Joseph doesn’t get many lines in Scripture, but his actions speak volumes. When the angel told him to take Mary as his wife despite her mysterious pregnancy, Joseph obeyed. When the angel told him what to name the child, Joseph obeyed. When circumstances...
Twice in this passage, Matthew emphasizes that Mary’s pregnancy was from the Holy Spirit. This isn’t just a statement about the virgin birth; it’s a revelation about the Spirit’s mission. The Holy Spirit brought Jesus into the world. The Spirit...
Emmanuel. God with us. Not God far away. Not God sending a message. Not God dispatching a representative. God Himself, present with His people in the most intimate way imaginable – becoming one of us. Think about what this means. The God who spoke galaxies into...
If you had been a first-century Jew waiting for the Messiah, what would you have expected Him to save you from? The answer is obvious: Rome. For generations, God’s people had lived under foreign oppression – first Egypt, then Babylon, now Rome. They longed...
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet famously asks, “What’s in a name?” suggesting that names don’t really matter. But in the biblical world, names were never arbitrary labels pulled from a baby book. They were declarations of...
