Matthew’s gospel emphasizes the Kingdom of Heaven (40 references) and Jesus as its King (14 times). His writing bridges the 400-year gap between the Old and New Testaments, carefully outlining the clear and unmistakable lineage from King David to King Jesus. Matthew wrote this account approximately 30 years after Jesus left to be seated at the right hand of the Father in the glory of the courts of Heaven. The disciples, while Jesus walked with them, were in the thick of accepting and making sense of their experience and tying it together with everything they knew of their Scriptures, even as they were regularly stupefied to be first-hand witnesses to the breaking through of the Kingdom of Heaven in their day and in their lives. That a certain level of detail escaped them in the heat of the moment, is understandably human, and immensely forgivable.

Matthew 13: 31-52

1. vv. 31-33 – The Kingdom is _______________________________________________

2. vv. 47-51 – The Kingdom is ________________________________________________

3. vv. 44-46- The Kingdom is _________________________________________________

4. v. 52 – The Kingdom is ____________________________________________________