Jesus and His World: Ancestors

[00:00:05] Amen. [00:00:07] Emmanuel means God with us. And so this connects with what Paul said at the end of that Ephesians passage when he says that we are being built together into a dwelling place for God. He is with us even in one way, that we are his dwelling place, temple fit for him. [00:00:29] This desire for the coming Messiah, this coming of God in this way that we just sang about, is discussed in this anticipation and hope is discussed in the passage we'll think about in a moment in Matthew, chapter one. Let's pray first, though, and ask for God's blessing. [00:00:50] Our Heavenly Father, as we come now to the reading and preaching of Your Word, we do ask for Your blessing on it, on the preacher and on the hearers. Let us all together receive Your word with gladness, knowing that Your promises in Christ are good, are sure. [00:01:09] Help us to strengthen our faith in Him. We ask that the fruit of Your Spirit would be produced in us as we draw nearer to You, Lord, draw us to Yourself. Keep us in your hand and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:30] Please remain standing if you're able. And let's turn to God's word in Matthew now, Matthew, chapter one. [00:01:55] I'll be reading the genealogy that Matthew begins his Gospel with. So from verse one through verse 17, let's hear God's word, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. [00:02:14] Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar and Perez, the father of Hezron and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salman, and Salman the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed, by Ruth and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David, the king and David was the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah and Solomon, the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah, the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah. And Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers. At the time of the deportation to Babylon, and after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Sheltiel and Shealtiel, the father of Zarebabel and Zerubbabel, the father of Abiod, and Abiod, the father of Eliakim and Eliakim. The father of Azor and Azor the father of Zaddak and Zaddak the father of Achim, achim, the father of Elud and Elieud, the father of Eleazar and Eliezer the father of Mathan and Mathan the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. [00:04:08] So all the generations of Abraham to David were 14 generations. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. [00:04:23] May God bless his word. You may be seated. [00:04:56] So Matthew begins the good news about Jesus Christ with a genealogy and a really interesting one too. It's interesting that he does it at all. And it brings to mind all kinds of things, which I'd like to think about with you this morning. [00:05:15] One of the things it reminds us is that when Jesus came into the world, he didn't come into some kind of fairy tale land. [00:05:23] He didn't come into a place of make believe. [00:05:26] He came into our world, the real world, a world that was filled with streets and donkeys and doctors and tax collectors, confused people, wise people, happy people, sad people, and people with names. Lots and lots and lots of names. [00:05:47] Many people had more than one name, even. [00:05:50] And we have these genealogies. [00:05:53] Jesus came into a world that was filled with people who needed Him. Some knew that, some did not. Some trusted Him, some did not. But this was the world that he came into. It was a world that at that time is very much like our world today. [00:06:11] What I'd like to do over the next several weeks, in the mornings and in the evenings, is to think about that world that he came into by looking at different aspects of that world and thinking about what that means meant at that time and what it means for us as well. So understanding Jesus and his world better. Jesus and our world better. [00:06:36] And this morning, what I want to think about this evening we'll think about the Romans today. I want to think about ancestors or people who came before, people who came in the past. [00:06:50] Matthew begins his gospel this way by pointing this out, he links the Lord Jesus and his coming with the past, doesn't he? He does it by telling this genealogy right from the very beginning, he signals to us that he's telling us something very important. And he wants us to understand who Jesus is by what has come before. [00:07:15] The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham. [00:07:22] By saying that he's a son of Abraham, it tells us that he's Jewish, that he belongs to the Jewish people. He belongs to those promises that God made to Abraham, the covenant God made with Abraham. [00:07:37] He also talks about him as the Son of David. This is a reminder that he belongs to this Kingly line, right? Matthew emphasizes this in verse six when he says Jesse was the father of David, the king. He wants us to understand Jesus as someone who comes with noble birth, royal birth, but at the same time, also someone who comes with a checkered past. We might say there are a number of people we could say all of the people in this story who have downsides and dark sides and, as we say, have a past, have things that are shameful, embarrassing and not pure. [00:08:26] There are a number of people here in this story that are not even Israelites by birth. We think of Rahab or Ruth? Perhaps Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. Uriah was a Hittite, maybe Tamar as well. There are people here and stories here that when we go back and we read about these people, we are shocked in some ways. And we are reminded, very much reminded, that this world that is represented by these names, while there's nobility and greatness and great covenants and these kinds of things, there's also a lot of shame and sorrow and sin and brokenness. [00:09:12] That's what we see when we look at these names. I'm not going to go through all of the names this morning, or even most of them. What I'd want to do is just think about this genealogy at a little bit of a higher level and sort of what these things point out. [00:09:29] One of the things that the genealogy points out, and aside from connecting us with the past, connecting Jesus with the past, is it reminds us that history has a direction, it has meaning and purpose. We see this in the way that Matthew constructs the genealogy. He centers it around David, right? It is sort of a rise up to David and then a fall away from David. [00:09:56] Some scholars have pointed out that David's name, when you the sort of three consonants that make up his name, they spell or they add up to the number 14, a number that Matthew obviously uses in constructing these generations. [00:10:13] Probably not an accident in a way that Matthew is locking in some of the significance of David and this text. [00:10:27] Another way that Matthew shows direction and purpose as he constructs this genealogy is in these groupings. One commentator, R. T. France, points out that Matthew likes groups a lot and uses them in his Gospel. He particularly likes groups of three and groups of seven. And we see both of that here in the genealogy. We have three groups of double sevens, 14 very, we could say highly constructed. Right. Matthew is being very selective in the way that he tells this story, and he's doing it on purpose. He's preparing us for things that he's going to tell us in the Gospel as he tells us about Jesus. [00:11:08] And all of this is intended to remind us that this history is not just a random list of people. The history that has come before Jesus is anything but random. It has. Just as the genealogy is constructed, history itself, in all of its parts, has been designed and purposed and planned by God. [00:11:30] These 14 generations 14 generations. 14 generations have a way of telling us that history can. One way to look at it is like these great epics or chapters in a book. [00:11:44] Look at it this way. Matthew says, this time from Abraham to David, the time from David to the deportation to Babylon, then to the deportation to Babylon to this moment right now. [00:11:59] And with these Epics 14 1414, these great movements of history all going somewhere, it leads us to this expectation that something's about to happen, doesn't it? [00:12:12] We notice this also in the way that we have this language of beginning or birthing. [00:12:19] Notice the first word, for example, in the first verse we have the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. This genesis of the Lord. Well, that same word that is used there, very similar, is used for the word father or begetter of. So what we have is Abraham was the of Isaac than the father of Jacob. You could say the geneser of. Right? The begetter of so and so, begat, so and so, begat, so and so. So another way to translate it, if you use these words that are similar to each other, would be sort of say, the geneser of so this is the Genesis, the genealogy of Jesus Christ and Abraham. Genesis, Isaac and Isaac. Genesis, jacob boom, boom, boom. Right. One after another after another. But then what happens at the very end, at the very end of the genealogy, after all of this Genesising? If I'm making up words now, we have Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, right? We don't have and Jacob begat or Joseph begat Jesus. But something different happens here after all of this begetting. [00:13:36] There's this one who was born of Mary, not born of Joseph. And that's, of course, because Jesus's birth was unlike anything that had come before. Matthew is basically getting this ball rolling for us. He's leading us, he's building all this expectation, expectation, expectation. And then we finally arrive and we find something really remarkable, something different, someone different Jesus. And as we come to read in verse 23, behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name emmanuel Joseph, who did not know Mary, she was found to be with child. Verse 18 says, from the Holy Spirit, history has meaning, it has direction. And where is it going? It's going to this moment right here with the birth of Jesus. [00:14:41] There's something else exciting about this genealogy, I think, that's worth noticing. [00:14:49] The Gospel of Matthew in some ways begins like Genesis begins. [00:14:56] Genesis begins with genealogies. There's a little bit of a prologue in chapter one and then in chapter two when we get a sort of retelling of the creation accounts. It begins with these words and these are the generations of. [00:15:11] And then that structure is what marks out the next rest of Genesis. [00:15:19] These are the generations of and then there's a break. And then these are the generations of a bunch of stories and a break. And then these are the generations of well, now, here, once we get to the New Covenant, what do we have? Here is the genealogy of it's. Another way that he is emphasizing the Holy Spirit is emphasizing this new beginning. [00:15:39] Well, in Genesis five, after the fall, we have a genealogy. There one of the very first ones. And if you might remember about that, or if you happen to be looking at it, you'll notice that there it says, and he died, and he died, and he died and he died. It sort of talks about there's this person and then they died, and then there's this person and then they died. There's this sense that after the fall, after the fall of man into sin, it leads towards death. At this moment, we're seeing something different. The way that Matthew tells the story, the way that he tells the history leading up to Jesus, he's telling us that something of life is coming. There's begetting and begetting and begetting. How? By God's grace, first through Eve, the mother of the living, right? [00:16:33] And then through these future generations, all leading up to this point. [00:16:42] History has direction and purpose. God is working in it despite the death, despite the dying. [00:16:50] Galatians four four says this. It says, when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. [00:17:03] I love this image as if time itself is pregnant, right? Time, it's full time itself is begetting by the hand of God. These events and these people, it's not random. It's not meaningless. And when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth his son born of a woman, born under the law. [00:17:30] Ephesians 110 says, as a plan for the fullness of time, jesus Christ came to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. [00:17:43] This unity between heaven and earth is also a unity between man, between Jew excuse me, and Gentile, as we read in Ephesians, chapter two, and between those in the past, those of the present and those of the future. [00:17:59] Most of us, when we are born, we have an effect on those people who are around us and maybe on future generations for a little bit, right? At least in some significant way. Maybe if we make a really big splash, we can say to have had some effect a little further than that. [00:18:24] Jesus is a remarkable and unique in this way. Not only does he affect those people who are around Him his family, his friends, not only did he create this movement and life and work that lasted thousands of years, but his work also applies backwards. [00:18:46] He saves the people who came before Him. [00:18:50] What king or general or wise person has ever done that? [00:18:56] What person has ever come into the world and says, don't worry, I've got you and also all of you back. There no one. This is totally, totally unique. [00:19:10] In the fullness of time, he comes and unites all of these things. [00:19:15] Mark 115 at the beginning of His Gospel, Jesus says, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel, history and time, they have direction and meaning. Because of Jesus. [00:19:36] Because of Jesus. [00:19:40] This is so helpful because many of us have families and origin stories and genealogies that, like Jesus, are mysterious in some places, stories that grandma never shared, shameful things in places, unknown things in places. [00:20:00] And of course, it brings us great sadness to know that we also contribute to the darkness in this world, the darkness in our families. [00:20:10] What we see in the Gospel of Matthew, in this new beginning, in this birthing forth of a new covenant and a new savior, is that not only has all of this had purpose, but the Lord is doing redemptive work as well. [00:20:30] It didn't just have purpose and that it was leading up to this moment, but this moment is a saving moment and has a way of redeeming and saving not only that which comes in the future, but that which happened in the past. [00:20:47] The Scriptures tell us this in several places about Jesus's work going sort of both directions. [00:20:54] In Genesis 15 six, we are reminded that Abraham believed God. [00:21:00] What did he believe God about? [00:21:03] Well, about a promised offspring who would bring salvation and blessing to the whole world. [00:21:11] Abraham believed God. [00:21:15] John 856 says Abraham. Jesus says, Abraham saw my day and he was glad. [00:21:24] Abraham, of course, didn't know this whole genealogy going up to Jesus, but he knew about Jesus. He knew about the one that God had promised him. He didn't have all the details worked out. There were things that, as Hebrews says, he saw from afar and didn't fully receive during this time, but he believed the Lord nevertheless, and his righteousness. And his faith was counted to him as righteousness. The righteous shall live by faith, the scripture says, and that's how Abraham lived. And many others who are in this list, they lived by faith. Faith in what? Faith in Christ? [00:22:09] Faith in the promised one, faith in the coming Messiah. Same thing for David. David was given a promise by God. These covenants, by the way, are the things we'll be talking about in the adult Sunday school class. But these covenants, this covenant promised to David that he would have a son who would reign on his throne forever, a son of righteousness, a son of power, a son of glory, a son of God. [00:22:38] David says in one of the psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, speaking of his son, if we turn to Romans, chapter one, there's really wonderful verses right there at the beginning of that book, which I'd like to read to you this good news about Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus. [00:23:12] Notice what Paul says about himself and about that Gospel in Romans one, verses one and two, he begins this letter. He says Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. [00:24:02] Paul is a servant of Jesus Christ. He is one who has been given the Gospel, a gospel which was promised beforehand concerning this person, concerning this Son. [00:24:16] Hebrews 915 says that death redeems those who are called, or who are called. It redeems those who are called from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. [00:24:29] It redeems those who are called from the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant. [00:24:38] An amazing thing in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham came to the Gentiles. Here's another way of looking at it. I'll finish with this. I said it's not only like Jesus'work works retroactively, right? His work on the cross accomplishes what came before. [00:25:02] But we could put it in this way that in Christ Jesus, as the Scripture says, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, right? So it's not as though know, sort of the ripple in the pond just sort of goes out in all directions. But it's also true in another sense that what happened in the beginning now comes to us. The promise that was given to Abraham comes to us. The blessing that was given to Abraham comes to the Gentiles. How? Through Jesus Christ, not just because of his power and his divinity, the effectiveness of his salvation, all of that, but in connection with the promises that God had made beforehand. [00:25:49] History has direction and meaning and purpose and salvation because of God, because God has been with us. God has been working in us and through us through different generations, generation after generation, making sure and keeping his love steadfast. [00:26:11] And this Jesus, this Son of God who comes into the world, brings all of those things to completion. [00:26:20] That's why Paul then says in verse 16 of chapter one in Romans, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation for all those or to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. [00:26:47] So what we see as Jesus sorry as Matthew begins to tell us the story about Jesus is that Jesus comes into a world that has already been existing. Unlike Adam, he came into a world that was already affected by sin, already marred, already broken. [00:27:07] Jesus comes into a world that we could say has a past, has a history, comes with baggage, comes with a lot of sin. [00:27:17] But it was a past that always included a promise. And that promise is fulfilled by the Promised One, by the Messiah, by the Christ, by the Anointed One who came in the fullness of time to redeem us out from under the Law, to save us from our sin, and to bring us into an eternal life in his name. [00:27:45] As we see then in Are, when we consider Jesus and who he came, matthew tells us right away how we are to be thinking about Him. He is the Son of Abraham, he is the Son of David, he is the Son of God. [00:28:03] Let's trust Him and trust his powerful salvation for us and the world. Let's pray. [00:28:12] Our Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for the gift of Your Son. [00:28:18] We praise you for his eternally begottenness, that he is distinct from the Father in person, and yet one, as one God with the Holy Spirit, his divinity ever sure, always perfect, never fading, always eternal. [00:28:41] His divinity reminds us that we worship Him, rightly. We serve Him as God, and that our salvation is complete. [00:28:52] He is, after all, Emmanuel god with us, and because of his salvation, we have every reason for hope. [00:29:03] We can proclaim the news as good, as joyous, as one that is filled with life for the present and for the life to come. [00:29:16] Our deaths are not the end, but the beginning of eternal life. With you, Lord, in us. You bring us out of the sin and misery, out from under the wrath and curse that is deserved because of our sin, and you bring us into a very great salvation, Lord. We're thankful also that because of the Lord Jesus, our lives on our particular moment, though very small and insignificant in many ways, nevertheless, as ordained by you, has significance because of you and in Him who came and who promises to come again. [00:30:00] Lord, teach us all to bow our hearts before this great King, to serve Him with everything that is in us, to count ourselves as those who are no longer strangers to the covenants of promise, but those who belong to this as citizens of the kingdom of Heaven. Fill our hearts with joy and hope for all that is to come. Through Jesus, who is already resurrected from the dead and ascended to Your right hand, let us live under his guidance and under his glory. Now forever. We pray this in his name. Amen.