May 16th, 2024
by Brandon Starnes
by Brandon Starnes
Matthew 1-3: Jesus as the Messiah and Immanuel (God With Us)
Chapters 1-3 set the stage by attaching Jesus’ story right onto the Old Testament Scriptures. 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. 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. 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. He is God with us, the God of Israel embodied as a human.
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. Like Moses, Jesus came up out of Egypt (ch. 2), passed through the waters of baptism (ch.3), entered the wilderness for 40 days (ch. 4) and went up onto a mountain to give new teaching, most of which focused on the Torah (chs. 5-7). 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. This also explains why Matthew structured the center of the book into five main parts that highlight Jesus’ teaching. 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.
Chapters 1-3 set the stage by attaching Jesus’ story right onto the Old Testament Scriptures. 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. 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. 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. He is God with us, the God of Israel embodied as a human.
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. Like Moses, Jesus came up out of Egypt (ch. 2), passed through the waters of baptism (ch.3), entered the wilderness for 40 days (ch. 4) and went up onto a mountain to give new teaching, most of which focused on the Torah (chs. 5-7). 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. This also explains why Matthew structured the center of the book into five main parts that highlight Jesus’ teaching. 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.
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