JANUARY 05 THE JESUS QUESTIONS Introduction-05: Lessons, Lifestyle, and Parables of Jesus: JQ#1-JQ#33 (Matthew 1:1 thru 3:17)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, ever will I praise Your Name, for You are ever-Faithful and Your Glory will endure forever! Lord I praise You for Loving me and dying for me while I was lost in my sin — Your LIGHT has led me into a new day where I pray that my new song will be to “work until Jesus comes!”
Lord, You have directed my paths to this point and I pray that my eyes and heart will be kept firmly fixed on You and the kingdom’s work and that I will be a good “witness” to Your Love. Lord Jesus, again and yet anew do I yield my life to serving You and to telling Your “Good News” to those You send my way. AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus told His disciples and even the Pharisees and Sadducees that the Holy Spirit would be a “witness” to who He really was — and Matthew, being an eyewitness who was led and Divinely inspired by the Spirit of God, wrote for a permanent record the events that point clearly to Jesus being the Divine Son of God sent to earth by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with a specific Purpose.
Matthew was primarily writing for the Jews because before the birth of Jesus, it was the Jewish Holy Scriptures (known today as the “Tanakh” or modern “Hebrew Bible”) that the Jewish nation Israel had been reading for thousands of years and were waiting expectantly for the Messiah, God’s Anointed! The prophets from Jewish history were led by the Holy Spirit to write down the “signs” that would point to the Messiah, just like the New Testament writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were led by the Holy Spirit to write down eyewitness accounts of how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies of old.
You cannot read the Holy Scriptures (the Old Testament and New Testament) without seeing God, His Plan, and the fulfillment of all the Spirit led prophecies that God uses (present tense!) to “lead His people to the Promised Land”. Matthew wrote in his Gospel of Jesus Christ that which was contained in the Jewish Holy Scriptures (the Old Testament of our modern Bible) that pointed to Jesus being the fulfillment of prophecy recorded in the Tanakh. What Matthew wrote about Jesus is true for all that will “seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness” and is fully documented in the New Testament.
God has a Plan and a Purpose for each individual person that breathes the breath of life imparted to us by God as was demonstrated by God breathing life into Adam whom God personally created with His own hands as His last act of His Divine Creation. “This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed…Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it.” (Genesis 2:4-15)
God “Spoke” everything into existence except man and woman — it was “Personal” with God in His creation of mankind, for only with mankind did God use His own Hands to form man and then God “breathed” (with His Own Breath) life into the man — it is imperative for us to note that only after mankind receives the “breath of life from God” that we become a “living being”!
After forming man, God then used His own Hands to form woman out of the rib of the man that He had just breathed His “Breath of Life” into, Eve was the second operation accomplished by God Himself, demonstrating His “Hands On” commitment to mankind — and to “seal the deal” and to show that God had all His Creation planned out before “the beginning”, we read of God’s “intent” for mankind to be special: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’…So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27)
So let us approach this “Introduction” of God’s Plan for the world as documented in the Gospel of Matthew in this way: The Old Testament is a written record of God revealing His Plan and “how” He intends to “execute” His Plan. The New Testament is a written record of eyewitness accounts of the fulfillment of prophecies in the Person of Jesus Christ as well as general prophecies regarding the “completion” of God’s Plan for all Mankind.
Again, the fact that Matthew writes primarily for the Jews is because it is through the Jews and the nation Israel that God has intended to use the nation Israel from BEFORE the beginning of mankind to fulfill God’s Plan for the salvation of the world! The main point is that BEFORE man came into existence God “had a Plan” — and the obvious Truth of God in that statement is that God made His Plan before mankind was created therefore mankind must accept that God is in control and is the Master Plan Maker — and life for mankind must fit God’s Planned Purpose — for God alone is the giver of life, the Creator — and everything made by God is His Creation — get that part straight and the rest of your life will be a piece of cake!
St. Matthew was part of God’s Plan to reveal the Messiah and His Purpose for the world — “For God did not send [the Messiah] His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17) Good Plan don’t you think??? — No wonder it’s called “THE GOOD NEWS”!!!
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THE PATRIOT’S PULPIT
Comment: 1/5/24 Friday 5:02A - Today I have already started “the physical fire burning” in the new fireplace and the “spiritual” fire (from reading in “THE WORD”) burning in the old one (77 years old in fact). I have already today memorized new portions in Genesis (the physical creation story) and John (the spiritual creation story) while the fragrant cedar has already turned to burning embers and I have loaded my first oak log, and it is only 5:02A!
Life with God is so exciting to wake up and know that while you were sleeping, God had been watching over you and preparing “new mercies” for you as you wake to His Glories with every new morning! God is GOOD!!!
This year is a year that has been thousands of years in the making and as it unfolds day by day here in 2024 we will see the hand of God shaping our future and preparing the new Eden for mankind unfold as God pulls back layer after layer of the old world that reveals bit by bit the “new heaven and the new earth” as recorded in Revelation 21:1-6
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Revelation 21 (New King James Version)
All Things Made New
21 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. 7 He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. 8 But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
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When you pick up any newspaper, magazine, or consume any media today (and everyday in the future) you will realize that the world is fulfilling prophecy. For everyone that has read the Bible can see God’s Plan for mankind and all of creation happening just like GOD’S WORD SAID IT WOULD!!! There is nothing new under the sun just like the Bible says and there will be nothing new under the sun until God makes it happen. John 1:3 says “All things were made by Him [JESUS], and without Him nothing was made that was made.” And remember that “In the beginning (of the old creation) was the WORD, and the WORD was with GOD, and the WORD was GOD (John 1:1) and note that Revelation is not “Revelations” but it is actually “The REVELATION of JESUS CHRIST” and therefore it is the WORD that is speaking in REVELATION 21 telling us that He is making everything new!
So dear Patriots, Rise and Shine
and as Moses said when the Red Sea parted,
“Behold the Salvation of the LORD”
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