Matthew 1 - Who is this King? What is His Kingdom like?

We studied through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.

And we happen to have some extra copies.

If anyone would like a paper copy, raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will drop one by your row, your aisle.

It's always great, especially this morning, really great to follow along with your eyes on the text, and it will help you engage with the word more and with the Lord more and open your own heart and mind to whatever God may have to say to us.

Now, a couple of just introductory Matthew, by the way, is the first book in the New Testament.

Some of you know a couple of years ago when when the pandemic kind of hit, we decided to do the book of Revelation.

We thought, man, that is a much bigger theme than anything that we're experiencing.

So we went for Revelation, and which was wonderful.

I so enjoyed that.

If you weren't able to be with us during that, that's all up online.

And for those of you online, I encourage you to study the book of Revelation.

It is amazing.

And then after Revelation, we decided, let's push reset on everything.

And so we went back to Genesis.

So that was all of last year.

Some of you remember that as well.

And those are all online as well if anyone would like to study the book of Genesis.

The book of beginnings.

The book that helps us with the questions that people have been plagued with for years and years and years.

Like, why is there something rather than nothing?

Where did everything come from?

Why is there this something?

What does it mean to be a human person?

That's a really important question right now.

And where you go for an answer really matters to how you see yourself and how you see others in this world around us.

So Genesis, great place to go.

And then we thought, well, as we start a new year, let's go to the first book of the New Testament, to the gospel according to Matthew.

And I just a couple of introductory comments, if you don't mind.

The authorship, while we're not 100% certain of this in these four gospel accounts, uh, none of them really say, you know, to all of you from me.

My name's Matthew.

It doesn't start that way.

That's not the way ancient literature was written.

But all the way back to the second century, Papius Aranius, two early church leaders, attribute a gospel to the disciple named Matthew.

At the end of the second century and into the third century, the learned scholar Origen refers to a gospel by Matthew.

In the fourth century, they're all joined by Eusebius, who was one of the early church historians, and also by Jerome, one of the leading theologians of the first few centuries of the church.

And they all recognized and referred to a gospel account that was written by Matthew, who was Matthew.

Not unlike others of that time, he appears to have had two names in Mark's Gospel, chapter two, and Luke's Gospel, chapter five.

He's referred to actually as Levi, the son of Alpheus.

And in his own book, Matthew, he tells the account of when he, a tax collector in chapter 9, became a believer.

He had his pen, he was there at work.

He had evidently the Lord Jesus walked right by and just said two words to him that radically changed his life.

Follow me.

And Matthew stood up, took his pen with him, and uh he had kept a record of what people owed as a tax collector.

And somewhere along the line, and my assumption is that perhaps even Jesus changed his name to Matthew from Levi.

Levi, the tax collector, keeping a record of what people owed, changed his name to Matthew, which means gift of God.

And began a record of how Jesus paid it all.

And you and I, our account with God, can be settled right now because of the finished work of Christ.

And so this is an amazing book.

I'm really excited about getting to study it together.

There'd be some important themes.

We're calling our study of it The King and His Kingdom.

The name Jesus appears 179 times in these 28 chapters.

So, you know, it's not magic.

It's not, I'm not into numerology and all that sort of thing.

I'm just noticing that if you see certain words show up a lot, you kind of get a sense of what the author had in his uh in his original intent in writing.

He wants to tell us about the king.

He wants to tell us about Jesus.

Kingdom is mentioned 54 times, and 31 of those times, it's coupled with of heaven, so kingdom of heaven.

And Matthew's careful to not say kingdom of God because he's a Jewish guy.

He would avoid uttering, you know, and speaking Yahweh.

He would avoid that out of respect for the name.

Wouldn't want that name to be on sinful lips.

And so he would say kingdom of heaven.

Fulfillment themes are mentioned 16 times in Matthew.

And in this chapter that we'll study today, it begins right there.

It's kind of cool.

In addition to all the miracles of Jesus, Matthew contains the largest collection of Jesus' teachings of any of the four Gospels.

And we get there, the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Was it all spoken in one setting?

I don't know.

You know, I know a lot of us assume that that was the case.

But this guy's an accountant, man.

And I got a feeling he's got all kinds of paperwork that he's carrying around with him, and he's collecting stuff.

And uh maybe it was, maybe it wasn't all spoken at one at one particular moment.

But the Sermon on the Mount is very important, and this accountant organizes material and puts it in what we call chapter 5, 6, and 7.

He didn't call it that, but we do in our English Bibles.

The parables are here and they're well organized as well as the stories of Jesus' miracles.

But in terms of the body of the teaching or the things that Jesus actually said, Sermon on the Mount Parables, and then that amazing Mount Olivet discourse that we'll get to in chapter 24 and 25.

One more time taking a look at what Jesus had to say about the end of times and what his role is in all of it.

If Genesis offers us a record of the creation fall and the beginning of God's unfolding plan of redemption there in Genesis chapter 3, as we learned.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Here we're kind of zooming way high up to like a 100,000-foot view as we begin this book.

And uh we're gonna go all the way back actually to Abraham.

I I don't know if this has happened to you, but do you feel like after the last couple of years, you have pretty much exhausted all that Netflix and Amazon Prime have to offer?

Raise your hand if you think you've seen most of what they've got.

Yeah.

And and the other thing is, I don't know if you've noticed this, but most of them, most of those shows, and and and and I'm, you know, we enjoy them.

Kim and I are now into the sort of phase where we're we're even watching ones with subtitles.

It's really okay with us.

We'll we'll take we'll take whatever we get.

We just want a good story, and and and we really like stuff from the UK, by the way, um, because it just really seems to be about the story and it not about some kind of, you know, let me persuade you to this cultural moment or whatever.

It's about the murder mystery or the whatever it is, and I love that kind of stuff.

So, but I I've noticed that a lot of them roll credits at the end.

You know, so you get the who played the role of this and all that sort of thing, and then whose music it was and all that stuff.

That all comes at the end, and Matthew is kind of the inversion of all of that, isn't it?

Uh some of you may have read ahead, I don't know if you did or not, but we're going to begin with verse one and take a look with with me at it, if you will.

It's the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

So, right at the beginning, you know, all of you that just love genealogies, this one's for you.

You know, and this is a really great way to start.

Um, I I love, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read through the chapter and then I'm gonna come back to uh a couple of comments about Matthew.

And I think you'll start to see, you get to know this brother, you know, our older brother Matthew.

But that's the way it begins.

Uh he says the book of the genealogy, or the record of the Genesis, or the the origins of Jesus Christ.

And remember, we've said this before, Christ isn't his last name.

It's not like Jim Thomas.

My last name's Thomas, okay?

So Christ is a title.

Uh it is sort of the Greek version, Christos, it is the Greek version of the Hebrew title, Messiah or Messiah.

And so what Matthew, the Jewish tax collector, well-educated, uh great at keeping records, what he starts with is identifying Jesus as God's anointed one.

He starts off that way.

There's no guesswork here, it's not something that happened 400 years after Jesus ascended back into heaven.

And and 400 years later, some of his followers wanted to prop up the image of their fallen hero.

No, from the beginning of the New Testament, accepted as fact that Jesus is the Christ.

And he's the son of David and the son of Abraham, because the Christ would have to be the son of David, and the son of Abraham.

Jews knew that.

And so he begins with that kind of bold statement that just says, This is true about Jesus.

And let me connect the dots for you.

He's the son of David, and he's even the son of Abraham.

And the promise of God's covenant promises goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 12, which we studied in the book of Genesis, and that's the Abrahamic covenant.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And then there's the Davidic covenant that the Lord would take one of David, King David's descendants, and establish this throne, the throne of David, forever.

And we just sang forever, didn't we?

I love that.

It's a beautiful word in the Bible.

Forever.

He's king forevermore.

Um, so man, this just starts off that way.

Let me fly through this list of 42 names, and if you can, keep up with me.

Listen fast, will you?

Um, because it goes pretty fast.

To Abraham was born Isaac, to Isaac, Jacob, and to Jacob, Judah, and his brothers.

To Judah were born Perez and Zara, twins, by Tamar.

That's a woman, not usually mentioned.

Women are not usually mentioned in ancient Jewish genealogies.

There will be five mentioned.

Four will be the ancestral mothers, if you will, of Jesus.

One will be the biological mother of Jesus.

Okay?

So to Abram was born Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and to Judah, Perez, and Zerab by Tamar.

And a little bit more in a few minutes on her.

To Perez was born Hezron, to Hezron Ram, to Ram was born Aminadab, to Minodab, Nashan, to Nashan Salmon.

To Salmon was born Boaz by Rahab, another woman.

And to Boaz was born Obed by Ruth, another woman.

And to Obed Jesse, to Jesse was born David the king.

And they would all have known David the king.

And here he draws that direct line between Jesus and David the king.

To David was born Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.

Anyone know her name?

Bathsheba.

Most of you know her name.

That's great.

Wonderful.

To Solomon was born Rehoboam to Rehoboam Abijah to Abijah Asah.

To Asah was born Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat, Joram, and to Joram Uzziah.

To Aziah was born Jotham, to Jotham, Ahaz, to Ahaz, Hezekiah, to Hezekiah was born Manasseh to Manasseh Amon, to Amon Josiah, to Josiah were born Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon, to Jechiah was born Shealtiel, and to Shealtiel Zerubbabel, and to Zerubbabel was born Abud, and to Biud, Eliakim and Eliakim, Azor, and to Azar was born Zadok and to Zadok, Achim, and to Achim was born Eliad, and to Eliad was born Eliezer, to Eliazar, Mathan, and to Mathan Jacob, and Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom was born.

And that's interesting.

The rhythm is broken there.

Did you notice that?

It's not, he wasn't born to Joseph.

But Joseph was married to Mary, by whom was born.

Jesus, who's called Christ.

Christos.

In Latin, Christos.

In Hebrew, Messiah.

This is just amazing.

Therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ.

Fourteen generations.

I like the pacing here.

This is an accountant at work.

Do you know an accountant?

An accountant would do this.

Three groups of fourteen.

Makes it easy to memorize when it's three groups of fourteen.

And guess what they depended on a lot in the ancient times?

Oral tradition memorized.

And so you see, it makes so much sense that he would group it this way.

Now he doesn't, as is the tradition with ancient genealogies, especially biblical ones, it doesn't mean he's saying the name of every generation.

It just means that, and they they would use the term the father, you know, who was the father of the father of the father.

To sometimes it would be the, you know, I mean, if if if David is the father of Jesus, there's a bunch of generations between them.

But Jesus is his descendant in a way.

And in this particular genealogy, Jesus, and this is really a tracing really of the record of the Joseph line, in Luke's gospel, chapter three, we have more of Mary's line by the good doctor and historian himself, Luke, who well researched, you know, everything.

But here it's you know, sort of the legal, if you will, genealogy of Jesus.

Whereas in Luke 3, the biological or the physical generations uh leading up to Jesus.

So this is really great.

And by the way, if if you or someone you know is planning on having a child in the next couple years or whatever, there's some there's some great names in here.

I I'd love to see somebody come back with a Sheal T L and we'll we'll dedicate that baby right away.

I'll give you a slot all by yourself.

We won't we won't do double, triple, or whatever.

If you've got a Jehoshaphat, bring them on, okay?

We're we're happy about that.

All right, so that's the genealogy of Jesus.

And um, it goes all the way back to David, all the way back to Abraham, and it connects Jesus to these messianic promises and these really important covenants in the history of the world.

And it's a hundred thousand-foot view of the history of redemption that is culminate, that culminates or finds fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus.

Now watch the rest of the chapter, and then we'll we'll make a few comments and we'll be done.

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

Doesn't that sound like an accountant?

Now, here's what happened.

Boom.

Just a fact, you know.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, and that implies exactly what you think it implies, some of you.

Uh not all of you, but some of you are thinking that, I'm sure.

Um, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

And in their day and time, by the way, there were the the this the whole idea of becoming married, a lot different than ours.

You know, in our day and time, it's kind of you grow up, you kind of sift through the, you know, you're kind of looking through the social landscape, you maybe set your eyes on somebody, you hope they notice you.

You know, I noticed with some of the some of the teenage boys around here, they start wearing deodorant and combing their hair and stuff, and it's like all of a sudden they're kind of, you know, they're thinking maybe there's somebody they might like or whatever, and they want them to like them back, so they don't want to smell bad, and and they try to look, you know, brush their teeth, whatever.

And and you kind of shock, and that's the way it is now.

Back then, see, a wedding, uh marriage may have been actually arranged by the parents.

Think about if that happened to you in your day and time.

Wouldn't you be really nice to your parents growing up?

Wouldn't you like, hey, mom, dad, uh yeah, I honor you all of my life.

I obey everything you tell me to do.

Let's pick a good one.

You know, that kind of thing.

But here, um, back in their day and time, it's quite possible uh that this uh could have been an arranged thing.

They had three stages really to the sort of marriage process.

There was engagement, betrothal, and then there was the marriage ceremony itself or the consummation where the marriage is consummated, okay?

So in the stage at which these two are at, it says here in verse 18 that Mary is betrothed to Joseph.

That means they're in the year remaining before the actual ceremony, the wedding ceremony is going to take place.

And it's as good as you're married, it's just that it's not physically consummated.

So the commitment is now so serious that it would require a writ of divorce if you were to want to break off and not actually go through with it.

And so what we have here is that Mary's betrothed Joseph, before they came together physically, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly.

And we get some insight into these human beings.

And it's very important for us, I think, to remember that they are human beings.

Um, you have read, and we've taught many times the account in Luke.

And so we have the birth narratives in both Luke and in Matthew here, don't we?

And we're all familiar with the fact that the angel appears to Mary and says, You're going to have a child.

She says, How can this be?

I'm a virgin.

And uh last time she checked, and last time all of us checked, that doesn't happen to virgins, right?

And but the angel goes on to say, This will be by this will be something the Holy Spirit will do.

And none of this nonsense about uh as you see in some pagan religions where there's a deity that in some way physically couples with a human.

It's not that.

The Holy Spirit will overshadow her, and uh the Holy Spirit will uh uh uh do something that we still can't explain, but it's not that same kind of thing that you read about in some of the some of the pagan religions.

And the assurance is going to be given to Joseph that he needs to go ahead, even though he currently in verse 19 is actually thinking to himself, I don't know how this happened to Mary.

I I I don't know.

I hear her saying what she's saying because she seems to know, she seems to suggest that God did it.

But if you're on Joseph's side of that message, it's gonna be hard to accept, right?

And so verse 20 comes because the Lord God is doing something much bigger than the laws of physics at this particular time.

He was gonna put her away secretly, verse 20.

When she when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, So here's this angel appearing to Joseph in this dream.

Joseph, son of David, knows his name, knows his lineage, might even be cueing him up with that term, son of David, might be cueing him up to think in his dream about Messiah line.

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son.

This is before sonograms.

So the angel already knows the gender.

She will bear a son.

You should call his name Jesus.

He's even given the name to Joseph in the dream.

Okay?

For it is he who will save his people from their sins.

That's kind of what the name Jesus means.

God or Yahweh is salvation.

It's actually a common name back then.

It wasn't that uncommon.

There certainly would have been other people named Jesus back then, much like in our own day and time.

There are names that are kind of popular or whatever for the time being.

But his name will be Jesus, and it will be because he will save his people from their sins.

Now, all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be, here it is, fulfilled.

Matthew is very much about the fulfillment issue and the subject of fulfillment in his gospel.

And this took place.

In other words, it was planned.

It's not random.

It's not just didn't just happen.

It's actually planned and now it's being fulfilled.

It was even predicted.

And he's going to quote Isaiah 7:14 and show how the prophet predicted that this would happen.

Isaiah 7:14

So planned, predicted, fulfilled in the person of Jesus.

That's why verse 1 is so important.

This is Jesus the Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

He's in that line.

He's the Messiah.

And he will save his people from their sins.

And now Isaiah had predicted this.

Verse 23 Behold, the virgin shall be with child, shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

Why would God even bother to be with us?

That's crossed my mind so many times.

Why would God even bother with this rebellious planet, with this dark, loving planet full of people that go the run the other way.

With this group of people who, when you look at this list even, you see all kinds of brokenness, all kinds of rebellion, all kinds of messiness.

And yet it's through that line that Messiah will come.

But he won't come in the normal way.

He will be very unusual.

This conception is very unusual.

And his birth is really powerful, that he would come and become one of us.

And Joseph arose from his sleep and he, this is beautiful about Joseph.

He arose from his sleep and he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took her as his wife.

I wish Jim Thomas was, I wish that I would be that resolved to God's will as it's been revealed to me.

Because I've got a whole book full of God's will right here.

And I wish that every morning I got up and went out and did this.

Somebody identify with me, or am I all alone in this?

I mean, this right here, this is the word of the Lord to me.

You know?

And oh, he's so Joseph, we don't know a lot about, we don't know how he disappears from the scene.

We're not really sure.

But one thing I know about him is that when the Lord spoke to him in this dream through this angel, he got up the next day and did what God told him to do.

Oh, may we get up tomorrow morning and do what God has already told us to do.

And then Joseph, it says here in verse 25, he kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

There's so much there.

Um if you are uh interested and concerned about the, some of you may have heard that the the word virgin there, Alma, uh, could also be translated to young woman or young girl.

Um, and uh, while I'll acknowledge that that's true, please understand that in around the third century BC, when the Jews, not the Christians, but when the Jews decided to make a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, including Isaiah, where it says Alma, a virgin, shall be with child.

The Jews who translated into Greek in the third century BC used the word Parthenos, which is a Greek word most regularly used for virgin.

The other thing that's true about this angel saying this, it should be a sign for you, you know, and the prophet saying that it'll be a sign for you.

It's not a sign if it's just a young woman having a baby.

Why?

Well, because young women have babies all the time.

It's a sign because a virgin has a baby.

And that's what makes it remarkable, different, extraordinary.

And that's also important for us because of the fact that Jesus is both human and divine.

He's not just the product of a male and a female coming together, so that he's just a human, but he's both.

The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary.

And what we have is the God man, Emmanuel, God with us.

What a beautiful chapter.

What a great way to start.

I mean, this is awesome.

All right, so when you read through Matthew, here's what you learn about Matthew.

He's humble.

Um, what I really like about Matthew is that he there's no selfies, he never quotes himself, okay?

So you don't, you don't, you don't you're not gonna see a lot of uh of Matthew saying, and I said to so-and-so, you know, you know, it's not doing that.

He's not doing that at all.

Here's me and Jesus.

You know, he's not doing any of that.

So he's humble.

He's Jewish, we know that.

Uh Levi, very Jewish name, named after one of the leaders, the heads of the of the 12 tribes.

But for Matthew, who is humble, it's not about Matthew, it's about Jesus.

He's not a product of the culture of self-expression.

Matthew's not that.

Matthew is a part of the culture of kingdom realities, and he wants to promote Jesus, the king and his kingdom.

Matthew sees Matthew's story as fitting into his story, Jesus' story.

And he's a part of that.

And it's really beautiful.

Um, Jewish appears to write with a Jewish audience in mind, quotes the Old Testament more than any of the other gospels.

Some say I've seen numbers as low as 50 times he quotes the Old Testament.

I've seen other numbers as high as 99 times.

And that's probably based on some of the inference type passages where it's echoing some of what's in the Old Testament.

But that's a lot of Old Testament quoting.

Um, is tax collector, so that means he was scorned and hated by his own people.

Isn't it interesting the people that Jesus gathered around him?

Um, if you if you read Peter J.

Williams' uh uh Can We Trust the Gospels, I think is the name of the book, it's really great because he says one of the most fantastic things about the four gospel records is that they're unlikely.

There's so many aspects to them that are unlikely.

It's unlikely that it would be women that would be the first ones to the tomb and the ones that you would count on their testimony in that day and age to bear witness the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Why?

Because they couldn't, women couldn't even be uh witnesses in a in a court of law.

They just didn't have that privilege and that status.

But even these, even these disciples that Jesus gathers around him, Matthew included, it's fascinating to me how they don't really go together.

And they and they even throughout all four gospels, you see them telling the truth about their weaknesses.

Uh, you know, that Peter denied Christ three times.

You know, that I mean, they're they're just really upfront and honest that it's really all about Jesus.

It's not really all about us.

And I love that about Matthew.

Uh skillful record keeper, we've we we'll see that even more as we go through Disciple of Jesus.

Which what I'm saying there is he's actually he's actually an eyewitness and an ear witness to what we're gonna read in these 28 chapters.

So this is like firsthand witness credibility.

Instead of some theologian 2,000 years later trying to posit the notions, you know, trying to weed it all out, fin it all out, and here's what I think from 2,000 years later, the arrogance of people in our own day and time, to not just take the ancient text and let it speak, allow it to speak.

You you might think it rubbish, but at least be honest enough to let it speak and to consider uh the veracity, the potential veracity and the credibility of this text.

He's a disciple of Jesus, ear witness, eyewitness, a gifted teacher himself.

He'll include, as I say, more teachings than anyone else.

So that's a bit of what we know about Matthew.

We'll call this chapter, Who's This King and What's His Kingdom Like?

I think the first part, the genealogy is who's this king?

Look, he's the son of David, he's the son of Abraham, he's the Messiah.

And then what's his kingdom like?

Well, it begins with this plan of salvation that God thought up, and then God comes and invades space-time history to become one of us and to come and be with us.

Really powerful, really wonderful, and including in included in this genealogy, as I said earlier, uh Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, uh, four of the ancestral mothers of Jesus, uh, two of them, likely not even Jewish, Canaanites, one of them an out and out professional prostitute.

Rahab, harlot.

Um Ruth, a Moabitus, not even Jewish.

The tribe of the Moabites came from the incestuous relationship between uh Lot and one of his daughters.

And all I'm saying here is this list of 42 names overflows with the cry for redemption.

And we overflow with that same cry.

Because in our day and time, with all that's going on in the world around us, we have come to, we've fallen to our knees and we find ourselves lifting up the empty hands of faith and saying, Help, Lord, mercy, Lord, redeem your people, Lord.

We need you, Lord.

And that's what's beautiful about a chapter like this.

The Bible said in space-time history, we're reminded of that.

Matthew doesn't begin with once upon a time, Keller says.

He says, This is the genealogy of Jesus.

It means he's grounding what Jesus Christ is and does in history.

Jesus isn't a metaphor, he's real.

All of this actually happened.

You see, if all of this did not actually happen, if it's fantasy, myth, legend, uh, if it's augmented reality or artificial reality, then the only redemption we're going to have is also artificial and augmented.

If you as a human person, if I as a human person really need redemption, we need real redemption.

Not artificial, not augmented.

Uh we need real names, real people here in this chapter, real places in the real world, not a fairy tale, not a fantasy.

Um, and I love that because this is a real offer of real redemption.

And I know I need it.

Uh, even when I retreat into my phone and my fake world, uh, I still need real redemption.

And so do you if you're honest about it all.

Secondly, redemption history was and is in motion.

We see that here, don't we?

It's flowing, it's it's moving fast.

And and Matthew, the great record keeper, does a good job of here, look, 42 names, you know.

And there were more names, but there's 42 of them, and that certainly helped a lot of people see that God was on the move.

God was doing things.

I love the Lion the Witch in the Wardrobe.

Most of you do as well.

Uh, you probably remember the scene where Father Christmas comes around.

Everything is covered in snow, it's all ice and all that sort of thing.

Seems like it's always winter and never Christmas.

Yeah, for all right, that's good.

You guys, now go home and read the Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe.

But yeah, it's always winter and never Christmas.

And sometimes it feels that way here in our day and time too.

It feels a little like we've been going through winter for two years and never got to Christmas, even though we had that holiday thing.

But when does Christmas come?

When does this wonderful thing happen?

And the beauty is that this thing isn't wrapped up in fiction.

And I love C.S.

Lewis.

I know love is fiction, but it's wrapped up in history, it's wrapped up in reality.

And what it's saying is that God's redemption plan is in motion.

It's in motion now, and it's real redemption.

Um I love the way uh John Piper says God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.

Is that awesome or what?

I mean, we are all the time, you know, driving around driving around and not even seeing the stuff we're passing.

I remember when Kim and I were on the road for all those years, we would sometimes, I'd drive like, you know, we'd be in our little van going to do a concert in some uh basement of some church or something like that.

And we'd we'd drive, sometimes I'd drive a whole hour and not even remember the last hour on the road.

It's just a blur, you know.

And we live, some of us live that way.

And we're missing, we're only seeing three things, and he's doing 10,000 things.

And if you wake up, if I wake up, if we were to do that, we would actually see God at work in so many wonderful and really truly powerful ways.

So redemption history was and is in motion.

Thirdly, the genealogy of Jesus reflects God's love for the entire world.

And I think that's really important for us to know.

It can't be emphasized too strongly that um when it comes to the atonement, please understand this God's love is the cause, not the consequence of the atonement.

You hear what I'm saying?

God doesn't love you because Jesus died for you.

God Christ came and died for you because God loves you.

You see the difference?

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Now get that inside of your head and heart, especially if you've been steeped in sort of performance mentality all of your life, and you think that that's what it takes for you to be uh accepted by God, that you've got to perform a certain level and balance out the scales.

Well, that's not true.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that there get rid of the scales.

There are no scales.

This is an offer.

God's done for you what you can't do for yourself.

Would you like that offer?

Would you receive that offer from him?

Look at that.

How beautiful is his grace toward us, Matthew.

Um, I want to, just from the standpoint of the message of Matthew, I want to put it in one sentence for you.

This will be point number four.

The king has come, and his kingdom has been inaugurated.

It's begun.

That's what chapter one basically says.

The king has come, he's been born into the world.

Yeah, here we go.

Call his name Jesus.

Joseph responded to what the angel told him to do and called his name Jesus.

And here we go, get ready.

You know, I mean, the next, you know, 27 chapters are just a wild ride, and it's really awesome.

James N.

Anderson says, if there were to be an invasion of the imminent by the transcendent, all for the salvation of sinners, would we not expect it to be mysterious, to defy human comprehension?

Such mystery would be a mark of reality, not human invention.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

In other words, all of this about a virgin birth, all of this about angels appearing and speaking to somebody in a dream, all of this about connecting the dots between Jesus of Nazareth, first century Jewish, poor Jewish carpenter guy, right?

Connecting him back to David, connecting him back to Abraham.

All of that sounds mysterious in a lot of ways, but it's kind of so mysterious, it sounds like what would happen if the transcendent invaded the imminent.

Yeah, it sure does, doesn't it?

I want to close with this quote from uh David Gooding, a great Bible teacher.

And uh just to, this is actually from his uh uh commentary on the book of Hebrews.

He says, God's appointed as us a captain of our salvation, made him responsible for seeing us through this world home to glory.

Thank God we can count on his faithfulness and know that he will never fail, never once lose his patience or his temper with any of us, but will fulfill, there it is, his appointed task to the very end.

He will save to the uttermost all who come to God by him.

So will you come?

Have you come?

If you have come before, abide in him.

As Andrew Murray, the wonderful little book that he he wrote.

I'm I'm using that uh uh as a as a daily reader myself, and um it's really powerful.

But this idea that we abide in Christ is so amazing.

He will save to the uttermost.

Some of you think there's no way he could save you or forgive you or possibly love you, and and yet, no, this is exactly what the claim of the Bible is.

He will save to the uttermost.

No matter how far you've run, no matter how much you've rebelled.

He's in the business of saving sinners like me and like you, and like these 42 names on here that include everything from prostitutes to murderous kings like King David, to the broken but like Bathsheba, who was kidnapped and raped.

To the incestuous relationship of Tamar with Judah, her father-in-law, because he, Judah, was so unfaithful and disrespectful to her.

Um and yet she thought the solution was to dress up like a prostitute and seduce him.

We need the redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ because some of us try to take charge and do it ourselves, and we just can't do it.

It's a burden too great for us to bear.

We need him to save us to the uttermost.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for your word.

How excited we are to open the front page of Matthew's gospel and just find ourselves here, standing in the line of those who are at the foot of the cross and in great need of your redemption.

But how wonderful that you came.

You didn't have to, how wonderful that you came.

You didn't owe it to us.

Give us, Lord, now a greater vision for you, our King, and the kingdom that you have invited us to become a part of.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.