Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song And Praise

I love the gospel of Matthew.  Matthew was written to communicate the Jesus story to early Jewish Christians and, let me tell you, the writer of this gospel really knew how to tell a story!  Beginning with Chapter one, verse one, we hear Jesus called “The Messiah.”  The writer of Matthew begins by setting us up for something amazing, something big, something life changing and something surprising by naming Jesus as the Messiah.  There had been many would-be messiahs popping up around that time in history, as there have been throughout history.  Most of them got the people hyped up about the political scene and Roman oppression.  There had been great expectation among Jewish people that a messiah would soon arrive, a messiah who would use military might and power to free them from Roman oppression.  So, Matthew’s version of the Jesus story begins by latching on to that expectation and announcing Jesus as the long promised, awaited Messiah.  The writer of Matthew continues to build on that expectation by linkin