I will certainly be posting, but I am very hopeful that others will do so before I do, so that no one of us is the actual “leader” of this study.

So, please read those first two chapters and post your thoughts.

If you don’t have a bible, or if you want to read online, you can go here and pick a translation.

For those who are new or newish to the bible, I would suggest either the Holman Christian Standard Bible (which is the one I most often use) or the New International Version (NIV) because both are in easy-to-read English.

Some basic information about the Gospel of Matthew:

The first three books of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are all about Jesus and his life and ministry during the same time period. They are each told from different points of view.

Because we are beginning in the first book of the New Testament, Matthew, we’ll take a look at his life now.

The name Matthew means “gift of Jehovah. This particular Matthew, the one whose testimony this book contains, was a tax collector before he gave up everything to follow Jesus Christ.

Matthew wrote specifically to the Jews, and he meant to prove that Jesus is the Messiah that the Jews had been told about and for whom they waited. He dos this by showing His life against the backdrop of the prophecies, promises, and types of the Old Testament.

Like all of four of the Gospels, Matthew spends the most time and detail on the very last days of the earthly ministry of Christ, from Palm Sunday when He entered Jerusalem triumphantly, through the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, to His last days on earth.