SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/28/2019
10:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Return to Nazareth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
2:19-23
Message of the verses: “19 But when Herod
was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,
saying, 20 "Arise and take the Child and His mother, and go into the land
of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead." 21 And he
arose and took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. 22 But
when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod,
he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he
departed for the regions of Galilee, 23 and came and resided in a city called
Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He
shall be called a Nazarene.’”
Remember
that we spoke of earlier that Matthew’s gospel was first and foremost written
to the Jews and so it is possible that the early Jewish readers knew who the
prophets were that prophesied that were.
As far as latter readers like us today we can conclude that the Holy
Spirit did not want us to know who the prophets were that said He would be
called a Nazarene.
John
MacArthur describes Nazareth: “Nazareth
was about fifty-five miles north of Jerusalem, in ‘the regions of Galilee,’
where the Lord had directed Joseph to go.
The town was in an elevated basin, about one and a half miles across,
and was inhabited largely by people noted for their crude and violent
ways. The term Nazarene had long been a term of derision, used to describe any person
who was rough and rude. That is why
Nathanael, who was from Cana, a few miles to the south, asked Philip, ‘Can any
good thing come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1:46).
The question is especially significant coming from Nathanael, who by
Jesus’ own word was ‘an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!’ (v. 47). Nathanael was not give to maligning his neighbors,
but he was shocked that the one ‘of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets
wrote’ (v. 45) actually could come from such a disreputable place as Nazareth.”
Now
that we know a little bit about the reputation of the Nazareth we can better
understand why after Jesus returned to heaven and the church began why those
who belonged to the church through their trust in Jesus as Messiah would talk
down on them as seen in Acts 24:5 which took place at the trial that Paul had
with Felix as a lawyer Tertullus who was acting as attorney for the high priest
Ananias said “"For we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who
stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader
of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
MacArthur
concludes his comments on this section, the last section in chapter two with
these words “It was therefore at lowly and despised Nazareth that the royal Son
of God, along with the righteous Joseph and Mary, made His home for some thirty
years.”
This is a very sad day for my family as
my father-in-law passed away early this morning at the age of 102 years
old. He will be missed.
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action”
comes from 1 Samuel 30:6.
“But David strengthened himself in the
Lord his God.”
12/28/2019 10:59 AM
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