Some Notes on Matthew--NT Journey

OK, we're getting closer to the New Testament Journey. Remember the point of this exercise is not just the get through the New Testament, but it's to dive in and allow God to teach us. So when you're reading, don't just read as if you're fulfilling an obligation. In John 5, Jesus is talking with the Pharisees and says this,

"You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life."

As you work your way through the New Testament, don't fall into the same trap as the Pharisees, reading only to gain information. The whole New Testament is about Jesus, so as you read find life in Jesus.

A Little About the Order
Here's how I've broken down the NTJ. I'm starting with Matthew because it's one of the Gospels, which give us the most direct picture of Jesus we have. I could have had us just go right through the Gospels to start, but I wanted to break up the Gospels so we'll come back to them from time to time. Each Gospel has a different slant on the life and teachings of Jesus, depending on the audience or the writer. More on that later.

After Matthew, we'll move on to Acts, which is the continuation of the story. So by the time we're done with Acts, we'll have read through most of the events that happened during the writing of the New Testament books. After Acts, for the most part, we will be reading books in the order they were written. That way we can get a sense of the issues the church was dealing with as they developed their theology and practice through the years. As I said earlier, we'll come back to a Gospel periodically as a reminder of Jesus' life and teachings.

Why Four Gospels
Some people ask why we have four Gospels. If they're basically the same, why do we need four of them? In fact, couldn't it save us a lot of headaches from people who claim they contradict each other for us just to get our story straight? Well, the short answer to that is that we have four Gospels because we have a rich, diverse world.

Think about this for a moment. If it was so important to God that we all just get our theology straight and all behave a certain way, don't you think He would have just dictated a theology book and an instruction book and left it at that. But because God values relationship, what He most left us with was stories. He's saying, "Here's the picture of how God interacts with fallen humanity, now do likewise." In the Old Testament, we DO find those rules and regulations and look how that turned out! Paul says the reason the Israelites were given the Law was just to show how futile our attempts at righteousness are.

So the New Testament is the story of God interacting with fallen humans. It's the story of Adam and Noah and Moses and King David...and Jesus and Matthew and Paul...and YOU. No one tells a story the same way. Matthew, for instance is writing to Jews who have questions about this Jesus who claims to be the Messiah foretold in the prophets. John, on the other hand is writing to Greeks who are familiar with the philosophy of Plato and Socrates, so his writing is much more ethereal and reflects Greek thought. Luke is a doctor who has a great concern for the poor and oppressed. Each tell the same story, but emphasize different points and bring out different teachings of Jesus.

Different people have a different favorite Gospel. Philosophy students resonate more with John. Detail people and "bleeding-heart liberals" like Luke. Others like Mark for his simple, short and to-the-point style. It's OK. We have all four because we have different types of people. God knew that and provided for that.

A Look at Matthew
As I mentioned earlier, Matthew comes from a very Jewish perspective. The book was written by Matthew (one of Jesus' 12 disciples). Matthew was a tax collector. In Jesus' day, tax collectors were more than just IRS agents, they were seen by every Jew as a traitor because they worked for the enemy--the oppressive Roman government. The Jews were supposed to be God's chosen people, yet they were under the power of the Romans. The Romans knew the situation with the Jews around Palestine was tenuous, so they didn't figure having a Roman collecting taxes would be very effective. So they recruited Jews, who would exact taxes on their own people. Tax collectors could collect as much tax as they wanted. They would send a certain amount to Rome and keep whatever was left over. As a result, tax collectors were very unpopular and very rich.

Matthew left that life to follow Jesus. He wrote his gospel to Jews who were wondering who this Jesus guy was. So when you read Matthew, notice that he takes great care to reference the Old Testament prophecies. You'll read quite often in Matthew, "This was to fulfill..." This is also why Matthew is the only Gospel writer to include a geneology at the beginning of his book--tracing Jesus' roots back to Abraham. (Edit: Actually, Luke does include a genealogy that traces Jesus' lineage through a little different line. We'll discuss that when the time comes.)

In the book of Matthew, you'll also find Jesus speaking a great deal about the "Kingdom of Heaven." The other writers use the phrase "Kingdom of God," but because of the Jews' aversion to saying the word "God" Matthew uses "heaven" instead. The Kingdom of Heaven is actually a continuation of the idea of the Jews as God's chosen people. Israel was to be God's Kingdom, but in Jesus, God's Kingdom is now open to all and takes on more spiritual meaning as well.

As you read, you'll also find many references to "the Law." The Law is the Law of Moses given on Mt. Sinai. It was central for the Jews, and especially for the Pharisees--the most common religious leader of the day and usually Jesus' adversary. The Pharisees were fixated with the details of the Law. Jesus believed and followed the Law, but much of what He came to do was to clarify that the importance of the Law was not in following every little detail, but to focus on relationships (i.e. love God, love others in 22:34ff). Notice this theme throughout Jesus' interactions with the Pharisees.

Jesus' most extensive teaching is contained in Matthew. We find the Sermon on the Mount, a section of parables, as well as his comments on Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. As you read through Matthew, keep these things in mind and you'll have a much greater understanding of the book and of Jesus, which is the whole point.

The journey starts Friday.

Kory

A Little New Testament Background

We're just a few days away from starting the New Testament Journey so I wanted to make sure everyone has a good handle on what they're reading. For many of you, this is old stuff, for others it will be a complete revelation, but in any case, it never hurts to be reminded. What I'm going to do today is to give some general information about the Bible. Then one more pre-Journey post specifically about the book of Matthew.

When you thumb through your Bible, you'll see that it's broken down into Old Testament and New Testament. The reason it's broken down this way is because Christians see Jesus as the center-point of their faith. Everything before Jesus is the Old Testament (or old covenant) and everything from Jesus on is the New Testament (or new covenant).

The Old Testament is the history, law and writings of the Israelites. It extends from the beginning of time all the way through about 400 BC (before Christ). The Bible is a very Israel-centered book. The writers of the Old Testament and many of the writers of the New Testament were Jewish. So the themes of the Jewish people are prominent all throughout the Bible.

The Jews were God's "chosen people." What were they chosen for? Were they chosen because God loved them more? Were they chosen because they were more holy and righteous than any other people group? No, not really. They were chosen just because. Some of it had to do with Abraham's obedience, but ultimately the Israelites didn't earn their chosen status.

What were they chosen for? When we read the Bible, we see that the Jews were not chosen just to enjoy God's blessing, but so that they could be a blessing to the rest of the world. How did they bless the rest of the world? They carried the lineage of Jesus. Jesus is the blessing of the world.

Because God chose to bring about Jesus through the Jews, He protected them, He commanded them not to associate with other people groups or religions, He wanted them to be pure. In the Old Testament, much of this purity happen through The Law. When you read the New Testament, you will see references to the Law quite often.

The Old Testament law (or Law of Moses) was the Law given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Each Israelite was expected to keep the Law which included both ethical commands (i.e. the Ten Commandments) as well as instructions for ritual purity (i.e. ritual hand-washing, offering sacrifices, kosher laws, etc.). In the Old Testament, you see the covenant God made with the Israelites, "If you keep my commandments, I will protect you." That's what we refer to as the Old Covenant.

But if you're familiar with the history of Israel, ultimately they did not keep the covenant with God, so God allowed Assyria in 722 BC and Babylon in 586 BC to take Israel into captivity, ultimately displacing the Jews from Palestine. This, of course, was a great shock to the Israelites, who saw themselves as God's chosen people. How could God allow them to be taken into captivity?

At the time of Jesus, there was again a strong Jewish presence around Palestine and particularly in Jerusalem where the Temple stood. The Temple was the center of the Jewish religion and so you'll see much of what Jesus did was centered around Jerusalem and the Temple.

In case you didn't know, Jesus was born some time around 0 AD. I say sometime because the reality is that we don't know exactly when Jesus was born, but it's somewhere around there give or take a few years. He was born into a political and religious powder-keg. The Roman Empire was going strong. The Jews were bitter toward the Romans and felt oppressed. This was the environment of Jesus.

The Jews had the Old Testament. That was Jesus' Scripture. Of course, the New Testament had not been written yet. The New Testament began to be written around 45-50 AD or 12-15 years after Jesus' death and ascension. Remember that the New Testament was not written as one book by one author all at the same time. But instead it's a collection of books written by Jesus' disciples or people closely associate with His disciples as well as the Apostle Paul, whose situation is a little different than the others as we'll read in the book of Acts.

The different books were copied and distributed to the different churches that had formed around the Empire. So for instance, the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians were letters written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth (in modern-day Greece). Since Jesus wasn't still around to teach them, the church in Corinth found them to be valuable teaching about their new faith, so they would copy them and pass them along to other churches. As time went on, the collection of books grew and they were eventually all bound together to form what is now our New Testament. The collection of books that were bound together were the book that the church found to be authoritative and consistent with the teachings of Jesus as well as the Apostles.

At the same time, there were other books being passed around that were not included in the New Testament. The books that were not included were rejected for various reasons. For some, the author couldn't be verified, for others the teachings in them were clearly false or were just not consistent with the teachings of Jesus or the Apostles.

We read the New Testament (as well as the Old) as the Word of God. We believe it is inspired by God and still relevant for our day and age. Even though the books were written a couple thousand years ago in a particular situation, human nature has changed very little and we find the insight into the human condition found in the Bible to be just as relevant and useful as it was then.

Certainly there is much more that could be added here and I will certainly provide more background information as we continue reading, but let this serve as a quick primer on what we'll be spending the next year reading.

NT Journey--Getting off to a Good Start

OK, I promise I won't carry the "journey" motif too far, but there is a sense in which seeing ourselves as on a journey is helpful for us. First, we have to remember that what we're doing here will take us an entire year. If you're like me, it's pretty hard to stay focused on something for 15 minutes, let alone an entire year! But that's what we're doing here. In order to accomplish what you set out to accomplish, you have to remember at the outset that this is going to take a while.

We're always excited about the idea of things, but often less excited about doing the thing itself. So you're excited about the idea of being able to say, "I've read through the entire New Testament," but in order to be able to say it, you have to be willing to do it.

Now, we could certainly read through the New Testament in much less time than a year. For goodness' sake, my wife will read a good novel in an evening! The New Testament isn't that much longer than a novel. But we'll take much longer than that with the NT because our purpose in reading it is different. The purpose of a novel is entertainment--that's pretty much it. They may be thought-provoking, but ultimately a novel is mostly just a story that people are interested in.

I've never thought there was much point to being able to say "I've read all the way through the Bible." I don't think the Bible is meant to be read that way-as if there's something magical about just reading the words thinking somehow just by reading your life is going to be better. As John Ortberg says, "The point is not to get through Scripture, but to get Scripture through you." I think that's the whole point and why we're taking an entire year to go through the NT.

One chapter is really not that much to read on any given day. So what I will encourage you to do is not just to read one chapter one time and call it a day. Read the day's chapter a few times. Read it fast, then read it slow. Read it in light of the chapter before it. What's the point that Jesus or Paul or Peter is trying to make? How do the events of 2000 years ago relate to what's going on today? Hopefully, I'll be able to add some valuable background on the passages, but be sure to wrestle with them yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Do your own research.

Finally, the goal of reading Scripture is transformation, so pay particular attention to how the passage sheds light on your life or the world around you. First a warning: while we will ultimately try to apply Scripture to our lives, don't fall into the trap of only asking the question, "what does this mean to me.?" The second rule of reading Scripture is to remember that the Bible was written for us, but it wasn't written to us. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he had in mind the church in Corinth, not you. What he said to the church in Corinth can certainly be useful to all of us, but sometimes in our efforts to find application to our lives, we make a passage say something it was never intended to say. So first we'll try to figure out what a passage meant in its original setting, then we can take the principle from it to apply it to our lives. (I'll beat that drum all year long.)

Allowing the Word of God to transform our lives is the ultimate goal, so don't put the goal of getting through the NT ahead of transformation. Next post, I'll give some background on the New Testament, it's relationship with the Old Testament, and other helpful tidbits as we prepare to get started on January 1st.

The New Testament Journey

I know I've often taken it for granted that I know the Bible pretty well. I grew up going to church three times a week (at least) and spent much of my childhood memorizing and having drilled into me large chunks of the Bible. When I went to college, a good number of the classes I took were Bible classes, then four more years of Bible classes in seminary. I even learned to read the Bible in it's original language--which I've since mostly forgotten. Yet as much as I've read and as many classes I've taken over the course of my thirty-some-odd years, it seems every time I open the Bible, I gain something new.

We all find it hard to be motivated to continue reading the Bible. I would guess that if someone said they would give us a million dollars if we read a chapter a day for a year, that would be motivation enough. But why should that be the best motivation for us? Isn't life-change or a greater understanding of our Creator and Father enough motivation for us? It should be, but there's something about the immediate tangible rewards that seems to work better.

With this in mind, I'm inviting you to join me in the New Testament Journey. I've put together a reading plan, beginning January 1st to read one chapter in the New Testament every week day (yes, you get the weekend off). Here's how it will work:

First, fill out this quick online form to gain access to the New Testament Journey page on the Hillside Community Site. Here you can see the reading calendar and even download the calendar to your Outlook or smartphone so you'll have it with you. (you'll need a Hillside Community login to do this).

Second, you can also download a printable version of the reading plan to put in your Bible. (which should be available in the next day or two).

Third, check back on my blog to learn some history, background, commentary and other insights on the passages. I'd also invite you to comment about the insights you gain from the passage as well. I can't guarantee I'll post every day, but I'll do it as often as I'm able.

Before the new year, I'll post a quick explanation of the Bible that will be helpful for those of you who consider yourselves completely Biblically illiterate. This should help you as you dive into the New Testament for the first time. There may even be some helpful stuff for those of you who already know the Bible pretty well.

As always, if you have questions, feel free to e-mail me.

Kory