SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/28/2019
10:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Virgin Birth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 1:18
Message of the
verses: “18
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been
betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child
by the Holy Spirit.”
In today’s SD we will begin to talk
about Joseph and we know less about Joseph than we know about Mary. His father’s name was Jacob, and we also know
that Joseph was a carpenter which probably meant that he also worked with
stones, like a mason. The word this is “tekton” which means a construction
worker.
Many believe that Joseph and Mary
were very young as it was not uncommon for couples to get married in their teen
years. I have heard that some people
believe that Joseph was a few years older than Mary and already had his
business going, but not sure if that is true.
We have written about the Jewish
marriage ceremony in other SD’s including when we went through the book of
Revelation as the Jewish ceremony is a picture of Jesus Christ and His
bride. Once the engagement had taken
place it was as good as the couple being married but with the sexual union, and
this is where we find Joseph and Mary, as they were what we would call
engaged. We are told that Joseph and
Mary had not come together, which means that they were both virgins, never had
a sexual relationship. I have heard a
sermon that all of God’s covenants have blood in them, and this includes the
marriage covenant.
You can look at different OT
passages to show the importance of sexual purity, and if this was not kept
there were some harsh consequences, including death. I want to quote from John MacArthur’s
commentary about the conception of the Holy Spirit.
“Obviously Jesus’ conception by the
Holy Spirit is a great mystery. Even had
He wanted to do so, how could God have explained to us, in terms we could
comprehend, how such a blending of the divine and human could have been
accomplished? We could no more fathom
such a thing than we can fathom God’s creating the universe from nothing. His being one God in three Persons, or His
giving an entirely new spiritual nature to those who trust in His Son. Understanding of such things will have to
await heaven, when we see our Lord ‘face to face’ and ‘know fully just as [we]
have been fully known’ (1 Cor. 13:12).
We accept it by faith.”
MacArthur quotes Jeremiah 31:22 “"How
long will you go here and there, O faithless daughter? For the LORD has created
a new thing in the earth-A woman will encompass a man.’” He states that many rabbis stated that the
birth of the Messiah is to have no earthly father, and the birth would be most
unusual. We also read many times during
the Christmas season Isaiah 7:14 “"Therefore the Lord Himself will give
you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call
His name Immanuel.” The word “virgin” in
the Hebrew can mean a young madden, but once it was translated into the Greek
it means a woman who has never had a sexual relationship. I have also mentioned Genesis 3:15 which is
the first prophecy of the Messiah and it tells us that the Messiah would be “the
seed of the woman” which is never seen in Scripture again. We will look at one more “Christmas verse”
and that is from Galatian 4:4 “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent
forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” In this verse we see no human father. In closing I want to say that Jesus Christ conception
was through the Holy Spirit and that His mother Mary was indeed a virgin. If this were not the case then there would be
no reason for me to every write a Spiritual Diary, and I have written more than
20 years worth if you read one a day.
The virgin birth is the key to the gospel.
HAPPY
THANKSGIVING TO ALL WHO READ THIS.
Our quotation
from “Love in Action comes from TLB, Colossians 3:21.
Don’t scold your children
so much that they become
discouraged and quit
trying.
11/28/2019
11:06 AM
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