The Gospel of Matthew, Part 2
Chapters 14 to 28
Explore the second half of Matthew’s gospel account, where Jesus models servant leadership and fulfills God’s promises to Israel. Watch our overview video on Matthew 1–13, which breaks down the literary design of the book and its flow of thought. In Matthew, Jesus brings God’s heavenly kingdom to earth and invites his disciples into a new way of life through his death and resurrection.[1]
• Watch this 2015 BibleProject overview video on the gospel of Matthew (8 min.): narrated by Timothy Mackie and Jonathan Collins.
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Reflect Once you’ve watched the featured video, take time to reflect on these questions:
(1) How were the Israelites expecting the Messiah to deliver them?
(2) How did Jesus’ sufferings challenge their expectations?
(3) How does Jesus’ suffering challenge your own expectations of God’s promises?
Matthew’s gospel is full of quotations and allusions from the Hebrew Bible, emphasizing that Jesus is the surprising fulfillment of Israel’s messianic prophecies. At the end of his account, he specifically alludes to Isaiah 53, while telling the story of Jesus’ sufferings, death, and resurrection. Many Israelites expected the Messiah to come as a military warrior, who’d punish the ruling empire and deliver the people from oppression. But through the lens of Matthew’s eye-witness testimony and Isaiah’s scroll, we learn that Jesus is so much more than the savior the people were expecting.[2]
