📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 2: The King Has Come

I. The Tax Collector and His King

Open your Bible to Matthew 1:1. "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." That single sentence is a Messianic legal brief. It is the opening of a court case for the Kingship of Jesus, and the prosecution is built on two ancestors: Abraham, to whom God promised that one of his descendants would bless every nation on earth; and David, to whom God promised that one of his descendants would sit on the throne forever. Matthew opens his Gospel by laying down the evidence: this man is the rightful heir.

The author was a tax collector named Levi, whom Jesus called from his tax booth in Capernaum and renamed Matthew, "Gift of God." A tax collector kept records for a living — names, amounts, dates, debts. When Jesus put a pen in Matthew's hand and said write a Gospel, the pen knew what to do. Matthew gives us the most carefully arranged of the four Gospels, organized around five great teaching blocks that echo the five books of Moses. He quotes the Old Testament more than sixty times. He says "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet" over and over again. Matthew is the bridge between the Testaments.

If you forget every other detail, hold on to this one: Matthew is written to Jewish readers to prove that Jesus is the King who was promised. He opens with a genealogy of the King, runs through five sermons of the King, climbs to the cross of the King, and ends with the commission of the King. Behold your King.

II. The King's Pedigree (Matthew 1–2)

The genealogy itself is doing theological work. Matthew breaks it into three sets of fourteen — Abraham to David, David to the exile, the exile to Christ. He includes four women, every one of them surprising: Tamar (who deceived Judah), Rahab (a Canaanite prostitute who hid the spies in Jericho), Ruth (a Moabite, from a forbidden people), and Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah). Matthew is preaching grace before he ever finishes the family tree. The Messiah is coming through a line stained with sin and scandal, because the Messiah is coming for people stained with sin and scandal. That is to say, He is coming for you and me.

Then comes the announcement. "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel' (which means 'God with us')" (Matthew 1:22–23). The prophecy is Isaiah 7:14, spoken seven hundred years before Bethlehem to a faithless King Ahaz. Isaiah had told Ahaz to trust the Lord and not scheme an alliance with Egypt. Ahaz refused. So the Lord gave a sign anyway — a sign that took seven centuries to ripen. Immanuel. God with us.

Some teach today that Jesus was a great teacher but not God. Look honestly at the name. The shepherds heard it from the angels. Joseph heard it in a dream. Old Simeon held it in his arms. Sadducees and Pharisees and Romans and Greeks — every one of them was reaching for a god. Matthew opens with the news that the God they were reaching for had just been born in a manger behind a Bethlehem inn. The first chapter of Matthew is the first chapter of the answer to four hundred years of silence. God with us.

III. The King's Forerunner and Temptation (Matthew 3–4)

Skip ahead thirty years. A wild-looking man named John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey, wearing camel's hair, preaching repentance and baptizing in the Jordan River. He is the messenger Malachi 3:1 had promised — the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord." The Pharisees came out to him. The Sadducees came out to him. Soldiers came. Crowds came. And one day the One John was preparing the way for came too, and asked to be baptized.

Then the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Forty days, forty nights — the same forty that Israel had wandered, the same forty that Moses had fasted on Sinai. And every time Satan held out a shortcut — turn these stones to bread, throw yourself off the temple, bow down and take all the kingdoms — Jesus answered with Scripture. "It is written." The Second Adam stood where the first had fallen. The King had passed His coronation test before He had ever sat on His throne.

If you and I learn nothing else from these chapters, learn this: there is no temptation in your life today that Christ has not faced, and there is no Scripture you cannot put on your tongue when Satan whispers a shortcut. "It is written" is not a quaint phrase. It is the sword of the Spirit in the King's own mouth, and He has put the same sword in yours. Pick it up.

IV. The King's Manifesto (Matthew 5–7)

In Matthew 5 Jesus walks up a mountain in Galilee, sits down, and delivers what is probably the most famous sermon ever preached on this earth. The disciples gather around Him. The crowds press in. And Jesus opens His mouth and overturns the world in three chapters.

He starts with the Beatitudes — Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Every blessing is a paradox. Every blessing names a kind of person the world overlooks and heaven keeps records on. He calls His followers the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He fulfills the Law, not abolishes it. He raises the standard from outward act to inward heart: anger is murder, lust is adultery. He teaches us how to pray, how to fast, how to give, how to forgive, how to love our enemies.

And then He says it. "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). That word "perfect" is teleios — complete, mature, fully arrived at the goal. It is a standard no one can reach. And yet Jesus says, be perfect. How?

The answer is the gospel. I once read of a marathon runner who collapsed just before the finish line. Another runner stopped, lifted him to his feet, and carried him across. The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:7). We strive for holiness, and we fall short. Christ carries us the rest of the way. The Sermon on the Mount is not a ladder you climb to heaven. It is a portrait of the Kingdom you have already been carried into. Strive. Fall. Trust. Be carried. That is the four-beat rhythm of every day of the Christian life.

V. The King's Power and the King's Parables (Matthew 8–13)

For five chapters after the Sermon, Matthew shows us the King in action. He cleanses a leper with a touch. He calms a storm with a word. He casts out demons. He raises a synagogue ruler's daughter from her deathbed. He gives sight to two blind men, speech to a mute, and food to five thousand on a hillside with five loaves and two small fish. The miracles of Jesus are credentials of the King — not magic tricks, but the King's signature on the contract of the Kingdom.

But opposition rises. The Pharisees, who answered the question of how to serve God by building a fence around the Torah, do not like Jesus stepping over the fence. He heals on the Sabbath. He eats with sinners. He forgives sins, which only God can do. They begin to plot. By Matthew 12 they are accusing Him of casting out demons by the prince of demons. The hardening has begun.

And so in Matthew 13 Jesus turns to parables — seven of them, all about the Kingdom of heaven is like. A sower scatters seed on four soils. A man finds a treasure hidden in a field. A merchant finds a pearl of great price. A dragnet pulls every kind of fish out of the sea. The parables both reveal and conceal. To the disciple they are doors that open into the Kingdom. To the hardened heart they are walls. Jesus quotes Isaiah 6 over the crowd: seeing they do not see, hearing they do not hear. The same Word that softens one heart hardens another. The question is never whether the Word will work; the question is which work the Word will do in you.

VI. The Great Confession (Matthew 16)

By Matthew 16 Jesus has reached the northern edge of Israel — Caesarea Philippi, a Gentile city at the foot of Mount Hermon, dedicated to the Greek god Pan. In that pagan landscape, Jesus turns to His disciples and asks two of the most important questions in human history.

The first is researched. "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" The disciples rattle off the popular list. Some say John the Baptist resurrected. Some say Elijah returned. Some say Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, come back to weep over Israel. The list is complimentary; not one of them is wrong about Jesus being great. They are only wrong about Him being only great.

The second question is revealed. "But who do you say that I am?" Peter, who often spoke for the disciples and sometimes without reflection, this time gets it exactly right. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus blesses him — not flesh and blood revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. This is not something you reason your way into. This is not something you read in a book. This is something the Holy Spirit Himself plants in a human heart.

Then comes a beautiful little wordplay we lose in English. Jesus says, "You are Peter (Petros — a pebble, a small stone), and on this rock (Petra — the bedrock) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." Notice what Jesus did not say. He did not say Peter was the bedrock. The bedrock is the confession Peter made — Christ, the Son of the living God. Every church in every century is built on that confession or on nothing.

VII. The King on the Offensive

Look once more at what Jesus said about the gates of hell. "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." My friend, gates are not offensive weapons. No army ever attacked with a gate. A gate is a defensive structure. Walls and gates are what you put up when you are afraid of what is coming. When Jesus says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, He is not picturing the church huddled in a fortress while the devil pounds on the walls. He is picturing the church marching against the gates of hell and the gates buckling under the assault.

That changes everything. The church is not on defense. The church is on offense. We are not holding the fort until Jesus returns. We are advancing the Kingdom until He returns. Lew Wallace, the Civil War general and atheist, set out to write a novel that would expose Jesus as a fraud. The deeper he dug into the historical record, the more he was forced to his knees. By the time he finished, the novel was Ben Hur, and Wallace was on his face before the One he had set out to debunk. The gates of hell did not hold against him.

They will not hold against you either. Every prayer you pray, every soul you witness to, every act of obedience in a hard week — these are battering rams against the gates of hell. "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before."

VIII. The Cross and the Commission (Matthew 26–28)

The road from Caesarea Philippi runs straight to Jerusalem. Three times after Peter's confession Jesus tells His disciples that He must be killed and on the third day rise again. Three times they fail to understand. He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey on Sunday. He cleanses the temple on Monday. He teaches in the temple courts through Tuesday and Wednesday. He keeps the Passover with His disciples on Thursday, washing their feet, breaking the bread, lifting the cup. He prays in Gethsemane until the sweat falls like drops of blood. He is betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, tried in a kangaroo court of Sadducees, handed over to Pilate, scourged, mocked, and crucified between two thieves at nine o'clock on Friday morning. "It is finished." He dies at three in the afternoon. The Roman centurion who watched Him die says, "Truly this was the Son of God."

Sunday morning, the women come to the tomb and find the stone rolled away. An angel says the words that change everything. "He is not here, for He is risen, as He said." The empty tomb is the receipt for the cross. The resurrection is the Father's Amen on the Son's It is finished.

And then Matthew ends where Matthew began. The Gospel that opened with Immanuel, God with us closes on a Galilean mountain with the King speaking the Great Commission. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18–20).

IX. The Same King, the Same Promise

Notice the bookends. Matthew 1:23 opens with Immanuel — God with us. Matthew 28:20 closes with Lo, I am with you always. The whole Gospel is wrapped in the same promise. God with us at the manger. God with us at the cross. God with us at the tomb. God with us on the mountain at the end. God with us tonight at your kitchen table. God with us tomorrow morning when you wake up and remember whatever it was that hurt yesterday.

The King has come. The King has died. The King has risen. The King has commissioned us. And the King is with us. That is the whole Gospel of Matthew in seven sentences.

So press on into Mark, where we will see this same Lord again, this time as the Servant who got it done. But before you turn the page, take one moment with Matthew 28:18. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me." He owns the office you walk into tomorrow. He owns the school your children attend. He owns the country you live in. He owns the cancer ward and the courtroom and the cradle. Behold your King. And then, having beheld Him, go. Make disciples of all nations. You do not go alone. He goes with you. He is Immanuel, this morning, this afternoon, and to the end of the age. Amen.

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