January - Reading 2

Todays Reading is:

Matthew 1:18-25

Acts 1:12-26

Psalm 2

Genesis 3-4

Sorry I missed yesterday, I was away. Joining you for today

I love our reading from Matthew today. I read it over this past month anticipating the birth of our Savior. I find it interesting how much of a part Jewish law plays in the New Testament. We see it right here as Joseph prepares to divorce his wife for adultery until the angel comes and stops him.

UNP
Adam

[ January 01, 2003, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: Clint Kritzer ]

Joseph and Mary were only betrothed at this point, so it would've been more like breaking an engagement, however, the Jewish people really took their betrothals very seriously. Breaking an engagement was looked down on. The only reason it was acceptable, is if one of them was found in fornication, in which case, they could possible be stoned!

I see God's wonderful hand of intervention here. Just imagine if Mary had been stoned!

Joseph had a great faith to follow the instructions of the angel to go ahead and take Mary for his wife. His obedience probably seemed very much out of character for a Jew who was used to obeying the letter of the law.

Joseph's act of forgiveness also shows us the beginnings of grace here. Before he knew what had happened to Mary, he loved her enough to forgive her and break the betrothal privately.

Great passage of Scripture!

I posted this on the Janurary 1st reading but it belong here... I lost my place!

YEA HATH GOD SAID!... To me this is the most powerful scripture in the bible in reference to the walk of the child of God. When we are tempted thus we can replied like he who loved us with an everlasting love did... IT IS WRITTEN... Brother Glen

Here are some thinking points about Genesis 3 and 4 --

Satan only has had to use ONE temptation through all time for all of us. It comes in two parts, as you will see with Eve --
"Hath God said...?" -- question God's Word
and then
"...think for yourself..."

Thinking for ourselves is a fine thing unless and until it directly goes against God's Word!

I often see on anti-Christian posts ad other writings that the temptation involved knowledge. That somehow the Bible and God are against knowledge. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What God did not want man to know was the knowledge of EVIL. Man already knew Good, for Adam and Eve communed with God. And God IS Good. So all that was left was evil...

Note, too, that human nature has never changed -- they started out passing the buck and we do it whenever we can get away with it today, too!

"The woman YOU gave me... " (it's really your fault, God...)

"Well, the serpent, he....." (hey, it's not my fault either!)

Note, too, that the promise of a Redeemer is made BEFORE God tells Adam and Eve about the consequences of their disobedience. In the same way, Revelation says Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation or creation of the world.

I have often wondered WHY Adam ate that fruit? Paul says, in the New Testament, that he was not deceived -- that it was the woman who was deceived. And so I have wondered if Adam was either so in love with Eve that he could not bear the thought of losing her or if Adam thought maybe HE was the one who was supposed to save his wife from the dreadful consequences of her sin. Those are the only two ideas I can come up with. Either way, he was putting his wife ahead of obedience to God, and that ruined everything.

Then came the first blood sacrifice -- done by God when He made clothing of animal skins for the couple. And they are banished from Eden.

A real case of eating yourself out of house and home, eh?...

Chapter 4 -- the first murder, mention of cities and technological accomplishments of the pre-flood civilization(s).

What was the "mark of Cain"? We have no idea, really.

Who did Cain marry? His sister. All the kids of Adam and Eve would have. There were no genetic difficulties preventing close marriages. Incest was not defined or prohibited until the time of Moses. In fact, close marriages were considered preferable for a long time. Abram married Sarai, his half sister. When Isaac was born and then of marriage age, the command of Abraham to his servant was to go back to the land where the rest of the family was and find Isaac a wife from within the family. Isaac's son, Jacob, did the same thing (except he came back with TWO wives and a couple of concubines!). So evidently, from the first, marrying into the family was important.

Were there enough people for cities that early? Look how long they lived (peek ahead to chapter 5). If a woman was only childbearing for a third of her life, that was still for about 300 years! One child every three years is a hundred kids! The first would be married and possibly a parent or even grandparent before the last one was born. It would have been a population explosion unheard of in our time!


Something I did not notice for a long time, though, had to do with murder. Look at the violent reaction to the first murder at the beginning of chapter 4. Now look at how casually Lamech boasts of killing a man or two for some kind of injury in verse 23.

This may be an indication of how evil the world had gotten and how fast it happened.


Last note is the last verse: "At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord." I've heard a lot of explanations about this. The only one that makes sense in context (and I would love some comment on this from those who have studied the Bible) is that the human race in general was now so far from God, that all they could do was 'call on His Name' instead of actually commune with Him.


Anyway, those are some things I have picked up from those two chapters before. I'd love to hear other comments.

Look at me, two days in and I'm already behind!

I completely forgot I was doing this! I promise I'll catch up tomorrow!

Somebody put a star by my name. I read today.

Something that cuts me to the quick every time I read it is though Joseph felt betrayed and smeared by scandal, he being a just man did NOT want to make a public example out of Mary.

1 Peter 4:8 And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

Isn't that beautiful?

Joseph truly loved his wife as Christ loved the church.

My thoughts on Genesis 3:

Though Adam and Eve did extenuate their transgressions in their confessions, there was nothing they said that was not a complete and full confession of wrongdoing. I think God's response to their "passing the buck" is interesting. When Adam said "the woman," God leaves Adam and speaks to the woman. And when the woman said, "The serpent," God leaves the woman and speaks to the serpent.

God held each one accountable not for his own sin only, but also for his part in the sins of the other.

The Israel of God:

Matthew 1:21 ...and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Now that Gentiles have been engrafted into the commonwealth of Israel, we can say, "Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given."

[ January 02, 2003, 10:01 PM: Message edited by: Aaron ]

So much said in Genesis 3-4 in so few verses! Mankind didn't just fall, they plummeted! Aside from the original sin of eating the fruit there is also: false witness (Gen 3:12 & 13), non-cheerful giving (Gen 4: 3), deceit and murder (Gen 3: 8), unrepentance (Gen 4: 13), polygamy (Gen 4: 19), and more murder (Gen 4: 23). Great, powerful story! Could verse 4:15 be an argument against capital punishment?

I also find it interesting in our reading from Acts that the disciples cast lots for choosing the substitute apostle. Does anyone know any of the basis in Jewish custom for this? I suppose it was a better device than coin flipping because God could have rejected either candidate. I had not noticed this before.

Good readings. Look forward to tomorrow's thread.

May God bless you.

- Clint

“The Fall” seems to be mostly about Satan and Eve. Why is Adam held responsible for the “original sin?”

Eve was deceived by Satan, who is the author of lies and the great deceiver. Ultimately, the responsibility for the Fall still rests with Adam, since he chose to disobey God apart from being deceived. God gave the command to Adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before creating Eve. Adam obviously passed the command on to Eve. Also, Adam was with her during the discourse with Satan and did not intervene; did not protect his help mate whom God had given him:

Genesis 3:6 (ESV)
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.[/b]

Genesis 3:15 (ESV)
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

“Your offspring” refers to children of the Devil (non-believers) (John 8:44), and “her offspring” refers to believers (Christ, a descendant of Eve, and those in Him).

“He shall bruise your head” means to destroy him, whereas “you shall bruise his heel” refers to causing Christ to suffer the cross.

Adam's non-protection of Eve was the beginning of problems for the husband and wife. God had intended, and still does, them to be "one flesh." But in "the curse:"

Genesis 3:16b (ESV)
16b Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

The man and the woman will face struggles in their own relationship. Sin has turned the harmonious system of God-ordained roles into distasteful struggles of self-will. Lifelong companions, husbands and wives, will need God’s help in getting along as a result. The woman’s desire will be to lord it over her husband, but the husband will rule by divine design (Eph. 5:22–25).

Genesis 3:21 (ESV)
21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

The first physical deaths should have been the man and his wife, but it was an animal—a shadow of the reality that God would someday kill a substitute to redeem sinners.

Genesis 3:22 (ESV)
22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”

This was to prevent fallen man from living forever. Since sin increasingly degenerates, it would be very bad for sin-laden man to live forever. This does not obviate the fact that in their pre-fallen condition, Adam and Eve were designed to live forever, as was all the living creation. God had not “created death.” Scientifically, we could say that God had not imposed the law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics) prior to the Fall.

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: John Wells ]

We read how the first couple ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and it was sin for them.

Normally we think of knowledge as being good, not sin! Why is knowledge a sin? Because of our nature.

If we do a thing and we are not aware it is wrong, we are innocent. No one thinks a baby that cries in the middle of the pastor's sermon is committing a sin - the baby doesn't know any better. I, on the other hand, would be judged more harshly for crying out like that.

And so when we gain knowledge that what we have been doing all along is harmful, we become responsible for changing our ways, when we weren't reponsible before. But what is the human reaction? To forget the new knowledge. To continue in the habits of old. And then it becomes sin for us.

Adam and Eve, in perfect innocence went around naked in the garden. They were given supernatural forced knowledge they were not yet ready to receive and falsely concluded, among other things, they were inappropriately naked.

That's another thing about beggining knowledge. It can be incomplete and misleading.

Would that our first parents had awaited the Divine Instructor to bring them into the fulness of knowledge in a balanced, fruitful manner.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Clint Kritzer:

I also find it interesting in our reading from Acts that the disciples cast lots for choosing the substitute apostle. Does anyone know any of the basis in Jewish custom for this? I suppose it was a better device than coin flipping because God could have rejected either candidate. I had not noticed this before.
- Clint<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Clint -- casting lots was considered a way of leaving things up to God or the gods. Lots were cast when Jonah was on the ship to find out who was responsible for the wrath in the storm.

The difference between those two occasions, though, is that on board the ship, all possibilities were considered. However when a new Apostle was to be selected, the other Apostles, using human wisdom, picked two for God to choose from. God's choice in the long run? Paul.

An additional note -- no one has mentioned Psalm 2, a wonderful Messianic prophecy. We see the fulfillment of verses 1 and 2 everyday -- the kings and nations conspire against God Himself and Christ, wanting to escape the concept of real good and real bad, real morality. A lot of this has been making the rounds in the 'general discussion' board, and it's really interesting to see what the atheists are saying. They will decide things for themselves, thank you very much anyway...

God's response, verses 4 and 5 tell us, is scorn and wrath. Not exactly a comfortable thought...

Verse 7 has always fascinated me: "He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father."

to 'become' means a change in status. Is this to David? Possibly, referring to David being born again through his faith in the Promise of God: the Anointed One who was to come.

But I have wondered if it might not be referring to a change in relationship between the first two members of the Trinity. The Psalm is Messianic. With the possible exception of this one verse, it is talking about the future Messiah all the way through. That's the first thought.

Then I think about Revelation 13:8 which says Christ is the Lamb slain from the FOUNDATION of the world -- which must mean He assumed the role of Son before the world was made. Yes?

Which might also mean that at the beginning point of time itself, there was a decided change in the relationship between the first two Persons of the Trinity. Before the shift, done for the love of man, they shared glory (John 17:5), but Jesus gave up that for our sakes (Phil 2:6 --&gt; ). Psalm 1 gives us foundational knowledge of the life of a believer. Does Psalm 2 give us foundational knowledge about the Person of Christ?

It seems only a few of us are really partaking of this chance to discuss here, but if someone can come back on this with their ideas, I'd love it!

John Wells:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>“Your offspring” refers to children of the Devil (non-believers) (John 8:44), and “her offspring” refers to believers (Christ, a descendant of Eve, and those in Him).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The version I use is the NASB and it says Seed instead of offspring. Through looking at commentaries and at Gal. 3:16, I thought Seed referred to Christ.

John

When I went back and re-read your postI saw you had Christ in parenthesis next to believers. Sorry - I'll be more careful next time to pay close attention to the wholepost. If I knew how to delete my post I would.

KayDee, your ability to admit a mistake and apologize for it is too rare to delete! Please, I hope you don't mind being a good example to everyone...

:razz:

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who is contributing to this forum. It is a great help to me in seeing some deeper meanings. I am going to try and do my daily reading before I read the thread, then read the thread, then go back and read the days verses again. In this way I hope to gain some extra insight. I doubt Ill be able to to this every day, but Ill try to do it as often as possible.

Bill

KayDee,

But I'm reading through in the ESV. I can only think in ESV!

Your oversight is quite all right. You have paid Helen for your sins (her razz)! Actually the NASB refers to both Satan and Eve's "seed." That is one reason why "seed" here takes a broader meaning of "those belonging to Satan," and "those belonging to Christ," since Satan didn't actually sire any children physically (although I've known a couple of people that make me wonder ).

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: John Wells ]

I have a couple of questions about Genesis 4:17-24 if someone could shed some light on it I would be appreciative.

Why was the lineage of Cain necessary here since only the line of Seth (Noah) survived the flood?

Why is specific info given (skills) about three of Cain's decendants (Gen. 4:20-22), if this line was no more?

Again I thank you in advance for any thoughts.

Cross reference links on the board

Read through the Bible forum:

Genesis 3-4, the first sin and after

Reading through my post of a year ago I discovered that I had left out a critical word or two which conveyed a meaning I did not intend . So I corrected it.

Not much to add except that the account of the Fall teaches us that a covenant of works will only end in death and a curse. Man, no matter how good his beginnings cannot maintain a covenant of works.

Sunday School lecture, 12/21/03 (continued)

The Birth of Jesus Christ

(Read ESV text 18-25) Matthew and Luke both attest to the virgin birth of Christ and do so in completely different ways, showing that the story is older than either Gospel. In Luke, the virgin birth expresses the divine power and grace. When Mary asks how her pregnancy is possible, the angel replies that with God, there is no impossibilities. In Matthew the focus is upon the Divine origin of Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. The name Emmanuel means "God with us." In verses 2-16, Matthew has shown us the human origin of Christ. He now shifts to the other side of Jesus' gene pool: God Himself!

The name Emmanuel is not repeated in the Gospel but a similar phrasing is found at the end of the text when Christ says, "Lo, I am with you always." Matthew does not attempt to explain the dual nature of Christ being fully God and fully man, he merely affirms it as fact.

Joseph comes into the story believing that Mary had been unfaithful to him. What else could the man assume? While the closest equivalent we have to the word betrothed is engaged, the two are not exactly synonyms. Betrothal was a legally binding arrangement between a couple that included most marital rights and privileges but did not include conjugal rights. Therefore, to break a betrothal would require divorce.

By the Law of Moses, an adulteress was to be stoned. The Romans had squelched capital punishment being inflicted by the religious leaders but a magistrate could have been called in to allow the execution. We are told, however, that Joseph was a righteous, or a just man. Being such, he could not allow himself to put Mary through the public shame of the accusation nor could he see himself remaining with a woman who was an adulteress. Therefore, he resolved to divorce the woman in a private manner. Only the intervention of the Holy Spirit could convince him to stay with Mary and follow through with the Chuppah, or wedding ceremony.

Matthew makes it clear that Mary and Joseph did not have any sexual relationship until after the birth of Christ. The notion of Mary's perpetual virginity is contrary to Scripture and has no relevance to this discussion.

The virgin birth also has no direct bearing on Christ's sinlessness. It was Christ's own personal decision when He was tempted in the wilderness to remain sinless. Sin is not genetically transmitted through human sperm. Such a notion is not to be found within the Scriptures. Sin is a personal, moral choice made by the individual. Just as salvation is not inherited but is bestowed upon the individual by Grace, so too is sin committed by the individual through his own human shortcomings.

The name "Jesus" was significant also for Matthew's audience. It was a fairly common name of the time and was taken from the Jewish name "Joshua." That name in turn means "Yahweh is salvation." The Jews had long believed that the Messiah, God's anointed, would come to deliver them from the oppressive rulers that had held them since the time of the exile. Instead, this birth would result in the God/man that would save men from their sins. Their salvation would not be physical and temporary. It would be spiritual and permanent.