Heads Up

Who is Jesus Christ? We should have a fairly complete answer to that question by now, because we have been given several clear answers to it in the first three chapters of Matthew.

In addition to John the Baptist’s message of repentance, the second most important thing about the work given to him was his practice of baptizing people as a sign that they had done what he demanded. They had repented of their sins and were looking forward to the coming Messiah.

John the Baptist’s message contained three parts, according to Matthew (3.1-17): (1) a warning, (2) a promise, and (3) a demand.

Some thirty years passed between chapters 2 and 3 of Matthew, during which Jesus lived in Nazareth and worked as a carpenter. But the time came for Him to begin His public ministry which would culminate at the cross. For over 400 years, the nation had not heard the voice of a prophet. Then John…

How should we handle this verse? First, we should note that Matthew introduces the verse by referring to prophets (plural, “through the prophets”), rather than saying, as he does in other instances, “This took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet” (Matt. 1:22) or “For this is what the prophet has…

The second of the three incidents in Matthew’s Gospel is the account of the slaughter of Bethlehem’s young children, those “two years old and under” (v.16). It is a brief account, for apart from the note that Herod determined the age span for the slaughter “in accordance with the time he had learned from the…