January last year, I started the class “Rise of the Messiah” on the Bible Project website. After a year, I finally finished it. Yehey. On average, I have spent about 1 hour of class per month. Not bad.
Some lessons learned:
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The book of Matthew was designed for loud reading and for easy familiarization to its original listeners/readers who were mostly Jews, and who were familiar with the Old Testament writings.
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The phrase “that it might be fulfilled” we find in Matthew does not mean what we think it means.
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Matthew portrays Jesus as the new Moses or greater than Moses. And that Jesus was the new Jerusalem mentioned in Isaiah. And that Jesus was the new Israel (related to his baptism, selection of 12 disciples, testings in the wilderness).
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Jesus is first the saviour of Israel, then the saviour of the nations. (Because the original covenant with Abraham and with Israel was that they will be blessed so that all the nations will be blessed through them. But Israel failed to uphold their covenant with God, that is why they needed saving.)
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“Matthew is highlighting that it has always been God’s purpose to have the multiethnic family.”
