Matthew 1 • The Lineage of the King
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Matthew, chapter 1. How has God shown Himself faithful? We start a new school year. We see new lives in Christ, and today we start the New Testament after months in the Old Testament. The Gospel of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament, chapter 1, verse 1, as we say, "How does God now answer what He has promised for so long?" When we began months ago back in Genesis, moving forward in the Scriptures, we saw that it was gospel at every stage. In every page, God's saying, "I will provide for people who cannot provide for themselves. I will send one who will make a way for them to come to me." Now He's here. Now the promised one comes. How does He come? Matthew, chapter 1, verse 18. We'll cover the rest later. "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 a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as He considered these things, behold, an angel 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 together. Father, you are the one who has given us this Jesus, the son of yours who came to save us. And so we offer our prayer in Jesus name that you would show us who He is and what He has done, that the scriptures that predicted Him for so long, the events that pointed to Him so well, would not just be a history lesson, would be the ministry of your spirit to our soul, that we would recognize how Jesus saves and trust Him even as these young people have this day. Show us Jesus we pray, for we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated.
In this age of blockbuster movies about superheroes, we are accustomed to hearing the origin stories of those superheroes to tell us a bit of their nature, who they are, how they come by their superpowers, Wonder Woman, who was built out of clay by her mother Hippolytus, given life by Greek gods and raised by Amazons on an island called Paradise. And through the Amazons she learned how to fight and what love and peace were at the same time. Superman, as you should all know, was born on the planet Krypton, put in a rocket capsule sent to earth by his parents before the faded planet exploded. There are other kinds of superheroes. In the book "The Good Neighbor,"
we learn about the dangerous Mr. Rogers, whose gentle smile concealed a boiling anger at a culture that did not know how to take care of its children. Speaking out of his own past,
where he had been bullied as a youth with the nickname Fatty Freddy. And so when he said to children, "You are special just the way you are," it was not mere sentiment, it was a so-called a sword of his crusade to rescue children from a culture that would not always protect them. Similarly, we have a recent biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. that describes the civil rights leaders' attempts to get into a seminary, virtually all Bible-believing seminaries at that time, turned him down, would not have accepted him anyway. So he went to a seminary that was not Bible-believing, that was predominantly white. But even there, though he was praised for his oratory early, he was criticized at the same time for more flourish than substance, which caused him to press harder so that the marks of that education later became great oratory and a history of plagiarism. The marks on the education of a man who ultimately did not dodge a bullet,
but took a bullet to help express to a nation a dream from a mountaintop of what it would be when one day children would be judged for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. What do all the heroes teach us? Comic book and real heroes. The comic book heroes all come from a reality of paradise, of power, of unreality. But real heroes that can touch us and that transform our world, they are out of our mess. And their ability to transform our mess in some measures because of their background in the mess. And never is that more obvious than when you look at the one true hero of the Scriptures, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we begin earlier in the passage, before the Christmas portion, we see something called a genealogy, the history of the Lord Jesus. And what we discern over and over again is He is the one who knows our reality because He comes from the mess of it. We don't just sing the sweet songs when we look at the genealogy. As we look at the births and the burials, we begin to recognize
He can help those in the mess because He comes from it. Why do we look at a genealogy? You do not want to read it at dinner time in your devotions. But there are messages.
You know, a few years ago, Kathy and I went to Germany to look at the history of her family. And we went to a church where the records were 800 years old. And in order to look at the record books of the births and the burials and the baptisms, you had to put on white cotton gloves to handle the pages. And the script at times was so small or faded that you had to take out your magnifying glass to look at who was being identified. You had to look at the details to perceive actually what the history was. Well, you don't have white cotton gloves. Just imagine you do. I've got the magnifying glass that you need to see the gospel in the genealogies of Jesus. What do you see if you go to Matthew 1-1? First, you just see the promises of Jesus. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. You need to stop right there. Do you know that Christ is not His last name?
It is His title. He is the Christ. He is the anointed one, the long-planned Messiah. And when we see this is the genealogy, the history, the development of the Christ, you're expecting something. What is the glory? What is the goodness? What has been God been up to all of these centuries? And He gives us a bit of it by telling us the privileges of this Jesus. He is the Son of David. What do you remember about David? As the king over Israel who established its boundaries, its security and protection so that the nation could be built and become great, God made a promise to David. I will from your line, from your lineage, bring a son who will have an eternal and universal kingdom. And now Matthew is saying, "This is the Son. This is the Jesus so privileged to come from the line of David." That's not the end. The first verse says He's not just the Son of David. He's the Son of Abraham. Abraham was the patriarch of the Jewish nation, the one who believed God, though he was approaching a hundred years old, that he could have a son.
And that son would be the beginning of a lineage by which Abraham would become a father of many nations. And against all odds, Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him for righteousness. We learn not only that this Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the privileges given to David, He is the fulfillment of the promises given to Abraham that what you had faith in, that there would be one who would come to bless the nations has come. That's kind of on the front of the page. But if you take out your gospel magnifier, you see a bit more in verse 1, "Son of David." Oh yeah, received a great promise. What else do you remember about David?
"But that when his men had gone off to war, he stood on his rooftop one night and saw a woman bathing, and had his men bring her to himself, and slept with her, and enjoyed her so much
that he had her husband killed so that he could have her. Then raised bad children. Then at the end of his life, in pride, numbered his troops as though he were responsible for the glory of his kingdom rather than the grace and the blessings of God." And Abraham, no less complex. "Oh yes, he left the land he did not know to obey the call of God. And on that journey
gave away his wife twice to other men to save his hide. And while he did believe God would provide an heir, because he did not have patience for the Lord's promise, he slept with his wife's maid. And then when that began to destroy his family, he put his mistress and his biological son in the desert to dive exposure." Son of David, son of Abraham, what are you seeing? He is, yes, the son of privilege, and yes, the son of promise, but he is also the son of adulterers and murderers and our Savior. What do you make of that? But we are learning that God is saying, "I know the mess. I know where you're from because I have been from a greater mess, perhaps, than you yourself ever thought." God is saying, "I have understanding because what you need, I will provide." If you actually take the stories as they have developed to this point, you recognize that David and Abraham become men of faith because they got nothing else.
I can't stand before God, either as David or Abraham, to say, "I merit your care.
I merit your favor." All they can do is say, "I got nothing but faith in what you provide."
And it is that message that the God who's providing Jesus is going to bless his people on the basis of their faith, and what he provides, rather than their goodness, is the message through the genealogy whose volume just gets things turned up more and more and more. You don't just have to look at the promises of the Messiah. What about the parents of this Jesus? You can start just looking at the mothers. Verse 3, "Judah, the father of Peres and Zera by Tamar." You have to stop right there. What do you remember about Tamar? She was early in the lineage of Jesus, hundreds of years before the wife of a son of Judah. Judah, to whom God had promised, "The scepter shall not depart. Your influence shall not depart from the line of the Messiah." But one of Judah's sons married Tamar, and it was an incorrigible man
who died at the hand of God. And Judah, who should have taken care of his daughter-in-law, instead neglected her in such a way that she became desperate for funds just to be able to survive and live. And what she did is she turned herself into the likeness of a pagan temple prostitute so that one day as Judah is going down the road, he apparently has a habit of being with prostitutes. And so he decides to sleep with a prostitute who happens to be his daughter-in-law, Tamar. She produces a child of that union. And because he does not know that he is the father, he declares that she is to be burned until she reveals that he in fact is the father because she has his clothes in her possession. What do you learn about Tamar?
Abused, neglected, shameful, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother of Jesus.
Where do you go from there? What other mothers are here? You read just a little bit further, verse 5. "And salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab." And we stop Rahab.
Wait. That was the street walker who saved the spies who were going into the promised land to prepare for Israel to come in. And apparently, even as she was betraying her people by putting a red cloth, the scarlet mark of her profession outside the window to save her family when the walls fall down, the mark for the Israeli army coming in. Hey, we're the ones who helped you. Afterwards, somebody said, "I'll take you from my wife." And the original lady in red
becomes a mother of Jesus who would shed his blood for you and for me.
Verse 5 mentions another. "Samuel was the father of Boaz by Rahab, and he was the father of Rahab. And Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth." Ruth? We've lost the history. Ruth married Boaz. We like it wedding ceremonies to quote the famous saying of Ruth. It's so dear and so gentle and so sweet that when her husband had died, she said to her mother-in-law, who was Jewish, "Where you go, I will go, and your God will be my God," as she put her faith in the God of Israel.
But she, like her mother-in-law, were destitute then, ultimately taken in by Boaz,
who married her and became part of the line of Jesus. What you will not remember is that Ruth was from the nation of Moab. Moab was the nation when Israel came out of Egypt, trying to get in the Promised Night, that would not give the nation passage that forced them into the desert deprivations. Moab was a hated nation, and Boaz is not actually supposed to marry a pagan foreigner, but he marries her a refugee from the most hated of nations that Israel could have. She is a refugee from a hated nation, marrying into Israel for the production of a Savior.
And still we are not done. Verse 6, "Jessie was the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah." So much shame she is not even named.
By the wife of Uriah, we know who that is. That is Bathsheba, whom David took. We don't know for sure. Was she seducing him, or did he force her to be his plaything? Whatever was happening, he murdered her husband. And for the rest of her life, she is shackled to the man who murdered her husband. Produces an error, yes, Solomon. But what we understand is what God has done is said, here is this abused woman, this adulterous relationship, resulting in the murder of her husband that she now has to marry the murderer. And Christ will come from her.
And of course it's not the end of the scandal. Verse 18, we read at Christmas time, "With such joy 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." A teenager in a little village of Nazareth, probably under a hundred people, where everybody doesn't just know your name, they know your business. And in just a few months she'll show, and everybody will know, and it will be a scandal. And the teenager in the scandal becomes the mother of God.
Amazing grace as God is really scanning history for the situations of women long before the Me Too movement, long before the movements where women are seeking not just equality but recognition and significance. And God in this awful beauty thrusts to the surface women's pain and shame and isolation and loneliness and hurt and pain and sin to make something very clear. Not only does He know the mess, but He has the ability to purify it because it's the gospel where He is saying, "I know the worst about these people, what has been done to them, what they have done, but I am willing by my grace to wash that away." And not just to purify the person, but to use them to construct a whole new reality. For from this line of women as God is drawing the lineage through the mud of the mother's lives, He is in fact leading to the wonder that they will be used
for the lineage of the Savior of the world. What's the message? That God is not just purifying sin, He's making a new creation, He's constructing out of lives that have faced difficulty and hurt and pain and shame, and He's not just saying, "That's gone," He's saying, "I can still use and build and make something new out of what you yourself may have hated." I think of the beauty of the women of this church who have recognized what the gospel is, not just washing away the shame, but constructing wondrous new beauty out of the mission of God in their lives. I think of the young woman now, Mother, whose abortion in the past so pressed upon her heart that she wanted other women to know there was a God who could deal with the shame and He could also build new lives. And so she authors and runs a ministry now, not just for the women, but for the men who have been complicit in abortion to say, "God can forgive and you can build again a life in His care and in His power." I think of the young woman whose husband was caught in an addictive sexual pattern with pornography in places and other people, and so was affected by it when the confession came, struggled to say, "How does the grace of God apply here?" And ultimately not only knew the grace to take the shame away, but to begin a ministry to help other women whose husbands are sexual addicts to deal with the shame, but also to say, "How do you forgive and how do you move forward and how you build together in the lives that God is planning and wanting?" I think of a young woman in this congregation who is a single mom, impoverished in so much of her life, but has begun to take young women adopted into her home to help them know the beauty and the wonder
of the gospel of Jesus Christ who forgives and builds and helps people start anew. And Ruthie, I know you're in the hospital, but if you're listening to this, I am talking about you.
God says, "There is hope. I am showing you I know the mess, but I can clean the mess and construct something beautiful again." And it's not just the women. I think of recent conversations with dads in this church, some whose sexual patterns have led them to be complicit in abortion activities, some who have had chemical addictions and it's destroyed much of their family. It's maybe years in their family suffering that whose addictions led to rage and harshness and abuse. And as awful as that sounds, I will tell you some of these conversations have been absolute joy. As men have said, "That is what I was, but God forgave me." And he didn't just forgive me. He began by his spirit to build something new in me, desires for him, renewed love for my spouse, renewed commitment to my family. And I'm different now, and my family is different now, and we're in total new ground. And that's not just idle talk. I mean, it's what the Scriptures are meant to teach us that God can work. Don't just look at the mothers. Look at the fathers with our gospel magnifier, and what do you see? I mean, verse 2, "Abraham was the father of Isaac." You already know about Abraham, the man who would betray his wife, sleep with another woman, seek to kill his child and his mistress, but he would believe God. What we would believe if we said, "Here is a man, and we're expecting him to lead in the church." And of course, he's a murderer and an adulterer and a liar. We say, "Unqualified, unqualified." And that's just the beginning.
Verses 2 and 3 mention Judah twice, the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar. You already know about him.
He is the one who would neglect his daughter-in-law and then abuse her, and then seek to burn her.
And only as she could supply the evidence, repent of what he had done, and we say, "Unqualified."
But God said, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah. His promise shall be maintained." Boaz, verse 5, "Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth." He marries outside the faith. He marries outside the clan of Israel. And despite all of that, he is still allowed to be part of the line. You don't even recognize the complication. Boaz, he is a descendant of Perez who came out of the illicit relationship between Judah and Tamar. If there was an incestuous relationship in Israel, the product of that incestuous relationship would not be allowed in the temple, not recognized as part of the lineage of Israel for ten generations. Now comes Boaz, progeny of Perez
in the tenth generation. He gets in just by the skin of his teeth. As God is saying, "I said the scepter shall not depart from Judah," and God maintains the line of holy lineage even as He said He would. David, verse 6, you already know who He was. You know His adultery. You know His murder. His bad children. His pride at the end of His life. You would say, "Unqualified, but no one is worse than the one mentioned in verse 11. "Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon." Jeconiah. Now there's a name you don't hear very often. I don't know anybody who's named their kid Jeconiah, and I know why. The last king of the last sliver of Israel surviving. And even as Babylon is pouring into the land to take the people captive, Jeconiah turns to idolatry, away from God, and to serving the Babylonians. And Jeremiah the prophet says, "No seed of Jeconiah shall sit on the throne of David." We say, "Unqualified." And uh-oh. Wait, wait. God made a promise to David that from the lineage of David would come the Messiah.
And now Jeconiah, a little further down the chain, is cursed and said by Jeremiah,
"None of the seed of Jeconiah shall have the promise of David." Oh no. I mean, God made the promise to David. He said it's irrevocable. You cannot have the promise to David and seemingly have the curse to Jeconiah because what that would mean is God would have to maintain the legal lineage of David but break the biological lineage from Jeconiah. How are you going to do that?
Verse 18,
"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." What happened?
God did not maintain the line of sin. He did maintain the line of promise. The legal title was maintained by Joseph, but Mary the Virgin was given a child by the Holy Spirit, and the biological line would not continue even when the legal line did continue. Six centuries before it happened, God not only prophesied what would happen, He took the steps to make it happen. "My Son will save, but He will come out of the mess without being tainted by the mess by being born of a virgin." What God is going to do is provide a beautiful story to say to those who are in the mess, "I can do things you can hardly fathom beyond your mess, beyond your difficulty, the grace greater than you could ever orchestrate. I will bring about my promise to take people who are in the worst of circumstances and to bring my grace beyond them, even through them, for a beautiful purpose." I've told you before of a friend. I've never mentioned his name. I won't now. I'll just call him Bill, a friend of ours whose child was so awful. His origin story
we can hardly bear to hear, as all he said he could remember of his childhood was his parents physically fighting outside his bedroom door. And a father so desirous of a affair with a neighbor that he intentionally drove his wife, Bill's mother, into insanity in order that he could have an unfettered affair with the neighbor. And now here is Bill, an adult, married without any model, without any background to give him guidance. And he flies into rages and his sexual addictions are destroying his family. And he doesn't know what to do. But what convicts him is learning of the prayers of his wife on his knee, on her knees for a year, praying, praying, praying, "Father, enter my husband's life, convict his heart, turn him around, change him." And when Bill learned of how his wife had served him by her spiritual humility and his behalf, it broke him. He came to us to say, "How do I live as a follower of Jesus Christ? How do I stop these rages? How do I stop this addiction? How do I stop all these things that are hurting my family?" And if you were to see him now, a man, repentant, humble, and gloriously walking with Christ for the beauty of his family, he would say, "God did something beyond what he could have imagined. God was working a grace that we can hardly believe still happens. We tell the stories in the church and we think he just made that up." No, the stories are here. God is working among us because he is still with us. That's the point. What is the genealogy teaching you? Yes, it's teaching you about the mess of the mothers. It is teaching you about the mess of the fathers. But if you've got fathers and mothers with the promise of a child, you know you've got a duty left. You've got to find out who that child is. What will they name the child? We know because it's in the Scriptures and nobody went to babynames.com. It comes from the mouth of an angel. Verse 25, "After Joseph woke from a dream, 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. That's what the angel said. "You shall call his name Jesus." Do you know what Jesus means? It means salvation or deliverance. And it's actually the same New Testament name as the Old Testament name Joshua. It's just the same name in the Greek representation. And if you thought about that, this one who's coming, you're to name him salvation. You're to name him deliverance because he will save his people from their sins. It would make wonderful sense to you if you were Jewish in your background. You would know the genealogy. You would know the history. What are the Joshua's you remember? One is very easy, right? There was the one when the walls came tumbling down at Jericho who took the people of God into the Promised Land. He was the deliverer of the people to take them from their slavery, from their enemies into the land of promise. But the second Joshua comes much later after the nation has been established, after the kingdom has been built, and then destroyed by its own divisiveness. The people are taken into slavery and you remember a remnant comes back to the Promised Land that's an absolute ruin. And they begin to build the temple. We need to honor God again. We're not sure how to do it, but we need to honor God. We need to build the temple again. They begin to build the temple again. And the high priest of the new temple of the ruined nation is named Joshua. And Jeremiah actually describes what is to happen with this new high priest. He says, "Tell the people to bring gold and silver and to make a crown for the high priest and put him on a throne in the temple, for he shall reconcile God and man." It's an amazing picture in the Old Testament of who Christ is. He is both king and priest. He is the one who comes to reconcile people who have a mess in their lives to a holy God. And at the same time as a king, he has the authority to do that. He comes with reconciliation and rule. He comes to say, "I can make you right again and I have the authority to help you rebuild. I have authority over all creation and I will use who I am for your sake." Wonderful, unless it's just past history.
But that's not the only name. Verse 23, "When the angel comes in the vision of Joseph, he quotes Isaiah the prophet in the Old Testament." Verse 23, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel." Which means God with us.
He's not just the deliverer. He's not just the one who has the title that allows him to say, "I'll be the reconciler between you and God. I'll make things right again and I'll put you on a good course again. I have the authority for that." It's not just ancient history. He is Emmanuel. He is God with us. It's been the message from the beginning when God would meet with Adam and Eve in the garden and when their sins seem to put God away, He would keep coming in the clouds of glory, in the fire by night to lead, to descend into the temple to say, "I will make my home with you." And then Christ would come among us and He would say, "I am God with you." And then He would send His Holy Spirit so that even when He had ascended to God in heaven, He would say, "I am in you and with you and I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you." It's the wonderful message of God simply saying, "I sent my son to save and he is with you." Whatever you face, he can work past the mess and build something new because he is God, the reconciler and the ruler who is with you. Some of you know just this last week I was in Medellin, Colombia teaching pastors and a nation that's filled with violence, with the remnants of the drug wars that tore the nation apart, and gathering with 1,500 church leaders and pastors. Let me tell you, there were such assaults, spiritual and otherwise, on that gathering. And yet to be able to say against the difficulties of arrangements, against the difficulty of governmental opposition, against the difficulty of transportation to get there, God is with us.
The Lord is near. And so we are able to move forward, believing He is blessing and helping and building as He said He would. The Lord is near. There is no more common note that I make to you when in the hospital or you're suffering different things. If you receive notes from you, you see it over and over, the Lord is near. And I recognize in that storm in which we ourselves were living. It was my message to myself again. Brian, preach the gospel to yourself. This is hard, but the Lord is near. And for that reason, do not fear.
The Lord is near. Praise God. The one who knows the mess, to rescue from the mess, because He is the Savior who is here. The Lord is near. Do not fear. Amen. Heavenly Father, so teach us of the blessings that you have given that we who need to remember when the storms come, when the hardships come, when our own sin is so large in our eyes, we can hardly imagine that you would forgive us or fix it. But you have done it throughout history. And you teach it through the genealogy and the history of your own son. He knows our mess, but He came to save us from it, even if it must be from ourselves. So Father, for those who are here that need to say it to you, Father, clean up the mess as we believe Jesus would die for our sins to cleanse us from it. And not only die, but live again to give us new lives of hope and power. So work in and among us, we pray, and we will not fear because you are here. We bless you in the name of Jesus. Amen.