Let's Meet the King, Part 1

You've chosen a significant day to join us. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll kicks off a brand new study through the Gospel According to Matthew. It's the first time in Chuck's preaching ministry that he's presented a series of this magnitude. In the coming months, we'll take our time to trace the life of Jesus, beginning with His miraculous birth and concluding with His magnificence. The series is called The King's Arrival. And following Jesus, we'll find that our love for Him intensifies.

Chuck titled this first message, Let's Meet the King. The outline you find in your worship folder today will be of an important guide, not only for today, but for days to come. Matthew is a book of 28 chapters, quite a study. We'll work our way through the book of Matthew as we go from one chapter to the next in an expository manner.

The outline has on its back a chart which will give you an overview of the book itself. And we'll return to that chart from time to time just to orient ourselves to where we are and what has come before and what will come later. I want to read for you some excerpts from Matthew. No time to read as many of the verses as we'd like, but this will give you at least snapshots along the way of the scenes that we will be encountering.

I'll be reading from the New Living Translation and we'll be going from one chapter to another several times, so be ready for that. I'll begin with the first verse and then we'll go to verse 16 in this first chapter. This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. Verse 16, Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.

Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. Verse 1 of chapter 2, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod. About that time, some wise men from Eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. Verse 13, after the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, Get up, flee to Egypt with the child and his mother, the angel said, Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. That night, Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary his mother, and they stayed there until Herod's death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet, I called my son out of Egypt. Verse 20, Get up, the angel said, take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who were trying to kill the child are dead. Verse 23, So the family went and lived in a town called Nazareth.

This fulfilled what the prophets had said, He will be called a Nazarene. Two more sections, chapter 9, verse 9, As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector's booth. Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him.

So Matthew got up and followed him. Finally, chapter 16, verse 13, When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Well, they replied, Some say John the Baptist. Some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Then he asked them, But who do you say I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. My hope as we undertake this study, which will be lengthy and in something of a detail, is that we will get new glimpses of Jesus, the Son of the living God, and that our love for Him will intensify as time passes. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To search the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck entitled, Let's Meet the King. Our God is a God of surprises. He's filled with them.

Stop and think about it. Who else but a God of surprises could have arranged a plan for saving humanity, and in that plan designed that he himself would step into the ranks of human flesh to carry it out? What a genius. What a surprising idea. Who but our God of surprises would have arrived in the way he arrived, in a stable, born to parents that didn't have two shekels to rub together, just absolutely abject poverty, and from them the child was raised? Who but our God would have used a flaming star in the sky to lead wise men from over a thousand miles away to find their way over months of travel to that one place where the child was living with his parents, not realizing when they arrived with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, that it was that child who, while second member of the Trinity, created all the stars? Who but our God of surprises? Who but a God of surprise would have assembled a ragtag body of disciples made up of fishermen and, of all things, tax gatherer, tax collector, and with him his brother, with whom he must have fought a number of occasions, and brought him also as a disciple? Who but our God of surprises? And who else but our God would cause a hated, greedy tax collector to have his life transformed from extortion and fraud and dishonesty and cooperating with an enemy force like the Romans, known among the Jews as the swine, and make him one of the twelve? Only our God would do that. And while I'm at it, it would be that tax collector who would sit down with pen in hand and write the story of the one who came to save the lost originally presented as the king of the Jews, their Messiah, only to have him not accepted but rejected and crucified, mistreated and misunderstood.

Who but our God of surprises would have brought him back from beyond and had him stand before those who had witnessed his death announcing that he is risen and that he would then ascend and he would arrive and be seated at the right hand of the Father back in the place which he had left 33 or so years earlier, and there he would wait for us and pray for us with plans to return for us to take us to himself. The book we began to study is a book filled with this story. It's the story of the great king who left the riches of heaven to become a commoner on this earth, that we, the commoners, after believing in him, would become the regal children in his family. No one ever said it better than Paul, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus, who though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich.

Only a God of surprises would have come up with a plan that magnificent. It's our joy to begin today to take on the study of this Gospel story. I've provided you with an outline and I'd like you to keep your eye on it as we work our way through it.

Have your pen ready or your pencil. I've given you four columns that mark out the four Gospels, but you might want to write in the margin the meaning of the word gospel. It's an Anglo-Saxon word, good spell. It comes from a term that means good news. So the gospel would be the good news, the good news of Matthew, the good news of Mark, the good news of Luke, the good news of John.

Now, with that in mind, be ready to write in each column various things. Matthew presents Jesus as the King, so put King below his name. You will see all the way through the writing of Matthew the King, the King, the Messiah, the Promised One. When you get to Mark, Jesus is presented as a servant.

He's at work. You read very little of regal significance in the gospel by Mark. You'll read a lot about work, a lot about immediately moving from this action to that action. Mark is a book of action because he's a servant at work. Luke presents Jesus as the man, the son of man, the man who would represent us among humans on this earth. Luke sees him as the man, and finally, John presents him as God. The preface of John's gospel is filled with 18 verses of the deity of Christ, the one who came, logos becoming humanity, God incarnate.

He is the man God, the God-man, and John presents him as God like none other. Now, go back to Matthew. Matthew was written to Jews.

That's why there are so many references of Jewish significance, references to the law, references to the customs, references to the feasts and events of the Jews, very familiar to Jews. Mark is written to Romans. They're the workers.

They're the people who constructed so much during their generation. And Mark writes to them. Luke writes to Greeks being one of them. The physician writes to fellows in his same race. And third or fourth, John writes to all the world or to all the church.

He wants all the world to know that Jesus, the king, the servant, the man, God himself is available to the whole world. Now let's go to the order in which they were written. Most likely, Mark was written first. He got his information from Peter. Peter gave Mark information regarding the details of those discussions that took place. Mark took notes.

Mark knew him well. And from Peter especially, he was able to write the first gospel. The second was most likely Matthew, as best we can tell. Matthew wrote his good news second. The third was Luke, and the fourth was John.

So in this order, Matthew comes second, Mark written first, Luke third, John fourth. Let me teach you a word, and I'll tell you why it's significant. It is synoptic.

Write it down. S-Y-N-O-P-T-I-C. Synoptic. It comes from two Greek words. Sun, S-U-N, means with, and optic, you know what that is. That's seeing.

Seeing things with. These first three gospels are called the synoptic gospels because they see similar things. And they write about similar events. However, when you get to John's gospel, which is not among the synoptic gospels, you write many things found only in John. Not only does he write in the 80s, 90s, but he is writing 92% of his information is unique to John.

Think about it. Even though Matthew, Mark, and Luke have written the good news of information that they received and saw, witnessed, and wrote similar things in various ways, John wrote from an altogether different standpoint, and his presentation is unique, 92% of it. Why four? Why not one?

Why wouldn't we just be satisfied with one gospel? These four give us four eyewitness accounts. These four let us see different flavors, different shadings, different scenes from their perspective. If a terrible accident were to take place on the corner out here near our church, let's imagine someone is jogging along the way and witnesses the accident. Let's say there's another driver behind the person driving that was in the accident.

He sees the accident in another way. Let's say several members on a construction crew that are working today over in this project beyond us would look over and they would see, they would have another perspective. Let's just imagine someone is up in a tree. Let's say somebody's up there just kind of sitting there in the tree.

Maybe a kid that decided to climb a tree that day. He would see from another perspective the same accident, four different perspectives, and anyone who investigates the accident would want to know the perspective of those people who witnessed it. They would give evidence from their perspective. It's interesting, though they come from different perspectives, there is no contradiction in all of the writings. In spite of what the critic may tell you, or in spite of what you may have learned in your religion class in college, there is no contradiction in any of the Gospels as well as any of the Scriptures.

Matter of fact, talk about content. Forty-six percent of all the information in the New Testament is found in the four Gospels. If you add the book of Acts, it grows to 60 percent. Think of that, since Luke wrote Acts. If you take all the writings of Matthew, Mark, and the two books of Luke, and then John, you have 60 percent of the New Testament represented here. This is an amazing amount of information contained right here. It's a good place for me to pause and bring a challenge to every one of you. I'm of the opinion that every Christian, at least once a year, should become reacquainted with the Savior.

I suggest that you do your own study. It may be one of the Gospels. It may be a chapter from one of the Gospels that has always intrigued you. It may be of the crucifixion of Jesus. It may be of the resurrection.

You may choose to do it in the Christmas season or the Easter season. You may want to take the three months of the summer and take on a study of the life of Jesus. Why would I say that? Well, he's your Savior. Some people know Paul better than they know Jesus. Some have studied the disciples and know them as a group better than the person of Jesus himself. Let me tell you something. In going through this study for the last several weeks in preparation for today, I found any number of things I'd never known before, and I've been at this all these years.

There's truth ready to be discovered when you spend your time in it over a concentrated period of time. Now, let's go back to the outline and notice that there is a writer and he writes for a reason. To begin with, the writer in this book, of course, is Matthew. He's only called Matthew in this book. Mark and Luke call him Levi. No doubt Jesus gave him the name Matthew. Back for your notes, you may want to note it means gift of God, gift of Yahweh. So God chose, the Lord Jesus chose Levi to walk with him, and he chose this man giving him a name, Gift of God.

What a man he was. Now, why do they write? Well, Matthew writes, obviously, to show us that the king who has come is worthy of our trust. That's the reason Matthew put his words together.

He wants us to know this is written by a man who knew him personally, walked with him, was among the disciples. How about their family? What do we know about them? Well, first let me have you go to the list. Look at Matthew 10 where the Lord gives us a list of all the disciples. There in verse 2, here are the names of the 12 apostles.

You can read them. Simon, called Peter. Andrew, who's Peter's brother. James is the son of Zebedee. John, James' brother. So we've already got brothers, James and John. They were called otherwise, sons of thunder. They had a real anger problem.

That's another subject. And then Philip comes along. Then Bartholomew is mentioned. Thomas, who was a twin, named Didymus in John's gospel, meaning twin. Here's Matthew, parenthesis, the tax collector. James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.

Study the list of these names for a few moments. You can't tell by looking, but no doubt, it's pretty probable that Matthew and James, the son of Alphaeus, were brothers. See Matthew, followed by James. In another gospel writer, in another gospel, two others, Matthew, I should say Mark and Luke, Matthew was called son of Alphaeus, just as James is. They're brothers.

Listen to the writings of Michael Green, who adds this about this fascinating family. We learn from Mark and Luke that Matthew was the son of Alphaeus. And so was James, Mark 3.18, as well as Matthew 10, verse 2.

They were therefore brothers. And at the end of the apostolic list for all its variations, we find James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, were the last four who were named. We know that Simon was a zealot, not to be confused with Simon Peter. See down next to the last, Simon is called a zealot.

What does that mean? That is to say, a violent resistance fighter against the occupying Roman forces. Very likely, Judas Iscariot was one as well.

One of the more probable derivations for his name is Sicarius. The word means dagger carrier. He carried a dagger. He would be among those so bent on resistance that they were ready to assassinate.

And the dagger was always handy. Judas, no doubt, was the most zealous of the twelve, which explains his departure from the faith. He never was really a believer in the Lord Jesus, but he followed Jesus, believing Jesus would overthrow the Romans. And he lived for that. And when he realized he would not be doing that, Judas turned on him. It's another subject we'll go into at some other time. Back to this quote.

Most of the common people of Israel were people of nationalistic patriotism. But his brother Matthew, or Levi, was totally different. Now follow this carefully. James is a zealot. He's a son of Alphaeus. So is Levi.

But Levi's different. As he grew up, he farmed taxes for Herod Antipas. He cooperated with the occupying power that his brother was set on seeking to overthrow with a bloody revolution. He writes in conclusion, it took Jesus of Nazareth to bring the two brothers together.

Nobody else could. As you can see, we're digging beneath the surface in what promises to be a rewarding exploration through the book of Matthew. You're listening to Insight for Living and the very first message in a brand new series from Chuck Swindoll. He's titled today's opening study, Let's Meet the King. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. This first book in the New Testament tells the story of our king from his arrival in Bethlehem to the call for his great commission. And it's never been presented on Insight for Living before now. In order to make the most of this series, you may want to secure Swindoll's Living Insights commentary for Matthew.

It comes in two hardbound volumes. It's written in a style that's easy to understand and the format is simple to navigate. Chuck's deep insight, conversational style and humor bring a warmth and accessibility rarely found in commentaries. These are excellent reference books that belong in the library of anyone who's a student of the Bible. So to purchase Swindoll's Living Insights commentary for Matthew, go to insight.org slash store. If you prefer, call us.

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Chuck Swindoll has more to teach us about the King's arrival Thursday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Let's Meet the King, was copyrighted in 2014 and 2021. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.