Matthew 1:1–17

0:00 You know, every year about this time, as the lights begin to twinkle and the garland goes up and the halls begin to be decked, there is one question that always comes into my mind, and that is, where did all these people come from? Have you noticed this? Like every Christmas, it's like a million people who have not driven for the entire year all of a sudden decide that this is the week I'm going to take my car out of the garage and drive.

0:39 The roads are just stuffed. And what makes it worse is that it's clear these people have not driven for the last 11 months because they're terrible at it. They're just terrible. Louisville has, from what I gather, a reputation for having pretty bad drivers anyway. but oh my goodness are Louisville drivers terrible at Christmas but then again I get it I understand why all these people come out it's because this is a special time of year and everybody is super busy at this time of year and everybody is out doing the same thing obviously in the same places and most of it is people getting ready to do something that is really admirable they're getting ready to give that's what they're doing they're out shopping and buying things at this time of year for the you know really the only time during the year they're not buying things for themselves they're buying things for other people and at this time of year we tend to run ourselves ragged in giving we put a lot of energy into giving because that of course is the reason for the

1:48 season? Or is it? And if you think about it, Christmas is really more at its very heart, its very core, in its sort of main meaning. Christmas is really more about receiving, far more than it is about giving. It's about a gift given to us by God, a Savior who would save us from our sins and the joy and the wonder and the awesomeness that come from recognizing and reveling in that gift. When we come here to worship Jesus, we don't rejoice and we don't worship Jesus for what we give to him. We worship him because of what he gives to us.

2:27 We worship him because of what we receive from him. We're going to look this morning and think about all of that. We're going to look today and next Sunday at Matthew's account of the story of Jesus's birth. It's a fascinating story because he starts his book with this list of impossibly hard to pronounce names, which is just not something you or I would do if we were going to sit down and write a book. If you were going to write a story of somebody's life, the very last idea that would come into your mind for chapter one is let's go back a thousand years or longer and let's write down everyone who is a father of a father of a father of a father until we get to the hero of our story.

3:07 That is not how you would start chapter one of your book, and yet Matthew does it. I hope one of the things, though, that you've realized, especially if you've been with us through the series we just did on the first part of Genesis, I hope that one of the things you've realized is that genealogies like this in the Bible, though, as much as we kind of make fun of them and as much as we laugh at them and, oh, why would Matthew do that? They are far from just boring lists of names. These genealogies are here for a reason. And if you look at them carefully, what you start to realize is, oh, this is not just a list of names.

3:40 This list of names is a list of names that's doing something. It's saying something. And that something, once you understand what it is and once you grasp what the author's doing with the list of names, that something is often glorious. Well, that's the case here, too. We saw that kind of thing back in Genesis chapter 5. We saw it in Genesis chapter 10. We saw it in Genesis 11. Lists of names that are doing something, saying something, pushing the story further on in their own way. And that's what's happening. Matthew, here in chapter 1, isn't just tracing the ancestors of Jesus for historical reasons.

4:16 He's saying something with this genealogy. In fact, he's proclaiming something about what God has given us in the coming of Jesus. And it's more profound, I think, than you might have guessed. So, if you've been wondering, yes, we are in fact going to read this genealogy. I am probably going to mispronounce some of the names, but I'm going to do it confidently. and you're not going to question me on it. Are we clear with each other? All right. Let's read Matthew chapter 1, verses 1 to 17.

4:50 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nashon, and Nishan the father of Salmon, it's not salmon, it's not a fish, Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed the father of Jesse and Jesse the father of David, the king. David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah and Solomon the father of Rehoboam and Rehoboam the father of Abijah and Abijah the father of Asaph and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram and Joram the father of Uzziah and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the

5:53 deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eliezer, and Eliezer the father of Methan, and Methan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations.

6:34 All right. Now, there's nothing too difficult about this text. The names are difficult. They're hard to pronounce. But in terms of theological troubles or chronological troubles, there's nothing too hard about this. But Matthew, I think, makes his point in this genealogy pretty hard to miss, especially once you get down to verse 17. Structurally, Matthew tells us in 17, he doesn't leave us to wonder what the structure of this thing is. He lays it out for us there in 17. The genealogy breaks down into three sections of 14 names each, right?

7:05 So the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. So if you look up at verse 2, run all the way down through verse 6, you're going to have 14 generations there. And then from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. It's interesting that he doesn't say from David down to Jeconiah, 14 generations. It's from David, not to a person, but to an event. You get 14 generations, so that would be the second paragraph there, verse 6 down through verse 11. And then he says in 17, from the deportation to Babylon, so again, dating it from not a person, Jeconiah, but dating it from an event, that becomes really important, we'll talk about it later.

7:44 But from the deportation to the Christ, 14 generations, so that would be verse 12 all the way down through verse 16. So with those three sections, you might think of them and you might label them, You can even write this in your Bible. Basically, you have three sections of what might be called patriarchs, kings, and captives. Patriarchs, kings, and captives. And like we've learned, even as we've looked at genealogies in Genesis, the interesting parts of these things, the places where they really speak and where they really drive the story forward and where you can see why the author put this thing in his book in the first place are the places where the general pattern of what's going on is somehow broken.

8:31 You've probably noticed that in Genesis. You have a pattern that's established, right? The way the author says it. He says it again and again and again. Here, it's was the father of this, was the father of that, was the father of this, was the father. That's the pattern. And when that pattern is broken, that's where the genealogy is really speaking. It's where there are anomalies. So at several points in this genealogy, Matthew has written into this list of names anomalies to his normal pattern. And that's where the main meaning of the genealogy shows up.

9:04 So that's what we're going to look at. The main idea of this text that Matthew is trying to get across to us as his readers is this. Jesus is king. He's the long-awaited Messiah that Israel's been waiting on for centuries. Jesus is the king. but he is like no king you have ever heard of before. Jesus is king, but he is like no other king you have ever heard of before. We're going to look at this text this morning in three points. It's not really stepping through it in a sort of ordered fashion, right?

9:38 It's just sort of looking at the whole thing and taking some points from it. But point number one is kind of the point of the whole genealogy. Jesus is king. That's the first thing that I want to try to show you from this list of names. Number two, Jesus is not just king, he is a merciful king. And Matthew makes that point very clearly in his genealogy through the way he breaks the pattern. And finally, number three, Jesus is a just king. So he is king, he is a merciful king, and he is a just king. And I hope, my prayer for you as we go through this genealogy this morning, my hope is that you'll stand in awe of what God has given us in Jesus.

10:15 And my hope is that that awe, if you catch it this morning, if you have just a little bit of awe in what God has given you in Jesus, I hope that will color your entire Christmas season this year. Look, this kind of thing right here may be the most important thing that we can think about today or this week or this month or this year or ever. It may be the most important thing. I know there's a lot pressing on you right now. I know you've got gifts to buy and cookies to make and people coming in for the holiday. There's a ton going on.

10:46 There's a lot pressing on our time and attention. And a whole lot of that is an impulse to give, give, give, give, give, give to our children, give to our neighbors, give to our parents, give to the people we love, give, give, give, give, give. But nobody, friend, nobody, nobody ever found salvation in giving. It just doesn't happen. See, that's kind of the funny irony of Christmas. For all the giving that we do, nobody ever found salvation in doing that kind of thing.

11:20 We know the impulse to just receive, receive, receive is not a good one, right? It's better to give than to receive. So we turn that impulse to receive, receive, receive into give, give, give. And yet when all is said and done, Christmas really is. It is finally about receiving. Simply and humbly receiving God's grace in Jesus Christ. That's what I want to try to show you today. So point number one, Jesus is king.

11:52 We've already said if you're writing a book, you wouldn't start a book like Matthew does with this long list of names. It's just boring, we say. It's boring to read it. I read it faster than I would normally read the scriptures because we just need to get through it and I don't want to lose your attention. So I read it fast and I make little asides and comments. We just think it's boring. But I would say a couple of things about that. Number one, I would just remind many of you that you spent all afternoon and evening last night looking at a list of names and statistics from the UofL-UK game and trying to figure out what went wrong or what went right.

12:26 So lists of names and numbers are not inherently boring. Sometimes they have meaning. You just have to look at them carefully to get it. Second thing is what I've already told you, and that is that I think by the end of this morning, you're going to see that that's exactly the case for Matthew's genealogy. It's not boring. Matthew has a point. He's got something he's doing, and he's not embarrassed by starting his book with his list of names. And that's because once you understand what he's doing, you all of a sudden realize, oh, wow, there's nothing boring about this at all. This thing has layers of meaning that I can get to.

13:00 In fact, for Jewish readers, every single name in this genealogy would have built excitement, especially as the list made its way into the present. And there were historical reasons for that. Why? Well, because what Matthew is doing is making this incredible claim that the throne of Israel, the ancient throne of the nation of Israel, which was once one of the most glorious kingdoms in the world under Solomon, a throne that's been empty by this time for some like 600 years because the people have gone off into exile and they've come back and then they've been conquered and conquered again and conquered again.

13:38 This throne has been empty for 600 years. Matthew is saying with this genealogy that that throne is no longer empty. You've got to understand the emotional weight of what's going on there. You just have to kind of put yourself in their shoes, right? And think about what it would be like. If you're an American patriot, right, think about what it would be like if the presidency of the United States had been empty for several hundred years because the USA had been conquered again and again and again.

14:11 And all of a sudden, there's this lone voice that stands up in the middle of Washington, D.C. and says the first president of the United States was George Washington. And after him was John Adams. And then he says them all, all 46 of them or whatever it is now. And he gets closer and closer to the present. Friend, you're leaning forward on your seat. Because his proclamation at the end of that, and you can feel it rising, is the presidency is no longer vacant. And you'd rejoice at that if you're a patriot of America. Same thing's going on here.

14:42 That's what Matthew's doing. He's taking us from the ancient past through the kings of Israel, through even the deposed kings, the captives, and he's saying at the end of it, it's not empty anymore. There's one who has a right to sit on the throne of David, and he is called Christ, or king. See, for all the ridicule it takes for being boring, I think this genealogy is just endlessly fascinating. It's just got so many layers of meaning. It's 40 some odd names, depending on how you count, begins with Abraham, ends with Jesus, who is called Christ, there at the end of verse 16. It's broken into these three sections of 14 generations each, which you might remember we call patriarchs, kings, and captives. People sometimes get tripped up trying to count the 14 generations. But the trick, at least one of them, is that unlike the way we tend to count generations, you have to count the names, not the spaces in between the names, right? We tend

15:42 to count the spaces in between. You can't do that. You have to do what's called inclusive counting. So Abraham was the father of Isaac. That's not just one generation. That's two, Abraham and Isaac. So we're going to do a little experiment here. What I want you to do is look down at the text because this is what you have to do to understand the Bible well. And I want you to look at that first section and I want you to count the names. Now, you don't count the women's names. I'll tell you about that a little bit later. But they don't count as generations in this genealogy. You count the men's names.

16:13 So I'm going to give you like 15 seconds to count the men's names as they show up and you're going to tell me what you get. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Perez. We don't count Zerah because it doesn't go forward. Hezron, Ram, Aminadab, Nashon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David.

16:50 Right? There's the 14. Easy enough. Okay? Second paragraph there. We're not going to count David again. We've already counted him. So we're not going to count him again. But I'll save you the trouble. If you were to count those names, again, the men only, you would get 14. It's not a problem, right? Ending with Jeconiah. Okay, look down at the third section there. Count those. Now, remember, we didn't count David a second time. And we've already counted Jeconiah in the second section.

17:22 And so the question becomes, do we count Jeconiah in this one? You're thinking no. If you don't count Jeconiah, though, as you read down and count down through that third section, you're only going to come up with 13 names. And the reason is because you are supposed to count Jeconiah twice. Now, why? It's not just to make it 14. Matthew has a reason for this that's rooted in history and in the Bible itself. So look down at verse 17.

17:53 Do you see how Matthew divides this thing up? The first generation, he says, runs from Abraham to David, a person, right? The second generation, interestingly, runs from David, not to a person, but to a deportation, to an event. And then the third one runs from the deportation to the Christ, 14 generations. Now, what does that do to Jeconiah? Well, what it does is that the deportation happens right in the middle of Jeconiah's life. So what Matthew is trying to flag to you is that the second generation, you've got to run all the way through the first half of Jeconiah's life and count him.

18:28 And then from the deportation, you've still got more of Jeconiah, and so you've got to count him again. That's what he's trying to tell you. Now, why? Why, why, why, why? Okay, so we know that's what Matthew's doing from verse 17. But why? Well, it's because in the Old Testament, Jeconiah was famous for being the last king of Israel. He was famous for being the last king of Israel. And so famously, he had in the Israelite sort of consciousness two identities that were broken by the deportation to Babylon.

18:59 In the first part of his life, he was known as Jeconiah the king. And in the second part of his life, he was known as Jeconiah the captive. And so he took on two kind of identities. You can see this. You can write this down and look at it later. But in 1 Chronicles 3.17, 1 Chronicles 3 is a long sort of list of names. genealogy of the kings of Israel. But in 3.17, that genealogy of kings pauses after Jeconiah. It sort of ends the sentence, but then it picks back up again, breaking the pattern by saying, now the descendants of Jeconiah, the captive. So that's where this double identity came from.

19:41 It came from 1 Chronicles. And Matthew's just picking up on that and saying, I'm going to maintain the tradition of having two identities of Jeconiah, Jeconiah the king and Jeconiah the captive. And when you do that, you find out, okay, now there's 14 generations in each. Look up at verse 1. Fascinating little verse there where Matthew kind of sums it up. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Now, at first, you think that all that's going on here is sort of a, you know, we're going to run it back real fast to the beginning, to Abraham. So it's like it's skipping through those sections, right? Jesus Christ, the son of David the son of Abraham and then he moves it forward and fills in the blanks right that's part of what's going on but there's more going on than that that word genealogy there interestingly enough given the last few months that we've spent together in the bible that word is actually the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham now what's that supposed to do? Well, it does a lot of stuff because that word Genesis is a complicated word and it's got

20:49 layers and layers of meaning, partly because it gets used in the book of Genesis several different times to sort of organize and divide that book up. But it has several different layers of meaning. So four different layers that it might have. It might just mean the book of the beginning of Jesus Christ, like his ancestry. So it might just be referring to this genealogy, which is how the ESV is sort of interpreting it, right? It's just, this is the list of names. This is how we get to Jesus Christ. This is his genealogy. It might mean that. It does, in fact, mean that. Second, though, it has another meaning of the origins, the sort of beginning story, the beginning of the story arc of this person's life. So it might be referring to the birth of Jesus Christ, and it might take in everything sort of, you know, about the first few years of Jesus's life. There's another meaning of it, though, that could be the book of the history of Jesus Christ, which would be referring to his life. And that would be saying, that would make it sort of a title for the whole book of Matthew, right? It could be saying, this is the book of the history of the life of Jesus from beginning

21:54 to end. It might mean that. But also, it's got a fourth meaning that would mean something like The book of the new Genesis wrought by or owned by Jesus Christ. The Genesis of Jesus, right? The thing that Jesus made. And what Matthew is saying there is that he's deliberately casting your mind back to Genesis and saying that just as great as the creation of the world that God did back there in Genesis, So great is the new creation that Jesus Christ has wrought and launched.

22:34 You see the depth of meaning that he's pulling off there? That's what he's doing. All these names, as I said, are not just information. They're driving at something. And the thing that they're driving at is to show that this guy, Jesus, the son of this carpenter, Joseph, holds a legal claim to the great throne of King David. That's the main thing that Matthew's doing there in that very first verse. This is a record of the genealogy, the ancestry, the history, the life, the birth, maybe even the new creation of Jesus.

23:05 But then look at the end of that verse, or middle of it, I guess. He calls him Christ. Christ was not Jesus' last name. Joseph was not known around town as Mr. Christ, right? Christ's carpentry. That's not what it was. There was no mailbox outside their house that said Christ, J, right? It's not a last name. It's a title. It means anointed one, one who has oil poured on their head. And what that meant was that you were being set aside for office and mostly the office of king.

23:37 So it means Messiah. And you got that phrase there also, the son of David, right? Son of David is a term of royalty. If you were a son of David, you were not just an Israelite. You're the king. You're the son of David. And over time, in the prophets, the great hope of the nation of Israel became for a son of David to refill the throne of David. And so right there, Matthew is proclaiming, this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus, the king, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

24:11 Even those 14s are significant. You know what those are down in 17? All the generations from Abraham to David were 14 from David to the deportation, 14 from the deportation to Babylon, 14. Why does he do that? And he obviously sort of, you know, massages the number of names. He leaves some people out and that sort of thing. But he massages all three of those sections to get 14 names in each of them. Why? Well, there have been a lot of guesses as to why. I mean, some people have looked at it and said, okay, well, three 14s is actually also six sevens, right?

24:43 If you break them in half, you get six sevens. And that would mean that Jesus maybe is the beginning of the seventh seven. Maybe it has something to do with the creation week. Maybe it has something to do with the year of Jubilee. But it's interesting that Matthew doesn't deal in six sevens. He deals in three fourteens. So why? Why does he do that? Well, 14 in the Jewish mind was a famous number. And it had to do with a Jewish practice that was called gematria, where they would actually sort of take their alphabet.

25:18 They had an alphabet just like us, right? A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Theirs was Aleph, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, etc., etc., right? And what they would do is take the various letters of their alphabet and line it up with numbers. So A was 1, B was 2, C was 3, you know, and they would go on down. You get down to K or L, and it turns into 100 or 1,000 or 500, whatever it is. But they did this practice of numbering their letters. And then you could play this fun game where you would take the letters of your name and assign their numbers to them, right?

25:50 and you could come up with what was essentially the number of your name. So, you know, you see this in the Bible several times. Revelation, the number of his name shall be 666. It's an example of Gematria. Like if you take G-R-E-G, you come up with the idea that my sort of lucky number or whatever is 37. Because you add up those numbers and that's what you get. Well, 14 was famous in the Jewish mind for representing someone's name. Three letters that would come together, and when you add them up, you get 14.

26:26 What were they? Well, it was D, V, and D, 4, 6, and 4, David. That's why Matthew does it. What Matthew is doing by putting 14 generations in each of these sections is he's fairly screaming at his readers, listen to me. I could not say this any more clearly. This is the book of the Genesis of Jesus, the king, the son of David. Oh, and 14, 14, 14, and I'm even going to put David in the 14th spot in the genealogy. This guy at the end of this genealogy is king, king, king. He's got every legal right to sit on the throne of David, and he does so. He is Christ the king. That's the main thing Matthew wants to get across to you. Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah King. Now, what does that mean for us? Well, I think several things. I think it means several things. Here's one thing. If we truly recognize that Jesus is our King, if we acknowledge Him as being what the Bible says He

27:31 is, King of kings and Lord of lords, guess what we'll do? We will submit to Him. We'll listen to what his word says about our actions, about our thoughts, about our motivations, about our priorities, about our relationships, and we'll work to conform our lives to his will. From becoming a Christian is not just about taking the hand of a friend named Jesus. It is that, but it is also about bowing your knee to a king.

28:07 You know the difference between a friend and a king, right? People in Syria, if those reports are correct, and Christians are being killed because of their faith in Jesus, they're learning very clearly the difference between a friend and a king. Because you know what a friend would do when his friend is kneeling on his knees about to have his head cut off or be shot in the chest or whatever it is? And then the person standing over them is saying, I want you to renounce your friend. Jesus, you know what a friend does? A friend says, yeah, renounce me.

28:40 I love you. I care for you so much that I don't want you to die on account of me. So renounce me, and we'll patch it up later. That's what a friend does if he's just a friend. You know what a king does? A king says, your allegiance is to me. Live or die. You do not renounce me. You do not reject me. And if you do, I will deny you before my father in heaven. People in Syria are getting a hard lesson on the difference between a friend and a king.

29:16 And brothers, sisters, some of us need to have that hard lesson explode in our own minds. Yes, Jesus is your friend. Yes, Jesus wants good for you. But Jesus is your king. And you must submit to him. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, you need to hear that loud and clear also. Becoming a Christian is, yes, a matter of taking grace and mercy from the hand of a friend. But it is also bowing your knee to a king. You submit to him.

29:46 You give up the things in your life that he hates. You give up the things in your life that aren't honoring to him. And you bring your life into conformity to the king. Jesus is a king, and he requires submission. If we recognize that also, a second thing is that we'll rest in his total sovereignty. We'll rest in his total sovereignty because we'll understand that it's true what Jesus says at the end of Matthew. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

30:19 And that's a bold statement. There's nobody in the history of the world who could say something like that without being laughed out of the world. And yet Jesus does. because that's the true nature of the Messiah, as the prophets foretold it. His power, his authority, is going to stretch from one end of the globe to the other. There's not one detail of history, there's not one detail of your life that is outside his command. And friends, that's a truth that gives us great comfort, when things seem like they're out of control. A third thing is that when we acknowledge Jesus as king, we'll live with an eternal perspective, not just an earthly one.

30:59 We'll live with an eternal perspective, not just an earthly one. Because we know as Christians that yes, we're citizens of this nation and this world, but we are ultimately citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And our eyes are focused there. We're pilgrims, we're strangers in the world, as Peter says. And our eyes are focused on heaven. Look, we Christians live in a way that makes the world mock us and look sideways at us because the way we live doesn't make sense to them.

31:31 And you know the reason it doesn't make sense to them? It's because we see things that they don't and it affects the way we live. I mean, if I started walking down that aisle right there and all of a sudden I went like that, right? You'd go, that's weird. But what if, what if there was something invisible that sort of made a swoop at me and made me do that, right? Then it's not so unreasonable. It's just that you didn't see the threat.

32:03 Well, same thing happens with us as Christians. We live in the way that we live because we see the threat of hell and we see the reward of heaven and that affects how we live. The rest of the world doesn't see that and so they think we're weird. so Jesus is king, and we live in that truth. Here's the second point that we see from Matthew's genealogy. Jesus is a merciful king. The main thing that's going on is Matthew's proclaiming Jesus as king, but it's also clear that there's something else going on too, like Matthew's not just giving a straightforward, you know, line to the throne. There's more going on there. There are things in this genealogy that are unusual if all you're doing is proving that Jesus has a claim to the throne. That could be a very straightforward thing. But there are things here that are sprinkled in among all this kingly majesty that you just don't expect. They seem out of place. But the more you look, you realize that those little sprinkles are there for a purpose. Even in the names he

33:06 chooses, little asides he makes here and there. Matthew is trying to say not just that Jesus is king but that this king has come to us with an open hand a wide open invitation to salvation and not this is the surprising part not just to people who look like perfect candidates for it not just people who look like they ought to be dressed in kingly robes let's look at it a little more carefully look at that first section of patriarchs verses two to six you read down through there it's kind of a hall of fame of israel's history right big names abraham isaac jacob But notice also the way Matthew includes the names of four women.

33:47 Do you see them? Verse 3, there's Tamar. In verse 5, you've got Rahab and Ruth. And then in verse 6, you have Uriah's wife. All right, now, we need to pause because you need to understand how ridiculously unusual this is. In the Jewish mind, you just do not include women in your genealogies. You just don't do it. I know that sounds absurd to us, and yet that's the way the Jewish mind thought of it.

34:18 So for Matthew to include these women was saying a lot. All rights and privileges of citizenship and Jewishness and all the rest of it were transmitted through the Father. That's the way it was then. That's why in Luke 3, right, when it's literally Mary's genealogy that's being traced there, and that's what that is, she's not even named it. Because it would be entirely inappropriate even to name her as the point of the genealogy, right? And so Luke kind of shifts it. But Matthew does it.

34:51 He names these four women. So why include them? And for that matter, if you're going to include some women, why these particular ones? I mean, they're kind of bit players in the story of the Bible, right? I mean, you could have included Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Rebecca, the wife of Jacob, right? They were much bigger players in the story. So why these? Well, I think there's a reason they're here. I think there's a reason Matthew chose these. And I think there's a reason that he puts them in this section that's headed up by Abraham.

35:23 And here's why. All of these women are Gentiles. They're all outsiders. They didn't belong. And they didn't belong for multiple reasons. I mean, Tamar and Rahab, not only were they Gentiles, but they were also notorious prostitutes. Ruth was a Moabitess who just married into Israel. And Uriah's wife Bathsheba was considered a Hittite the minute she married Uriah the Hittite. They were all outsiders.

35:54 They were all rejects from the nation of Israel. They were all rejects from the kingdom of God. But from the beginning, from the beginning, Matthew is saying, King Jesus welcomes outcasts. He welcomes those who are thrown aside by the world. I wonder if there's anybody here that feels like that. For whatever reason, because of wrong things you've done, or because of a slightly awkward personality, or maybe an unusual personal history, You just look at your life and you look at yourself and you feel like an outsider.

36:29 I wonder if there's anybody here like that. Friend, if that's you, let me give you an invitation. In Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, there is a place where you belong. In Jesus Christ, there's a place where you belong. And look, I'm not even just talking about having friends in the church. I'm not talking about just having some people who can bring you a meal when something goes wrong in your life. I'm not even talking about just having a place to gather on Sunday morning. No, what I'm talking about is a deeper belonging than even belonging to a group of people that is a church.

37:02 I'm talking about being brought into the family of God to be welcomed into his presence as a happy son or daughter of the king with a wide open welcome into his life. That's what Jesus offers. That's what Jesus offers. Look, none of these four women that are mentioned here, not a single one of them, had any reason to think that anything good would come from their lives. They were rejects, they were outcasts, they were Gentiles. But God brought them in.

37:36 And now here we are thinking of them not as rejects, but as glorious trophies of God's grace. Friend, listen to me, listen carefully. That is what God does. He is in the business of taking outsiders and bringing them in. Of giving life to the dead. Of calling into existence that which does not exist. That's what he does. He says to your nothing heart, be something.

38:13 And it is. But friend, the first step, the first step is to recognize that you actually are nothing without him. And then to see his beauty and come to him in faith. Something else, I think, to see here, and that's why when Bathsheba is mentioned there, she's not even mentioned by name.

38:49 Verse 6, David was the father of Solomon, not by Bathsheba, but by the wife of Uriah. Why is that? Why doesn't he name her? Is it because all of a sudden he's gotten ashamed of her? No, that's not it. The reason has more to do with David than with Bathsheba. I mean, you know the story of David's life. She was the woman with whom David committed adultery. you know, some people even argue that she was raped by David. David sinned against Bathsheba, and he killed her husband to try to cover it up. And I think what's going on here is that Matthew is pulling no punches about David's sin. He's not shying away from it. He's not trying to gloss over it. He's not trying to cover it up. He pulls David's sin roughly into the light and reminds us, his readers, by calling this woman Uriah's wife.

39:45 See, Matthew's not in the least, not for a moment in the business of glorifying Israel, the nation. He didn't care anything about Israel's glory. He drags Israel's sin into the light. He's not worried about glorifying Abraham. He's certainly not worried about glorifying David. He's in the business of glorifying God and God alone. And here, he holds up David's sin in order to say, look again at God's grace to David. Remember how David sinned. Remember what he did. And look at how God showed him mercy anyway.

40:17 Even so much mercy, so much grace that the Messiah himself descends from him. It's incredible, but it's not even just David. I mean, this section of kings, it's a who's who of royal villains, royal failures. When you look down there and you see Rehoboam, Rehoboam's the one that threw the kingdom into civil war for several hundred years, broke it in half because of his stupidity. Jehoram was such an evil king that the Old Testament will usually end its stories of the kings with something like, you know, King so-and-so lived so many years, and he rested and was buried with his fathers, right?

40:58 Jehoram was such a horrible king that the Old Testament deadpans about his death that quote, he departed to no one's regret. I mean, can you imagine having that on your tombstone for all eternity? He departed to no one's regret. It's awful. Then there's Ahaz. Ahaz was so sunk in paganism that he even burned his son as a sacrifice to the god Molech. Hezekiah came along, the next guy, and he sort of fixes things. But then Manasseh, the next guy comes along, and he tears down all the good stuff that Hezekiah had done and becomes even more wicked than Ahaz was.

41:36 These guys are terrible. And yet here they all are in the lineage of Jesus the king. Do you see the point of all this? The point is that Jesus came into a world of sinful, broken, cast out, even deceitful and adulterous and murderous people. In other words, people just like us. People just like you and just like me. no he himself wasn't like that he never sinned but he lived his life among people who did and he loved them he loved them i think our pious mental pictures of jesus do a disservice sometimes they they make him out to be somebody that somebody that's aloof from us unapproachable uninterested in people like us but friend jesus isn't like that at all he was a man who knew and loved sinners, who lived with them and worked with them and ate with them, who had them in his own family. And the really wonderful thing is that he is still a man who loves sinners and who gave his

42:42 life to bring sinners into his presence and his family for eternity. He's a merciful king. Here's the third point, and final. Jesus is a just king. He's king, he's a merciful king, and finally he's a just king. If you look closely here, one weird thing that Matthew does in this genealogy, like we've just been talking about, is he includes these other names, especially these outcast women, to make the point that Jesus is merciful.

43:13 But there's another weird thing he does, which is in the second section, the kings, he changes some of the names in that section and it's very strange because because everybody would have known those kings like you know some of you have memorized all the presidents of the United States people did that with the kings of Israel too so they they had to memorize they knew who these were and yet Matthew changes the names at various points so so look for example at verse 7 Look at 7. Solomon, the father of Rehoboam.

43:45 Rehoboam, the father of Abijah. And Abijah, everybody knew that the guy who comes after Abijah is Asa. A-S-A. And yet Matthew changes the name to Asaph. Why? Why would you change it to Asaph? Also, look at verse 10. Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh. Manasseh, the father of Amos. Everybody knew that the next king after Manasseh was Amon, A-M-O-N. Why does Matthew change it to Amos there?

44:20 Well, I think what we typically do, because our general evangelical way of reading the Bible, when we come across little difficulties like that, is just to kind of blur our eyes and think, well, those people were primitive. They made mistakes. And, you know, there must be, it's just a misspelling of the word. Or maybe there's an alternative spelling of these things. But we don't notice it and we don't think about it. And yet, like I've told you, where the pattern breaks is where the meaning is. And the pattern breaks when he changes these names. I mean, think about it.

44:52 For one thing, Asaph is not an alternative spelling of Asa. It's just not. Nobody had an alternative spelling of Asa for Asaph. Nor do they have an alternative spelling of Amos for Amon. also, Asaph and Amos were famous in the Old Testament in their own right. So probably what Matthew is doing is changing those famous names just a little bit in order to invoke something about those other famous names. And everybody would have seen the trick, right? Oh, I see what you did there, Matthew. You changed Asa to Asaph because you want me to think about Asaph for some reason. And you changed Amon to Amos because for some reason you want me to also think about the prophet Amos. So what's he trying to invoke? What's he trying to do here? Well, Asaph is famous for having written 12 psalms in the Psalter. He wrote Psalm 50, and he wrote the 11 from 73 to 83. And one of the main themes of all those psalms, it's just palpable, it's all through them, is a

45:56 declaration of God's justice. Now some of those psalms just proclaim God to be a God of justice, and they do it over and over again. You are a God of justice. Others of them cry out to God to come and judge enemies and judge wickedness in the world. But the major theme of those psalms over and over again is God is just and he will judge. That's what Matthew's trying to evoke by making you think of Asaph. God is just. Amos, similarly, is a prophet. He wrote one of the books of the Old Testament, Amos. And he's the prophet that most famously called God's people to be just, to live in justice. And he threatened judgment on them if they didn't. So do you see the point? Those little changes of names just kind of subtly remind you that God is just, that he has promised to judge wickedness, and that his people are called to live justly.

46:54 They're a subtle reminder that a day of judgment is coming. And there's a little bit more, too. Look at verse 8. Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, Joram, the father of Uzziah, except Joram was not the father of Uzziah. He just wasn't. He was like the great, great-grandfather or something of Uzziah. Now, when you're putting together a genealogy in the ancient world, it's perfectly legitimate to leave out generations. Moses did it in Genesis. Ancient people, Homer did it in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's not a big deal to leave out generations. That's perfectly legit. And Matthew has obviously done that, at least in part here, to get this thing to 14. But what's interesting is that he's left out three of the most wicked kings in Israel's history here now yeah he's left in other wicked kings Ahaz Manasseh we've already talked about that but here here his point seems to be again that God will ultimately judge the wicked he will blot their names out of the book of life I mean if you know the history of

48:00 the kings of Israel when you get to this spot where the most wicked ones disappear it's a frightening thing because you realize, oh, that's what that means. That's what that means to have your name blotted out of the book of life. It's as if you never existed. Friends, some of you here need to hear that warning. You need to hear the warning that a day of judgment is coming, and on that day, your eternity will be sealed. Either you will be blotted out of the book of life, or you will be welcomed into the presence of God. And the whole thing depends, the whole thing depends on whether you bow your knee to King Jesus before that day comes. And don't let any more time pass. Why are you waiting? Some of you have been attending this church, and you know you're not a Christian, but you've been attending this church for years.

49:02 And week after week after week after week, you hear the gospel, you hear the gospel, you say, not today, not today, not today. Why not? Why not? Friend, what if the day of judgment is this afternoon? Don't find yourself blotted out. Come to Jesus and be saved. One more thing. One more thing. I want you to see this figure Jeconiah. It's really extraordinary to see his name here. Why is it so extraordinary? Well, think about what we're doing here. We're tracing the line of the kings, right? It's going to end with the guy, Jesus, who now sits on the throne of Israel. But it's extraordinary to see Jeconiah here because back in Jeremiah, the prophet that tells the story of all these kings, Something happened to Jeconiah that should have precluded him from ever being included in a genealogy like this one.

49:57 A royal genealogy. Something happens to Jeconiah that should have blown him up from ever being part of a royal genealogy. He's cursed. You can look it up later. Jeremiah 22, like 20 to 24, something like that. What's going on there is that Jeconiah is such a wicked king that God says, Look, Jeconiah, even if you were a signet ring on my finger, I would rip you off and throw you away. And then at the end of the prophecy, he says, Let it be written down for all eternity that this man shall be childless.

50:35 And he shall never have a descendant to sit on the throne of David again. Jeconiah is cursed. He's cursed. Okay, so how is he here? How is he here in the genealogy of Jesus the king? Well, look at 16. Verse 16, this is how. Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. Jesus, the baby Jesus, was not a biological descendant of Joseph.

51:11 And therefore, he wasn't a biological descendant of Jeconiah. He was a descendant by adoption. We'll talk about that more next week when we talk about the virgin birth. But it's incredible, isn't it? Jesus is the biological son of David through Mary. Mary was a descendant of David as well. But because he's not the biological son of Joseph, but rather an adopted son, he bypasses the curse that was handed down on Jeconiah. Look, friends, God always, always has a way to accomplish his purposes. even when it looks impossible.

51:43 He always has a way to accomplish his purposes, even when it seems impossible. But back up out of it and see the point. Even in this section, when the anomalies are piling up and they're pointing to God's justice and God's determination to judge, here's what I want you to see. Even in that section where that's happening, there's still this final little point of mercy to Jeconiah. Jack and I, you thought the curse was going to destroy you. You thought the curse was going to end you.

52:14 You thought the curse was going to make you a permanent outsider. But my mercy to you is come back in. It's incredible, isn't it? That's the kind of mercy, that's the kind of grace that God offers to you. You may think it's over for you. You may think you've done so much or you are so much that God would never have you. You're a permanent outsider under the curse. You know what God says to you? come back in and be saved.

52:45 Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are a God who is kind, who is merciful, and who is just. And we thank you that in Jesus Christ, your justice and your mercy were united. Justice in crushing your son on the cross for our sins and mercy in offering us forgiveness and salvation because of what he did for us. Our God, we pray that you would help us to remember these things as we celebrate Christmas these next couple of weeks.

53:18 Lord, fill our hearts up with the glory of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.