Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Listen to the Word

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). (Matthew 1:22-23)

We will spend the weeks leading up to Easter on a journey with the Messiah through the Gospel of Matthew. Today’s verse contains a key word for Matthew: “fulfill.” He used that word so much that if he had typed his Gospel on an i-phone, the whole word would pop up if he just entered the letter “f.” Matthew wants us to realize that Jesus is the continuation and the completion of all that God had been doing since the beginning of time. All of the Old Testament’s miracles and prophetic messages and moral exhortations were building to a crescendo in the arrival of Jesus. God intended all along to send Jesus to us. He intended all along for his arrival to be both extraordinary and ordinary (miraculously conceived, yet born like you and I were). He intended all along for Jesus to come as God with us.

Live the Word

Ask God to help you see Jesus as central: central to God’s work in all of history, and central to your own life.