The Genealogy of Jesus

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We are going to kick off Christmas in Matthew. So if you would, turn with me to Matthew, Chapter 1, verse 1. I know, it's weird. We're going to start a Bible book in the first verse. I know it's a little I kind of feel like I'm going to echo. Is there an echo? You guys feel that? Yes? A little bit? Oh, okay. All right. I don't know if you guys have ever seen an episode of Star Wars. If you've ever seen an episode of Star Wars, you can just clap once. Okay. Half the room or more. Okay. Star Wars movies, all of them, actually all nine of them, all the main Star Wars movies, have a very particular opening. And that particular opening looks just like this. It is a text crawl. So it's these slow, very slow moving words that kind of just, you know, just very, I mean they creep, they crawl as it were. And this slow text crawl for all of the movies actually gives you, if you read it, it gives

you the context for what is about to happen. It frames the movie in a larger landscape. So if you've seen Star Wars before, you likely skip that part. We see this often throughout, you know, if you're watching Netflix, if you're watching Amazon Prime, if you're watching anything streaming, there is this really wonderful button that pops up and it says, skip intro. And you hit that skip intro button. You guys know what I'm talking about. Don't tell me that you have never hit a skip intro button. You have. I know you have. So we do the same thing with genealogy lists in the Bible. There is no skip button, but I mean in our heads we're like, and Seth was the father of Enosh, skip. We're not going through, I don't know who Ham was or why the sons he had matters, so I'm not going to read it. I'm just going to skip all the way the heck through that, not even read it.

Christmas season as we tell Jesus's story, at the risk of you hitting the skip intro button, I want to begin in Jesus's genealogy. The verses that we will cover this morning are Matthew chapter 1 verse 1 through 17, and if you just take a gander, you can see that's a lot of names. Okay, that's a lot of names. I will not read them this morning. All of them. I will read some of them.

What I want to propose to you though is that Matthew, as he's writing out his gospel, okay, so this is a pretty, it's pretty linked. There's 28 chapters in this, in this gospel that Matthew's writing. My contention, my, my kind of argument this morning is to say that he chose this opening on purpose, that it wasn't perfunctory. It wasn't just tradition. It wasn't something he felt like he had to do for people. It was something that he actually wrote in there on purpose with kind of with some statements that he wanted to make. In fact, Matthew with this opening makes several controversial statements about Jesus, about his beginning, about the completion, about imperfection. And these are statements, really powerful, really controversial statements that we miss if we just skip the intro. So let's not skip the intro this morning. Let's go through the slow text crawl of Matthew,

A New Hope. That was way funnier in my head. Okay, it's good. Yeah, clever, clever, Cape Verde. Let's keep moving. Okay, Matthew chapter one, verse one. Here we go. It says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. R.T. France is a dead guy that you should not know, but he is, was a premier scholar on the Gospels, on Matthew in particular. Spent a lot of his life writing Matthew commentaries and what he points out is that in the beginning of Matthew's gospel, that literally in the Greek says, the book of Genesis of Jesus Christ. In other words, it's very similar to how John opens his gospel when he opens with, in the beginning was the word. Okay? So when you see that, when you see it here, the book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, That actually mimics perfectly the first genealogy that was recorded in Genesis, which is Genesis 5:1, that says, this is the book of the generations of Adam.

Okay. It's the exact same wording in the Greek. Biblos geneseos, the book of Genesis. Same thing. Why does Matthew care about it? Why does he do that? His first statement, his first controversial statement is that this gospel is about a new beginning. That the counter on history is about to be reset. That before this moment we were in BC and we're about to be in AD. Okay. In Jesus a new era has arrived. Okay. That's what he's trying to talk about here. He's hinting at it. He develops this further. But it also says, it also says that he's the son of David and the son of Abraham. And so in that, Matthew is making another statement. He's making a statement about completion. He's making, so he's made a statement about beginning, which we're going to get back to. He's also making a statement about completion, which is where I want to kind of explore for just a minute.

Because to get this, to get what he's saying about here, about how is the son of David and the son of Abraham, We really need to start at the end, so we need to look at verse 17 first. And this verse happens right after the genealogical list is completed. It says this in Matthew 1, 17, So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation of Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. What this does is this highlights major turning points in Israel's history. Abraham was the beginning of God's people. Abraham was the guy that God called out and said, I'm going to make you a great nation, right? Genesis 12, Genesis 15, big, big, big stuff. You talk to a Jew today, today in 2022, and you say, who was Abraham? And they'll tell you exactly who he was. Abraham's a big deal.

Same thing for King David. You ask a Jew today, who's King David? They'll tell you exactly who he was. King David kind of represents this high point in Israel's history. Okay? When King David ruled Israel, they were at the height of their political power. I mean, there was no more splendor, greater than when David was their king. And then the Babylonian exile, deportation to Babylon. It's when all of God's people were taken out of their land and put into a foreign land. So this is like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This is Daniel, the prophet. This is whenever that's happening. And this represents the lowest point in the history of God's people. So you have the beginning, you have the high point, and you have the low point. What is he saying? Matthew here, and stay with me on this, Matthew here is highlighting symmetry with 14, 14, 14, okay? He's saying there's 14 generations between the beginning

and the high, another 14 between the high and the low, and another 14 between low and Jesus, okay? However, however, we should note, and this is really important, the genealogy, that's gonna happen more times, the genealogy that is here is selective. In other words, Matthew does not list all the people that should have been listed, should have been. Another way to say it is that when Matthew is talking about this 14, 14, 14 symmetry, that symmetry is forced. Okay? It's a forced symmetry. Now, before you burn me at the stake, you keep listening, okay? Matthew, there's a couple of things we need to know. by trade as a tax collector, okay, which means the brother can count. In fact, he made a living counting. He knows how to count. He's not trying to wipe anybody out of the history books. He's not trying, like I said, he's not forgetting how to count. In fact, historical data, authoritative historical data of genealogical lists was available to

everybody. Look, for example, the gospel of Luke, which was written around the same time Matthew had the same information available as Matthew did. Luke has 23 generations where Matthew has 14. Although we do not know his motives, we don't know Matthew's motives on this, we can only guess, we do know two things and they're very important things. Number one is that we know that Matthew is aware that the symmetry is forced. He knows he's putting 14, 14, 14, where there is not really 14, 14, 14. He knows that, because he can count, and everybody else can too. If he tried to do it, it would be a very stupid ploy. Like trying to say there's 51 stars in the flag. Okay? It doesn't work. We also know that Matthew knows that his readers know. Go with me on this. Matthew, in other words, is not hoping to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. He knows that the people that are reading his gospel with Jewish background,

he knows that they know that the symmetry is forced. In other words, he's not trying to fool anybody. Rather, he's carefully putting the data into forced perspective. Let me explain. All right. If, for example, I declare that the homicide rates in blue cities, we're talking about Democrat cities, right? Red cities, Republican. If I say the homicide rates in blue cities, Democratic cities are higher than ones in Republican cities, okay? That's true, okay? But I might omit this, that the homicide rate in Republican states are higher than than ones in Democrat states. Both of those statements are true, by the way. Those were actual, factual statements. However, choosing the state or the city perspective tells its own story. Does that make sense? Both of these are true, but whichever one I highlight, whichever one I tell, tells the story. It actually tells the story that I want it to tell.

I'm putting it into forced perspective. I'm saying here's data, it's kind of skewing it this way so that you can kind of see it. I'm trying to tell you something by telling you something. Now when people highlight this information with forced perspective, when they do it to deceive other people, it is scandalous. When they do it to deceive other people, scandalous. However, when people do it and it's common knowledge And you're not fooling anybody, just like Matthew's doing here, it can be thought provoking. It can be a little controversial. It can make you think, it can make you wonder about what's going on.

So why the fourteens? Why do it? Matthew was saying something about Jesus here, and he is saying simply, numerically, that Jesus is the seventh, seven. That does not sound like anything to me and you, but to Matthew's readers, it was a big deal. So you count 14, 14, 14. Well, that's six sevens, six sets of sevens. That make sense? So that when Jesus is coming onto the scene, what he is saying is that Jesus is the seventh seven. We know from other elements in Matthew, again, that his gospel is written to people that are kind of inside Jewish culture. know the significance of a generation, the significance of genealogy. They know a lot of those things. Another thing they know is the significance of the number seven. In Jewish culture, the number seven signifies the number of completion. For example, there are seven days of creation. There are seven weeks of Pentecost, or in the Old Testament, the Feast

of Weeks. There's the seventh year of Jubilee in Leviticus. Whenever all the debts are canceled and all the slaves are freed. There are seven churches in Revelation. I'm not trying to play the numerology game here, I'm just trying to tell you the number seven is significant. It's significant to us, but it's even more significant to the Jewish reader that Matthew is talking to right here. And when he forces all of those fourteens together to say that Jesus is the 7th, 7th. The statement is that Jesus is the completion of all that has come before.

That the promise that Abraham received and was commissioned by, that Jesus is the completion of that promise. That all of the splendor and the grandeur of David's kingdoms, Jesus completes it with His own majesty. The law that came through Moses, Jesus completes that law. Or in Jesus' words, He fulfills that law. All the pain of the Babylonian exile, Jesus puts it into it, it puts it in perspective and completes it and makes it worth it. Jesus does all those things. All this is completed because Jesus, remember, is the beginning of a new Genesis. Jesus is the beginning of something new. And this is the thought that Matthew is trying to provoke in us by forcing all those fourteens together, by putting that perspective together with statements of completion and new beginnings, that Jesus, in other words, is not just another good guy. He's not just a great teacher, but Jesus has the power and the authority that are

unlike any that have ever come before Him and any that will follow. Jesus is something new and altogether different. He's not just another 14. And particularly here in the first couple of chapters of Matthew, he's saying that Jesus's birth is not just another instance of God moving in history, but it is the start of a tidal wave. that will remake reality.

And that's not even overstating it. That what's about to happen is cataclysmic on a cataclysmic order. And by listing Abraham and David and all the others, the statement is here that all the people on that list, right, all the 14 times 3 generations that were listed, all the 42 generations, Their lives were serving His. Their lives, Abraham's life was serving Jesus. David's life serving Jesus. All those other guys that you don't even know. Shield heal, right? That guy's life was serving Jesus. Abraham acting in faith was only a hint of what Jesus was going to usher in. King David ruling over so much land, having so much sway politically, it's only a shadow of the kingdom that Jesus was going to usher in or is ushering in in his birth. And this, this should be our view at Christmastime. Our view at Christmastime is that Jesus is the King who has come. That he initiates not just favor, not just

grace, not just joy. I mean, all those things existed kind of in, in people's relationship with God before Jesus came, what is he introducing? He's initiating a coming kingdom, something brand new. And this is why the coming King is the title of our Christmas series, because in the book of Matthew, this is what he's talking about. He's talking about not just that, that Jesus was born. Yay. He's saying this is the beginning. This is the inauguration of something big. Christmas is a celebration, both of Jesus' birth, but also a kingdom that his birth initiates. And so in Matthew's text crawl, verses 1 through 17, in that slow text crawl, when we don't skip it, we begin to see the magnitude that Jesus is the focal point of history, that he is the axis upon which history turns. I know in academia we've replaced BC and AD with BCE and CE. I get it, I know that.

But aside from all of that, for millennia, the whole world viewed Jesus' birth as a different era, as a different reality. That in BC before Christ, it's different than AD, which is Latin for ano dominee, which which means the year of our Lord, that we count the year 2023 next year, when we celebrate it on January 1st, 2023, it will be 2,023 years since Jesus was born.

So this year that we're just kind of throwing out, well, we're throwing out in reference to the birth of Jesus, the turning point in history. history. This is what we celebrate, that He's the King of all creation, old and new. But there's one more statement that Matthew makes. So I said there were going to be three. Statement of beginning, statement of completion. There's also a statement of imperfection. So just like Matthew is carefully foreseeing those fourteens, right, he's putting in the generation counts in just so. He's also very precise with extra details that he adds between Abraham David in particular. If you look at verses 2 and 3 of Matthew chapter 1, it says that Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

and Judah the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar. Now if you just visually scan that list, you can see the regular rhyme and meter, right, is what with the beginning of verse 2 was like. So Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and so on and so on and so on. And so there's this rhythm, right? But every once in a while, that rhythm breaks. And it's because Matthew's adding something that he wants us to notice. Okay? So what does he say? He says, he's the father of Judah and his brothers.

So what? Well, those brothers were pretty famous. Judah was a part of a plot to kill one of those brothers. And then he was part of a plot, after they thought he was dead, to cover it up and lie to his father. This is the story of Joseph in the Technicolor dreamcoat. This is the coat of many colors. This is that story. Judah was a part, Judah was a villain in that story. Straight up. And it gets better. It says that Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah was the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar.

Now Tamar is the person, is the woman that Judah had children with. Tamar was also Judah's daughter-in-law. Okay, you don't know this story, it's pretty great. When Judah, according to the law, Judah was supposed to supply a husband to his daughter-in-law after his son died. Okay, that was the custom, that was what you were supposed to do. So his son, Mary's Tamar, his son dies, he's supposed to give her another husband, and he doesn't. He refuses, which makes Tamar like a young widow, which was really bad in that society. So he disgraced her. So he refused to supply her husband. So what Tamar does is she disguises herself as a prostitute, lures Judah, and has children by him, when he doesn't even know. Okay, so this is the genealogy of the Messiah, okay? And we are talking about a guy who was tricked by his daughter-in-law to have children, that's who Perez and Zara are, they're the twins from that interlude.

He could have simply said that Jacob was the father of Judah and left it at that, not and his brothers. Or that Judah was the father of Perez, didn't have to include Zara because Zara's not even mentioned after that, and definitely doesn't need to include Tamar. What's he doing? He's highlighting the flaws on purpose. And he's highlighting them with people that are major pillars in Jewish history. Do you know why they're called Jews, for example? Because they're from the tribe of Judah. That's their patron saint, basically. And so far, we've got two strikes against him and the list is just getting warm. Okay, let's keep going for just a little bit. I don't want to exhaust this, but you can read it for yourself. It's actually pretty interesting. Look at five and six. Salomon, not salmon. And Salomon, the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth.

Obed, the father of Jesse. Jesse, the father of David the King. And David was the father of Salomon by the wife of Uriah. Okay. Rahab, let's talk about her first. Salomon married a prostitute. Rahab, very famous prostitute. Salmon married a prostitute just like Grandma Tamar pretended to be. Ruth was a Moabiteus, in other words, she was from a different country called Moab. The quick version is God's people hated two countries, okay? Ammon and Moab, and there were very good reasons. So for Ruth to come from Moab and be in the line of Jesus was like pretty disgusting for some people, okay? She was outside the circle. She was part of a hated people, Ruth, the Moabites. And also that David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. Doesn't even name the woman, her name was Bathsheba. David, famously, you probably know this story, had Uriah killed because he wanted to marry Bathsheba

because he had had a child by her while Uriah was off to war. Why include all of these flaws? Why? If Matthew were writing his own genealogy, if he was selling his own life map, he would have to include that at one point he was a tax collector, which was, that sounds like a normal thing to me, and you knew it was very shameful. It means he knowingly took advantage of his fellow Jewish brothers. K. Matthew was a good Jew, right? And we must include a whole host of things that he's not proud of, right? This is like how some of us consider our own past, right? We view our addictions, our sins, our bad choices, our regrets, All these things that we do not like to talk about, this is how we think about them.

Like, I don't like to talk, for example, about how I battle lust as a guy. I don't like to talk about it because I have to fight off shame when I do. But the reality is my shame is God's glory. It's actually not my shame because God can take the credit for delivering me from that. And that Jesus still uses me despite that, despite that ongoing battle that I'm in, despite the ongoing battles that you're in. This is Matthew's point by including these flaws. It's not to say that Jesus' genealogy is tainted. It is to say that God can work within those flaws, that God can work through those flaws, that whenever you screw up, even major, when you do that, God is not gasping in heaven, wondering just how you could have done something so foolish, how you could have done something so dumb. How many times have we gone over this thing? That's not what is happening. What is happening is this.

Christmas is the story of God using generations of flawed humanity to usher in a kingdom and a king that saves generations of flawed humanity. Let me say it again. Christmas, Christmas, the holiday that we're celebrating that I mean, look, these decorations, they look great. I'm super excited. I had hardly anything to do with it and no art direction. So if it looks good, tell somebody else. This Christmas, we got Christmas trees, we got shopping, we got family, we got all that, and that's good. I don't hate any of that. But what is the story that we're celebrating? It is the story of God using generations of flawed humanity. So not just the fact that you mess things up all the time, but also like Perez, that his mom dressed up to be a prostitute, right? that God is using that, God is using generations of flawed humanity to usher in a king and a kingdom that will save generations of flawed humanity.

And this seems impossible to us because all we see when we look at our past is a trail of broken dreams, broken hearts, broken lives, broken promises. That's all we see. We don't see the pattern. We can't read the signals. We don't look at it and see any kind of tapestry, any kind of design. All we see is failure. And all we feel is guilt when we look back at that. And that's why we don't like to talk about it because we don't believe, actually believe that God is going to use it for something good. So we don't even confess it sometimes within our life groups. Like we're not even talking about it because we can't see what God is doing. We can't notice the theme. And yet, despite our inability to notice, despite the fact that we have a lot of blinders on, Jesus is at work right now, taking all of your and my flawed history and at just the right time and in just the right way,

just like we're gonna see in the story of Christmas, just the right time, just the right way, that he's going to bring all of that together for his purposes. And here's our thought this morning. I just want to leave you with this, and we're going to enter into our time of response. Here's our thought this morning. What if Jesus did more than just save you from your sin,

but what if he's also a king that's calling you into his kingdom to pick up the work work and to be a part of the kingdom, to be a producer in that kingdom, to be a servant in that kingdom, to make things happen in that kingdom. What if Jesus is not, whenever you mess up, is not looking the other way, hoping that, you know, like, oh, I just can't believe, you know, they did that for the last time, you know, just, that's not God's purview on that. What if he's not looking in the other way, hoping you never do it again, waiting three weeks to talk to you? That's not how God works. When you mess up, he's there with you. He's looking you in the eyes. He sees it, he knows it, and he wants to pick up the pieces with you. And he's telling you, let's get up. Let's try again. Let's keep going. This is the relationship that Jesus calls us toward. Not that we're under threat, but that we're being called into a new kingdom, where we

can repent and be healed. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this warning. I pray that you would help us. I pray you would help us to see all that you're doing in our lives, all the ways that all All of our mistakes, all of our, sometimes even our trauma, how it adds up, how it adds up to a big theme, how it adds up to something that you are using. A big pattern. In fact, it's not just a big pattern, it's something that fits within the pattern of your history, of you working in humanity. Christmas help us to remember the big story that we are caught up in, where you're doing things just at the right time, in just the right way, exactly when it needs to happen and you're using very flawed, very imperfect people with tainted family histories.

Lord help us, help us to see what Christmas is, help us to step in. Is your name to be pregnant? Would you please stand? to the entrance scene by every sist and lord. O praise the name of the Lord, He's His name. For as days He will see your praise. O Lord.