Thursday, Day 2: Matthew 1
Reading for today:
Matthew 1
Matthew begins with a
genealogy of Jesus Christ. There
is great purpose in doing that.
The Old Testament prophets proclaimed that the One who would come as
Redeemer – Immanuel, God with us – would be born of a virgin, be born to the
house and lineage of David, and be born in Bethlehem of Judea. All of those prophecies had to be precisely
fulfilled – and Jesus fulfilled every one of them! For starters, both his mother and his earthly
step-father were descendants of David.
I love the beginning of
their story. An angel appeared to
a young woman named Mary in the village of Nazareth and told her she was the
one chosen to give birth to the Messiah, the Son of God. She was just an obscure peasant girl engaged
to an upright man named Joseph – and she willingly agreed to become mother of
Jesus, to submit herself to God’s divine will, with no regard for what that
might mean in terms of hearsay and assumptions about her fidelity. And, Joseph, being fully man, upon
hearing the news of her pregnant state prior to their marriage, could only
assume she had been unfaithful. He
certainly hadn’t been with her yet, but being a decent man, he resolved to
divorce her quietly and not have her stoned. Really, that was being
a nice guy!
Then an angel entered his
fitful sleep and told him not to be afraid to take Mary to be his wife, let him
in on the secret and told him that what Mary had undoubtedly tried to tell him
was true – that the baby she was carrying was miraculously placed there by the
Holy Spirit. The angel even told
Joseph what he was to name him – Yeshua – and added the purpose for which he
was to be born: He will save His
people from their sins. His name –
Yeshua – when translated directly to English is Joshua, and means Savior. And He is!
[Yeshua translated to Greek
was Iesous, which when translated to English became Jesus, which is the name we
most commonly know Him by.]
Matthew 1:23
All this took place to
fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they
shall call his name Immanuel.” (which means God with us).
Thank you, Lord of all creation, Master of the universe, for coming so
humbly into this world You created to redeem those You created, so those who
choose You can be reconciled to You, and become sons and daughters of God. What a journey…from heaven to earth and
back again.
Humor for today:
When our
youngest granddaughter was 2, she was riding in the pickup with me and because
we were just going from my eldest daughter’s house to my house – on a back road on our own property, not
out on a public road (a distance of about 500 feet) – I told her she didn’t
have to put on her seat belt – something unheard of in her world! As I drove into the garage, she
dramatically exclaimed, “Thank God, we made it.”
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