These daily Advent studies are provided for your personal devotionals or for your daily family Advent devotionals during the evening meal. They are an excellent way to introduce daily Bible readings and discussions at the evening meal. Once begun during the Advent season the tradition can become a lifelong practice of your family. They seek to challenge both you and your children beyond the simplicity and often erroneous information provided in so called Advent calendars and children’s Christmas books. May you find it a blessing and may they be a starting point for your family in daily readings, discussions and meditations on the holy, eternal, inerrant written Word of God.
(T = True; F = False) 60_____ Although the Magi found their way to the baby Jesus in quite a miraculous way, there was nothing particularly miraculous about their return home.
61_____ The pagan Magi were the only people in the Christmas revelation to hear directly from God.
62_____ After Jesus’, Joseph and Mary remained in Bethlehem and set up housekeeping.
60F – (Although the Magi found their way to the baby Jesus in quite a miraculous way, there was nothing particularly miraculous about their return home.) Nothing could be further from the truth. In a mind boggling event recorded in Matthew 2:7 - 12, God personally intervenes by directing the Magi in a dream to ignore Herod’s orders and head home by another route. This type of revelation to a pagan is very rare. It had not occurred since the time of Daniel in Daniel 2:1 – 49 and before that one has to go all the way back to Joseph and Pharaoh (Genesis 41:15, 16 & 25) and even then both these kings needed a man of God’s choosing to interpret their dreams. This revelation however separates itself out from these two events in that it is divine revelation by God, to pagans without the need of interpretation by the people of God. One must go all the way back to the time of Abraham when in Genesis 20:3 God spoke directly to King Abimelech in a dream to find a similar occurrence in Scripture – that of god speaking directly to a pagan.
61 T – (The pagan Magi were the only people in the Christmas revelation to hear directly from God.) In Luke 1:11, Zacharias hears the news from an Angel, in verses 26 – 28, Mary receives word via the Angel Gabriel, in Matthew 1:18 – 20, Joseph gets his information in a dream from an Angel, in Luke 2:8 & 9, the shepherds are instructed by an Angel, in Matthew 2:2 & 3 Herod gets clued in, not by the scribes and priests but by leaders of a pagan cult, this is only later confirmed by the scribes and priests it is only the leaders of this pagan cult who hear directly from God in a dream (Matthew 2:12).
62 T - Matthew 2:11 (After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary remained in Bethlehem and set up housekeeping.) By the time the Magi found Jesus, Mary and Joseph were no longer at the manger. They had evidently found a house to live in and had set up housekeeping. Jesus was living in a house, with His parents in Bethlehem.
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