Show Notes
Luke 3:23-38
This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ
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Episode Transcript
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The son of David, the son
of Jesse, the son of Obin,
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the son of Boez, the son
of Salah, a son of Nassan,
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the son son of Aminadab, the
son of Admin, the son of Arnie,
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the son of Hezron, the son
of Perez, the son of Judah,
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the son of Jacob, the son
of Isaac, the son of Abraham,
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the son of Terah, the son
of Nahor, the son of Seah,
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the son of Rue, the son
of Paleg, a son of Ebert,
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the son of Sheila, the son
of Canaan, the son of our
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VAC sad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son
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of Lamick, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son
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of jared, the son of Mahalil, the son of Canaan, the son
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of Enus, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son
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of God. Amen, please be
seated. Well, I'm not sure I'm
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guessing, maybe this has happened to
your pastor before, but I kind of
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woke up this morning in a in
a cold sweat, and I started thinking,
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what are you doing preaching out of
the genealogies and UH, obviously we've
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come to that point in the gospel
of Luke. But I still thought you
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can't do this. And in my
mind I thought I know what I'll do.
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I'll switch the night sermon to the
morning and and and then I thought
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that would work because particularly, and
this is a plug for tonight, I
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found several, Um, very similarities
between tonight's text and the play that we
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read on Friday night. So that
that's kind of interesting. But Anyway,
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Um, then I thought, no, I think Andrew's printed out the bulletins.
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Uh, that's not going to work
at all. Um. So I
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mentioned a while ago that sometimes in
my carnality, Um, I think,
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God, why, why did you
not take out a couple of genealogies in
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the Bible? And and maybe you
know, put a chapter on who should
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be baptized or what's speaking in tongues
means or up along that line. But
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again, I said, I realized
that God's Word is ultimately perfect. I
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remember hearing a preacher one time talking
and he said that before he had a
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particular experience that he had trouble getting
a sermon out of the gospel of John,
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but then after that experience he felt
he could preach out of the maps.
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Um. So I'm not preaching out
of the maps, but I am
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preaching out of a genealogy, and
we need to know that God can even
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use a genealogy. Now, in
Philip Riikin's commentary on Luke he relates a
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story that he got out of the
wicklift Bible translator newsletter and I found it
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interesting, so I want to repeat
it to you this morning. It goes
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like this. When a Bible translator
and Papua New Guinea started to translate Matthew's
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Gospel, he thought the last thing
I want to do is bogged these people
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down with the genealogy. So he
began with chapter two. But the day
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came and all the other chapters were
done, they called together the men who
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were helping him and they decided on
the best way to say begat. Then
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they proceeded with Matthew Chapter One.
Abraham Begat Isaac Isaac Beigett, Jacob,
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Jacob Beghett, etcetera, etcetera.
By the time they completed about six of
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these bighats, the translator could sense
the men were becoming excited. Do you
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mean they said that these were real
men? Yes, he answered, there
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were real men that's what we do, they added, referring to the custom
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of keeping track of genealogies. We
thought that these were just white man's stories.
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Do you really mean that Abraham was
a real man? Yes, the
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translator said, that's what I've been
telling you. We didn't know that,
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they said, but now we believe
that night they gathered the village together and
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said listen to this, and they
read the first chapter of Matthew, and
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that chapter was a key for the
belief of the tribe. So we should
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never doubt the wisdom of God.
But once genealogy was important. We already
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saw that. Well, I guess
you didn't because I preached that sermon Beck
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in Wisconsin, but you probably know
from the Christmas story that Uh Joseph and
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Mary needed to know where to go
to be taxed, and of course that
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required them knowing and being able to
trace their genealogy. Since the early days
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of the church, there have been
efforts to connect the four living creatures in
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revelation chapter four to the four Gospels. The problem is there really isn't agreement
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among all the people that try to
do that as to which beast or which
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face equals which Gospel. But I've
always kind of found one, and I'm
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not saying this is hard and faster
or inspired or anything like that, but
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I found something that I thought is
at least interesting. I always thought that
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Matthew, who presents Jesus as the
king, is best represented by the lion,
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and Mark, who presents Jesus particularly
as a servant, is best represented
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as the ox, and Luke,
who presents Christ has man in his humanity,
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is the man, the face of
the man, and John, who
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especially emphasizes Christ as God, is
the ego and everything. I bring that
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up this morning is because if you
look at the genealogies of the four gospels,
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you'll see that they all relate.
You say, Wall wait a minute,
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pastor, I know it's a genealogy
and Matthew, Luke, what are
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you talking about? All four?
Well, Matthew, who presents Christ as
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a king, of course must trace
the genealogy through David and actually through the
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Kings, through David Back to Abraham, which he does. Luke, who
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presents Christ as man, presents his
genealogy taking Christ back to Adam, ultimately
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back to God, of course,
but back to Adam. Mark, who
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presents Christ as a servant, has
no genealogy, because a servant doesn't really
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need a genealogy. And John,
who presents Christ as God, has the
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shortest genealogy. In the beginning was
the word, and the word was with
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God and the word was God.
His genealogy simple, Jesus God. That's
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all he gives to us. Now
again, I'm not presenting that is something
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that's absolutely proven. So don't take
it that way, but I find it
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interesting. But the main problem we
have in our genealogy this morning concerns the
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differences between the genealogy that Matthew gives
us and the genealogy that Luke gives us.
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And the main question that divides people
on these genealogies is, is Luke's
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genealogy a genealogy of Joseph or is
it a genealogy of Mary? Now there
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are arguments on both sides of this
question. The Old English poet Francis Quarrels
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Uh wrote this. When two evangelists
shall seem to vary in one discourse,
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they're converse, not contrary. One
truth doth guide them both. One spirit
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doth direct them doubt not to believe
them both. Now the question I had
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is I prepared this message is how
much of this is valuable for a Sunday
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morning sermon, and I came up
with the thought not a lot, but
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maybe some, and so I'm going
to give you some of that and then
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I want to move to application.
But I want to begin by giving you
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some of the differences between Luke's and
Matthew's genealogy, without trying to say anything
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has what would prove whether Luke's genealogy
is actually a genealogy of Mary or a
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genealogy of Joseph? A couple of
things. are a few things we should
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know about Luke's genealogy as I read
through them. Maybe this struck you.
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We don't know a lot of these
people. They're not mentioned their names.
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About half of the names in Luke's
genealogy are not even in the Old Testament,
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so we're not very familiar with them
at all. And let me talk
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about the part of Luke's genealogy that
Matthew doesn't give because Matthew doesn't go from
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Adam to Abraham as luke does.
And so what about the names that Luke
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gives us from Adam to Abraham?
Well, the genealogy that Luke gives us
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from Adam to sham, who is
Noah's son, is exactly the same as
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the genealogy of Genesis Five, only
Luke gives it to us in reverse order.
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And then the names from Sham to
Abraham in Luke, also in reverse
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order, a difference than genesis,
but they are, outside of that,
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the same as genesis eleven ten,
to which only one exception, and the
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exception is that genesis eleven tells us
that our facts said Father Sheila, but
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luke puts in another name, the
name of Canaan, in that. Now
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that name is not found anywhere else
but only in the Septuagint, which you
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may know, is the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Old Testament. John Gill
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says this but seems to be Oh, into some early negligent transcriber of Luke's
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Gospel and since put into the Septuagint
to give it authority. I say early
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because it is in many Greek copies
and in the vulgate, Latin and all
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the oriental versions, even in the
Syriac, the oldest of them, but
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ought not to stand neither in the
text nor in any version. For certain
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it is there never was such a
Canaan the son of our facts head,
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for Salo was his son, and
with him the next words should be connected.
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Well, you see, gil has
a strong opinion. I'm going to
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leave it there. Before we continue
compare again matthew and Luke's genealogy from Abraham
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to Christ, let me deal with
some general differences again. Matthew begins with
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Abraham and moves forward to Christ,
where Luke begins with Christ and moves backwards
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to Adam. Matthew mentions women in
his genealogy, whereas Luke mentions no women
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in his. Matthew gives some explanatory
notes in his genealogy, explaining something about
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certain people in the genealogy, but
luke gives nothing outside of his very first
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comment in verse twenty three. Matthew's
genealogy is a total of forty two names,
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and those forty two names are divided
by Matthew into three groups of fourteen
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each, which also means, of
course, there are six times seven names
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in his genealogy. Luke gives us
another interesting number of names. He gives
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us seventy seven if we don't count
the name of God in it. Now,
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if you compare the genealogies from Abraham
to David and Luke and Matthew.
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They're roughly the same. There are
two names that are slightly different in the
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two accounts, but we can assume
that they are different names of the same
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person. But it is in the
genealogies between David and Joseph, the supposed
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father of Jesus, that we run
into a lot of difficulties. There is
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almost no similarity between Matthew and Luke
in those names. It starts right away
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with David's son. We are used
to the genealogy that starts with David and
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then, of course, Solomon and
then real bowman. We're used to that
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genealogy. But Luke doesn't give us
that one. He gives us Nathan,
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we know a very little about from
the Old Testament. And then he goes
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on from their listing people we have
no idea who they are and there are
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only two names in the two genealogies
that are the same between David and Christ
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and those two names are zerobable and
shielty. Of those are the only ones
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that are listed in both the genealogies. Matthew gives us twenty four generations between
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David and UH Joseph, Luke gives
us forty and again most of the names
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that do not appear in the Old
Testament. But it is possible that Luke
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had access to some genealogical records that
others did not have access to that perhaps
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we're destroyed when the temple was destroyed
in a D seventy. Perhaps those genealogical
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records were then destroyed. So he
may have used those to construct his genealogy.
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For it's very common for people to
know Paul knew that his genealogy went
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back to Benjamin and Barnabas knew that
his genealogy went back to Levi sort appears
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that people knew in those days their
genealogy and the less amount of names that
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we find in the gospel of Matthew
probably suggests that matthew skipped some genealogies.
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Was Most people believed that he did, and that was not uncommon at all
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in genealogies. And the phrase where
Matthew says the father of in his continuing
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genealogy does not have to mean direct
father. It just means that they are
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in line together. It could be
used of a grandfather, a great grandfather,
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and you know the word is used
in the gospels in that way,
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even going back many, many generations. And so that is uh, the
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question there that we have or why
these names me may be different. So
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let me deal just a little bit
and then again I want to go to
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application. But I want to deal
with the question of whether Luke's genealogy is
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that of Joseph or is it that
of Mary. Now there are arguments on
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both sides of this and Um one
is that the argument of the side that
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said that, uh, Luke and
Matthew's genealogies are both genealogies of Joseph.
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Now, one argument for that would
be it wasn't the common practice of Jews
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to trace a genealogy through the mother. So if this genealogy was of Mary,
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it wouldn't really be accepted by the
Jews at that time him. And
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along that line, people also ask
if this is indeed a genealogy of Mary.
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Wouldn't you think Mary's name would be
there? And it isn't even mentioned.
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And why would luke, in Chapter
One, Verse Twenty Seven, why
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would he draw special attention to the
fact that Joseph was of the House of
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David, if this genealogy is not
of Joseph? Now there have been several
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people that accept that idea, that
this is Joseph. One would be the
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founder of our denomination, J Gresh
Matchen, who thought that both of these
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genealogies were the same. But he
thought that Matthew gave us the legal descendants
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of David. In other word,
Matthew gives to us the men who would
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be the legal heirs to the throne, if the throne was there to be
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had, and Luke instead, machin
thought, gives us the descendants of David.
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That would lead up to and end
up with Joseph, Mary's husband.
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Not only Matson believed that, which
is a waiting name to put onto this,
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but another name you may have heard
of believed this, by the name
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of John Kelvin. He also held
to that view. What about some arguments
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in favor of Mary's genealogy? In
this idea, generally, Mary and Joseph
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are looked at a somewhat distant cousins. We're not sure exactly how distant.
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And if this is the view that
one his spouses, that Luke is giving
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us Mary's and Matthews giving US Joseph, then indeed the two gospel writers are
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giving to us a dual claim to
the throne of David by Jesus, since
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both by blood through Mary and also
through legality through Joseph, he has the
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claim to be David's son. Donald
Barnhouse brings out that this actually solves a
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problem that bothers many. Back in
the Old Testament, the Prophet Jeremiah uttered
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a prophecy in chapter twenty two,
in verse thirty, and this prophecy goes
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as follows. Thus says the Lord
right this man. This is talking about
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Jack and I write this. Write
this man down as childless, a man
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who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring will succeed
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in sitting on the throne of David
and ruling again in Judah. And people
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ask, well, if that's true, that Jack and I will have no
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child to succeed him, what in
the world is he doing in Matthew's genealogy?
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Wouldn't that then negate Jeremiah's prophecy?
But if Matthew's genealogy is only the
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legal genealogy and Luke is giving us
the blood genealogy, then we can say
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that makes perfect sense. Others point
out the way that Luke begins his genealogy
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where he says being the son,
as was supposed, of Joseph Son of
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Healy. He says by doing that
Luke is particularly trying to draw our attention
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away from Joseph and to marry,
and that he is doing that. And
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the Jewish talment actually says that Mary
was the daughter of Healey. So Luke
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is purposely omitting Joseph from the genealogy
and telling us that actually Jesus was the
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grandson of heally. Again, the
Great Puritan Commentator Matthew Henry believed that this
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was a Mary's genealogy. Far Far
as modern commentators, Philip Reich in,
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the former pastor of Tenth Press Philadelphia, future current president of Wheaton College,
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r Kent Hughes, Pastor of the
College Church in Wheatne Illinois, the reform
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commentator William Hendrickson and the name you
may have heard, John Macarthur, all
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hold that. Well, I'm letting
you pick your own view. Um,
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I'm going to move to application because
that's where I wanted to center on uh
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this morning, but hopefully it's at
some interest to you. Some of you
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more pedantic p but like myself,
may have found some of that interesting the
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others of you, please wake up
right now. That would be great.
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Um, I want you to note
in verse twenty three that Luke begins his
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genealogy with the fact, as I
told you last week, we would not
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have known had luke not given it
to us, and that is the fact
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that Jesus began his ministry at Thirty
years of age. And I told you
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last week that there's precedent to that. David began to rule when he was
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thirty, Joseph began to rule with
Pharaoh when he was thirty. The levite
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begin to serve as priest between the
ages of thirty and fifty, and so
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we oh luke for that detail.
And then there's a very important word in
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verse twenty three. It says of
Jesus being the son and then, parentheses,
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as was supposed, of Joseph the
son of heally. Now let me
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tell you something about that word supposed, and looking up in my concordance,
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that word occurs fifteen times in the
New Testament. Out of the fifteen times
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that it occurs, nine of the
Times it is used by Luke. So
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it was a favorite word that luke
uses. And here's what's important to note
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in every single case where Luke uses
this word, he uses it in except
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one. I'll say there is one
exception. But in eight of the nine
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occasions where Luke uses this word he
uses it to mean a fact that people
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suppose is true but in reality was
not true. A couple of examples.
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Acts Fourteen nineteen. But Jews came
from Antioch and ICONIUM and, having persuaded
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the crowds, they stoned Paul and
dragged him out of the city, supposing
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that he was dead. Now,
whatever you believe there about that particular incident,
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Paul was not dead and he walked
back into the city. So they
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supposed wrong. And Act six seven, when the jailer woke and saw the
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prison doors were open, he drew
his sword and was about to kill himself,
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supposing that the prisoners had escaped,
but they hadn't. They were all
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there. And so again this is
how the word is used. So Lucas
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saying, people believed that Jesus was
the biological son of Joseph, but he
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wasn't. It was the supposition of
those around them, maybe a presupposition,
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I don't know, but it was
a supposition of those that were there.
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But Lucas saying they were wrong.
And as Luke would tell us in his
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genealogy, he is ultimately and actually
the son of God. And that word
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actually supposed. It occurs in Luke's
genealogy, where every other place the phrase
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the son of would appear, and
so luke is trying to tell us something
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there about God. Let's not Miss
Luke's emphasis right there, as I said,
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the genealogy, and Luke goes all
the way back to Adam, which
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leads me to consider what I considered
to be the most important points, at
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least what I've looked at, in
this genealogy. Now, I mentioned earlier
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that John Emphasizes the Deity of Christ
and I mentioned also that Luke is proving
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in his genealogy that Jesus shares in
humanity, that he is a son of
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Adam and therefore he is man.
But believers of the Orthodox faith, and
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by that I don't mean uh eastern
or Greek Orthodox in regards to that,
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but as believers of the Orthodox faith, we believe that Christ is both God
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and man, not half God half
man, but God and Man. It's
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interesting when you read through the Gospel
Stories that oftentimes the Gospel Writers will tell
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us a story that emphasizes this,
that Christ is both God and Man.
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As man he's in the bottom of
the boat sleeping. That's what humans do.
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As God, he gets up and
tells the winds and the waves be
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muzzled, and they immediately cease.
As man he comes to the fig tree
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looking for food because he's hungry,
because humans get hungry, but as God
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he curses the tree and says no
one eats fruit of the henceforth forever.
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As man, he subjects himself to
the tax of the temple, but as
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God he brings the money for the
tax in a fish's mouth. Has Man,
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he weeps at the tomb of his
friend Lazarus, but as God he
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commands Lazarus to come out of death's
hold. As Man he dies crucified on
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the Cross, but as God he
comes out of the Tomb on the third
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day. As the hymn and our
PSALTER hymn puts it, fairest Lord Jesus,
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ruler of all nations, son of
God and son of Man. Both
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must be affirmed if we are to
be Orthodox, and I'm sure, because
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you're a part of an OPC church, that most of you know what the
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word Orthodox means, but it simply
means Ortho means straightened like an orthodonist,
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and doc simply means an opinion,
like we're seeing a doxology, which is
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telling our high opinion of Christ.
So Orthodox simply means that we are straight
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thinking. And so in all seventy
seven names in this genealogy of Luke,
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Christ is connected to humanity, but
of course Luke mentions he is also God.
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And so in some wonderful way we
believe that Jesus Christ is fully human
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and fully divine. The Presbyterian preacher
Henry Boardman said, we accept the marvel
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because God has affirmed it, not
because we can explain it. But let
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me make another point about this genealogy
that relates to you and I, and
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here's what I want to tell you. With some modification in this genealogy,
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okay, we can do a little
bit of modification of it, you would
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be able to find yourself in this
genealogy of Luke somewhere, and I know
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none of us have this, but
somewhere there is a genealogy that takes us
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back to Adam, and in fact
you can know this. Your genealogy is
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exactly the same as Christ for the
first ten names that are given to us
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in that genealogy, because we are
all related not only through Adam but through
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noah. So we all have that
genealogy in common. And so we are
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related to enoch, Methuselah, Seth
Noah. I've told you before, and
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I haven't told all of you,
but I've told some of you, that
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the origins of my last name Cufus, and I won't go into that story
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right now, but but I'll tell
you that the gist end of it is
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that I know positively I don't have
any royal German blood flowing in my veins,
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but that I was part of the
poorest of the poor in Germany Um,
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and so I don't have much to
break about that. But I am
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a royal blood because I have noah, I have enoch in my veins.
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So take that ANCESTRY DOT com mine. So I could say this morning in
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some complex way, if I had
all of the genealogical tables of humanity in
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front of me for the human race, I could establish some sort of relationship
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between the man Jesus and myself.
Now I know he didn't have children,
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so I can't do it that way. But I might be a four D
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and seven cousin. I'm not.
I'm not sure, but but I could
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establish it in some way. But
my point is not. That isn't the
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important thing. The important thing isn't
whether I can establish some physical relationship to
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Christ. The important thing is can
I establish a spiritual relationship to Christ?
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Can I say that I am a
child of God? Am I one John
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Refers to when he says in First
John Three, one see what kind of
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love the father has given to us, that we should be called children of
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God. And so we are.
Again, Paul will say in Romans Eight,
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which we read earlier, sixteen and
Seventeen, the spirit himself bears witness
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with our spirit that we are children
of God. And if children, then
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heirs, heirs of God and fellow
heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with
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him in order that we may be
glorified to him. Am I a child
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of God? Am I a brother
or sister of Christ? Hebrews two,
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eleven to thirteen, for he who
sanctifies being Christ and those who are sanctified
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all have one source. That is
why he is not ashamed to call them
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brothers, and that includes sisters.
As well saying I will tell your name
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to my brothers in the midst of
the congregation, I will sing your praise
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and again I will put my trust
in him and again behold I and the
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children God has given me this morning. If you have been born again by
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the Holy Spirit of God, you
are a child of God. To him,
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I don't remember if it's in this
uh assalter him nor not, but
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it was in the trinity. Him
That says I'm a child of a King,
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and indeed we are a child of
a king. And that that is
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the case, someone's been wiped out
of my genealogy. WHO WOULD THAT BE?
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Satan. We know Jesus said that
those around him that he said You,
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you are of your father the devil. Oh, he's that. He
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was there, he was in my
genealogy, but no longer. I have
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a different father. I have a
better genealogy, and so do you,
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because Christ became man he was two
seventeen. Therefore, he had to be
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made like brothers in every respect so
that he might become a merciful and faithful
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high priest in the service of God
to make propitiation for the sin of the
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people. Christ has made propitiation for
those whom he calls his brothers and sisters.
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Those were called the children of God. Luke does something interesting that I'll
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point out in closing here, and
again I'm not speaking to the question of
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whether his genealogy is that of Mary
or that of Joseph, but he does
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something here that he also does when
he recounts Paul's First Sermon in acts,
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chapter thirteen. And what he does
there, in one way in the Gospel
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and another way to acts, is
he basically leaves out every king between David
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and Solomon. Now, I know
I mentioned the robber ball and shall tell
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some people believe that those are two
men with the same name and they were
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not actually the kings, and I
don't I don't know if that's true or
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not. But basically what Luke does
is say, forget all those kings,
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go back to the king who was
the true type, go back to David.
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That's what Paul doesn't his sermon and
exerteen. He just goes back to
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David. You see, there's an
heir to the throne of David. There
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is one to whom it was prophesied
that of his kingdom there shall be no
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end. There was one who indeed
would sit upon the throne of David,
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and that one is Jesus Christ,
to that one, the only true king.
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to Him we humbly submit and find
ourselves not only his subjects, but
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his children and his brothers and sisters. Brothers, it does not appear what
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we shall be, but think what
you are. Think what you are children
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the Most High God. You are
part of that chain. If you have
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trusted in him, if you've gone
to the Cross and put your sins on
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Christ asked him to be the Lord
of Your Life, you are a child
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of God, of royal descent.
This morning, let's pray our God and
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father. We thank you that you
have indeed given us the blood, the
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blood of Christ that sheds for our
sin, and thereby we may be called
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children of God, not because of
natural blood that we descend from, but
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because of the blood that came from
him at the Cross, and Lord,
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we know. Because of that,
as we will remember it again tonight in
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the service, because of that,
we have royal blood. We are children
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of the king, we are children
of the most High God, no longer
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to serve Satan and his host of
darkness, but instead to serve our glorious
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and wonderful and loving God. Lord, we thank you for that this morning
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and we asked this in Christ name, Amen. Man
