Hope for Imperfect People | Pastor Adam Mesa

Amen.

Well, it's good to see everybody today. We're spoiled because

during service today we had Pastor in Fuego and Tiffany

with us, and man, they've already done an incredible job.

So thankful for them being hanging out with us this

weekend because we got all our other campuses joining right now,

and so can you do me a favorite? Can we

welcome Alameda, Pomona. I've already heard that there's people watching

us in Newport already, there's people watching us in Corona already.

And I was thinking about it earlier. I mean, we

got San Bernardino County represented right here. We got La

County represented with Pomona, we got Alameda County represented with Alameda,

we got Riverside County represent with Crona, we got Orange

County represented with Newport, and I chat gbted it earlier.

There's fifty eight counties in California, so who knows? Who knows?

We got like, you know, we got fifty two to

go or whatever that math is. But now I'm just kidding.

But it's so good to see everybody and have all

of our campuses joining us this weekend here at Patriot

as we get ready that really, you know, the whole

month is us preparing for this Christmas season. But as

we go into next Sunday, you know, next Sunday is

going to begin our Christmas weekend and then our Christmas services.

And you may have heard me say it last week,

but Pastor Diego has said this for over thirty years.

He said, don't forget during the Christmas season.

It's not your birthday worth celebrating, Okay, so make sure

you put it in your calendar, what services you're coming to,

maybe who you're inviting to.

There's two seasons that a.

Lot of people will say yes to come to church.

It's Eastern Christmas because their mind is there everywhere that

they go. I just saw something on TikTok. A lady

was like, I'm an atheist, but here comes all my

favorite Jesus songs and she was dancing to like a

Birth of Jesus song. You know. So it's in this

season that God is doing a work because especially in

our regions, you know, everybody is aware about what this

season is about. And it's our call as believers to

make sure that they know what is the reason for

the season, and that's Jesus's birth. And so we're excited

about this season and what God's going to be doing

in the house. If you all got your Bible or

maybe you've got a Bible app or anything like that,

wherever you're at, I'm gonna make you all look really

good today because you're gonna go to the first book,

the first chapter in the New Testament. Okay, book of Matthew. Okay,

So if it's your.

First time here, there's nothing wrong.

If you've got your first physical Bible, to go to

a little thing called the table the contents at the beginning,

find out what page is your page to go to

Matthew Chapter one. But this is the first chapter to

the first book of the New Testament. The New Testament

begins with the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The

Gospels are all about Jesus. That's what Matthew, Mark, Luke,

and John. The rest of the New Testament is all

about explaining our relationship with Jesus and how we continue

to worship Him on this planet together. And I love

this chapter that we're gonna read today because it's one

of my most favorite chapters in all of the Bible.

But most of the time, when a person gets their

Bible and they say to themselves, I'm gonna start reading

by Bible, and I want to start in the New Testament.

A lot of times people will open up to the

New Testament. They'll turn to the Book of Matthew. And

if you don't know, the Book of Matthew was written

to a Jewish audience, and so there's a lot of

Jewish religion and innuendos in it and explanation in it.

And majority of us in this room, across all our campuses,

I'm sure none of us are Jewish.

We're taught Jewish things or anything like that.

And so what most people do is they open up

to the Book of Matthew. They go to chapter one,

and for seventeen verses they see a list of people's names.

And then what most people do is they go, let's

start at chapter two. That doesn't seem like that's very important.

Look at all these people's names. These are you know,

Jesus's aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma, grandpa, great grandman. Okay, we

get it. Let's move on. But I don't know about you.

But if through God's sovereignty giving us hit the word

of God, John chapter one says the Word became flesh

and dwelt among us, and that now God gives us

the Word of God so that we can encounter Jesus

any day of the week. I don't know about you,

but if the New Testament opened in the first chapter

with a list of names, I think to myself, maybe

I should learn a little bit about those names. There's

probably something important happening. If this is that, you know,

anytime you open up a movie, have you ever missed

the first ten minutes of a movie and you thought

to yourself, I don't know the rest, Like this movie

makes no sense because the first ten minutes set you

up for the next hour and a half hour and

forty five minutes. And a lot of times when we

skip Matthew chapter one, you're skipping the first ten minutes

of the New Testament, and these ten minutes will radically

change your life when you understand and what Matthew is

trying to say, and what the Spirit of God.

Is trying to say through Matthew when.

He wrote this book. And so I want you to

do me favor. Wherever you're at, whether you're an Alameda,

Pomona or Rancho, I want you to someone next to you,

and I want you to say this, Today's word is

gonna talk to you.

Somewhere, Okay, somewhere.

Now, i'd say it's all gonna talk to you, but

I won't offend anyone, Okay, because you'll see why in

a second. I'm not gonna say that everything gonna talk

to you all, but something somewhere is going to talk

to you. And I'd love to read all seventeen verses,

but i'd end up just listing a bunch of names.

And I know half of the room probably has ADHD

like me, and so I'm not gonna do that. But

I'm gonna highlight about six or seven of these verses today.

And so I'm gonna highlight verses one to six, and

then verses sixteen to seventeen. I encourage you, on your

own time, if you like homework, just read all of

the seventeen verses, just to get an idea of all

the names. But there's something really that's trying to have.

So as you have your Bible open or maybe you

have it in your phone, I have it up on

the screen for us right here. If you're ready, wherever

you're at, would you stand for a moment for the

honor of reading God's Word. Here's what I want us

to see today in God's Word today. Here's what Matthew.

Chapter one, verse one starts with In the Word of God, it.

Says, this the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Wow,

that's a big deal. Right away, he's telling you, I'm

gonna tell you who Jesus's family tree is and what

happens is He says this starting the son of David

and the son of Abraham. Okay, so right there, he says,

this is these are royal lines, this is a faith line.

This is the line Jesus is coming from a thorough

bred family. This is David, This is a son of David.

This is a son of Abraham. Now, all of a sudden,

as a Jewish person, if you have never even heard

of Jesus, you hear that someone is related to David

or Abraham, you're leaning in like, oh, tell me more,

tell me more about it, tell me more about his family,

and then I want you to see what continues.

Now.

In verse two, it says, in verse two, Abraham was

the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob,

and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and

Judah the father of Perez and Zarah by Tamar and Perez,

the father of Hesron and Hesrun, the father of Ram

and Saltman, the father of Boaz by Rahab and bo As,

the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed, the father

of Jesse and Jesse the father of David the King.

Okay hardflex right there we continue.

On, and Jacob, the father of Joseph and the husband

of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, is called So

I started off at Abraham with fourteen generations, and then

now we end here at sixteen. He says this Jacob,

the father of Joseph, who was the adopted father of Jesus,

And he says, the husband of Mary, whom Jesus was born,

is called Christ Messiah. He's the anointed one. He's the

one we've been waiting on. And then the last verse

in verse seventeen, is this, 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

of Babylon the Christ fourteen generations.

You may be seated.

Now, there was a bunch of names that I didn't mention,

But the only reason why I did the first six

verses is because we're gonna highlight four names. And the

reason why Matthew is sharing the names it matters. He's

not just sharing the genealogy. It's like if you've ever

had to fill out paperwork for a marriage license or

your children were born, sometimes it wants to know who

are your parents, who are your parents' parents, where are

they from? Where were they born. That's not what's happening

in this That's not what Matthew's doing. Matthew's not just

doing like, hey, fun fact, here's his family tree. No, Matthew,

for the Jewish audience, he's making a massive point for

all of us to know, and I'm gonna share it

with you through four of the individuals that we read today.

What Matthew is trying to get across because what he's

trying to do we're in this series called Hope through

the Ages. Immediately, Matthew number one is trying to strip

judgment and religiosity out of people's mind. And he's also

there to give hope to people. For anyone that has

had a broken family tree. If anyone has ever had

a jacked up family Matthew goes get in line. He says,

Jesus came from that. You would say, but I don't

know how Jesus came from them. You know, many years ago,

until I became a senior pastor, I kind of set

this aside. But for over a decade I owned a

marketing and branding company. I and my company worked with

many big companies, many big brands, big real estate companies,

and all these things like that. But one of the

things that I was kind of most proud about within

my company was a little over five years ago, for

an entire year, my company was contracted by the Martin

Luther King Junior Center in Atlanta, and so my company

produced their podcast for an entire year, and we did

it through all means Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that kind

of stuff like that. And so basically me and my

team we were the producers of the show. We worked

with all of their interview guests, we did all of

the posting, all that kind of stuff like that. And

I was really honored when they reached out to want

to work with my company to produce a podcast. And

I thought to myself absolutely, are you kidding me? For

the legacy of Martin Luther King Junior, and you know,

and getting to have the assets to Martin Luther King

Junior's Twitter accounts and his Facebook accounts, and you may

not know, but he not alive, but he has Facebook,

he has Twitter under the auspice of the King Center,

and they manage his legacy, they manage his traditions. And

what happened was when we started working together, I actually

started getting really frustrated really fast. And I'll share with

you why I started getting frustrated really fast is because generally,

when I worked in a marketing company, what would happen

is the companies would give me full access admin permission

to all of their things at all times, and then

I'd get to do whatever I need to do for

their company, and anyone that worked for me, I'd give

them limited access to do what they needed to do.

But here's what the King Center said. They said, if

you're gonna.

Work with us, five minutes before you're gonna do what

you need to do, We're gonna send you a new

password every time, and then the moment you guys log

off doing what you need to do, we're gonna change

the password, and we're gonna do that for every other

different social media platform. So we produced a sho show

on Tuesdays, and sure enough the show they were on

the East coast, I was on the West coast.

It produced at three pm, and sure.

Enough, at two point fifty five, I would get a

password for Twitter, I would get a password for Facebook,

I'd get a password for Instagram. And they had other

different platforms under the King Center, and so I got

like twelve different passwords. We had to log in connect

all of them, and then the moment the show was done,

they would go in and they would change all of it.

And the next week I'd have to do it again,

over and over and over. How many of you guys

know would that not get pretty frustrating? I mean I'd

be pretty fresh. So one day, after about two months,

we have a meeting with the King Center and I said, hey, y'all,

I can't do this anymore. I'm getting absolutely frustrated, like

waiting for you guys to send me passwords and then

change it.

This is just frustrating. I'm not a fan of it.

Why are you guys doing this?

And they said, Adam let us explain to you. You see,

when you say something, or someone kind of normal says something,

you could.

Go in and you can delete it.

If you like something that was on accident, you could

go in and change it.

You can go and they go.

But let's just say you or someone on your team

likes or comments on something that's out of my dad's legacy.

They said, what if one day you think you're logged

into your Twitter account and you say something about a

person in office, and it's actually accidentally under my dad's account,

and so it goes from Adam's opinion or someone on

my team's opinion to Martin Luther King Junior's opinion. And

they said that could create an international crisis, depending on

what it is.

Every new source in the world would be talking about

something against my legacy.

And so they said, the fact of the matter is

we have to control our legacy and the verbiage of

our legacy in order that we don't get into mess.

And I said, man, that's fair. I'll just I'll be patient.

Then again, I don't really sten. I don't want to

be on s and tomorrow for accidentally doing something or

any So I said, fair game, you keep me out

of it and I'll deal with it. And it was

in that moment I realized that tends to happen. A

person with the greater the impact, their legacy has to

be extremely cared for. And the legacy moving forward has

to be not perfect, but it does have to be

perfected to a degree. I mean, you want to limit

the negative things in the past. You want to limit

what other people see, because all you want to do

is you want the legacy to be the message, and

so you want to care for that.

And you would think that if you and I were here.

To talk about the birth of Jesus and his family tree,

that in God's infinite wisdom, the Father's infinite wisdom, he

would say, when I talk about Jesus's family, I'm gonna

share the good people, the good stuff, because I'm going

to control Jesus's legacy so that when they see Jesus's

legacy they see that it was full of people that

were holy and righteous and pray and loved me and

served me because I'm managing Jesus's legacy. No, in fact,

when the Father and his infinite wisdom had Matthew write

Matthew one, he goes Matthew, I want you to throw

Jesus's family trees dirt in those names, because I want

people to see that in Jesus' legacy it was not

full of perfect people.

I want anyone that thinks that they are.

Connected to the legacy of Jesus that they don't think

that when they join Jesus's family that all of a

sudden they're elite, all of a sudden they're better than

all of a sudden, they figured out something that no

one else has figured out. No, no, no, no, no, the

Father said, through Matthew and Matthew Chapter one, go ahead,

share it all before BuzzFeed, before all of those gossip

columns or what else released Jesus's family's junk.

Matthew, I want you to release it. How do I

know that?

Well, look, it starts first with Abraham and it progressively

gets worse. But he shares Abraham, and if you're taking notes,

I want you to see this. What immediately what happens

is he shows through Abraham there's hope through imperfect people,

that Abraham was flawed, but he was still chosen by God.

Abraham wasn't this perfect individual who had the perfect faith,

who never doubted, and never struggled, and never lost hope. No, no,

Abraham had those things I want you see in Romans

chapter four, verse nineteen to twenty one, it says he

did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body,

which was good as dead since he was about one

hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of

Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise

of God. But he grew strong in faith as he

gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able

to do with him what he had promised. You see,

Matthew begins the genealogy with Abraham, a man who believed God,

yet struggled to trust him. He lied about his wife,

tried to force God's promise his own way, and still

God calls him the father of faith. Spurga says, the

God who called Abraham is the same God who turns

weakness into strength. That's what God did with Abraham. Abraham

was not a perfect individual. Abraham didn't exercise faith every

single day. Abraham had doubts. Abraham one day was in

Egypt and the pharaoh saw that Sarah was good looking,

and he wanted her for himself, and Abraham said, yeah,

this is my sister.

You can have her because he didn't want to die.

On top of that, God made him a promise that

he would be a father, and as he got older,

he said, I'm gonna take things into my own hands

and I'm gonna I'm gonna sleep with.

My slave to get the child that God promised.

This is a man who struggled to see God in

certain areas of his life, but yet this is how

Jesus is.

Family.

Tree starts not with just this giant in the faith

that everywhere he went he had this strong trust in God.

It was a guy that as he trusted God through

his life, there were moments in his own humanity that

he was like, God, I don't where are you. A

lot of times people think that to be full of

faith means that you can't go to God with questions

or doubts. Abraham exemplifies that, and a lot of times

for you and I, we think that for some reason

we don't love God, we don't trust Jesus because when

things aren't going the way that we think God has promised,

we think it has something to do with us. But

we see through Abraham that what God was doing was

through the moments of his unbelief, Abraham was still pointing

his life towards God to give him glory. It's like

if you've ever been taking GPS instructions to drive somewhere

and you've thought to yourself, you're worried the moment the

GPS calls a U turn for me when I'm driving

and I feel like I'm lost. The moment I see

that GPS says I need to get make a U turn,

then I'm worried.

But there are times I'm.

Lost that it seems like I'm still on the same road,

and I just say, I'm just gonna trust it step

by step because i don't know where I'm going. But

as I look at the GPS, the line is still blue,

so I'm good to go. And for Abraham, there were

moments not where God was calling him to make a

U turn. It was just Abraham just didn't know what

exit to get off of. And what he was doing

is in those moments as he was honest and saying,

I don't know why.

It's going on.

What's going on, I don't know why I'm getting into

my old age, and I still haven't had my son yet.

I don't know what's happening, but yet I'm still trust God.

I'm still be obedient to God. That's how Jesus's family

tree begins. But then what happens is now we're introduced

to another person, a few versus lady her, and we

see Rahab. You see what happens in this family tree

is we see that now Rayhab the salmon the father

of bo has by Rayhab. If you don't know the

story of Rehab, there's the story in the Book of

Joshua and in the and in the Bible, where uh,

what's happening is they're in Canaan, and now they've left Egypt,

and they've gone through the wilderness, and there's a group

of spies that go to spy out Jericho. And what

happens is is they go to the house of a

prostitute and what she does is she saves the spies

from the men in Jericho. And then when the Israel

comes to destroy Jericho, it says that Joshua honors her

and welcomes her into Israel. And then what happens is

is an Israeli man, a Jewish man, marries Rayhab, and

that is in Jesus's family tree. That's a great great

great great great grandmother the prostitute. And right away Jesus

is born. Matthew Chapter one goes, you got Abraham, and

then two verses later and his great great great great

grandma the prostitute, And it's like, if you were Jewish,

you would have been like, were there no other names? Look, yeah,

we know ray Ham's in there, but can we not

publicly share that for individuals to know Graham Graham's past, Like,

we don't want people to know.

Graham Graham's press.

Don't don't put Graham Graham's past out there, don't even

mention Graham Graham. There's just name her husband, don't name her.

We don't want her in there.

Because what happens is people are gonna read Joshua and

they're gonna read about this woman that used to charge

for people to sleep with her, and they're gonna be like,

that's Jesus's family tree, and the father goes, yeah, put

that in the manuscript. Put it in there. I want

people to know right away that Jesus's family tree the

salvation of the world, the hope of the world. It

came from brokenness. It came from sin. It came from

what we would say is the is the outskirts of sin,

because we have sin that we're all comfortable with. But

the moment you start going to more of the sins

that make all of us comfortable with, now, now we

all start getting a little more uncomfortable. But he goes

put Rehab in their ride away. Look at Joshua chapter six,

verse twenty five five and says, but Rayhab, the prostitute,

and her father's household and all who belonged to her,

Joshua saved alive, and she has lived in Israel to

this day because she hid the messengers who Joshua sent

out to spy out Jericho. You see, there's a misconception

that what would have happened was is Jewish people would

have loved had they accept Jesus as Messiah. They would

have wanted to completely rewrite his past to make sure

that no one knew that Jesus came from Gentiles. Because

Rahab was not Jewish, she was a Canaanite. She was

someone that wasn't peer, that wasn't born into Abraham's family tree.

And according to the Book of levitoicust, that would have

made the line unclean, that would have made them a

pure Jewish person. And immediately God's like, why don't you

go ahead and expose right now that within Jesus's family

tree there are people that are not Jewish that were

accepted into the salvation and the promise of Abraham. Just

let people know as a Jewish person in Matthew chapter one,

that Jesus's family tree wasn't all that, and it wasn't

as clean and peer as someone would try to make it.

And he lets us know right away. Rayhab was a Canaanite,

a gentile, and a former prostitute.

Yet Matthew highlights her.

He doesn't hide her, and he doesn't hide her story,

her scarlet cord and Joshua chapter two foreshadowed the blood

of Jesus. A woman with a past becomes a woman

with a promise. That's who she was. Matthew chapter one,

or Dietrich Bonhoffer says, God is the god of the lowly,

the rejected, the broken, and the ones who fail. And

that's what's part of the family tree of Jesus. It's

the fact that God has taken broken past and broken

people and he's done miracles and wonders, and even Jesus,

the savior of humanity, came from people who were broken,

from people who have had a past, from people who

are imperfect. Because a lot of times we think to ourselves,

surely God can't do anything with me, Surely God can't

save me, Surely God can't speak to me because I'm broken.

But you look at Rayhab's story, and you look at

the fact that if you would tell ray Have all

those years ago that one day the savior of the world,

the Messiah, is gonna come through your womb, she wouldn't.

There's no way she would have believed it. And she,

on top of that, she was I'm gentile, I'm not

even Jewish. Why would God even do that to show

the world, to show the world that he takes broken

things and he does beautiful things. There's this art form

that maybe you've heard of it before. It's in Japan,

and maybe you've had a piece of pottery before that's broken.

Maybe maybe your children or grandchildren have knocked something over

before and it's shattered. And most of the time, for us,

what we'll do, even if it's something that's precious to

us if it falls into pieces, we'll just get rid

of it. You know, as upset as we are, we

think there's nothing I can do with it. But in

Japan there's an art called kinsugi, and what they do

with knsugi art is they take broken pieces of pottery.

And I actually preached about this many years ago, and

someone great in our church gifted me an authentic piece

of konsugi pottery from Japan that the process was actually

made with this. And what happens is is they take

broken pieces in Japan and then they take gold. They

melt the gold down and they use gold as a

bonding agent. And then they take all of the pieces

of the pottery and they take the gold that they've

melted down and they place it in the edges of

the broken pieces, and then when it hardens, it connects

the pottery together. And what happens is because pottery, all

that is, is just mud that's been put in a kiln,

and as valuable and as beautiful as is, it is

not a precious material. But what they do is they

take a precious metal like gold, they use it as

the bonding agent, and even in its brokenness, it is

now more valuable than it ever was because it has

a precious material in it connecting it. So now what

it's done is it's taken something that is broken, not

only fixed it, but has made it more valuable than

it was when it was in its perfect condition. And

that's a picture of Rahab's life. Of what God did

in her life is though she had a past and

though she was broken, what happened was is through her

faith of concealing these spies and trusting that God Yahweh

is bigger than the Canaanite God that she had. What

happens is though she had a broken past. When you

have God's name attached to you, when you have faith

in Jesus attached to you, the value immediately goes up.

Your value immediately goes up because when God is the

one connecting your life and your pieces back together, where

even though who you once were had value in its

own way, the moment God places his fingerprint on your life,

the moment God puts your pieces back together and gives

your brokenness now purpose you own it. Just imagine by

this time in heaven. There's no theology for this, but

I could imagine that the spirit of God is talking

to Matthew, and She's going, can you leave me out

of it? Like mention anyone else? Take me out of it?

And God's like, no, no, no, no, no no, Your brokenness is beautiful. Rehab.

Your brokenness will show the Jewish people that I have

a purpose in everything that I do. And then I

want you to see the next person that then he's

chosen is then he mentions David. And then as he

brings up David and he mentions David.

In there the king.

But also what happens is is it says and Jesse,

so we have hope through restored failures. That's David. David

was gifted but fallen. And what happens is when David

is mentioned, it's mentioned his family tree. But what happens is,

it says and Jesse, the father of David and David.

I want you to see. What happens is when he

talks about Solomon, and David was the father of Solomon

by the wife of who Euryah. Okay, wait, does anyone

know who Solomon's mother was? Bethsheba. Bethsheba's not mentioned. He mentions,

he says, the wife of Uriah. Now if you don't know,

King David's story. Bethsheba was in a bath. He sees

her naked. He takes her for himself. Uryah is his guy,

her husband is his guy. He's a general. And what

David tries to do.

Is pin the pregnancy.

Besheba gets pregnant, wants a pin the pregnancy on Uryah.

Uryah says, man, if my men aren't able to be

with their wives, I won't be with my wife. I'll

just seep in. I'm just gonna sleep in the in

a living room. And then David tells his generals, hey,

I got this scroll. Give it to the front lines,

and let no one open it except the one in

charge of the front lines. They read it and they said,

tomorrow morning, put Uriyah on the front lines of the

battlefield so that he can die. And so what happens

is is Bathsheba's husband gets put to death. That first

child that was fathered by David and Bathsheba, he marries

her because she's pregnant. They have a miscarriage. He's heartbroken.

He gets checked by the prophet and then they have

another child. They go again and they get Solomon.

And then when.

Matthew records he's not devaluing Bathsheba. What he's doing is

he's taking David, this person that the Jewish people have

put on the level of like practically godhood.

This man can do no wrong.

This guy is perfect. This is David.

Anyone that would be related to David. They are the

cream of the cream of the crop.

They're the best. And then Matthew goes, oh, this is

the son Solomon who was birthed by the wife of

your Aryah. In other words, David, we ain't forget your past.

Don't let no one elevate because someone's gonna be like, oh,

here's Jesus's birth. He's the man, but he ain't no David.

And you're like, oh, you're right, he's not a David

because he's not about to sleep with someone else's wife.

That's why he's not David. So he's like, don't put

David on this pedestal all of a sudden, because Jesus

is the only name above every name.

Jesus is the only one.

That's gonna do what Jesus comes to do. And what

he's doing is he's even taking the heroes of the

Jewish faith and going y'all lost it. If you think

these people are perfect, and he says, the birth of

Jesus is about to separate him from any man that

has ever been birthed in history. And he starts naming

anyone's hero, and he starts throwing their laundry out and going,

as much as we love them, don't forget their human

don't forget they're falling. Don't forget they make mistakes. Don't

elevate these men, and don't elevate these women to the

place that only God needs to be elevated at. And

it's a reminder in Matthew chapter one, whoever your hero is,

even they will bow their need to Jesus, even them

in the presence of Christ, they themselves will fall on

their knees. There is no one who is above him.

And that's what happens. David sin deeply, but repented deeply.

And it's a picture that though God did not forget

about David's past, it was forgiven. And when he shows

us that David was gifted but fall in, but David

was still used, and it shim shows you and I

that there may be times that we fall into sin,

there may be times that you fall into temptation. But

the thing is the difference between a person who lives

in their sin and repents is the person who rectifies,

who looks at what they've done and say, Lord, would

you cleanse me?

Because when David was checked, he wrote Psalms.

Fifty one, and it was the apology letter to God,

to say, Lord, I repent to my sins.

I'm so sorry. What I did was so wrong.

And it gives us this picture of what happens is

is these people are not perfect. And then the last

person that has shared tonight that we'll share with today

is that we see that we have hope through every generation.

And Tamar is mentioned within this passage. Tamar is mentioned

who was the daughter in law to a man by

the name of Judah, and this whole family was jacked up.

All these men were messed up, These men were selfish,

these men were sinful.

And Tamar gets thrown.

Into the marriage union with these individuals, and all of

a sudden, without her choice, without her asking, she gets

married into like the worst guys that have ever been, unrighteous, unholy, unloving, broken, promises,

all these things. And then here's Tamar just sitting there

and just getting passed from guy to god guy and

Tamar's first husband.

He dies because he was a wicked man.

And then what happens, according to the levitical law is

that the next of kin brother has to marry uh

marries the wife and brings her into the family, or

else she wouldn't survive, she would die back then you know,

you had to be married to a man that if

you if you're at that age, it just the family

needs to take care of the next of kin. And

so she marries him, and then what he does is

he's using her, he's sleeping with her, but not starting

a family with her. And so then God goes, yeah,

I'm gonna kill him too. And then the third son, Judah, goes, yeah, yeah,

I'm not gonna let you marry that one because I

don't want him to die too. So she basically goes, so,

then you're gonna bring me into the family, and then

you're gonna marry me to Judah, and he's like, and

what happens is you have four men who don't know

how to lead, four men who don't know how to love,

four men who are selfish, and then you have a

person that's here that's like, I'm gonna ask to be

here and then eventually she gives birth and it becomes

part of the line of Jesus. And what Matthew is

pointing out is he's pointing out that not only were

the men in her life imperfect and God used them

and God still brought about Jesus, but also this woman

who was just sitting here, going what am I doing here?

God had a plan for her and was able to

redeem her story. And so there are our own times

in our own life that you're like, I didn't I

don't deserve to be here, I don't belong here, and

we see that through the thread. God's like, but I

could still give you purpose. I could still have a

plan over your life. I can still use you like

I did with Tamar. Genesis thirty eight, verse twenty six.

As we begin to close, says, then Judah identified them

and said, speaking of Tamar, she is more righteous than I,

since I did not give her to my son Sheila,

and he did not know her. Again, you see, there

are sometimes you and I will be born into families

with patterns that we didn't choose. Cycles You and I

never asked for dysfunction that we inherited. Tamar represents every

person who says, I did not ask for this family story,

but I'm stuck in it.

And in that mention what happens.

Genesis thirty eight is one of the most complicated yet

painful chapters in scripture. Loss in justice, family dysfunction, generational sin.

Yet Matthew includes Tamar by name. Why because God never

cuts out a name when the story gets messy. God

doesn't see your mess and go, ah, let's get them

off stage as quick as possible. Let's get their family

out of here as quick as possible. He's patient, He's kind,

God's lung suffering. God is full of justice, God is

full of mercy. And in the story of Tamar, do

we not even do we not just see that God

is just and God is merciful and God is kind.

But God had taken care of Tamar and t.

Wright says the Genealogy of Jesus review that God works

his planned through real families, with real failures and real redemption.

And when you and.

I are called to read this story, we're not called

to just be notified who Jesus's family line is. We're

called to look at it and go, Yeah, there's my dad,

there's my great grandma.

There's me.

And then you get to the end and boom, it says,

and here's Jesus, the Messiah who redeems. And you're called

to go, wow with my family and their brokenness and

my own brokenness. If God will use that family, then

God can do something with my life. If God can

redeem that family, then God can redeem you, and God

can do something in your life. You are meant to

see not only what God's history of stories was shown,

but you're called to identify and say, there's my family,

there's my husband, there's my wife, there's we're right there. Wow.

But God he can redeem that, He can rescue that.

You see, Hope is not for one generation. Hope is

for every generation. That's what's shown in this. Hope is

for every line. Hope is for every broken story, and

hope is for every person who thanks God forgot them.

And when you get the end of verse seventeen, it

shows and hope has a name.

His name is Jesus.

And the beauty of that moment's like, hey, then he's mine,

I'm his. If that Jesus come and he has come

to redeem me and save me, and he has been

inherited and he's the Messiah, He's mine and for all

of you. Today, I'm gonna pray, and I'm gonna make

an invitation. I'm gonna pass it to our campus pastors.

But then when we close, I'm making an invitation that

if you don't know this Jesus who is here to

give you hope today and any brokenness you've ever experienced,

this moment Today is the day that you can call

upon the name of Jesus. Lord, we thank you for

this message today. Father, pray it speaks to us. We

thank you for hope today. Lord, in Jesus's name, Amen,

as you're here today, We're gonna leave here right now

in a matter of moments, beause I shared today. I

don't know your story, I don't know your past. I

don't even know where you're at today. But what I

do know is that God knows. What we read in

Matthew chapter one is none of the things of those

families caught God by surprise, and God never detourd those

individuals stories because of their brokenness. But what we do

see is for many of those individuals, not all of them,

but for many of those individuals, we see either where

their story starts and we see in the middle. But

as you would continue to read about many of these

individuals life stories, you'll see that all of them came

to a point in time where they fully surrendered to God.

And what God is showing is that.

There are a lot of individuals who once were a

lot of ex somethings, but they're now something else. If

you read to Hebrews and other passages, you learn about

the heroes of the faith.

Many of the people that I name today.

They are listed as heroes of faith, not because they

live perfect lives, but they all got to a point

in their life where they surrendered to a holy God

that loves them. They all got to a point where

they said, Lord, I am yours brokenness and all. And

God does not identify with a person who pursues perfection.

He identifies with a person who can fall broken on

their knees and cry to a God that loves them,

who can recognize that the only one that can save

them and redeem them is the only one who does

not have a personal broken life, and that's Jesus. He's

the only one who has lived completely holy, completely righteous.

He's the only one who is fully God and fully man.

You see, in order to be seen as redeemed and saved,

according to the Bible, you need two things.

You need a priest present and you need a king present.

The priest says that you're holy, the king welcomes you

into his kingdom. And the Bible says that Jesus is

both king and priest. We only learned about David's line,

which was the kingly, or Joseph's line which adopted Jesus,

which is David's line. But then if you learn about

Mary's lines, she came from priests.

She came from Levites. So as he was born into

this family.

Not only is Jesus fully God and fully man, he

comes from two family trees, one family tree of kings

and one family tree of peace priests.

He's the only one. And so what happens is when

you and I.

Go before God and we see Jesus sitting at the

right hand, you have Jesus the priest who says they

are made righteous because of what I've done in their life.

And then Jesus now switches the other hat and he

becomes king, and he says, and I can also say

that you're welcomed into my Kingdom, Jesus is the only

one who can offer both. And so if you're here

today and you're saying, I want to be part of

the kingdom of God, I want to have a relationship

with God. The only one who has the authority on

heaven and on earth to call you righteous, to call

you redeemed, to call you holy, is Jesus Christ. And

the Bible says in Romans chapter ten, verse nine to ten,

if anyone would confess with their mouth that Jesus is

Lord and believe that he rose from the dead, because

that's victory over your sin, says you will be saved.

So it's a work of faith. You don't have to

pay for it. You don't have to pray for it,

you don't have to work for it. All you have

to do is have a moment in your heart where

you say, God, I'm taking an act of faith and saying, Jesus,

I know what you did, and I recognize that you're

my savior. I recognize your death baral resurrection from my life. So,

if you're here today and you're ready to make that decision,

would you bow your head and close your eyes together

Wherever you're at some of y'all are going to be

saying this for the first time or the last time,

and by no means this prayer is not the thing

that saves you.

The Holy Spirit's already at work in your heart.

When we say this prayer, all we're doing is affirming

what God has already done right now. So would you

say this today, Dear Lord Jesus, in this moment, I

confess you as Lord and Savior. Believe my heart that

you died on the cross and you rose from the grave.

From this day forward, I turn from my sins, and

I commit to fully pursue you for the rest of

my days in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, I'm gonna count

real quick to the count of three. If you said

that prayer today for the first time or the last time,

I'm gonna ask on the counter of three that you

raise your hand. Not because we want to identify you

in any way, but the Bible says if one person

gives their life to Jesus, that all.

Of Heaven rejoices.

And unfortunately, right now we don't have Heaven's perspective. But

when you raise your hand, we will know what's going

on in heaven and we'll be able to celebrate with

you and welcome you to the family. So, if you

gave your life to Christ today, would you boldly raise

your hand in the air so we can celebrate with you.

One two, one, two three raise your hand about man,

I see those hands, one two, three, four, five, six, seven, Hey, DoD, come, Drac,

come on church. We can celebrate and welcome to the family.

And God, Hey, we're so excited for you. It's the

greatest decision that you'll ever make in your life. And

I fully believe it because I've made that decision and

it has been the greatest decision I've ever made. If

you're here today and you gave your life to Christ,

when you go to any of our exits, you'll see

our family journey kiosks. And we have a gift for you,

which is a book that we recently wrote, and this

is our gift to you for saying yes to Jesus.

We want to help you with your next ninety days

of faith. And this is a great book that's only

forty eight pages, but it's something that I believe is

going to help you with your walk in faith. If

for some reason you would like access to this book,

but you didn't give your life to Jesus Christ, then

out at our bookstore.

We sell these for costs. You would help us because every.

Book costs something, and so we want to put those

these in the hands of individuals who have chosen to

follow Jesus today as a gift from here our family

here at Patrio. Additionally, if there's any people in this

room that needs any prayer at all, our elders, deacons

and prayer team will be up here at the front.

If you got something coming up, the holidays are hard,

or you just need someone to come in agree with

you in prayer, then our team what Pierre would love

to see you and pray for you. Don't forget this Wednesday,

we got our family movie night, so come in whatever

festive attire you want to, but it's gonna be a

great man. I love that there are a lot of

Christian production companies that are not making incredible Christian films,

from animated films to actual films where you know, on

a Christmas we can share a Christmas Troop Jesus themed

movie together. So that's gonna be really exciting and we

will meet back here as well in the next weekend.

We got some great Christmas services that begin. I'm gonna

pray for us and bless us out. I'll be over

here at the audio booth if you like to meet

me and say hello.

I'm sure love to meet you.

If it's your first time, or you've been coming and

we've never got a chance to say hello, I'll be

over there if you like to say hello.

But let me pray for us and bless us out.

Lord. We thank you for the word today, Father God.

We thank you Lord that you have shown through the

first chapter of the first Book of the New Testament,

that you take in perfect people, and you have redemption,

You have mercy, you have grace through any broken pieces.

So to God God today, I pray as we leave

this place, Lord, may you continue to be the glue

that holds us together. Father God, may you continue to

be the one that leads us. I pray blessing every

every person in this room. Lord, anoint their thoughts, anoint

their hands, anoint their hearts today in Jesus name. Amen

and Amen, God, bless your family. We'll see on Wednesday

or next Wednesday.