Well, again, welcome and good to have you here tonight.
Would you please open your Bible to the New Testament book of
Matthew in Chapter 1? As you're turning there, let me
remind you of some announcements from this morning, ladies, this
Tuesday, 9:30, time for gathering and study together out
of the book of Ruth. An invitation also to Wednesday
when we gather to pray 7:00 here in the church.
God is doing a great work in our midst, in our hearts and lives
as as we can just see families pressing into the Lord,
individuals desirous of of understanding God's word more
and being transformed by it and living for him and obeying him
in these last days. And part of that is recognising
that we're stewards of that which God has given to us.
And so we give of our tithes and offerings.
And I just want to pray now and ask the Lord the blessing upon
that as we trust him with our resources.
Then we'll get stuck in to our study tonight of God's Word.
Let's bow our heads, let's close our eyes.
Father in Heaven, thank you for the privilege of being called
your people, the generosity that you have displayed to us.
And as your family, as your children, we cannot help but be
generous. Help us to recognise that we're
to be stewards wisely using that which you have entrusted to us.
So we give back to you of our first fruits and our tithe and
offerings, and we do so with glad and cheerful hearts.
And I ask that you would use that which we give for your
glory and purposes here on earth as in heaven.
And thank you now again, as it has been prayed for your
wonderful word. But now we have the opportunity
to open and in in the coming weeks studying through the book
of Matthew. It will be such a blessing to
us. And we ask that blessing be upon
us now in Jesus name, Amen. The title of tonight's message
is the King above our mess. We're going to have a look at
Matthew chapter 1 verses one through to 17.
And maybe you've read ahead and you've been looking at those
verses and you're going, surely we're not going to read the
genealogy. And most of us, when we read
these in our devotions, we might skip over them.
We're going to read it all. And we, we kind of did this as
we studied through the book of Nehemiah.
We saw a list of names and we saw how important they were.
And I think what we'll see tonight is I want to show you
why these are of great interest to us.
Matthew, chapter one, verse 1 to 17.
I'll read it now out of the new King James Version.
The book of the genealogy Matthew begins of Jesus Christ.
Now Christ is not Jesus last name, it is Jesus the Christ
meaning the Messiah, the promised 1 the anointed one, the
son of David, the son of Abraham.
Verse 2 Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot
Judah and his brothers Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar.
Perez begot Hezron and Hezron begat Ram, Ram begot Aminadab.
Verse 4 Aminadab begot Nation and nation begat Salmon Salmon.
Verse 5 begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed
begot Jesse and Jesse begot David the king.
David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of
Uriah. Verse 7.
Solomon begot Rehoboam, Rehoboam begot Abuja and Abuja begot ASA,
ASA begot Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and
Joram begot Uzziah. Verse 9.
Uziah begot Jotham, Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah,
Hezekiah begot Manasa, Manasa begot Ammon, and Ammon begot
Josiah. Josiah begot Jeconiah and his
brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon.
Verse 11 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jack and
Niah begot Shield Teal and Shield Teal begot Zerubbabel,
Zerubbabel begot Abayud, Abayud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot
Azor. Verse 14 Azor begot Zadok, Zadok
begot Akim, and Akim begot Iliud, Iliud begot Iliasa,
Eliezar begot Matan, and Matan begot Jacob, and Jacob begot
Joseph. Notice the husband of Mary, of
whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
And so verse 17, all the generations from Abraham to
David are 14 generations, from David until the captivity in
Babylon are 14 generations, and from the captivity in Babylon
until the Christ are 14 generations.
Stopping there. Well now be honest, reading
those verses, was that a little bit tedious?
And I'm not saying that we did not value that in reading
through it. And as you read through it, you
realise, OK, it's God's word, it's important, here's what sits
beneath that is we're not sure of it's application, right?
We don't really enjoy reading genealogies.
Generally speaking, we see this as the Jewish phone book list of
names and if we were writing a book, put yourself in Matthew
sandals. If you were beginning putting
pen to paper writing, OK, I'm going to write the Gospel of
Matthew. Would you begin like this?
It's akin to could you imagine commencing reading a fictional
book And the beginning chapter was now here's a list of all the
characters in this book and just rattled off, you know, the
people that you can come across and that.
And so ends chapter 1. Oh, OK, This book's not really
getting me because we understand in literature that the beginning
is what hooks us in, right. We talk about the hook in
narrative writing and in in movies and in TV series.
The opening sequence before the credits is is to hook the viewer
in to capture their attention in readiness for the story that
lies ahead. We've been taught that you need
to grab the attention of the reader of the viewer of anybody
engaging. Now listen.
The authors of the Gospels knew this.
Think of the Gospel of Mark. Mark is all about colourful
characters. He commences with John the
Baptist. John the Baptist is clothed with
camel hair. He's eating locusts dipped in
honey, is baptising people in the Jordan River, proclaiming
repentance for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
And then Jesus comes onto the scene and the sky opens up and a
voice from heaven says, this is my beloved son in whom well
pleased. And then not long after that,
demons are convulsing and screaming cry.
We know who you are, Jesus. That's the beginning to a book,
right? That's how you start a book.
Luke, the Gospel of Luke. Luke starts with a bold claim
about being a better book. He says, I know that you've read
many other accounts before, but let me tell you, effectively
this is the best. He writes as an historian, as an
eyewitness and those that he'd interviewed and investigated.
And he says, I'm about to give you a fuller account of that
which you've come across. That's going to work.
That'll grab readers attentions. And John, oh, the Gospel of John
starts with mystery, using this kind of ethereal language that,
you know, is kind of otherworldly.
Jesus is the word. It's like a new genesis.
You know, in the beginning was the word, he says, and was with
God and became flesh. Oh, I'm curious about that.
Matthew in the beginning kind of this nerdy voice, odd picture
and Jesus was born by and he rattles off all of these list of
names. He throws out these 46 different
names repeating some. Some are hard to pronounce as we
read through it before we get to Jesus.
I don't think it's really a page Turner by modern standards.
And yet let me tell you something.
History indicates to us that in the first two centuries, you
know, which gospel was by far the most widely read and
consumed if we use that language, Matthew, when the
early church fathers came together to put the Canon of
Scripture and thinking of the New Testament, you know, you
picture them gathered around, they go, oh, oh, we, we should
start with Matthew. That'll be a great thing to
start the New Testament with. Let's put that at the beginning.
The intro is the best. So they knew, don't you think?
You've got to do something to grab the the attention of the
reader. So what are we as the modern
reader missing in this list of names?
What is it that we're not getting out of this?
Why are we tempted to skip the intro and pick up from verse 18
out of Matthew chapter 1? Want to try and help us here?
A little historical background on the book of Matthew and on
the man Matthew. There's a time gap between the
last book and the Old Testament, Malachi.
And here Matthew of some 400 years, the last book of the Old
Testament, the first book of the New Testament.
Bible scholars call this the silent years.
That means that there were no prophetic words recorded that
were given to the people of God during this time.
It begs the question, why? Why was God silent?
400 years is a significant, significant, you know, period of
time. We try to help you and by
thinking of it this way, Imagine you have a significant
announcement to make and, and you're gathered with a group of
people and there's noise in the room and you, you need to make
that announcement. What do you typically do?
OK, everybody listen up. You try to get silence in the
room, try to draw attention to I have an announcement to make
everybody. And you wait for the silence to
settle before making said announcement.
That's what God was doing. The major announcement is listen
up everybody. Listen.
The Messiah is here, the promised one, the Christ.
In Hebrew, Matthew's name is Matthew Yahoo, which means gift
of Yahweh. So if your name is Matthew here
tonight, what a great name. If you go by Mat, I think you're
selling yourself short. Full it Matthew, gift of Yahweh.
Matthew was one of the 12 disciples chosen by Jesus.
You'll know and remember from your prior knowledge that he was
a tax collector also went by the name of Levi.
Being a tax collector that was the lowest of lows in Jewish
society. You were a sell out.
You were working in cohesion with the the Romans and you were
taking advantage of your fellow Jews skimming off the top and
and they were hated by their fellow countrymen.
He worked for the Roman government.
And yet we read that when Christ calls him, he leaves everything
and abandons that to follow Jesus, even throwing a great
feast for him. Matthew probably wrote his
gospel around 50 AD and specifically targeting a Jewish
audience. So it's very Jewish in in
language. And so it's very Jewish,
particularly in these first few verses as to why he commences
with the genealogy, which we'll get to in a moment.
And he's all about bringing evidence that points to Jesus
being the fulfilment of the prophetic promises from the Old
Testament of a Messiah of the anointed, one of the one who had
delivered the people of Israel. And he says that Jesus is this
Messiah king. There are more than 100 quotes
from the Old Testament in the book of Matthew, more than any
other New Testament writer. And the word Kingdom appears 54
times when the early church fathers gave each gospel a
symbol that captured its theme. Maybe if you've done a tour of
different churches and you've seen some of the gospels
pictured with a symbol. The book of Matthew was given
the symbol of a lion to symbolise the kingly aspect of
Jesus being the King of the Jews.
And it so fits perfectly with the title Today, The King Above
Our Mess. I want to establish what
Matthew's purpose was in writing because it sits in our
understanding of these verses. He is again presenting Jesus as
the expected Messiah, as the King, the King of the Jews.
And any Jewish reader encountering the Gospel of
Matthew would know that if Jesus were to be the Messiah King, he
would have to fulfil 2 covenant conditions.
What's called the Abrahamic covenant and the Davidic
covenant to be the Messiah would depend on a lineage connection
to both Abraham and both David. The Messiah would need to be a
descendant of Abraham and a descendant of David.
And that's why Matthew declares this first of all in verse one,
Jesus the son of David, Jesus the son of Abraham.
These are two ear perking claims for the Jewish mind to go.
Hang on a minute, son of David, son of Abraham.
And it grabs their attention because there are huge promises
given by God to David, given by God to Abraham that have huge
implication for Israel and the rest of the world.
And the book of Luke presents a genealogical record of Jesus
through his mother Mary, while Matthew presents it through
Joseph, Jesus legal adoptive father.
Again, Jesus had no biological earthly father.
That's why it says here that he was the husband of Mary.
God supernaturally impregnated Mary.
So Jesus was born of a virgin, as the prophetic word says.
But both lines, Mary's and Joseph's, track their ancestry
back to King David. And this is absolutely vital
because the Messiah had to be a descendant of David.
So let's look at that. David, as mentioned first in
verse one, what is this Davidic covenant?
What is this promise given to David?
It was promised by God to David that a future king would come,
descended out of David, whose dominion, whose Kingdom would
last forever. And yet people knew, certainly
the Jewish mind did, that son after son, grandson, great
grandson, and so on, descended of the line of David and died
and died and died. And their dominion, their
Kingdom, did not last forever. But there was one who would come
along the scene, and it was promised that he would be that
through which kingly rule out of David's line would be
established across the earth forever.
To Samuel 7, verse 13, God said to David, he shall build a house
for my name, and I will establish the throne of his
Kingdom forever. Verse 16 And your house, David,
and your Kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
Your throne shall be established forever.
And then in Jeremiah the prophet says in chapter 23, verse 5 to
6, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will
raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as
king. And then we know Isaiah Chapter
9 verse six to seven. We bring that out at Christmas
time, for unto us a child is born.
And on the verses go. And the government shall be upon
his shoulder on what? The throne of David for
evermore. So there is a promise, the
Davidic covenant, where God said to David, David, I know you want
to build me a house, but you can't.
Your son will Speaking of the temple.
But let me tell you what, David, I'm going to establish your
line, and out of your line will come a king whose dominion will
be established forever, and he will rule and reign on the earth
forever. That's the Davidic covenant, the
Abrahamic covenant. He's mentioned also in verse
one, the son of Abraham, God picked him, you'll remember in
Genesis from heir of the Chaldeans.
He said, I'm going to make a great nation out of you, Abram
Avram as you pronounce it, and change his name to Abraham.
And out of this nation Abraham will come, one who would be a
blessing to all the nations of the world.
Genesis 12 one to three. And in you all the families of
the earth shall be blessed in Genesis 2218, and in your
offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
And on these promises are confirmed again and again to
Abraham and to his children in Isaac and Jacob, and on through.
So everyone knew in reading Matthew that if this Messiah
King was to come upon the scene that he would need to fulfil
these two covenants, these two promises, the Davidic and the
Abrahamic covenant, And God would rule through him this
individual and love and bless and bring the Kingdom of God
upon Israel and the whole world. And so this is Matthews
contention from the very beginning of this book.
Let me tell you about the one who is the son of David, who is
the son of Abraham. Jesus is his name, Jesus the
Christ the Anointed. 1 And many had claims to this back in the
1st century AD. There were messiahs popping up
here, there and everywhere. There are all sorts of people
laying claim to that. Even in Jesus Day when we read
that there were people who had had brought up these
insurrections against the Roman Empire and laid claim to being
the Messiah. But Matthew's claim is, I will
tell you who the true, the real Messiah is, Jesus of Nazareth.
He's the Christ, the Messiah, the promised king.
Now think of the audience, the people of Israel.
They've been waiting thousands of years since this promise had
been given to Abraham, since this promise had been given to
David, 700 years since Isaiah I quoted from out has has been
written 400 years since the last Old Testament book in Malachi.
And this relative silence as they've been languishing,
waiting, oppressed by the hands of multiple regimes.
Consider their history and now the Roman Empire's ruling and
has dominion in the land of Israel.
And all the while, don't you think that the people of Israel
are wondering about the fulfilment of these promises?
When, when is this going to happen?
I I read it and I hear it and I hope for it.
But when? When is this salvation spoken of
going to come? When will Messiah be here?
Where is this child who is promised?
Where is this king? And where is his Kingdom, whose
dominion lasts and stretches throughout all of the world?
And as Israel hoped for this and long for this, they had to do so
amidst brokenness and pain and heaviness and missteps and being
trampled upon by other nations around them.
And circumstances certainly look messy, especially at this time
in which Matthew is writing. And it looks so unlikely the
fulfilment of this promise in the 1st century AD.
And think of the implications. Rule the world implies
prosperity. It implies military might,
political prestige, success, prominence and victory.
All of the things that Israel we're not experiencing.
They'd been slaves in Egypt some 400 years.
They'd wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
They'd gone through king after king.
Descended from David, yes, but they were up and down and they
were good king and bad king and so on.
They'd had captivity in Babylon for 70 years, and the Grecian
Empire ruled, and now the Romans.
And, and none of this was what had been promised.
Where is this peace? Where is this prosperity?
And many longed and hoped for it, but man, they, they were
barely clinging and hanging on. Where's this forever Kingdom?
Where is this deliverer? When will these covenantal
promises come true? Do you ever think like this
about the promises of God? God, how can what I'm
experiencing be your plan for me?
How can how can what I'm going through be what I'm what I'm
reading and what I'm hoping for? And how is this a blessing?
We we feel like this like the audience that Matthew's writing
to. Sometimes we look around like
the people of Israel no doubt were and say this can't be, this
is such a mess. God, when will your plans, when
will your purposes be fulfilled? But Matthew's introduction would
tell you and I tonight that God knows exactly what he is doing
and exactly what he is doing in the mess.
And then he is able to work out his sovereign plan perfectly.
Matthew wants you and I to understand this.
He certainly wanted his original audience to understand it.
And so he starts with the genealogy.
It doesn't include everybody in the genealogy, but pick certain
ones that are helpful in telling the story.
And there's symbolism and patterns here.
Remember Matthew? He's a tax collector, so he's
all about numbers. Notice that we read up 14
generations from Abraham to David, from David to captivity,
captivity to Jesus. There's something in certain
languages that that numerical values are placed to the letters
and so on. Something called gematria, the
assigning of numerical value to letters and words for symbolic
significance. David's name in Hebrew has three
letters, Dilette, and the number 4 is allocated to it, Valve
number six allocated to it, and Dilette repeated 4.
Do the math, That's 14. The numerical value of 14,
David's name is even 14th in the list.
So Matthew, he's, he's about numbers and he's trying to tell
a certain type of story and he picks a certain type of people
to focus in on. And this is now where I want to
draw our attention in this genealogy of the people that
that seem even odd to the original Jewish audience, let
alone you and I tonight. There's some certain names in
here that the Jewish audience would have been offended about
including. And, you know, if you and I were
writing an ancestral record of our, you know, linear engine
where we've come from, there'd perhaps be certain names that
we'd gloss over or leave out of the story because of the
embarrassment maybe that they are.
You see, the Jewish mind understood that the nations
would be blessed. Yes, yes, yes.
But through US, through US first.
Very Jewish focused. It's very much an insider
movement. And so outsiders and Gentiles
weren't seen as important, just a byproduct.
And so on purpose, Matthew eaves Gentiles into the story.
And then there's some really messy stories included in this.
And he mentions women in the genealogy.
Matthew mentions Mary, obviously, but makes mention of
four other women. And I highlight that because
women ordinarily were not mentioned, not, not required.
So it's already outside of the norm the way that Matthew is
structuring and recording this genealogy.
So let's look at this, these messy stories of some of these
individuals in here and want to highlight them because I think
we'll find our story because if we were to be honest, we would
declare, you know what? My life is just as messy.
The things that I've done, the things that I've experienced,
the things that have been committed against me.
It is tragic, it is a mess, and boy, it's embarrassing and I
hate for people to find out about it.
But Matthew records in all of the messy detail, the names,
some very interesting individuals.
Matthew 1 verses two to three. We have the story of Tamer.
You can find that account back in Genesis 38.
She was the daughter in And there was a custom back then
that culturally, without a descendant, then the
responsibility fell to the next son in line to marry the
deceased, you know, brother's wife to continue his line.
And so Onan was married. And I should have prefaced
tonight saying it's a little PG with some of these stories here,
because Onan, he conducted himself wickedly.
And when he went in unto Tamar, instead of conceiving, he did
everything that he could to ensure that he would not
conceive. You can read the story and all
of its graphic detail in Genesis 38.
So God killed Onan and Judas thinking, I've got a third son
who's not yet of age, and the responsibility is that she's to
marry him. But there's a common denominator
here. So he he delays.
So why don't you go back to your home and just wait till my third
son sort of, you know, comes of age and then we'll make it
happen. And you know, he can marry you
and so on. But he doesn't.
Now Tamar takes matters into her own hands and she knows what
kind of a man Judah is. And so she poses as a a
prostitute on the way of him visiting into a town.
And prostitutes back then were attached to worship of other
gods. So a temple prostitute no less.
And he propositions her and he goes in under her.
And when it comes to making payment at the end, he's, you
know, I haven't got my wallet. And she's that's OK.
Give me your signet ring and your staff and then, you know,
come back and bring me the sheep.
And then he goes to send off one of his mates to go and make
payment. And he's inquiring where's the,
the prostitute? The temple prostitute.
There's no temple prostitute. They say he's realising I've
been done and quickly just forget about it.
Don't worry about it. And then word three months later
eventually gets to Judah. Judah, guess what?
Tamar is pregnant. Bring her out.
He's filled with indignant rage and and just wants to bring her
out and have her stoned to death.
Who did this? Judah cries out to Tamar.
Tamar pulls out his identification.
Is this your licence, Judah? Is this yours, Judah?
That's a messy story. Twins were born, but that's in
the genealogical record of Jesus, Perez and Zerah born by
Tamer of Judah. Matthew one, verse five, Storey
of Rahab. Remember, Rahab and the
Israelites are coming in to make their conquest of Canaan land
and Jericho, the book of Joshua. The spies are sent out and
they're spying out the city of Jericho.
And where do they reside? In the House of the prostitute
Rahab in Jericho. She hid the spies, you know the
story how it goes that she, because she hid the spies was
told by the spies that if you'll dangle down the scarlet thread,
we, we make promises that when Jericho is attacked, you and
your household and anybody that you can gather in will be saved.
And she does exactly that. And some members of her
household and Rahab, an outsider and a prostitute at that, ends
up becoming a part of people of Israel being absorbed in that's
a messy story, but that's a part of Jesus story.
And also in Matthew 1 verses 5 and 6, we read of Ruth and the
ladies are studying about Ruth on Tuesday.
And it's a wonderful story of redemption and and Ruth is a
wonderful example of a woman of God, but she was an outsider of
the people of Moab. And if you know anything about
Moab in the book of Genesis, it's it's a dubious family tree.
To put it bluntly, the Moabites were from a line conceived by
incest, the story of Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19.
And as outsiders, Moabites weren't accepted into the people
of Israel. They were looked down upon.
And now her rough, downtrodden experience becomes part of the
family tree of Jesus. And and what we see of Ruth is
that she ends up marrying into a a royal line because out of her
comes King David. What a story.
Speaking of David, Matthew, chapter one, verse 6, Bathsheba,
her name's not mentioned, but we know who she is, says that she
was the wife of Uriah. It's a messy story.
David, at the time when kings go to war, it says, is up on his
rooftop and he looks out and he spots Bathsheba.
He enquires about her and word comes back as to who she is.
She's the daughter of and she is the husband of and the two
individuals that she was a daughter of and a husband of
were part of the mighty men of David, people that fought
alongside David. And yet David commits adultery
with Bathsheba and to cover it up commits murder of Uriah the
husband, thinking that he's gotten away with things he
hasn't until Nathan the prophet instructed by God, comes onto
the scene. What a messy story of Bathsheba
and David. It's not just the women.
As we read through some of the names mentioned, the men in the
line weren't exactly role models either.
You talk about an ancestry that wow, let's keep that quiet.
Abraham verse 2, yes, he's the father of faith that's mentioned
there, but Abraham was a liar. He lied twice, claiming twice
that his wife was his sister, protecting himself in the
process. Very cowardly actions.
Abraham is mentioned Jacob verse 2.
You know his name literally means deceiver, heel catcher.
He stole his brother's birthright, tricked his father
in law out of the best sheep, he messed with his father and
Isaac, put on the whole hairy arms and you know, in cahoots
with his mum in the neck and put on the clothes of his brother
Esau to steal the blessing. His life was a mess until God
changed his name to Israel. And that's my name, Prince of
God, governed by God. I'm so glad I'm not Jacob.
Judah. We read of him verse three.
He was a philanderer, paid a prostitute, turned out to be his
own daughter in 700 wives and 300 concubines and
idolatry reached its height in his reign.
Rhea Baum is mentioned in verse 7 was divisive.
His actions split the Kingdom and civil war ensued.
Joram in verse 8 was a murderer. He killed six of his brothers to
secure his throne. And Manasseh verse 10 was pure
evil. He even sacrificed his own son
in the fire to a false God. That's some messy stories.
Matthew, putting pen to paper, guided by the Holy Spirit, is
very careful to include these characters in this story.
Why does this teach us? Why include these?
Why does the Holy Spirit guide Matthew in these ways?
I mean, why not Sarah? Why not Rebecca?
Why not Rachel? These are nice Jewish girls.
You could have included them in your genealogy, Matthew.
But why these individuals that are mentioned here?
Because the purpose of the gospel is to preach the good
news of Jesus Christ. And he begins to preach from the
very first line. Does Matthew the son of David?
Oh, what a mess was David the son of Abraham?
Oh, what a mess was Abraham. And these guys aren't worthy and
these guys aren't deserving. But that's who the Messiah came
for. That's who the Messiah is meant
for. For listen to this.
Those who do not deserve him. Story is meant for the Sinner.
Story of Jesus is meant for the ashamed, for the guilty, those
who are the outsider, the outcast, the unwanted, the
sinful, the broken. Listen to what Jesus himself
said in Luke chapter 5. He said, I have come to call the
sinful to repentance. And you know what?
The sinful are messy stories. You know who the sinful are you,
Me, the reader, the listener. They recognise even in this
genealogy, just as we are to tonight.
That's me. I'm in this.
Our stories include the same as this.
We're the outsiders. We're we're full of sin.
There's brokenness in our lines. There's pain, there's there's
hurt. There's tragedy, there's
deception. There's mess after mess after
mess. But you know what?
It doesn't end there. It ends in redemption, not ruin.
It ends in Jesus. In 16, Jacob begat Joseph, the
husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called
Messiah, Christ the Anointed. 1 And when Jesus arrived on the
scene, he said in Luke chapter 4 verse 18 to 19, quoting out of
Isaiah 61, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has
anointed me to preach the gospel.
To whom? To the poor he has sent me to
heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, recovery of sight to the blind to set liberty those
who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
You know, this whole passage out of Matthew that we've covered
tonight should tell us the one who is writing the story is
bigger than any and all of our mistakes.
But no one is beyond the reach of His grace.
That our lives like Judah and Tamar, like Rahab the
prostitute, like Ruth of Moab, like David and Bathsheba.
Bathsheba can be redeemed in Jesus.
God's ending is dependent upon God and His faithfulness, not
man and his efforts. So here's the good news.
Your identity is not in your ancestors.
It's not in who your father was, in who your mother was.
It's not in your past. It's not in your failures.
It's not in your faults. In Christ, you are a brand new
creation. You've been given a new heart
and a new start, and what comes with that is a new purpose, a
new mission, a new legacy that can be left.
And you are not destined to repeat the sins of your family,
of those who have gone before you.
Being a Christian means that you are a new person. 2 Corinthians
517 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he has a new creation.
Old things have passed away and behold, all things have become
new. And that's why Paul was glad to
declare. When you think of Paul and his
past in Philippians 3 verse 13 to 14, he said, Brethren, I do
not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward,
straining forward to those things which are ahead Jesus.
And if there's anyone whose lineage whose ancestry could
have been looked back and go, well, I'm just like those that
have gone before me. Think of those that went before
Jesus. But Jesus lived his life for
what? The glory of his Heavenly Father
without letting his family tree deter or detract or define him.
Jesus identity and purpose and mission was defined by what the
Heavenly Father said was for him and God used some pretty messed
up people to accomplish his purposes.
The heritage that you and I have received from our ancestors,
from those that have gone before us, is not nearly as important
as the legacy that you can leave because of Jesus Christ.
Because the heritage that you have received in him is one that
glorifies God, is one that makes old things pass away and all
things become new. And I want you to see out of
this, these verses, these names, this Jewish phone book, the mess
of humanity. And there are times where we can
sit here and we can be thinking, man, I don't deserve this.
And who am I kidding? And I look around, I see people
worshipping and praising God and I don't feel like it.
And our thoughts and all that we've done, all that we've said,
all that's been done to us, all that's been said to us, can, can
really do a number on our mind, can it not?
And we can let that detract or deter or define us in many
respects. But in Jesus Christ we need to
see that he is the King above all our mess.
And here's the King who redeems all our mess, and his name is
Jesus, who is called the Christ. The next week we get into the
nuts and bolts of the narrative of Matthew.
And I'm really looking forward to our study through Matthew
because not only do we have the life and the events of Jesus,
but we have the teachings of Jesus and the parables of Jesus,
the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes.
We have prophetic words that will come that speak to
relevance in our day and age. We certainly have the the death
and the the resurrection of Jesus Christ so much that we
have to look forward to in Matthew.
But tonight I wanted to remind you that Jesus is the Messiah,
but Jesus is the anointed one. Jesus is the Christ, and he is
the King above all. No matter what mess you're going
through, no matter what mess you've made, no matter what mess
has been made against you, will you trust in Jesus as the King
tonight? Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your wonderful word for this book
that we're about to embark in a study of an end.
Will you bless it and continue to guide us and teach us through
it? For each person here tonight,
you know their story. You know the events, the
circumstances, the situations. You know all that is going on.
You know all that they're thinking and feeling, all that
they have done, all that has been done against them.
Just as we were reminded of the names and the individuals in the
genealogy of you, we see that out of the mess of humanity,
still God, you are able to work and transform and bring about
the greatest blessing to humanity.
It's all in you, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the
anointed. 1 So we love you, and we thank you and we praise you
for the work that you have done in our lives, for the work that
you were doing in our lives, and for the work that you are to
fulfil not only in our lives but in this world.
It's in your name. Now we pray Jesus and God's
people said Amen, Amen. And God bless you and may He
guide you and lead you through this coming week.