Matthew: Behold Your King! artwork

Matthew: Behold Your King!

22 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 5 years ago - ★★★★★ - 7 ratings

Beginning in the New Testament we move from the realm of shadow, type, and prophecy, into the full sunshine of the presentation of the Son of God. The Old Testament speaks of him on every page, but speaks in shadows, in types, in symbols, and in prophecies -- all looking forward to the coming of Someone. You cannot read the Old Testament without being aware of that constant promise running through every page -- Someone is coming! Someone is coming!

Now, when we open the Gospels, that Someone steps forth in the fullness of his glory. As John says, "We have beheld his glory...as of the only Son from the Father," (John 1:14 (RSV). I love the Gospels. They are to me one of the most perennially fascinating sections of the Bible. There you see Christ as he is. Remember that what he was is what he is; and what he is is what you have, if you are a Christian. All the fullness of his character and being and life is available to us, and we only learn what those resources are as we see him as he was and is. That is why the Gospel records are so important to us.

People often wonder why we have four Gospels. There is a very good reason for this. It is interesting to note that each of these Gospels is a development of an exclamatory statement that is found in the Old Testament. Four different times -- and only four times -- in the Old Testament there was an exclamatory statement made concerning the Messiah, introduced always by the word behold. In one of the prophets we read, "Behold thy king, O Israel!" In another place we read, "Behold the man!" In a third place we read, "Behold my servant!" In still a fourth place we read, "Behold thy God!" These four statements are amplified and developed in the four Gospels -- Matthew, the Gospel of the King; Mark, the Gospel of the Servant; Luke, the Gospel of the Son of man; and John, the Gospel of God, the presentation of the Son of God.

These four Gospels give us four aspects of our Lord's character and person. They are not, strictly speaking, biographies. They are really sketches about the Person of Christ -- eyewitness accounts by those who knew him personally, or those immediately associated with them. Therefore, they have the ring of authenticity, and they carry to our hearts that first and marvelous impression that our Lord made upon his own disciples, and then upon the multitudes that followed him. No more amazing character has ever walked among men. As you read the Gospel accounts, I hope something of this fascination breaks upon your own heart as you see him stepping forth from these pages, revealed to you by the Spirit, when you see him as he is.

The first book of the New Testament is Matthew, and this is the place where most people start reading the Bible. I think more people begin reading in the New Testament than the Old, therefore, that would make Matthew the most widely read book in all the world. In fact, Renan, the French skeptic, said of this book, "This is the most important book of all Christendom." He also said, "The most important book that has ever been written is the Gospel of Matthew." But it has its critics, too. There are those who claim that this book contains nothing but the early legends of the church which grew up around Jesus, that these accounts are not historical, and that this book was not actually written until the fourth century A.D. Therefore, they say, we are uncertain as to how much is really true. Other critics make the claim that this is only one of many gospels that were circulated.

Christianity Religion & Spirituality matthew bible ray steadmen www.raystedman.org god holy spirit jesus christ sermon exposition
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Episodes

The Mystery of History (Matthew 13:1-17)

September 30, 2018 00:00 - 8.92 MB

We have completed our studies in the book of Acts. We left Paul a prisoner in Rome, dwelling in his own hired house. He was awaiting trial before the emperor, but was free to have his friends visit him and to write letters to all parts of the empire. That is as far as Luke's inspired account goes. That is as much as we know from Acts of what happened to the early Christians. The book of Acts closes about A. D. 62. We know from suggestions in Paul's later letters that he very likely was freed...

The Case of the Lavish Farmer (Matthew 13:3-23)

September 29, 2018 00:00 - 7.97 MB

We shall turn again this morning to the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Here we are looking together at the Sermon on the Sea which our Lord preached from a boat on the Sea of Galilee. A great crowd was assembled on the beach listening to him as he delivered seven parables which he called the secrets, or mysteries, of the kingdom of heaven. These seven parables constitute a view of the age following our Lord's appearance on earth, the present age in which we live.

The Case of the Mysterious Harvest (Matthew 13:24-43)

September 28, 2018 00:00 - 9.35 MB

We are returning this morning to Matthew 13 where we are looking at of parables our Lord gave to describe the age in which we live, the age introduced by his first coming and which has been unfolding now for almost twenty centuries. He looked down those twenty centuries and gave us in parable form some clues to the understanding of our own age. It is very important that we see what these are. We come today to the second in this series of parables. We looked last week at the parable of the so...

The Case of the Ambitious Seed (Matthew 13:31-32)

September 27, 2018 00:00 - 8.11 MB

Today we come to the third of the remarkable parables which our Lord called the secrets, the mysteries, of the kingdom of heaven. These were all given in one message delivered on a single occasion as he sat in a boat on the Sea of Galilee teaching the people gathered on the shore. One by one he unfolded these amazing mysteries, these secrets of the age between his comings, the present age in which we live. They give us insightful views of what is going on in our own time, and of what has bee...

The Case of the Sneaky Housewife (Matthew 13:33)

September 26, 2018 00:00 - 7.44 MB

I invite you now to turn again to the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew where we will examine another of the parables that our Lord gave on a single occasion by the Sea of Galilee. In them he sets forth in parable form the great secrets of the kingdom of heaven, the mysteries of the present age, the revelation of the forces and powers at work in the age which began with our Lord's first coming and which will end with his second appearing. Today we come to the fourth of these parabl...

The Case of the Buried Treasure (Matthew 13:44)

September 25, 2018 00:00 - 8.59 MB

In the great series of parables in Matthew 13 our Lord gave us, as he said, "The secrets of the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom off heaven is God's work among men, God's rule and authority in the midst of human affairs. In this series Jesus is revealing the work of the kingdom as it is going on throughout the centuries of this present age since his first coming and before his return. We come to the fifth parable this morning, the parable of the buried treasure.

The Case of the Valuable Pearl (Matthew 13:45-46)

September 24, 2018 00:00 - 6.64 MB

We turn again this morning to the marvelous secrets our Lord is telling us in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. They unveil to us things we would never know about history if he had not told us about these secrets of the kingdom of heaven, the mysteries of God at work in this present age. As we have been studying these parables in past weeks we have seen how accurately our Lord foresaw and foretold all that has happened in these twenty centuries of Christian life. Now we come to the sixth pa...

The Case of the Great Dragnet (Matthew 13:47-50)

September 23, 2018 00:00 - 7.91 MB

We come now to the seventh and last in the series of our Lord's parables recorded in Matthew 13. These parables convey what Jesus calls "the secrets of the kingdom of heaven," the mysteries of what God is doing behind the scenes of history in the age in which we live, the age which began with Jesus' first coming and will end with his second. As we look back over this series we can see through the eyes of our Lord something of what has been happening in our present age. We can see the history...

How to Handle Life (Matthew 13:51-52)

September 22, 2018 00:00 - 8.22 MB

In recent weeks we have been looking together at the great series of parables recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew by which our Lord Jesus has unfolded the way God works in the affairs of men -- especially during this present age. As we have examined these parables one by one we have seen that they predict great movements and events which history now records as having taken place. The very things which Jesus said would happen have happened through this present age. As we are drawing...

The Long Look Ahead (Matthew 24:1-3)

September 21, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

How would you like to know the future? Who does not want to lift, if possible, the curtain that hides the things to come, and read the future as well as he can the past? Many are trying it today with varying degrees of success, but the only book with a batting average of 1.000 is the Bible. That's one of the things that makes it such a fascinating book. It is always up-to-date and filled with the most pertinent, often exciting information. In fact, it is more than up-to-date-it is ahead of t...

The Age of Confusion (Matthew 24:4-14)

September 20, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

"Whatwill be the sign of your coming and [the sign] of the close of the age?" This is the question the disciples ask Jesus as he sits on the Mount of Olives with the faithless city spread out below him. We have noted already that the question is not very well put. Their concept of his coming is not at all clear, and they think that the close of the age is perhaps only a few years away. Therefore, the answer Jesus gives is at first seemingly evasive or at least indirect. Matthew says,

The Worship of Man (Matthew 24:15-22)

September 19, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

"Then shall the end come?" With these dramatic words, Jesus begins to answer the question of the disciples, "What will be the sign of...the close of the age?" He has prefaced these words with a powerful telescopic view which sweeps through all the intervening centuries and describes their character as one of deception and confusion. Now he focuses upon the (to the disciples) far-distant period, which he calls "the end of the age." Without further delay he describes, in Matthew 24:15-22, the ...

When the Dam Breaks (Matthew 24:21-22)

September 18, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Jesus is nw describing to his disciples the end of the age. That end will not be a single climatic event but a chain of events, all of which are the inevitable consequence of forces that have been at work in society throughout the whole course of this age. The scriptures agree that the "desolating sacrilege" our Lord refers to is a man; a man of world prominence who enters the rebuilt temple in the city of Jerusalem and assumes the prerogatives and claims the powers of Deity. So serious is t...

That Strange People, the Jews (Matthew 24:16-20)

September 17, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Perhaps yo are now thinking, "If God takes the church out of the world before the great tribulation begins, will no one have a chance to know God during that time?" To answer that perfectly proper question we must return once again to the words of Jesus to his disciples on the Mount of Olives. After he has announced the sign of the close of the age as "the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place," he then adds, in verses 16-20:

Russia, Religion, and Ruin (Matthew 24:21-23)

September 16, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Are you having difficulty in accepting some of these predicted events as true? Or do you perhaps accept them without difficulty, but yet wonder what your friends would think if you told them you believe all this? There are some who cannot tolerate detailed prediction in Scripture. They are quite content to hear prophecy as long as it deals in sweeping generalities and ambiguous figures which may be full of sound and fury, but, to them, signifies nothing. But when Scripture becomes specific a...

The Secret Presence (Matthew 24:23-38)

September 15, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Do you kno the first question ever asked in the New Testament? It was asked by Wise Men who came out of the East to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" A little later Herod the king asked the same question of the scribes, "Where (is the Christ) to be born?" They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea." Thus the New Testament opens with a search for Christ, "Where is he?"

The Power and the Glory (Matthew 24:29-31)

September 14, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

The most damatic event in all history will be the visible appearing of Jesus Christ. No one can possibly miss it when it occurs. He himself describes it for us in Matthew 24:29-31:

A Thief in the Night (Matthew 24:32-44)

September 13, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

How can we be sure all this will happen? No doubt you have asked that more than once before now. If you have, you are not the first one to do so. In fact it would be rather strange if you haven't. Even Jesus anticipates a certain degree of honest doubt, for at this point in his discourse (verse 32) he breaks off his description of the last days to give three powerful guarantees that all he has said will actually come to pass.

In the Mean Time (Matthew 24:45-51)

September 12, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

In a small country store in a southern state a Negro lady came to do her shopping. Two or three young Negro men were standing around passing the time of day, and knowing that she was a Christian, they began to taunt her. "We hear you're expecting Jesus to come back," they said. "I sure am," she replied brightly. "Do you really believe he's coming?" they asked. "Sure as you're born," she answered. They said, "Well you'd better hurry home and get ready, he might be on the way!" She turned and ...

The Wise and the Foolish (Matthew 25:1-13)

September 11, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Weddings nver go out of style. They are as old fashioned as the race and as modern as today's newspaper. There is something fresh and beautiful about each one for we never seem to get over the excitement of watching two lives become one. At most weddings a lot of fuss is made over the bride and groom, but no one pays much attention to the attendants. Not so with Jesus. He chooses to use a wedding scene as a parable, to illustrate further what he means by the command, "Watch!" He doesn't even...

Living Dangerously (Matthew 25:14-30)

September 10, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

Parables can be as exciting and challenging as detective stories. Even more so, for in the end they turn out to be dealing with real life, while detective stories can be pretty far-fetched. But parables, like detective stories, are filled with half-hidden truths and secret meanings and yet with clues to these secrets scattered liberally throughout. Parables are God's exciting way of challenging us to a mystery hunt, and the treasure we are after is a new insight into the nature of life which...

The Unconscious Test (Matthew 25:31-46)

September 09, 2018 00:00 - 1023 Bytes

This is the last chapter. If you've sneaked ahead to read it out of order because you can't wait to find out how it all ends, go ahead, read it! But come back to it again when you've finished the rest of the book. It will make much better sense to you then. But if you've stayed with us all the way you'll be anxious to know how Jesus ends this tremendous talk with his disciples on the Mount of Olives. He suddenly drops the use of parables and returns to a simple narrative. Unlike the househol...