Unlocking the New Testament Part 1 - Matthew 1

I am going to be talking about this book. It’s a book that will make you wise, but

not clever. There are plenty of other books you can read to make you clever, but this

book - and this is the only book to do it - will make you wise. And I’d rather be

wise than clever. Clever, you make a lot of money; wise, you make the most of life.

Now people read this book in different ways. Some people use what I call the medicinal

method, ten verses a day keeps the devil away, kind of thing. But other people use devotional

notes and I have the sneaky feeling that they study the notes more than they study the book,

and that they read through the selected passage quickly and then study the notes on it.

How did God mean us to read his word? Well I want to begin by telling you that this word

Bible originally is a plural word, not a singular word. It’s the word ‘biblia’ and it

means books - and this is a collection of books, it’s a library. There are different

kinds of books here, there are songs, there are proverbs, there are history books, there

are prophetic books - and it’s terribly important that we read the Bible book by book.

You see, somebody has damaged our Bibles very badly. They have put chapter and verse numbers

in it and many Christians have become ‘text people’, and we quote John 3:16; and I am

always quoting Hezekiah 3:16 and I make that say whatever I like and I see people hunting

through their Bible to try and find Hezekiah 3:16. It’s not there. Somebody who’d listened

to my tapes for a long time said David, why is it you are supposed to be a Bible teacher,

but you never give chapter and verse numbers. I say, no, they’re not part of the word

of God and God never intended them to be there. It has divided up God's word in a way that

he never intended. What other book would you read in which every sentence was numbered?

Well, it’s crazy isn't it? So here we have a collection of different books and we need

to ask of each book what kind of book is it? Why was it written? What’s it all about?

Now I’ve written a book called 'Normal Christian Birth' and to my surprise, when it was published

– it’s about being born again, and how to help people into the New Birth - but to

my surprise when it came out, the British Library in the front has catalogued it under

Childbirth, and so now, if you want to get this book in your public library you’ll

have to get it in the section under Gynaecology. Wouldn't it be crazy to go to your library

and take out a book of gardening if you wanted to know about cooking? Or to take out a novel

if you wanted to study computers, and yet people pick texts from all over the Bible

without any regard to context, without asking where they’re finding it, and they say this

is the word of God. A classic example of that is the text `I can

do all things through Christ who strengthens me'. Now what kind of thing is that about?

I often ask a congregation, what kind of thing can you do through Christ - and they tell

me, witness, heal, pray. I say, but that text has nothing whatever to do with those things.

It’s about being able to live on your income, and it’s a very, very relevant text today,

and Paul says, I’ve learnt to be content whether I’ve got a lot of money or a little

money, I’ve learnt how to manage. And you know I found recently in one church two thirds

of the congregation were in debt and needed to learn the meaning of that text - I can

manage on my salary, I can manage on my wages, through Christ who strengthens me. I can manage

on my pension. Very relevant. But you see if you take the text out of its context you

lose its meaning altogether. And the book in which a text occurs is the major context

of that verse and gives it its whole meaning. Now we’re going to begin with the Gospels.

They are a unique kind of book. In the New Testament we’ve got history books, we’ve

got letters, we’ve got one prophetic book - but we have four books which are quite unique.

There’s nothing quite like them in any other literature and we call them Gospels. Now what

is a Gospel? It’s not a biography. It’s certainly not an autobiography because Jesus

never wrote any books, but it’s not a straight biography either because over one-third of

the pages of each Gospel describe the death of Jesus. Now I don't know of any other biography

that spends a third of its pages on someone's death, however spectacular or tragic the death

may have been. So what is a Gospel? the nearest thing I can get to it in modern life is this:

it is a news bulletin. It’s a news announcement and when you read them you get the sense straight

away that there’s an exciting bit of news to share and that really it should be read

aloud. And I suggest that even when you are by yourself you might get more out of it by

reading it aloud to yourself. Reading it aloud to others you get far more out of it, as I

have found. I love reading the Bible to people, even more than preaching, because when I am

reading the Bible every word is worth hearing. When I am preaching that’s not quite true.

So it’s a unique literary form and the writers of the Gospels were witnesses of something.

They actually saw something happen, they heard it happen and they want to announce it as

news to others so really a Gospel is an extended news bulletin. That’s how it came about.

But as the time passed, obviously these witnesses to what Jesus did and said were getting fewer

and fewer, as they died off, as they were killed off. But at the same time the church

was getting bigger and bigger and spreading further and further, so here was a conflict.

The number of those who could announce the news, who had seen it first-hand, was getting

smaller, and the number of people who needed to hear this news bulletin was getting bigger.

So what was to be done? The answer is they had to write it down, quickly, and get it

down in black and white before they passed away, so that we’ve got this first-hand

account of Jesus from these people. Now the first thing that strikes you when

you open your Bible is that there are four Gospels. Now why four? Wouldn't it be much

more convenient if we only had one - and I’m sure when you read them you realise there’s

an awful lot of overlap between them. So why four? Why couldn't God get them together and

say produce one volume and each of you contribute all that you know and let’s have it altogether.

And there have been attempts to do this. One of my favourite authors years ago was a man

called Freeman Wills Croft. Any of you fans of his? Especially when I lived in Guildford,

I enjoyed reading The Crime at Guildford, it’s a murder on the Hog's Back, and Freeman

Wills Croft was an Anglican lay reader living in Guildford in Surrey and he wrote detective

novels. He was also interested in railways which I share with him, but he decided to

put the four Gospels into one story, and he did this and there’s Freeman Wills Croft's

Harmony of the Gospels. It’s an ingenious thing to do, but it’s lost something. And

I never read it nowadays. I enjoyed it at first and I thought that’s going to save

me a lot of time; instead of reading all four I can read it all in one - and then I realised

he’d lost a valuable dimension. You see, God duplicates certain things in

scripture. There are two accounts of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2. There are two accounts

of the history of Israel in Chronicles and Kings, and here we have four accounts of Jesus'

life and death. So why? The answer is: for some important things God has to give us a

different angle and to get the full picture you need every angle. Sometimes it’s a two-dimensional

picture but with Jesus we’ve got a four-dimensional picture. We see him from four quite different

angles. Now I’ve not been in prison but I’m told that if I was I would have to have

my photograph taken like this, and like this. But when I said that a month ago, a man who

had been through that experience corrected me and said they now do three mug shots, as

he said, to get a full picture of someone's face so that he can really be recognised.

Well, one of my favourite machines is Concord. I just love the shape of that aircraft. It

looks as if it’s flying even when it’s on the ground. There’s something about that

shape. How would you describe that shape to someone in words? It’d be quite a task wouldn't

it? Well, one way you simply describe it as a delta shape and people understand that as

a delta. That’s the shape of the Greek letter d or delta. That’s why it’s called that.

But then when you look at it like that, what shape is it now? And in fact if you wanted

to take photographs of the shape of Concord to show someone, you’d have to take at least

four or five or they’d never understand the shape of the thing. It looks so amazing

from every angle. Well now, Jesus is the most amazing character who ever lived and so God

inspired four people to look at him for us and to write down what they saw. Now it’s

an easy thing to say that each of them saw a different person, or rather the same person

in a different manifestation or attribute, and it’s become customary to say that Mark

saw Jesus as the Son of Man. He wrote the first Gospel and the briefest and then Matthew

came along with the second and saw the King of the Jews. Luke wrote the third to be written,

and saw the Saviour of the World and John the fourth, and he saw the Son of God. Well,

that’s quite a neat way of saying there were four different angles.

But we need to dig a bit deeper than that. There are two aspects that we need to look

at. Number 1, the writer. Oh, I’m jumping ahead. Let’s just go through that middle

bit. Three stages in writing up the life of a man who’s now dead. The first publications

usually tell us what the man did. The obituary in the Times tell us what he did. That’s

the first interest people have in a great person who’s gone, what they did. But after

a bit, people get more interested in what he said, and they begin to publish his letters

and his speeches. But then you’ll find a third stage of biography comes when people

want to dig behind all that to what the man was, his character, his personality, what

motivated him, what made him tick, what was he really like? And the four Gospels actually

follow these three stages very significantly. Mark is simply concerned with what Jesus did,

his actions, his miracles; and his death and resurrection. Matthew and Luke both have far

more about what Jesus said They’ve recorded his preaching very much more than Mark ever

did. That’s why they’re both longer because they both used Mark as their basic outline,

but then fed into it a whole lot of new material. John, however, was not interested in what

Jesus did, he was more interested in what he said, but his supreme concern, as we’ll

see in the next talk, was with what Jesus was; who was he? His personality, his innermost

being, who was he? Now let’s come to this third part. There

are two levels at which you can study a Gospel. One is from the point of view of the writer.

What did he see? How did he understand it? His insight is different from the other three

so what was his insight into Jesus - as insight is more revealing than sight. But that’s

only one angle, the other angle at which you need to study a Gospel is from the readers’

angle, and here we must ask what was the intention behind the writing of this book. Who was it

written for? Why was it written? Because the writer wasn't just getting things off his

chest and just telling us what he saw, he was writing for a particular purpose and particular

readers and so whenever we study a Gospel, we need to come at it from these two angles,

the writer's angle and the readers’ angle. The writer's insight and his intention. Who

was he hoping to reach? What was he hoping to teach?

Well now, I hope that will just lay the foundation for the rest of our study. We are going to

look at Matthew now from these two angles. We call the first three Gospels the synoptic

Gospels. You must have heard that term. It’s made up of two Greek words, ‘syn’ - together,

and ‘optic’ - see, view. And it says these three Gospels have a similar view. They view

Jesus together, whereas John, he’s just one on his own. You must have noticed what

a difference there is when you leave Matthew, Mark and Luke and get into John. Let’s begin

with Mark. Mark is a very exciting piece of journalism. It's sheer journalism, this news

announcement - and he rushes through the first months of Jesus' public ministry, but he divides

it very carefully into two and a half years and half a year. That’s his framework and

it’s a framework that Matthew and Luke were both going to use. Thirty months Jesus ministered

up in the north, in Galilee, which was very cosmopolitan area, lots of different nationalities

were there. A very open country and open people. But in Judaea in the south were the nationalists,

very narrow people, very strict people, very isolated people - and Jesus was very popular

in the north and very unpopular in the south. That’s why he died in the south, not in

the north. The only people who tried to kill him in the north were his own villagers in

Nazareth who tried to throw him off a cliff. But on the whole in the north Jesus was immensely

popular. Thousands followed him. When he went to the south that’s when he ran into trouble,

again and again. So that’s the framework and Mark is building

up to a climax in this and the climax is in the south. There’s a kind of leisurely feel

about the north, but when you get into the south the whole thing tightens up and becomes

a crisis. Now in another way he’s not only building up to a climax he is also slowing

down to it and in the first few pages of Mark you are rushing through the months, ‘and

straightway’ ‘and straightway’ - in fact you rush through two and a half years

in a few pages – ‘and straightway he got into a boat and immediately he was at the

other side’. It must have been a jet boat or something. ‘And immediately’ – everything’s

happening immediately. Have you ever noticed that? It’s journalism getting you all excited

about everything that was going on. But then the years become months. The next few months

a few pages, and then the months become weeks, and the weeks become one week, and each day

is described. And then on the last day, every hour is described. Did you ever notice that?

It’s like an express train slowing up and coming to a halt, and it halts right in front

of the Cross. So Mark is building everything up towards the Cross, and slowing everything

down towards the Cross. Do you see that combination of building up and slowing down? It’s a

masterly piece of journalism and is probably the Gospel to give a complete outsider to

read who just knows nothing about Jesus and wants to know about this exciting person we

believe in. Now let’s turn straightaway to Matthew;

we’re not looking at Mark now. Matthew uses Mark as his framework, but he has changed

it very considerably. First, he’s made it much bigger, in size. He has added a great

deal, he’s added all the story of his birth, of his conception, of the Wise Men coming

- you know all the story from Christmas. Now none of that is in Mark. Mark began his story

when Jesus was thirty. But Matthew goes way back and adds a whole lot of things. So he

starts earlier. He makes a lot of alterations. We’ll look at those when we come to them.

But he actually changes things in Mark to bring out another aspect. He puts the story

of the lost sheep in a completely different context so that the lost sheep is no longer

a sinner but is a backsliding Christian. He omits a great deal, but above all he collects

the sayings of Jesus. There’s a lot more speech in Matthew and these sayings are collected

into sermons, of which there are five big sermons in Matthew; and the best known is

the first, the Sermon on the Mount. But there are four others and Matthew is unusual in

this. Luke when he wrote his Gospel didn't do that. He scattered the sayings of Jesus

all the way through the narrative, but Matthew collected them under five themes, which we

shall look at in a moment and he did that for a specific purpose. They were probably

sayings that Jesus had said separately but Matthew said, I am going to gather them together,

in five blocks. Now Matthew was Jewish, and the Law of Moses was collected in five blocks.

The first five books of the Bible. We call them the Pentateuch, which means the five

books. The five books of Moses, the five sermons of Jesus – what’s Matthew saying? He’s

saying there’s a new law come; it’s not the Law of Moses anymore, it’s the Law of

Jesus now. Again we’ll come back to that. The structure is very interesting. He alternates

words with deeds: has a block of the words of Jesus, then he has a block of the deeds.

Then another block of the words, and then another block of the deeds, and five times

he switches and so you’ve got a sandwich. You can see the structure of Matthew in your

mind. Five sermons, each followed by five accounts of the deeds that Jesus did which

illustrate his sermon. Because, you see, Jesus was communicating in word and deed as we should

be communicating the Gospel in word and deed. People should see and hear and that is what

Matthew is saying. Mark didn't say it, Mark invites us to come and see what Jesus did,

but Matthew says come and hear what he said, and see what he did, and he keeps alternating

like this, and having got the five-layer sandwich, he then puts the birth story in front and

the death and resurrection after and we’ve got his Gospel. So we can see how he put it

together. Now one of the things that does strike us

when we read Matthew's Gospel is that it’s very Jewish and it is obviously aimed at Jewish

readers. Let’s start with a very simple observation. No Jew likes to say ‘God’.

They are so afraid of taking the name of the Lord in vain that I have never been able to

persuade a Jew to tell me how to say Yahweh which I understand is the Hebrew name for

God, and you know, I’ve tried to catch them out, I’ve said how do you pronounce the

name of God? And they say `Ya...' and then they stop; they say you’re not going to

catch me out, and they won't say it. They are desperately afraid of taking the name

of the Lord in vain and therefore they prefer to say Heaven instead of God. They say `Heaven

help you', `Pray to Heaven', `Heaven bless you'. And that is why in Matthew's Gospel

you don't find the phrase Kingdom of God, as you do all the way through Luke. When Matthew

reports Jesus, he reports his as saying Kingdom of Heaven, and that would be a sensitivity

towards Jewish readers to say Kingdom of Heaven. If you buy the Jewish Chronicle, you’ll

never find the word God in it, but you do find frequently a funny capital G, and then

a little dash and then a little d. If ever you’ve read the Jewish Chronicle, you’ll

find G-d all over it, and that’s God. You know it’s God, but they dare not spell it

out fully, in case they take his name in vain, so Matthew talks about the Kingdom of Heaven,

the Kingdom of Heaven. That tells you he’s thinking about Jewish readers, because Matthew,

remember, saw Jesus as King of the Jews and that’s a great message that comes all the

way through. Now there are other things that tell us that

Matthew had Jewish readers in mind. One is that he refers to the Old Testament more than

any of the other Gospels. One of his favourite sayings is “that it might be fulfilled,

which was spoken by the prophets”, and that phrase alone occurs 13 times in the story

of Jesus' birth, and he quotes altogether, Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah just in

the birth story. He’s saying something. One of the reasons why Matthew is first in

the New Testament, even though it wasn't written first, is that it links with the Old Testament

better than all the others, and it seems to provide a continuity. If you’ve read the

Old Testament and you’re steeped in that, then you’re just ready for Matthew, and

see the Old Testament fulfilled in Matthew. There are altogether 29 direct quotations

from the Old Testament in this book, but there are 121 references indirect, allusions - 121.

Here’s a man who’s steeped in the Old Testament scriptures; it’s why he takes

such a long time explaining that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, because the prophets had

said ‘O Bethlehem of Judea’, you’re the one that’s going to produce the King.

And so Matthew emphasises Bethlehem more than any other.

You know, once when Jesus was preaching somebody in the crowd said, “Could this be the Messiah?”

and somebody else answered and said, it can't be he comes from Nazareth and I’m amazed

Jesus kept quiet. I couldn't have done, could you? I’d have wanted to shout out, you're

wrong; he’s not from Nazareth, he’s from Bethlehem. But Jesus kept that quiet, but

Matthew writing for Jewish readers says he came from Bethlehem, I want you to know. That’s

why he included the story of the birth, so that Jews would know he was fulfilling the

prophets. Then of course why was he crucified? That’s

the big problem to Jews. They cannot understand a King who lets himself be crucified, and

Matthew makes it absolutely clear that Jesus was innocent - keeps emphasising it. He will

not let Jewish readers think that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy and put to death as a

criminal, and as a man who broke God's law. And there is also a big emphasis in Matthew

as there isn't in any other Gospel on: Jesus did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil

it, and one of the strongest statements in Matthew, which has been a problem to Christians

ever since, is Jesus said “not one jot, or one tittle of the law will pass away”.

Now, that makes me feel guilty because I’m breaking the Law of Moses right now and I

usually do so because a Jewish family helps me to. You see one of the jots or tittles

of the Mosaic Law is that you mustn't wear suits of mixed material, and ‘St Michael’

is my patron saint, and it’s a Jewish family who helps me to break that law, so what does

Jesus mean ‘one jot or one tittle’? That’s going to be a problem we’ll have to wrestle

with. You see, there’s another law that if you

get dry rot in your house you’ve got to burn your house down out of love for your

neighbour. It doesn't say anything about the Rentokil man - you burn your house down because

you love your neighbour. Then it says if you put an extension on your house and it has

a flat roof you’ve got to put a railing around the flat roof to stop the neighbour's

children climbing up and falling over. That’s a good one isn't it? But there are building

regulations, there are regulations about clothes, and about your toilet arrangements, and Jesus

says not one jot or one tittle of the law will pass. It’s Matthew who tells us this

- it must have been a relief to the Jews because the Jews thought Jesus had come to destroy

the law; Matthew said he didn't. He came to get it fulfilled. Well it means we’ve got

to wrestle with the Laws of Moses. And yet having said all this, that Matthew is very

much inclined to Jewish readers, I must now tell you that it’s also for Gentile readers,

and there’s quite a bit of anti-Jewish teaching in Matthew, and Matthew has a lot going for

the Gentiles. The Wise Men coming to see the baby in Bethlehem - we presume, though we’re

not sure, we presume that they were Gentiles. And right through to the end of the Gospel

where Jesus says go and make disciples of all the Gentiles, all the nations, all the

ethnic groups out there, all the non-Jews, go and make disciples of them. So Matthew

is not just writing for Jewish readers as many people have thought, and I’ve heard

many say Matthew is the Gospel for Jews - no it isn't. It’s the most helpful one to give

to a Jew; and I remember meeting a Jew who was converted through reading Matthew Chapter

1, would you believe it? That’s the genealogy, all the “begats”, you know? When I first

read through the Bible, I thought they did nothing but begat in those days, you know:

“begat, begat, begat, begat”, all the way through, whole chapters of begatting,

and there we’ve got it - Matthew Chapter 1 – all the begatting, Jesus' family tree.

And you know this Jew was converted because when he read that, he suddenly realised Jesus

was a real person and that’s what convinced him because to a Jew, it’s your family tree

that establishes you as a person - and he was converted and believed in Jesus from just

Matthew Chapter 1. So the genealogies have their purposes.

But here we have in this Gospel a chapter full of woes on Jews. Now I wonder if you

know what the word woe means. It’s a curse. It’s the opposite of the word blessed, and

Jesus uttered as many woes as blesseds. Whenever I go to the Sea of Galilee, I always remember

the woes of Jesus for this reason. If you go to Israel today, you will stay in a hotel

on the shores of Tiberius. Not this week, because I’ve just heard that the hotels

are all flooded with water - the Sea of Galilee has just risen like that. All the snow that’s

come and melted from Hermon - and the hotels are flooded, and they thought the Sea of Galilee

would take four more years to fill up again. It’s now all over the place. But you would

stay in Tiberius, do you know why? You see, in Jesus' day there were 250,000 people living

on the shores of Galilee in four major cities. A quarter of a million! It was the most populated

area so, you know when tourists today see it and say, oh, isn't it beautiful? I see

it just as Jesus saw it, the green hills; that’s sheer romanticism. There were a quarter

of million people living around that lake. Where are they? Where are the towns? The answer

is this, Jesus said “woe to you Capernaum, woe to you Bethsaida, woe to you Chorazin”,

and they have all disappeared. The only town he never cursed was Tiberius and it’s still

there. I will tell you when Jesus curses, that’s something to make you tremble. And

in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus cursed Jews. He said, woe to you who love to have the chief

seats in the synagogue. Woe to you that you like people to call you father and teacher.

Woe to you. It’s chapter 23 and it’s just packed with woes - against Jews. So Matthew

is being an honest reporter at least, even if he’s writing for Jews, he tells them

the truth, as Jesus saw it about Jews. Before we leave this side, before we forget

the Jewish side for a moment, why would Matthew write so strongly for the Jews, because by

the time he wrote, the church was becoming more and more Gentile and a deep gulf was

opening up between Jews and the church. And in fact by the year A.D. 85, which would be

just after Matthew wrote – by the year A.D. 85, Christians were being excommunicated from

the synagogues. Jewish believers were no longer allowed to worship in a synagogue and the

split had come. I remember I got into serious trouble once for saying that neither Abraham

nor Moses would be eligible for Israeli citizenship today. There was a dead hush today, but it’s

true. If you are Jewish, you can be an atheist, an agnostic, a Buddhist, anything you like,

and you can be a citizen of Israel. But if you’re a Jewish believer in Jesus you can't,

and Abraham and Moses both believed in Jesus as did Elijah - and they wouldn't be eligible

for Israeli citizenship. And this is because a great gulf opened up between Jew and Gentile

believers, and between the Jews and the church of Christ. Because you see, the church was

Jewish in the beginning. All the apostles were Jewish, all the first members were Jewish

and so Matthew was writing for Jewish readers just about the time that split was becoming

permanent. Why would he do that? Well, two reasons I can give you. First, he wanted to

keep the door open to Jews. He wanted to keep the relationship with Jews. He was a Jew;

they were his people and Jesus was and is a Jew, and he wanted to keep that door open

so that Jews would not feel that they had to keep away from the church. He had a real

longing - as Paul had - that the Jews should come to believe in their own Messiah. But

the other reason I believe he particularly wrote a Gospel that would appeal to Jewish

people is this: I believe he wanted Christians never to forget their Jewish roots and Matthew

of all Gospels roots Jesus in Judaism; roots him back in Jewish history, gives us his genealogy

back to Abraham and David. And so he’s saying to Jews on the one hand don't run away from

Christians, and he’s saying to Christians on the other hand, don't run away from Jews

- and somehow this Gospel brings Jew and Christian together. It always has done, and it’s played

a unique role in that particular task. Well, we’ll have a little break now and

then I want to talk to you about the value of Matthew's Gospel for us Christians. I’m

a Gentile, looking round I think most of you here are Gentile believers. I’m sometimes

mistaken for a Jewish believer for obvious reasons, it runs in the family, but nevertheless

I’m Gentile, and yet Matthew is a favourite Gospel. What has it got to say to us? Well,

we’ll see in the next talk.