Introduction: The Gospel of Matthew, written by a man who was a pilfering publican (tax collector) prior to his conversion to Christ, is the first book of the New Testament, as well as the first of the New Testament's four Gospels. It contains Matthew's narrative of the life of Christ as the promised Jewish Messiah.
Matthew 2:1-10 — Christians serve as the stars of Bethlehem in the world today, by proving to the world that Christ has come and pointing the world to Him. (Daniel 12:3)
Matthew 2:11 — To truly worship Christ requires a willingness on our part to relinquish all our treasures.
Matthew 2:16-18 — If the coming of Moses and the first coming of Jesus Christ were both foreshadowed by the killing of newborn children, is abortion—the killing of millions of unborn children—not a present-day foreshadowing of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ? (Exodus 1:15-22)
Abortion is not the killing of potential human beings, but the killing of human beings with potential.
Matthew 3:11-12 — You are either wheat that Christ has baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit, as a guarantee that you will be gathered into His heavenly garner, or chaff to be baptized by Christ in the fire of judgment and burned up in the unquenchable fire of Hell.
Since Jesus spoke more about Hell than about Heaven, the contemporary preacher who is completely silent on the subject is more an accomplice of the devil than an apostle of Christ.
Matthew 4:7 — God welcomes us to test Him, but warns us not to tempt Him. The difference between the two is that testing God is obediently stepping out on His promises, but tempting God is ostentatiously stepping out on our presumptions. (Malachi 3:10)
Matthew 4:13-17 — A sad place of dark distress is transformed into a shining place of divine illumination the moment the ministry of Christ's commences within it!
Matthew 4:18-19 — Christ makes all who answer His call into whatever He has called them to be. There’s no such thing as a self-made servant in the service of the Master.
“We’ve drifted away from being fishers of men to being keepers of the aquarium.” (Paul Harvey)
Matthew 4:18-20 — Christ did not commission His disciples to clean up the pond, but only to fish in it. (Mark 1:16-18)
When the church minors on the major—preaching the Gospel—and majors on the minor—political activism—it makes itself ineffectual.
Matthew 5:3 — Blessed (happy) are spiritual paupers who are humble enough to confess the spiritual poverty of their sinful depravity, for the kingdom of God belongs to them, not to the proud who presume they possess ample spiritual means to merit their own salvation.
Matthew 5:4 — Blessed (happy) are those who mourn their spiritual death in trespasses and sins, for their sorrowful souls shall be comforted when the God of all comfort saves them from their sins.
Matthew 5:5 — It is the meek of the earth, not the earth’s movers and shakers, who will end up inheriting the earth.
Those who will inherit the earth are those who don’t care to be overlooked by it, not those who are obsessed with receiving ovations from it.
Matthew 5:5 — Blessed (happy) are those who are slanderously belittled by the world for bowing submissively before God, for unto them will the earth be bequeathed.
Matthew 5:6 — Blessed (happy) are those with an insatiable hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be ultimately and utterly satisfied.
Matthew 5:7 — Blessed (happy) are those who are merciful to others, for God will be merciful to them.
Matthew 5:8 — Thankfully the prerequisite for seeing God is not a sinless heart, but simply a sincere one, one undivided in its devotion and unmixed in its motivation.
Matthew 5:8 — Blessed (happy) are the pure-hearted, for they shall peer through eternity at God.
Matthew 5:9 — Blessed (happy) are the peacemakers, for they, not the pugnacious, shall be called the children of God.
Matthew 5:10 — Blessed (happy) are those persecuted in this world for righteousness' sake, for it serves as confirmation of their Heavenly reservation.
Matthew 5:11-12 — Blessed (happy) are those persecuted for Christ’s sake, for it proves their identification with God's heroes and their inheritance in God's Heaven.
Matthew 5:13 — Christians are the salt of the earth. We are the preservers of society. We preserve society by standing up against its evils. If we fail to stand up; that is, if we lose our saltines, society will think us totally irrelevant, toss us to the side, and trample us under foot.
Matthew 5:14-16 — Christians are the light of the world. We are the conscience of society. We illuminate right from wrong for others to see. However, if we fail to boldly speak out; that is, put our light under a bushel, our society will be blacked out, without a Biblical beacon to guide it.
Matthew 5:17 — Jesus Christ, as the Living Word of God, came into this world to fulfill everything God has ever spoken.
Matthew 5:17-18 — In all of this world of uncertainty and unsurety, there is one thing, God's infinite, infallible, and immutable Word, of which you can always be sure and certain! (Psalm 119:89; Matthew 24:35)
Without the anchor of God’s Word we are adrift on the stormy sea of subjectivism and headed for the rocky shoals of relativism.
Matthew 5:21-37 — Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount teaches us that the prerequisite of every sinful action is a sinful attitude. Therefore, the preventative of wrongdoing is right thinking.
To keep your hands from performing any evil deeds you must protect your heart from all evil thoughts.
Matthew 5:38-48 — Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount teaches us that it is not so much our actions that get us into trouble, but our reactions.
The children of God are not so much distinguished by acting right when everything is going right and they're being treated justly, but by reacting rightly when everything is going wrong and they're being treated unjustly.
Matthew 5:48 — Jesus admonished us to be perfect, like our Father in Heaven is perfect. While it’s not achievable, no other aim is acceptable. How could our aspiring to anything less be agreeable to our Lord?
Matthew 6:5-8 — Don’t pray to impress God, to inform God, or to instruct God, but to invoke God!
Matthew 6:6 — True faith in God is found in private prayer closets where needy saints pray secret prayers for needed provisions from the hands of divine providence. If we are truly trusting God to meet our needs, what need is there for us to telegraph our needs to any other?
Matthew 6:7 — Christ does not discourage us from praying long prayers, but from being long-winded when we pray.
Matthew 6:7-8 — We should pray to invoke God, never to impress or instruct Him.
Matthew 6:10 — We are to pray for God’s will to be done, but done where? On earth, because, unlike Heaven, it is not always done on earth. If God’s will is to be done on earth, God’s people must pray for it to be done.
Matthew 6:10 — Prayer is partnering with God in the carrying out of His plans and purposes in this world and in the fulfilling of His good, acceptable, and perfect will in our lives and the lives of others!
Matthew 6:12 — I suspect this is a prayer that few professed saints can sincerely pray. For few, I fear, want to be forgiven by God as they forgive others.
Matthew 6:21 —One’s honest devotion is hands down detected by one’s heart’s desire!
Matthew 6:22-23 — If your attention is focused and allegiance fixed on Christ alone, you will live in the light, but if your attention is distracted and allegiance divided, you'll live in darkness, and the more distracted and disloyal you become, the greater the darkness will be.
Matthew 6:24 — The only thing Jesus directly cited as a competitor with God in our lives was money. Money is also the subject the Master most talked about during His earthly sojourn. So how important is it to keep money in proper perspective and from ever rivaling God for our affection? (Luke 16:13)
Matthew 6:25 — True trust in the Lord is testified to by taking no thought for your life.
Matthew 6:25-30 — God, who feeds the fowls and adorns the flowers, can always be counted on to care for His children.
Matthew 6:27 — Worry is life’s greatest waste of time and exercise in futility
Matthew 6:31-33 — If we daily focus our attention on Christ, He will daily attend to and care for our needs.
Matthew 6:34 — Don't trouble yourself today with tomorrow's troubles, since today has enough trouble of its own; not to mention, just enough sufficient grace to strengthen us to bear today's burdens alone.
Matthew 7:1-2 — God will judge you by the same standard and with the same severity with which you judge others.
Matthew 7:1-2 — God will measure you up in His judgment of you just as severely as you have measured up others in your judgment of them.
Matthew 7:7-11 — God’s good and gracious gifts come to those who diligently pray for them, to those who seek until they find them, who ask until they receive them, and who knock until they are opened unto them.
Matthew 7:15-20 — If the church had more fruit inspectors it would have fewer false instructors.
Matthew 7:20 — Don't judge others by what they profess themselves to be, but by what they prove themselves to be.
Matthew 7:21 — Many present-day professors of Jesus Christ promptly proceed from their Christian profession to disown Christ as their savior and to disobey Him as their Lord!
There are two words you cannot say, "No Lord," for the moment you say "No" Jesus ceases to be your Lord.
Matthew 7:21-23 — All who profess Christ, but live in disobedience to Christ, are phony disciples of Christ, who are destined in the end to be disowned by Christ.
Matthew 7:28-29 — Jesus taught that the truth was the truth because He said so! Likewise, if you're not teaching the truth is the truth because Jesus said so, you're not teaching the truth.
Matthew 8:27 — Human impotence is demonstrated in the old adage, “You might as well speak to the wind.” Divine omnipotence is demonstrated in Jesus' ability to do so!
Matthew 8:27 — The wind is hushed and the sea is calmed at the command of Christ.
Matthew 9:29 — Our faith is not determined by our sight, but our sight is determined by our faith. In the Kingdom of God, unlike in the state of Missouri, we don't have to see to believe, but to believe to see.
Matthew 10:22-25 — Christ warned His disciples to expect this fallen world's furious animosity, ferocious abuse, and false accusations. That the contemporary church entreats the world's approval rather than expects its animosity proves the dearth of true disciples within it.
Matthew 11:1-6 — To be content with one’s Christ-given station in life, even if it is a dungeon, and not to be offended at the apparent better station of others, whom Christ blesses and uses in ways He's never blessed nor used you, is to successfully scale a soaring and most blissful spiritual summit.
Matthew 11:6 — If we are offended by Christ blessing others in ways He hasn’t and isn’t blessing us, then, we have rendered ourselves unblessable by Christ. Don’t let jealousy over Christ blessing of others jeopardize Christ blessing of you!
Matthew 11:15 — This is the most oft repeated saying of our Lord, proving to us the absolute necessity of daily hearing God for ourselves. (Matthew 13:9)
Many contemporary Christians have spiritual inner ear trouble, which explains why they're without spiritual equilibrium and their lives are spiritually out of balance.
Matthew 11:21 — The blindness of unrepentance is hardest to heal, for the unrepentant are blind to the works of Christ and have a blurry image of man, seeing him as innately good rather than sinful and therefore in need of neither repentance nor redemption. (Mark 8:22-26; Luke 10:13)
Matthew 11:25-27 — It is not the scholarly intellectual, but the Spirit illuminated who understands the things of God. Likewise, it is not through human reason, but only through divine revelation that we come to know God.
Matthew 11:25-27 — It is only the humble, who have an infant-like dependency on Him, who the Heavenly Father will help to understand His Word. It is never the proud, who strut around in the self-sufficiency of their own smartness and scholarship.
Matthew 11:28-30 — We have no rest from heavy labor and being heavy laden apart from coming to Christ. Upon coming to Christ, however, we immediately find rest. We leave off our hard labor and find our heavy load lifted as soon as we begin to lean on Jesus and to learn of Him.
Matthew 11:28-30 — For those who labor and are heavy ladened to find rest for their souls they must learn of the Savior. They must learn that living under His Lordship (yoke) is easy and that His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3)
Matthew 12:22-32 — To denounce divine deliverance as the devil’s doing, such as, denouncing God's Good News as hate-speech, is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit—God’s final call to fallen humanity—to perpetrate the unpardonable sin, and to denounce as hate your only hope.
Matthew 13:9 — This is the most oft repeated saying of our Lord, proving to us the absolute necessity of daily hearing God for ourselves. (Matthew 11:15)
Many contemporary Christians have spiritual inner ear trouble, which explains why they're without spiritual equilibrium and their lives are spiritually out of balance.
Matthew 13:33 — Like leaven, the kingdom of God may begin with a somewhat imperceptible pinch, but will inevitably permeate one’s whole life.
If the kingdom of God is definitely possessed within, it will be unmistakably discernible without. (Luke 17:21)
Matthew 13:38 — The mission field is the world, from its most populace cities to its remotest corners. There is no boundaries, borders, or barriers to the grace of God or the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell." (C. T. Studd)
Matthew 13:44-46 — The appreciation of spiritual truths, no matter how much they are treasured, is never to be mistaken for their acquisition. Their possession positively necessitates the personal payment of their nonnegotiable high price.
Matthew 15:14 — One should ditch their spiritually blind leader, lest they be lead into the ditch.
Matthew 15:21-28 — Jesus may put great faith through the paces, knowing it perseveres and prevails. However, He doesn’t do it to put it down or discourage it, but to put it on display and show it off, so that others will see and seek it!
Matthew 16:13-19 — The Christian's confession of Christ, like Peter's, is the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. If we share Christ with others, Heaven is opened to them and they can be loosed from their sin, but if we don't, Heaven remains shut and they remain bound.
Matthew 16:15-17 — The problem with many professed Christians is that they know Christ doctrinally, having received religious education, but they don’t know Him personally, having never received divine revelation.
Matthew 16:16 — The best way to begin prayer is not with a concerned cry: “I ask thee Christ, the Son of the living God,” but with a confident confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” for confidence in God is a prerequisite for crying out to God in prayer!
Matthew 16:16-17 — No one will ever come to know Christ through human tutelage or his or her own reasoning, but only through divine revelation. It is not made possible by human examination and assessment, but only by a divine encounter, which leads to a personal acquaintance.
Christ must be formed in our heart, not figured out in our head. (Galatians 4:19)
Matthew 16:18 — Christ builds His church, we don’t grow it.
Matthew 16:18 — Christ builds His church with us, little pebbles or living stones who confess Him like Peter, but it is build on Him, for He is its immense and immovable Chief Cornerstone. (1 Peter 2:5-7)
Matthew 16:18 — Since the gates of Hell are attacked rather than attacking, the Church of Jesus Christ should be on the offensive rather than the defensive. We should be charging, never cowering!
Matthew 16:24 —The cross should be seen by the Christian as a capital “I” with a minus mark through it, for to take it up means to die to yourself so that you will henceforth live for Christ.
Matthew 16:26 — To gain possession of the whole temporal world, at the forfeiture of your immortal soul, is to eternally bankrupt yourself. (Mark 8:36-37)
Matthew 17:1-9 — We cannot successfully proclaim the glory of Christ we've seen until others can surely see the proof of Christ's resurrection in us; that is, until others are seeing Him alive in us and living through us. Only afterward, will our lives tally with our testimony.
Do not shine so that others may see you. Shine so that through you others may see Him. (C. S. Lewis)
Matthew 17:9 — We cannot be witnesses of Christ's glory until our lives are proof of His resurrection; that is, until others are seeing Him alive in us. Only afterward, will our lives attest to our testimony.
Matthew 17:20 — The strength of faith is not found in its amount, but in its object. A little faith in Christ can move mountains, but misplaced faith, regardless of its quantity, can’t move a thing.
Matthew 17:24-27 — A miracle of Jesus that makes manifest how paying taxes is a fishy business.
Matthew 17:24-27 — Although it was not justifiable to tax the Son of God for the house of God, Jesus paid the temple tax to teach us that we can trust Him to miraculously provide the necessary means to meet our financial obligations, even to pay onerous obligatory taxes.
Matthew 18:19 — It is our covenanting together in prayer, over God's confirmed will, that gives us confidence in prayer.
Matthew 18:19-20 — Whenever two or three join together in Jesus’ name; that is, for His glory, not their own, and agree to pray for His Will to be done, not theirs, Jesus will be with them. They will not be alone! This is not a promise, but a statement of fact.
Matthew 18:20 — The big question is not have we come to church to meet with God, but will God come to our church to meet with us! He will if we’ve gathered to glorify His name rather than make a name for ourselves or our church.
Matthew 18:23-35 — If we, who’ve been forgiven by God of our unpayable sin debt, refuse to forgive others who’ve sinned against us, God will turn us over to demonic tormentors. Think about it; you've never met a happy person with a grudge or an ax to grind.
Resentment is like an acid that does more damage to the vessel in which it’s stored than to the object upon which it’s poured.
Matthew 19:8 — Do you see things as they have become, because of the hardness of man’s heart, or as they were intended to be from the beginning, in the holy heart of God?
Matthew 20:25-28 — The Kingdom of God, which was exemplified by Christ, is an upside down kingdom, where ministers are greater than monarchs and servants are greater than sovereigns.
The way to greatness in the Kingdom of God is not ascending to a throne, but descending into thralldom.
Matthew 21:12-13 — Christ cleansed the temple twice, once at the beginning of His ministry and again at the end, proving that the purity of His house means more to Him than its popularity! (Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:13-17)
Matthew 21:22 — “Whatsoever” is a precious word of Sacred Writ. It lets us know that no earthly prayer can ever exceed Heaven’s power or provisions. If we can believe it, God can bestow it!
Matthew 21:42-44 — Whether we receive Christ, the Chief Cornerstone, or reject Him, determines whether we take the kingdom of God or it is taken from us, as well as whether we fall upon Him and are broken by Him or He falls upon us and we’re crushed by Him.
Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone upon which every true Christian and church stands.
Matthew 22:29 — All error comes from not knowing the Scripture nor the Spirit—"the power of God." It's right if Scripture commands it and the Spirit compels us. It's wrong if Scripture condemns it and the Spirit convicts us. (Mark 12:24)
Matthew 22:35-40 — To be what we should, to do what we should, and to live as we should, only requires us to love God and others as we should!
Matthew 22:37-40 — If we will love God as we ought to love God and others as we ought to love others, we will live as we ought to live, do what we ought to do, and be what we ought to be!
Matthew 23:12 — The self-promoting are exalted in this world, but the Christ-exalting will be promoted in the world to come.
Matthew 23:15 — Unfortunately, the children of the devil are often more committed to winning converts to Hell than the children of God are to winning converts to Heaven.
Matthew 23:34-37 — To resist God’s prophets and Christ's apostles, in rejection of God’s Son, is to relinquish divine protection and to put oneself at imminent risk of divine retribution.
Matthew 24:4-5 — Our nation's capital is filled with many a false Christ, those who pretend to be our savior. Don't be deceived by these Jesus wannabes who confiscate Christ's name by claiming to be what only He can be.
Matthew 24:6 — Jesus taught that war is inevitable, because of the reality of evil in this fallen world. In other words, the world must continuously war against evil, lest evil win the whole world.
"There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others." (Niccolo Machiavelli)
Matthew 24:6 — Jesus clearly taught that war is an inevitability in this fallen world. It is, unfortunately, inescapable and unavoidable.
Matthew 24:7-8 — According to Jesus, pandemic pestilences will prove to be one of the birth pangs to the birth of unprecedented end-time perils.
Matthew 24:7-8 —The coronavirus pandemic’s origin in China is no coincidence, when seen through the prism of Bible prophecy, which predicts unprecedented pandemics from the Orient as the beginning of end-time sorrows. (Revelation 9:13-21)
Matthew 24:12 — Lawlessness leads not only to the increase of crime, but also to the decrease of compassion.
Matthew 24:35 — In all of this world of uncertainty and unsurety, there is one thing, God's infinite, infallible, and immutable Word, of which you can always be sure and certain! (Psalm 119:89; Matthew 5:17-18)
Without the anchor of God’s Word we are adrift on the stormy sea of subjectivism and headed for the rocky shoals of relativism.
Matthew 24:45-51 — According to Jesus, a pastor—a steward over God's household—is to feed those in God's house "meat in due season"; that is, to address the issues of the day with the truths of God's Word. A pastor failing to do so is unfaithful to Christ and his congregation. (Luke 12:42-46)
Matthew 25:1-13 — It was the bridegroom’s coming at the midnight call that exposed the folly of the foolish virgins—their oilless lamps. Likewise, it will be Christ’s coming at the midnight call that will expose the folly of foolish churchgoers—their Spiritless lives.
Matthew 25:19 — When the Master returns, men will be reckoned with; there will be retribution for salvation-rejecting sinners and rewards for service-rendering saints.
If we serve Christ now, we'll be rewarded at His return, but if we spurn Christ now, we'll be reckoned with at His return!
Matthew 26:36 —Although we'll balk at it and buck it, Christ sometimes bids us, even in the hour of crisis, to sit in the background. No station in Christ's service is more difficult to man and no order of the Master's more difficult to obey.
Matthew 26:39 — Whereas it may be said that we’re the beneficiaries of Christ’s one unanswered prayer, we may rest assured that we’ve also benefitted from all our unanswered prayers. (James 4:3)
Matthew 27:22-25 — Are you willing to join in the chorus of today’s politically correct crowd in calling for Christ’s crucifixion, despite the danger of the stain of His blood being forever on you and your children?
Matthew 27:45 — Is there any wonder that darkness covered the earth when the Light of the World was doused out on the cross of Calvary by all of the dark deeds of all humanity in all of human history?
The darkness of this dark and dying world was never more plainly displayed than when it doused out the Light of the World on the cross of Calvary!
Matthew 27:62-28:1-4 — The seal of state was broken, the soldiers were shaken, the stone at the sepulcher was rolled away, and the Savior arose from the tomb triumphant, as God the Father put His stamp of approval upon the sacrifice of His Son for the salvation of the world.
Neither a stone sealed sepulcher, the power of the state, an armed arsenal, or the hordes of Hell, could keep the unconquerable Christ confined in a crypt.
Matthew 28:5-6 — The only place where Christ’s absence has ever abolished fear is His empty tomb. Everywhere else, His presence is vital for fear to be vanquished.
If you go to the tombs of the founders of all world religions, you will find them all occupied, except one, which proves it, Christianity, is the world's only true religion!
Matthew 28:18-20 — Christ did not commission His church to make decisions, but disciples. To profess the Christian faith is one thing, to practice it is quite another. The Great Commission is not fulfilled until the commands of Christ are being adhered to, not just avowed.
Matthew 28:19 — Christ commissioned His church to make disciples, not decisions. Unfortunately, the contemporary church has no shortage of those who've been talked into making a decision for Christ, but an undeniable dearth of those who've been made into a disciple of Christ.
Matthew 28:19-20 — Christ’s Great Commission isn’t fulfilled by His church until the evangelized become evangelists.
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