The Bible, getting to grips with what the writers message means today ~ Matthew
Reading the Bible is great, but reading it in everyday language, I believe, helps put it into perspective.
Even better is knowing the background of the writer and understanding why and to whom he was writing.
So these blogs, one for each of the New Testament Books hope to achieve just that by giving the background for each of the books of the New Testament as written in The Message.
MATTHEW
The story of Jesus doesn't begin with Jesus. God had been at work for a long time. Salvation, which is the main business of Jesus, is an old business. Jesus is the coming together in final form of themes and energies and movements that had been set in motion before the foundation of the world.
Matthew opens the New Testament by setting the local story of Jesus in its world-historical context. He makes sure that as we read his account of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we see the connections with everything that has gone before. "Fulfilled" is one of Matthew's characteristic verbs: such and such happened "that it might be fulfilled." Jesus is unique, but he is not odd.
Better yet, Matthew tells the story in such a way that not only is everything previous to us completed in Jesus; we are completed in Jesus. Every day we wake up in the middle of something that is already going al that has been going on for a long time: genealogy and geology, history and culture, the cosmos — God. We are neither accidental nor incidental to the story. We get orientation, briefing, background, reassurance.
Matthew provides the comprehensive context by which we see all God's creation and salvation completed in Jesus, and all the parts of our lives - work, family, friends, memories, dreams - also completed in Jesus. Lacking such a context, we are in danger of seeing Jesus as a mere diversion from the concern announced in the newspapers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
All Scripture quotations are taken from The Message, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.