DECEMBER 17 THE JESUS QUESTIONS SUMMARY 03: JQ#1-33 The Gospel of Matthew: A Study of the Life, Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ

 DECEMBER 17  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  SUMMARY 03: JQ#1-33  The Gospel of Matthew: A Study of the Life, Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ 

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 the physical world Your Light will rise each day in our spiritual lives and bring with it the blessing of Your renewed Mercies and Grace! 

Thank You Jesus for Your coming to the earth and 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!!! Lord forgive me of all my worldly shortcomings and my daily iniquities and give 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 Himself and John the Baptist (the forerunner to 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 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 had no earthly wealth or possessions therefore Jesus could not be the “soon coming King” like Israel’s previous great king, King David who possessed the entire kingdom of Israel and David had great warrior strength and all the resources that King Solomon used to build the Great Temple of Solomon — John the Baptist had no strength except the Spirit of God and was calling Israel to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven was at hand”! 

The nation Israel and many people today simply cannot see how a cruel death on a cross at the hands of Israel’s religious rulers who had sentenced Jesus  to death as a criminal by the laws of the Jews could actually be the Messiah and that this “prophet” that did not possess any earthly treasures, and that this Jesus of Nazareth simply by His Death, Burial, and Resurrection would “fulfill all righteousness”!?!?!? 

Matthew started his documentation of Jesus fulfilling the Holy Scriptures by establishing in Chapter 1 that through His genealogy Jesus was the “rightful heir” to the throne of His father 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 we have a record of fulfilling of prophecies by a single man Jesus that defies all logic and odds and that if the odds of one man fulfilling all prophecies could be calculated that it would fit into the category of “counting [all] the stars if [we were] able” (Genesis 15:5) or imaging the number of descendants God promised a childless 90 year old man “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 stars or grains of sand??}} (Genesis 22:17) . 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 Chosen One, the Messiah”,  Matthew establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for any one person to fulfill EVERY Prophecy as Jesus did!!! Matthew established in the first part of Chapter 1 that Jesus is the rightful heir by birthright and in the last part of Chapter 1 Matthew records the fulfilling of 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 Son” and as 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 therefore they would be the first ones to recognize that Jesus was the earthly embodiment of “Immanuel” and truly God had sent His only begotten Son and by observing the Life of Jesus, we observe GOD HIMSELF!!!  — and the really GOOD NEWS is that now that Jesus has come, the Promise of God to Joshua becomes  His Promise to us for God assures us:

 “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) and (Hebrews 13:5)