about the gospel of Matthew is all about Jesus to the Jews. It's ultimately Jesus to the nations and he came through the Israelite nation. He came through the Jewish people, but the ultimate goal is to make disciples of all the nations. And so while the gospel of Matthew is deeply rooted in Judaism, I think we'll be able to find as we dive deeper into this gospel, it's also a message for the whole world, it's not just for Jewish people, and I think that's the remarkable thing about Christianity and about when you begin to unpack the Word of God and you begin to look at different places in Scripture, how the reality is that throughout the Scriptures, you see where God came to a specific group of people at a specific time. And yet when you take a step back, you can also see how those are eternal truths that for all are all people at all times. And so these are things that we ought to. be able to focus on and consider as we even unpack the gospel of Matthew. And another thing that's interesting is we also notice that Matthew and his gospel is quite critical of the Jewish leadership and the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. And he makes that clear, I think, throughout his writings in this gospel. And it's even been said that there are some early church commentators And even modern day scholars who believe that Matthew possibly could have written the entire gospel in Hebrew. And then it was later translated into Greek. There's no concrete evidence for this, but it's definitely an interesting thought if he was writing specifically to Jewish people, it would be best received in Hebrew. And then the other phrase that I want to look at really quick, um, before we wrap this up. is not just that he uses the phrase son of Abraham, but he also uses the phrase son of David. And that's the second part of Matthew's emphasis, is we see that he emphasizes Christ as being a Jew and his Jewishness, if you will, but then he also emphasizes his kingly royal line. And so we see Jesus in the book of Matthew as the kingly messiah. that's promised from David's royal family. And the Old Testament promises that the Messiah would be the son of David. And here in the book of Matthew, he points it out from the very beginning that Jesus is this fulfillment. He is the son of Abraham. He is the son of David. And so there's this connection that goes not just to Abraham, or not just to David, excuse me, but it goes even further back to Abraham that he is the seed. Uh, who, through whom all nations would eventually be blessed as he brought salvation to the world. And so we start the book of Matthew in just this one verse. And there's so much truth there. And that one phrase, the book of the generation, this biblos genisos, right? This record of genealogy of Jesus Christ. It's the, it's the record of Christ who is the son of David, the son of Abraham. And so the impact of what this means in relationship to who Christ is, is exactly what Matthew is going to unpack over the next chapters as we begin, as he begins his gospel, he starts with this reality. And then we're going to jump in, in our next episode together, we're going to jump right into these genealogies. And so and so begat so and so and so and so begat so and so. And he's, and he's listening for us. He's giving us this proof, this evidence of the very thing that he's claimed is the truth. And so I think that we're going to, we're going to walk away from the book of Matthew, realizing that Jesus is the Messiah who was promised from the very beginning. You know, I hope that as we continue to look at these passages and learn that you'll grow in grace and learn more about the word of God and that you'll join us next time as we continue to look into the book of Matthew. Thanks for listening. I hope that you've been both encouraged and challenged today. If you want to connect with us further, please be sure to check us out on the web at Gosp We look forward to having you join us again next time.