Word Alive: How to Study Your Bible (Week 2)

You've read the Bible. You've heard the stories. But do you ever feel like you're missing something — like there's a deeper layer you can't quite reach on your own?

Maybe you've wondered:
➡️Why does Matthew's gospel feel so different from the others?
➡️What did it actually mean for Jesus to be called "King of the Jews" — and why did that phrase carry so much weight?
➡️How do I study the Bible in a way that actually changes how I live?

This week on Word Alive (Week 2), we're going deeper into Matthew 1–2 — and the picture of Jesus that emerges is stunning.

We'll uncover why Matthew includes the details around Jesus' birth that he does, what the Magi's arrival really reveals about God's plan, and how one Hebrew word — shema — might completely reframe what it means to "hear" from God.

You'll walk away with: ✅ A clearer picture of Jesus as King and Messiah ✅ Practical Bible study tools you can use this week (BibleHub Interlinear, Atlas, cross-referencing) ✅ A deeper understanding of the 400 years of silence — and why everything breaks open in Matthew 2 ✅ Free resources, handouts, and a reading plan — all in one place

📂 Grab your resources & handouts: https://higherpursuitministries.com/r...

Bring your Bible, a journal, and colored pencils if you have them. This is a study session, not just a sermon — come ready to dig in.

🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://streamyard.com/pal/d/54417800...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's so important that we understand who the audience is that the writer is writing to. Last week, I went into a deep dive on context, how reading the Bible in context is the number one rule. Before we start taking scriptures out of context, wanting to apply this promise and that promise to our situation, to our life, which is not always a bad thing. It's not a bad thing, actually. But if we don't understand the context first, it's sort of like trying to play jazz on a can't on a keyboard, and you don't even know basic chords. Like you really have to know the basics of context. For more content, check out our ministry website at HigherPursuit Ministries.com. You can also find me on YouTube at Cecily LaChappelle with Higher Pursuit Ministries. Okay, now let's dive into the podcast. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Higher Pursuit live stream and podcast. If you are just joining us, if you're new here, I'm Cecily LaChapelle. I'm the host of this great live stream and podcast that we've got going on. And right now, we are in a really great series. I've already gotten amazing feedback on this, and we're only one week in. And it is called The Word Alive: How to Study Your Bible. You know, a lot of us, we read our Bible, but we shut it and we think, I don't know if I really even understood what I just read. I feel like maybe I kind of sort of got something out of that, but I know there's more. And then you hear somebody who really loves to study the Bible, and you think, where did they get that? How did they find that out? I'm reading the same Bible. I'm pretty sure the words are in my native tongue and I'm not seeing what they're seeing. So this is literally your behind the scenes, grab the tools, get the resources, live stream. I don't know how many series we're, I mean, how many sessions we're gonna do on this series. We might go, who knows? We might go all the way through Matthew, or we might just get to the point where you guys have enough tools under your belt. But no matter what, I'm super excited that you're here. And okay, awesome. So Teresa is here. So good to see you guys joining. Now, I did put some questions in the chat, review questions from last week. And I'd like to see who can remember some of the things that we covered because we started in Matthew chapter one. First of all, we talked about how to study a passage. We talked about who the author is, the importance of the who, what, one, where, why, these five questions that we need to ask every time we're about to study scripture. And I don't have time to go into all the reviews, so you can just catch last week's live stream either on your podcast platform or uh right here on YouTube if you're watching uh the video version. But I did want to review some of the important things. Who can tell me what, hey, Linda Sullivan, good to see you. Who can tell me what synoptic means? If you remember, it's S-Y-N optic. If you can remember what synoptic means, because we talked about how there are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the only three of them are considered synoptic. And so let me see if anybody's got that in the chat, if they remember the answer to that. I'll give it a minute. And then the next question while I'm waiting for that answer is which of the gospels are synoptic gospels? All right, similar stories. Yes, very good. Linda Nardella got the answer on that one. Synoptic means S Y-N is the root that means same. That's where we get the word like synthesis, when things become the same. They become like one. And so it's we're seeing them the same. And so the synoptic gospels, the three synoptics are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John, as we mentioned last week, is his own special guy, and he's got his own, his own um gospel going on. Kate O'Neill is here, so good to see you. Yes, good job. Teresa got the answer. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the three synoptic gospels. We're gonna talk about this later. This is why I'm asking these questions because we're actually, I'm gonna give you a resource where you can start to compare the stories and the accounts in the synoptic gospels. It's a resource that I put on our resource link for you. Then we talked about who is Matthew writing to. Last week I went into a deep dive on context, how reading the Bible in context is the number one rule. Before we start taking scriptures out of context, wanting to apply this promise and that promise to our situation, to our life, which is not always a bad thing. It's not a bad thing, actually. But if we don't understand the context first, it's sort of like trying to play jazz on a can on a keyboard, and you don't even know basic chords. Like you really have to know the basics of context. So who can tell me who Matthew is writing to? He has a very specific audience, and it's going to make all the difference in what Matthew talks about that maybe the other gospel writers leave out, what he puts in that the other gospel writers don't think that is important to include for their audience. So I'm gonna just jump in and answer it because I don't see it yet. Oh, there we go. Linda Nardella again. So smart. She's taken this class before as a hint. So don't feel bad that you don't know the answer. She is just a super smart lady, and she has also taken this course live with me before. But thank you for answering, Linda. That's fabulous. He is writing to the Jews. And because he's writing to the Jews, what we're gonna find out is that there are a lot of Jewish idioms, words, lots of quotes from the Old Testament that don't make sense to us as a Gentile necessarily. So we have to dig to find out the relevance of these words, these phrases, idioms, things that seem kind of random and odd to us, but wouldn't have to Matthew's listeners, I mean to Jesus listeners and to Matthew's readers. So last question that I put in the chat prop. Matthew's main goal is to show Jesus as the, oh, Linda said, uh, you're a great teacher. And I also have the help of Kaneo. Yes, that's Bible school that we that we go to. Um so what is Matthew's main goal? Every gospel writer wants to portray Jesus in a certain way to their audience. And Matthew's main goal is to demonstrate that Jesus is the Jews' promised Messiah and King, that he is the king. So we're gonna see all kinds of references. We're gonna actually get touched on this tonight because we're gonna start talking about how Matthew is showing Jesus as the true king in comparison to someone who was not. So last week we left off at the end of the genealogy, and I totally want you to go back and watch that if you didn't see it. Because, oh, good job, John La Chapelle Messiah. Very good. Um yeah, so we left off at the end of the genealogy, and we actually discovered the genealogies are cool, they're interesting. They are they last week's uh dive into the genealogy, we brought up a that there's four women in Jesus genealogy, which was very unusual. So go back and listen to that if you missed last week. But moving forward, we're now gonna start with the birth of Jesus, which is found in verse 18. But before we do, I want to show you a Bible tool. This I promised you that I was gonna give you tools, I was gonna give you resources, I was gonna pull books out of my own library that have blessed me, impacted me, um, books that are my go-to. Last week I showed you the cultural historical Bible that I use a lot. But this week I want to actually show you an online tool. So if you have your phone or if you have a laptop, I want you to open up to biblehub.com. So it's the word bible and then hub.com. And I'm going to share my screen and get to Bible hub. Share screen. And here we go. So right here we have Bible Hub. And what you're gonna see up here at the top, this top menu bar is the book of the Bible that you're looking at, the chapter and verse. And then right here, you're looking at we're looking at the Bible. There are us, as you can see, there's tons of other things we could be looking at. We could be looking at different translations, we could be looking at concordances, study tools, Bible questions, summaries, timelines, atlases, but we just we're gonna look at the Bible tonight. And so one of the things we're gonna do, we're gonna scroll down here, and we're whoops, I went right past it. We're gonna go, we're gonna choose Matthew, and then we're going to choose Matthew 1, verse 18. And what I want you to see down here is it's gonna pull up that verse for you in multiple translations. So you can compare the different translations and see how the Bible says something in maybe a more contemporary translation or a more literal translation, for instance, the Berean Literal Bible, or you could look at how the King James Version differs then from the English Standard Version, which is the one that I generally use. So I wanted you to see that that you can get the different versions of the Bible, and there's way more. I could like scroll way down. There's tons. They have so many translations of the Bible. Sorry if I'm making you dizzy with all of this scrolling. But the other thing that I want us to look at is in this gray bar right here. So you've got your white bar with the book, then you have Bible Hub that has this search bar where you could put a word in. For instance, if you wanted to look up peace or joy, you could put the word in this search bar, just like you do with any Google search bar. But then down here are your different translations, all here. These are all um acronyms for different translations, NIV, New International, NLT, New Living Translation, et cetera, et cetera. Then down in this gray bar, this is what we're gonna hit right now, these are Bible study tools. And so you can have, you can see your parallel Bible, you've got study tools right here, you have an audio Bible, you have various visuals, and this word right here, comment, they couldn't fit the whole word commentary in. And that's an excellent resource right there for fantastic Bible study commentary, and then interlinear is when you're actually going to see it in the original language. So unless you read Greek or unless you read Hebrew, you might not spend too much time there. But this is what I want to go to right here. When you're in the New Testament, this language, um, language word is going to be Greek. But if I was, for instance, back in Genesis, it would say Hebrew here instead, because that's what the Old Testament is written in. So I'm gonna hit Greek because I want to look, I want us to look at this scripture, verse 18, in the Greek. And right here, you're going to see the Strong's numbers. Strong's is a concordance that brings your English word right back to the original Greek word. And then you're going to see the Greek word right here, the way it's written in Greek and the way you would pronounce it. Then you have the English words and then morphology, which is basically your grammar. So, unless you really want to dive deep into the grammar, I don't generally spend a lot of time there. Okay, so we're going to look at Matthew 1.18 using Bible Hub. And the word that I want us to look at right down here. So we have now of Jesus Christ, the birth thus came about. As you can see, the words are out of order because in Greek the words are written in different order as they are in many like romance Romance languages. So the word that I want us to look at right here is this word birth. This is an easy one to see. Look at what it says in the Greek. That word for birth is the word genesis. Isn't that cool? So, what can we learn from that? That the word for birth, when it says in verse 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. Now the genesis of Jesus Christ. Do you see what God is telling us? He's telling us he's starting over. If you read in Hebrews and in Romans, Jesus is called the last Adam. Not the second Adam, the last Adam. There won't be no more. So tell me right now how much you think studying Greek would benefit your study. Tell me in the in the chat. Yes, it means beginning. Absolutely. It means the genesis and the beginning. It's so fantastic to see that. I absolutely love that. All right, so I'm going to stop sharing my screen. There we go. Okay, and let me go back to here. Oh no, that is not what I wanted. Let me hit escape. Okay, now we're back to where I want to be. Kate O'Neill, huge impact. Yes, absolutely. When we find out what a word means in the original language, first of all, English is a very shallow language. I mean, just take, for instance, the word love. I can say I love my husband, and I can say I love my cats, and I can say I love ice cream. It's the same word. That's ridiculous. It shouldn't be the same word because I don't love ice cream the same way I love my husband. And so we can see that in other languages like Hebrew and Greek, there are multiple words that have so much more depth and shade of meaning than we can translate into English. So it behooves us to use tools like Bible Hub to every now and then go back and read a passage in the original language. Is every single word going to jump out and be a mind blower? No. But we don't know if we don't look. We don't know what we're missing. It's kind of like walking along the beach and just never looking down to see if there are some cool shells or rocks, like just always being so focused, looking up and never just taking time to slow down and see what might be right underneath our feet. So that's one of the incredible tools. Biblehub.com is an amazing tool for studying the original language. So we looked in verse 18 at the word birth and we saw that it means Genesis. Now I want us to move on to when it says in that verse, when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. We could just bounce right over that word betrothed. Because in our traditional Western culture, we first of all, we don't use the word betrothed, do we? Tell me in the chat if you have ever, out of your mouth a normal conversation, use the word betrothed. If you have, give me a thumbs up because I'd love to see how many of us use the word betrothed ever. This is my betrothed. No, we're like, this is my fiance, or this is the guy I'm marrying in a you know, in a year or something. But that's so that's what we think of when we hear the word betrothed. We think my fiance. And we think typical Western fiance, where there's an engagement, there's a ring, there was a date that was set, the young lady is going to, she's going to go get her dress, she's going to go plan her wedding. But what happens if the relationship goes south? She can either keep the ring or give it back. She can sell the dress on eBay. They cancel all the plans, and one of them is heartbroken, or maybe they both are, or maybe neither one of them are, and they just move on. It was not like that in Jewish culture. Tell me in the chat, give me a thumbs up if you have a frame of reference for the Jewish wedding. If you, yes, Teresa said betrothed means contract. Exactly, exactly. It was the very first step of the marriage covenant. So if a Jewish father would come with his son to the home of a young lady that the son wanted to marry, and they would give her what was called a ketuba, which was a contract, a legal binding contract. And in that contract, it said all the things that the son was going to do and be and provide for his wife. And then he would leave, sometimes for up to a year. He would go back to his father's house and he would begin getting ready to be the man she deserves. He would be building, he was a lot of times adding on to the father's house. And he would be putting aside money, he would be making himself the um in the vocation that he needed to be, an apprentice or whatever. He prepared himself so that when he came to the bride's house to take his bride, he was ready. And the cool thing about a Jewish wedding is he wasn't allowed to go get his bride until the father said he was ready, until the father said it was time. Is any of this resonating with things that Jesus said at the Last Supper about in my house there are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you? Is I mean the marriage supper of the Lamb, is this all coming into play? And Jesus left us his ketubah, he left us his marriage covenant, his promises. It's called the Word of God. These are all the promises that he left us while we wait patiently and faithfully for our beloved to come and consummate the marriage. But Mary and Joseph were as good as married here. They had not consummated the relationship, but they were if that's why it's it goes on to say that Joseph would have to put her away with a bill of divorce. He couldn't just break up with the girl and say, you know, we it it just didn't work out. I found out she wasn't right for me. No, he would have to divorce her, and that would have been public humiliation, and that's why Joseph is wrestling through all of this. So, what do you think that personal application of just understanding the Jewish betrothal? What does that do to your feelings about the Word of God and the importance of understanding the ketubah that our bridegroom Jesus has left for us? What do you think that that does? Like what does it do in your heart to know that Jesus isn't just dating you? He can't just, he's not going to just lose his charm and decide, you know what, this really isn't working out. I don't I don't see a future with her or with him. No, he married you. He cut a covenant signed in his own blood because it is now a legal binding contract. So betrothed is a very, very big word. So uh let's move on. Oh, I do want I'm gonna put up some slides for you now because there's some things that I just wanted to share with you. So we went through The review questions, the words that matter. We just discussed those. Here's a method tip. When you are studying the word of God, we talked about this last week. Pray before you read and let the spirit slow you down. Because as I was putting these notes together, and you know, I wish you guys could like see my Bible. I mean, I'll hold it up. I'm not really sure how well you can see that in the really small um square that you've got, but I have gobs of notes written in my Bible. It's because I'm going to various places to find information. I'm going to Bible Hub to go into their commentary. I'm going to study it in the Greek. I'm going to read resources that talk to me about these scriptures. So my study goes very slowly, but it goes very deep. And so if we pray before we read, then the Holy Spirit will slow us down. So many times I think we're about quantity rather than quality. And I highly recommend quality. I would rather read one chapter of the Bible and know it so well that it is imprinted into my heart and mind that I see the face of Jesus in that scripture rather than having read an entire book and have basically gotten nothing out of it. How about you? Okay, so let's move on. So there are your method tips. Pray before reading, let the Holy Spirit slow you down. Oh, when stuck, try a tool. So the interlinear, you can use the atlas, you can use the cross references, the Greek and the Hebrew. That's what we want to do when we're studying if we get stuck, which happens a lot. I mean, I love to read the Bible, but I go through really dry spells where I'm reading a book of the Bible that I just wanted to really dig into. And I can't, nothing is really clicking. But that's when these tools come in handy, when we can really dig deeper using these tools. And then all of a sudden, something will spark and there will be some revelation and understanding that we didn't have before. The hand of the diligent maketh rich. So when we diligently pursue wisdom, when we diligently pursue revelation or deeper understanding, instead of just moving on and saying, whatever, I read the Bible today, I did my part, you know, I just didn't get it. I didn't really get a lot out of it. Let's not be satisfied with that. Why should we be satisfied with that? When God has placed before us a great feast, and he says we get to eat this feast in the presence of our enemies. Why would we be satisfied with the crumbs? When he said, No, no, no, I want to serve you a filet mignon. All right, moving on. Um, oh, that slide should not have been there. Okay, here we go. The 400 years of silence. So Joseph has a dream in right after what we read, Joseph had a dream, and an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him not to put away his wife, not to divorce Mary. What I want to point out is that before the book of Matthew, it before that in the Old Testament, between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, there was 400 years of silence. I mean, if you're watching me from the United States, our country is not even 300 years old. And imagine if nobody in the entire history of the United States had ever had a word from the Lord. If God had not ever spoken, where would our country be? I mean, it almost feels like God isn't speaking when you look at our country, but he is. He is speaking. And there were 400 years of silence where he did not reveal anything to the Jews. But it wasn't actually a silent time. Here's why. Alexander the Great conquered much of that of the world in that area, much of Asia, Asia Minor, Israel, and regions around there. And it was the Greek Empire. And one of the things he did was called Hellenization. And in Hellenization, he demanded that everyone, that every civilization that they conquered, that they become Greek, that they all learn how to speak and write Greek. So if you did business, you did business in Greek. Well, you want to know what is very interesting about that fact is that when Jesus comes on the scene and when these gospels are being written about him, it's the only time in history since the Tower of Babel that everybody speaks a single language. They might have their own native tongue, but everybody understands Greek. So one of the things that the Jewish rabbis did is before, in between Malachi and Matthew, in that 400 years of silence, they transcribed their Hebrew Old Testament. It's Old Testament to us, Old Covenant to us, but their Torah, they transcribed it into Greek so that all the Greek-speaking Jews could read it and understand it. And so now the Old Testament is being able to be read not just by Jew, but also by Gentile. Why is that important? Because these gospel writers are not going to be just writing to Jews and they're quoting the Old Testament, and many of them are bringing up Old Testament scriptures from what is called the Septuagint. That translation, you might have seen the um, you might have seen the um initials LXX. And that stands for L is 50, and X is a Roman numeral for 10. These are Roman numerals, and so that stands for 70. And so that is the um the acronym, I guess, for the Septuagint. The Septuagint was written by 70, some Bible scholars say 72 rabbis who painstakingly translated the Old Testament into Greek. And so the Septuagint is extremely important. And you might see it referenced in some of your study notes. So it's important that you understand what these things are that as you go into a study Bible and somebody says, Well, this was quoted from the Septuagint, and you're like, Well, what is the Septuagint? What is what is the difference? It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. When you use your interlinear on Bible Hub, you're bypassing that. You're going right back to the original Hebrew. But some of the gospel writers aren't bypassing that. Some of the gospel writers are actually quoting from the Septuagint because they're writing in Greek. So it's important that we understand that that book was written, that translation was written during that, the very end of the 400 years of silence, right before Jesus comes on the scene. And one of the other things that I think is incredible is that right at the end of the 400 years of silence, when Jesus is born, in the end of chapter one, going into chapter two, God comes barreling onto the scene. He is anything but silent. He is speaking through dreams, multiple dreams that Joseph had. He is speaking through angels in the sky. He is speaking through a star in the sky. He is speaking through prophetic words. He is bringing his Old Testament scriptures to life in the minds and hearts of his people. So the silent period ended, and now God is speaking using it all, using nature, using dreams, using angels. It's incredible. And so Joseph's dream is the very first instance of the silence is over. God is now speaking. It's so cool. All right. So there's the Septuagint. We talked about that. Method tip. One of the things that I want you guys to do is read through the entire chapter. When you're going to go to do your reading in Matthew or wherever you're reading, read through an entire chapter. Even if you're looking up a verse or you think you just want to read one little section, try not to fall into that. Read the entire chapter through, just to read it. And then go back and read through it slowly and start to highlight, make notes in your journal, or you can make notes in your Bible of words that you don't understand or that you have a question about, or words that interest you. Also start looking for words that repeat or themes that repeat. Like, for instance, you might hear a story, Jesus is talking about, um, I will make you fishers of men. But then further down in the chapter, like a bunch of things happen. And further down in the chapter, Jesus is telling Peter to go get a coin from a fish's mouth. And you're thinking, well, wait, hold on. I just read about fish up here. And now there's talking about fish down here. I wonder if this gospel writer is trying to teach me something by repeating this symbol of the fish. He could have put those stories in a totally different order. Maybe there's something I should pay attention to here. So those are the kinds of patterns that you want to be looking for. And that's why I highly recommend that you keep a bunch of colored pencils. I like colored pencils, but you can also use colored pens nearby because as you're noticing things that repeat, either words or themes, then you can start coloring them or circling them in the same color. So your eyes, when you go down to the page, you see, oh, fish is circled in aqua blue and it's here and it's here and it's here. Like, oh my gosh, it's mentioned four times in this chapter. This is something I totally should pay attention to. So that's how we want to read. We want to track those repeated words and themes. All right. Now we're going to talk about the concept of hearing. Oh, actually, you know what? I do want to go back to something first about those 400 years of silence. Malachi gives a closing promise. Malachi is the last prophet of the Old Testament. And he makes a closing promise in Malachi 4, chapter 5. Check out this promise, the very last words of the Old Testament. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. Guys, put in the chat. Who do you? Yes, Teresa said, God is not silent today. Amen. He is not silent today. And I'm so happy about that. And I'm so happy that I can hear God's voice. You can hear God's voice. We can hear him speaking through the word. We can hear him speaking prophetically. We can hear him speaking in the inner witness in our heart. It's incredible. He can speak to us in dreams and visions. There are so many ways that God can speak to us. He's not silent. That is so true. So put in the chat. Who, when I just read this, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. And that's the very last word of the Old Testament. Who is Malachi prophesying about? Does this ring a bell to you at all of somebody who is going to appear very quickly in the New Testament? Put it in the chat if you know who Malachi is talking about, because right there he has completely mixed. He's melded. He has sewn together the old covenant and the new covenant with that promise. And then with this person, John the Baptist. Amen. That's right, Linda. John the Baptist was referred to as Elijah. He came in the spirit of Elijah. Even Jesus referred to him as that. So it is absolutely incredible. So I just want you to know there's continuity in the scripture. All right. We talked about the Septuagint. We talked about marking and following themes with our colored pencils. I'm so excited about that. I love that. All right, let's talk about, um, let's keep reading because I want to talk about the names and the covenants that we see in Matthew 1, 20 to 23. So moving on, I wish we were kind of all in the room so I could have somebody else do this reading. I really usually like to do that. But as he considered these things, this is Joseph. Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. So we could completely um skip over or read quickly past that where it says, Joseph, son of David. Right there, Matthew is identifying the fact that even Jesus' natural, basically stepfather, comes from the line of David. And so did Mary. They didn't come from the same family, but they came from the same line. So through the mother, through the father, it's all coming down upon Jesus. This covenant to who? To David. And if you remember what we talked about last week, the Davidic covenant was the covenant of an eternal kingship. So right here, he's saying to Joseph, you are a son of David, and from your wife, not biologically from you, but because of this marriage that is coming to take place, the eternal king is coming. This is a reference that the Jews would have picked up on right away. But a Gentile reader, we skip over it. It doesn't, it doesn't really resonate with us. But if you remember who Matthew's talking to over and over and over, he's going to show that Jesus is their king. And that's what he's showing right there by referring to Joseph as son of David. And he's already just a few lines above, identified Mary as also from the same tribe of Judah. All right. And so right there we see the lineage of Jesus comes from the Davidic line. And then in verse 21, we I wish we could go into all of these words, but the name of Jesus. Tell me if you know the Jewish name for Jesus. Put it in the chat if you know how to spell it, how to say the Jewish way of pronouncing Jesus' name. Because we say it in like the Anglo-Saxon way. But if there's a two Hebrew ways, but what only one way of pronouncing it, but a couple ways of spelling it. Yeshua. Yes, Kate. Exactly. Yeshua, or sometimes it's written and pronounced Joshua. Yes, John, John La Chapelle, Yeshua. Exactly. And what that means literally is salvation is from our God. Salvation is from God. And so Yeshua means savior. God saves. And that's what this angel is saying. You are going to name your son Yeshua. You're going to name him. God saves. But then it goes on in verse 23 to call Jesus Emmanuel, God with us. And what that is showing us is that there's a shift now. He's Matthew is setting the scene that God is shifting the entire way this earth has been running up until this point, where the Jews were the chosen people, and God dwelt in their midst in what? In the tabernacle. And now God, Yeshua, God saves, he's God saving them by coming as a child, as an infant. And then he's going to be God with us, with them, instead of just in the midst of them. So this is Matthew right here is showing that Jesus is their king, he is their Yeshua, their savior, and he is the fulfillment of the promise that God said, One day I will make my dwelling among men. He also made the promise that I will take their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. And the only way that God can live in us is if we have that reborn heart. Amen? Okay. So now let's talk about the word and the spirit, avoiding deception. I don't think I have a slide for this one. No, no, I don't have a slide for this part. So the emphasis that I want to make right here is as children of God, we have to become Bible literate. I'm bringing out these tools. These are not all the tools. There are so many other wonderful Bible study tools, Bible study research. Yes, Teresa said in the Holy Spirit and dwells in us. Amen. Amen. So when we use these Bible study tools and we dig in for ourselves, it helps us to become Bible literate. It's absolutely critical that we know how to read our Bible, that we know how to find information, how to find revelation. If we don't know what something is, what tool can I use to go find out what this name means or where this place is or where this place is in relation to that place, or what this means in Greek. What is the deeper meaning for this word? Because I feel like there's got to be more. That's why we're doing this live stream, to put the tools in your hands so that you can get comfortable with them and you can start finding this information for yourself. And why is that important? Because in this day and age, my friends, deception is rampant. It already is rampant. And the Bible says that, you know, in the last days, even the elect, many of the elect will be deceived. How would that even be possible? Well, it's possible when we don't know the word and when we are not literate in the Bible. And so that's why it is so important for us to be literate. So one of the ways we do that when we're studying the Gospels is to cross-reference the Gospels by comparing parallel accounts for a fuller picture. And one of the things that I'm giving to you is when the same link that you used to get your handout, you'll see a resource under there. It's a comparison PDF. So it's going to compare all the accounts in all of the Gospels. And you're going to see, you know, this one might show up in Matthew and it might show up in Mark, but not in Luke and not in John. You'll see how they line up. But more than just seeing where an account that you see in Matthew might show up in Mark, go there. Read it. Read how Mark told the same story, but from a different angle because he has a different audience. He's trying to get a different message across. Sometimes Mark might leave a whole bunch of detail out that Matthew finds very important. And then other times it might be in the reverse. And the same thing with Luke. So it's very important that we go to these stories and we read how the other synoptic gospel writers recorded them. You You will find out so much information when you do that. You get that full, that broad picture of what happened because each person is looking at it from a different angle, right? You know, you could have eight people at a crime scene, and they're all going to give sort of a different, similar main the main points will be the same. You know, one guy pulled out a gun and shot this guy and he ran away and he was wearing a blue jacket, but other people might notice different details. Oh, he was wearing a baseball hat or he had on white tennis shoes and that other people didn't add. Does that make those people wrong that they didn't notice the white tennis shoes? Does that mean that it's invalidate, it's an invalid testimony? No, they just focused on other details when they were in the story, when they were in the moment. So that's what you see with the gospel narrative, um, the parallel, being able to read those. Okay. So now we're gonna talk about something really important because it's called the concept of hearing. Let me see. Oh, actually, I guess we're not gonna get there yet. Let me let me just go through these methods, method tip right here. Um, I would love it if you would start this habit of marking movement. So mark time, place, and audience changes. So when you see, for instance, the lead character in our narrative is Jesus. When you see G something happen, it'll say Jesus, you know, now Jesus went to Galilee, or Jesus went in the house, or Jesus left with his disciples. When there's movement, mark it. Pick a color pencil, pick a colored pen, however you want to do it, a highlighter and put a box around it or a circle. Mark the movement. It's so important because that changes the who, what, when, where, why. If Jesus, for instance, is sitting in the house with his disciples, what he's talking about and how he's saying it is totally different than the moment he steps foot outside of the house and now he is talking to a bunch of Pharisees that are attacking him. Now his tone changes. Now his uh phraseology changes. Now the lessons that he's talking about, the parables, whether, you know, if he's inside the house, he's probably explaining things to the 12 disciples. If he's outside of the house, he's keeping things a little bit more buttoned up. So it's very important that we see the movement of Jesus. Things will make so much more sense. And then note when something is happening, note where something is happening because geography matters. Okay, so that kind of goes back to our thought on context. All right, uh, the magi prophecy and guidance. Um okay, so I guess we're gonna do the magi before we get to the concept of hearing. No, we're not. We're gonna we're gonna go into the I think I must have passed, missed it. Okay, here we go. I skipped over it. That's why it's out of order. All right. So in biblical um Hebrew, the word for hearing, so for instance, when Jesus says, would those who those who have ears to hear, let them hear. That concept for hearing is so much broader than our concept of hearing. I mean, I could walk in a room when my kids were sitting down watching TV when they were young, and I would say, okay, guys, um, I need you to pick up your room. You got to turn off the TV, go pick up your room, and you have to be done in a half an hour because we're leaving for wherever. I'd come back in the room, TV is still on. They didn't hear a thing I said. They heard, like sound actually went in their ear, but they didn't hear what I said. They didn't listen. How do I know that? Because there was no action, there was no corresponding action. And that's what this word hearing means in as a Hebraism. It means to listen, to more than just hear sound, but to heed and to obey. It's a very, very different word. And it comes, it's from the Greek word, I mean sorry, the Hebrew word Shema. Put in the chat if you have any familiarity with the word Shema. If you've ever heard maybe a Jewish prayer called the Shema, it is the most famous, most well-known, and most recited Jewish prayer. And it's the one that starts, hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. That's hear, listen, take heed, and obey, O Israel. So back when Matthew is writing to the the Jews, they would have understood that completely. And so anytime it's referred to in the scripture about hearing, they would know there should be corresponding action. And if there isn't, then the heart is cold. The heart is hard. Because hearing means heed and obey. Now, one of the things that um I put some more in your handout about hearing and about that whole concept, but I also wanted, I told you I would show you some books that I really like. These two books are by a woman named um Lois Tverberg. I'm I don't know if I'm saying her name right. This one is Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus. And actually, let me just do this. Let me stop sharing so you can see these books better. Okay, so this one is um, this one is sitting at the feet of Rabbi Jesus. This was the second one I read. And then this one is walking in the dust of Rabbi Jesus. I highly recommend these books, especially this one, Walking in the Dust, because this is, she takes words and idioms and phrases that we read in our New Testament, and we have no clue what we're reading. And she has studied this, she has lived in Israel for decades and is very close with rabbis and sat down and said, Explain this to me. What is Jesus really saying? And when you understand the Jewish culture, the Jewish background, and what those idioms really mean, it changes the scripture completely. Yeah, Teresa said, I always wondered what ears to hear meant. Yeah, that's that's what it means. He's saying if you if you have ears to not just hear sound, but to hear, heed, and obey. So sounds not just coming in, but it's going down into your heart and it's producing action of some sort. That's what that means. So I highly recommend those two books, and I did give you more um more meat in your handout on that whole concept of Shema. And we talked about cross-referencing the gospels. It's so important to do that. And so now um I talked to you about noting the the when and the where. For instance, noting the when it says now after Jesus was born. After Jesus, it's um, let me see, where is that? Let me see. Okay, chapter two, verse one. I have a red box around that phrase, now after Jesus was born, because it's telling me the scene just shifted. We have now moved away from talking about Joseph and Mary and his dreams. And now we're talking about something else. So now it's after Jesus was born. So that there's the the when, and then the where it says, in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. So do you remember earlier when we started, I said Matthew is going to be talking about kings and kingdoms throughout his gospel. So one of the things that you can do is you can take a colored pencil or a pen and circle every time you see a reference to king, kingdom, authority, things that kings have. And here is, and for me, I used purple. So in this verse, it says Herod the king. Guess who he is? He's king of the Jews, and he is ruling from Jerusalem. And but the Bethlehem of Judea is where the wise men are there they're coming to Jerusalem, but this whole story is going to happen centered in Bethlehem. You all know the story of the wise men, some say three three kings, but they weren't. They were um astronomers and and wise men from probably Babylon or Persia in that area from the east, and they come to Jerusalem. You might you know be able to know the story, they come to talk to the king, King Herod. And this is so strange. I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about it. Where he said, they say to him, Where is the king of the Jews? And they're talking to the king of the Jews. They said, Well, the king of the Jews has just been born. And Herod says, uh, well, then tell me where this king of the Jews is, so that I can go worship him as well. He has to call his wise um wise men in. He has to call in the stuff the scribes. Sorry, I'm blanking on the word. And he calls the scribes in, and they say, Oh, yeah, the Messiah, the king of the Jews, is supposed to be born in Bethlehem. And so off go the Magi to Bethlehem, and then they're warned in a dream not to return to Herod. Again, we've got more dreams happening, we've got stars appearing, we've got God talking in so many cool and unusual ways. It's gone from stunning silence to stunning speaking. God is speaking in every way possible. So I'm actually going to stop here for the sake of time. I had a feeling I had way more information than we were going to be able to cover. So we are going to stop right here and we'll pick up at the beginning of chapter two in next week. So, what I want you to do for your homework this week is to read chapter two. Read it, go just read it all the way through, and then go read it slowly, circle repeated words, circle words about kings, look for ironies, look for play on words, um, anything that catches your attention, write it down in your journal and come ready to share with us next week what you learned and what you got out of chapter two, because we're going to dive into chapter two hardcore next week. So, for those of you who have joined us tonight, I just want to say thank you so much. Again, this is the Higher Pursuit live stream. And I just encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Subscribe and rate the podcast if you're listening to this on the podcast. And if you can comment and share this live stream, if you got anything out of it or you know somebody who is longing to learn more of the word, please share this. It actually helps the YouTube algorithm so much. I've heard people tell me that recently they're starting to see my content in more places. And that's because people like you are doing that easy thing of just sharing it on your social media, sharing the link to friends and family. It makes a huge difference and gets the word of God out to so many people because YouTube can send it out to far more people than you do, but they won't know that somebody cares about this content if you don't react and respond to it by making comments, by subscribing, and by sharing. And when they see that somebody values this content enough to share it, then it gets YouTube's attention and they start spreading it out even more. So you can help the channel, but you can help also a lot of other believers and people that are just looking for the truth about the word. All right, guys, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we love you so much and we are so grateful that you are speaking. You are still speaking. You always will be speaking now, Lord. We thank you, Father, that Jesus came as a baby, that he came as Yeshua. God saves. What other religion has a God that came down to do the saving? This, the saving that we could never do for ourselves. We are so grateful that we're not in a dry, dead religion, but we have a living God, a living savior who still ever lives to make intercession for us and to speak to us and through us. We are so grateful to be your children. So grateful that we can hear your voice speaking to us on these written pages of holy scripture, anointed scripture. Your voice comes out from the word. Just like your voice shook on Mount Sinai, and like your voice came forth from Jesus. Now your voice comes forth through these pages as well as through the Holy Spirit that lives in us. We love you, Lord. Make us students of the word, make us disciples of our rabbi Jesus so we can follow in his footsteps all the days of our lives. We give you all the praise and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, guys, thank you so much for spending this time with me, and I look forward to seeing you next week in the next live stream. Take care. Hey, family, I pray that you were blessed and encouraged by that episode and that you took away something you can use in your walk with the Lord starting today. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So I thank you for making me a part of your pursuit. Until next time, abide in Him.