Emmanuel | A New Beginning (December 1st, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

Well, good morning, church.

If you would uh be so great as to grab your Bibles right now and turn them to Matthew's gospel.

Matthew chapter one is where we are going to be uh here this morning.

Now, as you're getting turned there, uh we know that with the rise of technology, things like computers and phones and cloud-based storage and all of those types of things, we know that people have moved largely uh to a paperless existence.

All right, I would put my hand up and say, I am one of those guys.

I'm a minimalist at heart and all about uh not having paper as much as possible.

But do you remember uh back in the day, it wasn't that long ago, where uh paper was uh more of a thing, right?

It was.

And you remember maybe as a as a student, uh, how you would, you know, you would write all of your you know essays and book reports and basically every assignment uh that you had to do, you would write those out on hand.

I remember doing that.

I remember the the first day that I had my very own computer, it was about this thick, uh, that I brought with me to uh to college uh was a huge day for me, but of course did most of all of that on paper.

Now, some of you maybe have been, you know, back in the day, maybe you still are, you're into uh letter writing, right?

Writing somebody a letter, and maybe you still prefer that over uh emails or over uh uh a text, even you would write somebody a postcard or or a note.

Maybe for you, you are into uh art, right, and and drawing or sketching or or painting.

Now uh you would know as a paper user, and if you still are, you know that if you uh ever made a mistake, right, on that paper, uh you would need to employ uh an eraser, right?

If you were using a pencil, if you were using uh ink, of course, you would have to use whiteout.

Anyone remember whiteout?

That was a thing.

Uh or or listen, you would have, I got a piece of paper uh here right now.

Otherwise, if you had you know no whiteout or anything like that, or you made enough mistakes, you would simply uh crumple up that piece of paper, and heads up, Ralph, you would toss it away.

Okay, you would toss it away.

That is my sermon, by the way.

I'm gonna need that back.

Kidding, kidding.

Okay.

Now, a fresh start would be the reason why you would do that, right?

Why you would toss that away in those moments.

Why?

Well, because things were not going well, right?

I needed to start over.

Okay, well, in in Matthew's gospel, he begins his account by writing uh this in verse 1.

Are you there yet?

Here's what it says uh in chapter 1, verse 1.

He says, uh, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Okay, that word genealogy there in the original language is the word Genesis.

Hey, Genesis, which literally means beginning.

Okay, now when you think of the word Genesis, it probably reminds you uh most obviously of the very first book of the Bible, right?

The book of Genesis, which is about the beginning of uh creation itself.

All right, so when Matthew uses the word genealogy here, uses that word Genesis, sure, he's tracing back the ancestry of Jesus, which we're gonna get into this morning, but but it also suggests, okay, that the that the birth of Christ is itself a new beginning for humanity.

See, I think it's safe to say that uh we needed a fresh start, right?

We needed a new beginning.

Things were not exactly uh going well for mankind, right?

Sin had corrupted us completely, right?

The Bible makes it very clear, it tells us this, and it gives us plenty of examples of all the characters in the scriptures, it tells us that that all of our attempts to fix our failures, to correct those faults ourselves, fall woefully short of making us good and right in God's eyes.

Right?

None of our works get that job done.

Now, the truly remarkable thing here is that God could have easily done this with us.

Heads up again, Ralph.

Bad toss.

Right?

He could have scrapped the whole thing, and you could even argue that that he should have.

Right?

He would have been uh perfectly just to do that, okay.

But he didn't.

Okay, instead, he chose to enter our world himself, right?

He chose to redeem us by by paying our sin debt with his own blood, right?

By taking the penalty of our sin, my sin, your sin, upon himself and offering us the free gift of his righteousness, his perfect, spotless righteousness, which, by the way, is the only way that you and I are made holy in God's sight.

Right?

So today, as we begin our Christmas series here this morning, Emmanuel, uh God with us, we're gonna be uh looking at uh four stories, four passages from each of the four Gospels over the next four weeks.

And this morning, we're starting it off by looking at how Christ's birth is the inauguration of the brand new beginning uh that you and I so badly needed and God so graciously uh offers us.

And so we're gonna jump uh right into it today, and I want to pray uh to get us going.

So join me uh as we do that, Lord.

We uh come before you and we just really marvel at uh the message of the gospel and uh the message of Christmas, and that is that you uh decided to uh to join us, come here, uh, be with us, Emmanuel, uh, and fix our sin problem for us.

God, what grace, Lord, what love, what what sacrifice on your part, God.

And I pray that as we uh begin uh to this this morning and over the next uh four weeks unpacking this and looking at this, Lord, I pray that uh Lord, we would indeed uh marvel.

Lord, I pray that our hearts would be stirred with joy as we uh think about how Jesus is the culmination of uh of promises made over centuries, Lord, and is the fulfillment of your plan to come and rescue your creation, redeem us, and make us right with you.

And so, Lord, as we look at this, as we look at the new beginning uh that we are given through Christ, Lord, I pray that we here today would uh would find joy in this.

Lord, I pray that we would look for any kind of fresh start that we may be looking for, not in just trying hard or being better people or some kind of scheme of man, but Lord, I pray that we would look to you as the one who gives us the ultimate new start.

And so, God, help us in this, Lord.

Make your word come alive to us today.

Fill it uh fill me with your Holy Spirit as your word is preached, and Lord, encourage your church.

We pray all of this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, jumping right into the first thing here, two uh points this morning.

Here we go.

Jesus Christ brings humanity, the new beginning we need as our one true Messiah and King.

All right, so we're gonna be working through uh the genealogy of Christ today.

Now, how do you uh how do you respond when you think when you hear that?

Right?

Like maybe for you, you're thinking, man, sounds like a pretty sweet time to catch up on some sleep.

Right?

You think about the the genealogy, you think, seriously, man, like this is how we're starting a Christmas series.

Is there anything more dry uh than that, than going through uh the names, a bunch of dead people, and uh you know, kind of pointing all of that back to Jesus?

Really, we're doing that?

Listen here, you need to understand that uh for Matthew's readers, okay, it was extremely important for them to see and to be able to kind of trace back Jesus' lineage, okay, because it it gave them rock solid evidence and proof and and ultimately confidence that he was in fact Israel's promised Messiah and rightful king.

Now, the two places that we find uh genealogies of Jesus recorded in the New Testament are of course in Matthew here in chapter one uh and in Luke, in Luke chapter three.

And I don't know if you've studied much of them before or if you tend to kind of glance over them or skip over them uh to get to uh to other things, but uh they are uh both a little different from each other.

Now, um why is that?

Why is that?

Is is one right?

Is one wrong?

Do they do they contradict each other?

Well, no, you just need to understand that uh the authors, Matthew and Luke, they had very different intentions, okay, and goals in mind when they uh laid out their lists in their gospel, right?

And as as R.

T.

France, who is a theologian, uh kind of explains it, Luke is concerned with showcasing Jesus' family, physical family tree.

Right?

And so he goes into much more detail even than than uh does Matthew, and he outlines the generations from Jesus all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to Adam, uh, the very first man.

All right, so so Luke's focus or emphasis is really on Jesus' physical descent, right, and his descendants.

Whereas Matthew is more interested in tracing the official throne succession list.

Alright, so he focuses on Jesus' legal ancestry and his right to the title of King of the Jews.

Okay, so Matthew's is a little bit more of a selective list.

Some people are gonna get all rattled because, you know, well, Jesus, or you know, or Matthew rather, he he he skips some generations, right?

And and that's okay.

Right?

He's not he's not super can uh concerned with being extremely exhaustive here.

Um he goes back uh as far as Abraham, okay?

Abraham was the original patriarch of the Jews, of course, and through whom uh God's covenant relationship with Israel began.

So again, okay, Matthew, who we're gonna be spending our time in here this morning, is much more concerned with Jesus' royal heritage, okay, as we will see here.

And so the sense that you and I will get here, I think, as we kind of read our way through Matthew's genealogy is okay, wow, like Jesus wasn't just some kind of random guy who kind of appeared out of nowhere at this point in human history and claimed a bunch of stuff.

Right?

We know that a lot of men have have risen up throughout history and have claimed to be God, right?

That that's that's nothing new, right?

Lots of cult leaders have done that.

But as we read through this here, we'll see that that Jesus is much more than that.

Because there are there are actually meticulous records that were kept.

The Jews were actually uh very careful about this.

Uh they were kept showing uh that that Jesus did come from the line of Abraham and eventually uh through the line of King David as well.

Okay, two of the of the key figures uh of God's covenant uh with his people.

Right, and that's why we see uh here again, that's why it says in verse one, take a look, it says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and that says, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Okay, that he is the son of David.

Let's start there.

That that signals to us that that Jesus comes from, again, royal descent.

Okay, that he comes from, or that he's the son of Abraham shows his Jewish roots.

Okay, that he's connected to these people by by racial and and ethnic descent.

Now, now both of these statements uh to us might seem somewhat unassuming, right?

You can easily just kind of glaze over that and pass over and not really think much about it.

Like, yeah, okay, I've heard of Abraham, I kind of know who he is, and King David, yeah, right, the guy who killed um the giant and all of that.

But but listen, listen, it's really an indicator here in what Matthew says and to the original readers and to us that that he's getting his gospel started here by making it very, very clear.

Okay, Jesus is absolutely, completely tied into the history of and the promises to the Jewish nation.

Jesus is the culmination, he's the fulfillment of God's plan and God's promise to give Israel their true Messiah and King, right?

And to save them from their sins.

That was the point of all of that.

And of course, we know this as we as we are studyers of God's word, we know that he is not just the king of the Jews, but he's the king, he's the messiah, he's he's the savior of of the entire world, right?

Of uh, you know, God's redemptive plan through Christ, it's it's extended to everybody, right?

Whether you are Jew or you are Gentile.

See, it was God's plan, okay, promise to Abraham in Genesis 15.

If you want to jot that down, you can take a peek uh back at that later this week.

Okay, God's God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 15, where God said that through Abraham's offspring, all of the nations would be blessed.

You remember reading that and seeing that in the scriptures in Genesis 15?

Right?

You might remember that Abraham and his wife Sarah, uh, they weren't exactly spring chickens.

Right?

They were getting up in age, and God had promised them, no, you are going to, you are going to be the father, Abraham, of many, many descendants.

And and and through your seed will all of the nations be blessed.

And Abraham's kind of looking around, he's looking at himself, he's looking at his wife.

He's like, Are you are you serious?

He actually kind of scoffed at it, and same with same with Sarah.

And we know, of course, that that eventually Sarah did conceive and she did give birth to Isaac, and we're actually gonna see his name in this genealogy here in a minute.

Now, it's actually Galatians chapter 3, Galatians 3, 16, if you want to write that down, that gives us further insight into what was really going on in Genesis chapter 15.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention Genesis 15 · chapter mention

All right, because Paul says in Galatians 3 that Abraham's offspring, which is in the singular, okay, refers ultimately to Jesus Christ.

Okay, Jesus is the ultimate offspring from the line of Abraham, through whom all nations would be blessed.

Right?

The blessing, the spiritual blessing being that we can all be saved, right?

We can all be forgiven of our sin through Christ's atoning work on the cross.

Now, one of the many amazing things about God is that at multiple points throughout the history of Israel, he would go on to reiterate this promise that he'd originally made to Abraham, right?

Because things would get kind of sketchy in Israel's history.

We're gonna see some of that.

Things weren't so great.

A lot of sin, a lot of damage, a lot of consequences, a lot of pain, and a lot of problems.

And you can imagine, you know, as they know the promise that God had made to Abraham after a while, things aren't going so good, they would start to lose hope in that.

And but God was so so good and so gracious and so kind to remind them at points along the way of his original promise, right?

That a messiah, that that a king was coming.

And so one of the key people that this was reiterated to, of course, was King David.

Right?

He's the son of David.

And now in 2 Samuel chapter 7, God promises David.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

Now, look at listen to what he says.

He says, I will raise up your offspring, that sounds familiar, after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

All right, now there's an immediate sense to this and a future sense to this.

In an immediate sense, this was referring to David's son, Solomon.

Okay, we're gonna read about him as well here in just a moment.

Okay, Solomon would be born, Solomon would take over as king, Solomon would build the temple, Solomon, like all of that.

We know a lot about Solomon, but listen, in an ultimate sense, in a future blessing sense of all this, this was a promise pointing further ahead, again, to who?

To Jesus, right?

Jesus was coming.

Jesus was the ultimate promise.

He was the offspring from the royal bloodline of David, whose kingdom God would establish forever.

Okay, so think about it, right?

Matthew's readers, okay, they would have been very familiar with their Jewish history.

They would have known it very well.

And and having experienced already the birth and the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, they would have been putting all of this together as the reading, even just the first verse of this genealogy here, and absolutely reveling in the awesomeness of God, right?

To promise such a thing so great, and then beyond that, to deliver epically on that promise.

They were ones who would have seen it, they would have experienced Jesus.

Right?

Jesus was the Messiah, he was the king who offered everyone who'd believe in his name the new beginning that you and I and everyone so so need.

Right?

It's the forgiveness of sins, it's right standing with God, it's it's eternal life.

Whereas they they see Matthew start his gospel off this way, they would have been like, wow, this is incredible.

And they would have been filled with joy and passion about this.

Now, when you think about Jesus, when you think about Christ, do you tend to think of him as the one true Messiah and King of your life?

Now, on one hand, you might be thinking, well, that seems like kind of a funny question.

Of course, I think of him like that.

Right?

Like I know that he is the Messiah, I know that he is the king, I know that he is the Lord of all.

But of course, we also know that it's easy to know that up here, but in our heart and by the way that we live in our thinking and all of that, we live as though as though we don't actually see God that way.

Right?

It's actually extremely easy to have a much, a much lower view of Jesus than the scriptures, than these scriptures even uh show him to be.

Right?

It's very easy to think of Jesus as, I'll give you a couple of examples here, as a life coach.

Right?

Is this how you view him?

Is this how you interact with him?

Seems like life coaches are a big deal uh these days.

And maybe that's how you treat Jesus.

He's he's more of a consultant than anything.

Right?

And maybe you kind of compartmentalize Jesus into a few areas of your life.

Right?

Jesus will be Lord of my life on Sundays, Jesus will be Lord of my life when it's convenient to me, Jesus will be Lord of my life when I'm in a jam and I need his help.

And so maybe you think of him as a life coach, where you come to him for suggestions on how to live your life that you can either follow or you can reject.

If you go to a life coach and you talk to somebody and they tell you something that you don't want to do, guess what?

You're not gonna do it.

Right?

Is that how you relate to to Christ?

Right?

Depending on how I like his advice, I might take it, I might not.

Well, what does that tell us?

It tells us ultimately that we think we're still in charge.

Right?

And that being the case, he is not truly Lord of all.

We're not actually thinking of him as that.

Okay, how else do you think about Jesus?

Do you think of him as a genie in a lamp?

Okay, full confession.

I just watched that Aladdin movie uh very recently, and I got thinking about this uh a little bit.

I think we think of Jesus as a genie, right?

God owes me the life that I want.

God owes me the life that I demand.

He owes me wishes, right?

And and thing, it could be things like health, right?

Like God owes me a healthy life, God owes me a fit body, God owes me all of my physical problems.

They need to be ironed out.

God owes me this.

We think about that oftentimes and we pray for that when in the scriptures we're never promised that we will get that.

Right?

We think of God as a gene and a lamp.

We think about that when it comes to money.

Right?

God owes me comfort, he owes me wealth.

Right?

The prosperity gospel.

Is such a damaging message, uh, perpetrated or or shared, I should say, by many pastors and in many churches and in many believers, which is essentially a marrying of the American dream and some things from the Bible.

Right?

God owes me this wealthy life, this comfortable life.

And if I'm truly following Jesus, I should have really no worries.

Kind of in line with that, we treat God as a genie when we think about He owes me happiness.

Right?

I should be just full of happiness all the time.

Now I think there's a little bit of a twist to that, because I think Christians should be the happiest people on the planet.

Right?

And really the word that the Bible uses for that is joy.

We should have joy, but listen, joy that transcends our circumstances.

Right?

Joy that transcends no matter what difficulty we might be going through.

But oftentimes we think that life should just be full of good vibes and and good feelings, and God owes me that.

And anything that goes wrong in my life means that that God is being stingy, and I guess I better rub that lamp a little bit harder.

Do you think of God as a genie who owes you things?

Maybe you think of God as more of a cruel prison warden.

Do you think of him like that?

You kind of picture your life being like Shawshank redemption.

Right?

And it's that it's that cruel, harsh prison guard warden who is just cannot wait to punish.

Do you see God like that?

Do you see Jesus like that?

He he's just a killjoy.

Man, he is out to ruin my fun.

Right?

I remember before I was a Christian, I could kind of do whatever I want.

And I could, I, I could have all kinds of fun, and now those days are kind of over.

Right?

And so oftentimes we romanticize some of the old way of life and just remember, remember the good or the fun parts, or the parts that felt good, but we forget the the carnage that's caused by being able to do or thinking we're able to do whatever we want to do.

Right?

Do you think that God is just a killjoy out to ruin your fun?

Do you treat him as that cruel prison warden who maybe you're fearful of?

Right?

Like I better behave well, or that guy, that God is gonna send me into solitary.

Right?

He's gonna punish me.

And so, yes, like on the outside, you're kind of following God, you're doing some things, but it's all out of fear.

That God is just gonna smack me.

Listen, how do you view Christ?

Because listen, he isn't any of these things, right?

He is so much greater, right?

He is your Messiah, right?

He is the one who came to set you free from the destruction of your sin and and offer you a new beginning.

He came to offer you salvation, man.

Right, and beyond that, a new beginning where he is also the king of your life right now, right?

In in this life, where now all of your life is to be lived under his lordship.

And well, yes, there are there are difficulties in that, as you know, we battle our pride that you know that just constantly wants us to usurp his throne in in all kinds of different ways.

Like, listen, we have to remind ourselves that it's ultimately a glorious thing to be under the lordship of Christ.

Because he's worthy of our trust.

Right?

He he's he's worth following, right?

He's worth serving.

He's such a wise, loving, and gracious king.

Speaking of gracious, that kind of leads us to the second thing here.

Jesus Christ brings humanity, the new beginning we need, extending grace to sinners like us.

Okay, so let's work our way now through the rest of this genealogy here.

Okay, we know that you know Abraham and David, they're they are the you know the two main pillars, if you will, of Matthew's list here, but but what about the rest of them?

Right?

What about those who are uh in between?

Okay, well, as we'll see here, uh it is a very interesting group, right?

It really is.

And I I think what kind of stands out here is just how how flawed uh the people are here, how how in need of grace uh the ancestors that God chose Jesus to come from were.

And it's a reminder to us as we see this that God's grace triumphs over every single weakness, every failure, every sin.

Right?

God sent Jesus to overcome the the sin and the and the failings, and there were many, right, of every single person uh mentioned in these verses.

Right?

People marked and scarred by egregious sexual sin.

People damaged by family brokenness, right?

Murder even, faithlessness of of all kinds.

I mean, the list just goes on.

Okay, and if we're honest, you know, we would admit that that we're characterized by by some of these things too.

Okay, but but Jesus accomplished what what none of them, none of us ever could.

Right again, we can't make ourselves right in God's eyes.

Jesus can, right?

And he did.

And it's all extended to us by his grace.

Okay, let's take a look at this and see some of these examples here, starting in verse 2.

Now, as you look through this, you're like, man, there's a lot of names on there.

We'll just let you know we're not gonna do a mega deep dive into every single uh name here, or we'll be here literally until Christmas Day.

Okay, and uh, some of these names, honestly, there aren't even a lot known about them, especially towards uh the end of the list.

So we'll just highlight a few here, but take a look at verse 2.

It says, Abraham, we've talked about him, he was the father of Isaac, right?

Already kind of shared a little bit about that and the the original covenant promise made to Abraham that him and Sarah would give birth to Isaac, and sure enough, they do.

Now keep going, and Isaac, the father of Jacob, right?

Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers.

Okay, Judah and his brothers, that's referring to the twelve patriarchs that would you know eventually become the twelve tribes of Israel.

Okay, now, of course, one of Judah's brothers was um Joseph.

Right now, Joseph will ring a bell uh for us.

Okay, Joseph was the one.

I mean, you think about this family, right?

You think about uh Jacob as the father.

It's very easy to kind of think of them, and these guys are legends, and and you know, what a family, and you know, twelve tribes all came from there, and Jacob's name was changed to Israel, which becomes the name of the entire nation.

You know, wow, such prestige and all of that.

But do you remember just how messed up this family was?

Do you remember that?

Do you remember how Jacob he made no bones whatsoever about playing favorites among his sons?

Right?

Uh Joseph at the time, he was his youngest.

Right?

Remember, he was the guy who gave him, you know, Jacob gave him the multicolored coats, right?

He funned over him.

It was it was all of the attention was given to Joseph.

I mean, he was not remotely hiding the favoritism there.

Right?

And what did that cause?

Right?

Well, that caused all kinds of problems among uh Jacob's other sons.

Right?

It caused all kinds of problems.

It created created all kinds of carnage, it caused jealousy and bitterness and anger to the point where they were like, you know, we gotta get rid of Joseph.

We hate this guy.

And so they came up with this ploy where they they send them off into slavery and then lie about it to their father and tell their father that he'd been killed by wild animals.

Right?

But of course, we see God's grace in this in this ugly story, don't we?

And that in that Joseph is spared, he's brought to Egypt, and he ultimately rises up through the ranks and becomes second in command under only Pharaoh.

And it was through through Joseph that that God redeems and brings the rest of his brothers in to live in Egypt, and he brings healing into this family, he brings forgiveness, which of course is a picture of the gospel.

It's a picture of God's grace and what Jesus would ultimately do, welcoming all of us into his family, calling us brothers.

Right?

Amazing the amount of grace uh in that story alone.

Now look at verse three, let's keep going.

It says, and Judah, back to him again, the father of Perez and Zarah.

Okay, so these were Judah's twin sons by Tamar.

Now, this is the the first of four, okay, first of four um women that are mentioned here that uh I kind of want to highlight here this morning, right?

They are included in this genealogy, which is really unique if you think about it, right?

Because typically uh genealogies uh focused on on the men, right?

They trace the father's line.

But this is God's grace shown to these women.

These these four women that we're gonna see here are women that were that were outcasts, right?

They were marked by by scandal and and all kinds of problems.

And the first one that we see here, of course, is is Tamar.

Right?

Now, Tamar was the Canaanite daughter-in-law of Judah.

So she was a Gentile.

And you can read all about her story in uh Genesis 38.

Now, I am not gonna go into uh major detail of that story, knowing that we've got a lot of young ones in the room today.

Because that story is messed up, it is so sordid, right?

It involves incest, it is, it is not a pretty scene.

But in that we see God's grace to Tamar in that she is included here in the Messiah's genealogy.

Right?

A super, you know, you know, scared and and and desperate woman who makes all kinds of mistakes, and the men around her fail her miserably, and yet they are included in the line of Christ.

Amazing.

Okay, now keep going here.

We're still in verse 3.

It says, and Perez, the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram, the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab, the father of Nashon, Nashon, the father of Salmon, and Salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab.

Okay, now pause right there.

I know I blasted through a number of those word uh names, uh, but I want to pause here on Rahab.

Okay, she was the prostitute by profession uh that we read about in Joshua chapter 2.

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

Right?

She resided in uh Jericho, right?

And so she has quite a story, as you can imagine, uh herself.

All right, and you might remember that she protected the Israelite spies who had been sent in uh by uh Joshua to spy out the city and see what it was all about and see what you know how it stood and all of that, before they would ultimately march around and blow trumpets and God would bring it all down.

And so what she did was she actually protected the Israelite spies by lying to her king.

Okay, so she, on top of being a prostitute, she is also a liar, okay, but because she feared God, God spared her life when the walls of Jericho fell, which is what?

God's grace.

Right?

Further grace, again, being that she's included, just like Tamar is in the Mesianic family tree.

Now, another amazing thing here that we see as we keep going is that she ends up becoming the mother to Boaz, okay, a godly man.

We see that in verse 5.

It says, and Boaz, the father of Obed, by Ruth.

Okay, now there's the there's the third woman here mentioned.

And of course, we know that there's an entire book written uh to her name, right, in the Old Testament.

Okay, we know from Ruth that she uh was a Moabite.

Okay, a Moabite was a Gentile.

Now the Moabites were like bitter enemies and bitter rivals of the Jews, okay?

And so her Israelite husband married her in violation of the Mosaic law.

Okay, and so after he died, God's grace uh to her is seen that she's included not just in the family of Israel by way of her marriage to Boaz, which is an amazing story, but of course, also in the sense that she is in the the royal line, in that she becomes the grandmother to King David.

Okay?

And this plays out in uh the rest of verse 5.

Take a look.

It says, and Obed, the father of Jesse, and Jesse, the father of David, the king.

And again, we talked about this, but 2 Samuel 7 is where we see that God promises through the prophet Nathan that the Messiah is going to come through the royal line of David.

Through David is where this family line becomes royalty.

Now, again, as we continue, and David, it says, was the father of Solomon.

Okay, we mentioned his name already, by wife of Uriah.

Okay, now that wife of Uriah is Bathsheba.

She would be the fourth woman.

We've talked about her numerous times here, and she was also marked by scandal in that King David.

So you think about even, you know, David, who was kind of, again, one of the legends in this group, just how how broken and messed up this guy had, you know, had a clear lust problem, right?

And ends up committing adultery with Bathsheba, a married woman.

And I think through all of this, I think her character is also called into question here.

And it ended up leading to the death of Uriah.

David has him killed, but through Bathsheba, she ultimately, excuse me, gives birth to Solomon.

Okay, and in verse 7 is where now we find this long list of kings who who ruled after David and after Solomon.

Some of them were good, but honestly, most of them were just pure evil.

Okay, take a look at this, verse seven.

It says, And Solomon, the father of Rehoboam, and Rehobam, the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat.

Remember, we just studied Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles, right?

We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

Remember, he prayed that as he brought everyone everyone, all of God's people before the Lord and sought protection from the Lord.

Love Jehoshaphat, he's one of my favorites.

But keep going.

It says, in Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, Joram, the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah, the father of Jotham, Jotham, the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah.

Hezekiah was one of the rare good kings, and then Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh.

Now I stop there for a second because I don't know if you're familiar with Manasseh, but he is widely recognized as the worst king Israel ever had, or Judah ever had.

Right?

To the point where it says that Manasseh led the inhabitants of Judah to do more evil than all of the other nations surrounding God's people.

He was so vile, right, so wicked to the point where he even had his own sons sacrificed in idol worship to Molech.

All right, but here he is, right?

God's grace included in this.

And actually, back to Manasseh for a second, he has this amazing story of actually repenting and turning his heart to the Lord and turning things around, which again is just more evidence of God's grace in his life.

But again, let's continue here.

And Manasseh, the father of Amos.

Now that's not likely the prophet Amos.

Uh rather, it was Amos.

Sometimes it's spelled that way.

Okay, but Amos, the father of Josiah, Josiah, the father of Jeconiah, we'll come back to him in a second, Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of deportation to Babylon.

That's an important thing to know because this was when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged and captured Jerusalem and dragged the inhabitants of this city away.

And this is where they were all spread out.

And so, as you can imagine, this was like the big time low point in the history of God's people, because it meant the loss of kingship for their nation.

After that, they would not have another king in the sense of how King David or Solomon or some of these guys were kings.

Now, very interestingly, I mentioned that we would come back to King Jeconiah.

You see his name in verse 11 there.

He was told, and we see in Jeremiah 22, that due to his wickedness, his evil, he would not have one of his descendants take the throne ever again.

Right?

He was so brutal, and God had had enough that he pronounces this curse and says, No more, no from your line.

Now, if you're thinking about this and you're starting to think through the rest of this list and how this is all pointing to Jesus, you may be thinking, uh-oh, does this pose a problem for Christ now?

Does this disqualify him from his legal claim?

Well, no, it doesn't.

Because the fact that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, okay, and was not the natural father or son, I should say, of Joseph means that he's not disqualified from his right to kingship.

Right?

Jesus still has a legal claim to the throne.

I mean, that means such an astounding detail, which shows again just God's grace, right?

And in the careful preservation of the royal line throughout history, right?

Despite all of the mistakes, despite all of the evil, despite all of the wickedness, God's like, I'm not gonna let any of that stop me, right?

I will prevail.

I am coming for you, Israel.

I am coming for you, Judah, I am coming for you, Gentiles, and no matter what kind of garbage you can spit out and throw at me, it is not stopping any of it.

Right?

God's grace.

Now, verse 12, take a look.

It says, and after the deportation to Babylon, Jechaniah was the father of Sheelteel.

That's an awkward word to say, right?

Sheelteel, the father of Zerubbabel.

Okay, now Zerubbabel was uh was a great character who ended up leading, got permission to lead a group of the Jews back to Jerusalem to begin efforts to see this uh city rebuilt.

All right, now verse 13, and Zerubbabel, the father of uh Abad, and Abid, the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim, the father of Azor, and Azor, the father of Zadok.

By the way, how many people just came today to hear me like try and pronounce all of these?

Right?

Anyone just here for that?

Sometimes you need to break through some of that.

Need to catch my breath.

Let's keep going.

And Zadok, the father of Achim, and Akim, the father of Eliud, and Eliod, the father of Eliazar, and Eliazar, the father of Man, and Methan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of, here's some familiar names, Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Right?

Christ is not Jesus' last name, by the way.

It's not his surname.

Christ means Messiah, right?

Jesus who is called Christ, right?

The one that the Jews had been waiting for for centuries, right?

The one who had been promised from the very beginning, right?

The rightful heir of both the Abrahamic and Davidic covenant promises.

Right?

Amazing that we see that trace all the way through that.

Now finally, take a look at verse 17, and we see really three different eras here of God's grace extended during some very dark times in Israel's history.

So he says, so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, right?

David to the deportation of Babylon, to Babylon, 14 generations.

That's where we see all those lists of the kings.

Right?

The kings.

The people wanted a king, right?

We want to be just like all of the other nations.

But what they had to do is learn the hard way that these kings, uh, so they were so far from leading them to blessing and prosperity, they actually led them into further slavery, more adultery, further away from God, right?

Super dark.

But keep going there, the rest of the verse says, and from the the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations, right?

And we see all of these names of whom we don't even really know outside of this list.

We don't even know who they actually really are.

We know that again, the Jews kept meticulous records of all of these things, but but we don't know a whole lot about them.

Right?

Things were pretty silent and pretty pretty quiet throughout that time, through the uh throughout the inter-testamental uh time.

All right.

Now, what you can't help but notice, and we've been kind of fleshing this out here all the way through this genealogy, you can't help but notice through Jesus' ancestors is that they are a mess.

Right?

They're a mess.

It is not a pretty picture.

I mean, just think about some of the names that we've already talked about here in our time this morning.

We haven't even begun to unpack, right, all of them.

I mean, and even if you think about the, you know, maybe the most pure person on this list.

Let's say it was Mary, right?

Even her, she was still a sinner in need of God's grace.

Right?

But overall, we just see the darkness of this.

We, you know, we we know the sordid details, we we see we see the pain, we see the effects of sin that reverberate throughout generations and and completely mess up in uh families and individuals.

Listen, not a pretty picture, like I said, but hey, guess what?

Neither am I.

Right?

I am not.

If you want to hear my story sometime, just come and ask me.

I'll tell you.

And guess what?

Neither is your story a pretty picture.

Right?

We've all been scandalized by sin.

We've all committed sin that flies in the face of a holy God.

We've all committed sin that has damaged us, we've all committed sin that's damaged other people.

We've all been damaged by the sinful choices of other people, certainly.

And yet, what do we notice here, even just through what we've looking at here this morning?

We notice that God extends grace.

Right?

All sin in the world did nothing to stop his plan, to offer humanity the new beginning that you and I needed.

Right?

Nothing stopped Jesus Christ from coming.

Nothing stopped Jesus Christ from being born, right?

Christmas is simply the the jubilant announcement of that.

Right?

Jesus is here, God is here, finally, right?

The one that that Israel has been waiting for, the one that our hearts ultimately long for, he is here, he is with us.

Listen, if if you're here today and you uh desire uh a new beginning for yourself, right?

And you're just thinking about your life and and and how it's gone and it's it's not been pretty in its own right, listen, know that Jesus offers you the ultimate beginning by grace, right?

The gift of forgiveness for every sin you've ever committed.

Now, some of you might be thinking, that can't be true.

Not for me.

Pastor, listen, you don't know my story.

You don't know the seedy things that I've done.

You don't know the mess that is my heart right now, the mess that is my mind, the mess that is my family, the mess that is my life in all kinds of different ways.

No, and you know what?

I don't need to know all the details.

But Christ knows, right?

And he loves you anyways.

And I mean, again, we just look at the at the list of this genealogy and we see that people committed murder, they committed incest, they had their own children killed.

Right?

There are some dark things that happened there.

You need to understand that God loves you anyways, and he offers you a new start, a new beginning, and that is salvation through his son.

Would you, would you not just understand that, but would you believe that?

Would you repent of your sin?

Would you, would you just confess your sin to the Lord here today?

Would you, would you trust in him?

Would you bow to your messiah and your king?

Hey, if you're a Christ follower here this morning, and maybe you're feeling kind of burned out and beat down by your own failings and your own shortcomings.

Maybe you're suffering from the sins of somebody else as well.

Listen, the sin in your life, maybe you're thinking, man, this mirrors you know some of the examples that that we just read about.

And you know what?

I'm kind of discouraged about this and I'm down about it.

Well, listen, remember here this morning that he extends his grace to sinners like you and I.

Right?

Grace alone is what triumphs, grace alone is what overcomes.

Grace alone is enough.

So simply humble yourself and once again ask God for more of it.

Grace is what you need.

Listen, I'm I'm I'm weak, I'm I'm feeling frail, I'm I'm I'm I'm discouraged by my sin.

All of these things, listen, I get it.

I I feel that way as well.

And we have to fight that temptation to just like I'm gonna try harder next time, I'm gonna I'm gonna be better.

That's that's not what you need.

You don't you don't need more self-effort.

You don't you don't need to play the hero, you're not the hero.

Jesus is the hero.

Right?

His grace is what you need, his grace is your power.

His grace is what triumphs and overcomes and transforms.

Through grace, you and I get a fresh start.

Through grace, we get that new beginning literally anytime we need it.

So would you cry out to him again today?

We want to do that together.

I want to do that for you right now.

I want to pray for you.

And then listen, we are going to hail the king again in worship.