Transcript
genealogies don't do a lot for us who wants to read all those names most of
which we don't know how to pronounce properly anyway but I also pointed out
the genealogies are important and they're important for three reasons
number one they tell you who you are number two they tell you whose you are
and number three they tell you what your inheritance is and if you want to sort
of capture why that is so important think of the many adopted children who
once they come of age often begin this desperate search for their parents
because they want to know who they are they want to know to whom do they belong
and they want to know what their inheritance is spiritually emotionally
and certainly physically and so in Scripture genealogies really matter the
genealogy of Jesus really matters so much so that both Matthew and Luke spend
extensive parts of their introductions in the gospel to the genealogy of Jesus
and so far in looking at Matthew's genealogy we have noted two things let
me very quickly review those the first is that the purpose of the genealogy is
to establish the credibility of Jesus as the promised Messiah every believing
Israelite familiar with the Old Testament knew that if the Messiah came
he was to be a descendant of David and so Matthew and Luke go out of their way
to prove by way of their genealogies that Jesus is the legitimate heir of the
promises made to David that's why Matthew begins the way that he does in
verse one of this particular chapter a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ
the son of David the son of Abraham the second thing we saw two weeks ago is
that the gospel is for sinners the gospel is for sinners and we saw
together that in Matthew's genealogy there are the names of four women all of
whom have a history there is Tamar daughter-in-law of Judah committed
adultery with Judah in order to conceive an heir out of that union came twins one
of whom becomes the ancestor of Jesus a very sordid tail and painful to observe
then there is Rahab Rahab we call her an innkeeper but it's very likely that she
shared more than her rooms with visitors she likely also shared her bed and that
would make her a lady of the night there's Rahab and then there's Ruth Ruth
the Moabites and you will recall that God placed a curse upon the Moabites to
the 10th generation which was God's way of saying there is not a Moabite that's
ever going to be part of my people and yet Ruth bless her becomes one of the
ancestors of Jesus so then of course the wife of Uriah her name is Bathsheba she
had a little fling with King David ultimately ended up costing her husband
Uriah's life he was murdered through the instrumentality of David one of his
most sordid chapters and out of that union between her and David eventually
was Warren Solomon who also was listed as one of the heirs of Jesus and Matthew
names those names very intentionally to show not only his commitment to the Great
Commission but to show that from Jesus's point of view he is not ashamed to be
associated with sinners because it is sinners that he came to seek and to save
as Luke puts it in Luke chapter 5 these are the words of Jesus it is not the
healthy who need a doctor but the sick I have not come to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance and that brings us then this morning to still a third
observation that I want to make about the genealogy of Matthew and that is
this Matthew imposes a literary structure on the genealogy Matthew
imposes a literary structure on Matthew's genealogy I talked about that
very briefly last week or two weeks ago you have the scripture in your bullet
and take it out again a moment and I'll show you once again how the genealogy
divides into three sections the first section runs from Abraham in verse 2 to
King David at the end of verse 6 the second section runs from David in the
second part of verse 6 all the way to the exile in Babylon the end of verse 11
and then from verse 12 to the end of verse 15 you have the return from the
exile and the rest of the genealogy three sections very clearly divided
that's interesting enough but what's really interesting is what Matthew does
with that because he goes on to make the very interesting observation that each
of these sections consists exactly of how many generations 14 generations he
sums it up in verse 17 thus there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to
David 14 from David to the exile to Babylon and then 14 from the exile to
the Christ 14 14 and 14 pretty neat package isn't it problem is if you've
ever tried to count then you'll discover that Matthew is way out to lunch first
of all it's not 42 but it's 41 not only that but he's had to skip at least three
generations of Kings in his first section and he's had to double up some
other names in order to make it fit this particular structure and so you can well
imagine that over the years the skeptics have looked at that and they've said
Matthew either you don't know how to count or you're trying to pull the wool
over everybody's eyes neither of which I believe to be true because if the
Matthew who wrote the gospel is the Matthew who was the disciple of Jesus
and subsequently his Apostle which I happen to believe is the case do you
remember his profession he was a tax collector now do you think tax
collectors would know how to count you bet your bottom and all that nor does it
do justice to a high view of the inspiration of Scripture to say well he
was just trying to pull the wool over our eyes and he was playing trickery on
us so what's the answer well the answer is this
Matthew imposes deliberately a literary structure on the genealogy of Jesus see
we come to this sort of thing with our Western minds and our Western minds are
best described as digital it's either on or off it's either right or wrong well
the mid-eastern mind doesn't function that way the mid-eastern mind isn't just
concerned about the actual historicity of the facts and that sounds funny
they're more interested in this spiritual interpretation or the
theological underpinnings of the fact let me show you what I mean again notice
how the genealogy begins a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of
David the son of Abraham now would you say with our Western mindset that Jesus
is the son of David and the David is the son of Abraham and the answer is no
that's not how we think we might use the word descendant but when we think of
sons we think of the next generation isn't that true but the Bible isn't
interested in picturing the next generation the Bible is interested in
picturing where goes the flow of the inheritance and so yes Jesus inherits
the promises made to David and that's why he is David's son and Abraham and
David inherits the promises made to Abraham because you see that is why he
is called Abraham's son so back now to the number 14 why does Matthew impose
this literary structure of 14 on his genealogy well numbers in the Bible
you'll know are often used in a symbolic fashion and it's very easy to get
carried away with all kinds of speculation in that regard but the fact
remains that numerology in Scripture is a solidly established fact and so the
number one represents the unity of God number two represents the duality of
witness Jesus sends out his disciples two by two in the book of Revelation
there are two witnesses in the end day the number three represents what the
try unity or the perfection of God number four represents what do you think
creation the four corners of the earth again you can't take that literally
obviously and the four ends of the earth number five represents grace number six
represents what the totality of humanity that's why the Antichrist in the book of
Revelation what's his number six six six the number seven represents the
perfection because it is on the seventh day that God rested God has seven years
of Sabbaths and so on number eight wonder if you know what number eight
represents number eight is a new beginning it represents the start of a
new week Noah had eight people in the ark it was on the eighth day that
children boys would be circumcised under the old covenant number nine not as
well-known represents judgment number 10 represents divine perfection and number
12 represents governmental perfection you have 12 tribes of Israel you have 12
disciples or Apostles and you have a hundred and forty four thousand saints
in the book of Revelation again a multiple of 12 you can go on like that
for quite a while the number 40 represents triumph through trial and so
you have Jesus in the wilderness fasting 40 days and 40 nights and you of Israel's
journey in the Old Testament wilderness lasting also 40 days and 40 nights so
brings us back to number 14 what do you do with number 14 well number 14 is a
double of seven and if seven is the number of perfection then 14 is the
total perfection that Jesus Christ has come to bring and so Matthew's theme
here appears to be that Jesus comes to usher in the ultimate perfection he is
heir not only to the promises made to Abraham but also made to David and I'm
going to give you two reasons for that just very quickly first of all the
numerical value of David's name is 14 I'll talk about that in just a moment if
you're familiar with Old Testament languages or New Testament ancient
languages such as Hebrew Greek and Latin you may recall they don't have numbers
for numbers the way that we do they use letters for numbers and the easiest way
to demonstrate that is to think of Roman numerals if we can get that number up
let's see how good you are mm xii is 2013 the only place that I hardly see
Roman numerals anymore is at the end of movie credits you ever notice that the
end of movie credits tend to list the year of the production in Roman numerals
well David's name adds up to 14 and it looks like this the D has a value of 4
the V or the Wow it's a combination of V and W has a value of 6 and again D has
the value of 4 for a total of 14 and some of you are saying what about the
vowels aren't you thinking that you ought to be thinking that if you aren't
but Hebrew historically did not use vowels in fact they had to be added by
the reader and so it's the consonants that have a value ascribed to them and
what Matthew appears to be doing is he is again underscoring the reality that
Jesus is the legitimate heir of all the promises that God has made to David and
back through David to Abraham God's kingdom is coming through Jesus which is
why Matthew talks so much in his gospel about the kingdom of heaven the kingdom
of heaven is like this the kingdom of heaven has these values Jesus has come
as the ultimate expression of the kingdom promised to Abraham originally
fulfilled to some degree on an earthly level in David's life but will one day
be fully realized in the coming of Jesus that's one reason Matthew appears to use
these the number 14 in his genealogy there's a second reason though and that
has to do with the fact that he repeats this three times because three times 14
is what 42 42 months is a significant figure as I'll show you in a moment but
it equals three and a half years which is half of seven and the figure 42 in
scripture is particularly interesting in apocalyptic literature it occurs in the
book of Daniel it's repeated in the book of Revelation and it appears to
represent a season of suffering for God's people that ultimately ends and
comes to completion by the coming of the kingdom and Matthew appears to be
teaching here that the Messiah is going to be a suffering Messiah who will bring
to an end the suffering of humanity and he will bring God's people into their
rest listen to this verse from Revelation Revelation 11 verse 2 they
will trample on the holy city for 42 months that is the Gentiles will
persecute God's people I will give power to my two witnesses they will prophesy
for 1260 days cloth in sackcloth 1260 days is 42 months of 30 days each which
is how it was reckoned biblically 42 appears to represent a season of
suffering that comes to an end with a glorious resurrection victory one other
reason I can state that with a reasonable amount of confidence is that
if you add up here's an interesting thing all the stations of Israel that is
their places of camping through the wilderness on their way to the promised
land how many do you think you come up with 42 42 so Matthew is imposing a
literary structure on his genealogy not because he wants to fudge the facts not
because he doesn't know how to add things up but because he is wanting to
teach a deeper theological truth that Jesus is the legitimate heir to the
promises made to David which in turn originated with the promises made to
Abraham and again the implications of that as we bring this to a close this
morning for you and me are utterly profound let me just very quickly state two
profoundly practical implications of this first of all we can expect God to
be faithful to his promises to each of us individually we can expect God to be
faithful to his promises to each of us individually remember what we said
earlier that if this morning you are in Christ that is to say you have repented
of your sin you know that you cannot bring about life restored by any other
means but faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ then the Bible
says you are a son or a daughter of Abraham and a recipient of the promises
made to Abraham that you will one day inherit the earth we've quoted this
verse before Galatians 3 verse 29 if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's
seed and heirs according to the promise you are heirs according to the promise
and remember the promise was that Abraham's offspring would be blessed they
would inherit the earth and they would do so by faith so practically speaking
that means this if you're in Christ today the faithfulness of God's promises
through the generations apply to you first of all God is your covenant
keeping God that means that he has chosen to reveal himself to you your
sins are forgiven you have access to his throne of grace to receive as the book
of Hebrews says mercy to help in times of need God loves you with an everlasting
love and he makes all the resources of heaven available for you he has promised
to guide you to lead you to protect you to provide for you he holds you in the
palm of his hands he describes you as being as precious as the apple of his
eye he has placed you in history and in time under certain circumstances that he
has sovereignly controlled because he has a place and a calling for you in
life that only you can uniquely fulfill he has provided the presence of the
power of his Holy Spirit in your life to equip you for that calling and he has
promised to walk with you until the end of the age and then upon passing into
the next life will receive you into his presence without spot wrinkle or
blemish or any such thing and then at the end of history at the end of history
he's going to share the fullness of his glory with you I hasn't seen ear hasn't
heard the heart of man hasn't imagined what God has prepared for those who love
him Paul you will recall got a glimpse of it he was so struck speechless that he
couldn't and wasn't permitted to speak of the coming glory that God has ordained
for his people and you know what's powerful about it is that God is bigger
than anything he is bigger than your sin he is bigger than the devil he's bigger
than the world and he has said you hang on to me and I will bring you profoundly
to glory that is the covenant he made with Abraham when he would bless Abraham
you can trust God that come hell or high water he'll hold on to you and he'll
walk you through the generations and he will bring you into that place of glory
there's a second profound implication and that is the fact that we can expect
God we can expect gone to be faithful to his promise to the whole world why did
God call Abraham out of her of the call days to the land that he was going to
show him yes it was so that God could bless him but what was a secondary
reason God wanted to bless Abraham so he could bless the nations it was never
God's intention to save you and me and bring us into this incredible covenant
relationship with him where he is our God and we are his people and we can
experience the presence and the power of his glory even when often we have to
walk that out by faith because we we can't see it or always feel it or
experience it it's reality nevertheless but it's never just about us it's so
that through us the purposes of God can be realized for the world and you've
often heard me quote this next verse from Isaiah 49 verse 6 I will create sorry
49 6 it is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of
Jacob and 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 that's
a messianic passage and that's part of Matthew's passion in wanting to take the
gospel beyond the Jewish nation to the Gentile people every one of us who is
here is here today unless we are physically Jewish we're here because we
have been grafted into Christ and we thereby share in the promised blessings
that God has made to Abraham so many years ago so how does God go about doing
this well he does that you will recall and I want to wind this up but he does
that in two phases we can picture it this way he does it in two phases first
Jesus comes into the world as a baby and by coming into the world as a baby he
takes upon himself our scene he dies on the cross and is raised so that he can
put us into proper relationship with God and one of the reasons and you've often
heard me talk about this before the reason those circles overlap is that's
because where you and I find each other we have one foot in the kingdom of God
because we have received new life on the other hand we have one foot in the world
and we're still very much physically present here and God is going to change
the nations of the world not by military might not by great economic revivals
or by all of the things the world seeks to adopt in order to make the world a
better place the problem with humanity is the human heart we're estranged from
God we're estranged from each other and as you've often heard me say the further
that cycle progresses the more life comes to fall apart but then Jesus comes
and he teaches us to love God and he teaches us to love our neighbor and God's
people are like Israel of the Old Testament they are a seed of a new
relationship a seed of a new life and everywhere the gospel goes God is at
work changing lives little bit at a time here and there a mother who sacrifices
for her children a father who sacrifices for his wife and family friends who
consider their responsibility to each other to outweigh their own demands and
their own needs lovers who give as opposed to take business people whose
hearts are characterized by the generosity and the care of God himself
and we're little pinpoints of life and as those pinpoints grow and spread
through all the nations of the world there comes a place in time when God
says enough is enough the scales will balance God will have proven his point
the archangel will blow his trumpet Jesus comes in judgment and comes in
redemption and then will come to pass the scripture that is written by Isaiah
many years ago behold I will create new heavens and a new earth the former
things will not be remembered nor will they come to mind be glad and rejoice
forever in what I will create for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and
its people a joy and I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people
the sound of weeping and crying will be heard in it no more we can trust God to
be faithful in our own individual and personal lives but we can also trust him
to be faithful in the world nation will rise against nation people will rise
against people as the end of the age approaches whenever that will be things
will increasingly fall apart people's hearts will fail for fear but in the
midst of it can be God's people who know their God who can lift up their heads
because they know their redemption draws nigh and the challenge for you and me as
we come to the end of this year we launch into another year is to not grow
weary in well-being or in well-doing but to know that in the Lord our labor is
not in vain because every little deed of righteousness that we do in the name of
Jesus God remembers it gets added to the scales and it will hasten the day of the
coming of the Lord God is faithful and what he has promised many generations
ago he will complete and accomplish for the glory of his name
you