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Day by Day Video
Broken Branches On The Family Tree
Clif Johnson
(Lifeword)
Aired on Dec 21, 2023
Show Day by Day
Dec 06, 2023
Duration:
00:03:57 Minutes
Views:
24
Christmas devotionals salvation

Salvation, redemption, restoration is not from man, it is not from within, it is from God.   ~~~ In all of my classes through bible college and seminary, and in all the preaching books I have read, capturing the audience’s attention was a crucial aspect of the introduction. Use a startling fact or a provocative statement or a funny story. Something engaging, heartwarming. Draw the audience in immediately. Apparently someone forgot to tell Matthew about this little rule of communication because he begins his gospel with a long, long genealogy. This genealogy is one, long astonishing fact. It links Jesus with the beloved King David of the Jews, and Father Abraham, father of the Jewish nation. And in Jewish culture, lineage was a big deal. You had to be able to prove your lineage in order to show that you could live in certain places since the land was divided up, at one time, according to tribes. And you certainly had to prove your lineage if you claimed to be a priest or a King. And that is exactly what Jesus claimed, and it was what Matthew had set out to prove. So his lineage needed to be proven in order for Jewish people who weren’t around to hear him teach and see his miracles, to consider him credible. When we look at the beginning of this genealogy we read the first two names of Abraham and Isaac. And what is incredible about these two names is that Abraham was so old when Isaac was born, that he and his wife should have been dead. In fact, the author of Hebrews says that Abraham was as good as dead. That is how old he was. He should not have been able to produce children, but he did! Why? Because God is faithful to his promises. And so from the beginning, we see that this kingdom is going to be a supernatural kingdom. That this promise is dependent on God doing something. So what we have here in the first parts of Matthew 1 is Matthew saying that Jesus is a legitimate King, in the line of Abraham and David, two pillars of the Jewish nation. And that His kingdom is supernatural. God was faithful to keep his unbelievable promise. God fulfills his promise of sending a revolutionary king and kingdom to save His people because they are people in need! And your name could be listed right along with them; your heritage; your family tree is just like this; this lineage is just a small snapshot of all of human history. So what do we learn from this genealogy? Israel had no reason to be proud of itself. Salvation, redemption, restoration is not from man, it is not from within, it is from God. David, the great King of Israel, who stole another man’s wife, and had the husband put to death, receives forgiveness, grace, and mercy from the hand of God. No one is able to save himself. All, even the best on the list, stood in dire need of redemption by the blood of the promised One.

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