DECEMBER 9 THIS ALL HAS HAPPENED TO FULFILL THE PROPHECY By Tom Davis Distinguished Professor, Word of Life Bible Institute, Retired
Today’s Passage: Matthew 1:22–23 and Isaiah 9:6–7
Matthew is a Jewish person writing specifically to his fellow Jews to convince them that Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the Jewish prophets’ predictions about the life and ministry of their Messiah. He refers to Isaiah who, 700 years before the birth of Christ, claimed that the Messiah would be virgin-born and that as a result, He would be “God with us” in human flesh. Isaiah refers to a “son being given,” a hint at the Messiah’s deity, and “unto us a child is born,” which hints at the Messiah’s humanity. We often imagine the Son of God as a spirit being, dwelling with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit for all eternity past until He became a human being for thirty-three and a half years. We acknowledge He was a helpless babe in arms, and that He went through normal human development: crawling, toddling, walking, puberty, and adulthood. We know He hungered as a human, grew weary as a human, sorrowed as a human, bled as a human, and died as a human. We are even firm in our belief that He resurrected as a human. But we sometimes stop there, not considering He also ascended into heaven as a human and that, 2,000 years later, there is a human in heaven, knowing our weaknesses and needs, and waiting to welcome us home! For all eternity, we will interact with a God who is in our form, human form. This reminds us of the child who is not comforted by his parent’s reminder that God is with him in his dark bedroom at night. Scared, he crawls into his parents’ bed with the explanation, “Yes, I know, but I need someone with skin on!” The Old Testament prophets foretold and the New Testament writers report that God took on human flesh so He might identify with us and then become a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. He is our God with skin on.
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