“Now the Lord said
to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the
land that I will show you. And I will
make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so
that you will be a blessing. I will
bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you
all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” –Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV). “So all the generations from Abraham to David
were fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon fourteen
generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”
–Matthew 1:17
(ESV).
How could the call of a nomad named
Abram in the land of Ur of the Chaldeans have such a world-wide significance
and such heavenly meaning? Yet in the
providence and plan of Almighty God lay the very promise of redemption and
restoration that would touch not only the nation God established through
Abraham but subsequently the whole world.
In anticipation of the coming of Messiah King, we will look at some of
the Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in the birth of Jesus of
Nazareth.
Actually the plan in the heart of God
began even before the call of Abram. Go
back to the very first account of the creation and fall of mankind in the
Garden of Eden. In the wrong choices of
Adam and Eve, they broke the fellowship that existed between God and
mankind. From that time forward the
Bible is our record of how God continued to love the height of His creation and
provide a way of restoring fellowship.
Even though excessive sin brought on major destruction by flood at the time
of Noah, a remnant was saved and given a new covenant (see account in Genesis
9). With the call of Abram and his being
set apart for specific leadership, God again set in motion His plan for
blessing all the nations of earth. In
our means of reckoning time and in our inability to see the complete picture of
God’s purpose and plan, we may sometimes miss the mark, fail to see how God was
working His purpose out. In the call of
Abram one was significantly set apart for a larger and inclusive purpose of God.
In Matthew’s gospel, we have an earthly
genealogy of Jesus Christ that goes back to Abraham. In writing specifically to a Jewish audience,
Matthew’s readers would give great heed to genealogical lineage. Even today, there is a strong bent toward
tracing family lineages. Many want to
know from whom they descended, where their family roots began. I, for one, am
among those who have studied genealogy and find pleasure in tracing ancestral
records. Matthew’s record shows that the
birth of Jesus was a definite part of history, in the plans of God back to the
time of their Father Abraham (Luke’s account goes even farther back, even to
Adam and to God Himself [see Luke 3:23-38]).
But not only was the birth of Jesus at a time and place in history, the
genealogy of Jesus reveals and illustrates God’s wonderful grace to
mankind. It was unusual to find the
names of women listed in Jewish genealogies, but Matthew included Tamar, Rahab,
Ruth and Bathsheba. A study of their
lives and times helps us to understand how God placed in Jesus’ family line persons
who might have been rejected due to sinful associations or non-Jewish
birth. But the important role they
played in the history of God’s provision of a Messiah is extremely
significant. Likewise, God’s provision
of Joseph as the legal guardian of the earthly Son of God was providential to
give sequential lineage back to David, back to Abraham: “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called
Christ” (Matthew 1:16).
Prayer:
From everlasting to everlasting God is God. Thank You for visiting earth as Christ the
Messiah, breaking apart the roll of finite history, to visit Your grace and
mercy upon us. Your plan was perfect
from the beginning. In man’s failure,
You provided a way. Praise be to
God! Amen.
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