PT-3 "Intro to the Gospel of Matthew"

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/19/2019 10:30 AM

My Worship Time                                                  Focus:  PT-3 “Intro to the Gospel of Matthew”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 1:1

            Message of the verse:  “1The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:”

             I promised to quote some more from John MacArthur’s commentary and then write about how it was possible that Jesus’ line from Matthew’s gospel can allow Him to become King of Israel.

            “Matthew also focuses most uniquely on the rejection of Jesus as King.  In no other gospel are the attacks against Jesus’ character and Jesus’ claims so bitter and vile as those reported in Matthew.  The shadow of rejection is never lifted from Matthew’s story.  Before Jesus was born, His mother, Mary, was in danger of being rejected by Joseph.  Soon after He was born, Herod threatened His life, and His parents had to flee with Him to Egypt.  His herald, John the Baptist, was put in a dungeon and eventually beheaded.  During His earthly ministry Jesus had no place to lay His head, no place to call home.  In Matthew’s gospel no penitent thief acknowledges Jesus’ Lordship, and no friend or loved one is seen at the foot of the cross—only the mockers and scorners.  Even the women are pictured at a distance (27:55-56), and in His death Jesus cries out, ‘My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?’(27:46). Only a Gentile centurion speaks a favorable word about the crucified One:  ‘Truly this was the Son of God’ (27:54).  When some of the soldiers who had stood guard over the tomb reported its being empty, the Jewish authorities paid them to say that Jesus’ body was stolen by His disciples (28:11-15).

            “Yet Jesus is also shown as the King who ultimately will return to judge and to rule.  All the earth one day ‘will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory’ (24:30), His coming will be ‘at an hour when you do not think He will’ (v. 44), and He will come in glory and in Judgment (25:31-33).

            “No reader can fully immerse himself in this gospel without emerging with a compelling sense of both the eternal majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ and the strong power that sin and Satan held over the apostate Israel that rejected Christ.

            “No gospel is more instructive to those who are the Lord’s disciples and who called to represent Him in the world.  The lessons on discipleship are life-changing for the committed reader, as they were for the eleven who were Jesus’ first followers.  Thus, with all its great themes of majesty and glory, rejection and apostasy, the book of Matthew lacks no practically, and woven through all that is the constant thread of revealed instruction for those who are His representatives among men.”

            I will not skip to the last paragraph that I promised to look at in our last SD, and then we will look at some other points from this first section of Matthew covering the first 17 verses of chapter one.

            “It is essential to note that in His virgin birth Jesus not only was divinely conceived but through that miracle was protected from regal disqualification because of Joseph’s being a descendant of ‘Jeconiah’ (v. 12).  Because of that king’s wickedness, God had declared of Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin or Coniah) that, through he was in David’s line, ‘no man of his descendant will prosper, sitting on the throne of David or ruling again in Judah’ (Jer. 22:30).  That curse would have precluded Jesus’ right to kingship had He been the natural son of Joseph, who through the father, came through Jeconiah to Joseph.  But His blood descent, and His human right to rule, came through Mary, who was not in Jeconiah’s lineage.  Thus the curse on Jeconiah’s offspring was circumvented, while still maintaining the royal privilege.”

            Now you have the truth of why there are two different genealogies in the gospels of Matthew and of Luke.  It is though that the genealogy in Luke’s gospel found in chapter three comes through Mary.  Luke’s genealogy also goes all the way back to God who created Adam.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  God has the answers to all problems and situations as seen in highlighted paragraph above.  Satan will never outsmart God, and this gives me great comfort.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  As we go through the gospel of Matthew we will see humility in the life story of Jesus Christ who humbled Himself in His coming to earth, and who depended on the Spirit and the Father to accomplish my salvation and all who believe on Him for their own personal salvation.

Quotation from “Love in Action” today gives us David Jeremiah’s comments on Genesis 1:31.

“We read in Genesis that God looked at what He had created and ‘saw that it was good.’  Then when He had finished with the creation of man, God surveyed His entire work and indeed it was ‘very good.’”

11/19/2019 11:13 AM