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(upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to Drive Time
Devotions. This is our New Testament survey study in Drive Time Devotions,
something a little different. Instead of going through a book, a chapter, a
week, we're going to go through the entire New Testament.

But we're going to do it a book each day. So we'll just give you a sense of what
each book of the New Testament is all about. We're not just going to look at what
the book is about, we're also going to look at the major message of that book and
how that can impact your life.

So this is a very quick 50,000 foot flyover of the New Testament. And my prayer
as we go through this is that it will first give you an overview of the New
Testament. Maybe you've never really looked at all the books in the New
Testament.

But second, even if you're very aware of all the books in the New Testament,
it'll give you the strength and the encouragement from God to live out the major
truths of the New Testament in your daily life. We're going through the New
Testament, so we're going to start where the New Testament starts. We're going to
start with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then we're going to do the book of
Acts this week.

We'll do five books each week, it'll take us about five weeks to go through
this. We start with the four gospels. Four gospels give us four eyewitnesses of
the life of Jesus.

Matthew was one of the followers of Jesus, one of the 12 disciples, he was an
eyewitness. Mark, John Mark, wrote down the eyewitness account mainly of Peter,
he was a good friend of Peter. Luke wrote down, he tells us the eyewitness
account of many people that he talked to.

As you read the book, you realize that he talked to the mother of Jesus, Mary,
to get a lot of what he had to say. And John was also an eyewitness, a follower
of Jesus. So they were people that were there, that saw what happened when Jesus
came upon this earth and lived his life for us, gave his life for us, and was
resurrected for us.

Even though they tell somewhat the same story, they tell it from a different
perspective. That's what always happens with an eyewitness. And by doing that,
these gospels speak to us at different times and speak to different people in
different generations in different ways.

When you look at these different gospels, you can see the differences pretty
clearly. When you look at Mark, you see Jesus the servant. In Luke, you see
Jesus the son of man.

In John, you see Jesus the son of God. In Matthew, you see Jesus the sovereign
king. In Mark, you see that the direction of the writing is to the Roman mind.

In Luke, it's to the Greek mind. In John, it's to all people. In Matthew, it's
to the Jewish mind.

In Mark, you see that Jesus is a servant you can depend upon. In Luke, you see
that Jesus is a friend that you can love. In John, you see that Jesus is a
savior you can trust.

And in Matthew, you see that Jesus is a leader that you can follow. Matthew's
gospel, which we're looking at today, more than any other, is a link between the
Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, each week we'll talk just a little bit
about the person who wrote the book or who they wrote it to.

The author of Matthew is obviously Matthew, one of the followers of Jesus. He
was a Jew, he was a tax collector, he became a disciple, and that tells us that
he was prepared for this task of writing this book. As a tax collector, he would
have had to master the art of writing, and he would have had to learn to give
careful attention to details.

That prepared him to write this gospel. As a Jew, he would have had to learn the
Old Testament. And as you read through Matthew, you see how often he quotes from
the Old Testament.

And as a disciple, he spent three years with Jesus. He was an eyewitness to
these events. God had been preparing Matthew all of his life, even before he
became a follower of Jesus.

All of his life, he'd been preparing him for the job of writing this book. Now,
I want to give you just a sense of what is in all of Matthew before we turn to
the impact that this book might have on your life. When you look at the book of
Matthew, one way you might think of it is as if it's a six-layer cake.

The life of Jesus, the things that he did, are interspersed with the teachings
of Jesus, the things that he said. The key to seeing this is the five times that
Matthew says when Jesus had finished saying these things. That's in Matthew 7,
28, and 11, 1, and 13, 53, and 19, 1, and 26, 1.

I don't expect you to write that down, but those are the five times this
happened. There are five blocks of teaching that are there, and then he says
when he finished saying these things, he went out and did something, the
narrative of his life. So as you walk through this layered cake real quickly, it
begins in Matthew 1-4 with the narrative of his birth, his baptism, the
beginning of Jesus.

And it starts, as you may have realized, if you ever started to read through the
New Testament, you open it up and you turn to the book of Matthew and you start
with this long genealogy of Jesus. Doesn't seem like the most exciting place for
us to start. Why does he start with the genealogy?

Because we just said a moment ago that Matthew was written to the Jewish mind.
This was the most important question to the Jew. Where did Jesus come from?

And they had to know his genealogy. You see, the purpose in the first verse, he
was the son of David and the son of Abraham. That points to two of God's great
promises from the Old Testament.

The promise to Abraham of a multitude of descendants, and that was going to come
from Jesus. The promise to David of a king who would be on the throne forever,
and that is Jesus. The son of David, the son of Abraham.

David's son was a king. Abraham's son was a sacrifice. That's true in the Old
Testament, but it's also true of Jesus.

Jesus is both king and sacrifice. So there's a lot in this genealogy that you
start out with with Matthew. Matthew starts with this genealogy, and then you go
to the teaching, some of the most famous teaching of Jesus.

Matthew five to seven is the Sermon on the Mount. Then chapters eight to nine,
the next layer is the narrative where Jesus is healing the sick, he's calling
the disciples. And then in Matthew 10, you go back into a teaching section where
he's preparing his disciples to be sent out.

Then back to narrative as you're going through these layers. John the Baptist,
battles with the Pharisees in Matthew 11 and 12. Matthew 13, the next layer is
the teaching layer, the seven parables that Jesus taught in that section.

And then in Matthew 14 to 17, you have Jesus working signs and wonders. And then
Matthew 18, more teaching, teaching on greatness and forgiveness. Matthew 19 to
22, next layer is the triumphal entry of Jesus.

And then Matthew 23 to 26, the teaching. And finally, the final layer of this
cake is the narrative of Jesus's death and his burial, and then his
resurrection. Now that's hard to think about as you hear this on a podcast.

How do I even picture all those verses all together? So what I want to do each
week is give you a little taste of the outline, but actually focus primarily in
each of these books on what's some of the major lessons, major truths that are
out throughout this book. Now, any of the books of the New Testament are so
deep, you could look at this from several different angles and get different
ideas of what the major lesson might be.

But we're going to take a look at one of those each week in each book to focus on
what does God want to do in my life? We're going to talk about what's the impact of
the book on my life. Paul Zimmerman, the famous football writer for Sports
Illustrated, applied the laws of physics to the football field.

And he figured out that when a 240-pound lineman hits a 240-pound lineman, the
resulting kinetic energy is enough to move 33 tons, one inch. The force is
approximately 1,000 Gs. That's a huge impact.

What I want to say to you is God's word has even greater impact, because it has an
eternal impact. It has a personal impact in your life. So what is the impact in
my life, your life, of the book of Matthew?

Well, one of the major impacts is that Matthew impacts your life with
fulfillment. It is a book that's all about true fulfillment, both personal
fulfillment and historical fulfillment. There are four specific ways that we see
this in Matthew.

First, Jesus fulfills God's plan for our salvation. Jesus himself says in
Matthew 5:17, "Don't think that I've come to abolish the law "or the prophets.
"I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

" So Jesus didn't come to do away with the Old Testament. He came to fulfill the
New Testament. And you see this again and again and again in Matthew.

Matthew 1, 22, 2, 15, 17, 23, 4, 14. I'm not going to read all the verses, but
again and again, it says that he did this that it might be fulfilled. Just a few
of those verses.

Matthew 8, 17, "This was to fulfill "what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah.
"He took up our infirmities and he carried our diseases. " So when Jesus healed,
he was fulfilling the Old Testament.

Or Matthew 21, 4-5, "This took place "to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.
"Say to the daughter of Zion, "'See your king comes to you gentle and riding on
a donkey, "on a colt, the foal of a donkey. '" This is when Jesus rode into
Jerusalem, you remember, in the triumphal entry.

Or Matthew 27, 9, "Then what was spoken by Jeremiah "the prophet was fulfilled.
"They took the 30 silver coins, "the price set on him by the people of Israel. "
You remember that was what happened with Judas and the payment for betraying
Jesus.

So all through Jesus' life, it's shown that he is fulfilling all the promises of
the Old Testament. That's one of the things that's fulfilled in the Book of
Matthew. A second thing, and this becomes more personal, the Book of Matthew
teaches us that Jesus Christ fulfills our material needs.

When you read the Book of Matthew, you see him talking about, Jesus talking
about the fact that if you'll just seek first my kingdom, all these things will
be added to you. Matthew 6, 31-33, "Do not worry," Jesus said, saying, "What
shall we eat, or what shall we drink, "or what shall we wear? "For the pagans
run after all these things, "and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, "and all these things will be
given to you as well. " So Matthew teaches us that Jesus is here to fulfill
those needs that are a part of our lives, even the material needs. He's not
going to give me every material thing that I want, but he will meet my material
needs, he cares.

Number three, Jesus fulfills our inner desires. "Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness, "for they will be filled," Matthew 5-6 says.
Matthew 11, 28-30, "Come to me," Jesus said, "all of you who are weary and
burdened, "and I will give you rest.

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, "for I am gentle and humble in heart,
"and you will find rest for your souls. "For my yoke is easy and my burden is
light. " So he not only fulfills the outer needs, more importantly, he fulfills
the inner desires of our lives, the deepest desires.

And then finally, when it comes to fulfillment, the greatest impact is that God
will fulfill his plan through us. He uses us in fulfilling the plan of spreading
the good news of salvation to everyone. These are the ending words in the book
of Matthew.

Famous words, Matthew 28, 18-20. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. "Therefore, go and make
disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father "and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, "and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you.

"And surely, I am with you always "to the very end of the age. " That's how
Matthew ends, telling you and I that not only does God want to fulfill his plan
in our lives, fulfill the needs of our lives, he wants to fulfill his plan
through our lives. He wants to use you to spread the good news.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the good news of the Gospel of
Matthew. And thank you.

Thank you, Jesus, that you came to fulfill. So anything right now in my life
that is not fulfilled, where I feel empty, instead of looking to this world,
instead of looking to myself, I look to you. But I also realize that you want to
fulfill not only your plan in me, you want to do it through me.

You have something for me to do to share this good news with somebody else. Show
me how and show me where I pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to take a look at Mark, which is the shortest and the most
action-packed Gospel.