Jesus, a Man with a Story

Turn with me to the wonderful Gospel of Matthew in chapter 1.

Matthew, chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, isaac the father of Jacob and Jacob.

The father of Judah and his brothers and Judah the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar and Perez.

The father of Hezron and Hezra.

The father of Ram and Ram.

The father of Amenadab and Amenadab.

The father of Nashon and Nashon.

The father of Salman and Salman.

The father of Boaz, by Rahab and Boaz.

The father of Obed, by Ruth and Obed.

The father of Jesse and Jesse.

The father of David, the king and David was the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah and Solomon.

The father of Rehad, abgeum and Rehabom.

The father of Abijah, the father of Asaph and Asaph.

The father of Jehochefah and Jehochefah.

The father of landfill and Jamintrodu, him the father of the CIA and Uzziah are the father of Joseph, him and Joseph him.

The father of a has and ah has.

The father of Hezekiah and Hezekiah, the father father of Manasseh and Manasseh.

The father of Amos and Amos.

The father of Josiah and Josiah, the father of Jochaniah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon, verse 12.

And after the deportation to Babylon, jochaniah was the father of Shilteel and Shilteel, the father of Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel, the father of Abayud and Abayud, the father of Eliachim and Eliachim, the father of Azor and Azor, the father of Zadok and Zadok, the father of Ahim and Ahim, the father of Abayud and Abayud, the father of Eleazar and Eleazar, the father of Matan and Matan, the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations.

And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, fourteen generations.

Many of you know my story.

Some of you are new to Trinity and perhaps don't How.

I first heard the gospel through the witness of my older brother, who is a drug addict.

He's four years older than me.

We lived in Philadelphia.

He became addicted to drugs at a young age, mainlining a needle in his arm for many years and hopelessly addicted to drugs.

My parents, in attempt to shield me from drug use, came to me in 1969, said Neil, we don't want you turning out like your brother's brother.

We want you free from drugs.

We're moving to Miami, drug free Miami.

But I really did, while living in Miami, hear the gospel the first time the only time I ever remember from the lips of my newly saved brother, who was dynamited into the kingdom in the revival of the 70s, instantaneously healed of drug addiction, and he began to talk to me on the phone and then moved back to Miami and personally share with me that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

But actually something happened to me years before my brother shared the gospel with me in Philadelphia that I remembered And it was a very vivid memory because it's the first time that I can consciously remember thinking about Jesus of Nazareth in a Jewish context.

I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia, but all my friends were Italian.

I used to dip my calzone in chicken soup.

But I distinctly remember one Christmas Eve walking down the street of my Philadelphia neighborhood and hearing from the houses of my friends one in particular, christmas music, and it stopped me dead in my tracks and I listened to the words.

It was an Italian family that I knew and from their home was coming the words Noel, noel born as the king of Israel, and I knew they were Italian, so I thought Noel was Leon spelled backwards, but I remember stopping in my tracks I might have been eight, nine years old And for the first time hearing about Jesus as the king of Israel, and I was stumped by that.

It was foreign to me.

You have to know that most Jewish people have no understanding.

I tell you this and I'm not exaggerating I thought Jesus was a Jew who became a Catholic priest and went around Israel sprinkling holy water on people.

No exaggeration.

That was the extent of my understanding of Jesus of Nazareth, and I remember thinking as a young kid, born as the king of Israel.

He's the king of the Gentiles, but he's not the king of Israel.

It seems strange to me to relate Jesus in any way to Israel.

But what is even stranger this morning is, so many of us are used to Jesus in a Gentile or a church context, we have difficulty thinking of Him in the context of Israel as well.

Take, for example, the fact that many of us this Christmas will hear Christmas readings from the Scriptures, most of which, if not all of them, will start with verse 18, which I didn't read this morning.

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.

No one in this room who attends a Christmas service in this city.

It is unlikely that you will hear what I read this morning the first 17 verses of Matthew.

We will sing about the babe in the manger.

We will celebrate God coming in the flesh.

We will talk about the wise men coming from the east all part of the story.

I have no problem.

But when Matthew begins his account of how Jesus came to this planet, he doesn't start with Bethlehem's manger folks.

Instead, he starts with a list of names nobody in this room can pronounce.

Why.

Why start with such an archaic list of names from the past, most of which, sadly, the majority of us are unfamiliar with?

Well, there's good reason, and here it is.

Matthew starts this way because he wants his readers to understand that they cannot understand the story of Jesus unless they see it in the light of a much longer story which goes back many centuries and leads up to Jesus.

That story, which I read this morning, is the story of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament for those of us who don't know it as the Hebrew Bible, and Matthew doesn't tell it as a story.

He tells it in a very typical Jewish way, by providing us a genealogy that tells us Messiah's ancestry.

It may not mean a lot to most of us in this room, but to every Jew who read it, this was a familiar story, and what Matthew is trying to tell us, folks, is that we will only understand Jesus properly if we see him in the light of the story which he brings to a climax, the story of the Old Testament And, in other words, jesus.

The Old Testament tells the story which Jesus of Nazareth completes, and not only do we need to look at Jesus in the light of the history of the Old Testament, but he also sheds light backwards upon it.

Think about the importance of this, because you understand and appreciate a journey only in the light of its destination.

The fact that you know where you're going makes the ride doable, and so it's important for us, if we're going to be biblical, gospel-driven people, to understand that as we journey through the Hebrew Bible, as we read through its pages, it's going to lead us to Jesus.

This is so important for us every Christmas to understand, because without it, we get the impression that Jesus has dropped into history.

We don't know who he is.

But that's not how Matthew starts.

He tells us Jesus is a man with a story and he's going to bring to completion that story.

And this, my friends, gives us proper perspective on the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

You know, i have a tree in my front yard.

So if I take a picture of the tree standing in front of my yard but I Photoshop my house out of the picture, can you tell me how big or small the tree is?

You can't.

But the moment I go back in Photoshop and put my house in the background and show you the same tree because the tree now has perspective or background you suddenly know how big or small the tree is.

This is exactly what understanding Jesus from his Old Testament background does.

It suddenly brings the Lord Jesus into proper perspective.

Now I don't need to say this.

Well, maybe I do, but I hope you knew it already.

Jesus is a man with a unique culture and a specific history.

His background, his ancestry, his roots were shaped and influenced, as all his contemporaries were, by the history of his people.

Ps.

Jesus was a Jew.

That's important because when we sing about him and talk about him, we can do it in a sort of general way, without a reference to his ancestry.

This blew my mind.

These verses have particular meaning to me this morning because I had all of the typical prejudices as a young Jew about Jesus.

I knew two things as a young Jew Jesus is not for us And I knew.

Somehow I never got it, as I said earlier, he was a Jew but he left us And he became a Catholic, or I didn't get it.

Why did he leave us?

He was a Jew And when I was 16, 15, i think I can't remember I decided to run away from home.

I was living in Miami.

I had moved there from Philadelphia.

I was probably living in Miami about a year.

I hated it.

I wanted to be back with my friends in Philadelphia because, sadly, i was beginning to experiment with drugs and tensions were building between my parents and I.

So I devised a plan to hitchhike, run away from home in the 11th grade hitchhike from Philadelphia, i'm sorry, from Miami back to Philadelphia.

And right before I left my brother called.

He was already converted, he was training for ministry, he was in Bible school in North Dakota And I told him about my plan to run away And he said these words to me.

Now my brother's name is Perry And he said to me I'm praying for you, you're going to meet Jesus.

And I said that's good for you.

I don't need Jesus because my I'm a musician and I wanted to make a record and get famous and get rich and buy a yacht and sail down the California coast, proving again Satan is a liar.

The only thing that came true is that album.

I made it and I sold 60 copies.

So and so I did.

I ran away from home the next day, hitchhiked from Miami to Philadelphia, and three days later I'd been up for three days.

I was on drugs.

My hair was long.

In those days I had a picture I've lost that I wish I could show it to you.

I had.

I had hair like David, my son, i did, and it was curly, and I was on drugs and I was in a little town in Maryland.

Now, remember, my brother told me I'm praying for you, you're going to meet Jesus.

And I was hitchhiking about two in the morning in Maryland And there it was.

No, there was a small town.

I didn't know where I was.

One car comes up to the light.

They rolled her window down.

Would you like a ride.

I said no, i'm getting a tan.

By the way, it was January when I ran away and I forgot that once you get above Tallahassee it's cold And I was not prepared for it.

I thought the rest of the nation was 80 degrees, like Miami.

And these people picked me up.

It was two, two a married couple, a man and a woman in the front and a man in the back, and I got in the car and we weren't driving down the road two minutes when I started telling him my life story, that I'd run away and all this stuff and all my frustrations And the guy in the front seat turned around and said I have a question Do you know Jesus?

And I answered you know, i've been around the church long enough.

I answered right, i said yes, i know Jesus My brother's in Bible school.

But he said no, do you know Jesus?

And then he said this he said why don't you come back to our house?

We live down the road.

We will put you up for the night, we will feed you a good meal And when you wake up in the morning, we'll buy your bus ticket from Maryland to Philadelphia.

My name is Neil Silverberg.

My brother, perry, is praying for me.

I found out I was with Bob and Connie Silver in Perryville, maryland And, by the way, bob Silver never heard the end of the story.

And I called him up years later.

I got his number I can't remember how And I said Bob, it must have been 10, 15 years, maybe more.

I said Bob, he said Neil, and he said did you ever get saved?

And I told him what I've been doing for the last 20, 30 years.

But when I, when they took me to the bus station in Maryland, they did the unthinkable.

As a Jew, i had never read the New Testament.

Can I be honest with you.

I never touched it.

It was illegal.

And as I got on the bus, bob Silver handed me and, by the way, i didn't give my life to the Lord that night but they prayed with me and asked me to pray a very dangerous prayer as a Jew.

I think if anybody prays that it's dangerous, but it's dangerous if you're a Jew.

And they asked me to pray to the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, who I had never prayed for.

I prayed prayers from a prayer book, but I had never talked to God that way.

And they directed me to pray to my God, the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, that if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, god would show me You're in trouble.

If you're Jewish and you pray that prayer, you're condemned to salvation.

And then I got to the bus the next day and they handed me the New Testament And I couldn't say no, i'm Jewish.

Because these people were so hospitable.

So I grabbed the New Testament, stuck it in my pocket and got on the bus And while the bus was going to Philadelphia I thought about pulling it out Now.

I assumed, as every Jew does before he or she reads it, that if I opened the New Testament, it's probably the most Gentile book you could ever read The story of Jesus, a Jewish boy who left Judaism and became a Catholic or a Protestant.

That's what I expected to find.

I really did.

I had no idea what was in the New Testament And I can remember the moment on that bus ride where I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out a little New Testament and opened it up and fell off my seat Because I read those words The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

I stopped and I said I know these guys Abraham begat Isaac, isaac begat Jacob.

It was so Jewish.

Well, that's exactly why Matthew starts his genealogy, or his book, with a genealogy reaching back all the way to Abraham, because Jewish society genealogies were the pivotal way of establishing your right to belong to the community of Israel.

And look what Matthew does.

In the opening verse, he connects Jesus of Nazareth to two of the great personages in the Old Testament.

He's Ben David, son of David, and Ben Avram, son of Abraham.

And Matthew is telling us this not merely to tell us Jesus is physically descended from these guys though he certainly is But Matthew is telling us that he's Ben David and Ben Avram, ben, son of David, son of Abraham, to connect Jesus to the great promises that were given to these two men in Hebrew history.

David is first, because he's the most important.

Every Jew knows one thing, if he knows nothing else about the Messiah, every Jew knows Messiah must be Ben David.

I remember my parents talking about it when I was little Messiah, ben David, messiah, son of David.

But he also says he's son of Abraham.

And I want to start there for a minute, because, really, verse 1,.

Let me read verse 1 to you properly from the Greek text.

Here's how it reads.

See if you recognize anything familiar folks The book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Any familiar words to you there?

Genesis is the real word in the Greek text of Matthew 1, 1.

And obviously, if you read that and you're a Jew, you're going to think of what The book by that title, genesis, which is the book that tells us the story of a man named Abram who is living as an idol worshiper in Caldea.

And Abraham was not elected by God because he had a propensity towards godliness.

By the way, the New Testament doctrine of election, which we all should celebrate, that we were elected.

It is not that God reached down and said you've got potential, i see it.

I think I'll choose you and use it later.

That's not the basis for God's choice.

And Abraham was no better.

He was an idol worshiper.

Jewish tradition says he worshipped the stars, he worshipped.

In fact, where he lived, or of the Caldeas was a citadel for the worship of the moon god Herki.

And, by the way, if you have a god named Herki, you need to be saved.

That's embarrassing, i mean.

I wonder if people in the ancient world said to Abraham who do you worship Herki?

Herki, you might want to change deities there.

I just get saved out of sheer embarrassment.

But what does Matthew mean when he tells us the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ?

he's the son of Abraham.

Let's remember who Abraham is.

He's a man to whom God gave incredible promises.

God chose a man out of the mass of humanity and gave him incredible promises.

So often when we think of Abraham I'm going to challenge you a little here, because we don't think this way Most people think of Israel.

Abraham would give birth to a great nation called Israel And I stand before you and say that's biblical, that's right, and if you read the Old Testament you know it happened.

But you'll never understand Abraham, folks, if you stop with a nation called Israel and think once God has a nation called Israel, the promise to Abraham was fulfilled.

Israel was part of the process by which God's promise to Abraham would be ultimately fulfilled.

And, brothers and sisters, the promise given to Abraham was not a land in the Middle East, it was that through him, god would bring blessing to the nations.

When Matthew says Jesus is the son of Abraham, he is saying that Jesus belongs to a people whose very reason for existence was to bring blessing to the rest of humanity.

Now this is demonstrated in Jesus's genealogy here in an incredible way, and if you read this genealogy you may have missed it.

This morning I want to point it out to you.

It blows my Jewish mind.

It really does, and the first time a Jew reads it it should be shocking, because in a genealogy which always is traced through the dead Sorry girls It was a male world Two sticks in four women, and they're not that great a gal.

I would have definitely kept women out altogether.

If I want men to read us And I definitely, if I'm going to include women, would not include these gals.

Not only were they foreigners, but they were women of very dubious, shady characteristics.

Abraham was a harlot.

Tamar posed as a prostitute in order to lure her father-in-law, judah, to conceive a child through her after her husband died.

Bathsheba I don't know about you.

When I read the story of David and Bathsheba, i have a feeling.

Forgive me if this offends you, but I think Bathsheba had a plan.

Could be wrong, but I didn't.

She know her tower was right under David's.

And then you have Ruth.

Ruth is impeccable in her personal life, but she's part of a nation called Moab.

She's a member of a group that God told Israel to totally extinguish.

Why does Matthew include women?

Why does he include women of dubious character?

God wants us to know something in this that this Jesus of Nazareth came to save sinners.

And not only would Jewish sinners be saved by him, but Gentile sinners would be saved.

And if you are in this room and you're as messed up as Rahab, tamar or Bathsheba, welcome.

You are a candidate for the kingdom.

But then something else comes in this genealogy and everybody looks really alarmed.

I'm not going over every person in the genealogy.

Thank you, jesus.

Hey, you should be thanking me because I could have pulled Luke's out.

It goes back to Adam.

You would have missed lunch.

But even more important than being Ben Avram, messiah, son of Abraham, as I said previously, messiah has to be Ben David, son of David.

Every Jew that I know knows this, though they're all waiting, and you really want to find out how confused Judaism is?

Ask Jews who the Messiah is and how they'll recognize it.

There's no consensus.

There was a rabbi years ago that everybody said was the Messiah.

He died.

They thought he was going to be raised from the dead.

I used to say to my mother when will Messiah come?

I don't know He's coming.

We have to wait.

Let's go buy something.

Hey, it's almost Hanukkah.

You want to hear a summary of every Jewish holiday from the beginning of time.

They tried to kill us.

We won.

Let's eat.

I'm in a festive mood today, but if you trace Jesus as a son of Abraham, it comes right down naturally to the son of David.

And what Matthew does in this genealogy and it may shock you and offend you to know that it's not accurate, but he does it as a literary device he traces Messiah's genealogy in three particular distinct periods From Abraham to David is one.

From David to the deportation to Babylon, which is the end of the Old Testament.

and then from the deportation of Babylon to the coming of Jesus, which covers that whole period at the end of the Old Testament, and through what we call the inter-testamental period, the silent years until John the Baptist broke the silence by screaming in the Judean wilderness.

And from Abraham to David.

There's a natural connection, because God made promises to Abraham and David brought those promises to its zenith.

Now, actually, his son went further, but dear old dad really prepared the way and by the time of David, israel had become a great nation and the other Gentile nations around Israel were submitted to Israel.

But when you come to the second period in Messiah's genealogy we have a huge problem.

It's the time from David to the time that Judah in the book of Second Kings you can read about it was carried away into Babylon for seventy years, and you will remember that period is the period of the kings of Judah.

Messiah would be the son of David through Solomon, his son Solomon, and therefore all of the Messiah's line was through the kings of Judah.

And those of you who've never read this history you must.

It's First and Second Kings.

You see, there was one kingdom of Israel, but in the book of First Kings there was a shism and the Northern Kingdom broke away from the Southern Kingdom.

Ten tribes in the north became a separate nation called Israel, with their capital in Samaria, and the Southern Kingdom became Judah with its capital in Jerusalem, and they had separate lines of kings that ruled over those nations.

Now, israel was a postate from the beginning.

The Northern tribes, the Ten tribes, were never led by a godly king until they were carried away by the Assyrians a hundred and fifty years or so before Babylon.

But God had to carefully preserve Judah, because Messiah would come from Judah, and so the line of Judah kings had to be carefully preserved.

But that's where the problem comes in in this genealogy.

One of the kings in Messiah's ancestral line had a curse put on him, and it was said of him his name is Jechoniah.

We read about him in verse 11 of the genealogy, and this is what Jeremiah said to Jechoniah, the king of Judah, who's in the direct line of Jesus, the Messiah, jeremiah 2230.

Thus says the Lord write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.

This is said of King Jechoniah.

This curse placed on him for he was a wicked man meant that no one descended from him could sit on the throne of Judah as king.

So in Jesus' direct line is a man who must be in that line, yet who had a curse placed upon him so that none of his sons can sit on the throne of Judah.

Now, if Jesus, now this man who had this curse, would give birth to a descendant years later named Joseph, the father of Jesus.

Now get this, watch this.

I'm going to blow your mind.

If you've never understood why the virgin birth is necessary, you're about to, because what would happen if this is true?

if Jesus was the physical son of Joseph?

what would happen regarding this?

Tell me He couldn't rule, he can't be king.

There's a curse placed on one of his forefathers, and God said you'll never have a son sitting on the throne, but yet Jesus has to go through him, because that's the line of the Messiah.

How can you resolve this?

There's only one way Let Jesus be conceived in the womb of a young woman named Miriam, and then let a descendant of this man, joseph, marry his mother, miriam, before he's born, and he gets the legal rights to the throne of David through Joseph.

Yet he's not a physical descendant through Joseph, so that the curse is not applied.

You get that.

This makes the virgin birth not only a miracle, a necessity.

It had to be.

But there's another problem I didn't resolve.

Are you asking it?

Jesus has to be a physical descendant of David.

If this is true, he's not a physical descendant of David, and if we had time this morning, we would pull out the third chapter of Luke and discover that Luke gives us a genealogy of the Lord Jesus.

That is different from Matthew's.

It's the same from Abraham to David, but when it gets to David it traces Jesus' line not through Solomon, david's son, but through Nathan, who's another son of David, and you realize these are two different genealogies when it goes through after David.

And what are we reading here?

Most Bible teachers and scholars agree that Luke 3 is a genealogical record of Jesus through his mother, mary, and we discover that Mary is a descendant of David as well.

So Jesus is Mashiach ben David, but not through Joseph, because he was born without a human father.

The curse is canceled.

He can rule on the throne of Judah.

Now, when you, as we bring this to an end, when you realize this I said something earlier Jesus is the climax of the Hebrew Bible.

It's all been building towards him.

What does that mean?

If I go back in the Hebrew Bible, what does that look like?

The whole earth is lost.

In Genesis 3, in what is called the fall.

Men and women have lost their relationship with God.

Sin has entered the world.

Sin is not a slap on the hand, sin is a disruption.

Sinners are now dead in trespasses and sins.

They are lost, they are separated from God, and God has a plan of redemption.

So, right after the fall, adam and Eve give birth to two boys.

They probably had more descendants in fact they did.

We know that they intermarried but they have two boys that become the centerpiece.

The story goes on.

They're named Cain and Abel, and before Cain and Abel come on the scene, god had given a prophecy to Adam and Eve in the garden.

And in fact, he came in the garden and brought judgment on Adam, judgment on Eve, and then he judged the serpent who had deceived the woman.

And this is the promise God made, though, when he brought judgment on the serpent.

It's in Genesis 3, verse 15.

Genesis 3:15

It is called the fountainhead of all prophecy in the Bible.

If you don't understand this, you will not understand what I've said earlier this morning about all of Old Testament.

History climaxes in the Lord Jesus.

In judging the serpent, god said this I will put enmities talking to the serpent.

I will be enmity between you, serpent, and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He, the offspring of the woman, shall bruise your head, serpent.

Now, if you bruise a serpent's head, it's usually fatal, and you serpent shall bruise his heel.

This is almost universally commentators and Bible teachers agree is the fountainhead of messianic prophecy And notice, it centers around the fact that through the woman, god would have an offspring, a seed.

So here's how it works.

Cain and Abel come on the scene.

Adam and Eve have these sons.

Cain wants to worship, but he brings vegetables.

He works hard.

He's a farmer and he brings his vegetables to the Lord and he says I work so hard.

But what's he doing?

when he brings his vegetables?

He's ignoring the curse that God put on the earth.

The ground was cursed And one thing is obvious man cannot offer to God in sacrifice that which is cursed.

His brother, abel, comes.

He brings blood.

God rejects Cain.

He accepts Abel.

Cain doesn't like it, so he kills Abel.

God replaces Abel with Seth And it's interesting in Genesis 4, we have a list of the descendants of Cain.

It's a very general list.

There's no genealogical information.

It simply says Cain gave birth to Methuselah or whatever it is.

That's not the Methuselah of Seth's line, but it just tells us who his sons and sons' sons were.

But then, when you come to Genesis 5, you have a genealogical table of Seth And what immediately strikes you when you read it is the detail.

Every year is accounted for.

It tells us how long Seth lived, how old he was when he had a son, how old he was when he died, and then his son, how long he lived when he had a son, and it is a genealogical table that gives us all that we will need to be able to count every single year.

Now, if you know nothing else and you're reading the Bible, you're going to ask this question Why is God so meticulous about counting every year of one family line?

We're not told why yet.

Well, actually, genesis 3.15 told us.

But God is separating out for Himself a family line.

Later, noah comes on the scene.

He has three boys that make it through the flood.

But what does God do with the three boys?

Noah prophesies over his sons, and it is clear from the prophecy in Genesis 10 or 9 that it is Shem, not his other two sons, ham and Bologna, That's later.

Shem is chosen, ham and Japheth are rejected.

God's the prophetic word.

Through Noah, god will dwell in the tent of Shem.

God makes a decision between these three boys.

Another reason he's separating out a family line, that line of Shem.

God will bring out from that line a man.

We talked about him this morning.

Stay with me, i'm almost done.

His name is Abram.

He comes out of the Shemite seed.

Abram will have two sons, isaac and Ishmael.

Which one does God choose?

He raises up Ishmael.

He finally gets it after waiting all these years.

He's 86.

God needs my help.

Some of you have recently come to the same conclusion.

I'm going to help God out.

I'm going to enter Hegar.

He's going to have a son and He does.

And He presents Ishmael to His God and says thank you, this is the promise fulfilled.

And God said He came from you, i'll bless him.

But that ain't it.

Abraham gives birth to two sons.

God says I'll bless Ishmael, but I'm going to give you a son.

Abraham is 100.

Sarah is 90.

When they hold little Yitzchak Yitzch in Hebrew means laughter, because all Sarah could do How many know?

Now someone said something to me It's not biblical.

I just want to quell it right now, because someone said that means when Isaac was two, sarah was 92.

Is that why she gave him to Abraham and said offer him up?

It's hard enough having a two-year-old when you're 25.

But can you imagine 92 with a two-year-old running around?

Take him, go to a mountain and offer him up.

Interesting proposition.

It's not biblical.

But Isaac's the one.

Isaac would go on and father two boys, and they both have histories recorded in Genesis, chapters 26 and on.

Genesis 26 · chapter mention

But who does God select?

He bypasses Esau, and Esau becomes a great nation, but he chooses his brother, jacob, instead.

Jacob has 12 sons And as Isaac is dying on his deathbed I'm sorry Jacob he begins to prophesy and he chooses out one of his 12 sons And God says through Judah, the scepter shall not depart.

This is the one of all your brothers.

Judah would be the one through whom Messiah comes.

How well we know that as this church, because we worship the lion of the tribe of Judah.

And David comes out of Judah and he has sons galore.

But God made it clear before David's death Solomon, your son Solomon.

In fact, god said of Solomon I will raise up a son to him who shall rule on the throne of Israel forever.

God told David that it can't be Solomon.

Solomon not only died, but his life was a sad departure from Jehovah.

But God said I will give you a son, david, who will sit on your throne forever.

And on and on.

And what we read this morning that started our service is the history of that family line.

Now get this.

When you, a Gentile, believed on a Jewish Messiah.

This family line became your family line.

There isn't a Gentile church and a Jewish church.

God doesn't think that way.

What you are in the flesh, racially and ethnically, you should enjoy, you should celebrate.

It's part of your family history.

But your being in Christ has nothing to do with whether you have Jewish or Gentile skin.

It has to do that you believe on a Jewish Messiah who's changed your life.

Galatians sums it up this way, and I'm paraphrasing Writing to Gentiles, paul says that the blessing of Abraham has now become yours, gentile believers in Christ Jesus.