The Story of God: Matthew

Listen along as we enter the New Testament and see the arrival, announcement, and acts of the Messiah.

Notes//Quotes:

Matthew
Matthew 3:1-17

“First, God generally designed or allowed a desperate situation to arise before presenting His deliverance. Secondly, He always called upon a faithful servant to “stand in the gap,” making intercession to Him on behalf of the people (Ezek 22:30), and to be His agent through whom He performed His work.” William MacDonald

“The remedy for sin is not denying sin’s presence or explaining it away, but openly admitting it. We are free from sin only when we face it; we disown sin by owning up to it; sin is remitted where sin is admitted.” - Dale Bruner

The wrath of God is not the irritability of God; it is the love of God in friction with injustice. It is the warm, steady, patient, but absolutely fair grace of God in collision with manifest selfishness. - Dale Bruner

If we hear the Father’s twice-repeated Voice at the baptism and transfiguration correctly, the one fact the Father wants believers to know, above apparently all other facts, is how much we have in Jesus. If we know this, we know the most important fact in the world. “Here,” God is saying in so many words, “in this man, is everything I want to say, reveal, and do, and everything I want people to hear, see, and believe. If you want to know anything about me, if you want to hear anything from me, if you want to please me, get together with him” - Dale Bruner

“You have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.” - Henri Nouwen

“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Matthew 11:3
“Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the vengeance of God. He will come to save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,” etc. (Isa 35:4–5)

“For immediately after John’s sermon, in the rest of chaps. 3 and 4, Jesus comes (almost like a sinner) to be baptized, and in water! John even tried to dissuade Jesus from being baptized (3:13–15). In John’s eyes, Jesus was from the very first a little baffling, a little strange; less messianic than he had expected and less cataclysmic than he had preached. Then in the Three Temptations, Jesus rejects rather than accepts the powerful ministries offered by Satan (and even well-meaningly predicted by John)—sensational, spectacular, and speedy ministries (4:1–11). In the Three Services (4:12–25), Jesus called his first disciples with power—but just a few were called (four are recorded), they were not persons of great influence (they were simply fishermen), and their task seemed less to be setting the world on fire by destroying evil (which was John’s main picture) than it was, more prosaically, “catching people” into salvation (which is Jesus’ main picture, 4:19).” 

“In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught “with authority,” but what he taught seemed more calculated to put axes in the hands of his opponents than in the hands of his disciples: disciples were in fact specifically forbidden avenging attacks on evil, were particularly promised persecution and tough times, and when talk did come to great and powerful deeds (7:22: prophecy, exorcism, many miracles), Jesus seemed less to encourage them than to warn of them. The whole Sermon on the Mount calls its hearers to a fundamental morality—to such prosaic deeds as scriptural reverence, temperamental patience, sexual purity, marital fidelity, no oaths, nonviolence, and even the love of enemies (the Six Commands of 5:17–48). Are these “the deeds of the Messiah” preached by John and predicted by the OT?" - Dale Bruner

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Matthew 11:4-6,