How do the pieces fit together? With my grandson, we started with a stack of Lego pieces, followed 48 pages of instruction, and finally saw what we set out to see: the assembled car.
Larger books of the Bible can feel like that. You start reading the verses, to understand the paragraphs, and the chapters, and the sections, and eventually you get the big picture, how the whole story fits together.
So here’s a brief guide to Matthew’s Gospel, a simple outline distilled from 5 years of processing and pondering the details, meditations that could fill two books (275 posts). From opening statement (anointed son of David) to closing declaration (all authority in heaven and earth, with the nations being instructed as he commands), Matthew’s message is how heaven’s anointed became earth’s king.
This is how Matthew traces the good news of Jesus as the one who restores heaven’s reign to earth: