The Bible Study Podcast, episode 408. Today, the Bible Study podcast starts a study of the book of Matthew.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. Today we jump into the gospel of Matthew

taking a break here from Psalms. It's been quite a long time in Psalms, and I'm looking forward

to a study in the New Testament. This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David,

the son of Abraham. That's an odd start for the book, but that's how Matthew

starts his gospel. It's interesting to compare that to the other gospels. Mark starts with

the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God, as it is written in

Isaiah the prophet, and then immediately starts talking about John the Baptist,

preaching in the wilderness. Luke first does an introduction to Theophilus talking about how he's

writing this and he's investigated it, but then immediately jumps into John the Baptist,

but jumps further back in the story. Luke takes a little more time in his gospel than Mark did,

and so he tells us about the birth of John the Baptist and how that whole thing went about

and then will continue on into the birth of Jesus, as well Matthew.

And John, of course, being the more theological, John writing to Christians who had already

read the other gospel, says says in the beginning of the

word and the word was with God and the word was God. All interesting choices, all very different

choices, and they just do point out that all the four gospel writers are writing for different audiences.

Matthew is writing for the Jews. Mark is writing for the Romans, Luke for the Greeks, and John for the Christians,

those who have already read one of the other Gospels. That's a simplistic version, of course,

but it does help us to understand why Matthew starts with a genealogy. Matthew starts with

Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham, ties him to both the

royal line and to Abraham, the one who is chosen of God. I've always thought of this as burying the lead,

...