{"id":9923,"date":"2021-10-04T06:37:15","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T11:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-matthew-2\/"},"modified":"2021-10-02T13:00:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T18:00:23","slug":"devotional-on-matthew-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-matthew-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Matthew"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2014 – Arches National Park, Utah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Church of the Nazarene<\/p>\n

Matthew 2: He shall be called a Nazarene<\/p>\n

I like to think about the little mysteries of the Bible and Matthew\u2019s comment that Joseph\u2019s moving his family to the town of Nazareth, thus making Jesus a \u201cNazarene\u201d is a fulfillment of prophecy is one such mystery. There\u2019s no record of such a prophecy being stated, yet Matthew seems quite confident that pointing his readers to this is yet another proof of the Messiah-ship of Jesus. I\u2019ve found a couple of explanations to this. Some people think it has to do with the similarity of \u201cNazarene\u201d to a Hebrew word meaning \u201cBranch.\u201d Use of that term is found in the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah. It has to do with the Messiah\u2019s being a descendent of David. The other idea has to do with the prophecies concerning the Messiah\u2019s being despised and rejected. The connection is that Nazareth is considered to be a backward, unimportant place that could only produce backward, unimportant people. There\u2019s a danger in overstating the standing (or lack there-of) of Nazareth here. It\u2019s not as though it’s thought of as a bad place. It\u2019s more of a \u201cno place\u201d than it\u2019s a \u201cbad place.\u201d From the point of view of the religious scholars of that day, Nazareth and a hundred other small towns don\u2019t qualify as a place worthy of consideration. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be overlooked and rejected…a sort of \u201cNazarene.\u201d Whatever the answer to this little riddle, Matthew thinks it should help people decide, along with the rest of his Gospel, that Jesus, is, indeed, the Messiah of God.<\/p>\n

Take Away: We don\u2019t have to solve every mystery of the Bible, sometimes they just add a bit of spice to our study of it.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Church of the Nazarene Matthew 2: He shall be called a Nazarene I like to think about the little mysteries of the Bible and Matthew\u2019s comment that Joseph\u2019s moving his family to the town of Nazareth, thus making Jesus a \u201cNazarene\u201d is a fulfillment of prophecy is one such mystery. There\u2019s no record of such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1518,1428],"tags":[1188,717,871],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15642,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9923\/revisions\/15642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}