Secret Church 25: The Gospel of Matthew (ASL)

Thank you, Larissa. Let me add my personal welcome to Secret Church 25, but for some of you, number one. So if you’re new to Secret Church, one thing you need to know from the start is that this is not just a Bible study, though we’re definitely going to do that. This is us coming together around God’s Word and remembering our brothers and sisters around the world who are persecuted, some of whom have to meet in secret, often late at night, for hours at a time at great risk to their lives. They live in places where it’s hard, oftentimes dangerous to share the gospel.

So we’re going to pray with them for the spread of the gospel in hard places, and we’re going to say with them God use our lives and our families and our churches, however you desire to make the gospel known everywhere in the world, no matter what it costs because we know you are our reward. The Book of Matthew, in a sense, maybe more than any other book in the Bible, is going to give us a picture of how Jesus calls all of us to live and die for this.

I want to start this Secret Church with a couple of questions, and you’ll see them in your Scripture Journal, if you don’t already have that open. I want to ask these questions as personally as I can. If I could just in a sense look you in the eye, I want to ask you, do you want your life to count? Do you want your life to count? Or maybe the converse of this question is do you want to waste your life? As soon as I ask that question, I suppose I assume the answer is yes, you want your life to count. I’m guessing none of us wants to get to the end of our life whenever that may be, which could be any day for any of us, I don’t think that on that day any of us wants to look back and say, “I wasted it. I missed the whole point.”

There’s an innate desire in us to want to live and to experience a life that counts. So then the next question follows naturally, how do you make your life count? If we want our lives to count, then this is a really good question to ask and answer. So how would you answer this question? Here at the start, I want us to take a moment to answer it. So there’s some space in your Scripture Journal and I want to invite you to take the next 60 seconds to do this. So, 60 seconds. This is not an exhaustive treatise on life. Just whatever’s the first thing that comes to your mind, if someone was to meet you on the street and ask you, “How do you make your life count?” what would you say? So take a minute, just write down whatever comes to your mind. Let’s do that together now.

I obviously don’t know what you’ve written, but my aim in this Secret Church is to show you in the Book of Matthew the answer to this question. I want to show you the life that counts, the life that understands what matters most in this world and lives accordingly. I’m not saying there’s only one correct way to answer this question. The Bible actually uses many different images and descriptions of a life that counts, but I do think they all revolve around the same theme. I want to say that by the end of this journey through Matthew, we are going to have a picture of the life that counts in such a way that you could say, “If this is what my life is about, then by God’s grace I will get to the end and my life will have counted for what matters most,” which makes this study of Matthew over these four sessions really significant.

So, let’s dive in. Let’s start with an overview. The Book of Matthew is a gospel, an account of good news. Now that seems obvious, but it’s important and we can’t overlook it. So gospel literally means good news. Matthew, one of Jesus’s disciples, writes this account of the good news of Jesus, who he is, what he did, what he said, and how all of that changes our lives and changes the world. So the gospel of Matthew is not a congregational letter like Romans or Ephesians or Colossians, which were Bible books written to different churches. Matthew’s not writing to a certain local church in a certain situation like many of the New Testament books are doing, and it’s not a comprehensive biography.

Matthew didn’t sit down and say, “I want to include every single detail about Jesus’ life.” The reality is there are many details about Jesus’ life that he doesn’t include here. He chooses various stories. He abbreviates various teachings from Jesus to accomplish a specific purpose in what he’s writing, and what he writes is not even a chronological history, meaning Matthew isn’t just saying, “Okay. Here’s what happens first, then what happened next, the next, next.” Instead, he intentionally arranges his material, not around time, but around specific emphases.

If you look at the verses I have in your Scripture Journal there, you’ll see how Matthew arranges his whole book around five distinct teaching sections from Jesus. So the first one leads up to Matthew 7:28, and it then signals the end of that. After the sermon on the Mount, Matthew writes, “When Jesus finished these sayings,” so he just finished these teachings, “the crowds were astonished at his teaching. He was teaching them as one who had authority, not as their scribes.” So circle the word finished there, that marks the end of the first teaching section. Then when you get to chapter 11, we read in the first verse, when Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities. So that’s the end of the second teaching section.

At the end of chapter 13, Matthew writes, “When Jesus had finished these parables, these teachings, he went away from there.” That’s the end of the third teaching section. Then Matthew 19:1 says, “When Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.” That’s the end of the fourth teaching section, which then leads to Matthew 26:1. “When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that after two days, the Passover is coming. The Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.’ ” That’s the end of the fifth teaching section, which then leads to Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. In between each of these five teaching sections from Jesus, Matthew gives us stories about Jesus.

So the point here is this is not an accident, this is intentional. Matthew is not necessarily organizing things chronologically, although he obviously begins with Jesus’s birth, ends with Jesus’s death and resurrection. Instead, Matthew is organizing things intentionally and quite beautifully really to give us a portrait of both Jesus’s words and works in this book. So throughout Matthew, we see an emphasis on Jesus’s words and works working together. Matthew, to summarize, is not a congregational letter. It’s not a comprehensive biography. It’s not necessarily chronological history. Over and above all that, it’s a gospel. It’s a carefully arranged account of good news in the words and works of Jesus.

The Book of Matthew is one of four gospels, and this is important because three other writers also tell us the story of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection, and they all do it differently. If you’ve read through the gospels, you’ve seen this. Obviously, there’s similarities between them, but different ones use different stories at different times and different ways to emphasize different things about Jesus. It’s like the story of Jesus is this multicolored diamond that you can look at from a variety of different angles. Every angle is unique, every angle is glorious, but it’s all the same diamond. So we have four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each one of them composed by a different author who wrote with distinct emphases and themes and in some situations even distinct audiences in mind. Every one of them though written under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit. You see these emphases and themes and the primary audience Matthew was writing to from the very beginning. Let me show this to you.

So, let’s start. We’re reading through this first part of Matthew and I’ll give you a heads up. One of this is one of these parts of the Bible that we’re prone to just skip over so we can get to the good stuff. It’s just a bunch of names. Well, I want to show you there is really good stuff here in this introduction to Jesus. Matthew 1:1, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac.” Side note here, remember Isaac was a miracle baby born to a mom, Sarah, who was shocked to find out that she would have a child, which sets the stage here for a mom named Mary in Matthew, who was herself pretty shocked for different reasons to find out she was going to have a child.

“Then Isaac, the father of Jacob, Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.” Tamar is the first woman mentioned here. If you remember, Tamar was actually Judah’s daughter-in-law. The picture in Genesis 38 was sinful incest that led to the birth of these two twins, Perez and Zerah. So keep that in mind. “Perez, the father of Hezron, Hezron, the father of Ram, Ram, the father of Amminadab. Amminadab, the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon, the father of Salmon, and then Salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab,” second woman mentioned. Rahab, a prostitute who was spared when the people of God came into the Promised Land. “Then Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth,” third woman mentioned. Ruth, a Moabite, a people known for their sexual immorality at one time forbidden to be counted among the people of God. “Then Obed, the father of Jesse and Jesse, the father of David the King.” So that’s not every single generation in the line, but that’s 14 generations, just remember that number, tracing from Abraham to David the king.

Now, from David. “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” So that’s the fourth woman mentioned the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, brought into the kingly line through sexual sin and murder. “Solomon, the father of Rehoboam,” and then thus begins the list of kings in Israel leading up to the exile. “Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah, the father of Asa, Asa, the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram and Joram, the father of Uzziah. Uzziah, the father of Jotham, and Jotham, the father of Ahaz and Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh and Manasseh, the father of Amos and Amos, the father of Josiah, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation of Babylon.”

What I just read is dripping with Old Testament history. For Jewish readers who knew the Old Testament, every one of these names sparked images and stories and emotions. A few of these kings honored God, but most of them were evil, led the people of God into sin and idolatry leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, the deportation to Babylon. Then from Babylon, eventually back to Jerusalem. “After the deportation of Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel, the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel, the father of Abihud. Abihud, the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim, the father of Azor, and Azor, the father of Zadok, and Zadok, the father of Akim, and Akim, the father of Elihud, and Elihud, the father of Eliazar, and Eliazar, the father of Matthan, and Matthan, the father of Jacob, and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”

Friends, that is one crooked family tree and this is the family tree through which Jesus, God in the flesh, stepped onto the pages of human history. So why was it important for Matthew to start this way? Well, let’s start by thinking about the first people to read or hear what Matthew was writing. I mentioned earlier distinct emphases and themes and in some cases audiences. Well, most people in Matthew’s audience were either Jewish people who had put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, so the promised king of the Old Testament, or they were Jewish people who were contemplating belief in Jesus as the Messiah.

That’s why we have this list, and it’s why, for example, Mark doesn’t have this list because Mark writes his gospel with predominantly Gentile readers in mind. So it’s not as important for him to show all this Jewish lineage leading to Jesus. But for Jewish men and women who were considering trusting in Jesus as the Messiah or who had trusted in Jesus as the Messiah and were losing their families and possessions and safety because of it, this was extremely important for their faith. So Matthew starts with all this Jewish lineage to begin painting a stunning portrait of Jesus.

I want to show you 20 pictures of Jesus in these opening chapters in Matthew. We could spend a ton of time on each one of these, but for the sake of time we’re going to fly through them so you can see the masterpiece that Matthew is painting. We see four of these pictures in this first verse. So Matthew 1:1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus. We’ll start there. First picture, Jesus is the Savior. That’s what the name Jesus means. It’s the Greek form of the name Joshua or Yeshua, which means Yahweh saves or the Lord is salvation. That’s what his very name means, God saves.

When you look down at verse 21, the angel says to Joseph, “She will bear a Son. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The Lord will save through Jesus.” That’s his name. Remember Joshua? He was the leader appointed by God to take his people into the Promised Land. Now, Jesus is the leader appointed by God to take sinful people into eternal life. So this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. So Christ is not his last name. Christ means Messiah or anointed one.

The next picture Matthew gives us of Jesus is the Messiah. The Old Testament is filled with promises of a coming anointed one, a Messiah who would deliver God’s people and Matthew’s saying, “This is him. He’s here, the one we’ve waited for, Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Messiah.” Then back to verse one, the Son of David. Jesus is the Son of David. You know what’s interesting? When you look at that genealogy we read, which by the way side note, I was reading through all those names. Whenever somebody asks you to read a passage out loud and it’s got a bunch of names like that, just own it. Just read through all those names like you think you know exactly how they’re pronounced. Nobody else in the room knows how they’re actually pronounced, so just go for it. Anyway, just a little side note.

When you look at that genealogy, it’s not actually complete, meaning not every descendant in the family tree is included there. In some cases, entire generations are skipped, but Matthew is again intentionally arranging this genealogy and he’s doing it in groups of 14. You remember when I mentioned, “Hey, focus on this. Look back at verse 17.” So all the generations Matthew points out from Abraham to David were 14 generations, from David to the deportation of Babylon 14 generations, from the deportation of Babylon to the Christ 14 generations. Matthew arranged this family tree this way around this number for a reason that goes all the way back to the Hebrew name for King David.

In the Hebrew, they had something called gematria, and this was basically a way that they would assign a numerical value to certain words or names based on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet that make up that word or name. For example, based on the Hebrew letters that would make up your name, there would be a number associated with your name. According to the system of Gematria, you’ll never guess what the number associated with David was. It was 14. Matthew is being very intentional to show us how Jesus is connected to King David, and he’s doing this again because his audience is predominantly Jewish with deep reverence for King David.

With reference to so many verses throughout the Old Testament that promise the Messiah would come from the line of David, I put just a few of them in your Scripture Journal in parentheses if you want to look them up. Matthew is saying Jesus is the Savior, the Messiah. He is the promised one from the line of David and not just from David, he’s the Son of Abraham. Jesus is the Son of Abraham who’s the father of the Jewish people. So this one takes us all the way back to Genesis 12:1. “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you. Make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. Him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ “

So here was the promise through Abraham, “God will form a covenant people. I will make of you a great nation.” God will give them a promised inheritance on earth. “I will bless you. I will give you a land that I will show you,” that would become known as the Promised Land in the Old Testament, God will form them into his people, in his place for his purpose. God will use them to accomplish a global purpose. “You will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.” This promise is reiterated in Genesis 15, then in Genesis 17 where God says to Abraham, “I’m going to make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make you into nations,” and watch this, “Kings shall come from you.”

Did you hear that? Through Abraham’s line, God says he will send a king. You get down to verse 15 and 16 and God says to Sarah, Abraham’s wife, “As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her. Moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her. She shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her.” God will send a king through Abraham’s line and one day his kingdom will expand to all people groups. You jump over to Genesis 49:9-10 and you see that Judah, who we also saw mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy, Genesis 49:9–10 says, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah’s line nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

God says to Abraham and his sons in Genesis, the first book in the Bible, “I’m forming a covenant people to accomplish a global purpose and I’m going to send a king, a ruler, a scepter through your line, the line of Judah to whom all the peoples will one day bow and obey.” Now in the first book of the New Testament, Matthew shouting, “The King is here.” This is part of what I love about the Bible, how it all connects, all these different writers in all these different times with one divine Holy Spirit orchestrating a script that connects in ways none of these writers ever could have imagined. But the takeaway is clear, nothing in history is accidental, nothing. Everything is happening for a reason. Every detail in the Old Testament from the very beginning is pointing to a king who would one day come and Matthew’s saying, “Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, he’s at the center of it all.”

That’s the fifth picture I want you to see of Jesus, he is the center of all history. You are not at the center of history. I’m not at the center of history. Our generation is not at the center of history. For those of you who live in my country, the United States of America is not at the center of history. For those of you live in other countries, your country is not at the center of history either. Throughout history, billions of people have come and billions have gone. Empires have come and empires have gone. Countries, nations, kings, queens, presidents, dictators, rulers have come and gone. At the center of it all stands one person, Jesus the Christ. Everything in history is specifically and intentionally focused on him and that’s what this whole genealogy is about.

All right. We got to keep moving quicker. We’re just getting started. We’re getting through five. We got a long way to go. So that leads into Matthew 1:18-25, and the most extraordinary miracle in all the Bible, the most remarkable mystery in all the universe. I don’t say that lightly, and it’s described in eight simple verses at the end of Matthew 1. So watch this with me. Starting in verse 18, Matthew writes, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph.” Pause there.

The word betrothed is basically means engaged, but engagement or betrothal in the first century was much more binding than it is in the 21st century, at least in my culture. Back then in that culture, once you were engaged, you were legally married and to call off a betrothal would be equivalent to divorce. When you were betrothed, basically the only thing yet to happen was for the woman to be taken to the man’s home to physically consummate the marriage and to live together. That would happen up to a year after the betrothal or this engagement began. So Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but they’d not begun living together, which is what Matthew communicates next. Before they came together, before they had consummated the marriage physically, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Obviously, we need to pause there because this is not normal.

Matthew adds from the Holy Spirit to clue us into something supernatural that was going on, but Mary and Joseph would not find this from the Holy Spirit part out until a little later. So just put yourself in their shoes. Mary having never had a physical relationship with a man finds out she’s pregnant. Just think of all the thoughts and emotions, the utter confusion and concern that would be going through your mind. Or Joseph, if you’re a husband of a wife that you’ve yet to bring into your home and have a physical relationship with you, find out she’s pregnant, there’s only one possible explanation in your mind. She’s clearly been with another man. So imagine the emotions for him, the woman you love, the woman to whom you’re betrothed turns up pregnant as far as you know from another man right before you’re about to take her into your home. Verse 19 gives us a glimpse into Joseph’s thought. “Her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.”

Basically, Joseph had a couple of options. He could publicly disgrace Mary or he could privately divorce her, and he decides to do the latter. The story continues, “But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, ‘Joseph, son of David.’ ” You see that? You notice how Matthew reminds us as the readers that Joseph is in the line of King David? “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” There’s that phrase again. Now, we’re used to the story of the virgin birth, but this is altogether new and absolutely unheard of for Joseph. That which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit of God? Things just went from baffling to bizarre for Joseph. The angel continues, “She will bear a Son.” Keep in mind, Joseph, a Son, you had nothing to do with bringing him about, “and you shall call his name Jesus.” Look at this, “For he will save his people from their sins.” What an announcement.

Basically, Joseph, you’re going to adopt this boy as your Son and you will give him the legal name Jesus, which by the way means Yahweh saves all this took place to fulfill what was spoken or the Lord had spoken by the prophet. “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and they shall call him his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.” Have you ever had a dream and when you wake up you think, “Did that really happen or did I dream that?” If it’s a good dream, you’re kind of disappointed that it didn’t happen. If it’s a bad dream, you’re totally relieved it didn’t happen. I don’t know what Joseph felt at this point. I imagine he was just dazed, but I love the picture of Joseph that Matthew gives us next.

“When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. What a picture of obedience, no questions, no conditions, no hesitation, no “Let me get some more sleep tomorrow night and see if anything changes then.” No, he just does as the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not… In other words, he had no physical relationship with her until she had given birth to a Son and he called his name Jesus. Thus, we have this introduction to the virgin birth of Jesus, which leads to these next two pictures of Jesus in Matthew 1. Jesus is fully human, born of a woman, as a child, like fully human is a crying cooing, bedwetting baby boy. Do not let yourself picture Jesus without true humanity. Silent Night, Holy Night is not completely true. Holy, yes, but silent, probably not, at least not all the time. Who in the world ever had a baby that was always silent, more like Screaming Night, Holy night. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it though. But this was a baby.

I think of the hours that Heather and I and other parents have spent in the middle of the night holding, crying children, walking back and forth, bouncing up and down, rocking here and there trying to settle them down. So forgive me, I’m just not buying the idea that everybody slept peacefully that night. No parent looks back at those first nights and says, “Man, things were so quiet.” All the more so when a cow is mooing as soon as the baby starts to go to sleep every moment. Jesus was not born with a glowing halo around his head. He was born like us, fully human, fully able to identify with us physically, mentally, emotionally. Jesus is fully human like us, and at the same time, Jesus is fully divine seeing his humanity and his deity in the virgin birth. Jesus didn’t have a human father in the way we do.

Notice how Matthew never explicitly refers to Joseph as Jesus’s father even in the genealogy. You have this person, the father of that person, this person, the father of that person and so on until you get to verse 16 and it says, “Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.” This picture of the virgin birth of Jesus introduces us to the incarnation. This is a word that describes the doctrine of Jesus’s full humanity and full deity, which is arguably the most extraordinary miracle in the whole Bible. Just think about it, if Jesus is fully man and fully God, then everything else in the gospels makes total sense.

Is it really strange later in Matthew to see Jesus walking on the water if he’s the God who created the water he’s walking on? Is it that unusual to see him feeding over 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish if he’s the one who created the bread and the fish and the stomachs of every single person who’s eating? Is it even surprising to see Jesus rise from the dead? Not if he’s God. The strange thing, the real miracle is that he died in the first place, right? The virgin birth, the entrance of Jesus, fully God and fully man into the world is the most extraordinary miracle in all the Bible. It is the fundamental point where Muslims, Jews, various cults, countless others disagree with Christianity. It’s the ultimate stumbling block and it’s a mystery. It’s mind-boggling.

We did a whole Secret Church years ago called The Cross of Christ where we dove into the mystery of the person of Jesus. This mystery, this miracle is a display of the infinite wisdom of God. Think about other ways Jesus could have come into the world. If he’d come without any human parent, then he couldn’t really identify with us. He wouldn’t be a descendant from any line. On the other hand, if he’d come through two human parents, a biological father and a biological mother, then it would be hard to imagine how he’s fully God since his origin was exactly the same as yours and mine. So see how God and his perfect wisdom and creative sovereignty ordained a virgin birth to be the avenue through which Jesus fully man born of woman, yet fully God born from the Holy Spirit would come into the world and think about all this means on so many levels going all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. So this introduction to Jesus is showing us that God is the Creator and Re-Creator of all things.

Check this out. The word that Matthew uses for birth in verse 18, remember now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way, that word birth is genesis or origin, the origin of Jesus Christ and the Spirit inspires this word in the first book in the New Testament to take us back to the very beginning, the first book in the Old Testament, where in Genesis, the Spirit brings life to men. Remember Genesis 1, first and second verses in the Bible. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” In Genesis, it’s the Spirit of God who breathes life into man, and now here in Matthew, it’s the Spirit who brings life to the Messiah. In Genesis, God promises a seed from a woman. You remember Genesis 3:15, God promised to raise up a seed, a singular offspring who would crush the head of Satan, the serpent.

Genesis 3:15, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.” Now here in Matthew what we’re reading is God delivering that seed through a woman. What an amazing picture. The seed of a child in pregnancy comes from man here in the only instance in human history where that’s not the case. The seed comes from God through woman. Finally, in genesis, a man is born who would succumb to sin. The first man, Adam who just right there in that chapter, what we see in Genesis 3, sinned against God, rebelled against God, and the Bible teaches Romans 5 that from that one sin came condemnation for all men.

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and death spread to all men, because all sin,” this is you and me, all of us. “For sin indeed was in the world before the Law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no Law yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” We have all, every single one of us has inherited a sinful nature from Adam. Every single one of us is born with it. We are prone to turn from God and his ways to ourselves and our own ways. It looks different in all of our lives, but that’s every one of our story. But the story here is different.

In a technical physical sense, Jesus does not come from the line of Adam. He does not come with an inherited sinful nature. Now this doesn’t mean that Mary was perfectly sinless as the Roman Catholic church has historically taught. The Bible nowhere teaches Mary’s sinlessness. Instead, this is a picture of a partial interruption in the line that came from Adam and a new Adam has come on the scene, a man who is born who would not succumb to sin. No. Here in Matthew, a man is born who would save from sin. Do you see this? The God who creates in Genesis 1 is recreating redeeming in Matthew 1. He’s making a way through the virgin birth of Jesus, the Christ for humanity to be rescued from sin and reconciled to God. God is the Creator and Re-Creator of all things and God is both a transcendent over us and present with us. This is awesome. God with us, Emmanuel, that’s what his name means. Jesus, he’ll be called Emmanuel. God has come to us.

Picture number eight of Jesus and we won’t take time to read all these Scriptures, so they’re in parentheses in your journal, Jesus is the sovereign over the wise. Matthew 2:1-12 is “Magi from the east come looking for a king and they worship at his crib.” Jesus is the shepherd of the weak. Matthew quotes in 2:6 from Micah 5:2 to show how Jesus will rule God’s people as a good shepherd, “The sovereign over the wise is the shepherd of the weak.” Then the Old Testament imagery gets even richer. Jesus inaugurates a new exodus, a powerful picture in Matthew 2:13-15 as God brings his Son into Egypt, then back out of Egypt as a picture of the rescue of redemption he would bring just like we read about in the Old Testament.

Jesus ends the mournful exile. You study Matthew 2:16-18, you see how God in the coming of Jesus promises hope to the weeping women of Bethlehem who’ve lost their baby boys, Jesus has come to end the mournful exile of God’s people and in the middle of it all, Jesus loves his fiercest enemies. When you finish Matthew 2:19-23, you realize Jesus has come to save people who will seek to kill him. Jesus loves his fiercest enemies. Jesus loves sinners like you and me. All of that in chapter two. Then in Matthew 3, so four more pictures of Jesus, here he is the Savior King. In Matthew 3:1-3, John the Baptist declares the King is coming. He’s going to save all who repent and believe in him, but he’s not only the Savior King, Jesus is the righteous judge.

Matthew 3:12, John the Baptist says, “A winnowing fork is in his hand. He will separate the grain from the chaff. All who do not repent of sin and believe in Jesus will be burned with unquenchable fire.” Then after all this, John baptizes Jesus and in a rare glimpse into heaven, we see two more pictures of Jesus in Matthew 3:16-17. “He is filled with God the Spirit.” Just imagine this scene. When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him. “He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.’ ” What a scene. The Spirit of God resting on him. Jesus is filled with God, the Spirit and he is loved by God the Father. “This is my Son with whom I’m well pleased. He’s beloved.”

All that sets the stage for Jesus’s temptations in Matthew 4:1–11 where we discover Jesus is the new Adam. Matthew 4:1-11, meaning where the first Adam fell to the temptation of the devil, Jesus stood. Jesus did what no one else in history has ever done or will ever do. He resisted temptation fully. He didn’t give in one time to sin. He’s the new Adam and he’s the true Israel. Israel failed the test of temptation in the wilderness. Jesus passed that test of temptation. He conquered sin and Satan. All that leads up to Matthew 4:15 where Matthew quotes from Isaiah, we see that Jesus is the light of the world. “The land of Zebulun land, of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, death on them a light has dawned.” What Isaiah prophesied has come true. Jesus is the light of the world, and number 20, Jesus is the hope for all nations.

Did you notice Jesus, the Jewish king from the line of David and Abraham brings hope beyond the Jordan? Look back at that verse to Galilee of the Gentiles. Jesus is the hope for all the nations, all the peoples. So there it is, 20 pictures of Jesus at the start of this book that all lead us to Matthew 4:18 and this is where we’re going to start to close this first session. Look at this passage. “While walking by the sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon who’s called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen, and he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.”

Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father mending their nets and he called them. Immediately, they left the boat and their father and followed him. So when we come to Matthew 4:19 and we see Jesus saying to four fishermen, “Follow me,” we need to feel the weight and the wonder of those two words based on all we’ve seen. Just think about who the me is here that’s being followed. This is Jesus the Savior, Messiah, promised to come in the kingly line of David from Abraham, the father of God’s people, Israel, the center of all human history, fully human and fully divine, the one to whom wise men from the nations bow, the one whose birth ushers in the culmination of generations upon generations of prophecy and anticipation, the Savior King, righteous judge of the whole world perfectly filled with God, the Spirit completely loved by God the Father, the only man who has conquered sin, the true Son that Israel could never be the light of the world, the hope for all nations.

Do we realize who this is? Because when we do, there’s only one conclusion that is possible. Jesus is worthy of far more than casual association. We must not reduce Jesus to a poor puny savior who’s just begging for people to accept him into their hearts. Accept him? As if Jesus needs to be accepted by us. Jesus doesn’t need your acceptance. He doesn’t need my acceptance. Jesus is infinitely worthy of all glory and all the universe. He doesn’t need us at all. We need him. So let’s not patronize him. Jesus is worthy of more than casual association. Jesus is worthy of supreme adoration. This is no game here. If this Jesus, the Savior King of the universe, the righteous judge of the world, God in the flesh comes to you and says, “Follow me,” there’s no potential casual response. It’s either turn and run or bow and worship, one or the other.

You look at Luke’s parallel account of Jesus calling his disciples. You’ll see as soon as Peter realized who Jesus was, he fell on his face and then he rose and followed. Everything would be different in these men’s lives because of this encounter with Jesus, everything, and that’s the point because now watch this, the life that counts follows Jesus. Now we’re starting to get to the answer to our question. What’s the life that counts? It’s the life that says yes to Jesus’s invitation to follow him. Just think about it. If Jesus is God in the flesh, if he’s the author of life and the only one who can save you from sin and death, then you and I will miss the whole point of life if we don’t follow him. There’s no true life now or forever apart from the one who is life, and life in him, the life that counts starts with death to everything else, namely our sin and ourselves.

I see the picture of Matthew’s painting from the start. The life is found in dying to sin. You got to see this. Go back to verse 17 here in Matthew 4, and Jesus says, “From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ” That word repent means to renounce, to turn aside from, acknowledge, confess your sin that leads to death, express your sorrow over your sin and to turn from it to renounce your sin. Life is found in dying to sin and life is found in dying to yourself. Think about all these disciples were leaving behind in this moment, in this passage. Well, let’s just list it out. They were leaving behind their comfort. These guys were leaving behind everything that was familiar to them at this moment. All that was natural for them, leaving comfort for uncertainty.

Notice Jesus didn’t tell them where they were going. He just said who would they be with. That’s massive. Followers of Jesus don’t always know where they’re going. They always know who they’re with. They’re leaving behind their comforts. They’re leaving behind their careers. This was an abandonment of profession for these guys at least temporarily. Now we’re going to come back to how all this applies to us, but just put yourself in their shoes for a minute. They left behind their possessions, dropped their nets. They were obviously not the economically elite in their society, but the fact that they had a boat, had successful trade. As fishermen shows these men had much to lose in following Jesus. We find out later they likely still had a boat, various other things, but the reality is at this moment they followed Jesus with nothing in their hands, their possessions, their position.

This is big. It’s one of the things that set Jesus’s disciples apart from other disciples who would follow rabbis in that day. Disciples would often attach themselves to a rabbi to promote themselves. It was a step up a ladder toward greater status and position. That was not the case with these guys. This was not a step up a ladder. This was a step down a ladder for a rabbi they would follow who would eventually be crucified as a criminal on a cross. They were leaving behind their families. James and John leave their father in this moment, their friends, their safety. This is a rabbi, a teacher who as we’ll see soon will one day say to these same men, “I send you out like sheep among wolves. All men will hate you because of me. They will persecute you.” They were abandoning their safety. They were dying to themselves.

Get this, in a world where everything revolves around self, protect yourself, promote yourself, preserve yourself, entertain yourself, comfort yourself, take care of yourself, Jesus would say, “Crucify yourself.” So don’t buy it and don’t sell it. So many Christians have bought it and so many churches have sold it. The idea that all you need to do is pray a prayer, make a decision, become a Christian, and you can keep your life as you know it. It’s not true. You become a follower of Jesus and you lose your life as you know it.

Now, let me be really careful here. I’m not saying I cannot would not say based on the whole of the New Testament that every follower of Jesus must lose their career, sell or give away all their possessions, leave their family behind, physically die for the gospel. But the New Testament is absolutely clear on this. For all who follow Jesus, comfort and certainty in this world are no longer our concerns and our career now revolves around whatever Jesus calls us to do, however he wants to use us and our careers to spread the good news of his kingdom. Our possessions are not our own. We no longer live for material pleasure in this world. We forsake material pleasure in this world in order to live for eternal treasure in the world to come, and that could mean any one of us selling or giving away anything or everything we have.

Position is no longer our priority when it comes to family and friends, absolutely based on the whole of the New Testament, we’re commanded to honor our parents, love a wife or husband, provide for children. So you can’t use a passage like this to justify being a lousy son or daughter or spouse or parent or friend, but our love for Jesus as we’re going to see in Matthew 10 should make love for our closest family members and friends look like hate in comparison. Wherever he says to go, we go. Knowing that because self is no longer our God, safety is no longer our priority.

This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to renounce, to die to ourselves, to die to sin, and to live in all that obedience to him. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian. To many, this may sound extreme, but don’t forget who the me is in Matthew 4:19. To leave behind, lay down, abandon everything in your life doesn’t make sense until you realize who Jesus is. When you realize who he is, when you realize who Jesus the King is, then laying down, leaving behind, renouncing, abandoning all things is the only thing that makes sense.

I’m going to jump ahead and bring in Matthew 13:44 here. It’s one of my favorite verses in the whole book. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” I love this verse. Just picture the scene. You’ve got a man walking in a field. He stumbles upon a treasure that nobody else knows is there. He realizes, “This is worth more than everything else I have put together.” So he covers it up and he goes and he sells all that he has. You can imagine people coming up to him and saying, “You’re crazy. What are you doing? You’re selling everything you have.” He says, “I’m going to buy that field over there.” They say, “You’re crazy. You’re going to sell everything you have for that field?”

He smiles because he says, “I think it’s going to be worth it.” He knows it’s going to be worth it because he realizes he has found a treasure that is more valuable than everything else he has put together, and so it just makes sense to sell everything he has to buy that treasure. He has found something that’s worth losing everything for, and this is Christianity. We have found someone who’s worth losing everything for. He’s the only one worth losing everything for, and he is infinitely better than everything this world offers us. So life is found in following him. Notice, it’s not based on our effort. This is so key. So see the beauty of God’s grace in these words from Jesus, “Follow me.” Feel the wonder of this. Jesus takes the initiative to choose us. This is incredible.

I mentioned earlier it was common in first century Judaism for potential disciples to seek out a rabbi to study under. The beauty of what we’re reading here is these men don’t come to Jesus. Jesus comes to them. Jesus initiates the relationship. He does what we see all throughout the Old Testament God doing. He chose Noah. He chose Abraham. He chose Moses. He chose David. He chose the prophets. He chose Israel to be his people. Deuteronomy 7. Just as God the Father chose his people in the Old Testament, Jesus is choosing his disciples in the New Testament. In John 15, he tells them later, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” He didn’t choose these men because of any merit in them. It was all because of mercy in them.

It’s at this point in sermons or commentaries on Matthew 4, sometimes people describe all the reasons why Jesus would choose fishermen to be his disciples, because they do this or that or have this or that skill or this or that perspective. But if that’s the direction we go, we’ll miss the whole point of the text. Jesus did not call these guys because of what they brought to the table. These four guys and the subsequent disciples to follow didn’t have many things in their favor. Most of them were lower class, rural, uneducated Galileans, commoners, nobodies, not well-respected, hardly the cultural elite. They were not the most spiritually qualified for the task. They were exceedingly ignorant, narrow-minded, superstitious, full of Jewish prejudices, misconceptions, animosities and that’s who Jesus chose.

You say, “Well, you’re being kind of hard on them,” but the reality is it’s not just them. It’s us too. You and I have nothing in us to draw Jesus to us. We’re just sinners, rebels to the core running from God and the beautiful, gracious, glorious reality of the gospel, the good news is that Jesus has come running to us. Jesus, this Jesus the center of all history, the Savior King of the universe takes the initiative to call you and me to himself. Notice, this is so key that this is not a call to a set of rules and regulations. This is a call to a relationship. Jesus is not saying what every other religious teacher in the history of the world has said, “Follow this path to life.” Jesus is saying, “I am the path. I am the way, the truth and the life.” He’s not saying, “Follow this eightfold path. Believe these noble truths. Adheres to these five pillars in your life.” He’s saying, “Follow me and find life.”

Followers of Jesus are not men and women for whom Jesus is part of their life, followers of Jesus for men and women for whom Jesus is life like their whole life, period. Why? Because he is the author of life. If we don’t follow Jesus, the author and giver and sustainer and the Lord of life, then we will miss the whole point of each of our lives. I ask people in the world about the life that counts and most will immediately focus on self, who we can be, what we can do. The answer the Bible gives is totally different. The life that counts dies to self and follows the only one who can give life now and forever. The life that counts follows Jesus and, so don’t miss the and here in Matthew 4:19, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” So the life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known.

Jesus takes this imagery familiar to these disciple’s vocation. He says, “As you follow me, instead of searching for fish all over the lake, you’re going to lead people to me all over the world.” That was not number 100 on a list of 100 things these followers of Jesus would do. It was at the top and it makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe an illustration will help. Imagine you have cancer and you discover the cure. So what does it look like to live in a way that counts? Well, first and foremost, you’d take the cure, right? You’d live free from cancer, then surely you wouldn’t keep that cure to yourself. You’d do whatever you could to get the cure to cancer to others so they could live too. You dedicate your life to that. Wouldn’t anything less than that be missing the point of your life?

Just imagine if you got to the end of your life and you had continued living with cancer and/or kept the cure to cancer to yourself, wouldn’t you realize, “I wasted my life”? So, isn’t this all the more true when you have something better, but someone who is infinitely greater than a cure to cancer, who’s the only cure to the eternal cancer of sin in the human heart that affects the whole world, who’s the only way to real, true, abundant, eternal life? Yes, the life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known. Don’t miss this, Jesus makes us into this. As we follow Jesus, he transforms us from the inside out so that we lead others to know him.

I want to show you one last thing before this session closes. The life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known in your neighborhood. Clearly, we’re seeing in Matthew, Jesus came for the Jewish people. We’ve seen this all over Matthew 1-4. At the same time, we’re seeing the life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known in all nations. Remember that genealogy in chapter one and I pointed out the names of the women mentioned there, all of them were essentially gentile outcasts, Tamar associated with incest after Judah took a wife from Canaan, Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, Ruth a Moabite. Did you notice how Matthew emphasized how Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? The picture is clear. Jesus came not for those who have it all together among one type of people. He came for outcasts among all the peoples. Jesus is fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham to bring blessing to all the peoples.

Put it all together, the life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known in your neighborhood, among the people around you and among all the nation, among the peoples of the world, which all leads to how Matthew 4 ends. He went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of his kingdom, healing every disease and affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria. They brought him all the sick, those afflicted with diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures and paralytics and he healed them and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.

So here’s what we’re going to do in the next three sessions as we walk through Matthew, we’re going to ask, is this true? Is it true that the life that counts follows Jesus and makes him known in your neighborhood and all nations? Is this where life is found? If you lived to follow Jesus and make him known in the world, would you get to the end and be able to look back and say, “My life counted for what matters most”? Let’s see. Speaking of seeing, if this is the life that counts, following Jesus and making him known, then we need to see where Jesus is and is not known in the world. That’s one of the reasons Radical started doing a video series called Hard to Reach, to help followers of Jesus see the world and where Jesus isn’t known yet. As you heard earlier from Larissa, tonight, for the first time, you’re going to have the opportunity to see Hard to Reach Indonesia. So, watch this with me.