Day 3 - The One Year Adventure with the God of Your Story

Genesis 5:1–7:24; Matthew 3:7–4:11; Psalm 3:1-8; Proverbs 1:10-19

IN OUR FIRST few days, we’ve gained a context for the stories that are beginning to unfold before us. Yesterday, we learned of humankind’s fall from perfection and complete intimacy with God. Murder and death entered the human story—things we were never intended to endure.

Today in Genesis, we jumped a millennium into the future and saw the devastating results. Humankind had become so corrupt that they acted as animals and had only evil intentions. God regretted creating them. To see us so far from our created state of perfection and intimacy grieved His heart (Genesis 6:5-6). But there was one righteous man: Noah. And we saw a redemptive thread weaving its way into the story as a reset of the earth came by way of a great flood.

Since we took a moment a couple of days ago to orient ourselves to the book of Genesis, we should also consider the first book of the New Testament, and the first of a grouping of four books known as the Gospels: Matthew.

When Matthew became a disciple of Jesus, he left his prosperous former life altogether. He had to. He had previously been a tax collector and was considered a betrayer of his people, the Jews.

Although Matthew appears first in the New Testament, it is likely the second Gospel chronologically, with Mark being first (we’ll get to that later). Matthew was written in Greek but was originally intended for a Jewish audience. We know this because it quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) more than any other Gospel and reveals Jesus as the Hebrew Messiah by demonstrating the ways in which Jesus fulfilled Hebrew messianic prophecies.

In today’s New Testament reading, we followed Jesus as He went into the wilderness, where Satan challenged Him. While in the wilderness, the evil one tempted Jesus with an invitation to abort his mission and inherit the earth the easy way. All Jesus needed to do was bow to him. Jesus was the first perfect person to walk on the earth since Adam, and Satan put the same type of humanity-twisting temptation before him. But Jesus made a different choice: He rebuked the evil one and sent him away.

We confront similar temptations every day. And we either respond to them like Adam and Eve—or like Jesus. Each of us daily choose whether to eat of forbidden fruit or to know God by intimately walking with Him in every thought, word, and deed. How will you choose today?

WORSHIP:

You, O LORD, are a shield around me; you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.