Hi Folks,
I hope you are having a great week!!! The below devots. are some great ones for the Christmas season.
The first devot. below brought to mind a conversation I had via phone with my pastor this past weekend. I was hosting a zoom movie for some of the teen girls I mentor and I was showing "The Nativity Story" from 2016. I was going through the film and researching details so I could give the girls some in depth background on the Christmas story they may not have thought of.
I was asking my pastor exactly where do we find some of the Old Testament prophecies that predicted Christ's birth and how many years were they prophesied before they came to pass?
~Numbers 24:17 and Isaiah 9:6-7 predicted Christ's birth (the passage in Numbers was written 1,4000 years before Christ's birth)
~Micah 5:2 predicted Christ's birth and the exact town He would be born in.
~Isaiah 7:14 predicted that specifically a virgin would would birth to the long awaited Messiah (Savior) (this was prophesied 750 years before Christ's birth)
If you read through Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2, you will find words like "as it is written" (Luke 2:23) to give credit to the fact that the words or incidents that just occurred were spoken of in the Old Testament and were now coming to pass.
As I thought of this on Saturday, I just sat back and thought, "Wow, here we have prophecies of Jesus, God Himself, coming to earth for us down to the exact town He would be born. God made sure it was recorded so that when it happened, we would see The Truth and know that God keeps His Word! Wow!!"
I hope the devots. below are a big blessing to your weekend/week ahead and that it refreshes your mind on the Christmas story.
As a thought, consider reading through Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2 through this season (on your own or as a family), maybe as bedtime reading. I plan to do the same with a pencil and sticky notes in hand as I read carefully through the accounts.
Each writer God inspired to write the Christmas story had their own flare based on 2 factors-their profession and the audience they were writing to.
My pastor gave me these details of the 2 writers, the audience they were writing to and how they wished to present Jesus in these books, "Each of the Gospel writers present Jesus in a unique way to a unique audience so that taking the four together we truly get a better view of Jesus and how He revealed Himself to humanity. Matthew is writing primarily to a Jewish group of believers, so he presents Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One so they could understand His coming from Old Testament Scripture. Luke is writing primarily to a Greek audience, so He presents Jesus as the Son of Man (God's Son). Matthew 9:9 records that Matthew was a tax collector. In Mark and Luke he is listed as Levi, but the description and calling by Jesus indicate that Matthew & Levi were one and the same person."
I pray that the devots are a blessing to your weekend.
God bless you and yours!
(Devots. used to by permission. Take from https://www.dayspring.com)
Prophecy: Born in Bethlehem:
Jesus the Savior:
Names:
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