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, likewise 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; therefore, 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 in God’s nation of His Chosen people, 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! 

For surely, 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 imagining the number of descendants

 that God had promised a childless 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 imagining 

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 in the entire 

history of the world 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 (the WORD came down from Heaven 

and  became flesh yet HE still dwells among us)

 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”!?!?!?