SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/1/2019
8:48 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The
Virgin Birth Connected”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
1:22-23
Message of the verses: “22 Now all this
took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD
AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated
means, "GOD WITH US.’”
Now
we have come to the point in Matthew’s gospel where he explains that Jesus’
virgin birth was prophesized by God through the Old Testament prophet. It is the Holy Spirit who is the author of
Scripture, all Scripture, and He does this through different men at different
time periods, which in and of itself is a miracle. MacArthur writes “God does the saying; the
human instrument is only a means to bring the divine Word to men. Based on these words of the Lord given through
Matthew, the Old Testament text of Isaiah must be interpreted as predicting the
virgin birth of Jesus Christ.”
We
have to remember that the audience of Matthew at the time of its writing was
primarily the Jews and so when we look at the phrase “might be fulfilled” we
will see this also in 2:13, 17, 23; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:54 and other
places as well. This indicates ways in
which Jesus, and events also related to His earthly ministry were fulfillments
of Old Testament prophecy. As mentioned
this goes along with his audience as they would have had read the Old Testament
Scriptures that Mathew relates to. John
MacArthur adds “The basic truths and happenings of the New Testament were
culminations, completions, or fulfillments of revelation God had already made—though
often the revelation had been in veiled and partial form.”
As
mentioned the prophecy that Matthew is writing about comes from the book of
Isaiah, the 7th chapter and I will briefly go over what was going on
at the time Isaiah wrote this 7th chapter. The king of Judah at this time was the son of
the godly kin Uzziah whose name was King Ahaz, and he was a wicked king unlike
his father. Ahaz filled the city of
Jerusalem with idols and then reinstated the worship of Molech, and even burned
his own son as a sacrifice to that god. (I have referred to this kind of thing
as modern day abortions.) MacArthur adds
“Rezin, the king of Syria (Aram), and Pekah, king of Israel (also called
Samaria at the time), decided to remove Ahaz and replace him with a king who
would do their bidding. In the face of
such a threat to the people of Israel and to the royal line of David, Ahaz, instead
of turning to God for help, sought the help of Tiglath-pileser, the evil king
of the Assyrians. He even plundered and
sent to Tiglath-pileser the gold and silver from the Temple.”
The
prophet then comes to Ahaz and reported to him that God would deliver the
people from the two enemy kings. You
would think that because he had been raised in a godly home that he would
repent and ask God to do this, but that was not the case, so when he refused to
listen, Isaiah responded with the remarkable messianic prophecy of 7:14.
Lord
willing we will give the rest of the story in our next SD.
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”
is David Jeremiah’s short commentary on Psalm 127:3.
“Children are encouraged when we affirm
their originality. Some kids are
athletic; some aren’t. Some are musical;
some aren’t. Some are introverts; others
are extroverts. They are all very
different, but they are all gifts to us from God.”
12/1/2019 9:21 PM
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