THE PLAN
Every Monday I will post the reading for the week ahead. It will be about 10 chapters a week. You might want to read a chapter or two a day, and catch up at weekends. If there is a verse that especially spoke to you, a question that you have, or a thought that struck you, please share it with your fellow travellers by making a comment.
8 comments:
2:5,15,17,23. Notice the drum Matthew is beating. Jesus has come to fulfil what The Lord had said through the prophets.
Does anyone have any idea what chp5v19 means? Conscious that I don't observe the commandment of the sabbath and other OT laws...
I think that 5:17 sets up the issue. Jesus is not scrapping the Law or the Prophets. He doesn't want anyone to misunderstand him to be, as it were, relaxing God's requirements. Rather, he is fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Far from relaxing the requirements he is intensifying them, he is bringing about their true goal. So when we think about Sabbath, thinking "Jesus has come, so we can bin the Sabbath laws" is a false move. The question is, "Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath laws - he has brought them to their goal - so what does it mean for me to live out the goal of those laws as a follow of Jesus."
Re-reading the sermon on the mount was very sobering. I had forgotten how Jesus shows us how high the bar is set. There can’t be a man alive who can read verses like 5:21-22 (on anger) or 5:27-30 (on lust) without feeling cornered. So I was very glad to have read these chapters in the same sweep as 1:21! (“You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”)
Jesus teaches them to address God as “Our Father” (6:9). How new is that for Jews - does it have precedent in the Old Testament?
I'm not sure it does have a precedent? If that's right, must have been a pretty big thing for the guys listening in, which we just take for granted now!
Really enjoyed chapter 1 seeing how the whole Bible fits together! The stuff in v23 from Isaiah ch7 and then all the Genesis people in v2-3 that we've just read about (including a special mention for Tamar from that weird story in Gen38) and then the kings we've been hearing about in Isaiah too in v9. All these messed up people part of Jesus' family tree...
Having been tripped up by Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38, and having spent some time wondering how it fitted into the story, Matthew 1:3 is making me marvel. Out of the muddle and mess of the ancients, the Messiah is born.
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