Matthew Mondays

Today starts what hopefully will turn into a long and hallowed tradition, Matthew Mondays. From Hence forth, every Monday I will write on a passage from Matthew. Maybe I will go in order, maybe The Spirit will move me otherwise. I figure though why not talk about the best gospel [in my opinion atleast] on the worst day of the week.

Why not start at the Begining...

Matthew 1
It starts out kind of boring, or so it would have you think. It starts out with a family tree for Christ, which links him as a direct descendant of Abraham. Pretty neat. What is also important is that it fulfills on of the prophesies, in Isaiah 11:1 which talks about how "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." Notice how "Branch is capitalized....some foreshadowing perhaps? So that is why Matthew starts out how it does. Then we get into the very very very abbreviated story of the Birth of Christ. Though I would like to point out, that this particular telling of the story focuses a bit more on Joseph. Why is Joseph so important? Couldn't Mary just married someone else, or even do the whole single mother bit? Well Joseph, as stated in the first part of the chapter, is a direct descendant of David, so with no Joseph, no fulfilling of the Isaiah 11:1 prophesy...Kind of neat eh?