JANUARY 20 THE JESUS QUESTIONS Introduction-20: Lessons, Lifestyle, and Parables of Jesus: JQ#1-JQ#33 (Matthew 1:1 thru 3:17)

 JANUARY  20  THE JESUS QUESTIONS   Introduction-20: Lessons, Lifestyle, and Parables of Jesus: JQ#1-JQ#33  (Matthew 1:1 thru 3:17) 

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer

JESUS, as each new day unfolds Lord we ask for Your Light to shine in our day-to-day world and we thank You that like the consistent sunrise that brings light to our physical world that Your Light will rise each day in our “Spiritual world” and bring with it the blessing of Your renewed Mercies and Grace in our “Spiritual” lives! Thank You Jesus for Your coming to the earth and for taking on flesh and being tempted in all ways such as we but yet You were without sin, and Your Victory over the world is the foundation of our Hope and the Great Expectation of our inheritance in Your kingdom, for surely this world is not our home, but our “dwelling” will be in the kingdom of God where You have prepared an eternal permanent place for those that would call upon Your Holy Name and Repent and turn from our worldly sins — Lord forgive me of all my worldly shortcomings and my daily iniquities and grant to me the self discipline to forgive others as freely as You forgive us!      AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

JESUS spoke His first words in Matthew’s Gospel and stated that the event unfolding between Him and John the Baptist, the forerunner of God’s Chosen One, the Messiah,  as “Fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15) which established Jesus as the “Chosen One” and that John was the “one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight’” (Matthew 3:3) thereby Matthew documents that the “Coming One” had arrived! Only the Jewish community that had been reading the Talmud would understand the significance of Matthew being able to trace the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham through King David so the Gospel of Jesus according to Matthew points to the fulfilling of God’s prophecies for the nation Israel and establishes through God’s Covenant Promises with Israel’s forefathers that Jesus was the rightful Heir to the throne of David. I believe that the nation was blinded to the Kingship of Jesus because of His Humble beginnings and the fact that Jesus was more like John the Baptist who possessed only the Spirit of God and had no earthly wealth or possessions. Sadly for many, Jesus in His Humbleness, did not fit their vision of the “soon coming King” who they mistakenly believed was to be like Israel’s previous great king, King David, who had possessed the entire kingdom of Israel. King David had ruled with great warrior strength and had accumulated all the material possessions that King Solomon used to build the Great Temple in Jerusalem! The nation Israel and many people today simply cannot see how a cruel death on a Roman cross (at the hands of Israel’s religious rulers who declared that Jesus was a “criminal”) actually prove Jesus to be the Messiah? And how could a “prophet” that did not possess any earthly treasures, by His Birth, Death, Burial, and Resurrection “fulfill all righteousness”!?!?!? Matthew started his documentation of Jesus fulfilling the Holy Scriptures by establishing in Chapter 1 that Jesus was the “rightful heir” to the throne of David! Any one of the events that Matthew records in his 28 Chapters about the life of Jesus could be considered significant but by recording all the events into a single Gospel Matthew established a record of the fulfilling of prophecies by a single man [Jesus] that defies all logic and odds — if the odds of one man fulfilling all prophecies of the Messiah from the Jewish Holy Scriptures could actually be calculated then it would certainly fit into the category of “counting [all] the stars if [we were] able” (Genesis 15:5) or imaging the number of descendants that God had promised a fatherless 90 year old man and his 80 year old barren wife, “I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of  the sky and as the sand which is on the seashore” {{have you ever tried counting all the stars or grains of sand??}} (Genesis 22:17) and these great numbers that are far beyond our counting or imaging the total sum of them point to God the Father for King David wrote: “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand!” (Psalm 139:18). Therefore by collecting all the events of Jesus that point to His being the “Son of God, God’s Anointed One, the Messiah” Matthew establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for any one person to fulfill EVERY Prophecy that Jesus did!!! Matthew established in the first part of Chapter 1 that Jesus is the rightful heir by His Birthright and in the last part of Chapter 1 Matthew records the fulfilling of even more early prophecies of the Messiah as Matthew writes: “the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows…Mary was betrothed to Joseph [and] before they came together, she was found with the child of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:18) Matthew explains: “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet {{Isaiah 7:14}}, saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name ‘Immanuel’ which is translated, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:22-23) Matthew started at “the beginning” which leaves no room for anyone other than Jesus to claim the title of “God’s Only Begotten Son”! The Apostle John (whom Jesus loved) wrote about Jesus: “The WORD became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) The Jewish community had been reading the prophecies of the Coming Messiah for centuries therefore they would be the first ones to recognize that Jesus was the earthly embodiment of “Immanuel” and truly God Himself had sent His Only Begotten Son to dwell among us and by observing the Life of Jesus, we observe GOD HIMSELF!!!  — and the really GOOD NEWS is that now that Jesus has come down from heaven to earth that the Promise of God to Joshua becomes God’s Promise to us for God assures all believers — “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) and (Hebrews 13:5) I will be perfectly honest with you, when I started my “Journey to find TRUTH” I did not expect to find the Messiah; but now that God has revealed His Plans to Provide Salvation as a Gift, why should I turn a “blind eye” to such a “Divine TRUTH”!?!?!?