Bible Lessons for the Little

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Duration: 6min
MAT. 1:1, 21-25
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AS soon as you open your Testament, you find that the first writing there is the Gospel according to St. Matthew. This was the first of the four gospels which was written.
After the Lord Jesus had died and had risen again, just before He went back to God, He told His disciples about a message which they must take for Him, and He told them to whom they were to take that message first. Look for the last chapter in the Gospel of Luke, vs. 47; there we see that a message was to be given in the name of Christ to “all nations”; but the first to hear it were to be the Jews, for the verse says, “beginning at Jerusalem.”
You know what it is to give a message “in the name” of another person. If your little brother was climbing up some dangerous place, and you were sent with a message to him, and you said, “Baby, mother says you are to come down,” that would be giving a message in mother’s name, and baby would know quite well that though the voice was yours, the words were mother’s. Just so the disciples, when their Master was no longer with them, were to give His message in His name. The Lord Jesus had come in His Father’s name, and given His message, and He said to His disciples, when He was going away, “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”
How wonderful that the story about the Lord Jesus, and about what He had done fox God His Father, and for men and women and children who had hearts like ours―hearts which only knew how to think wrong thoughts―should be told first in the street! of the city of Jerusalem!
Just think, dear children, only a few weeks before the day when Peter stood up and began to tell that story, the blessed Son of God, who had gone about doing good, healing and helping and saving, had been there. He had walked through those streets, a man of sorrows, the cross upon which He was to be nailed laid upon Him, and the crown of thorns about His head. As he went, people followed Him, crying out, “Not this man!” others said, “Away with Him!” and others, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”
All this had been done in Jerusalem, that place which was called the “holy city,” and yet it was there that the gospel was first to be preached. Almost the last word that the Lord Jesus said to His disciples was that they were to preach in His name “repentance and remission of sins,” first there, to those very people, for it was for them too that He had suffered and died.
How could this be?
It could only be, my child, because of what you can read in your Testament, that little verse which you have often heard, even if you do not know where to find it, “God is Love.”
I know you love your father and mother; now suppose you saw some people treating them very cruelly, would you not hate them. For every hard look and wicked word and cruel blow they gave to those who are so dear to you?
God loved His Son, the Lord Jesus, more than we can ever think―He had loved Him always; and God knew all that would be done to His Son, the Lord Jesus, in this world; yet, after He had seen Him suffer, after He had seen every look of hatred, and heard every wicked word, and known all the dreadful way in which His Son was treated here, the words which the Lord Jesus spoke about God were still true: God had “so loved the world”―that place full of people who could treat His Son like that―so loved the world that He gave Him up to suffer it all, and has only thoughts of love for those who “with wicked hands “took Him and” nailed Him to a cross of wood.”
As it was to the Jews at Jerusalem that the messengers of Christ were first sent, so it was for Jews first―not at Jerusalem only, but in all countries―that Matthew wrote his gospel. The Gospel according to St. Matthew begins by telling us that Jesus Christ was “the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” When a Jew read this it would mean a great deal more to him than it does to you. Even a Jewish child would think at once of how David was the first king whom God chose to rule over His people Israel. As he read the words “Son of Abraham,” he would stop and think―for those two names “Son of Abraham, Son of David” were the names given to Him of whose coming the prophets had spoken, whom the Jews called “Messiah,” or “Anointed.”
You may find two verses in the Gospel of John from which we see that the Jews, even after He had come, were still looking for their “Messiah.” Look at ch. 1, vs. 41, and ch. 4, vs. 25. The words “Christ” and “Messiah” both mean the same― “the Anointed.” So the very beginning of the Gospel by Matthew would show a Jew that the Messiah, of whom the prophets had spoken, had indeed come.
But, as we read the account of the birth of Christ, we find that God Himself gave Him a name, for it was said to Joseph, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” The name Jesus means “Jehovah the Saviour.”
In vs. 23 we find one other name, and the meaning of that wonderful name is explained. It was a name which God had taught His prophet Isaiah to write many hundreds of years before His Son was born into this world: “Emmanuel―God with us.”
Ask God Himself to teach you to understand these wonderful names which He gave His Son, for no one can understand them in any other way. We may call a child a name and not think much about the meaning, but those names which God gave His Son mean exactly what He was here in this world, and what He is now. He was “God with us” while here; He is the “Saviour” still, for all who come to Him trusting it that blessed name.