Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us online at Madison church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: All right, so this week we had asked that everybody read Matthews chapter Matthew, chapters one and two. And next week, the chapters, we will go no further than chapters three and four. So if you read chapters one and two this week, great. If you didn't read chapters one, two, three and four for next week. Okay. And before we begin, Patty Bill stopped me in the hall, and she has a Matthew, fun fact that you're going to tell us about the book of Matthew. Right.
Okay.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: I have this little book called.
[00:01:21] Speaker D: Know.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: Your Bible, and it has the author and facts and things, and it says that Matthew is the only gospel that mentions the terms church and kingdom of heaven. And the Internet backs it up.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Right.
All right, that's like the. You know, I read a quote earlier this week and it said that everything that is written on the Internet is true. Theodore Roosevelt.
[00:01:50] Speaker D: All right.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Okay. So, Robert, tonight is going to start covering the other part of the Gospel of Matthew, or I should say the behind the scenes. Last week we covered a lot about who Matthew was and the area that he was writing from. So, Robert, I'll turn it over to you.
[00:02:13] Speaker D: Let me just put my next chart up so you can talk to.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, great. So we talked about all this last week. We talked about Matthew the man. We stated that one of my personal beliefs is that it's highly likely that he knew the others, at least a few of the others that were chosen by Jesus. He had two names, Matthew and Levi. And he was a tax collector.
And this one was one of the things I enjoyed about the class last week. I had never thought about until Robert brought it up that he actually had two radical life changes. One was as a jew when he became a tax collector. What did we say happened to him when he did that? He's outcast completely. And then when he gave up the tax collector life to follow Jesus.
And then at the beginning class, I did the silly little example where I was trying to illustrate the importance of context and perspective, where I threw up the silly phrase. And then as I gave more information, it was clear what I was saying when I said the silly phrase. And as I mentioned, that's our reading assignment for next week.
[00:03:26] Speaker D: So any questions or comments? Any thoughts from last week, things that were covered? Anybody discover any other interesting facts? Those were very good. I didn't catch the one about the church, but we're going to continue with the thought of context and perspective, spend a little more time on that, not just because it's a gospel that we're talking about and studying this quarter, but because of the fact that it's placed as the first book in the New Testament.
So it's coming right after the end of prophecy and what's been revealed in the Old Testament scriptures. And there's a period between there that I want us to spend a little bit of time so a little more perspective on Matthew to support his writing style. Things I want us to notice as we start into the scripture. And then we'll talk about this time period between the testaments before we get into chapter one and two. And let me say up front, raise your hand, speak up, ask a question. I've got a lot of stuff to try to cover tonight. If we don't get through it, we'll pick back up next week. We won't worry about that. But I would like for us to read parts of chapter one and two together.
It's going to be very familiar and we're going to hit the highlights, mentioning some specific interesting topics, and if you have others, mention those. But we're going to read it quickly. It's very clear and going to be very familiar to you.
So from the perspective of Matthew, we talked a little bit about his primary audience is a jewish audience, and as such, it's going to be folks that are very familiar with the Old Testament, and we'll touch in how that plays into that gap between the Testaments. But these people that he's trying to reach and teach are going to be very familiar with all Old Testament scripture because they had that at this time and Moses and the prophets.
And to the point of his use of prophecy and references to the Old Testament is excessive compared to other books.
Primary goal and objective was to demonstrate to that jewish audience that Jesus was indeed the son of David, the son of Abraham, who is the Christ, the messiah as foretold by the prophecies that we read about. And he starts his book out with that very statement in Matthew eleven. So it's very clear what he's trying to accomplish here.
He intended to show that Jesus of Nazareth was the long awaited Messiah that all these jewish folks have been waiting for, and that he is the rightful king. That's another important thing.
There are some constraints to that, that these jewish people who know the scripture are going to be looking for.
He wanted to show that Jesus fulfilled these prophecies that were about him from long ago, that were recorded in scripture.
And as I mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit about bridging that gap between the Old and New Testaments, a little bit about Matthew's gospel compared to the other synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke. And most of us are familiar with what the term synoptic gospels sets them a little bit apart from the gospel of John. But synoptic just means to see together or have a common view, which makes a lot of sense when you consider Matthew, Mark and Luke.
They cover a lot of the same events that deal with the life of Jesus, his ministry, actually, his birth in life, death, resurrection, and all those aspects associated with his jewish audience. Focus in Matthew. Mark's was geared a little more toward a roman audience, a little broader for that time frame following the quiet period. Mark's is actually the shortest, and it's a little more action oriented, if you'll notice the text and the way Mark writes. He actually uses the term immediately, several times in his gospel, reads a lot like a story compared to the other two. And then Luke's more geared toward an audience of gentiles, which makes a lot of sense. We're covering all the bases with those gospels to tell this common story.
Luke's is the longest. It's very historic in nature, and it's very thorough.
And then John's audience, and his is broad with a very persuasive, because of his stated intent, was to get people to believe that Jesus is the Christ.
Continuing on in the style of Matthew.
He did use extensive Old Testament references.
You can count them differently. Some of them. There's different types of references, not all direct prophecies that were fulfilled, but there's 80 plus references in his book, which is more than any other New Testament book, really. It's only exceeded by some of the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah.
You're going to find when we start reading it, or as you've been reading, you may not realize how almost every verse, every other sentence has some reference to the Old Testament.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: So, Robert, can I jump in there?
[00:09:22] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: I'm curious if anybody remembers last week I made the same point. Does anybody remember when I was making the point about how many prophecies there were, why I found that interesting, that it was Matthew that did that?
Does anybody remember that?
[00:09:42] Speaker D: I don't.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: That one, he was a jew. And then having going off and then basically.
[00:09:52] Speaker E: Join up with Romans to be.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: A tax collector, and then having come back to that, it's likely that there.
[00:09:58] Speaker D: Was a source of answer for him or whatever.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And a couple of us had a little short conversation afterwards that I had not thought about as well. Is it also says something about Matthew that number one, like I said, he's done that much, I believe, personal study, and then he's putting that in his book. And then after Jesus died and was resurrected, he ministered to the Jews. So he ministered to the very people that hated him. Right. And that's, for me, that just over and over, when I study Matthew, I always keep that in the back of my mind.
[00:10:39] Speaker D: Very good.
Another little interesting thing that I noted was it's very similar to the 77 items that are mentioned in Genesis that are prophecy related or predictive in nature. First book of the Old Testament. First book of the New Testament.
Just an interesting .1 of the interesting emphasis that he makes in terminology is Christ the king. That's who he's trying to convince the Jews is coming. And that's somewhat unique to Matthew's verbiage and way of teaching, and he follows that up with his content about that right to that throne and that kingship and Patty mentioned.
Another thing unique to his gospel is that he uses the term kingdom of heaven, where the others will use kingdom of God.
Why does anybody happen to know or suspect?
There's some thought that it may have been his deep jewish roots and reaching out to those people.
The terminology in that time was they were sensitive, they were very reverent to these words and terms that they use. So it could have been that he was trying to avoid overuse of kingdom of God and any connotation that would come along with that.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: I don't have any proof of this, but I know it brings to my mind the sadducees didn't believe in a resurrection. So that might have also been, since he's writing to the jewish audience, he's talking about the place where we're going to go when we are resurrected. And the sadducees would have said, no, that's not going to happen again. I've got no proof of that. But that came to mind as I was thinking about that.
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't think we'll ever know for sure why, but it is unique to Matthew's gospel. Okay. I mentioned talking a little bit between the Testaments, between those books of the Bible. Has anybody studied that extensively? Or that gap of about 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
Just curious. There's a lot of interesting information that helps set the stage for Matthew's gospel.
I'm going to read through a summary. We're going to spend a little bit of time. I'm not hitting every ruler, every empire, because there was a lot of change over those centuries. We're kind of going to start at the beginning and get to the end and try to hit a summary of the things that are pertinent to Israel at that time.
But it's roughly 400 years from the time that the events recorded in the Old Testament to the time that Jesus came to earth. Some people call it the intertestamental period, but years of silence is what a lot of folks refer to it. Let's put yourself in that environment during that 400 years. Can you imagine being prior to that time with the scripture being revealed and recorded?
And over this time, we're going to see that it was translated. But 400 years with really no word from God, no prophecy, put that sort of in perspective. Bonda mentioned when we were talking about this the other night that think about how old the United States is, 250 ish years old. And it's really hard for us to imagine it not being here from our little window of life here, but imagine 400 years.
It would be a hard perspective to imagine.
So the Old Testament closed out with the return of the Israelites from the babylonian exile, and they were told to go back to their own land. And this came from the persian king Cyrus, after he conquered Babylon. That's the only reason they got to go back to their home. And then Ezra and Nehemiah recorded some of this. That return to their home happened in waves. There was a series of waves that began in about 540 BC to 420 BC.
And the first wave was under Zerubbab and Joshua the priest. And they rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem.
Decades later, the wall of the city was rebuilt, and by that time, the teaching of the law of Moses was reestablished. Civil authority was reorganized, and Malachi wrote about this in some final prophetic words that were recorded in the Old Testament.
Throughout this period, Israel was a minor province in a persian empire, which was a far cry from what they were used to throughout Old Testament times when Israel was strong and powerful under a very powerful king.
They remained under persian rule for another century, until about 331 BC.
And until that time was when Alexander Great the Great came on the scene and he built a tremendous empire when he came in the 330 BC time frame, built an empire and a kingdom that spread over a lot of land mass. He is the one responsible for introducing the hellenistic greek culture, if you will, which was heavily based in philosophy, religion and language throughout that territory.
After Alexander the Great's death at age 33, very young, the empire was divided into a handful of his leaders that were under him.
That land is now called Palestine or Judea.
And that process of hellenization that instilled that greek culture over time reached a bit of a tipping point. And at one point, when Anticus IV epiphanes, and you've heard some of these rulers desecrated the temple in Jerusalem, and that was sort of a breaking point for the jewish people in that time that led up to the maccabean period. A lot of us have heard that and know bits and pieces about the Maccabees and their revolt, and they actually became an independent Judah state in about 142 BC. So you can kind of get a feel for the time frame leading up.
Let's see.
Judea reached its largest extent, incorporating samaria, Galilee and regions east of the Jordan river and the Dead Sea. So it's starting to sound a little more like the New Testament time.
But for a brief moment, the Jews were on the verge, or felt like they were on the verge of that promised messianic kingdom, because they had their independence back, which they had not had in 300 years.
But those leaders turned out not to be as pure as they thought. Kingdom was small and it was riven with, as you might expect, political and religious division.
And that independence ended at 63 BC.
Then in 37 BC was when the Romans conquered and came on the scene with Herod the Great.
Some of the things during that period, the Greek and Aramaic replaced Hebrew as a common spoken language.
Part of the Israelites longed to stay in.
That's not right.
Skip down to the time in the foreign captivity, back to the Babylonian had cured the jewish people of their idol worship, which was one of the sins that put them in exile to begin with, why God sent them there.
But they rededicated themselves during this time.
Back to the. They began obeying the law and teaching the scriptures.
But interpretations began to waver. Heavily affected by political, socioeconomic type, nature of the land at that time. And that's where we wound up falling out with our five political religious factions. That being you mentioned earlier, the PharISees, the SAdducees, the Essenes, the Herodians, and the zealots. We won't go into detail about them, but the Jews were still scattered about the Mediterranean and the Near east, so there weren't large concentrations of them.
A lot of political instability, which made temple worship difficult. Instead of the temple worship was typically at least two treks that you made for sacrificial type worship a year.
That changed a little bit over this time period with the development of synagogues. And Synagogue, that term in greek means to bring together. So you can imagine these synagogues start popping up because people can't travel a long way to get to the temple, allowed them to worship in non sacrificial formats. More locally, along with the synagogue came the Sanhedrin, and that name came from the hellenistic greek background and has a meaning of sitting together, assembly, or council. We've all heard about the Sanhedrin and talked about it, but where and when did it come from?
That was a court that was made up of priests and elders, and they were to administrate political, legislative, and judicial matters. Their role was to oversee jewish culture and religious affairs. This is when the scribes, the elders, and the rabbis arose as leading scholars across all the land.
So beginning in about 275 BC, the hellenistic Jews and scholars translated, as I mentioned earlier, the hebrew scriptures into greek. And that's a key part leading up to. Were you getting ready to mention, well.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I want to jump in there.
[00:22:05] Speaker D: Go ahead.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: So, Romans, chapter five, verses six through eight. It says, I'm only going to read six. This is for while we were still helpless at the right time. Christ died for the ungodly. Now, when I was younger, I was always taught and asked the question I'm about to ask you guys, why was it the right time? Based on everything Robert just said, why was that the right time for Jesus to die?
What was going on geopolitically with what he just said? So it's not something in the scripture, but what was happening.
The Jews had gone back, right? And we've now had this conqueror, Alexander the great, who's come through. He's built roads, and he standardized the language. Okay, so what's that going to allow to happen after Jesus dies?
Gospel. The spread of the word.
That, to me is really interesting when you think about. Because if you think about now, right. Well, what if God had waited, and it was. Now, I mean, we have mass communication, we have all this different, but no scripture says that was the right time.
[00:23:20] Speaker E: Yeah, Ed, one of the things that, what I think we're saying is about the right time, things start falling into place.
The Romans were a mighty military machine, and they created a unified empire from the Atlantic Ocean almost all the way into Mesopotamia and stuff like that. And so there's this big, huge bunch of language you could travel all over.
[00:23:52] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Much impediment, and they spoke the same.
[00:23:55] Speaker E: Language and very same language and all that kind of stuff. The other thing was that the Romans wanted to hold on to their conquest. And so one of the things that happened was that they built these roads to move their legions quickly all over the empire, and they built huge fleets, be able to move their army all over the Mediterranean Sea. Well, kind of two things happened to the roman empire because of that first one, and I have to say, leading into this first one was that I'm an economist, so one of the things that the Rhodes did in economics, roads and transportation were very important. So the Romans created, through their military roads, a tremendous amount of trade. So there was a great amount of movement of people, of goods and services. And that's one of the reasons that the roman empire became so powerful and lasted so long, but it also became very rich. But through those roads and all that kind of stuff, the gospel could be spread very quickly throughout the whole roman world, from the Atlantic Ocean down into, you know, further out into Africa and all that kind of that. In a way, that's the right time. When you had political stability over a huge amount of land, you had easy transportation by sea and by land and all that stuff. So it was a great time to be spreading the gospel.
[00:25:30] Speaker D: Right.
Another thought to that, do you think the Jews recognized that at that time, they might have recognized the ability to have a copy of Old Testament scripture that we could all read together and understand and communicate. But coming out of that 400 years, I don't know that we would see that. And leading up to that tremendous development were a lot of bad guys and a lot of instability that got to that point. So you can kind of see it coming together in our time now. The pieces fit together. So that's a good way to wrap up that 400 years. That was a good discussion. I threw a lot out there. I know it's a lot to even try to hear and understand, much less digest, but I wanted us to set that perspective.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: I'll throw out while you're going to the next slide. David Morrison did a really great class last quarter on the minor profits and covered some of this material. So he's a good resource if you're interested in that. And then I don't see Adam beard in here, but years ago, Adam Beard did a class where he covered the five different sects of Judaism that you brought up. So if you get a chance and you want to ask Jason or.
[00:26:49] Speaker D: Why did I say Jason?
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Adam, about that. He's another great resource.
[00:26:55] Speaker D: Okay, any questions or comments? We're going to jump on now to chapters one and two and try to read some of that together and mention some interesting points, interesting facts.
I want us to read the genealogy. I know it's painful. It's a test of pronouncing names. But if I could get somebody to read. Let's split it up into two sections. Somebody read one through nine, and then somebody else pick up at verse ten.
Don't try to read it fast, but let's listen to the words that are used in this genealogy.
[00:27:38] Speaker F: Record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The son of David, Abraham, Father Isaac, Isaac, Father Jacob and his brothers Perez and Vera by Samuel. Perez. Father Hezram and Hezram, father brand grandfathered Amenadab. Amenadab, Father Nathan and nation. Father Samuel. Samuel. Father Boaz by Rahab. Boaz. Father obed by Ruth and Obed. Father Jesse. Jesse. Father David. The king David fathered Solomon by her who had been the wife of Solomon. Father Rehoboam, Rihon. Father Abijah. And Abuja fathered Asa. Asa. Father Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat. Father Joram. And Joram. Father Isaiah. Isaiah. Father Jocelyn. And Jocelyn. Father Ahab.
Father Hezekiah.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Okay, I'm going to read the rest of these because I just got notification. They can't hear us at home, so I'll read from nine on. Was there something you wanted to interject there?
[00:28:38] Speaker D: No.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Okay. So, Aziah fathered Jotham. Jotham fathered Ahaz. And Ahaz fathered Hezekiah. Hezekiah fathered Manasseh. Manasseh fathered Ammon. And Ammon fathered Josiah. Josiah fathered Jacona and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. After the deportation to Babylon, Jaconia fathered Shiltil. Shiltil fathered Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel followed Abihud. Abihud fathered Eliakim. And Eliakim fathered Azor. Azor fathered Zadok. Zadok fathered Acham. Acham fathered Eliod. Eliad, fathered Eliezer. Eliezer fathered Mathen. And mathen fathered Jacob. Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
Do you mean to keep reading or.
[00:29:34] Speaker D: Yeah, go ahead and read that last.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David to deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. Now, I want to ask a question here, because this is something later on we may end up talking about, or if you'll be in a class with me someday and you'll hear me talk about this. Whose genealogy was this?
[00:30:02] Speaker D: Jesus.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: But through who? Through Joseph. Okay. I think it's Mark. Is it the same genealogy?
No. Whose is it? It's Mary's. Any idea why that occurred or why that's important?
[00:30:19] Speaker E: It was actually born?
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Well, yes, but also the Jews, actually, in response to Christianity, they changed tribal affiliation.
So when Jesus was born, your tribal affiliation came through your. I think it came through your father. And then after Jesus, they swapped it because they didn't want him to be able to have a claim to the throne, and it had to come through your mother. So that's why there are two genealogies. And it's showing that through both parents, he was lineage of David.
[00:30:59] Speaker D: So the primary point that I would like to make out of that, that would be easy to be drawn into.
I've got two genealogies in back to back books. Is that a conflict in the Bible? It would be real easy to go there.
And we as christians need to understand and be able to respond to that. That. No, it's not a conflict. It's actually complementary proof that he is the messiah and that he has the right lineage to have that right to the throne. Interesting.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: I thought of this this week. I'm glad you brought that up. So last week we talked about that Matthew is called Matthew in his gospel, but every other gospel, he's called Levi. Isn't that correct?
[00:31:47] Speaker D: Called both. In other gospels, he's the only one who does not refer to himself as Levi.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Right. And there are people that point to that. Again, that is a conflict. Okay. And as silly as it sounds, you know what hit me last week is I call Robert Pawpaw. He calls himself Robert.
You get what I'm saying? So if I'm writing a book, I might talk about Paw paw. If he's writing a book, he might talk about Robert.
[00:32:15] Speaker D: And you have the context, so you'll know who David's talking about.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:22] Speaker D: So, yeah, that was a point that I wanted to make. And it helps us understand why start this book off with a genealogy we tend to in our reading and our habits? Oh, it's that genealogy with all those hard to pronounce names. If you dig into the names.
As painful as you might think it is, there are subtleties in there that will jump out at you.
Is there anything up here we haven't covered?
[00:32:53] Speaker A: I like that one.
[00:32:55] Speaker D: He does start his genealogy with Abraham. And where does Mark start his.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: I think he starts all the way back with Adam and Eve.
[00:33:02] Speaker D: Adam.
And it is through Mary and not starting point, as well as the details are complimentary, we've covered that some genealogies mention women, but there's quite a few women mentioned in this one.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Any of the women jump out at you that are mentioned in there?
Rahab. Why Rahab?
She was a gentile, but she was also a prostitute. And then the other one that's always interesting to me is Ruth. That when you think about Ruth being. Let me make sure I get this right. Ruth was King David's grandmother. And for me, when I read Ruth, that makes Ruth really kind of come alive as well.
[00:33:58] Speaker D: Another thing you might notice if you study, and I'm not saying that I do or have I learned a lot of this stuff studying for this class. Nobody will learn more in this class than me, but it's a well known practice. I didn't realize that. And if you read this genealogy that Matthew recorded, there's some gaps there.
If you look back and compare to Old Testament, you'll see there are gaps. And there's also some in Mark's genealogy, but that's Luke's.
Thank you for correcting that.
But that was a thing that I couldn't find it when you were looking through Mark.
Yeah, one example of that, when this one jumps from Rahab to David, that was a 300 year period, so you had to miss some generations.
Same thing in Joram to Uziah.
And the end of the genealogy, I thought was interesting, which is necessary.
Let's read that.
You come down through this, and it's all the father of the father of in verse 15, and then you get to 16, and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
It's a detail that's necessary to fit with the rest of the story. Right.
He's not the true earthly father, but still, that custom, he has a right to the throne and jewish practices.
Okay.
Any other comments on this Genealogy? We spent a lot more time there than I meant to, but it should open our eyes to the importance in.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: The jewish culture, the number seven is a number of completeness. It's interesting that two times seven is the 14 generations in between each of the Groupings.
[00:36:16] Speaker D: That's another good point. If you count the Names in this genealogy, one is used twice to make those numbers fit. Is that just a jewish practice to help facilitate memory? Some of the things I read. That's another question that that genealogy begs, but it does fit with jewish history and practice.
Thank you for bringing that up. I'd forgotten about that part of it.
So let's look at this set of verses and some of the prophecy.
He's going to reign on the throne of David. There's examples of that in Isaiah and Jeremiah.
We're told that all nations will be blessed through Abraham. This is a way that they will be blessed through Abraham, through Jesus Christ.
Genesis 49 says, the scepter will not depart from Judah, and this supports that. And then Micah 52 from Judah will come ruler over Israel.
There's probably more in there, but this is four of them that I wanted to mention just in the first section of the first chapter from other study.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Of the New Testament. When the Jews read this, or when the Jews were looking at these prophecies, what can we infer? That they were expecting?
They were expecting an earthly camp.
[00:37:44] Speaker D: Absolutely.
That was one of the things that made it so difficult to accept.
All right, let's move on to the rest of the first chapter and discuss the birth of Christ. Again, this is familiar. The next few sections, remainder of the first chapter and the second chapter should be very familiar because we had a series of lessons from the pulpit talking about the birth and the virgin birth, the visit of the wise men, and the gifts that they brought.
Let's read verses 18 through 25, and I'll read that so the folks streaming can hear us now. The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Very critical to our christian doctrine and belief, this virgin birth, and to convincing the Jews that he was the messiah.
This was just a tidbit I threw in there. It just amazes me that the word that has been here since the beginning, as we're told in John, one came as a man.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: That one is hard for me. It's hard for me to understand specifically. I mean, I get Jesus as a man, I get it.
But God as a baby, it makes me smile. I can't quite wrap my head around.
And that's what I always think of when I am looking at this fact. Right.
[00:40:38] Speaker C: In human terms, we always think about the baby as being the symbol or the essence of purity. And God is in fact the essence of purity. Maybe that way to look at other thing that's interesting is when we did the vision funding, we talked about Mary in Luke chapter one and about the challenges she was given and that kind of thing. And you mentioned earlier that Matthew's account of the genealogy focuses on the path through Joseph. And you'll also notice that these verses are telling the story of Jesus'birth from the perspective of Joseph. And if you go to Luke's account and the genealogy just after that is told from the perspective of Mary.
So the genealogy and the account perspectives are.
[00:41:30] Speaker D: The.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: And for those online, we made a mistake. We were saying the genealogy was in Mark.
People in the audience caught our error. There it is actually that genealogy is in Luke.
But I like what you said about it's from the perspective of Joseph. And one thing I always ask myself, especially as Robert was reading there down in verse 19, what does it tell you about Joseph?
That he was a man who had a right to take an action under jewish law.
[00:42:09] Speaker D: Right.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: He could have put her away. He could have disgraced her. But what does it say about him that he had decided he wasn't going to do that, right.
He was going to allow her to have some dignity. What does that tell you about him as a man? Right. That's what I think about.
[00:42:29] Speaker D: That's what I wanted us to think about with that bullet. Put yourself in his shoes. With what he knew at the time, this lady that you were betrothed to, which was a strong commitment. Then it was like being married and she turns up pregnant.
What are you going to think, what position did that put him in? Yet he was still handling it very well, which was a great example of proverbs 1113, which says, he that is faithful of a faithful spirit conceal of the matter.
[00:43:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:12] Speaker D: So have a lot of respect for Joseph. And then it's interesting that the angel of the Lord announced that conception and named him. So we'll stop right there, finish up.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Chapter with two, and then if you'll read three and four for next week, we won't go any further than four next week. At the rate we're going, we probably won't get all the way through three.
[00:43:37] Speaker D: But maybe we'll speed up the rate a little. We won't have to. Thanks for being here.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:43:42] Speaker D: Streaming online. If you have any questions, questions, bring them to us anytime during the week.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Or next week at class.
