The Word This Week
Matt 3:1…
The 400-year silence between the Old and New Testaments is broken by a single word: “Repent!”
Why was this the word of God’s choosing, through His chosen man? The answer is the necessity of it, as much as men – especially religious men – may try to deny it. (Even to this day.)
All men must repent. Even religious men.
And so, God sends yet another prophet, whose very existence and message had been prophesied to once again speak to the children of God about their mission to the world.
As defiant as the Jewish people had been to God, first through idolatry, and then through legalism, you might think God would introduce His new message to a new people – perhaps a different culture which had never disabused the privileges God had provided the way the Jewish culture had.
But God had promised He was not finished with the Jews, and that they would be His chosen people forever – and God ALWAYS keeps His promises.
To an aged couple, of the tribe of Levi, God had provided a supernaturally natural birth of His prophet, sent specifically to introduce the Jews and then the whole world to His own Son, Jesus.
While we have studied and learned of the supernatural events announcing Jesus’ birth, 30 years have now passed, and those events have faded into an obscurity. This would now require a firebrand to remind the people the age in which they live is God’s time to bring His Son into His ministry to save the world from sin.
John the Baptist stepped away from Jewish traditional religious practice and ritual to announce more was required of mankind than dead religion. This must be repented of. The road to God was now headed toward relationship, and that relationship would be conducted in the realm of the heart, which must begin with repentance.
Pastor Bill
The 400-year silence between the Old and New Testaments is broken by a single word: “Repent!”
Why was this the word of God’s choosing, through His chosen man? The answer is the necessity of it, as much as men – especially religious men – may try to deny it. (Even to this day.)
All men must repent. Even religious men.
And so, God sends yet another prophet, whose very existence and message had been prophesied to once again speak to the children of God about their mission to the world.
As defiant as the Jewish people had been to God, first through idolatry, and then through legalism, you might think God would introduce His new message to a new people – perhaps a different culture which had never disabused the privileges God had provided the way the Jewish culture had.
But God had promised He was not finished with the Jews, and that they would be His chosen people forever – and God ALWAYS keeps His promises.
To an aged couple, of the tribe of Levi, God had provided a supernaturally natural birth of His prophet, sent specifically to introduce the Jews and then the whole world to His own Son, Jesus.
While we have studied and learned of the supernatural events announcing Jesus’ birth, 30 years have now passed, and those events have faded into an obscurity. This would now require a firebrand to remind the people the age in which they live is God’s time to bring His Son into His ministry to save the world from sin.
John the Baptist stepped away from Jewish traditional religious practice and ritual to announce more was required of mankind than dead religion. This must be repented of. The road to God was now headed toward relationship, and that relationship would be conducted in the realm of the heart, which must begin with repentance.
Pastor Bill