The Lord delights to use natural or normal means in order to bring about His glorious and eternal ends. What does not appear to be much on the surface, like a husband and wife travelling to Bethlehem for a census, is actually the eternal plan of God for the salvation of humanity. In this passage, we see God bringing about His eternal plans through the most unlikely characters and we also learn a lesson from the message of the angels.

In His death, Jesus took our sin and the curse of sin on Himself. As He did so, He fully payed the price so that we could have direct access to and a relationship with God the Father through Jesus. Matthew helps us to understand how this happened by detailing the last moment’s of Christ’s life on the Cross.

Many people who are familiar with Jesus and His death on the cross are unaware that His death is linked to the oldest prophecy ever recorded in human history. But His death is not just linked with the oldest prophecy but with many other prophecies as well. Matthew points five of them out for us in this passage and gives us the meaning as well.