"MatthewsGospel" Tagged Sermons
The Enlightenment’s own reading habits, traced through Hegel, Bacon, and set against Ned Stonehouse’s more faithful approach, shape how Matthew’s Gospel gets received in the modern academy. Matthew’s own focus, this sermon argues, is on proclaiming Christ as Son of God with us to Gentile and Jew alike. That focus gets lost whenever modern philosophical assumptions are allowed to reframe the text first.
Application-heavy preaching gets a real critique here in favor of a more faithful approach attentive to Matthew’s own literary habits, especially his repeated use of doubling. Two epochs, Christ in the flesh and Christ in the Spirit, structure the Gospel more than casual reading notices. The doubled calling of the first disciples in 4:18-21 describes the whole church being called, this sermon argues, far beyond four fishermen.