Swindoll's Living Insights Commentary Matthew 1a - Flipbook - Page 17
INTRODUCTION
COMPARISON OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
MATTHEW
MARK
LUKE
JOHN
PORTRAIT
OF JESUS
Promised
King
Suffering
Servant
Perfect Man
God the Son
ORIGINAL
AUDIENCE
Jews
Romans
Greeks
The World
AUTHOR
Tax collector,
one of the
twelve
disciples
Close
associate
of and
assistant to
the disciples
Gentile
physician,
early convert
Fisherman,
one of the
twelve
disciples
THEME
The
messianic
King has
come,
fulfilling Old
Testament
promises.
The Son
of God has
come to seek,
to serve, and
to save.
The Son
of Man has
come to
redeem all
of humanity.
The eternal
Son of God
has become
incarnate.
Imitate Him!
Believe in
Him!
RESPONSE Worship Him! Follow Him!
Though all four Gospel accounts together harmoniously present the
good news of the person and work of Jesus Christ in His first coming,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke relate to each other in a unique way. These
three are called “synoptic” Gospels, from a Greek term meaning “seeing
together.” In many places these first three Gospels can be read side by
side, giving distinct but complementary accounts of events that, when
“seen together,” provide a fuller picture of what Jesus said and did.
In contrast, the apostle John’s account, written several decades after
the synoptic Gospels were composed, covers elements from John’s own
eyewitness testimony that the preceding Gospels don’t treat.
Though the synoptic Gospels present the life of Christ in similar
ways, the Gospel according to Matthew stands out as the most Jewish. This is evident from the opening words of the narrative, in which
Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus in typically Jewish ways. This
unique attribute of Matthew’s account explains why we see so many
references of Jewish significance throughout the b
ook—references to
the Law, to Jewish customs, to feasts, to Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. Matthew contains a large number of direct quotations
from, allusions to, and paraphrases of Old Testament passages—many
more than Mark, Luke, or John. By some estimates, Matthew has over
sixty-five references to the Old Testament, compared to about thirty
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