Day 6

Grace, Grace (Matthew 1)

Christmas is behind us and we’re off and running into the new year. But I’m one of those who like to marinate in the Christmas message long after the season has passed. One morning I was enjoying devotion in Matthew chapter 1. If you’re an old school bible reader you know this chapter as the chapter of the begats. In the old King James Version this is Matthew chronicling the ancestors of Jesus. And it would go like this, And so and so begat him, and so and so begat him, and so on and so forth. There’s a good 20 or so begats in the chapter. I heard one preacher say Matthew chapter 1 is the world’s first ancestry.com. Ha!

But the point is that Jesus really IS the promised Messiah. And Matthew is giving due diligence to explain that to his Jewish Christian readers who would’ve wanted to know. But a secondary lesson from the chapter is the illustration of grace woven throughout the lineage of Jesus. Even a perusal of Jesus’ ancestry will prove that His family tree was not perfect. There are some liars in there. There are some folks who had questionable occupations (one of them was a prostitute). There are winners and losers. Yet all of them were allowed to be a part of the redemptive narrative that God was telling in the world through the coming of Jesus. The point is this—Grace gets us in. Not our performance. 

If you’re not careful a season of fasting can easily become a season of performance. It can become a religious exercise as opposed to a relational one. It can become a rote exhibition of checking off boxes instead of what it is intended to be — a deepening realization that you are more sinful that you ever did realize yet more loved than you could ever imagine. My prayer for you is that as you fast and ‘steal away’ to Jesus that your heart is being ever softened by the fact that in Christ your sins are washed away and your soul is set free. O for grace to trust Him more!

Keep Going

Ricky