The Name: All Who Belong | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Anybody else remember your first day of high school?

Just me.

Good.

Okay.

I'm glad we're we're all together today.

Came from a very small Christian school, there's like 30 in my class, to a large high school, public high school.

Knew no one, or at least that's what I thought.

The very first day, afraid to go to the wrong class, you know.

I did.

And then had nowhere, no idea where to be.

And so wherever my class ended up was in the very back of campus.

It was lunchtime.

I sat and ate lunch by myself, you know.

It wasn't until the end of the week that I ran into someone I know, and they're like, Oh, I didn't know you'd go here.

I'm like, I didn't know you'd go here.

Where have you been?

I'm like, way back there.

And they're like, nobody hangs out there.

I know.

Um come up, you know, towards the front of campus.

I'm like, oh, that makes sense.

And and so like I'm just searching, like so many of us are in those teenage high school years of like, where do I belong?

Where do I fit?

Uh, you know, where is my where's my place?

And and I'm a big basketball player.

Basketball is my life, especially in high school.

I'd spend so many hours in the front driveway practicing, getting ready.

And in October, basketball tryouts began, and I was so excited because, okay, I I think this is my try.

This is my place.

And if you've never done uh a tryout, let me share a little bit how it goes at the high school level.

Um, a coach wants to um, well, they want to try to test your commitment and get you off the team before you're even on the team.

And so practices were from seven until nine at night, Monday through Friday, and they would run you so hard.

Uh literally, I apologize for the graphicness, but in between liners, which is you're running up and down the court, uh, is you would go, I did this, a number of us, we just throw up outside.

You go outside, you'd you'd leave it all out there, then you'd have to come back in and you'd do it all over again.

Five nights in a row, you're doing drills, you're just hoping the coach sees you, you're kind of measuring up yourself against everyone else, right?

You're like, okay, I'm better than him.

Ooh, that's good.

You're trying to see where you're at.

And at the very end, on the last practice, on the last tryout, the coach takes a paper and he puts it on the door and he walks away.

And on that paper is a list of those who made it on the team.

40, 50 guys at tryout, 12, maybe 15 make the team.

And you can just only imagine a crowd rushes to that door to see is your name on the list?

Did you make it?

Do you belong?

Did you measure up?

And you'd see guys walk away dejected.

And then you'd see guys walk away just, I made it! My name's there.

And you know what's interesting?

That question, where do I truly belong, isn't just a high school question, is it?

It's a human question.

We ask this question all the time and wrestle with it.

Did I make the cut?

Am I good enough?

Maybe in the church context spiritually, does God really want me?

You know what's interesting is there are many people who are Christians.

Who get, I get that Jesus loves me, but it almost the way I think about it is like, it's almost like he just puts up with me.

Like I get that I'm kind of on the team, but maybe I'm just the water boy, you know.

Like God just kind of puts up with me.

Does God really want me?

Who actually belongs to the family of God?

Today we're continuing our series out of the Gospel of Matthew, the name.

Last week we looked at the Son of Promise, Jesus.

Matthew is helping us see who Jesus is, that he is the coming, long-awaited hope of the world, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us, this wonderful counselor, this mighty God, this everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Today we're gonna look at a part of the Bible that if you've ever opened it, if you ever read it, uh, this is the part you probably skip.

This is the genealogy of Jesus.

This is the list of names that you're like, why in the world did they include this?

Like, and when you think about Matthew, you're like, I could have come up with a better introduction, Matthew.

We we covered verse one last week.

This is the genealogy of Jesus, Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and then there's verse after verse.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez.

You're like, I get it.

There's a lot of people that had babies and babies after them.

Thank you very much.

What's the point?

Here's the point.

Matthew begins his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus to make an emphatic point about all who actually belong.

The very heart of God, the very gospel of Jesus is actually being declared in this genealogy and in a world and a culture that said, if you didn't measure up, if you didn't meet certain standards, you do not belong.

Matthew, from the outset of his gospel, is saying, I'll belong.

And he does it right in the genealogy.

He begins, or actually he concludes the genealogy this way.

In Matthew chapter 1, verse 17, he says, Thus there were, uh let me, I can read it right there.

Matthew 1:17

So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, from David to the deportation of Babylon were 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ were 14 generations.

And so he kind of gives you the framing of how he broke down this genealogy.

Abraham to David, the father of the nation of Israel to David, the great king, from David to Babylon, from the great king to this incredible descent into despair and darkness, to the exile, to the people of Israel being taken away to Babylon, then from Babylon to Jesus.

And he's unpacking the genealogy or the generations of Jesus.

And a few things I want you to note about genealogies.

Ancient genealogies were always working to communicate multiple layers of communication and information.

Ancient Hebrew genealogies was one about pedigree, like uh we want to know, is Jesus from the line of David?

Another about purity.

Uh, is he of this pure ethnic line that was very important to the Jewish people in their day?

And then the other is the area of theology.

Ancient genealogies were always making theological claims.

In fact, Matthew uses this uh like uh uh device, he's saying there's 14 generations.

Well, if you go back and study, you'll you'll notice there there's actually more than 14 generations.

It was, I mean, this doesn't work in our day, but leaving out generations to create symbolic numbers on general uh gene genealogies, thank you very much, is a common Hebrew literary practice.

He uses that 14.

Uh the Hebrew language, the letters actually have numeric value.

That's how you count.

And so if you actually take David's name, then what David's name numerically adds up to is 14.

And he's trying to, even in this, help us understand, woven throughout, that Jesus is the long-awaited king, the Messiah.

Out of these three, Abraham to David, David to Babylon, Babylon to Jesus, what we're seeing is the gospel right up front through these opening names.

And I want to give you just three hookholds of the way Matthew is weaving the gospel for all people, all of us to belong.

He's gonna give us in the first framing four women and then two name changes and then a list of nobodies.

And this is the gospel.

Four women, two name changes, and a list of nobodies.

Uh, let's begin with four women.

The four women from Abraham to David, these are unconventional heroes in the patriarchal narrative.

Uh, the four women he's gonna list out Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

These are four new matriarchs that he's gonna highlight where in genealogies you would only include women in the ancient day if it helped your pedigree or your purity.

And what we find is all four of these women do not help.

All four of them were foreigners, they were non-Israelites.

They're outcasts from the Jewish people.

And then there's scandal involving three out of the four.

Uh, Matthew could have included four matriarchs, the four primary ones, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

But he instead he includes these four to unpack this gospel of grace, God's divine mercy, how he's actively working, and who belongs a part of the family line of God.

Let's begin with Tamar.

She was a Canaanite, and she was actually victimized by Judah.

This is a story that is complex, it's weird.

You can find it in Genesis 38.

I don't have time to even unpack the like cultural complexities, the marriage rites and customs of their day.

Uh, but ultimately, uh, when it gets down to it, Tamar was one who actually lost two husbands, father-in-law deceived and treated her to shame.

She was passed over, unfairly treated, neglected.

Judah, who would be the one that was prophesied that the king would come through, actually is the villain in this story.

And Tamar, the Canaanite, Judah will eventually say, You are more righteous than I.

First, we see the divine mercy of God of highlighting Tamar, who had been overlooked, passed by, unfairly treated, neglected to shame.

And then you see Rahab.

Uh, she's a Jerichoite.

Her profession, well, problematic.

A prostitute.

Uh, when the Israelites went into the uh, they're going into the promised land, the first city that they were to address was Jericho.

The spies go into the land.

Now, why the spies are hiding out in a prostitute's uh house, I don't know.

Again, problematic.

And yet she took them and hid them and uh gave them safe harbor, and as a result of her kindness and her faith, her her and her whole family were saved, and she is now in the line of David as one of the great great-grandmothers.

Her past problematic, and she was morally compromised.

We're seeing that, okay, this is a unique matriarchal uh four that we're seeing.

Tamar, Rahab, and then Ruth.

Ruth, a Moabite.

A Moabite, uh, they were among the most uh alien and hated of people, the Moabites and the Israelites.

They did not get along.

Longstanding vitriol.

She was a racial outcast.

And you can pick up her story, and it's what's amazing is Ruth's entire story.

One of the few who's has a book named after her in the uh ancient Hebrew scriptures is this Moabite woman who had unwavering loyalty, another story of tragic loss, lost her husband, followed her mother-in-law back into a country that did not want her.

And I just think as we begin to go through this, what you're seeing is Matthew is exposing all of the family secrets that you want to gloss over, ignore, and cover up.

The things that we go, yeah, you know, let's let's let's not really bring that to light.

And he's like, no, no, no, this is actually the beauty of the expansive nature of God's grace and mercy on display for all of us.

And he closes with Bathsheba, a Hittite through marriage, and actually exploited by David.

And the way he brings it up, listen to this.

Notice how the way uh Matthew unpacks Bathsheba, because he doesn't even say Bathsheba's name.

He says, And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

Like, I get that David is this great king, but but he also had great failure.

Don't you love that about the Bible, though?

No, it's just me.

Okay.

It's not a list of perfect people who have everything perfectly laid out, and that if you don't live this perfect life and you have it, then you failed, you don't make the cut, you don't make the list.

It's just painfully, painfully transparent, painfully authentic, painfully real and human.

And unpacking the type of people that God desperately loves and came for and embraces and welcomes in his family tree.

If you don't know the story of David and Bathsheba, you can listen to that great song Hallelujah to get some of that.

David sees Bathsheba bathing, wants her, calls for her, sleeps with her, uses her, gets her pregnant.

Then Uriah, who's not even an Israelite, but he's on the front lines of battle for Israel.

Calls him back, tries to get her him to sleep with his wife.

He won't.

He's such a winsome man.

He sleeps on the front porch of the palace because his troops are away and they are not at home, and he won't sleep with his in his own house because of them.

David should have been with them, but he wasn't, and so then he devises a plan to send Uriah out and to be killed in battle.

This is part of the family tree.

Who does God include?

The outcast, the ostracized, the overlooked, the mistreated, the brokenhearted, those suffering deep loss, those who have had deep injustices done to them, and those who have done deep injustices.

The outsider, the morally compromised.

The gospel flings wide the door of belonging to every person on the planet.

These four.

They're pedigree.

And Matthew from the outset.

He says they're part of Jesus' family tree.

They're part of the Messiah's family tree.

They are on the list.

Four women, divine mercy.

And then we see two name changes.

Before that, Martin Luther said this, the great reformer.

He said, Oh, Christ is the kind of person who is not ashamed of sinners.

In fact, he puts them in his family tree.

Now, if the Lord does that here, so ought we to despise no one.

Let me say that again.

Now, if the Lord does that here, so ought we to despise, to look down, to have some sort of spiritual elitism or snobbery or uh separatism, judgmentalism, criticism.

So ought we to despise no one but put ourselves right in the middle of the fight for sinners and help them.

Four women, Abraham and David.

And if you thought that the list of names got worse, uh better, it doesn't, it gets worse.

From David to Babylon.

From David to Babylon, if if in the mind of um a Jewish person in the ancient days, especially, you would think from Abraham to David is this ascent.

Like you're seeing God chose this family, this man out of all the other nations, and it grows to Israel and David the great king being, you know, one of the world's superpowers in that day.

And then from that point, you see this incredible descent.

It could be, as Jim Collins said it in How the Mighty Fall, the hubris of success, that we don't need God anymore because we've already gotten to the top.

And if you read the lines of kings that uh are in the list here, most of them during this time, from David to Babylon, to the point when Israel and Judah were conquered by superpower nations, they were then subjugated, and the best and brightest were deported out of the country.

From that time, that stretch of time that brought us all the way to Babylon, or is exile, they were put into exile.

Is evil king after evil king and dark days.

Here's what's incredible: in the midst of the dark days, in the midst of your worst days, we see two name changes.

And these two name changes are fascinating because even some of your uh translations, they don't uh actually translate back to what the king's names were.

But Matthew is making a deeply theological point here, and he changes two names, and the ancient Israelites they would have known their king's names, and so they would have seen exactly what he was doing.

And he changes King Asa, and he changes his name uh from King Asa's and inserts the psalmist Asaph.

Like, like when you experience the four women, the divine mercy, the belonging of the uh family of God, what Jesus is bringing is fundamentally spiritual renewal.

Like, like the inserts of like whatever dark moment you are working and walking through, Jesus longs to bring spiritual renewal into your life.

Asaf is uh with David, the other great psalmist and writer, and he wrote all about the renewal of what God would do, that God is my king from long ago.

He'll bring salvation on earth.

And then King Amon, he inserts the prophet Amos from spiritual renewal to social restoration.

Notice Jesus comes to bring into your life spiritual renewal that will produce social restoration.

Amos was actually, he lived on the border, uh, and at this time in the history, Israel got divided into two kingdoms, the northern ten tribes, Israel, the southern two tribes, Judah.

Amos is living right in the middle of these two kingdoms, and he's prophesying to the kingdom of Israel, the northern ten tribes.

Now, they at this moment in time were externally successful, but they were spiritually bankrupt.

They were affluent and they worshiped God with their lips and they sang the songs, they did all the religious things, and yet they exploited the poor, they mistreated the marginalized, they they would turn their brother and sister into debtors' slaves.

And Amos is calling out this great injustice.

He says, Away with the noise of your songs, I'll not listen to the music of your harps, but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream.

That Jesus, when he He comes, he changes you.

And as he changes you, you begin to be a change agent in the world that you live in.

That you bring restoration and hope and life and peace.

That word justice refers to concrete actions to correct injustices.

That word righteous is a standard of right, equitable relationships between people, no matter their social differences.

We see four women in the divine mercy of God poured out, all who belong to the family of God, and that Jesus has the power to change your name, to change your story, to change your direction, no matter how dark the hour is.

When you experience the divine mercy of God, he gives you a new name, adopted into the family of God.

Four women, two name changes, and then a list of nobodies.

You kind of round it out, and at least you have notable kings.

You understand what's going on with the kings, and then he concludes with a list of nobodies.

Babylon to Jesus.

It says, after the deportation of Babylon, Jakonaniah was the father of Sheiliah, and Sheilatia was the father of Zerubabel, and then Zerubel the father of people we don't know.

Now Zerubabel, he's the one who came back from exile, led uh the restoration and rebuilding of the temple.

And then there's name after name, and there certainly was uh scribes who took down the generations and were keeping track, but but these are these are nobodies.

People we don't know, people you've never heard of.

And isn't that just like God?

That in all hope is lost when there's no king in sight, when what happened was if you take your Bible like mine and it says Matthew here, and you flip over one page, it says Malachi, this one little page it is represents 400 years of silence where there was no prophetic voice.

It looked like the Son of Promise would never come.

It was in that place, in a list of nobodies, that God showed up on the scene.

When the people of God thought everything had fallen apart, God started to put everything back together again.

Friends, let me just remind you.

Because I don't know what the darkest, deepest days that you're walking through, but God is at work even when you can't see him.

And even when it looks like all hope is lost, he is still working and his promises are true.

And then God delights to use just ordinary nobodies.

Ordinary nobodies like you and me to do extraordinary things.

I remember when I was um years ago, this was just starting out as a pastor, and I met some guy at a coffee shop and he had this line.

It's now become more of a, you may know the line, you've heard it before.

Uh, but this is about 20 years ago, and and he said this thing.

He said, he said, you know, I'm just a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody who can change and save anybody.

I'm just a nobody.

I mean, frankly, that's the reality.

We're just a bunch of nobodies trying to tell everybody about the somebody who can change and save anybody.

Because that's what happens with the four women when you with four women when you begin to experience the divine mercy of God.

Oh my goodness, I don't I don't belong on the list.

I didn't make the cut, I don't measure up, but you chose me, you accepted me, you brought me in, and then you changed my name, you gave me a new identity, you brought me in.

I'm a part of the family of God, and now I can't shut up talking about you.

And I just gotta tell everybody about you.

You know, in high school, we do, we just want to belong.

And for me to belong, I just tried to fit in and go along with what was going on, and I really, freshman, sophomore, junior year, I just walked away from Jesus.

I did grow up in a home that loved Jesus.

I made a profession early on about him, and then I then I just kind of I just wanted to belong.

I just wanted to fit.

In fact, I remember one time uh someone came to church, saw me there, and said this.

Now, granted, I was the pastor's kid.

Okay, said this.

Oh, Ryan, I didn't know you're someone who'd go to church.

Like, that's how radically different I live my life at high school as opposed to church.

We live this dualistic life.

The summer before my senior year, I had a Jesus moment.

I encountered Jesus, he changed my life.

And you ever get around people, like the moment they come to know Jesus, the moment they realize I don't belong in the list, you walk me in, you change my life.

They can't stop shutting up about Jesus.

And I showed up my freshman year or my senior year, and we're in U.S.

Gov class, and I just couldn't help it.

I'm not, I wasn't like cool or anything like that, but I'm sitting next to Preston Caffrey, the coolest kid in school.

I mean, he was the coolest kid.

But I he had so much charisma.

Man, just envied that guy.

He could sell snow to Eskimos.

I mean, just and I remember turning to him, and U.S.

Gov, uh, our football coach was teaching it.

He was droning on about some president.

I don't know, wasn't listening.

Um and I turned to Preston and I said, Has anybody told you about Jesus?

Like a high school student.

That's I didn't know what to do, but all I knew was Jesus changed my life, and I wanted somebody, I wanted them to know it.

And I'm like, could anybody told you about Jesus?

He's like, No.

I'm like, could I?

Sure.

Like we're just sitting in class and teachers talking.

And I just began to share how Jesus changed my life and tell him about Jesus at the end of class.

He said, Hey, can we talk more?

And I was like, sure.

What about like, could I bring some friends over?

What do you mean, bring some friends over?

Yeah, can we talk at your house?

Can we meet at your house and maybe weekly and just talk about this Jesus thing?

Sure.

Preston Caffrey, who I didn't know at the time, had lost his brother to leukema, leukemia earlier, going through the darkest days of his life.

One silly high schooler that just had his life changed by Jesus, just shared Jesus in the most uncool, awkward way possible.

And then Preston started a Bible study at my house with a bunch of his friends, and about 10 of them, plus Preston, came to know Jesus that year.

Just a nobody.

Trying to tell everybody about the somebody.

I can save anybody.

Like when you experience the radical acceptance and belonging of Jesus and his name change and identity change, you just can't help but share it.

And that was Matthew's story, by the way.

Matthew, who wrote this down.

Let me share it with you because it's so phenomenal.

Matthew, later on, will tell how Jesus called him.

Says and went on from there.

He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth, and Jesus says to Matthew, follow me.

Now we read this and we miss the weight and the gravity of this.

Matthew, sitting at a tax collector's booth.

He is ostracized from the community of the Jewish people from worship in the temple.

He is an outcast.

He didn't just make the cut, he's been cut off.

And a rabbi, by the way, listen, listen, listen.

A rabbi in their day wouldn't go and pick followers.

Followers would come and try to make the cut for the rabbi.

They would go through their own tryouts.

And Jesus goes to Matthew, a tax collector, in the middle of what he's doing.

He's literally taking taxes.

He's doing his job that everybody hates.

And he says, follow me.

Notice he didn't say fix up your life.

He just said follow me, because if you follow me, your life will be forever changed.

All you have to do is start following me.

Following me is it.

That's it.

Not measure up, not work your way up, not somehow make yourself better.

Follow me, Matthew.

You're welcome into the family of God, into my history and family tree.

And so Matthew had been invited and he got up and followed him.

Now notice this.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.

Sitting and eating was a sign of acceptance.

Didn't mean you agreed with them, but you accept, you believe they belonged, you loved them.

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked the disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

They didn't make the cut.

On hearing this, Jesus said, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I've come to call the right, not to call the righteous, but the sinner.

Matthew, from the opening pages of the genealogies, the four women, the two name changes, and the list of nobodies gone.

If I can belong, if Jesus can say to me, follow me.

If you knew how far down the put like the list I was, I didn't make the list, I was cut off from the list.

If I can belong, you can belong.

If I can belong, you can belong.

JD Greer writes this.

Says, Jesus didn't come for people who have it all together.

He came for people with problems.

He came for people whose lives were dysfunctional and messed up.

He came for people who had driven their lives into dead end.

He came for those who'd been mistreated, neglected, and abused.

He came for those who had gotten everything they wanted out of life and still found it didn't give them what they were looking for.

And somewhere along the way, even for those of us who are followers of Jesus, we somehow feel like we just have to measure up, make the cut, to not screw up.

As if God is just posting this list.

Were you a good boy or girl this year?

And somehow that determines your acceptance, your belonging, your position, your relationship with God.

All who belong.

You belong.

You know, there's this great line in AA.

In AA, you know the 12 steps, and some of you know that not only do they have 12 steps, they have 12 traditions.

It's how they function as a community.

And I love this on the third tradition, they say the only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking.

You want to belong in AA?

It's not that you somehow stop drinking.

It's not that you make it and you're a trophy of all the things.

Certainly that's the goal.

But what we all recognize is we're all struggling, we're all striving, and we all have a deep longing.

And you want to belong, the only thing you need is a desire.

A desire to stop.

You know what's fascinating is the only requirement to belong to the family of God is to receive Jesus' invitation.

He didn't post a list, he looks at you and says, simply follow me.

It's just to respond to his invitation.

And John, he says, yet to all who receive him, to those who believe on his name, he gave the right to be called children of God.

I think as we close, there's maybe three responses.

The first response, I think, for a number of us is simply maybe a confession.

It's the Pharisee in us.

It's the judge in us.

We get judgmental because we don't quite measure up, but we're looking around and feel bad, and we want to make ourselves feel better, and so we see people that are maybe doing things, quote, worse than us.

They don't match our box.

And where we just simply confess, God, you know what, my heart.

The expansive nature of your grace and love let no one despise, but may I lean in.

I think the second response is really to care.

Care for the people in our lives who have yet to experience the incredible grace and mercy of Jesus.

That God, you would remind me or you would once for a fresh in this moment, make me realize your expansive yes in grace in my life that would move me, that I long for every single person to experience your grace and mercy.

We've been praying for names.

You've written it down on the cards over the last few weeks.

Where you go, how can I care for my coworker, my neighbor, my friend, my family member, my college mate, my roommate.

That I long, that I'm gonna pray for them, God, I want them to experience you.

I don't know what they're walking through.

But could it be that if I just said, Do you want to know about Jesus?

I'm not saying you have to do it that way.

I don't know.

I all I know is that like when we just begin to bring Jesus into the conversation, he changes things.

His name's powerful, and only by his name can you be saved.

What if we actually believed that instead of just saying it?

What if we cared?

And our hearts broke to the point that we begin to share.

I want to invite you just in some of that response, just symbolically, at some point in the service of people that God's brought to your mind.

That you would just write it down.

We have these bells on the front and the back, just as this act of Jesus, I'm gonna be praying.

This is the person I wrote down in my card, and I and these bells are gonna be a part of our Christmas Eve service, and I'm praying for them for Christmas Eve.

I'm praying for them for for every day because I don't know the journey that God has them on, but I desperately long for them to know you.

Confess, care.

And then maybe you're here, and the final response is to call.

All who call upon the name of the G of Jesus will be saved.

Like you've never known the expansive nature of his grace.

That he loves you.

You are loved.

He longs for you to be a part of the family of God, and to all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, will be called a child of God, adopted into the family of Jesus.

And if that's you, I just want to pray a prayer and invite you to pray with me.

And would you all join me in prayer?

And if you want to begin a relationship, step into a new life with Jesus, just pray simply after me.

Jesus, I call upon your name.

Asking that you would come into my life and make me new.

I believe that you love me, that you want me, that you invite me in, that I belong in your family.

That you came and you forgive me.

That you died on the cross to heal the broken parts of my life, the devastating things, and forgive the devastating things, Abdog.

That you rose again that I might have a new life.

Would you come into my life and make me new?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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