The Old Testament
(Unwrapped: the Truth about Christmas #03)
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For many people, when they read the accounts of Jesus’s birth in the Bible, their first reaction may be how strange they are.
Jesus was not born in the modern western world. He was born in Israel, two thousand years ago. The background to his life was the Jewish world of the Old Testament.
So his life is set in a web of patterns of what God had done in the past, and prophecies about what he will do in the future. It is part of a story that goes back to the great king, David, the great deliverer, Moses, and the founding fathers of the nation – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus's first followers were sure that the same God who had spoken and acted in the Old Testament was now speaking and acting in Jesus.
So they announced Jesus as the one who fulfils the patterns and prophecies of the Old Testament – he was the promised Messiah, and the Son of David.
The accounts of Jesus’s birth make much more sense when we look at them against the background of the Jewish world and the Old Testament, and the belief that God had spoken and acted in history.
To find out more read Matthew 1:18-2:18
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