The significance of this paper is not about learning the λ-calculus.

Rather, to me the significance of this paper is that it presents a novel way of "implementing the lambda calculus in an algebraic system" and provides a correspondence between the λ-calculus and the matrix model of computation:

  Vector and matrix valued functions can be represented
  by vectors and matrices some of whose entries are 
  lambda expressions.

I have been looking for a lingua franca for programming languages, a way to unify the langs and make use of the decades of wisdom encoded into our langs' Great Libs. Maybe the matrix model and linear algebra is the lingua franca I seek.