Category: Matthew

Leviticus 14

³ The Lord told Moses and Aaron to say to the people:

³⁴ After I have given you the land of Canaan as your permanent possession, here is what you must do, if I ever put mildew^[g] on the walls of any of your homes. ³⁵ First, you must say to a priest, “I think mildew is on the wall of my house.”

³⁶ The priest will reply, “Empty the house before I inspect it, or else everything in it will be unclean.”

³⁷ If the priest discovers greenish or reddish spots that go deeper than the surface of the walls, ³⁸ he will have the house closed for seven days. ³⁹ Then he will return and check to see if the mildew has spread. ^40-41 If so, he will have someone scrape the plaster from the walls, remove the filthy stones, then haul everything off and dump it in an unclean place outside the town. ⁴² Afterwards the wall must be repaired with new stones and fresh plaster.

⁴³ If the mildew appears a second time, ⁴⁴ the priest will come and say, “This house is unclean. It’s covered with mildew that can’t be removed.” ⁴⁵ Then he will have the house torn down and every bit of wood, stone, and plaster hauled off to an unclean place outside the town. ⁴⁶ Meanwhile, if any of you entered the house while it was closed, you will be unclean until evening. ⁴⁷ And if you either slept or ate in the house, you must wash your clothes.

Richard: In our lives, we can evaluation what is ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’. We must get rid of that which is ‘unclean’. Our lives and possessions should be kept in good order.

Matthew 1

1 Jesus Christ came from the family of King David and also from the family of Abraham. And this is a list of his ancestors. ^2-6a  From Abraham to King David, his ancestors were:

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers (Judah’s sons were Perez and Zerah, and their mother was Tamar), Hezron;

Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz (his mother was Rahab), Obed (his mother was Ruth), Jesse, and King David.

^6b-11  From David to the time of the exile in Babylonia, the ancestors of Jesus were:

David, Solomon (his mother had been Uriah’s wife), Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram;

Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, and Jehoiachin and his brothers.

^12-16 From the exile to the birth of Jesus, his ancestors were:

Jehoiachin, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim;

Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

Richard: Lineage is important. The Blessing shifts our lineage from Satan’s side to God’s side.

World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon

Chapter 4

God’s Creation and Human Creativity

The Lord of Creation

2.Human Beings Are Superior to All Other Creatures

Verily We have honored the children of Adam.
We carry them on the land and the sea, and
have made provision of good things for them,
and have preferred them above many of those
We created with a marked preferment.
Qur’an 17.20

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and
moving how express and admirable! In action
how like an angel! In apprehension how like a
god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of
animals.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II. Scene ii

Having created the world and all that lives and
moves therein, He, through the direct operation
of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose
to confer upon man the unique distinction and
capacity to know Him and to love Him… Upon
the inmost reality of each and every created
thing He has shed the light of one of His names,
and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His
attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He
has focused the radiance of all of His names and
attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self.
Alone of all created things man has been singled
out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah 27
(Baha’i Faith)

Man, as the manifestation of God, is the leader
of all things, and no creature is more honorable
than man. All things upon the earth, following
their own individual names, fashioning their
true way, will know that Thou hast brought
them to sight for man’s sake. All things what-
soever, forgetting not their source, deviating
not from their determined pattern, are made to
work as well as to understand their part; hum-
bling themselves and honoring man, without
anger, without haste, without anxiety, without
grief, neither linked nor parted, they are made
to work out their true personality.
The Ritual Prayer (Perfect Liberty Kyodan)

The human body is a revelation of the goodness
of God and the providence of the body’s Creator.
It is a body obviously meant to minister to a
rational soul, as you can see from the arrange-
ment of the human organs of sense and of man’s
other members. This is obvious, too, in man’s spe-
cific appearance, form, and stature. The bodies
of irrational animals are bent toward the ground,
whereas man was made to walk erect with his
eyes on heaven, as though to remind him to keep
his thoughts on things above.
Saint Augustine, City of God 22.24 (Christianity)

Man was equipped with [three] souls… By virtue
of the animal soul he shares with the animals; his
physical soul links him with the plants; his human
soul is a bond between him and the angels…
The function of the human, rational soul
is the noblest function of all, for it is itself the
noblest of spirits. Its function consists of reflecting
upon things of art and meditating upon the
things of beauty: its gaze being turned towards
the higher world, its loves not this lower abode
and meaner station. Belonging as it does to the
higher side of life and to primal substances, it is
not its business to eat and drink, neither does it
require luxury and coition; rather its function is
to wait for the revelation of truths.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Katib al-Najat (Islam)

We did indeed offer the Trust to the heavens and
the earth and the mountains; but they refused to
undertake it, being afraid of it. But man under-
took it; he was indeed unjust and foolish. 11
Qur’an 33.72