Dec. 10, 2017 Promise Fulfilled by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Before you open your Bibles to the text for this morning, I want to ask a fairly simple question.

How do I begin the greatest story ever told? If I had for you the greatest story, if I knew that I had the greatest story that could be heard or told by anyone, how would you begin it?

How should I begin it? You know, Tale of Two Cities, that Dickens novel?

It famously begins with, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And that catches you.

That's a great way to begin a great story. Because I don't know about you, when I first read those words,

I couldn't wait to turn the pages and find out what that introduction was meant to lead me into.

Moby Dick, one of my favorites, starts so simply, call me Ishmael. Many scholars think that Anna Karenina is the best novel ever written.

It starts with, all happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And then that's Tolstoy, of course. So about a million pages later, you find out why that is.

That's how some really great stories began. Something like that. But the story

I want to tell you, and I'm asking how to begin it, if the story I want to tell you is not only true, but it's the greatest story ever told, and more than greatest, and more than true, perhaps the most important story you'll ever hear.

That's pretty heady stuff, to say that I've got a story to tell you that is true, that is important, that's the greatest thing that you'll ever hear, the most important thing you can hear.

And the author of this story that I want to begin, I need to tell you that the author is absolutely and always true.

In fact, the author, it's impossible for him to lie, to even bend or massage the truth in the slightest.

This story that I want to tell you, the story I'm asking you how to begin is so good that no matter how many times you've heard it, it is a good story to hear.

My story is good because it's the greatest of all stories, it's true down to the smallest detail.

And this is so good a story that even if you've heard it over and over and over again, hearing it again is good.

So how do we begin such a story? And of course you know where I'm going.

Matthew, the first gospel, the first of the gospels in our

New Testament was written by Matthew. And Matthew has a story to tell us that is the greatest story we can hear.

And of course I'm not going to figure out an introduction for you, I don't have to determine if I should say it was the best of times or worst of times, catch your interest and then give you the rest of the story.

We'll begin where Matthew began. Matthew was a man who lived about 2 ,000 years ago in Palestine.

He was an Israelite living under Roman occupation and he actually worked for Rome collecting taxes from his countrymen, which was a lucrative vocation that made him unquestionably wealthy and also made him an outcast.

Tax collectors were considered by their countrymen to be traitors to their people and compromising everything to work for Rome just for money.

Matthew, this one who Jesus came to and said simply, follow me, this is the

Matthew who immediately obeyed, left his tax booth and followed Jesus for three and a half years.

This gospel of Matthew is his record of the life of Jesus Christ, his master, his teacher, who he followed for all this time.

I said before that what follows is true because the author is incapable of anything but truth and by that I didn't mean, of course,

Matthew. I meant that by the Holy Spirit of God, his quill,

Matthew's quill, Matthew's pen marked down every word that he, that God, who it's impossible for him to lie, would have him write and write that for us here this morning.

And that's why what follows is true and reliable. And the greatest story you could ever hear.

Not because it's War and Peace or one of the great Nick Dickens or Melville novel because this is

God's word, because this is the story of God's son. So here begins the greatest story ever told.

And Matthew begins it and so shall we with a simple reading of 42 names which you will find there in Matthew chapter 1 and beginning at verse 1.

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was a 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 Zerah by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron and Hezron the father of Ram and Ram the father of Amidadab and Amidadab the father of Nishan and Nishan the father of 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.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, 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 deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud and 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 Eleazar and Eleazar the father of Mathan and Mathan the father of Jacob and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary of whom

Jesus was born who is called the 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 to the

Christ 14 generations. So begins the greatest story ever told.

So begins the best and the greatest and the truest story that I can relate to you this morning.

And at one level that simple reading of those 42 names grouped into three groups of 14 answers the simplest of all questions.

Where did Jesus come from? In verse one it is summarized excuse me

Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham and then in verse 17 at the end the order of that is reversed from Abraham to David and then to the

Christ. So what is Matthew starting us with here?

Abraham the father of this nation the father of Israel. Abraham whose grandson

Jacob eventually renamed as Israel. Jacob slash Israel being the father of the 12 brothers who names became the tribes that became that nation of Israel.

So where did Jesus come from? If we agree together that this greatest story ever told is a historical fact.

It is a true record of what actually happened what God did in time and space.

I think the simplest thing we can ask ourselves and it would be of high priority to the

Jewish mind back then that Matthew first wrote to where did this guy come from?

Where is Jesus from? Well first of all that's why the list begins here he came from Abraham that's where Matthew begins.

Jesus's roots trace back to Abraham the father of that people. So Jesus God in the flesh as man is a descendant of Abraham and therefore a

Hebrew an Israelite a Jew. We learn secondly that he descended from David from David through Abraham's great grandson

Judah and that was God's decree long ago back when Jacob was dying when

Israel was dying and he blessed his son and that was a prophetic blessing that he placed on his sons.

Judah his fourth son the man named Judah was prophesied was blessed to be the line through which and by which

Israel's kings would come. Jesus was a Jew a

Hebrew an Israelite by descent from Abraham and he was royal because he descended from David.

The first words actually though are a record of the genealogy and that alludes to a recurring theme all the way back in Genesis when

Matthew says a record of the genealogy that should put us in mind of a recurring phrase in Genesis such as Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth or chapter 5 verse 1 of Genesis this is the book of the generations of Adam and then lists all his descendants up to that time.

So when David says a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham he's alerting us to something he's signaling us that this is more than just a family tree.

What I read to you is something deeper than just 42 names. That listing where I just gave you sort of an inventory to begin the greatest story ever told.

We're signaled here that Jesus Christ's birth is a new beginning a paradigm shift if you will in the course of redemptive history.

It's a record of something a new work of God something changed with this event.

Now I use that term a lot from this pulpit redemptive history the course the flow of redemptive history.

What I mean by that by redemptive history is the Bible's witness of how

God's salvation has unfolded through the centuries. Simply from Genesis to Revelation one way of looking at it not the only way is to call it the redemptive history.

Salvation itself was determined in eternity past before earth or the universe or even time existed that's

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3. What we have in the gospels is the climax of steady and progressive and intentional revelation of this redemption this redemptive history and more than just giving it to us in revelation in words in the scripture that we have

God acting progressively to bring about this redemption as he worked in history.

Sometimes in remarkable ways through his power in what we call miracles. Sometimes more normally working through the means of men and women like ourselves and accomplishing his purposes but that's what

I mean by redemptive history. The progress of this promise of God begun back in Genesis chapter 3 completed at the end of the

Bible in Revelation. The record of it and there's a climax to redemptive history it's going somewhere

God is doing something as he reveals his purposes and then accomplishes those purposes and the climax of redemptive history is this person of whom we read about in these three groupings of 14 these 40 42 names

Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham. So that tells us something it tells us that this list of names that begins this gospel this greatest story ever told is meant to be more than just a list.

Matthew's specific purpose has been debated for centuries on why he starts his gospel this way and the many theories that we have are way beyond anything that I want to tackle this morning but there are a few salient points that we can ascertain without getting hopelessly bogged down in the details here.

At first is what we said earlier that Jesus Christ as a man was truly an

Israelite through Abraham and an heir to royalty through David. That's one of Matthew's big points here.

Jesus Christ became God in the flesh and as man he was

God and as such according to physical descendancy which we will talk about in a moment

Israelite through Abraham royal through David. And the second thing we see in this listing of 42 names these historical actual people who really lived in Jesus lineage is found room for any and for all.

Matthew begins with Abraham the father of the Israelites and then from verse 6 all the way down to Jesus they are all kings of Judah descended from David and in between there are some who came neither from Abraham or David and in fact those are all women

Tamar Rahab Ruth and the wife of Uriah. Interesting way to describe the woman we know as Bathsheba.

So theories rage on why Matthew included them. Why did he include these four women who fall outside that line of Abraham or David.

Tamar she had children by Judah who at the time was her father -in -law.

Salmon's wife Rahab couldn't possibly be the Jericho prostitute we read about who helped the spies but the name hearkens us back to that unsavory character who eventually turned good

Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess from the nation of the

Moabites and so ultimately she descended from Lot's incest with his own daughters.

Bathsheba is the one who willingly gave herself to David and then stood by while her husband was murdered.

Why are they in there? Why in this list of 42 names do we have them?

The best theory on why they're there is that Matthew reminds his readers, he reminds us that the lineage of the entire nation from Abraham all the way through to the

Davidic kings is tinged with scandal and with surprise. The sovereign purposes of God are worked out without consultation to our expectations.

Tamar had her children by her father -in -law. First Corinthians 5 tells us that that is such a sin that's not even mentioned among the

Gentiles. In the Gospels we read how Mary's morality was questioned.

Perhaps Matthew warns his readers to be less than hasty in their judgments. Her and her husband's claims to the virgin birth might have seemed scandalous but a longer view of history and a more finely appreciated tuning for God's ways should have stopped them short of their impulsive judgments.

And that said, there are some of the men in this list that aren't too savory either.

Joram was Uzziah's father and he was such an idolater that the chronicler has to tell us that the only reason he wasn't destroyed is that God had promised his father

David that he, that God would maintain a lamp for David forever. It's the only reason that that evil king wasn't wiped out immediately.

Hezekiah was a great king but his father was evil and his father let the house of God fall into disrepair and pollution.

And Manasseh who was Hezekiah's son and truly a son of David by birth, he was so wicked that we read that during his reign the streets of Jerusalem flowed with innocent blood.

All this tells us something. This Messiah, this Christ that Matthew writes about has no blue blood lineage.

It's not some sanitized laundered or exalted list. You know what's in there? It's really just a bunch of lousy messed up sinners.

It's really a list that according to the things that they did could include most of us at one level or another.

And it tells us something else too. It tells us that being joined to Christ is a matter of faith and not accomplishment.

It's by faith and not by birth. And were it otherwise, none could join.

And were it other than that, this story is not a great story at all, much less the greatest story

I could tell you. Neither you nor I are as brave as David as to stand on God's promise at the very hazard of our life and do so as often as he did.

Nor are we so bad as to commit adultery and then use our power to murder the woman's husband, at least

I don't think we are. Ruth came from one of the darkest moments in history.

If you trace her back to that incident after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and the Moabites were born through that awful incident with Lot and his daughter.

But what we learn here is that none of this matters when it comes to joining into Jesus Christ, this son of God, born of a woman, recorded in the gospel of Matthew, and begun with this listing of 42 names.

Luke's genealogy is very different from Matthew's. It begins with Adam and it flows to Christ. So at one level or another, brethren, we are all included.

There are no qualifications for coming to this Christ, born here in this great story, this greatest of stories.

There's only this. There's only faith in him, and some 33 years after this birth here recorded what he did on the cross, and faith in him, repentance towards God, and faith in Christ and what he did.

And by that, becoming children of Abraham, by Abrahamic faith. That's all that matters.

And read these names. Take each one and go back to the chronicler. Go back to first and second kings and read about them.

Boy, they're messed up. Take the best of them. Hezekiah, for example. Was it not

Hezekiah's sin with the Babylonian envoy that brought final judgment upon Judah? And yet there was no king like Hezekiah, who walked in the ways of his father

David. And what was he? He was you.

He was me. He rose to heights of moral purity and fell to the worst kind of pride and iniquity.

We're all included there. Those 42 names. All of us can find one and say, that's me.

By the time Matthew gets to Jesus's actual birth, he tells us why he was given that name

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Looking forward, of course, to the cross, which

I've already done with you, where he did just that. He saved his people from their sins.

By him, this Christ, this greatest story ever told, paying the penalty for our sins.

He had no part in sin. He was born according to the flesh to Mary. Joseph was his legal father by adoption and by virtue of being

Mary's husband. And you notice in verse 16, towards the end of that listing, Joseph is not called

Jesus's father. We had all those kings, this man or these people. This man was the father of and the father of and the father of and the father of.

We get to Joseph. He's the husband of Mary, not the father of Jesus Christ our Lord, the husband of Mary.

Jesus had but one father. That's God. Mary's pregnancy came not through physical union, but by the overshadowing power, overshadowing power of God the

Holy Spirit. There's a great importance here. I'll just point out a couple of things.

He was born without original sin. We come into this world guilty. You and I come into this world guilty, guilty by inheritance of Adam's sin, which he passed on to us all.

That's the core of the argument in Romans chapter 5. But Jesus, this

Jesus, the gospel of Matthew is all about, and Mark, and Luke, and John, and the book of Acts, and the epistles, well the whole

Bible. This Jesus, because he was conceived, his inception was by the

Holy Spirit of God, this Christ, though he could trace his lineage in the physical sense back to all those kings, and back to Abraham, and in Luke's genealogy back to Adam.

This Jesus, though conceived by the Holy Spirit, is free from that stain of sin that he came to resolve.

Luke's genealogy ends by calling Jesus, or by calling Adam the son of God. Adam the son of God, and so he was.

He had a beginning, Adam did, had a beginning as had no other, created from the dust of the ground.

Doesn't mean he was made from dirt, it means he was made as part of the created order, that God simply made him from what was, and what was from which

Adam made him hadn't existed, had not existed before God called it into being.

The incomparable God we worship, who calls that, who calls things from nothing, ex nihilo as we call it.

You see there's a very important point here, that Adam shared in what he came from.

He came from the created order, he shared in that, that's why he would return to dust, because he was raised up from the dust, not made of dirt, made from what was, and what was, because God called it to be.

So Adam shared in what he came from. Jesus, as the son of man, came to us in the normal way, birthed by a woman,

Mary. So in that sense, they're similar.

Adam represented all who would come after him. Now if he obeyed the Lord, life would be passed along to all who came after him.

What did he do? He chose sin. Romans 5 to 5 12 tells us that sin brought death, and that death spread to all men, because all men sinned.

That's Adam in his representation. Jesus is called the second Adam, because he, like the first Adam, came remarkably and unrepeatedly to this world.

The way he came, remarkable, unrepeatable. He, like the first son of God, like Adam, represented his people.

Should he have failed to obey God's God, Adam's legacy would have been passed along again.

He, if Jesus had failed to obey, there would have been Adam just over again.

But tempted in all ways as we are, as all of us are, Jesus did not fail, but in everything obeyed

God and did all for God's honor. So in him, what do we inherit? We inherit by faith his righteous obedience, and were divested of Adam's transgression.

Maybe one reason for Matthew's courage in listing the ones he did, the prostitutes, the pagans, the adulterers and adulteresses, violently wicked kings, and kings who passively failed to guard

God's honor. Maybe one reason for all this is to make sure that anyone looking at that list and then studying the people listed will find themselves in it.

Some people struggle to do what's right but fail. So think King David. Are you like that?

Struggling and have your ups and downs? Think King David. And some of us try to do what's wrong and we succeed remarkably at that, don't we?

Think King Manasseh. Some of us come from horrible pasts where we help promote wrongful cravings.

Think Rahab in Jericho before God touched her heart. Some of us were abused by those who were meant for our protection.

Think Joseph, one of the best known of the brothers in verse 2 of the genealogy.

Whoever we are, whatever we've done, whoever you are, whatever has been done to you, the history embedded in these 42 names at some point intersects with all of us.

We speak of Adam's creation, his being made. The universe and all it contains came about when

God willed and spoke it. As I said, Adam shared with what he came from.

Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, never created no beginning or no end. But as a man, as a man, he did have a beginning.

And that's what the advent is all about. And that's why Matthew begins where he does.

But the second person of the Trinity, as God the

Son, no, he's eternally God, sharing fully in all that it means to be

God. He came into the same world as did the first Adam, but by his conception, by his inception, did not share in his nature or in the sin that Adam introduced.

So this is something we learn from this listing of 42 names beginning this great, great story.

Born without original sin, God the Son, God became flesh, the

Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Surrounded by sin as we all are, tempted by sin as we all are, yet without sin himself, never giving into it for a moment, free of that stain by his conception by the

Holy Spirit. And yet as a man, his descendancy comes from these people, these men, these women, just like the rest of us.

And the second thing we see here is that Jesus was, as Paul put it in Galatians 4, 4, born under the law.

The Son of David is also the Son of Man, who as man would save men. He came in our likeness, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and in flesh as a man, he condemned sin in his flesh by his obedience to God, and the obedience to God meaning that he never engaged with sin.

So we learn that immediately. Just looking at on the surface of these 42 names, and what is

Matthew trying to tell us? Low -hanging fruit as we call it, born without original sin, and born under the law in the way we all are.

The Son of God without sin, the Son of Man born as the rest of us.

That's this Jesus about whom this great story is. There's something else though to this list of these 314s of names.

Not only do they lead directly and prophetically to Christ, they also encompass these three great stages of redemptive history.

This flow of history from sin in the garden to the final resolution of it, when the faithful, when the church is with Christ.

There are three, from Abraham to David, and then from David to what we call the exile. We'll talk a little bit about that.

And then from the exile to Jesus Christ's birth. So three stages, if we can call it that.

And stage one is verses 2 to the first half of verse 6, that takes us from Abraham all the way to David.

Or Abraham, Abraham's faith is the paradigm for our own. And we know this, we need to have the faith of Abraham to truly be

Abraham's children. It's not the children of flesh that are called the children of God, but the children of the promise.

Those who follow in the promise, the way Abraham had his eyes on the promise. Abraham who believed

God and that was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham, whose faith is the model that we must follow, called out of Ur the

Chaldeans and by faith went to a land he hadn't known, maybe he had never even heard of, when he heard from God that he would be the head of a line that would come to fruition in a seed, in a single seed, in your seed shall all nations be blessed.

A single one, a single descendant that would bring this worldwide blessing.

It was the gospel of the son of Abraham that Matthew presents to us, Jesus Christ, that he was hearing.

It was Jesus Christ, that one seed to bring all this blessing, he would bring it. And Jesus said at one point, your father

Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, he saw it and was glad. So what does this take us back to?

In this genealogy, this listing of names to start this great story, well before Abraham's entrance into redemptive history, which he suddenly appears in chapter 12 of Genesis, before him there had been

Eden and there the blight of sin that was introduced. And after man's expulsion from Eden, from God's presence,

God found in man, Genesis 6 tells us, thought continually only of evil.

And so God destroyed all men except for Noah and eight souls that were with him.

And once returned to the now cleansed earth, men united themselves so that they might build a tower and reach up to heaven, make a name for themselves, to be on a par with God.

And so what did God do? Well he gave them the different languages, he dispersed them, he confused them so they couldn't unite together for that again.

Not because God was scared of what might happen if that tower got too high, for their good, that they should stop in their madness.

But more than just a depressing cycle of sin, the astute reader has to be wondering about this seed, this one.

If you're in Genesis wondering about where is that single descendant promised? Back in Genesis 3 .15

where God said, I will put enmity between you, which is the devil, the tempter, and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

And that's the Hebrew word for seed that's translated offspring. And God goes on and says, he shall bruise your head.

He, the seed, shall bruise the head of the tempter and you shall bruise his heel.

What that says to us prophetically going forward in redemptive history we're all aware of, speaking of the cross. But back to Genesis and what

Matthew is bringing to us in this listing of names and what is wrapped up and entailed in Abraham's name.

With all the world destroyed in the flood and with all mankind now confused and dispersed, where is that seed?

Where is that one promised to Abraham that he believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness, his faith was reckoned or imputed to him that way?

Where is that one? Because mankind is now gone except for those eight souls.

Well it's Abraham who comes suddenly on the scene in chapter 12 that continues this seed promised in Genesis 3 .15.

It is that descendant who is to bring the universal blessing. Jesus as the son of Abraham is that one.

He is the one Abraham rejoiced to see. He is the one who rectifies what Adam did.

That's stage one. That's his first grouping of these names here, these 14 names, and it ends with David.

So that connects David back to Abraham and the tribes of Israel.

Jacob who was Abraham's grandson by faith blessed his sons. And the fourth one Judah, the scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him and to him shall be the obedience of all peoples.

The kingly line, the royal line is coming through him, through Judah, the fourth of Israel of Jacob's sons.

And the first of Judah's descendants to be a king was David. And we know that the first king of Israel was

Saul, but he was not a descendant of David. He was not part of that line from Judah, excuse me, not

David, Judah. David was the first to fulfill that, and so David begins that second stage, the second grouping of 14 names.

And that grouping, that second stage follows the kings of Judah from the height of glory in David to a low of defeat and disgrace and exile.

Towards the end there with the last king whose name was Zedekiah, the prophet in that time was

Jeremiah. And he was the one who spoke to Jeconiah and his brothers, sons of David by birth but not by example.

The deportation says the deportation to Babylon, that was God's judgment against sinful

Judah. Babylon came and broke down Jerusalem's defenses, ransacked and desecrated the temple in 586

BC, and the kingdom never recovered. They were dominated and occupied in turn by Babylon, then by Persia, then by Greece, and then by Rome.

And just the way one might have wondered what became of the seed in stage one, where is that seed?

And all of a sudden there's Abraham, okay, it's safe, we've got it going again. One might wonder what of the king in Judah?

With the kingdom destroyed, the people exiled, and as you read after the exile that they're there, the kingly line is there, away from their land in Babylon.

God promised David his throne be an eternal one, but here they are, no army, no king, no city, no temple, and most of the people in exile far, far away.

So what good is God's promise to them now? With Jeremiah 33 and verse 25 says, thus says the

Lord, if I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth, then

I will reject the offspring of Jacob and David, my servant, and will not choose one of his offspring to rule over the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for I will restore their fortunes and have mercy on them.

You see how the prophet there, much as Matthew does, connects this Judaic line, this kingly line, these descendants of David back to Abraham and puts them all together into one people.

Ezekiel preaches to the exiles, my servant David shall be king over them, and they shall have one shepherd.

They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant

Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever.

Psalm 72, the last of David's psalms, ends with this, may his name endure forever.

Speaking of this coming ultimate king of David, this ultimate one from that line, his fame continue as long as the sun.

May people be blessed in him. All nations call him blessed. David here writing about the king that God said would come from him and sit on his throne forever.

And so as we look at this listing of names in this second grouping, this stage two, from that viewpoint, from the exile, this has to have seemed a very dim hope.

Stage three, the last grouping of names, it takes up this history from the Persian king Cyrus's command that the exiles return to the land of their to their land, and it goes from there all the way to Jesus.

How long, O Lord, will you be angry forever? Will your jealousy burn like fire? A psalm, a song that the exiles sang before they returned, and the answer is no, not forever.

God's promises stand true. Not forever. They did return just as God promised they would, and we know what happened when they returned.

They rebuilt the temple, but they never regained independence. They were never a nation again as God had planted them, 1948 notwithstanding.

The question is where is their king? Where is God's promise? Where stage two of Matthew's genealogy ends with the deportation, stage three moves very quickly to what?

To the restoration. The third name in that third grouping is

Zerubbabel. Who is he? He was a direct descendant from David, that Judaic line, that royal line.

He returned to Israel when the exiles were allowed to return by the pagan king Cyrus's decree.

He wasn't king, but he was their governor. So where is the promise of God?

There. God keeps his word. God maintained the line. He preserved them, and there it is.

Return to the land, and finally we come to Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom

Jesus was born, who was called the 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, the

Christ, 14 generations. And so begins the greatest story ever told, the birth of Jesus Christ, the

Son of God. There's no grander epic I can tell you. There's no better way to start even the

New Testament of God, which begins this answer to this centuries and centuries of redemptive history.

Jesus was born. How simple is that? To whom was born

Jesus, who is called the Christ, done. Now I ask you, if I went back to the beginning,

I said, how am I going to begin the greatest story ever told? Would you go to a tale of two cities?

It was the best of times. It was worst of times. Something that will catch people, or all happy families are alike in their own way, but unhappy families are all unhappy in their own special way.

Would you start like that? Who would think to start with 42 names? I mean, what an exciting way to get this greatest story ever told.

Luke devotes the better part of two lengthy chapters with great detail to the events surrounding Jesus's inception and his birth.

Matthew is going to cover it all in verses 18 to 25. He does make very sure that we know that Joseph is not his father in the normal physical sense, but where do we get the details?

How do we know what actually happened? We have to go to Luke. Luke or Matthew begins this great story with this list of names.

The 42 names that I've read to you a couple of times, tried to give you some background on what they represent.

Why does he begin this way? Isn't Moby Dick a little more exciting? Call me

Ishmael, and you want to find out why. And so you got to start turning the pages, but that's just a story.

That's just a novel. I enjoy it very much. It doesn't even scratch the surface to being as great a story as this one.

So why does Matthew begin this way? There's a few lessons. Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, is the summation of history. A moment ago, I called it redemptive history, but let's just call it history.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sums up all of history. The events that occur in time and space, what we think of as reality, are not just random occurrences.

They are the deliberate movement of history intended by God since eternity past to bring about his intention, which is what?

Man's salvation. Where Abraham becomes the guardian of sorts of the promised seed, of the one who will crush the head of the garden's interloper, and David, the human picture of God's ultimate and sovereign rule.

All of this finds purpose. All of this finds finality in one, in Jesus, who's called the

Christ. That's what this record is about. Jesus comes from Joshua.

The name comes from the word Joshua, which comes from the Hebrew Yeshua, which means God is salvation.

Salvation in Jesus, in whom alone one can be saved from their sins. Christ sums it all up.

Christ is the focus. Christ is the purpose. Christ is the reason. Christ is why a listing of 42 names is exactly the right way to begin this greatest story you could ever hear.

Jesus is what it's all been about. Stuff in history doesn't just happen. All events, no matter how small they might seem, they converge by God's design and by his sovereign control on him, on Jesus Christ.

And without him, I would suggest to you that history is meaningless absent him, because he,

Jesus, God in the flesh, is God's intention from the beginning.

The great events of the world are just chaotic series of accidents against which we do our best if, if Jesus is not the goal and the summation of it all.

If Christ, who's the climax of these 42 names, these three stages, these three generations, if he's not the sum of it all, if he's not the purpose of it all, then it's just bad stuff that happens and sometimes it's good.

And sometimes it's worse. But Matthew tells us here that cannot be the case.

Because everything that happens, no matter how small it might seem, is by God's will been worked towards this one great purpose to bring out

Jesus Christ. He's what it's all been about. That's why the coming of Christ by the virgin birth is the greatest story ever told.

Because Jesus came to save sinners. Because Jesus came to complete redemptive history for us.

All that the prophets have been looking forward to since Genesis 3 .15 in the introduction of sin and man's corrupted relationship with God.

And everything that goes wrong with the world, whether it's the cold that I'm hoping stays away until I say amen here this morning, or a cancer that took one of your loved ones, whether it's a fight you had with your spouse, or a wrong thought that we had towards a brother or sister, all that's wrong with the world is for this one cause.

It's because of sin. Way back there in Genesis 3 .15, answered finally in the birth of Christ.

The birth of Jesus who is called the Christ. That's why the coming of Jesus Christ by the virgin birth is the greatest story that we could be told.

God sent his only begotten son so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. John 3 .16.

Another lesson from Matthew's opening is also this, that God is true to his word.

What he says he does. He said he would send his son to be God in the flesh, and he did.

And he said that when he sent his son to be God in the flesh, and as a man died for our sins and crushed the head of the one who brought sin or tempted

Adam and Eve into sin and brought that into the world, he did.

It's the other lesson from this listing of 42 names. It's not just a boring list.

It's a list that tells us that God is true to his word, that God does what he says, that it's all been accomplished in him who is the point of it all, which is

Jesus. He said Jesus would die for our sins, and he did. He promises that if you will repent of your sins and trust in his proven faithfulness, that by repentance and faith in Christ you will be saved, you will indeed be saved.

Not just a listing of 42 names. It tells us that this God who sent his son

Jesus Christ is true and reliable. If you will but repent, if you but place your faith in him, in Jesus Christ, this son of God who came, free from the stain of sin in order that our sins can be removed from us.

It's true to his word. God sent, he advented his son that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If you do not believe, then this is the worst story you could ever hear. If you don't believe what

I'm trying to tell you here at the end, and we're almost done, then this is a terrible story for you, because then you're going to perish.

Matthew's opening tells us that God is true to his word. What he says he does. He said he would send his son to be

God in the flesh. He did that. He promises also that if you will not repent, you will die in your sins.

If you will not trust in his proven faithfulness and put your faith in him, in Christ, this reliable God who in this history represented by these 42 names has proven himself true in everything he says, also says that then you will die in your sins.

If you believe this truth that Matthew is bringing out to us in this listing of names, this truth certified by all history, then all the promises of God that are vested in his sons, in his son, excuse me, which is all his promises of eternal life, and his promises of not having eternal judgment, all those promises then are yours.

This advent is a great time for family gathering, for turkey -based feasts again.

It's a great time for presents if you wish, for trees, to stand over gifts if you so like, for everything but that bearded man in the sled.

Leave him out. I'd like to see that silliness forever excised. This is a wonderful time to look at God's truth, his reliability, his promises, and what he's done in his son, and you can trust him if you will but repent and turn to him.

This is a time to stop and consider that the greatest story ever told is more than a story.

It's a record of God's salvation, and it is a truth to be believed. Amen. Our grace heavenly father, we again thank you for bringing us here, for having us in your presence, for giving us your word, this record of the birth of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray father that you would turn the hearts of your people to him, that you would bring by your spirit faith and repentance to all who hear this message this day, that we who know the

Lord Jesus Christ will seek to be more like him. And father, if there are those in this place who know not

Jesus, I pray Lord that by your spirit you would drive home this truth, give them faith to believe,

Lord, and make today the day of salvation for your honor, and we pray in Jesus' name.