There is a chorus of my youth I still recall when challenging situations overwhelm me.  Just singing a few lines lifts my thinking to a higher, more realistic perspective of the circumstance—God’s perspective.  So, let’s talk about Jesus!

Let’s talk about Jesus, the King of kings is He,

The Lord of lords supreme, through all eternity. 

The great I AM, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door,

 Let’s talk about Jesus more and more.

Yesterday we concluded our study of the prophets of God with Malachi who had last word in the Old Testament.  Then God was silent for about four centuries.  The Messiah (the One who would come to save), announced and foretold by the prophets, is now ready to come after this long silence.  

The Messiah does indeed come but Jesus does not come with the expected regality fit for a king with a formal ceremony or even a pompous procession deemed necessary for proud and noble royalty.  He comes as a helpless baby born to a couple who love God but are of lowly means.  Joseph is a carpenter and his “espoused”, promised wife to be is a teenager.  Jesus, Messiah, our Savior, and Lord, is born in a stall as farm animals look on.  He is wrapped tightly in cloth strips to keep him warm and secure by his loving mother.  Then Mary, with the help of Joseph, placed him carefully in a bed of hay covered with blankets.

We will talk about Jesus more and more by beginning with the account and eyewitness of Matthew.  But first, let’s gain an overall knowledge of the New Testament as a whole by reading Eugene Peterson’s introduction which is worthy of our attention before diving into Matthew:

“The arrival of Jesus signaled the beginning of a new era. God entered history in a personal way, and made it unmistakably clear that he is on our side, doing everything possible to save us.  It was all presented and worked out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  It was, and is, hard to believe—seemingly too good to be true.”

“But one by one, men and women did believe it, believed Jesus was God alive among them and for them.  Soon they would realize that he also lived in them.  To their great surprise they found themselves living in a world where God called all the shots—had the first word on everything, had the last word on everything.  That meant that everything, quiet literally every thing, had to be re-centered, re-imagined, and re-thought.”

“They went at it with immense gusto. They told stories of Jesus and arranged his teachings in memorable form. They wrote letters.  They sang songs.   They prayed.  One of them wrote an extraordinary poem based on holy visions.  There was no apparent organization to any of this; it was all more or less spontaneous and, to the eye of the casual observer, haphazard.  Over the course of about fifty years, these writings added up to what would later be compiled by the followers of Jesus and designated ‘The New Testament.’”

“Three kinds of writing—eyewitness stories, personal letters, and a visionary poem—make up the book.  In the course of this writing and reading, collecting and arranging, with no one apparently in charge, the early Christians, whose lives were being changed and shaped by what they were reading, arrived at the conviction that there was, in fact, someone in charge—God’s Holy Spirit who was behind and in it all.  There was nothing accidental in any of this, nothing merely circumstantial.  They were bold to call what had been written ‘God’s Word,’ and trusted their lives to it.  They accepted its authority over their lives.  Most of its readers since have been similarly convinced.”—Peterson

Peterson seeks to bring the Greek language of the New Testament to our everyday lives’ thinking, using our language structure, so that we truly understand what was happening then and gain perspective and understanding of why Jesus came to earth to reconcile us to God.  Jesus cleared the path, The Way, the Only Way, to God so we could establish our individual relationship with God.  It’s personal and it’s forever! 

Now, let’s talk about the line of David from whom Jesus is born.  Matthew, a devout Jew, wants us to know the lineage of the Messiah.  He begins there…

Matthew 1, The Message

The family tree of Jesus Christ, David’s son, Abraham’s son:

^2-6 Abraham had Isaac,

Isaac had Jacob,

Jacob had Judah and his brothers,

Judah had Perez and Zerah (the mother was Tamar),

Perez had Hezron,

Hezron had Aram,

Aram had Amminadab,

Amminadab had Nahshon,

Nahshon had Salmon,

Salmon had Boaz (his mother was Rahab),

Boaz had Obed (Ruth was the mother),

Obed had Jesse,

Jesse had David,

and David became king.

^6-11 David had Solomon (Uriah’s wife was the mother),

Solomon had Rehoboam,

Rehoboam had Abijah,

Abijah had Asa,

Asa had Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat had Joram,

Joram had Uzziah,

Uzziah had Jotham,

Jotham had Ahaz,

Ahaz had Hezekiah,

Hezekiah had Manasseh,

Manasseh had Amon,

Amon had Josiah,

Josiah had Jehoiachin and his brothers,

and then the people were taken into the Babylonian exile.

^12-16 When the Babylonian exile ended,

Jeconiah had Shealtiel,

Shealtiel had Zerubbabel,

Zerubbabel had Abiud,

Abiud had Eliakim,

Eliakim had Azor,

Azor had Zadok,

Zadok had Achim,

Achim had Eliud,

Eliud had Eleazar,

Eleazar had Matthan,

Matthan had Jacob,

Jacob had Joseph, Mary’s husband,

the Mary who gave birth to Jesus,

the Jesus who was called Christ.

¹⁷ There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David,

another fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile,

and yet another fourteen from the Babylonian exile to Christ.

The Birth of Jesus

^18-19 The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they enjoyed their wedding night, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.

^20-23 While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic revelation to full term:

Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son;
They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God is with us”).

^24-25 Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby. He named the baby Jesus.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Eugene Peterson…Intro to Matthew;

“The story of Jesus doesn’t begin with Jesus.  God had been at work for a long time.  Salvation, which is the main business of Jesus, is an old business.  Jesus is the coming together in final form of themes and energies and movements that had been set in motion before the foundation of the world.”

“Matthew opens the New Testament by setting the local story of Jesus in its world historical context.  He makes sure that as we read his account of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we see the connections with everything that has gone before.  ‘Fulfilled’ is one of Matthew characteristic verbs: such and such happened ‘that it might be fulfilled.’  Jesus is unique, but he is not odd.”

“Better yet, Matthew tells the story in such a way that not only is everything previous to us completed in Jesus; we are completed in Jesus.  Every day we wake up in the middle of something that is already going on, that has been going on for a long time: genealogy and geology, history and culture, the cosmos—God.   We are neither accidental nor incidental to the story.  We get orientation, briefing, background reassurance.”

“Matthew provides the comprehensive context by which we see all God’s creation and salvation completed in Jesus, and all the parts of our lives—work, family, friends, memories, dreams—also complete in Jesus.  Lacking such a context, we are in danger of seeing Jesus as a mere diversion from the concerns announced in media.  Nothing could be further from the truth.” –Peterson

Yes, it’s personal.

Lord,

Thank for allowing us to study, to dive deeper still into your Word along with what you have led others who know you who talk about you more and more!  I could talk about you all day long.  I love to learn more.  Give us wisdom, insight and understanding so that your message in us is spoken through us with clarity as we talk about you more and more and more…

In Jesus Name, For Your Glory, Amen!