Hey everybody I'm Matt and this week of the 10 minute Bible hour podcast is brought to you by Dwell.

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Okay, when you hear the phrase, God with us, I'm guessing that conjures one of two things. Number one, warm

Christmas feelings and number two just general warm feelings of a God that

cares about you and wants to be around you, maybe a little bit the more the therapeutic side of faith, which is okay. I'm not trying to in any way mock that. I just realize that word might have sounded loaded. But you know what? I don't think the original Jewish audience Matthew was writing to would have

thought about any of that stuff I think for them it would have conjured the pain

of realizing that frankly it had been a long time since they could say God

with us. I think they would have pictured God as this parent who maybe back in the day

they kind of resented because in their cultural ethnic memory

they recall a god who reached out and made a deal with their forefather Abraham. And the deal was that God was going to make a new people out of

Abraham and that this people would bless all the nations and no matter how stupid

Abraham was, there's dumb stuff that he did, God was still going to complete

his redemptive plan or carry out this promise to create this great nation and to bless all the

other nations through it. Well, and stuff goes well and stuff goes bad and

God is very present and hands on all the time, nurturing them in the early days of

their youth as a people. Then centuries later along comes Moses, things have been kind of up and down there as well.

But there's a new deal with Moses or an extension of the old deal or another deal to go along

with it.

It doesn't eliminate the old one and the new

deal is you're going to be my people I'm going to be your God and when you disobey

me I'm going to punish you and when you obey me I'm going to reward you

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