Table of Contents
Matthew
Matthew was a tax collector — a Jew working for Rome, collecting money from his own people, a trade that made him a social and religious outcast among them (Matthew 9:9-13) — before Jesus called him away from the tax booth with two words: “Follow me.” Writing for a Jewish audience above all, he opens with a genealogy tracing Jesus back through David to Abraham, and structures the whole Gospel around five great blocks of teaching, closing each one with some form of the phrase “when Jesus had ended these sayings.” No other Gospel quotes the Old Testament as often, or as insistently, as fulfilled in Christ.
This series reads Matthew chapter by chapter, the same way this site has already read every book of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. It is the first New Testament book on this site, and the first of Matthew’s own twenty-eight chapters — the Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the kingdom, the journey to Jerusalem, and the cross and the empty tomb that answer everything the Old Testament spent four thousand years promising.
List Of Articles
His Name Shall Be Called Immanuel
a seventeen-verse genealogy running through four scandal-marked women before it ever reaches Joseph, a just man who chooses mercy before an angel ever speaks to him, and a name — JESUS — given at birth with its meaning already attached: he shall save his people from their sins
Matthew 1Out Of Egypt Have I Called My Son
wise men from the East, a king who murders his way to safety, and a family fleeing by night — two Old Testament verses about Israel's own history, Hosea's exodus and Jeremiah's exile, both stretched forward to cover a single child's escape
Matthew 2This Is My Beloved Son
John the Baptist emerges from the wilderness dressed like Elijah, rebukes the religious establishment as a generation of vipers, and then baptizes the one man in the crowd who had no sins to confess — all three Persons of the Godhead visible in one scene at the Jordan
Matthew 3Get Thee Hence, Satan
forty days of hunger in an empty wilderness, three temptations aimed exactly where chapter 3's own strength was just proven, and then a ministry that opens not with a throne but with four fishermen leaving their nets on the strength of two words
Matthew 4Be Ye Therefore Perfect
the Beatitudes, salt and light, and six "ye have heard… but I say unto you" contrasts — murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and enemies — each one taking a commandment everyone already knew and pushing it down into the heart where no court could ever have reached it
Matthew 5After This Manner Therefore Pray Ye
almsgiving, prayer, and fasting taken apart the same way three times over — moved out of the street corner and into a closet — framed around the Lord's Prayer itself, and closing on the birds of the air and the lilies of the field
Matthew 6A Wise Man, Which Built His House Upon A Rock
judging, the mote and the beam, ask-seek-knock and the golden rule, the strait gate, false prophets in sheep's clothing, and a closing parable of two houses hit by the identical storm — the Sermon on the Mount's own final chapter
Matthew 7What Manner Of Man Is This
five miracles back to back — a leper touched and cleansed, a Roman centurion's faith Jesus Himself marvels at, a whole town's sick healed by evening, a storm stilled with two words, and two men no chain could hold, set free from Legion
Matthew 8Thy Sins Be Forgiven Thee
a paralytic forgiven before he is healed, Matthew called mid-transaction from a tax booth, John's disciples asking why Jesus's own disciples do not fast, Jairus's daughter and a woman healed by a single touch, and a charge against the Holy Spirit's own work that will return in a far more serious form three chapters later
Matthew 9Sheep In The Midst Of Wolves
the twelve are named, ordained, and sent out with authority over unclean spirits and disease — a discourse that moves from packing lists to councils and kings to family division, and closes on the promise that even a cup of cold water will not go unrewarded
Matthew 10Come Unto Me, All Ye That Labour
John the Baptist's own doubt from Herod's dungeon, Jesus's tribute to him as more than a prophet, woes on the Galilean towns that saw the most and repented least, and the invitation, still quoted two thousand years later, to every weary and heavy-laden soul
Matthew 11Lord Even Of The Sabbath Day
grain plucked and a withered hand healed on the Sabbath, the Beelzebub charge returning in its full and consequential form, the unpardonable sin, idle words, the sign of Jonah, and Jesus's own family concluding He was beside Himself
Matthew 12A Sower Went Forth To Sow
seven parables of the kingdom in one sitting — the sower and its four soils, the wheat and tares, the mustard seed and the leaven, treasure hid in a field, a pearl of great price, a net cast into the sea, and a hometown that rejected Him twice over
Matthew 13Of A Truth Thou Art The Son Of God
a king too guilty to enjoy his own throne, John the Baptist's execution told in full at last, five loaves feeding five thousand with twelve baskets to spare, and a fisherman who sinks the moment he takes his eyes off the Man he is walking toward on open water
Matthew 14O Woman, Great Is Thy Faith
a delegation from Jerusalem accuses Him over unwashed hands and gets exposed instead for a loophole that let a man starve his own parents, then a Canaanite woman with no covenant claim on Israel out-argues Him in faith, and a heathen crowd in Decapolis glorifies the God of Israel for three straight days
Matthew 15Thou Art The Christ, The Son Of The Living God
the Pharisees and Sadducees demand a sign and get only Jonah's, Peter speaks the truest sentence anyone has yet said about Jesus and moments later becomes Satan's own mouthpiece against Him, and the first plain word about the cross lands in the same breath as the promise of a kingdom coming in glory
Matthew 16This Is My Beloved Son; Hear Ye Him
the promise from the last chapter comes due as Peter, James, and John watch Jesus transfigured between Moses and Elijah, then the climb back down a mountain into a valley where the other nine disciples have just been publicly humiliated by a demon they could not cast out, and a coin turns up in a fish's mouth to settle a temple tax He never owed
Matthew 17Until Seventy Times Seven
a little child set in the middle of a dispute over who is greatest, a millstone warning for anyone who harms a simple faith, a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find one, the steps of church discipline, and a servant forgiven an unpayable debt who could not bring himself to forgive a small one
Matthew 18With God All Things Are Possible
a trap question about divorce answered from the creation account, children blessed over the disciples' objection, a rich and sincere young ruler who asks exactly the right question and cannot accept the answer, and a promise wide enough to cover what no rich man's wealth can buy him
Matthew 19To Give His Life A Ransom For Many
a landowner pays a full day's wage to laborers who worked one hour, the third and most detailed prediction of the cross, a mother's request for the two best seats in the kingdom, and two blind beggars who name Jesus more accurately from the roadside than the crowd walking beside Him
Matthew 20The Stone Which The Builders Rejected
the triumphal entry and a King weeping over the city praising Him, the temple cleansed a second time, a fruitless fig tree withered at a word, the authority question that traps the men who asked it, and two parables in a row that leave the priests pronouncing their own sentence out of their own mouths
Matthew 21Render Therefore Unto Caesar The Things Which Are Caesar's
a king's wedding feast for guests who wanted no part of it, a coin that settles a perfect trap in one sentence, seven brothers and one widow that expose the Sadducees' whole theology, the commandment every other commandment grows from, and a question about David's own greater Son that ends the questioning for good
Matthew 22How Often Would I Have Gathered Thy Children
seven woes fall one after another on the scribes and Pharisees for a hypocrisy that tithes garden herbs while neglecting justice and mercy, for whited-sepulchre religion, and for building monuments to murdered prophets while plotting a fresh murder of their own — and then the judge's voice breaks into a lament over the city that would not be gathered
Matthew 23The Sign Of The Son Of Man In Heaven
the Olivet discourse in full — Jerusalem's fall and the second coming woven together in one answer, wars and false christs and the abomination of desolation, the sun darkened and the stars falling, the fig tree's own calibrated certainty paired with a day and hour no man knows, and the faithful servant found watching when his lord returns
Matthew 24Inasmuch As Ye Have Done It Unto One Of The Least Of These
ten bridesmaids and the oil half of them forgot to bring, a traveling master's talents entrusted according to ability and reckoned for on his return, and a King who separates a gathered world by a standard nobody saw coming — not what they believed, but who they fed, clothed, and visited without ever knowing whose face they were looking at
Matthew 25Not As I Will, But As Thou Wilt
a woman pours out a year's wages of perfume six days before His death, one of the Twelve sells Him for the price of a slave, the Lord's Supper is instituted, Gethsemane's prayer is prayed three times, a kiss becomes an arrest, a court that can't find one true witness condemns Him anyway, and Peter denies even knowing His name
Matthew 26My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
Judas hangs himself over thirty pieces of silver, a governor washes his hands and condemns an innocent man anyway, a crowd chooses a murderer, and by mid-afternoon the sun itself goes dark over a hill called Golgotha — where a Roman centurion says out loud what the priests standing beside him could not admit
Matthew 27Lo, I Am With You Alway
the stone is rolled away by an angel while the guards fall down as dead men, the risen Christ meets the women with a greeting instead of a rebuke, the priests pay for a lie to explain away an empty tomb, and eleven men on a Galilean mountain receive the last words — and the last command — of the whole Gospel
Matthew 28