Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the YA podcast. Lean in as we dive into the practicals of life with Jesus as spirit filled young adults.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Well, welcome back to the Young adult podcast for 2025. My name's Thomas and I'm here with Jess. It's been a while.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: It's been a while.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: What's like, what's happened?
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I don't know. So much has happened. It's a new year.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Christmas happened. New Year happened.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: I think it's too late to say Happy New Year. We're in March now. Wait, it's like Happy Easter nearly at this point.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, true.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Time flies.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Time does fly. Yeah. Anything big happened in your life in the last couple of months, Jess?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: N. Wow. Just cruising, just cruising. Just following the Lord.
Just nice. Yeah. What about you?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I had a baby.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Oh, what? You had a baby? Yeah.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: So when we're recording this, I've got a 13 week old. 12 week old. Yeah. 12 week old.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Cutest little thing in the world.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Little Oliver.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: We love Oliver.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Yes. He won't be listening to this, so he might be.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: He just won't know.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: He won't have a clue what he's listening to. But that's okay. We're going to talk about Matthew.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yes, we are. But before we dive into that topic.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, good call.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Can you remind us as young adults why we have this podcast? Why are we doing this?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Why are we here?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: We want to create a forum to have conversations around the Bible and around topics that are important for Christian young adults.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Really? This is for our new young adults community to have these conversations spark other questions, other conversations to be had. And it's a forum of discipleship. I think a lot of our forum of discipleship is one on one, have a coffee, that's that or even life group. But you need some resource sometimes before you enter into discussions. So hopefully this can provide some resource for people to then have discussions within their communities and that sort of thing. But really it's around Yuma family. Um, so we love you guys.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And we hope that this is a place that would enrich and supplement also the teaching that you have in life group, especially where we're going in this season, that it would be a place that can continue to add to that and definitely. And enrich those conversations as we go.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So on that, let's dive in. We've been doing walk through. We've been walking through the Gospel of Matthew as a church community within our life groups. From start all the way to the finish where we are now. I think we're about midway through about chapter 14, I think in our life group studies this week. And so we thought it'd be good to have some conversations around the same thing that our life groups are talking about. So we're a bit of a lag, but we hope that it would be helpful even to remind you of some things that we've had in life group or chatted about with people since then. You're leading a life group still, Jess?
[00:03:05] Speaker A: I am.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: How's the chat's going for this?
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Just restarted. Look, I will be honest, we are behind on the book of Matthew, but that's okay. The conversations have been so rich. Like it's so good to dive into the Word together and have the Word as central to our conversation. Like that's obviously what we want to do. We base our lives upon the Word and we learn so much when we talk about it together and hear different people's experiences and understandings and what they. What the Holy Spirit highlights to them. So we've been having such a fun time. I love my life group. You guys are the best. Shout out if you're listening. You know, we're the best life group. It's not a competition, but yeah.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: So we're going to do an overview today of the entire book and by we'll say next week why don't you read chapters one to three and then we're going to talk about chapters one to three next week. We're going to have some fun people on the whole season.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: It's going to be good people.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Got some, some fun people that haven't been on before, some of our life group leaders and different people in the life of the church. So it's going to be some fun chats, but let's dive into an overview of Matthew.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And just a little disclaimer. If you are not in a life group or you aren't up to date with where we're at, the Bible is always relevant and this is still going to be relevant for you. We still encourage you to read the book of Matthew and go through it with us as we go through the different topics. We encourage you to have your Bible open and go through it with us. But yeah, let's go, let's go straight into it. So Thomas, what is the Gospel of Matthew?
What even does that mean?
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's essentially gospel being good news.
Gospel was a word that came from like the herald, the guy that would run ahead of the king and give the announcement and proclamation that a king is here coming. So prepare the Town to receive him or to give an announcement of something. So the gospel essentially, according to Matthew, is Matthew announcing that the king is here. Yeah, that's the. The simplest way to put it. And it's his account of the process and this, the life of Jesus. So that's what it is, I guess, in a nutshell.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can find it in the first part of your New Testament.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: In your Bible.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Exactly. The first book, just flip. Find New Testament, then flip over and there's Matthew and there it is.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Awesome. Could you give us like a bit of an a. An overview of what this book is or even a little bit of context of why did Matthew write this gospel? Yeah, because if you've read your New Testament, you'll see there's actually four gospels in there. So why do we have four and why Matthews?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: So why? Who's it written to? A bit of that context and then we can dig into the actual.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Yeah. So there's four. Four gospels. Each one are written by quite different people with very different, I guess, mission statements, like, reasons why they were writing. So when we come to Matthew, he is a Jew, and so he would have grown up hearing stories about the coming Messiah, the coming king, and then he would have witnessed Jesus and gone, hold up, this isn't what I expected.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: And so Matthew's writing as a Jew to a Jewish audience to explain to them how Jesus is actually the king that they've been waiting for. Because as you get in, especially in the later chapters, like chapter 20 onwards, there's these conversations with the Pharisees and they just don't see Jesus as Matthew sees Jesus. And it's because there's a blockage in their expectations of a king and of a messiah. And Matthew's writing to address this in the Jewish community, going, hey, I know we expected someone different, but Jesus is the one that we've been waiting for. And so that's really his desire that he's bringing. He's like, I want my brothers in Christ. Yeah, I want my brothers to be brothers in Christ is probably a better way to put it.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: So that's a good thing to keep in mind. He's a Jew writing to Jews, which means there is a little cultural barrier that we have to kind of step across. But I think he does it in a way that's quite easy for us in the modern day to. To pick up on.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think also having that and knowing that helps us to then look at the Scriptures and go, oh, this is why there's a lot of reference to the Old Testament and fulfillment of prophecy and like. And you can see and actually find so much more deeper meaning and understanding that context alone.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So if you know your Old Testament, it's a good time.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: If you don't, it'll probably drive you to read some of the Old Testament.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's an assumption that the readers at the time would have had an understanding of the Old Testament, which is really cool. Not to say that if you're a new Christian, you can't dive straight in and read it and get a lot out of it.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: But as we mature in Christ and as we grow in our understanding of the Word, it actually, it all plays in together. And you see that a lot in Matthew.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah. 100. And even I think if we wanted to pull out some things that are helpful for people to maybe have an understanding of when they're jumping into Matthew, especially Old Testament. The big one's Moses.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: That's a massive thing that comes up the whole way through from the very first chapter is this idea of Jesus being the new Moses.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: The. The teacher and the deliverer and that he's, like, coming. And as a fulfillment of that.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: So that's like one figure to kind of have in the back of your mind is, how is Jesus the new Moses?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Then there's also, like, David, which makes sense. We're talking about, you know, coming king.
So how is Jesus the new David or the fulfillment of David? In a lot of ways. The other one is the suffering servant.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah, he's the guy that came to essentially suffer the most so that we could live the freestyle. So that comes out in Isaiah, which is a lot. It's quoted a lot around, you know, the coming months. You'll hear it a lot as we head into Easter.
So those are some things to have in the back of your mind. Moses, David, prophecies from Isaiah.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: As you're reading through, and if you do that, you'll probably come up, come find yourself going, oh, I remember this. Oh, yeah, that's like this story or that's like this person. So there's a couple of kind of hints as we enter in.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: That's so good. And like, most Bibles these days will have those cross references to go back to you. So we encourage you, even as you're reading through, go back and see, like, okay, what is that context that it's coming from? Because that will just. Yeah. Completely add to that.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Should we Talk about the structure of Matthew and just like what his message is.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I think that's a big thing to talk about because a lot of us go verse by verse and we forget that this is an entire work of literature. It's. It's a piece of art that's been very intentionally crafted. So there's a couple of structural things that we can think about.
The first, we'll jump straight into a chiasm.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: No, we're going there.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So chiasm, it's not very common for us today. It's not. A lot of our literature is very Greek and Latin based. But a chasm is, is. Was very common at the time. Sorry. A lot of our literature is Latin based. Whereas in Greek literature, which is Matthew's sort of context, chasm is very costume common. Yeah. Essentially just points into the center. So if you think of a rhyming pattern of like A, B, C, B, A, that's a chiasm with the middle standing out and then there being pairs on either side of that. So Matthew actually structures his entire book with that in mind.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: And it's like these two arrows pointing to the center of the book going, this is the point. Look here.
Understand this?
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: And you'll find yourself reading the first half and then reading the second half going, this feels like it's repeating itself. That's the point. It's drawing your attention back to the center point, which is the main idea in the entire book. And that's why we're talking about chiasm, because it draws our attention to what is the main point that Matthew's trying to get across.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: So if we're looking at a chasm, it would be chapters one to four.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: It's talking about the king of Jesus. And then we go. Chapters five to seven is talking about the kingdom coming. Then you've got chapters eight to 10, which is the power of the kingdom.
We then have 11 to 13 if we keep counting, which is actually people's response to that very thing. The power of the kingdom being made manifest.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: The center of the book is chapter 14, and that's Peter's confession of who Jesus is. And he confesses him to be the Christ, the coming one, the one that we've been waiting for. And that's Matthew's point. It's the dead center of the book. It's where everything is climaxes to and then follows from. And that's the point Matthew's trying to make to his Jewish brothers. Jesus is the Messiah, hence why it draws into that center point.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: And then we flow from there again, more responses to the kingdom. We see the kingdom's climax. So this grandness of power being made manifest. Then the kingdom sealed in. Previously it was the kingdom arrives, now it's sealed in. The death and the resurrection of Christ. Sorry, the death of Christ.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: And then the kingdom's victory, which is the resurrection of Christ and then the advancement from there. So it draws into the center and then brings back out. And it almost is making comment on the first half of the book with the second half of the book.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Drawing it all together into that center point. Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: So that's a cool little structure thing to be aware of.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. What is the, like, the relevance of that to us? Like obviously if we're reading it today and we're not knowing about what a chiasm is, maybe some of us have heard that for the first time and, and we're discovering, okay, now this, we know this is central to the book.
How does that affect the way that we read it? And like how should that inform the way we read?
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I think coming from that, that starting point of when you're reading the first few chapters, understanding that it's them learning about Jesus and kind of going, hold up, there's something here, but I'm not too sure. And leaning into that as ourselves.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Of almost approaching the first half of the book about book of Matthew going, okay, what am I learning about Jesus here? How. How am I responding to Jes. That's what the disciples would have been doing.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: And then there's that confession point.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: When you get there, you kind of can ask yourself that same question of, okay, like I've read all of these chapters. I'm now at this point where all of this caused Peter to understand who Jesus was.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: And to see him rightly. Where am I at with that?
[00:13:36] Speaker A: That's really good.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Because then the very next section is really the Pharisees response.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: So it contrasts the two between these disciples that have walked with Jesus and we can ask ourselves the same questions. And then those that hadn't walked with Jesus, one had a revelation, one did not. And then as we're reading the second half going, okay, in light of my revelation of Christ, how am I living like this? Because that second half of the book is really the activation of the disciples of Jesus. It's really like, oh, okay, there's that. I now know who he is. I've seen him rightly.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Now I do.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: And I Think that's probably the best way to apply this structure is to learn about Jesus. Ask yourself, who do I say Jesus is?
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: And then as you're reading the second half, how do I live this?
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think we can relate in, in all of those aspects on both sides. And Jesus is presenting the kingdom because it's like, you know, when we look at the Sermon on the Mount and I'm sure we'll dig into that in that episode, but even stuff like that, it's very confronting and it's very, it is very unexpected in that sense of like, yep, oh, okay. Jesus is asking me to do the opposite of what's expected. And so there is that presentation of like, okay, even asking yourself, looking at that, who do I think he is and who do I know him to be based on the way that he's revealed himself. And so just as much as that message was communicated to those people at that time, we can also learn from that and go, okay, this is how I can learn who Jesus is today. And I can have that moment of revelation which is essentially the gospel. Right. When we're actually leading someone to salvation, we share the gospel with them and they have a revelation of Jesus and respond to it. And we still need to have that even as we read.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think especially like what you're saying is that presentation of the gospel is really important.
As I was reading Matthew beginning of this year, the thing that struck me was the people that weren't prepared to have to see Jesus the way he wanted to be seen, but rather to see expectations unfulfilled. And then the big, one of the big things I noticed was in the feeding of the 5,000, and then the feeding of the 4,000 is again, there's this very big Moses imagery of, you know, bringing manna to the, to the people and that sort of thing. Yeah. But the first is to a group of Israelites, to a group of Jews. The second is to a group of Gentiles. And in between there, there's a few accounts of Gentiles faith. You've got the faith of centurion, you've got the faith of the woman who, you know, some people go, oh, Jesus called her a dog.
He's having a teaching point there.
But the response of the Jews versus the response of the Gentiles. Yeah, the Jews responded from a place of these are my expectations. And do you measure up to that? Whereas the Gentiles responded from a place of faith and a place of I know who you've shown yourself to. Be. And so I believe who you are.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: And then you lead into. Into Peter's confession. And I think that's really challenging of, like, this gospel being presented to us.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Are we going to respond? Like, a lot of the Jews respond of going, but that's not the Jesus I know. That's the Jesus I expect.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: That's not the Jesus of the church that I've been presented, but actually going, okay, well, this is what I expected.
But who is Jesus showing himself to be within this gospel?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: How do you think we deal with that today? Like, because I think there's so many scenarios where we have an expectation of God or of church or of all these things, and we go, oh, it didn't turn out the way I expected, so it must not be God. Or it must, you know, we draw conclusions based on expectations without jumping too quickly into application. But how do you think that applies to us in terms of the unexpectedness of both the way that Jesus came into the world and the way that he came as king versus what they thought a king was going to do, and those expectations, but then also an expectation of what his kingdom on earth would look like?
[00:17:52] Speaker B: It's a big question.
I think I keep coming back to Peter and the way that in that interaction that he had with. With Jesus, there was. It was laden with expectations.
He had seen everything and come to the conclusion that he was the Messiah, but still hadn't fully realized the way that Jesus was working. And I think that's something that we can still do today. It's like we've seen Jesus move and we've. We've encountered him and we know who him to be, who he is to be. And then we, like, stop watching and listening and we jump to the next conclusion. And I think that's what Peter did, was he allowed his experience of Christ to lead him to the revelation of, you are the Messiah.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: But then allowed his understanding of the prophecies to cause him to go, no, you're not going to die.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: So it's when his ex. His understanding of Christ and his walk with Christ led to revelation, but then he went further with his natural understanding rather than giving the revelation and then waiting for Jesus. Yeah. And he kind of jumps ahead.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: And then later on you see, like it. You know what Jesus said, He dies three days later, is raised again. And. And there's almost like this realization in Peter, like, oh, I didn't, I didn't expect any of this.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: And this is way better than anything I thought was Going to happen.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: But it was that. That the thing that led him to the revelation, he kind of jumped ahead after that. And I think for us, if we're applying that.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: It's. Hey, like, don't. What you relied on your personal walk with Jesus for. Don't drop that when you all of a sudden think you understand.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yes. Yep. That's really good. Like, not getting ahead of ourselves and thinking that we know all there is to know about God.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Or that if he gives us one word and then we just run off and we think that we know the end result of that, but actually walking side by side with him, and that's what he wants us to do. Like, this whole story is about the disciples walking side by side with Jesus and him sending them out and challenging them, but then also continuing to bring teaching and revelation and pull them aside and explain the. The parables to them and all of those scenarios of where he's actually walking with them. Because he wants us to have that revelation of him, but he wants us to continue to have a revelation of him and to continue to live that out. And I think that that also applies to the way that we see the kingdom presented in this book, because it's both. Here. It is. But then we still have to kind of get to know the kingdom, and we still have to see it fulfilled because it will one day be fully fulfilled 100%. So Jesus is both presenting the kingdom, but then also.
Yeah. Leading us into the fulfillment of that.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Yeah. There's that tension through the entire book. It's like, you know, chapter four says from that point. Chapter four, verse one, it says, like, from that point, Jesus began to preach, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Translate that into modern English is the kingdom of heaven is here.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: So the start of the book, he's preaching, kingdom's here, guys. It's ready to go. I'm. I'm. I'm here. Which means it's here.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: But then you've got the middle of the book that deals with this tension of like, it's already here, but it's kind of not here. Like, what do you mean by that? And that's. You see this wrestle constantly. And then the end is that there's a coming fulfillment. It's that it's already here. It's now.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: It's living in the tension of partial fulfillment.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: And there's a coming kingdom that will eventually come. And that's, you know, the Matthew 28 great commission going, hate, you've now got to expand this kingdom so that it fully comes. And that's exactly it. Right? That tension of it's here, it's not here, it is coming.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. That's awesome.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably a good place to land. We'll leave some things for everyone else for the rest of the season, but I hope that's been helpful. Just understanding a little bit of a bird's eye view of the book of Matthew as we. Then we'll dive into chapter by chapter and have some more discussion and hopefully some application that's helpful for you in your day to day.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Yeah, why don't you spend some time reflecting after this of, of maybe even some preconceived ideas, whether you've had about this book or you've had about Jesus and actually invite him into that process of give me a revelation of you even as I read the Word and help me to continue to grow in that and to grow in the kingdom. Yeah. We encourage you to read the book. Read along with us as you continue to listen and yeah. Wrestle with the tension of the kingdom. So be blessed guys, and we'll see you in the next step.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah. For chapters one to three and talking about the king. See you then. Bye.
