The Genealogy of Jesus

SERMON: 2013-12-15--mt0113--the-genealogy-of-jesus SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:55.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: This candidate provides a powerful, summarizing theological conclusion ('had come to seek and to save the lost') that marks the end of the expository segment. Since no subsequent non-sermon material (music, announcement) is provided, this final token represents the last part of the sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- As we look together this morning at the genealogy of Jesus recorded here by Matthew in the first chapter of his gospel, there are two things that I think are especially worthy of our note. Let me spell those out for you. And the first is that the purpose of the genealogy is to establish the credibility of Jesus as the promised Messiah. Let me say that again. The purpose of the genealogy is to establish the credibility of Jesus as the promised Messiah. That is why Matthew starts the way that he does in verse 1. Our record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Now some of you here may remember the incredibly profound role that particular verse of scripture has played in my own personal life and ministry. I'll save you all the details but I will tell you this much. Very early on in my own Christian life as I was preparing for ministry and I was starting to really significantly study scripture on my own, I was struck by the emphasis in the Apostle Paul on our union with Christ. And I understood quite clearly what it was that he meant when he said that Christ comes to live in us by the power of his Holy Spirit. But Paul goes further than that. He not only says that Christ is in us but we are in Christ. Listen for example to these verses. Ephesians 1 verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us," say it with me, "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places." Similarly, 2nd Corinthians 5 17, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation the old has gone the new has come." Now one thing that I've always been very grateful to the Lord for in my own life is that I've always known when I didn't know. You know some people are just smart and they figure it out and and they go well they just know what they know right. Well when it comes to spiritual things I have always known that there's a difference between intellectual understanding and spiritual understanding. How many of you would agree with that reality? So I knew to some degree what it was to be in Christ but I also knew that I didn't really know the full scope of that. So what I did is what I think all Christians ought to do when you run into something that doesn't make a lot of sense biblically you pray for wisdom and for understanding. Paul says I pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ and so I began to pray, "Lord show me what's the full scope of being in Christ?" And I prayed that for quite a little while and not much of anything was happening as far as I was concerned and so what happens when you don't see answers to prayer? Well you quit praying right? You forget but remember what we talked about last week who remembers? God remembers. Roll the clock forward it's now five years later I'm pastoring my first pastoral charge I am sitting at my desk in my office when suddenly I get this very strong impression what I believe is from the Lord to read Matthew chapter 1 verse 1. That surprised me a little bit frankly because I knew enough about the Bible at that point that I knew what Matthew chapter 1 verse 1 was that it was the beginning of the genealogy of Jesus Christ but you know when the Lord says read Matthew 1 verse 1 if you're smart you do what he says and so I open up my Bible and I turn to Matthew 1 verse 1 and I read it once again a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham and it was like and this is not an exaggeration it was like an explosion of light because suddenly I understood something about that verse and what it implied that I had never ever seen before it is not an exaggeration to say to you this morning that that revelation changed my life and my ministry more than virtually anything else that I can recall because what happened in that moment of revelation was that I understood this everything God had promised to Abraham namely that God would bless him and his offspring and that through them he would bless all the nations of the world and everything that God had promised to David namely that one of his descendants would forever sit on his throne was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ let me say it one more time everything God promised to Abraham everything God promised to David in terms of the redemption of the world was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ it was an incredibly mind-blowing moment and you know what was really interesting about it another number of weeks went by until the Holy Spirit whispered into my heart that this was in fact the answer to my prayer about what it meant to be in Christ the answer was so different from what I had been expecting that I didn't link it with Abraham and with David the way that scripture very clearly teaches so in the hopes that we can all benefit from that and grow in our understanding of it let me just take a few moments and try to explain it this way first of all who's Abraham well he's the father of all believers he was as you may know from the Old Testament a pagan worshiper living in Ur of the Chaldees when God comes to him calls him to leave his father's house and his people and all of that sort of thing to the land that God would show him Abraham becomes a man of faith who learns to follow the Lord what did the Lord promised Abraham we looked at that last week let's see if you remember promised to bless his children and through his children would bless the nations of the world Genesis 22 we looked at that last week God says to Abraham after he was faithful to the Lord in being prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed and as we saw last week Zachariah at the birth of John the Baptist filled with the Holy Spirit declaring prophetically the significance of these events that God has now set into motion put it this way summarizing the oath that God made to Abraham remember it wasn't good enough for God to promise to Abraham he swore an oath by himself and this is the substance of the oath to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days so God comes to Abraham and he says Abraham through you I'm going to build a people who will be free from the power of sin and the oppression of the enemy and free to serve the true and the living God you're with me so far that's the story of redemption in Scripture now let's talk about David who's David well David is a descendant of Abraham through the tribe of Judah and David was called out from tending his sheep by God to become king of Israel and as he became king of Israel it was during his reign and then the subsequent reign of his son Solomon that Israel came to the clearest physical expression of all the promises that God had made to Abraham God said to Abraham your descendants will be free your descendants will serve me freely and with joy and it was during the reign of David that the surrounding nations were driven back in fact became subject to the people of Israel brought their tribute and you have that story of the Queen of Sheba bringing coming to Solomon to behold his glory and what you have here is a celebration of the promise made to Abraham in the Old Testament where God's people will be delivered from their enemies and they will freely serve God and so it was David who wanted to build the temple wasn't allowed to because he had too much blood in his hands but Solomon built the temple which becomes the spiritual center of Israel's worship and the promise is made to Abraham that God would would set his people apart so they could serve him and would be his instrument for bringing salvation to the nations of the world comes to physical expression during the reign and the rule of King David now who remembers the promise that God in turn made to David God promised to David that one of his sons would sit on the throne forever and ever Psalm 89 captures it wonderfully this way God speaking once for all I have sworn by my holiness here is another oath God is pretty sparing with his oaths by the way this is another oath made now to David I have sworn by my holiness I will not lie to David that his line will continue forever and his throne endure me before me like the Sun and it will be established forever like the moon the faithful witness in the sky as I said last week that promise was severely tested in the history of Israel because you know that after the decline of the nation they all ran off into exile the Kings all got killed and there was no word of this promise so along comes Matthew and he says the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of Abraham the son of David what's he saying well for our purposes he is saying two things first of all he says concerning Jesus that he meets the qualifications for being the Messiah that is to say he meets the qualifications of being the Christ or the anointed one of God who is going to as we'll see in a moment fix the whole world see anybody can say I'm somebody and anybody could say in fact many people did Jesus said there would be many false Christs who would have many people follow them anybody can say I'm somebody but for somebody to be able to say they are the Messiah the long promised Savior to Israel they had to be able to demonstrate that they were the descendant of David who in turn was the descendant of Abraham hence the genealogy in both Matthew and Luke both genealogy serve to prove that Jesus born of Mary and adopted by Joseph is a legitimate heir to the line of David because as the genealogy show both his adopted father and in Luke his birth mother trace their origins to King David that's why when Christ was born during the census where do they all have to go to Bethlehem why the city of David so the fact that this is never contested by their contemporaries illustrates how clearly this issue was established that the genealogy of Jesus left no doubt that he was the legitimate heir to David and therefore the legitimate heir of the promises that God made to Abraham into David you're still with me now take it a step further because second implication of this is that Jesus comes to restore all things Jesus comes as the Messiah to restore all things think through this with me a little bit for just a moment why is the world in such a mess I mean why is their illness why is their death why donations turned against each other why can people not get along with each other well you know the answer we have fallen into sin and broken covenant with God we're separated from him we've come under Satan's dominion he lies to us about God we've become self-centered to the core and because we're all self-centered to the core the less resources there are the less provisions there are the more we turn against each other and the more society goes down that path the worse things get and so what ought to surprise us not what ought to surprise us is not the thing sometimes get banned or that people have fights or the people can't get along or the nations go to war together no no what ought to surprise us is that anybody ever gets along and that things go right and things get blessed and so throughout scripture there's that cry how do we risk it restored in our relationship with God and I was thinking of that a little bit this past week as I watch snatches of the memorial service of Mandela and then part of his funeral service early this morning and matter of fact and and it strikes me that his elevation comes from a place of deep longing in people for somebody to make things right isn't that true I mean every time we have a political campaign and I listen to the campaign speeches I hear these messianic overtones I'm gonna fix it all up you follow my economic policies you follow my social policies you follow my ideas and and I'll make it all happen and the message of scripture of course is it ain't going to happen because it can only happen through Jesus it is Jesus who comes into the world if we can put that back up for a moment the promises were spoken to Abraham into a seed the scripture does not say two seeds meaning many people we looked at that verse last week but and to your seed or offspring meaning one person who is the Christ and of course the message of scripture is that the chaos that we see over here is only going to change by God sending his own son into the world in the likeness for sinful flesh to restore us to our relationship with God and to reestablish the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God is where people live in right relationship with God and where people live in right relationship with each other and of that kingdom Jesus is the king because he is the legitimate descendant of David that's why the angel Gabriel when she comes to Mary announcing the fact that she's going to be the mother of the Christ child says this in Luke chapter 1 31 32 and 33 he will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus he will be great and will be called the son of the most high the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever his kingdom will never end now if you know anything about a Matthew's gospel then you know that Matthew never calls it the kingdom of God he always calls it the kingdom of heaven because Matthew is writing to Jews Jews have a high reference reverence for the name of God and so he always changes it to the kingdom of heaven but the kingdom of heaven is the values of heaven lived upon the earth by the time history ends God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven and people that have trouble today worshiping God or living for him are going to find themselves very much out of place in a place where worship is 24/7 and God is at the center of all of life now just to extend this a little bit here is something the Jews of Jesus day didn't get and sometimes you and I have a hard time getting our heads around and that is the fact that this program of redemption that Jesus has come to establish bringing all things back under his father's authority comes in two phases the first phase was when he came as a baby as a man to die for our sins and to be raised for our justification he came to restore us to God and he sits today at the right hand of God the father waiting for all his enemies to be made a stool for his feet but he's coming a second time and in the Old Testament those two are sort of woven into one in the Old Testament prophecies and so it's easy to to miss out on this huge gap between his first coming and his second coming but in his second coming he's going to complete what he has started everybody will have had a chance to hear the gospel everybody will have had a chance to either respond to it favorably or negatively and then he comes in judgment he's going to destroy the nations of the world and he's going to establish the kingdom of God forever and ever the book of Hebrews talks about it this way Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people and he will appear a second time not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him theologians call this the already but not yet that is to say the kingdom of God is already here because when you come to faith in Christ then when we're born again we become citizens of the kingdom of God we are spiritually located over here we are children of God God gives us the Holy Spirit but you notice these two circles always overlap and the reason is because even though spiritually we're in the kingdom of God physically we're still very much in the world and the challenge of living in the world is to put off this whole system of thought behavior and living and to adopt this way of life because when Christ comes the second time this is what the universe is going to look like everything else will have been removed God will be all and in all we will be in perfect relationship with him will be in perfect relationship with each other and for all eternity we will continue to grow in the unspeakable riches of Jesus and you and I both know we can't even begin to imagine what that is like and the authors of scripture can only stoop to human language to describe what the eternal the holy city of God looks like streets paved with gold and and all that kind of language because words failed the imagination remember Paul got a glimpse of it he said I can't even begin to talk about it but that's who Jesus is and that's what he's come to do and that's why all around the throne of God in heaven the angels are just standing on tipita waiting for that second phase of redemption when God destroys all sin all evil all wickedness and he establishes his own kingdom I mean imagine living in a world of perfect bliss perfect joy perfect freedom no illness no death no struggles no marital quabbles to deal with because you'll no longer be married just oh life will be heaven some people don't want to go to heaven because they don't want to not be married but that misses the whole point of what relationship with God looks like and what marriage represents by the way because marriage is meant to be an earthly reflection of that totality of that relationship that we will have with the Lord Jesus when he will be all and the Father will be all and in all all right need to move on because there's a second thing in this genealogy you're lucky because I was gonna tell you about three but I'm only talking about two this morning there's a second thing in the genealogy that is of critical importance for us to understand and that is this the gospel is for sinners the gospel is for sinners if you'll take out the genealogy for just a moment if you're familiar with it you will know that there are some very unusual features to this genealogy I say unusual features because the names of five women are mentioned there's of course Mary the mother of Jesus but if you go back to verse 3 there is Tamar who was the mother of Paris then in verse 5 there is Rahab and also in verse 5 there is Ruth and then in verse 6 there is Uriah's wife what's her name that's Bathsheba with whom David committed adultery now the mere mention of female names in this genealogy is profoundly significant for two reasons number one historically very seldom in biblical genealogies do you find the names of women you know that not because the Bible is anti-woman but because the purpose of genealogy was to establish who inherited what and inheritance was typically through the male line and it was only when there was no male heir that the genealogy would refer to the female line and so I talked earlier about these nine chapters of genealogies in the book of Chronicles there are 886 male names in that genealogy but there are only 25 women so the fact that you have five women in this particular genealogy is very significant but there's a second reason why this is even more significant because these women all have a history I mean really who remembers Tamar Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah she was married to Judah's oldest son a dude by the name of Ur God didn't like him very much so struck him dead so now under Israel laws of inheritance the second son a boy by the name of Onan was supposed to marry her and generate offspring for his brother Onan didn't want to do that and you can read the story Genesis what 38 I believe it is and so God struck him dead now Jude is down to one son the third one and he's not about to take a chance in his third son so he does not give his third son to Tamar that means Tamar cannot beget a child and so what does she do if you know the story she dresses up as a prostitute and Judah comes along and she seduces him gets pregnant Judah hears about the fact that she got pregnant he wants to have her killed because she was bad double standard quite obviously but she's a smart little woman she tricked him and she said whoever staff this is this is the father of my child guess whose staff it was it was Judah and so Judah got caught and had and said she's a better woman than I am a man and so this child becomes Perez who is one of the forebears of Jesus a bit of a dubious family background don't you think but it gets worse of course you know Rahab Rahab was the innkeeper in Jericho who took in the spies innkeeper is sort of a nice term for describing probably she was a prostitute she gets joined in into the inheritance or the family line for Jesus Ruth you know about Ruth I mean we think of Ruth as a virtuous woman she was the daughter-in-law of Naomi who with her husband and family had traveled to the land of Moab her two sons and married the two Moabite women and Ruth went back to Israel with Naomi but what do you remember about the Moabites they were the product of incest between lot and his daughters so that was a bit of a dubious beginning not only that they were extremely inhospitable to Israel when Israel was coming through the wilderness to go into the promised land God put a curse on them and he says no Moabite listen to this no Moabite is going to enter into the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation which is God's way of saying never is never is never so here's Ruth she's part of the family line of Jesus and then Uriah's wife Bathsheba well you know that story she did a little hanky-panky with King David while her son was or her husband was out in the field David has him killed out of that union eventually come Solomon and the royal line continues through him women with a history a very notable history so why does Matthew go out of his way to mention these women in the genealogy of Jesus well I'll give you two reasons this morning the first is that he is setting the stage for the Great Commission the Great Commission is how Matthew ends his gospel in Matthew chapter 28 when he says has Jesus speaking here all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age remember before the exile Israel always wanted to be like the nations that was their besetting sin they lost their identity they couldn't minister to the nations of the world because they were just like the nations of the world but after they came back from the exile that at least was one lesson that they had learned and now in the New Testament the challenge for the people of Israel and remember Matthew is writing to the Jews to picture Jesus as the Messiah they thought it was all about them and they lost sight of the fact that God was saving them for what purpose to save the nations of the world to this day God's people struggle with that same dilemma there's all and I've talked about this before there's always the tension about looking after ourselves and looking after our own needs and building up the church and going beyond our walls to communicate the gospel to the world we often put these in opposition to each other we need both and as some of you know another verse from Isaiah that has been profoundly influential in my own life was Isaiah 49 verse X God's speaking about the servant of the Lord the suffering servant that we know is Jesus in the New Testament and he says it's too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back those of Israel I have kept I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth and in the New Testament Jesus puts it this way John 10 16 I have other sheep that are not of the sheep pen I must bring them also they too will listen to my voice and there shall be one flock and one shepherd Matthew is establishing the necessity of the Great Commission and if you'll remember some of the teachings that we've been doing in the book of Acts it took a lot of strings being pulled by God for the early church to get them beyond their own comfort zone to send them out to the world because it is always more fun to hang around with your own kind than to rub shoulders with the last and the lost and the least so second reason closely tying into this message that Matthew is trying to communicate in this genealogy nobody is beyond the reach of the gospel nobody is beyond the reach of the gospel there's another interesting thing in that genealogy that I never noticed until this week and you find it in the verses 7 & 8 listen carefully were you all the father of Abijah Abijah the father of Asa Asa the father of Jehoshaphat Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram doesn't mean a thing to you until I point out to you that the names in yellow italics there were bad kings in the genealogy of Israel and the names in white were good kings and so here we have Reboam a bad king giving birth to Abijah a son who is also a bad king but now we have Abijah who is a bad king giving birth to Asa and Asa is a good king Asa gives birth to Jehoshaphat Jehoshaphat was a good king Jehoshaphat gives birth to Jehoram and Jehoram was a bad king that interesting I thought I throw that in for those of us who are parents who have wandering kids just to help us to feel a little bit more in keeping with the kings of Israel what's the point well the point is this nobody gets into the kingdom and the coattails of their parents everybody has to come to personal faith personal repentance making personal choices that's why you know for all our emphasis in infant baptism we have an emphasis on making profession of faith where you own the faith for yourself and for many of us there's no greater joy than when our kids take that kind of step that having been said having a bad background doesn't have to keep you out of the kingdom because it is not your background that determines your salvation it is Jesus who determines your salvation and the whole point of this genealogy and the whole point of including these women with a history is Matthew's way of saying Jesus did not come to save good people he came to save bad people and there is nobody so bad they cannot be saved Jesus sums it up this way of course this is a quotation from Luke 5 31 and 32 it also occurs in Matthew's gospel it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick I have not come to call the righteous but sitters to repentance as I said Matthew records that same conversation and if you were to look that verse up in both Luke's gospel and in Matthew's gospel guess in what context this happens this is in the context of the call of Matthew do you remember what Matthew's profession was before he became a disciple of Jesus he was a tax collector what was the status of tax collectors among the people of Israel it's right up there with drug addicts and alcoholics and atheists and you name the worst person you can find that would be where a tax collector found himself and I think it was an amazing story for Matthew to know that despite his past despite his gouging the people of Israel Jesus reached out into his life and chose Matthew just like Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba Jesus was not ashamed to call them his forebears because he [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:49.570; remove through 00:40:55.000] had come to seek and to save the lost [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:55.000; resume after this marked segment]