Monday December 22, 2014

Focus on Christmas

 Read Matthew 1:1-17

Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy which in our day is considered boring and largely irrelevant. Our general tendency is to skip genealogies and move to the more interesting bits afterwards.

But having read through the genealogy (if you skipped it and moved straight to the reading notes, put the notes down and wade through it. You will be blessed) we can learn many things.

So what can we learn from this genealogy? More than I can fit into one or two pages of reading notes. The lineage beings by calling Jesus the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. God made great promises to both of these two OT figures. By linking these OT greats to Jesus we are being told that Christmas is more than just a coming of God into the world, as great as that is. Christmas is the fulfilment (or at least the start of the fulfilment) of all the promises of God.  The great promise to Abraham (see Genesis 12:1-3) to bring blessing to all the families of the earth and the great promise to King David to have a descendant to rule over his throne for all eternity is about to be fulfilled in this little baby born in a stable.

Secondly, the generation is commented upon in verse 17.

Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.

While much could be said about the number 14, notice who comes after both sets of 14 generations. It’s not Jesus but Christ, or in Hebrew, Messiah. Messiah is a word in Hebrew that means anointed one. It speaks of a special “person” who has a unique relationship to God and according to Psalm 2 is the Son of God who will destroy the enemies of God. He is the one we are to kiss (ie give the kiss of peace to) and He is the one we are to find refuge in from the anger of the Lord.

Christmas is far more than presents and trees and lunches/dinners with family.

Christmas is the time we celebrate the coming of God’s Messiah into our world  to fulfil all of God’s promises. That’s why we need Christ in Christmas!

Prayer:

Ask the Lord to give you and your church the right perspective on Christmas. Pray that God would bless those who have very little this Christmas.