Genealogy

This morning's text is Exodus chapter 6, verses 14 through 30.

Exodus 6:14–30

These are the heads of their father's houses, the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel.

Hanach, Palu, Hezron, and Carmi, these are the clans of Reuben.

The sons of Simeon, Jemuel, Jamine, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman, these are the clans of Simeon.

These are the names of the sons of Levi, according to their generations.

Gershin, Kohath, and Merari, the years of the life of Levi being 137 years.

The sons of Gershin, Libni, and Shimeh, by their clans.

The son of Kohath, Amram, Ishar, Hebron, and Uziel, the years of the life of Kohath being 133 years.

The sons of Merari, Mali, and Mushi, these are the clans of the Levites according to their generations.

Amram took as his wife Jochebed, his father's sister, and she bore him Aaron and Moses, the years of the life of Amram being 137 years.

The sons of Isar, Korah, Nepheg, and Zikri, the sons of Usiel, Mishel, Elzephan, and Sithri.

Aaron took as his wife Elishaba, the daughter of Aminadab, and the sister of Nashon, and she bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.

The sons of Korah, Asir, Elkanah, and Abiesoph.

These are the clans of the Korahites.

Eleazar, Aaron's son, took as his wife one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phineas.

These are the heads of the father's houses of the Levites by their clans.

These are the Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts.

It was they who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt, this Moses and this Aaron.

On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, I am the Lord.

Tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, all that I say to you.

But Moses said to the Lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips.

How will Pharaoh listen to me?

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Happy Mother's Day.

Yeah.

Woo! Mothers.

Yeah.

Congratulations to you mothers out there.

We give you one day for giving us, what is it?

What was it that you guys gave us?

Existence, yes, that's right.

Life itself.

Yeah, by suffering and toil.

Yeah, it's being a mother is completely absurd what it is that you mothers do.

So we're incredibly grateful for you.

And um yeah.

Here uh we have flowers for you today.

So if you're a mother, come grab a flower at the end of the service.

And then we'll call it even.

All right, so uh I picked a text that I thought would just be encouraging for our mothers.

Um uh that we could just celebrate and rejoice together.

Um, although it's not totally unrelated because it's a genealogy, and that's about you know generations, and um mothers are where are where people come from.

Um so it's uh it's uh it's relevant.

But just just tangentially, I won't I won't oversell it.

So let's pray and we'll move into our text for the day.

Holy Father, we thank you for your continuing our generations.

Lord, we thank you that in the garden, when our first mother Eve and our first father Adam sinned together, before they had yet had any children, and that the wages of sin were death, that you saw fit to bear patiently with a sinful humanity, that way you might, through these generations, passing down the original sin, you might see this as still a good means, worth preserving, so that through these generations you might give us the promise of salvation leading to Christ.

Lord, we praise you for your patience and kindness towards us.

A patience and kindness that we experience even this morning, as you continue to bear with us, and one that we hold in an absolute hope of the victory of Christ that has set us free from sin.

And by holding fast to him, we look forward to glory with you, Lord, because of your patience and forbearance.

Lord, we praise you for that and we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So you're happily reading through your Bible, things are going well.

In the beginnings are happening, narratives are flowing.

Maybe you make it all the way to Exodus and you think things are going pretty good.

I understand what's going on here.

We've got a story of Moses, the baby in the basket.

I've seen movies like this, and where we just had our first interaction with Pharaoh, and it didn't go so well, but we know that the plagues are coming, and then bam, there's a genealogy.

And so you start reading quickly.

That way you can gain up enough momentum to skip right over it.

And then when you skip right over it, you find that you're not you're not lost in the narrative.

You're still basically tracking along with the narrative.

And so later, when the next genealogy arrives, you think, ah, remember last time when I skipped right over it and nothing happened.

And so we develop this practice of, okay, these are the parts of skip scripture that we just kind of glance over and skip.

And uh it's completely understandable because it feels very in the weeds and it feels uh like why is this here?

And not just why is it in the Bible in general, but particularly like why is it in chapter six of the Exodus?

Why right after we have this interaction with Pharaoh, where Moses goes before Pharaoh and the slavery becomes worse for the Israelites after that first interaction?

And then Moses complains to God, and then God meets his complaint.

Why here do we get a genealogy of Moses and Aaron and the strangeness of their family and all the peculiarities of this genealogy?

Why is it here?

Why are they in the Bible in the first place?

Well, when you're reading probably any text, but especially an ancient text, and you happen upon something that's just sort of idiosyncratic and strange, it's helpful to ask the question, why was this so important to these people?

Because it's likely that you're discovering something that is important.

We've just forgotten how to recognize it.

We've forgotten how to see the importance of something that was deeply held by the original writer and by the original hearing audience.

But in our culture, it's it's it we've learned to filter it out as something that's not important to us or not important to really getting it.

And so this is teaching us partly just to how to read the Bible this morning, because what we're seeing is that we often think that we just know what's important and we know the details that matter, but really we have to be taught those things.

And the scripture teaches us that by giving us emphasis on the things that matter.

And you can't read the Bible and then consider genealogy doesn't matter.

Genealogy is obviously very important in scripture.

So we're gonna look at this text today and we're going to start with this question: why are genealogies so common and important in scripture?

Well, genealogies are hard to understand for us modern people, I think in particular.

And that's because we don't think of ourselves as having come from somewhere, not our true selves.

We don't think of ourselves as being in the context of a story that has been developing.

We rather think of ourselves as having a story inside of us that the context of our story could perhaps threaten.

And there's a story that's inside of us that is the true story, that that's the one that needs to be told.

And so our context, our genealogies, uh, the places that we've come from are merely something to be overcome.

You know, Ariel knew that she was destined to be a human princess with the with more stuff.

I don't know what the moral of that story is.

Give up your voice, get the stuff, get the guy.

I guess, yeah, something like that.

So uh it didn't matter what King Trident thought.

You know, or he could come up to her and be like, look, I know these who's it's what's it's thing emajigs, are very compelling to you.

But we've got a kingdom down here.

Uh and it you're born into this princess, and it's your responsibility to reign here.

Uh the she would break out in song, and the fish would accompany her, and King Trident walks away.

Sad.

And of course by walks away I mean swims.

And uh so this kind of shows to us what it what we think of genealogies and just where they where they take place in our own in our own sort of intuitions.

It's it's not where Moses' family of origin is not relevant to who Moses is.

Let's get to the Moses parts of the story.

That's our intuition.

But the intuition of the writer is if you're gonna know Moses, then you have to know the context that he's in.

You have to, if you're gonna understand the story as it's unfolding now, you've got to zoom out and understand this story.

And we're participating that in in a sort of a a new way, I think, in our culture.

But like it when I say the phrase family of origin, or if somebody, if you're sitting at a coffee shop and you hear the people next to you discussing their family of origin, which I sit in a lot of coffee shops, and trust me, it's trending.

The family, and it'll be more specific.

It's not their family of origin.

It's their ex's family of origin.

That's the critical, uh, that's because that provides the because we're diagnosing each other.

We're here to diagnose one another.

That's I don't know if you've been to a coffee shop lately, but the purpose of getting coffee with a friend is to psychologically diagnose the people that are not there.

But if I say family of origin, immediately what's coming up is that that thing which corrupted this pure you.

That's the that's the frame that that that it is you know popularly used in.

There was this pure you that came into the world, but it had a family of origin.

And it because of your family of origin, it had you have all of these faults and all of these uh uh pathologies and um negative dispositions.

And if you what you need to do is you need to overcome, differentiate from your family of origin, remove yourself from that context, and then you'll be liberated and you'll be free.

And so we have a new sort of interest in our families of origin, but is it it's an interest of resentment.

And you can see how those are kind of the same thing.

It's it our it's hard for us moderns to look at a genealogy and think, okay, this is relevant to the story that's unfolding.

If it is relevant, it's only relevant insofar as it is something to be overcome.

So when we encounter a genealogy in scripture, our our just intuition is to think that this is either meaningless or it's negative.

But genealogies will see they are central to the biblical narrative.

And they're central in a way that cannot be ignored, but it also can't be written off so easily as something that's just negative.

You'll see in scripture, we're uh our our tendency is we're always wanting to collapse something into like this was bad or this was good, this is a good thing or this is a bad thing.

But you'll see that the way scripture handles genealogies is much more complete than that.

And it teaches us how to be people who have context, who have families, families that are corrupted by sin.

And they're also the they are the place where the story of redemption happens.

And so there's an honesty that scripture presents their genealogies with, one which is grounded, and you can understand why our intuition would be these are negative things.

We'll we'll look into that in just a moment.

But there's also this unshakable hope as scriptures present their genealogy.

This story, amidst all its corruption, that I could trace through the names of these individuals, has not been stopped.

It continues towards an unthinkable hope.

The story of Scripture is a genealogical story, and this takes place right in the garden, right after the first sin of Adam and Eve in the garden.

And the genealogy becomes the place of hope in Scripture.

When God is cursing Adam and Eve and the serpent, the first one that he curses is the serpent, and in the midst of the curse of the serpent, he gives a generational promise.

It sounds like this in Genesis 3.15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

There's this, this is referred to as the proto-uangelion, the first gospel.

This is the seed form of the gospel, and it takes place in the midst of the curses in the garden.

Right away, God plants this seed of hope.

And the promise is that serpent who now rules over you by your obedience to him will be crushed.

Now, where are you to look for the one who will crush the serpent?

It is from the offspring of the woman.

And so the rest of Genesis becomes this story of tracing the offspring of the woman, looking to see who will be the one who will set us free by crushing the head of the serpent.

In that first generation, it doesn't go well.

She gives birth first to Abel and then to Cain, and then Cain kills Abel.

So the righteous one is killed.

So the one who was the hope of the line is now gone, and we've got the another cursed brother, just like his father Adam.

But then Eve is given Seth.

And she looks towards Seth and says, The Lord has provided me another son.

And the Eve becomes the pattern of the church throughout the rest of Scripture.

She is the first mother to look towards the Son as the hope of redemption.

And that's what the church is now.

We are the ones who look towards the Son for our hope of redemption.

And then Genesis is like a series of close calls.

I like to describe Genesis like an action movie, where it's a series of close calls with the line, with the promised line.

Because just as it happened with Cain and Abel, where is this line going to come from?

She's given Seth.

The line of Seth gets corrupted, but then it's preserved.

But then Noah, that was close.

And then Abraham is given the promise that it is from his line that the world will be blessed.

It is from his line that this promise will continue.

But Abraham and Sarah are too old to conceive, and they're nearing death, and they wait, and there's still no son, and they wait, and there's still no son, they wait, and then finally they conceive and have a son.

That was close.

And then this son, who is the promised one, is told by God, Abraham, God commands Abraham to sacrifice that promised son, Isaac, to him on the top of the mountain.

And Abraham has the knife lifted above and then says, Stop, I'll provide the sacrifice.

And we think, phew, that was close because of the line would have been ended there.

And so it's this series of close calls where God is showing us, He's drawing to our attention, this line, as in everything else that's been corrupted by sin in the world, tends towards destruction and tends towards disappearing.

Generations in a sin-corrupted world with a promise of death should be impossible.

But notice I keep preserving this one.

I keep showing grace to this line.

And so we see that from our first parents comes this corruption of sin.

We inherit original sin.

We sung it this morning.

What a lyric to sing on Mother's Day.

The sin in which my mother bore me.

And then I kind of felt like, I don't know if we should sing that on Mother's Day.

And then we repeat it, in which my mother bore me.

Thanks for coming, Mom.

Thanks for coming to church.

We all got it, yeah, we all came with you this morning because we know this is important to you.

In which you bore me, the sin in which you bore me.

But you can see the complete picture then that we have of genealogies.

It's why, like, why is it so intuitive that when you're taught, like, hey, have you ever considered that your family of origin is responsible for some of your pathological tendencies?

And then we're like, wow, this seems very true when we when we examine our lives like that.

And then we all of a sudden the sins of our parents just become incredibly salient.

And we're we as we're going through our own lives, we're like, ah, this is because of my dad.

Now we have a context.

Well, well, why is that salient?

Why is that so intuitive to us?

Because it is.

Your first parents are sinners.

And you you don't, it's not that you came from anywhere else.

You are a part of this story.

You are in Adam.

So what is the sin that we are culpable for?

The sin of Adam.

Because we this is hard for us to grasp.

But you aren't just individual creations.

You are part of the story of humanity.

And so that means Adam's sin is yours.

And so are all of your actual sins.

They're both real and they both need to be dealt with.

And so, of course, of course, an idea like that would be really sticky, and we see the helpfulness of it and the reality of it.

But the genealogy in Scripture is not the place of resentment.

It's the place of hope.

It's the place where we see this story keeps going on, and God has not abandoned it.

God continues in it, and he has this incredible plan to enter the genealogies of Scripture and become a new Adam.

A new atom that we're grafted into.

Where we say, Who is who is the one that we are in?

In now.

We are in Christ, no longer slaves to the tyranny of that original sin, but set free by a new Adam who came in and reset the family tree.

So genealogies, then you can see are utterly, they are central to the biblical story.

They are the place where we see our sin passed down, but it is in that very place that Christ enters to accomplish his redemption.

We are mapping the flesh, which the creator of the universe will take upon himself to accomplish our redemption.

You are that flesh.

Jesus must take it on in order for you to be redeemed.

Whatever was not assumed by Christ is not redeemed by Christ.

He assumed the fullness of our humanity.

And that means he assumed our context as people in a lineage so that the whole story might be redeemed.

So let's look at this particular genealogy.

Why is this one in Exodus 6 at this place?

And as we look through it, we're going to see six reasons.

I don't normally preach like this, like here's six points, because who can remember that?

You can't, you won't.

But we'll get an impression of what genealogies are for.

And we'll start to get a sense of how how this how the genealogy is placed here so that we might see the fullness of the story that Moses and Aaron are participating in.

One that we might have gotten lost in if we just were kept tracking through Exodus.

But now God is placing this here.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'll stop so that I only preach this once to you.

Happy Mother's Day.

These are the heads of their fathers' houses.

This is the way the genealogy begins.

With no segue, by the way.

These are the heads of their father's houses, the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel.

Hanok, Palu, Hezron, and Karmai.

These are the clans of Reuben.

The sons of Simeon.

The son of a Canaanite woman.

These are the clans of Simeon.

Okay.

I just wanted to get a flavor for what it sounds like, what the genealogy sounds like.

We're going to look at these six things that we can glean from this genealogy.

First of all, in this genealogy, we see God's faithfulness to his promise.

We see God's faithfulness to save.

This genealogy is a word-for-word reprint of the genealogy which is given to us in Genesis chapter 46.

Genesis 46 · chapter mention

And that genealogy is an accounting of who went down to Egypt.

Who were the Israelites that first went down to Egypt?

The answer to that question is found in Genesis 46.

Now that's the last major genealogy that we've encountered in the Pentateuch.

It was Genesis 46.

So the last time we saw a genealogy is the people who are going down to Egypt.

Since then, they've been in Egypt.

Now, this time, right before the plague starts, right before the hands of Pharaoh start getting pride one by one off of the Israelites, we are given another genealogy.

That's these same people.

The only difference is the addition of this phrase, which is these are the clans of, which is to show that it's not just it's not just Reuben anymore.

His three sons are now clans.

You know, they've gotten bigger.

So these are the clans of those people.

It's not just them as individuals anymore, but God has not forgotten those individuals.

These are the very people who he's bringing out.

So when we see that symmetry, we what we're seeing is God promised that he would bring these people out of Egypt.

And he gave them that promise when he sent them down.

And so here, at this moment in the text, right before they're about to be drawn out, God gives us the same genealogy to say, I remembered.

My promise was sure.

Why is it that these people are being brought up out of Egypt?

Because this is the same story.

This is still my story of redeeming these people.

So we see God's faithfulness in the position and the symmetry of this genealogy.

Secondly, this genealogy positions Moses and Aaron within the story of the Israelites.

Now, Moses, throughout the whole course of Exodus so far, has been removed from and rejected from and rejected by the people of Israel.

He's been living in Gersham.

He has been separated from his, to borrow a phrase, family of origin.

I'm sure that phrase has been around for like 30 years, but I'm right to say it's it's trending, right?

Okay.

Now, whenever anybody processes that way in our church, they're going to have this like self-consciousness of should I be doing this?

Relax, everybody, relax.

You don't have to.

I just want it to be more complete.

That's what we're doing.

Moses is rejected by the people.

And he's been positioned in a way where he's not really a part of the story of Israel.

And so the reader, we wouldn't think this.

We would think, yeah, this great man has come in to accomplish salvation and to accomplish, to accomplish the rescue of this people.

And it doesn't really matter where he came from.

We don't need to see that position in the story.

But an ancient reader would be thinking, who is Moses?

Why is he relevant to this story that's going on?

What gives him legitimacy to be doing this?

And they they would think who he is in the genealogical story is what gives him legitimacy to be doing this.

And so that needs to be accomplished for the ancient reader.

And so that's the second reason that we see this.

And the genealogy concludes with in verse 26 these are the Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts.

Like this story that's been happening, and the Moses and Aaron, who are genealogically a part of this story, even though Moses, the hero of our story, in his own experience, has barely touched it.

In his own experience, he was adopted away at three months old, and then exiled into another land where he spent most of his life.

Even though his own story has barely touched the Israelite story.

It's just glanced off.

He is a part of this story.

And so the scripture zooms out to show us that in the narrative.

Third, the story brings into focus the prominence of the Levites.

I think that needs no further explanation.

I'm kidding.

Definitely does.

So the reason that it's important that this brings the prominence of the Levites to the forefront is because the story of Exodus is not just a story of getting out of Israel.

That's the story up until about chapter 18.

And then from 19 till the end of the book, it is about establishing right worship for the people of Israel before God.

And there's a whole other half of the book that is all about establishing the right worship of the true God by the people of Israel.

And the way that that is done is by the construction of the tabernacle, this place where the people of God will meet, and the establishing of the priesthood.

And the priesthood is established through the Levites.

It is the Levites, the people who are descended from Levi, one of the twelve sons of Israel.

The ones who are descended from Levi are the ones who are chosen by God to be the priests.

So they are the ones who stand between the people and God as intercessors to attend to and provide for the right worship of God.

They are the ones who manage the tabernacle, who handle the offerings, who address skin diseases and matters of holiness and impurity.

The Levites are the ones who will do that.

And this genealogy is almost exactly a reprint of the genealogy in chapter 46.

The only difference is that the genealogy in Genesis 46 continues on to include all the 12 sons of Israel.

This one goes through Reuben, through Simeon, and then to Levi, and then it stops.

So the emphasis is completely on Levi.

And it shows us that Levi is the one from whom Moses and Aaron descend.

Which shows us, as we know the whole story, that they are the priests.

They are the ones who will be the intercessors for the people of God, between God and his people.

And so this is calling us to the right worship of God in the genealogy of the Levites.

And that is, so the text is saying, see the intercessors who are to come, they are Levites.

And that's what's headed this way.

So who are Moses and Aaron?

They are the ones who are who are destined to do this because they are Levites.

And there's a sense in which Moses and Aaron, who are brothers, by the way, Aaron is three years older than Moses.

They are very Levites.

In Exodus 6.20, it says, Amram took as his wife Jochebed, his father's sister.

Yeah, you read that right.

And she bore him Aaron and Moses, the years of the life of Amram being 137 years, which is the same lifespan that Levi had.

It's like the genealogy is telling us there's a restart here.

This is like a new Levi.

So that means technically that Aaron and to Aaron and Moses, Levi is both their grandfather and their great-grandfather.

So quit complaining about your complex family tree.

So that means that if somebody were to ask Moses and Aaron, like, are you guys Levites?

They could say, very.

We are very Levites.

So we are brought to the fore, this uh understanding of the prominence of the Levites.

So that this genealogy is placing all of these things, it's laying all of these seeds for how the story will unfold.

Fourth, this genealogy is about firstborn sons.

Reuben is the firstborn son of Israel.

But he is passed over.

He is not given the promise because of his sinfulness towards his father.

Simeon and Levi are the two sons that follow, the second and thirdborn sons of Israel.

Simeon and Levi together are cursed by Israel at the end of Genesis because of their violence towards the people of Shechem and their sin against the people of Shechem.

And so there's this sort of passing over the two firstborn sons to end up with Levi, who is not righteous in the story so far, but who is chosen by God to be the son who will represent the people of God before him in the temple worship.

Now there's an interplay of sonship throughout the text because we remember that Pharaoh began by trying to kill the firstborn sons of Israel, to kill all the sons, the newborn sons of the Israelites.

That was his first move to try and destroy the nation of Israel as he was threatened by their prosperity.

He had the sons thrown into the Nile River.

But God, when he's calling Moses, he says, Israel is my son, and I will rescue him.

So there's this interplay where Pharaoh is trying to kill God's son.

And God says, I will rescue him.

And we are shown here in this interplay of sonship what the mechanism of salvation will be for the Israelites.

The mechanism of salvation will be the judgment on all the firstborn sons, unless they are spared by the blood of the Lamb.

How is it that they will leave at the Passover?

What is it that will finally break free Pharaoh's hand so that the people of Israel will be set free and will actually be driven out by Pharaoh?

It is the final plague, the Passover, where God kills all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians and spares the firstborn sons of the Israelites.

So we're seeing here in the laying out of this firstborn son sort of conceit in the text that there is a demonstration to us of how it is that God will rescue the people of Israel.

It is a rescue through judgment.

That is how he does it.

God saves through judgment.

And so the firstborn sons are the ones who will bear that throughout this story, as they have from the very beginning.

Now, this sort of raises a further question, which matters for the importance of the Levites, which we saw that this genealogy is also establishing.

God is not a respecter of persons.

It is not that the Egyptians are killed because of their unrighteousness, and the Israelites are spared because of their righteousness.

God lays this out, the firstborn sons belong to me, is what God says to these nations.

Your firstborn sons belong to me.

And the way that the sons of the Israelites are spared during the Passover is substitutionary atonement.

God kill he instructs them, kill this lamb, and when I see the blood of the lamb, I will count that as the death of your sons, and so your sons will be spared.

Both are judged, but one group of people is atoned for.

So as the worship continues for the people of God, there is this question, which is the firstborn sons will now always belong to God.

So will we be perpetually offering up our firstborn sons to the Lord?

Other ancient Near Eastern religions had done that.

Moloch required the offering of your children in order to bless you.

Will this offering be required for the God of Israel?

Well, when God brings them out of Egypt and he is establishing their patterns of worship in the wilderness, God accomplishes his sparing the rest of Israel by taking for himself firstborn sons.

He says this in Numbers chapter 3, verses 44 through 45.

Numbers 3:44–45

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Take the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle.

The Levites shall be mine.

I am the Lord.

And so the Levites are taken in place of all the firstborn sons of the rest of Israel.

And he says, These will be like my sons.

And that means that unlike the rest of the tribes, they don't inherit any land.

They don't have a plot of land that's given to them.

They have to exist on just the offerings that are given at the temple.

They have no inheritance.

Their whole work is just the worship in the temple.

And so they are set apart to be intercessors, like the Son, who is set apart to be intercessors for the people of Israel.

And by this group being set apart as the Son, the rest of them will be spared.

So you see how this pattern is being established throughout the scripture, that this is the pattern of salvation that God works.

There is a judgment that is coming, but the judgment is indiscriminate unless you take refuge under the Son who has been given.

Now, why would that pattern be there?

Because this is the pattern that God has established in the garden during the curse.

I have put enmity between you and the woman, and her offspring will crush Satan.

And so the hope has always been that there is a son who will come from the seed of the woman.

And when we look towards the sun, we will be spared from the sin that is in us.

So why does this pattern shown?

It feels almost arbitrary when we read it in Exodus.

Killing the sons, these sons are being spared.

Why is it the uh Levites that are just kind of chosen as sons?

So that spares the rest of the Israelites, because they're the intercessors and the priests.

This is the whole story.

It's the whole story from the very beginning.

Who's going to be the righteous son who will crush the serpent and atone for our sins?

Because that is the only hope of humanity.

Because we aren't just individuals that spring from the ground like orcs.

We're part of a story with a context.

I didn't mean that as a joke.

We're part of a story.

I was really, you know, you felt the energy.

We're part of a story with a context, and that context is we are in this humanity.

You came from nowhere other than your parents.

And so that means you inherited this sin, and judgment is coming, and God is not a respecter of persons.

So how is it that you might be saved?

Look towards the Son.

Who will restart humanity?

He will be a new Adam.

He can atone perfectly for us if we are in him.

So the setting apart of the Levites is the fourth important thing in this genealogy.

Fifthly, this is kind of a gimme.

These are real people.

Real people.

They had days that they were born, days that they died, parents and generations.

They had controversies and strangeness in their lives.

It's important for us modern people to just visit this fact.

This really happened.

This really happened.

It happened as much as you were born.

You are in this story.

You are the ones who sit under the curse of God by the sin that you have inherited, unless you take refuge under the sun.

This is the story of the world that really happened.

Sixth and finally.

Throughout this genealogy, we are given dates of people dying, not dates, but times.

Levi dies at 137.

Levi's son, Koath, is 133 when he dies.

Koath's son, Amram, which is Moses' father, dies at 137.

Aaron, we find out later, is 83 at the time when this takes place.

You add that together, it's 490 years.

Which you give the overlap of when they would have had their children.

That brings us to about the 430 years to the day that Exodus 12 describes as the Passover takes place 430 years to the day that they entered the land of Egypt.

This is the line of Levi.

This is the Moses and Aaron who are the priests.

They all die.

Their priesthood comes to an end.

They can't be.

They accomplish an exodus, but they die.

They atone insofar as they are able to pass over, but the very people who were passed over are the ones who by their sin are unable to enter the promised land.

Moses himself will not enter the promised land.

And so the question continues in the scripture: who is the Son?

Who is the Son that we can look to that we might be saved?

In Hebrews 7, verses 13 through 16, it says, For the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar.

Hebrews 7:13–16

The one of which these things are spoken, he's talking about priestly things, is not from the tribe of Levi.

Thank you.

But he is from another tribe from which no one has ever served at the altar.

That's strange.

For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah.

And in connection with that tribe, Moses said nothing about priests.

How strange.

Like we just remember just earlier in the sermon, just a couple moments ago, when I was talking about how the Levites were the sons that were set apart.

And by their being set apart, then the rest of Israel was spared and they were able to participate and write worship with the Lord.

Then couldn't you just smell coming?

Jesus is the Levite.

Jesus is Levite, but he's not.

And Hebrews draws particular attention to this.

The one who is the true high priest is from a tribe of which none of these things have been spoken, from a tribe where no one has served at the altar.

This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.

How is it that Christ becomes our true high priest?

It is by the power of an indestructible life.

Now, why do we need a high priest that has the power of an indestructible life?

Because the high priest's job is to take our place, the death that we deserve, so that we might be spared.

So the true high priest must have this power, the power of an indestructible life.

Melchizedek is that mysterious figure, Prince of Righteousness, his name means, who Abraham sees and pays a tithe and offering to.

And this text in Hebrews describes that it is the lesser who blesses the greater, and so Abraham is lesser than Melchizedek, the prince of righteousness.

And in offering to this prince of righteousness, it is as though, since the Levites were in the loins of Abraham, it is as though the Levites themselves paid this offering to this greater high priest who is Melchizedek.

The Levites, the priests of Israel, needed a priest.

The priest of priests, the true prince of righteousness.

This genealogy shows us that that thing that the completeness of the biblical genealogies do, which is they show us the corruptness that is moving through the lines, the incompleteness, the honesty.

The Levites were insufficient.

The Levites were not a sufficient offering as a son, so that we might be atoned for.

But there is a greater son that even they would look to.

Strangely, because God does things perfect in perfect inversions almost all the time, they are from the tribe, Jesus from the tribe of Judah, the younger brother of Levi.

He's just always choosing the younger.

Who is in this pattern, who is the one who is able to stand in completely?

And Hebrews shows us that true son is Christ.

We have him.

We do not look forward as these genealogies do towards that son.

We look back in certainty.

Do you wonder with where you came from, the sin that you've inherited and participated in, could you be spared?

Could the Lord pass over you when he shows his righteous judgment?

The answer is yes, when you stand in the Son who is given.

Jesus Christ, our salvation.

So would you wonder, has he given me a righteousness that is suitable?

Yes.

He has given it not in priests who go and atone for themselves, but he has given it in his perfect son, who took on this flesh, your very flesh, that you might be saved and you might be spared.

You see the certainty and the hope, the rejoicing that we might have.

Christ has come.

The atonement has been accomplished.

We are spared.

The blood that is needed for us to be passed over eternally has been poured out, and we are saved.

The whole story is about this.

From the very beginning.

That's why the Bible is obsessed with genealogies, because it's obsessed with Jesus, who came to save sinners like us.

So we have to see that in the real story, which is the story of people like us, generations.

All right.

Are there any questions today?

Great.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

As we break this bread, we remember that Christ's body was broken for us.

It was broken for us because he was the righteous sacrifice.

He reigns as our high priest, whoever lives and pleads for us, who intercedes for us perpetually at the right hand of the Father.

How is it that he is able to do that as our high priest?

By the power of an indestructible life.

He is not like Adam, who sinned in the garden.

He is the new Adam, who, when he was in the garden, was righteous unto death.

And in his righteousness he gained the power of an indestructible life.

And he offers us this meal to come remember his sacrifice, that by his sacrifice we are spared.

And he took the cup and he said, This is the blood, this is the new covenant in my blood.

The new covenant, not like the old covenant, which is types and shadows, priests who go into the temple and have to sacrifice for themselves that they might be holy enough to enter, and then give sacrifices that are suitable for a time but are not perpetually suitable, and priests who ultimately die so that we lose our intercessors.

But this is the new covenant in his blood, where he reigns by the power of an indestructible life, so that once for all time his sacrifice is effective.

And so that we trust in it and remember it again today.

Why is it that we might righteously stand before the Father, no longer fear death, no longer be plagued by the guilt of sin?

Because the right Son that God promised in the garden has come.

He has given his blood to us.

By him we are saved.

So we drink the wine as he offers us that.

So we welcome all of you who are baptized into his name and who confess Jesus Christ as Lord to come and partake of the elements this morning.

Holy Father, we praise you.

What is man that you are mindful of him, or the Son of Man, that you take thought for him?

And yet, Lord, you took on our flesh.

These stories of our genealogies you entered, that you might take on our death, so that by that death we might find life, an eternal life with you.

Lord, back in the garden, how sensible to have just hit, reset, and start over.

But Lord, you did not let sin have the final word, and you will not let sin have the final word in our lives.

Lord, we praise you for your atoning sacrifice.

Give us faith to trust in it, renew our hearts by it, and let us live in the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

In Jesus' name, Amen.