Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew

 

YOU’RE NOT JUST ANOTHER FACE IN THE CROWD

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Something brought you to Jesus. A dream you cannot quite explain. A presence that knew your name. A moment when love arrived from somewhere outside yourself and would not leave. Now you are holding a Bible, or thinking about holding one, and Matthew is the first book of the New Testament.

 

There is a reason it is placed there. Matthew was written for people who needed to understand not only what Jesus did, but why He came at all. If you have encountered Him and now find yourself asking what that actually means, this is a good place to begin.

 

This guide will not replace your Bible. It is here to walk alongside you while you read it. The real conversation happens between you and the words of Jesus on the page. Open Matthew as soon as you can, even if only a few verses at a time, and let what is said here send you back to the source. It can feel like a lot at first. There are genealogies, long teaching sections, and more Old Testament references than any other Gospel. Do not let that intimidate you. Matthew was written precisely for people who need to understand why what Jesus did matters so much, and why the world has never been the same since He arrived.

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Who Wrote It

Matthew was one of the twelve men Jesus chose to walk with Him. Before that, he was a tax collector in Capernaum, a port town on the Sea of Galilee. That sounds harmless until you understand what it meant in his world. Tax collectors worked for the occupying Roman government, were permitted to collect more than the official rate and keep the excess for themselves, and were considered traitors to their own people. Matthew was, by the standards of his world, exactly the kind of person religious society had written off entirely.

 

The moment Jesus called him is told in three short sentences. Jesus walked past his tax booth, said follow Me, and Matthew got up and followed (Matthew 9:9). No examination. No list of conditions. No religious credentials demanded. Just an invitation, and a man who recognised the voice that was speaking.

 

The first thing you learn about the author of this Gospel is that Jesus came for the kind of person no one else wanted to be near. If you have ever wondered whether you are the sort of person Jesus would actually pursue, He already answered that question by calling the man who wrote the book.

 

Because of his trade, Matthew would have been highly literate and trained in meticulous record keeping. He wrote in Greek, the common language of the wider Roman world, but every page is shaped by the Hebrew Scriptures he had grown up with. The Gospel was most likely written between AD 50 and AD 70. The early church consistently named Matthew as its author, and it became the most widely used Gospel in the early years of the faith. It was placed first in the New Testament not because it was written first (Mark likely was) but because of its extraordinary comprehensiveness.

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Who He Was Writing For

Matthew wrote first for Jewish readers. People who had spent their lives waiting for the Messiah promised in their Scriptures, and who needed to see that Jesus was the one those promises had always been pointing towards. This is why he quotes the Old Testament more than any other Gospel writer, roughly forty times directly, and why he structures his account to echo the great figures and stories of Israel's past.

 

But the book was never only for them. The very last words Jesus speaks in Matthew make that clear. He tells His disciples to go to all the nations (Matthew 28:19). All of them. The story of Jesus is not the property of one people or one religion. It is an announcement addressed to every human being who has ever lived, including you.

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The Tone of the Book

Matthew is the most carefully arranged of the four Gospels. He is a teacher at heart, and he organises Jesus' life and words like someone who does not want you to miss anything. The Gospel is built around five major teaching sections, which many believe deliberately echo the five books of Moses, the Torah, which forms the foundation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Just as Moses delivered the law of God to Israel, Jesus is presented as the one who fulfils and surpasses that law entirely.

 

The five teaching sections are the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the sending out of the disciples (Matthew 10), the parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13), teaching on the community of believers (Matthew 18), and the words about the end of the age (Matthew 24 and 25). In between these sections, you see Jesus in action. The teaching and the doing fit together. What He says is matched by what He does, and what He does makes sense of what He says.

 

The tone is steady and full of conviction. Matthew writes like a man who was in the room when it happened and who has never been the same since.

 

One small detail worth noticing. Where Mark and Luke speak of the kingdom of God, Matthew almost always says the kingdom of heaven. He is being sensitive to his Jewish readers, who avoided saying the name of God directly out of reverence. It is the same kingdom. The reign of God breaking into the human world through the person of Jesus.

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Why Jesus Came

This is the question Matthew answers more carefully than almost any other book in the New Testament. And the answer begins before Jesus has even been born.

 

Matthew opens with a genealogy that traces Jesus' ancestry from Abraham through David to Joseph. This is not a dry list of names. It is a declaration of identity. Abraham was the man to whom God promised that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). David was the king to whom God promised an eternal throne (2 Samuel 7:16). Matthew is telling you, before Jesus has said a single word, you are being shown that this person is the one those promises were always about.

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A few verses later, an angel tells Joseph what to name the child Mary is carrying. The name is Jesus, which in Hebrew is Yeshua, meaning the Lord saves. The angel then says something that anchors the entire Gospel:

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She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.

Matthew 1:21

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That is the first reason given. He came to save. Not to start a religion. Not to teach better morals. Not to inspire. To save. From the very thing that has stood between human beings and the Father from the beginning. The name itself is the mission.

 

A few verses later, Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah and gives Jesus a second name. Immanuel, which he translates as God with us

(Matthew 1:23). The word comes from the Hebrew El, meaning God, and immanu, meaning with us. This is a quotation of Isaiah 7:14, a prophecy written roughly seven hundred years before Jesus was born. It is a precise statement. The child born to Mary is not a man who became unusually close to God, nor a prophet through whom God occasionally speaks. He is God Himself, present in person, taking up residence among the people He made.

 

He came to save. He came as God with us. Everything else in the book grows out of these two truths. The teaching, the miracles, the cross, the resurrection, the sending of the Spirit. All of it is what it looks like when the Lord saves and God comes near.

 

If you have encountered Jesus, this is who you encountered. Not a feeling. Not a force. A person who came on purpose, for a reason, with a name that means rescue.

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The Father Who Sent Him

Jesus was sent. He came from somewhere. He came from someone. And the someone is His Father.

 

The first time you really hear this is at His baptism. Jesus comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on Him, and a voice from heaven says:

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This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Matthew 3:17

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In one moment you see all three. The Son standing in the water. The Spirit settling on Him. The Father speaking from heaven. This is who God is. Not three gods. Not three modes of one God. Father, Son and Spirit, and the love between them spilling out into a public moment so that you would know what you are dealing with.

 

When you read the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 to 7, watch how often Jesus talks about His Father, and yours. He tells you that the Father sees in secret (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). That the Father knows what you need before you ask (Matthew 6:8). That the Father feeds the birds and clothes the wild flowers and knows you are worth more than them (Matthew 6:26-30). That the Father gives good things to those who ask Him (Matthew 7:11).

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The God Jesus came to bring you to is not the distant Judge Who keeps a list over our sins... He is the Father. The same Father who sent His Son into the world to find you, to encounter you.

 

The Lord's Prayer, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, opens with the words Our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9).  The Greek word for Father here is Pater, but Jesus had also used the Aramaic word Abba in His own prayer life, a word that carried the warmth of a child addressing a parent they completely trusted. He is not handing you a formula. He is opening a door. The Father He has known forever is now your Father too. Prayer is not a formal address to a distant deity. It is a conversation with a Father who already knows what you need. That is what He came to make possible.

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How He Reveals Himself

Who Jesus is unfolds gradually, layer by layer, until you cannot miss it.

 

You see a Jesus who heals lepers no one would touch. Who eats with tax collectors and sinners and tells the religious leaders that He came for the sick, not the well (Matthew 9:12). Who calms a storm with a word and leaves His disciples asking what kind of man this is (Matthew 8:27). Who forgives sins, which only God can do, and then heals the man's body to prove He has the authority to do it (Matthew 9:6).

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Halfway through the book, Jesus asks His disciples directly who they think He is. Peter answers, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus tells him that flesh and blood did not reveal this, His Father in heaven did (Matthew 16:16-17). The truth about who Jesus is does not come from working it out. It comes from the Father showing you. If something in you already knows that Jesus is more than a teacher, that knowing is not a coincidence.

 

The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiach. Anointed One. In ancient Israel, anointing with oil was how kings, priests and prophets were set apart for their calling. Jesus is the Anointed One in all three of those callings at once. The true King. The true Priest. The true Prophet. When Peter says You are the Christ, he is saying You are the one this whole story has been waiting for.

 

A chapter later, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain. His face shines like the sun. His clothes become as white as light. Moses and Elijah appear with Him, the two great figures of the Law and the Prophets. And the same voice from the baptism speaks again. This is My beloved Son, listen to Him (Matthew 17:5). The message is plain. Everything that came before was preparation. The voice you listen to now is His.

 

There is also the moment at the end of the Sermon on the Mount when the crowd notices that Jesus has been teaching as one who had authority (Matthew 7:29). The Greek word is exousia. The right and the power to act. The scribes taught by citing other rabbis. Jesus cited no one. He spoke as the source. Either that was breathtaking arrogance, or He really is who He claimed to be.

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Why He Came: The Cross

There is a sentence near the middle of Matthew that explains the cross before it happens. Jesus says:

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Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Matthew 20:28

 

A ransom is a price paid to free someone. His death is not a tragedy that happened to Him. It is the reason He came. Every sin, every failure, every broken thing standing as a hindrance between human beings and the Father, was placed on Him at the cross.

 

When you read the story of the crucifixion in chapters 26 and 27, watch how willingly Jesus walks into it. He could have called legions of angels (Matthew 26:53). He does not. He prays in the garden, sweating with the weight of it, and tells His Father, Your will be done (Matthew 26:42). He is not overpowered. He is laying His life down on purpose, for people who do not yet know they need it. Including the ones encountering Him in dreams and visions two thousand years later.

 

And then, three days later, the women come to the tomb and an angel tells them He is not there. He has risen, just as He said (Matthew 28:6). Death itself has been beaten. The cost has been paid in full. The rescue is complete.

 

This is the heart of why He came. He loved the world enough to come for it, save it, and rise again so that nothing would stand between you and the Father any longer.

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Promises Older Than the Book

No other Gospel is as deliberate about showing how Jesus fulfils ancient promise. There is a recurring formula throughout Matthew. This happened so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled. It is applied to the virgin birth (Matthew 1:22-23, quoting Isaiah 7:14), the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6, quoting Micah 5:2), the flight to Egypt and return (Matthew 2:15, quoting Hosea 11:1), the ministry in Galilee (Matthew 4:14-16, quoting Isaiah 9:1-2), and the entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:4-5, quoting Zechariah 9:9), among many others.

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These are not forced connections. They are prophecies written centuries before Jesus was born, preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures that His contemporaries read every Sabbath, and fulfilled in specific, verifiable events. The Jesus you are hearing about is not a recent invention. He is the conclusion of a story God has been telling since the beginning.

 

When Jesus says in Matthew 5:17 that He has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil them, He is telling you that nothing of God's heart that came before is being thrown away. It is being completed in Him.

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The Main Themes

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The Kingdom of Heaven

The kingdom of heaven is mentioned more than thirty times in Matthew. It is not a place you go when you die. It is the active reign of God breaking into the present world through the person of Jesus. Matthew 13 contains a series of parables that describe it. It is like a mustard seed that begins almost invisibly and grows into something vast. Like yeast that works through a whole batch of dough from the inside. Like a treasure hidden in a field worth selling everything to obtain. The kingdom is here. It is growing. It is not always obvious. And it is worth more than anything else you could give your life to.

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The Sermon on the Mount

Read chapters 5 to 7 slowly. They are the longest stretch of Jesus' direct teaching in any Gospel. He begins with the Beatitudes, a series of declarations that turn the world upside down. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The mourning. The meek. The ones who hunger for things to be made right. These are not consolation prizes. They are a description of reality as God sees it, which is almost always the inverse of how the world measures things.

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He teaches you how to pray (Matthew 6:9-13). How to give without performing. How to handle worry. How to handle anger. How to handle the things people do to you. He is not loading you with rules. He is showing you what life looks like when it is lived close to the Father He came to bring you to.

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The Parable of the Sower

This is the first parable in chapter 13, and Jesus does something with it He rarely does with the others. He explains it Himself (Matthew 13:18-23).

 A farmer scatters seed across four types of ground. Some falls on the path and birds take it immediately. Some falls on rocky ground where it sprouts quickly but has no root and withers in the heat. Some falls among thorns that choke it as it grows. And some falls on good soil, where it produces a harvest far beyond what was sown.

 

He says the seed is the word of the kingdom. The four types of ground are four ways a heart can respond. The path is someone who hears but does not understand, and what was planted is taken away. The rocky ground is someone who receives the word with joy but has no depth, and falls away when difficulty arrives. The thorny ground is someone who hears but is gradually crowded out by the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth. The good soil is someone who truly hears, understands, and bears fruit.

 

This is one of the most personally honest things Jesus ever taught. He is not describing four categories of other people. He is describing four conditions of heart that any one of us can move between. The worries of the world and the pull of wealth that He mentions are the very pressures that slowly crowd out what was alive in you when you first encountered Him. The Parable of the Sower is a quiet invitation to ask what kind of ground you are becoming.

 

Many of these parables also appear in Mark and Luke. As you read those Gospels later, you will see some familiar ones again, often with a different angle.

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Jesus as the New Moses

Jesus is the ultimate prophet and teacher, greater than Moses in every way. Moses received the law on a mountain (Exodus 19 and 20). Jesus delivers His definitive teaching from a mountain. Moses led Israel through the wilderness for forty years. Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days (Matthew 4:1-11). In each temptation Jesus faces there, He responds by quoting Deuteronomy, the book in which Moses recounts the wilderness journey to Israel. Where Israel failed, Jesus stands firm. He is the Israel of one, succeeding where the nation could not.

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Mercy Over Performance

Twice in this Gospel, Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea. I desire compassion, and not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13 and Matthew 12:7, quoting Hosea 6:6). He says it when religious leaders criticise Him for eating with sinners, and again when they criticise His disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath. The pattern is steady. The religious leaders are watching the rules. Jesus is watching the people. He came for the second.

 

If you have ever felt that you have to clean yourself up before you can come close to God, hear this. He came for the very mess you are afraid to bring Him. This is not a tension between the Old Testament and Jesus. It is Jesus revealing what the Old Testament was always meant to produce.

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Discipleship as a Way of Life

Matthew contains more teaching on what it actually means to live as a follower of Jesus than any other Gospel. He is not simply offering salvation as a transaction. He is inviting you into a completely different way of being human, shaped by love, forgiveness, trust in God, and freedom from anxiety.

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How to Read Matthew

Take your time with it. It rewards a slower pace, and there is no rush.

 

If you are not sure where to begin, here is something gentle to try. Read the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 to 7 first, simply to hear Jesus' voice directly. Read it once through, slowly, and let it ask you questions rather than rushing to answer them. Then sit with the parables of the kingdom in chapter 13. After that, go back to chapter 1 and read the whole Gospel in sequence.

 

As you read, listen for the recurring phrase but I say to you in the Sermon on the Mount. Each time Jesus uses it, He is taking something His audience already knew and showing them its full depth. You might find it helpful to pause each time and ask what this reveals about the character of God, and what it stirs in your own heart.

 

Notice also how the Pharisees and teachers of the law appear throughout the Gospel. They know the Scriptures thoroughly and yet repeatedly miss who is standing in front of them. This is a gentle warning. Knowing about God is not the same as knowing Him. Matthew's Gospel is not an invitation to master a religious system. It is an invitation into a relationship with the person who is the living fulfilment of every promise that religious system was built around.

 

And keep your Bible open while you read this. Anything written here is only worth as much as it sends you back to His own words.

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What This Means for You Now

Matthew is the Gospel that most directly addresses how to live. If you have encountered Him and now find yourself asking what following Him actually looks like on a Tuesday morning, in a difficult relationship, when money is tight, when someone has hurt you, when you are afraid, this is the book that answers most fully.

 

The Beatitudes at the opening of the Sermon on the Mount are not a checklist of qualities you need to perform. They are a description of the people whom God draws near to. The ones who know their own need, who mourn what is broken in the world, who hunger for things to be made right. That longing in you is not something to be embarrassed about. It is precisely the kind of heart God is at work in.

 

The teaching on worry in Matthew 6:25-34

is a good place to land. Jesus does not say do not worry because everything will go your way. He says do not worry because your Father knows what you need, and because worry cannot add a single hour to your life. The Greek word for worry is merimnao. It carries the sense of a divided mind, of being pulled in opposite directions. He is describing the exhausting state of trying to manage your future without the Father. His alternative is not passivity. It is trust in someone who actually sees you. You have not been called to manage your life alone. You have been called to walk with a Father who is entirely capable of managing it with you.

 

The teaching on forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35 will probably ask something of you that feels too costly. The parable of the unmerciful servant in those verses describes a man forgiven an unimaginable debt who then refuses to forgive a small one. The point is not a threat. It is a description of what happens to a heart that receives grace without letting it change how it treats others. Forgiveness here is not optional behaviour for advanced believers. It is the natural outflow of understanding what you yourself have been given.

 

For two thousand years this Gospel has shaped lives. It was the primary text used in the instruction of new believers in the early church. The Sermon on the Mount has shaped the ethics of entire civilisations. The Lord's Prayer has been prayed by hundreds of millions of people across every culture on earth. The great commission has sent believers to every nation in the world.

 

And the closing words of the book are some of the most important sentences in the Bible:

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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

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Notice what is there. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, named together by Jesus Himself. The same three you saw at His baptism. This is who you have come to know. The Father who sent the Son. The Son who saved you. The Spirit who is now with you. The Greek phrase translated always is pasas tas hemeras. Literally, all the days. Not the good ones. Not the days when your faith feels strong. All of them.

 

The Jesus you have met is not someone who arrived once and left. He is with you now.

 

Open His word. Read it slowly. Let it lead you back to Him.