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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Friday, August 27, 2021
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Generations of Jesus [1] - Christ the King Bible Verse:Matthew 1:1-5 (Phillips NT) "This is the record of the ancestry of Jesus Christ who was the descendant of both David and Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob, who was the father of Judah and his brothers, who was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). Perez was the father of Hezron, who was the father of Ram, who was the father of Amminadab, who was the father of Nahshon, who was the father of Salmon, who was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth), and Obed was the father of Jesse, who was the father of King David." Message:
If you have ever read Matthew cold, the beginning is discouraging: line after line of such riveting prose as, “And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; . . .” Is Matthew trying to bore us senseless?
We said yesterday that two of the distinguishing characteristics of Matthew were that he wrote his gospel for the Jews, and that he wrote it with a strong theme of “Jesus as King.” These verses, so impenetrable to the modern reader, had primary importance to those two purposes. A Jew in 100 A.D. would have found them as riveting as we find them tedious.
Jesus from illuminated Bible
By the time of Christ, Judaism had become rigid, institutionalized and closed, very different from the freewheeling and open Hebrew society we saw in Exodus. Persons whose blood was not pure Hebrew were suspect.
In fact, to become a priest, a man was required to trace his ancestry directly to Aaron, through records kept at the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. In Ezra, after the return from Babylon, there were Levites excluded from the reconstituted priesthood because there were gaps in their genealogy. (Ezra 2:59-63) Herod the Great was despised by the Jews, in part, because he was half-Edomite. (He destroyed a great number of the genealogical records for this very reason: so that nobody could claim superior lineage to his own.)
Jesus, to be taken seriously as the Messiah, thus needed to demonstrate two vital facts. First, that He was truly Jewish; and second, that He was the blood descendant of a legitimate king. But as we will see tomorrow, there is an even more important message in the genealogy: The prophecy of the Messiah was that he would come from the progeny of the great King David.
So we see three things of immense importance to the Jews, if they were to accept Christ as King and Savior. That he was a real Jew, with an unblemished heritage all the way back to Abraham (almost two thousand years!); that he was eligible to be the true King of the Jews, with royal blood; and that he fulfilled the prophecies that the Messiah would spring from the root of Jesse and from the line of David.
And thus, we see that the first verse of Matthew was, to a Jew in 100 A.D., riveting: “This is the record of the ancestry of Jesus Christ who was the descendant of both David and Abraham.”
Meditation : Prayer : Let me not forget my prayers as I go out into the world. Holy Spirit, be with me, and let me praise you and remember you in my every action and thought, for the entire day long. In Christ’s name I ask this,.....Amen |
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