Matthew 1:24

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

From Background Notes [BN] for Dec 6th & 7th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

Our text commences with the matter-of-fact statement, "Now the [one] Jesus having been born in Bethlehem of Judea in [the] days of Herod the king…" We follow a literally rendering of the Greek text here which uses something called a "genitive absolute" to declare the previous completion of an event as a prerequisite for what follows.

The passage just prior to this one (Matthew 1:25) stated that Joseph had no marital relations with Mary until (or, during the time before) she gave birth to a son and called his name "Jesus". Matthew relies on one single verse to tell us that Jesus was born, and now, at the beginning of the Magi story, he places that birth at some time in the past as he presses forward with the Magi narrative. [BN,8]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am