Contents:
• Why no Messiah could possibly come today.
• Why does it appear there are contradictions between Matthew’s account and Luke’s account of Jesus’s Genealogy?
• Does God speak to you in your dreams?
• How Jesus saves his people from their sins.

The text of Matthew chapter one is available HERE. If you’ve never read it before, I encourage you to read it first before reading this commentary.

Verse one states that Jesus Christ is the son of David, and the son of Abraham. This, of course, fulfilled prophecy that the Messiah would be from the line of David. And this is also the reason why it is not possible for “the messiah” to come today. Many of the Jewish people are still looking for the coming messiah. However, because the Jewish people were scattered across the globe for more than a thousand years up until the 20th century and then nearly 40% of the world’s Jewish population was wiped out in the Holocaust, the Jewish people today have lost the ability to trace their ancestry back to the original 12 tribes of Israel. This means that no person claiming to be the messiah today could fulfill the prophecy of being from the line of David because no Jewish person today knows their ancestry that far back. Jesus Christ is the only person in human history who fulfills all the prophecies about a coming Messiah.

Verses two through sixteen identify the names of each person in Jesus’s genealogy from Abraham all the way to Joseph and Mary. I believe it would be a fascinating topical Bible study to specifically seek out where each of these people appear in the Bible and to read their stories one right after another, having at the forefront of our mind that this is Jesus’s “great, great, great, great grandfather”, or “great, great, grandmother”. These thoughts really draw to mind the fact that Jesus was fully man, and yet simultaneously fully God.

Verse seventeen summaries the genealogy emphasizing that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham and David.

When I read the genealogy of Jesus, I’m reminded that the accounts in Matthew and Luke differ. One might be inclined to conclude there is some sort of error, however, we must recall what is written in 2 Timothy chapter 3 in which it states, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

If we are to operate our lives in faith, we can not go around nit-picking the Word of God claiming this or that is wrong. The moment you conclude that something in the Bible is an error, then any time you come across something you don’t like, you’ll be inclined to label it an error.

Some people have referred to the differences in these two accounts of Jesus’s genealogy as being a contradiction. However, anytime we see something in scripture that appears to be a contradiction we must conclude that the error must be our own and not that of God’s. We can also be rest assured that over the past few hundred years, scholars, more brilliant than ourselves have already examined and addressed these concerns. Therefore, anytime we see what appears to be a contradiction in the Bible, all we need to do is a brief online search to read about how others have already addressed, researched and resolved the issue. But even if one can not find a reasonable explanation online, one can still maintain that the error is in their own lack of understanding. They can then move on from it, knowing they’ll come back to it at some future time. Not having an immediate answer should not hinder one’s faith. The Christian walk covers an entire lifetime. You don’t need to have all the answers today.

Verses eighteen through twenty-five discuss the pregnancy of Mary, and Joseph’s reaction. In verse twenty an angel of the lord appears to Joseph in his dream. It should be noted that throughout the text of the Bible, God spoke to 14 different people through their dreams. It’s a valid form of communication for God and we would do well to recognize the possibility that God could speak to us through our dreams as well.

Today, it’s estimated that 1 out every 10 Muslims has had a dream about Jesus. Why? I suspect that in locations where few missionaries travel, Jesus goes there himself. I knew a Muslim who told me that he had a dream in which he was walking through a middle eastern city and came to a mosque. There were dozens of people outside, all of them on their knees with their faces to the ground. But none of them were facing east, as their religious tradition insists. Instead they were all facing toward a man standing in the doorway of the mosque. He was dressed in a robe that was whiter than snow. When the man having the dream, approached the man in the doorway and asked “who are you”, the man answered, “I am Jesus”. Then the man dreaming woke up. He fully understood what the dream meant. He knew that Jesus was God. That very day he gave his life to Christ.

In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. (Acts 2:17)

If you have an extremely vivid dream that is filled with memorable details, the first thing to do after you wake up is to write it down and then pray to the lord Jesus, asking if perhaps the dream was from Him, and if so, what it meant. However, one should be cautious and recognize that our minds are constantly stirred up throughout the night with images from our previous day’s events as well as our worries and concerns. Not every dream is from the Lord. Most probably are not.

In verse 20 the angel is instructing Joseph that he is to give the child the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Sin is what separates us from God. So how do we become reunited with God unto salvation; allowing us to enter into the Kingdom of heaven? It is through Jesus Christ. As we continue this commentary through the book of Matthew and the New Testament, we’re going to see exactly how it is that Jesus saves us, and how we are able to go to heaven.