Matthew 1:1-17
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Want to invite you to take your Bibles this morning and we’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter one. As we continue in our Christmas series of messages. And while you’re turning there, I want to, uh, talk to you about something. We are going to be preaching a series a in the book of acts on the book of acts starting at the end of January.
In the new year. And I know that a number of you have read through the book of acts or actually copied your way through the book of acts. You went from the gospel of John and then went right into the book of acts as a number of us did. But if you have not done that, um, and are not inclined to do that, I have another idea for you.
And this is called a scripture journal. It’s on the book of acts, basically what it is, is the book of acts. There’s the text, there’s a place for notes. Now here’s the benefit of something like this. Sometimes we can be squeamish about, you know, circling and highlighting and writing too much stuff in our Bible, because I think, I don’t know that I’m gonna, you know, I’m going to take all the space up or maybe I don’t even feel right about doing that much in my Bible.
This is a journal. This has the scripture and the encouragement to you is to do it. One simple study. Every time you’re reading through a chapter of back circle, the number of times the holy spirit is mentioned, you’ll be shocked how many times the holy spirit is mentioned in the book of acts, especially in contrast to how rarely he’s highlighted in the gospels, but it also is a place to start writing notes.
So we’re just encouraging you to take this journal. And I’m going to tell you how to get it in a minute, take this journal and prepare for our series and the book of acts. Just maybe the next few months you’re going to use the book. Vacs is the place to have your devotions. If you want to bring it on Sundays, this could be, you know, you could write your notes from the sermons if you want to do that as well in here.
But most of all, this is a personal journal for you to use. In reading through and reflecting on the book of acts we have on our website, under the events section on our website. If you scroll down and you’ll see something called acts scripture journal, you can purchase one. Um, it costs $5. If you do that, when you come the following Sunday, we’ll have a record of all the people that have purchased it.
You can pick one of these up. We will have them starting next Sunday at the hub, uh, in the that’s the main info hub in the lobby. You can pick yours up. Um, and if you want, you can, you can buy one right at the hub, but we’d prefer you to do it, um, online, just because then we know how many to get ahead of time.
Okay. So we’ll have them there. Hope you’ll use them, consider it, and, uh, really be a part of the study in the book of acts. Uh, as we begin that in a few weeks, In Matthew chapter one, we’re going to read the text in a moment, but if you have ever, if you’re a history buff at all, if you’re especially a civil war history buff, um, or maybe you just were forced to go there as a kid, you’ve been to the, the battle of Gettysburg over in Pennsylvania.
One of the things that they have at the battle of Gettysburg on the Villa Gettysburg site, and, and you can go through the whole site, it’s 6,000 acres. So there’s plenty to see, but if you’ve ever done that, instead of driven around, even if you’ve taken the, the thing in the car, you know, you can get a, uh, a video in the car, not a video, but you can get a, it’s a CD.
You can listen to it and it’ll direct you to the various sites, but still you it’s, it’s really hard to not get lost in the trees. ’cause you don’t see the whole forest of the battlefield, but they have a Panorama building where you can observe a 376 visual of the entire battlefield. And they’ll actually light it up for you.
They’ll take you through it. You can see the whole three days happenings. It gives you the Panorama picture of the entire battlefield over the three days. And you can see the fish hook, which if you’re a civil war person, you know what that’s about. That’s how the, the, the battle lines were drawn. And it’s fascinating.
And basically it’s giving you the Panorama view. We started last Sunday, pastor Mike started a series for us on the classic sermons of the Christmas story this morning, we’re coming to the second individual that is addressed in the Christmas story. Last week. It was Mary, the mother of Jesus. Today. It is Joseph is his father is adopted.
As we look at this passage, we are going to see the Panorama of the Christmas story. Actually, he’s going to start in the first 17 verses 2000 years back. And he’s really presenting the lineage of the individual that is going to be addressed here. Jesus, the father of, of Joseph J. Joseph, the father of Jesus.
You knew that, and he’s going to be presenting this, this panoramic view. And as we look at this passage this morning, we’re going to look at it similarly to the way Mike did last week, because I thought Mike did a really effective job in drawing together. Two things that were going on one was the miraculous, the promise of the miraculous conception that was going to take place in marriage.
And at the same time, just prior to that, the promise of a miraculous conception that was going to take place in a relative of hers, it was actually addressed to the husband’s Zachariah, but was about his wife, Elizabeth. And in these two passages, there is the picture of Gabriel. The angel that is going to, first of all, had three months, six months earlier had presented himself to Zachariah and said, your wife, who is, she was a senior at this time.
Well, past childbearing age, she was going to be pregnant. She was going to have a son who would turn out to be John the Baptist. Mary finds. From Gabriel, the same thing is happening to her in her case. It’s not, she’s an aged woman. Well, past childbearing age, she’s a Virgin and has never had relations with a man.
And so he brought these two passages together and in a similar way, I’m going to try to bring together Matthew one verses one through 17 and verses 18 to 25 to give this panoramic view of what’s going on as the angel is speaking to Joseph, because the genealogy is very important.
I’d like to read and I’m not going to read all the verses just for time. I’m going to read verse one and 17 of the genealogy. And then we’re going to look down at verse 18 to 25. We read this in verse one, Matthew chapter one, and I should have said, this is page 757. If you’re using a Bible there in front of you, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.
The son of Abraham. Now, if you jump down to verse 17, here’s the summary. 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 to Babylon to the Christ 14 generations. Now we continue now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.
When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the holy spirit and her husband, Joseph being adjust, man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly. But as you consider these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying Joseph son of David do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that, which is conceived in her is from the holy spirit.
She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for, he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name. Jesus let’s pray,
Lord, we come to this, this room, some of us joining in online this morning and God, it is our desire in the midst of the holidays to really put the holy back in that our focus really be on the event of Jesus Christ. Coming to this world. And Lord, as we look at this passage and reflect on the, the millennia of time, that was part of this process of your bringing him to earth.
Lord, may you teach us, may you compel us to want to know this Christ, want to worship this Christ, want to do life more fully with this Christ who you have offered to us as the one who brought to us yourself in Jesus’ name? I pray. Amen. It’s going to be two things. We’re going to look at this morning.
First of all, I’m going to give an overview of what I think is the first part of this panoramic view of the, of the Jesus story, the Christmas story, the lineage of Jesus, which is what he is presenting here in chapter one, verse one to 17. And then we’re going to actually look at the birth. And it’s interesting how Matthew introduces this in verse one, he says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Then he begins verse 18 with this statement. Now the birth of Jesus Christ. So he’s talking about the genealogy of Jesus Christ, then the birth of Jesus Christ. These are the two focuses we want to have this morning. First of all, we focus on crisis. Lineage his genealogy for us, genealogies are, are not really that significant.
The only time you really interested in learning about your genealogy is maybe a member of your family gets this, this, this passionate curiosity to know about your background or the other time is when there’s a contested inheritance. But other than that, we don’t tend to spend a lot of time reflecting on genealogies.
And so to start off his entire book, as a matter of fact, to start off the entire new Testament with 17 verses on genealogy, just to us seems absurd. It’s in comprehensible because a book is supposed to start to grab your attention, right? I mean the first few pages it person decides whether I’m interested or uninterested with this book disinterested well, genealogy is how he starts.
But for the ancient Jews, genealogy was actually more of a resume. If you wanted to buy land in Israel, if you wanted to sell land in Israel, you had to bring the documents that proved your genealogy because you are not allowed to sell land outside of your tribal inheritance of which there were 12 tribes.
You are not allowed to buy land outside of your tribal inheritance. If you wanted to participate in the worship experience in some way in Israel. You had to bring your genealogy to demonstrate your fitness, to be a singer in the choirs. You had to be a part of the political background you had to be if you want it.
Certainly if you want to be a priest, or if you wanted to support in the role of the priesthood, there are all kinds of ways that the genealogies were necessary in both the civil and religious life of the, the, of the Jews. This provided for them a degree of resume that qualified them for the role or the, or the action they sought to do.
Matthew is citing Jesus, Jenny genealogy at the outset of his book to show that Jesus has the credentials for the role that he is coming to perform two particular ways. That’s highlighted in the genealogy. First of all, his lineage showed he is the promised. In verse one, it highlights what it’s all about.
It’s tracing him back to Abraham and then jumping many centuries forward to David and proving. And again, this is all aligned. Uh, it’s not everybody that went from Abraham all the way down through the same parentage and actually had David in their family tree. And then a particular part of David’s family tree that came all the way down to Joseph, the, the father of Jesus.
And all of it is trying to demonstrate that Jesus has the creds to actually be viewed as the promised son of David. If there was a king in Israel at this day, that sat on the throne of Jerusalem, the appropriate individual is the one that is the culmination of this genealogy. Fixture look at it this way.
Some of you watched X men and you know, the story, uh, professor X Xavier is, uh, he has this thing that is called Cerebro and Cerebro is this, this, this device that he uses to identify all the mutants mutants are, he is a mutant. There are others that are just, they have these special power, special abilities.
They’re different from typical people. And he’s able to use Cerebro. And all of a sudden this Cerebro thing shows up on this like giant screen. And it identifies all the highlights, all of these people in all places on earth and they, they brought up and you can see them and see their picture. All of them are identify if Cerebro was used in the first century, a D and said, who is.
That actually is qualified today to be the king of Israel sitting on the throne of David and it searches all the earth. They would have come down to this individual named Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary living at that time as a, as a child in the town of either Bethlehem or later Nazareth, he is the one.
He is the promised one. He has all of the credentials in his lineage to sit as the throne on the throne as the king of Israel, the son of David. But as Lenny, it also shows that he is the mercy giving one in this God-ordained line and lineage of Jesus Christ, which. Intentionally chose and protected promised, and then brought to pass.
We see some remarkable things while we’re told that there were 14 generations, uh, and then there was another 14 generations, but actually there were a lot more than that actually in the 2200, somewhere 21, 2200 years from Abraham to the birth of Jesus Christ. There were a lot more than that. Number of generations in you.
If you study the, the individuals that are listed in Matthew’s gospel and chapter one, verse one through 17, you can come up with about 800 years, uh, of generations, but it was 2100 2200 year. In other words, the individuals that identified here are identified by specific. God is highlighting them in Matthew.
One is saying, here’s the family tree. It traces all the way down. We’re leaving some gaps in there because, but you can, you know, you skipped from these generations, but you get to here and you know how you had to get there to get to here. But ultimately we’re not highlighting every individual. We are highlighting certain select peoples.
Now, if it were you or me on a resume, what we would tend to do is we’d highlight the good stuff, right? I mean, we’d highlight, well, my first job I got fired. I’m going to give myself a Mulligan on that one. And I’m not going to include that baby in there because we don’t have to, but in God’s resume in God’s credentialed lineage of Christ, he does.
Well, we would say is the opposite. He actually does something. Unique in two ways, one, he includes in this lineage, something the, the average do would not do and did not do. He includes some of the women, uh, and the moms, rather than the fathers, typically the did the fathers, but the moms he highlights are done intentionally.
Now we could look at some of the guys that are in this list and I could come up with illustration. So like I’m going to do with the women, but I’m highlighting the women just because these were so unique to be included in the lineage that obviously God included them to say something specific to us.
Okay. We got that. So here here’s, here’s some of the gals, we look at this passage and we find, uh, there is this individual that is known as. And Tamar, um, in verse three, it she’s, she’s there identified with her father-in-law Judah and the striking thing about Tamar story. Here’s her story. Tamar was married to Judah’s son.
Um, he died. She asked for a replacement son, which was the appropriate role in, in Israel for them to do. And, uh, she was frustrated that, that this wasn’t happening because usually the brother would keep the line going through his brother’s wife. Wouldn’t do that. She got a little bit frustrated with this, her Judas ignoring her.
And so one day she dressed up as a prostitute by the side of the road, Judah came along, took her, didn’t recognize her, slept with her, and she had a son. And that son is part of the. Uh, that is presented here. There’s another gal it’s mentioned in verse five, her name’s Ray Hab. You may remember her. We all know her by her, her nickname in the scriptures, Ray Hab, the harlot, she was in Jericho, part of the red light district of Jericho.
The, she is the one that who’s most commendable. The greatest thing we know that she ever did in her life, her most exemplary deed was she lied and she hid the Jews despise. She became a follower of Jehovah, but her background is not the kind that you would expect that would be highlighted to qualify.
One, to be the, you would expect heroes of the faith or heroines of the faith. Her greatest deed was. There’s a woman named Ruth, well, a more godly woman and certainly known as a lovely, but she was a Moabite is Samoa bitus Moabites were the people that were constantly a Burr in the saddle to the Israelites.
She was an outsider in every sense yet. She also is a part of the family ancestry. We come to one other one in verse 10, verse six, Beth Sheba, Uriah, Riaz, wife Uriah, one of the close friends of, of one of the mighty men of David who was out in the battlefield, fighting for David, um, a loyal soldier. And while he’s gone, David sees his beautiful wife and takes her and sleeps with her.
And the most sorted story, perhaps in the entire old Testament, particularly in light of who David was. David not only slept with his friend’s wife. But actually has his friend killed on the battlefield. Now you look at all this and you say, God, I don’t why. I mean, what David had so many wives, you mean, why did you have to choose Beth’s Sheba of all women to be the one that’s going to be the, the, the, the ancestor of Jesus.
The question is really important because this first set of verses screams God is saying, read these names, think of these stories and realize that Jesus intentionally is identified with these individuals, prostitutes, murderers, manipulators, liars. He came. To be associated with such people. He came to do life with such people.
He came for such people. The good news, the gospel is that Jesus Christ came for people just like that. And you may say, well, I’m not like that. Well, quite honestly, I’ve said a million times, the seat of every sin is in every one of our hearts. The idea is that God associated with this and said, everybody sits down at the same table of grace.
It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been, how you failed. Jesus says in my church, Those things don’t disqualify. Sin cannot halt. God’s saving grace. There is more grace in Jesus Christ than there is sin in your life. There is more grace in Jesus Christ than there is sin in your life. It’s why in Romans, Paul says it this way, where sin, abounds, grace, super abounds.
It overwhelms it, it overwhelms everything you’ve done. It won’t be WellMed. Every one you’ve heard it overwhelms the failures because Jesus, even in his lineage is portrayed as identifying and associating with such people. Then we come to Christ birth. The second part of this, this passage. And he talks in this account to Jesus.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place this way. Just want to connect the dots of the story with where we were last Sunday, last Sunday, we saw the story of Mary who had been told by the angel Gabriel, you’re going to be pregnant. She stunned. And it says immediately while the angel then told her a second thing, and you’re your relative?
Elizabeth is now six months pregnant. Well, this was not a small thing because this is like her grandmother. And maybe even older than that, this is a very old woman. And so it says that Mary immediately that’s the term immediately left where she was in Nazareth to go to the one person. Who could possibly understand what was taking place in this Virgin’s body, a miraculous conception.
She spent three months with Mary w with Elizabeth, until Elizabeth delivered her son, John, the Baptist, then Mary returned to Nazareth. And it is at this time that she tells her betrothed husband, which was, uh, meant they had actually drawn, entered into as families and as individuals of binding legal covenant to be married.
But they had not consummated that marriage. It was usually a year long and they were in that, that waiting period to consummate their relationship to live together. The Mary comes to Joseph and says, um, we need to talk. And that’s when we come to our passage here in verse 18 and following.
Jesus’ birth. Joseph is told, is conceived by the holy spirit. Now, what did this mean to Joseph? Well, everything I’ve read is that typically in marriages, such as this, which was normal for ancient Israel in the time of Christ as well, the guy would be older than the girl. Usually the guy would be somewhere around 19 or 20 years old.
Typically the girl would be somewhere 13, 14, maybe 15 years old to us does sound like a couple of kids, right? They didn’t have a deep, intimate, romantic relationship at this time. I would guess Joseph knew Mary’s FA Mary Mary’s parents better than he knows. They don’t know each other that well, they know of each other.
They’re in a little town called Nazareth, which the estimates based on archeological digs and everything else today is to, we’re probably four or 500 people that live there. I mean, you knew who everybody was and now Mary lowers the boom I’m pregnant. We don’t know what he told her, what she told him.
Maybe she told him about the angel Gabriel. But again, he doesn’t know her this well to believe that, I mean, the angel Gabriel hadn’t appeared to him and here’s a young girl and she said, oh, here’s what happened. And here’s what God took. Maybe she told him, maybe she didn’t even tell him. Maybe she didn’t even feel she could understand, but we read this, this passage and we put ourselves in Joseph’s state and he responds actually with great grace.
He will not continue the relationship he’ll break off the patrol. So that’s what it means. It says he’ll divorce her, but he doesn’t do what actually the custom required him to do, which was to publicly take this to the courts and let them know. And they have the option of stoning her for her unfaithfulness or just treating her has a, as a loose woman for the rest of her life.
He opts to do the best that he can to protect her and not continue with the relationship. But it says to do it quietly. It’s a beautiful decision, but it’s not the decision God wants for Joseph. So the angel appears to him and makes this statement. Don’t be afraid. To take her. Now that’s such an interesting word.
Don’t be afraid. Well, what’s your afraid of, I mean, you say, well, if he’s such a good man and she, okay. She, she made a mistake, she messed up, but we’re not married the girl. Why is he afraid to do that? I mean, it’s not that he’s, that he’s, that he’s disgusted to do it. It’s not that he’s angry. And so he’s not, he’s afraid.
What’s he afraid of parleys afraid of doing the wrong thing of disobeying God. The, the entire sense of the patrol for the period of a year was for it to be a time to prove that they actually were still sell it, but they were still pure and right in the middle of the thing she’s pregnant. The other reason I can’t imagine he didn’t feel afraid it’s because he thought he knew him.
He thought he got her. He knew her family. He knew her character. He knew her reputation. He’s a good and godly man. She’s a good and godly young woman, young girl. And I’m sure Joseph’s gone. She’s not who I thought she was. You think he, wasn’t also imagining there’s four or 500 people in town. Which guy?
Who is it? You think he wasn’t thinking that may, how could you not be thinking that? Well, who did I see her with? Who carried her books to score parchments or whatever they were, man. Who was it? You think I, I can’t enter into this really. I’d be scared to death of what I’m getting into. And angel said, just don’t be afraid.
I want you to do something really big. I want you to proceed. As if things are normal and yes, it would be obvious that she conceived out of wedlock actually later, Jesus, one of the things they talk about Jesus is he’s a son of a, of an immoral relationship. That’s one of the accusations people make and they knew this town knew they, you didn’t hide stuff in small towns, but don’t be afraid.
Why three reasons what’s conceived in her is of the holy spirit. This is why this message also speaks to us. What it means to everyone is that what has taken place is done supernaturally by God. The second thing that’s true is his name highlights. What he’ll do. He says he’ll be called. You are to call him.
It says to Joseph, you are to call him. Jesus, the word Jesus is the, is the Aramaic translation of the name? Joshua. I don’t know if he knew that the name Joshua means savior, uh, call him Jesus, because he will deliver his people from their sins. They go back to a minute to the genealogy, right? The one that’s coming, this Jesus he’s associated with throughout his genealogy, with the people that God specifically chose as his ancestral parentage he’s associated with broken people.
He’s associated with people in need. He’s associated with people that have screwed up royally,
but he doesn’t just associate with them. He doesn’t just have a heritage with them. He delivers them. He rescues them from themselves. He comes to intervene in the lives of Ray rehabs and David’s a spiritual giant, but did a horribly horrible godless thing. He comes to
the people of our day that have messed up. He comes to you. He comes to me. He comes to be a deliverer. And then it says this other thing in this passage and in fulfillment of the profit statement in verse 23 of Matthew, one from Isaiah behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
Now you may have the question, wait a minute. It says. You’re going to call him Jesus. And it says he’s going to be called Emmanuel. So what do you call him? Is the name actually Jesus Emmanuel Christ. What’s the deal? Well, Emmanuel was more a title that his, his, the understanding of who he is will be that he is Emmanuel.
His human name would be Jesus.
He is Emmanuel God with us. You’ll notice it. Doesn’t say he’ll be God over us. That’s not the focus. He’s not primarily, ultimately. Come to take charge, to straighten us out, to get our behavior up to snuff and our moral religiosity in line, the Pharisees thought this would be great. Yeah. We want a God over us because we know it will be first in line because we’ve measured up in their own perception, but he’s not a God over us in the ways to describe.
He’s not a God in front of us. This is a little better. That he’d be a God that would lead us. That would direct us. I mean, it sounds better, more helpful, less pushy, but he still feels distant apart, separated our leader and director, but, and he’s not the one we often would like him to be. He’s not got under it.
This would be great, a God that, is there a vending machine, God, to give us what we want when we want it a God, we can boss around a God. We can control a God. We can a weekend. We can look at as of, of incredible power, like the, the majestic genie and, and he’s at our Beck and call. He’s not that either. He’s God with us.
He’s the guy that’s always associated by his grace with broken people. He’s a God that’s always willing to enter in where we sense our brokenness. He’s the God that is with you in your sorrows. He is the God that is with you in your fierce with people who need someone to be with. He is with us. And we face the daunting and at times dreaded realities and demands of life.
He is with us. He is with us in our aloneness. Jesus is the one that has come to say, I am with you. I, God am with you. Yes, I’m over you, but that’s not the focus. Yes. I’m there to be, to be, to be appropriated by you. But this is the focus. Yes, I’ll lead you, but that’s not the focus I’m with you. It’s interesting.
The holy spirit is called the paraklete the one who is alongside of, I mean, God just seems to constantly say I am with you. I’ve talked about the scripture that talks about fearing God and how God and how God’s being awed by God overcomes our fear. The most often repeated statement where God says to us, don’t be.
This is the next phrase. He says, don’t be afraid. I am with you. I’m here. I’m the God I’m Emmanuelle. I came among you. The triune God sent Jesus Christ to be God with us. Christianity is not about straightening up. He didn’t come as the God over us. Christianity is not about following at a distance. He didn’t come as the God in front of us.
It’s not about living out our own. Self-centeredness he’s not the God under us. Christianity is about not being left on our own to our own resources, our own devices,
because God is with us. So what does this say to us? We close this morning, what the story says, both the genealogy and. The account to Matthew, that Jesus is drawn to broken people. He’s drawn to people that know they need forgiveness. They need grace to I, Micah says he delights to show mercy. He delights to show mercy.
Secondly, Jesus came to provide the way to forgiveness and he came to provide forgiveness himself by living the life that we should have lived and dying the death that we should have died. He paid the penalty for our sins. He earned a righteous standing in his own righteous living that Jesus came to bring God to us in our aloneness.
And Jesus invites us to know God and enjoy him for. This is the story of Matthew one. It’s why Matthew opens the book. It sounds boring to genealogies, but when you dive in there, wow, this is an incredible story. It is the story, the Christmas story. It’s a story of Christ. God, the God who associates with people of brokenness is with us.
I’m going to pray and then we’re going to close. It’s going to be a song. It’s a song Michael Carr did years ago. He’s going to be singing it to us. It’s called Emmanuel Lord.
My prayer this morning is particularly for people in the sound of my voice, who feel that brokenness by your grace, maybe for the first time, they’re really coming to understand. They are center. If they can’t measure up, they can’t be good enough. God, such a mercy. When you show us that when you show us the insufficiency, the inadequacy of ourselves, because I don’t believe you ever show us our hearts except to show us yours.
So Lord show grace make these individuals know the beauty of Christ coming for people, just like them. Sinners, broken people, the Negro race. Lord, I speak to loan for lonely people this morning and I bring them to you. The holidays are such a loud time to remind us of how much we need to have got with us.
Lord grace them with the reality of what it means to do life with a God who chooses to call himself Emmanuel Lord, all the other needs that are represented in this room and online this morning, do what we believe is your best gift to us. Show us yourself, allow us to drink at the well of grace and a good God who chooses to do life with us.
I pray in Jesus name. Amen.