Matthew’s narrative has depicted Jesus in a near-constant state of activity from the moment He finished preaching the Sermon on the Mount. The breakneck speed does not let up in Matthew 14. In fact, things escalate to what would be a breaking point for most people, and yet Jesus seems to take it in stride. What is His secret? The Sunday school answer of, ”Well, He’s God,” might explain things if Christ had not laid aside His Divinity to take on humanity. So, what was it that kept Jesus going?

In Matthew 13, Jesus has just had a run in with the Pharisees in the synagogue. They started making plans of murdering Jesus so He left the synagogue and was met with a large crowd. Having healed their sick and demon possessed, Jesus is called as being demon possessed by the Pharisees, and Jesus contradicts them with sound reasonings and solid evidence. Now, He wishes to teach the crowd so He sits by the lake. So many people show up that Jesus gets onto a boat and preaches from the waters to those on the shore.

In Matthew 12, Jesus and the disciples are back together. Not too long before this time, Jesus had a run-in with the Pharisees when Jesus was eating with Matthew and his friends. He called them out for following a religious form while having hearts far from God, set on injustice, and oppressive towards the innocent. They followed Him around, heard Him teach, saw a girl raised to life, saw the blind healed, watched a demon possessed man who was mute delivered and begin to speak, and rather than take to heart Jesus' admonition, despite all they had seen and heard, their response to Jesus was to slander Him and accuse Him of being demon possessed. In Chapter 12, things escalate to a public confrontation that will leave the Pharisees shaken to the core. Jesus has much to say about the condition of our hearts and what comes out of us as a result of that condition.

Matthew 11 is one of the most gracious and one of the most severe chapters in Matthew. In many ways it is reflective of Joshua, drawing a line in the sand, announcing to the people of Israel, “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” Yet while Joshua’s announcement was a general challeng to his troops to loyalty, or to otherwise turn aside and follow no more, Jesus’ heart of compassion, His grief over those who reject Him, and His rejoicing over the revelation given by the Father to the lowly of this world shows Jesus, not in the light of an austere general, but as a loving Savior. He knows well that the hope He gives is the only salvation available and yet will not placate the hard-heartedness of those who refuse to follow Him.

Jesus sends out His disciples on their first missionary journey. His guidelines called for brutal meagerness and radical trust. The message was simple, but it wasn’t just a message of words but a message of displayed power and acted-out faith.

Up to this point, Matthew has portrayed Jesus as the Greater Moses, ushering in a new Kingdom with a clarified law and a creed marked by love for God and neighbor. Now, Matthew begins to show Jesus as the Greater Joshua, our Savior who ushers us into the Promised Land, bringing us into the lived-out experience of the Kingdom in our midst.

In the last chapter of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tackles the heart. Up to this point, He confronted people’s assumption of the Law, the inner motivation, and the hypocrisy of playing the fence, and now He directly tackles the heart and its loyalties to either envy or love, pretense or repentance, and the direction of your life will be determined by which wins.

At the center of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses what’s at the center of our motivations. What drives us towards good or bad? What motivates our activity? How is it that we can single-mindedly seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? In Matthew 6, Jesus gives us the answer.

In Matthew 5, Jesus is on the Mount of Beatitudes, laying down the principles of the Kingdom of Heaven. A New Covenant is being written in the hearts of a new people. A righteousness deeper and more complete than the Pharisees and the scribes is expected and even demanded. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” is the plumb line of the new law. But is Jesus simply expanding on the law, making it more strict and harder to fulfill, or is He perhaps getting to the heart of the matter and refocusing His disciples from simple rule-following to examining their heart condition?

Before Jesus found ministry success with people being healed, demons being cast out, and lives being transformed, he was tested in the wilderness, found out his cousin was arrested, and kicked out of his hometown. Before, the outward experience of Joy was a journey of suffering and hardship. Did Jesus find His way into God’s plan with Joy at the end waiting for Him? Or was He in God’s plan all along, with Joy accompanying Him on the way?

Christ is our Peace. In an auspicious moment, John bears witness to the fullness of God dwelling in the revealed Messiah.

Our exploration into Matthew 2 lands on the first Sunday of Advent. In a politically dangerous and religiously tense time, the Savior of the world is born and made known. Herod hopes to retain his political power. Jerusalem is unsettled by who’s proclaiming the birth of the Messia. Joseph and Mary must flee Judea to save the life of their son. It’s hard to imagine hope being found in such dire circumstances but it just may where hope shines the brightest.

Matthew chapter 1 introduces Jesus, born to unlikely people from an unlikely heritage, as the fulfillment of prophecy to an unlikely people.