Daily Blast - The Book of Matthew: Chapter 1
Scripture
“Then after her baby is born, name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
Reflection
Today we start our new series which is going to be looking at the book of Matthew. Matthew is the first book in the New Testament and is written by Matthew who was one of the 12 that followed Jesus closely.
The book of Matthew starts with a genealogy of the line of Jesus (verses 1 to 17). He runs through from Abraham all the way to Jesus. There are exactly 14 generations between Abraham and King David and then a further 14 generations between King David and Jesus. I think there is always something special at looking at these lists of names and their sons and the list goes on and on and even though we are not going to look at this section of chapter 1 today, I would definitely encourage you to take a look.
The second part of Matthew chapter 1 (verses 18 to 25) tells a very brief version of the beginning of the story of the birth of Jesus and then how Joseph came to accept Jesus as his son even though Jesus was really the Son of God. What I like about the book of Matthew is that Matthew is in their straight away with recognising the significance of the arrival of Jesus. We all know the story of Jesus’ birth rather well but Matthew is straight in there with recognising that actually, the birth of Jesus and what He shall be called was already in place as Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 7:14.
One of my favourite things about the book of Matthew is that Matthew, the author, sold out to follow Jesus. When I spoke at church earlier this year I mentioned how very often when we look at the disciples we quite quickly jump to the fishermen. After Jesus returned to heaven, the fishermen, if they had chosen to, would have still had their careers, they maybe would have needed a bit of practice to get rid of the rust but they could have gone back. Whereas in Matthew's case, he wouldn’t have had the freedom to have done that. As a tax collector for the Romans, when he left his job he was giving up his whole career to follow a man he had only recently met. Matthew took the skills he had learnt as a record keeper and tax collector to become a record keeper for the amazing things Jesus was going to do.
Challenge
Today I would like you to pray the following prayer.
“Heavenly Father, help me to follow you wholeheartedly. When challenges come my way I want to turn to you. Help me to trust You as Matthew trusted You as he stepped away from being a tax collector to become a follower of You. Amen”