Monday, February 2, 2009

Today's Passage: Matthew 1

Most of us are familiar with the story depicted in verses 18-25 of Matthew1, especially with Christmas being only a month ago. So God led me to concentrate on verses 1-17 and to explore why Matthew would choose to begin his depiction of the gospel with these verses.

Now if you are like me you might have found the first 17 verses of Matthew uninteresting and even kind of disorienting... it's a long list of names. Because of my lack of understanding, I took some time and attempted to find as many of the names mentioned in these verses in the Old Testament as I could. After discovering quite a few I realized that there were actually two purposes Matthew had in beginning his contribution to the Bible in this way.

First, he was obviously proving the connection between Jesus and David through his lineage tracing back to Abraham. This was a crucial point in making the claim that Jesus was the Son of God that had been prophesized about throughout the Old Testament.

The second purpose however, reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows, LOST. If you have seen an episode it always begins the same way: The announcer says" Previously on LOST..." followed by a quick 60 second recap of important things you need to know before you continue with the story. That is exactly what these verses are... a recap of the story so far. From Abraham and his son Isaac that he almost sacrificed to God; to David and his son Solomon; to Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar capturing and enslaving the people of Jerusalem with their King Jehoiachin. I realized that all of these names have a story behind them, but even more importantly they had a specific place in God's plan for bringing a Savior to His people.

For me it is extremely exciting and comforting to know that all of us, no matter how small we might think we are, have a part in God's plan. His plan has always been to draw all of mankind closer to Him... from beginning, to Jesus, to now and forever.

Praise be to Him whose plan has and will always come true!