Clarence E. Mason: Synopsis of the “Gospel According To Matthew”

Matthew was led by the Holy Spirit to reveal our Lord Jesus as the long-promised Messiah-King.  This aspect of our Savior’s ministry was especially aimed at meeting the need of the Jewish people.  Jesus Christ’s right to be King is asserted in many different ways in 1:1-11:1

Jesus Christ, Our Lord, was first of all “a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the Jewish fathers” (Romans 15:8).  These promises included the LAND (through Abraham) and a KINGLY HOUSE and THRONE in perpetuity (through David).  So in Matthew our Lord’s genealogy is not traced to Adam (as in Luke’s gospel – 3:38), but to Abraham and David.

Our Lord Jesus was “BORN KING of the Jews” (2:2) and came into the human family with the throne rights of His father David (Luke 1:32-33).  His herald and forerunner, John, announced the imminence of the setting up of that kingdom (promised to Israel in numerous Old Testament prophecies) and conditioned it only upon the repentance of a covenant people who had drifted far from God (3:1-2).  Our Lord Jesus took up this message when John was cast into prison (4:12, 17) and later selected apostles to go over all Israel bearing that message (to Israelites ONLY, 10:5-7).  Our Lord announced the principles upon which He would rule when that kingdom is established (The Manifesto of the Kingdom, (5-7).  Both John and He warned Israel of the judgment that would follow if repentance was not forthcoming (3:9-10, 12; 10:13-15).

Thus the long-promised Messianic kingdom was offered Israel, but the growing opposition (9:34) of Israel’s religious leaders led them to blaspheme the Holy Spirit (12:24), which moral rejection of our Lord recognized and responded to with solemn warnings of judgment (12:31-45; 11:20-24).  Our Lord anticipated the nation’s formal rejection of Him which would lead to the cross (16:21; 27:22, 25), and prophesied a form of the kingdom of heaven (called “the Mysteries of the Kingdom”) which would run its course between the time of His rejection and that of His coming again (13:11, 16-17, 34-35).  A “Mystery” means literally a secret, thus something in relation to the kingdom which had been unrevealed previously.

We are now living in this intervening period between the king’s rejection and the King’s return.  As a result of Israel’s rejection of Christ as King, the nation has been set aside by God in age-long discipline, and the kingdom has been put in abeyance (until the time of its manifestation), until the seed sowing of wheat and tares has produced a harvest (13:36-43).  Our Lord re-announced and identified the church as His instrument of witness during the period of the setting aside of Israel (16:18-19).

Israel will not “see Him again” until a substantial portion of them repent (23:39) in response to the re-announced message of the coming king and kingdom, which ministry will be interrupted by Christ’s return (10:23).  At the close of that period of Tribulation, climaxed by Christ’s return to earth, the hearers of that message of a returning King will be judged on the basis of their attitude of faith or disobedience toward the bearers of the message (25:31-46).  This is more properly called the Judgment of the Gentiles.

The book closes with the great facts of our Lord’s death and resurrection, 22-28.

2012-11-21