Matt 1:1-17 — The Genealogy of Jesus
Matt 1:18-25 — The Birth of Jesus Christ
Matt 2 — The Wise Men and Infancy of Jesus
Thoughts about serving others
This link includes a list of posts about Serving the Least, the Lost, and the Lonely.
My prayer is for you to join me on this journey. Subscribe to this blog below to get an email when a new post is available.
Let the Word evoke words. May your life encourage lives.
Reading through the genealogy of Jesus after this year’s intensive reading of the Old Testament is really interesting, the names are fresh in my mind and much more familiar now. Given the male-dominated culture at the time, it’s amazing that five women are included in this text: Tamar, Rahab (this time without the title, “prostitute”), Ruth, Bathsheba (inferred) and Mary. Ok, I’m a father of four daughters, so I think it’s cool that women are named in the genealogy of Jesus!
One name that jumped out from Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah was Zerubbabel (Matthew 1:12), a key leader in rebuilding Jerusalem after the exile. Verses 13-16 fill some of the gap between Old and New Testaments by identifying key fathers in the lineage of Joseph, “husband of Mary” (1:16), notably NOT the father of Jesus.
One of my favorite characters is Joseph. He’s a humble man of God who fulfilled his calling well, he “was faithful to the law” (1:19). He listened to the angel of the Lord who appealed to him in a dream and “when Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded” (1:24). The angel visited again and Joseph “got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt” (2:14) when it was apparent that Herod would kill the baby Jesus. When the time was right, the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in Egypt and Joseph “got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel” (2:21) and further listening to the Lord’s angel, “he went and lived in a town called Nazareth” (2:23). Joseph then disappears from Matthew’s narrative, but the sense we get is he was a good dad, one I long to learn from, humble and obedient. Yes, I want to be like Jesus, but I’m thankful for men like Joseph, husband of Mary, who did exactly as he was told. Something to be learned from that lesson!