The Gospel According to Matthew: Introduction

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Today as we begin our journey through the text of Matthew, we are going to look at a genealogy.
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And you may have thought that we are done with genealogies now that we're out of Genesis. But we are not.
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In fact, we begin with a genealogy. But what I hope that we can remember from the genealogies of Genesis is that they are exciting and not boring.
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In recent years, it's become more common for people to become interested in their ancestry through the websites like Ancestry .com.
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In my family, my mom has grown a huge interest in this.
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And she traced both her line and my father's line as far back as she could.
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She was able to trace my father's line back much farther than hers.
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And what she discovered is that if you go back far enough, she found that there's royalty in my father's line.
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I like to joke with my dad that he should spend his retirement going to Europe to claim his throne.
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He's the firstborn son instead of driving bus. But he hasn't done that yet.
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But all joking aside, today we're going to see the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
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And what we are going to see is that royalty is in his line. We will see that he is the final fulfillment of a monarchy that started 1 ,000 years before him.
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So I look forward to unfolding this to you as we look at this marvel from history, the most important line of ancestry that there is, the line that leads to the
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God -man himself. But before we jump in this morning, let me give you a little recap of what we did last
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Sunday. A week ago I gave some background details that will help us as we navigate through this gospel.
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We learned that one of Jesus' 12 disciples, Matthew the tax collector, is the author of this gospel.
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We learned a little bit about him. He's one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. He's a tax collector.
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And he wrote the book in the late 50s and early 60s A .D. He wrote this book to a largely
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Jewish audience that had some Gentile presence. So with this background in mind, let us begin our journey through the gospel according to Matthew.
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And I encourage you to turn there with me. And if you're using a red Bible in the pew, it's on page 807.
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We'll be looking at Matthew 1, verses 1 through 17. This sermon is titled,
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Royal Lineage. And our big idea, our proposition is this. God's orchestrating hand is seen as he weaved together
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Christ's royal line of ancestry. God's orchestrating hand is seen as he weaved together
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Christ's royal line of ancestry. Let's begin with verse 1. And then I'm going to highlight what we need to see here before we jump into all the names.
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So let's read verse 1 together. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
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There's a lot there. So let's stop right there. What Matthew writes from the beginning is that this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
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The word genealogy looks like the word Genesis. The first book of the
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Bible, Genesis, is called this because it's a book of beginnings. And the word Genesis is simply the
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Greek translation of the Hebrew word for beginning. The word genealogy is the same word.
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And what this means is that a person's origin is being traced back to the beginning.
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If we were to trace the ancestry line of every person in this church, we would all get back to the same two people,
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Adam and Eve. So that way we are all related. What is interesting is that most in this room are
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European. So we descend from Noah's son Japheth. We know this because his son
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Javan settled in what later became known as Europe. So most of us in this room can trace our ancestry back to that point, but it's after that where things start to get messy, where we come from all different places.
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I know that this is largely a Danish historically population here, but probably mostly
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Scandinavian. But obviously we have German and French and Spain and Italy and England and all those different places where people descend.
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But as we think about our text today, in the genealogy of the first gospel, Matthew writes in his heading two very important figures from Israel's history,
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David and Abraham. He calls Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham.
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This is where it is important to understand the background information that we looked at a week ago.
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I mentioned to you that Matthew has more of a Jewish taste to it than the other three gospels.
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What I've already explained is that most of the people that Matthew was writing to were Jews. These would have been
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Jews who needed help understanding how Jesus fulfilled prophecies in the
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Old Testament. So let's first look at the significance of the phrase son of David.
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One of the great hopes of the Jews in the Old Testament is that the Messiah would come and drive out their enemies and establish a forever kingdom on the earth.
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And when he writes son of David, what he's saying is that Jesus is the Messiah who will reign forever.
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One thousand years before Jesus in 2 Samuel 7 verses 12 and 13 and verse 16, the
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Lord made this promise to King David. He said, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers,
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I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
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He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
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Your throne shall be established forever. So we see the son of David.
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Seven hundred years before Jesus in Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, the
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Lord said this to the prophet Isaiah. For to us a child is born. To us a son is given.
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And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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Of the increase of his government and of the peace there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
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So what Matthew is telling us by saying that Jesus is the son of David is that he is the fulfillment of the
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Davidic covenant. He is the Messiah who will sit on the Davidic throne forever.
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So he's the son of David. Now let's look at the significance of the phrase in the second half of verse 1,
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Son of Abraham. I mentioned last week that going through Genesis as a church sets us up well to understand the rest of the
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Bible. We are very familiar with the promises the Lord made to Abraham. The Lord promised
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Abraham offspring that he would be blessed and that his people would inherit the land of Canaan.
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In Genesis 12 -3 the Lord told Abraham that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him.
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What this meant is that all the nations would be blessed through his offspring and specifically one offspring as he is the one who holds all the other offspring together.
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He's the lynchpin. What we saw in Genesis is that the offspring promise zeroes in on Jesus Christ.
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Paul explains this in Galatians 3 .16 and also verse 29 of that chapter.
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He wrote, Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say unto offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring, who is
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Christ. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
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When Matthew's Jewish readers read this phrase, son of Abraham, they would have understood that Jesus is the key figure in the
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Abrahamic promise. All of the offspring find their blessing in him and in their union with him.
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Furthermore, the Gentiles reading this would see the promise that the nations are blessed through Israel's Messiah.
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All the nations of the earth will be blessed through the son of Abraham. As Matthew writes his genealogy, he decides to trace
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Jesus' line from his native people, the nation of Israel.
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So we just saw a little bit of the son of David and the son of Abraham. Now let's get to the genealogy that he starts with the first Israelite, and the first Israelite is
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Abraham. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to read the genealogy, verses 2 -17, and then
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I'm going to highlight what we need to see in this. So here we go.
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The names aren't too bad, so I think we can handle this. So Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez, and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Ammonadab, and Ammonadab the father of Nashan, and Nashan 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, 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.
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And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and 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 Matan, and Matan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom
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Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations.
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And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the
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Christ, 14 generations. So there we have Matthew's genealogy.
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So as we read this, what we notice is that Matthew started with Abraham in verse 2 and worked his way down to Jesus in verse 16.
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Now there is one other gospel, as I mentioned in the call to worship today, that has a genealogy, and that is the gospel of Luke.
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The author of Luke does something different. In Luke 23 -37, he does not trace
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Jesus' lineage from the nation of Israel, from Abraham, but rather traces
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Jesus' ancestry from the first human who ever lived, Adam.
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What the gospel of Luke brings to mind is the reality that Jesus is the only hope for the world.
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He is the second Adam. The first Adam failed and plunged humanity into sin, while the second
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Adam succeeded. And that's interesting. In the early part of Jesus' ministry, as we will see, he's tempted by Satan in the wilderness.
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Remember, Adam was tempted by Satan in the garden. Adam failed. Jesus did not.
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He passed the test and, of course, accomplished his mission of living a perfect life, dying on the cross for our sins, and was raised from the dead.
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So that's why we call Jesus the second Adam. Now what is interesting is the genealogy in Matthew has some different people listed than what is listed in Luke's genealogy.
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If you compare the two, you will see that. One reason for this is the fact that there are gaps.
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Sometimes genealogies in Scripture skip a few generations because they want to highlight certain individuals over others, and they have a certain number in mind of how many they want to mention.
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More on gaps in a little bit. But another difference between the genealogies of Matthew and Luke is that a different person is listed from the same generation.
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This is where we really need to do some digging to figure out why. It would be like you having two great -grandfathers.
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You might say, okay, something's off here. So we need to figure out, well, why are there two different people named in the same generation?
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For example, in Matthew 1, 6 -7, Matthew writes that Jesus descended from David and then
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Solomon, while in Luke 3 -31, Luke writes that Jesus descended from David and then
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Nathan. So in other words, did Jesus come from David's son Solomon, or did he come from David's son
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Nathan? We are faced to figure out why this is.
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Now on the surface, this looks like a contradiction. Sometimes you hear people say that the Bible is full of contradictions, and whenever I hear someone say that, it's the weakest argument in the book, because the people who say that typically aren't people who dig deeply into the
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Bible. They just say, oh, there's a mistake. They're looking for reasons to dismiss the
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Bible. If you dig a little bit, you can see that there is no contradiction, but there's harmony.
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The Bible has apparent contradictions, and the key word there is apparent. There's always an explanation that shows a solution.
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So what is the solution to this? There have been two solutions offered, and I'm going to explain these to you, and then tell you which one
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I think is the right one. One solution is that Matthew traces Joseph's ancestry, who is
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Jesus' father, while Luke traces Mary's ancestry, Jesus' mother.
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In other words, Joseph came from the line of Solomon, while Mary came from the line of David's other son,
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Nathan. The second solution is this. This one's a lot easier.
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Matthew traces Jesus' royal lineage, while Luke traces Jesus' actual lineage.
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So in other words, Jesus did not come directly from Solomon's line, but from David's lesser -known son,
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Nathan. Now both of these are good options, and both of them take away any hint of a contradiction.
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The first option is a very interesting one. I'm going to teach you something that you probably have never heard before, and when
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I heard this, I was like, that's really interesting. And what I'm going to explain is that there's an event from the
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Old Testament that may, if this view is right, there's an event from the Old Testament that may inform us as to one of the reasons why these two lines are presented in these two
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Gospels. In Matthew 112, we read that Jesus descended from Jeconiah.
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Jeconiah is also known as Keniah, a wicked king of Judah.
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His wickedness led the prophet Jeremiah to give him this curse.
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In Jeremiah 2230, Jeremiah said this, A man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, in ruling again in Judah.
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Okay, so we see here this curse may present a problem.
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The Messiah from the line of David would eventually come from Keniah, and yet the curse says that none of his offspring would sit on the throne of David.
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So what do we do? This first solution as to why there are differences in these two genealogies provides an answer to this question.
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In the first solution, Joseph came from the line of Solomon, while Mary came from the line of David's other son,
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Nathan, the son that nobody knows about except that he's listed in the genealogies. This is where the virgin birth gets around King Keniah's curse.
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If Jesus came from both of these lines, and yet did not come from the seed of Solomon, since Jesus' father
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Joseph's seed never came into Mary, the supernatural birth, the virgin birth, then
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Jesus technically does not come from Keniah's seed. Because Joseph never was with Mary.
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The Holy Spirit was the one who put the seed there. So in this view, the virgin birth is the solution to the
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Keniah problem. And both these genealogies from Matthew and Luke show Jesus' lineage from both of his parents,
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Joseph and Mary, respectively. Okay, so the question is, is this right?
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One of my professors in seminary holds to this view, and it's kind of interesting. When you're preaching through a text, you really get time to study it and it was kind of one of those things in the back of my head.
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I want to look at that closely someday, but I just don't have time to look at it. And this week I got time to look at it, and I think my professor's wrong.
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Long story short, and I'll explain to you why here. I think the second view is far more likely, and that's the position
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I take. Even though the first one does work, the second view I think is much more likely.
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And here it is. Matthew describes Jesus' royal line of succession, while Luke describes
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Christ's actual physical ancestry. So here are a few reasons why
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I think this is right. Number one, Joseph is mentioned in both genealogies and not
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Mary. In fact, in Luke 3 .23, Mary is not even mentioned and Joseph is, but according to the other view,
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Luke is telling Mary's line. You'd think he would at least mention Mary. He doesn't even mention her, he just says
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Joseph. The second reason why I think that Matthew is describing Christ's royal lineage is because in the first verse,
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Jesus is called the son of David, which is a royal messianic phrase.
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It's a reference to the Davidic covenant that lists his royal line in Matthew's genealogy.
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Furthermore, his mostly Jewish audience cared about how Jesus fit into the royal line.
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And Matthew shows them that he descends from David and every other king that followed, and therefore is the rightful heir of the throne.
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And on the other end, Luke would have... Remember, Luke's audience was mostly Gentile, so they would have cared more about his physical ancestry than how he fit into these
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Jewish prophecies. So to summarize, the difference between the genealogy in Matthew to the genealogy in Luke is that Matthew highlights the royal line from which
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Jesus descends, while Luke lists his direct ancestors. So are you following me?
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I know this is a lot of details here, and you can always listen to it later. This will be online if you want to listen to it real close.
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So let me say that again. The differences between the genealogy in Matthew to the genealogy in Luke is that Matthew highlights the royal line.
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That's where he highlights Jesus as the son of David, while Luke lists his direct ancestry.
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So, in other words, Jesus did not directly descend from Solomon. He descended from David, yes, who the prophet started with.
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But he did not descend from Solomon, but rather, in his actual ancestry, he came from Nathan, a lesser -known son.
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And Luke records that in his genealogy. So are you following? Okay, there we go.
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I think I've said the same thing over again about six times. Sometimes the sixth time works, right? It took me six times to figure it out.
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So now you may be wondering, what about the solution to the curse of King Quniah? Does the other view really only have the only solution to this curse that none of his offspring would inherit the throne of David?
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Well, the answer to this is easy. If you look at the list of Jesus' ancestors in Luke, you know whose name doesn't show up?
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Quniah's name isn't listed, which means that Jesus didn't come from Quniah, which means that the seed curse doesn't apply to him because he doesn't come from him.
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And furthermore, I think that the curse that Jeremiah gives to Quniah, I think it's just referring to his immediate ancestors because shortly after this curse, there was only one king that followed him, and that was
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Zedekiah, who was placed in that position by the Babylonians. And Zedekiah was not
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Quniah's son, as the prophecy promised, but Zedekiah was, in fact, Quniah's uncle.
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So what Jeremiah said came to pass. None of his immediate offspring ever inherited the throne, but a distant offspring that comes from the line of David, Jesus would inherit the throne.
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Okay, so in other words, there is no problem with the Quniah curse. So we see here
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Matthew is concerned with the royal lineage. Luke is concerned with the actual ancestry.
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But let's look at something else here too as we look at this. As I mentioned above, there are gaps in genealogies.
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And verse 17 clues us in as to why. We know that there are gaps in Matthew's genealogy because from King Joram to Azariah, three generations are skipped because if you look at the genealogy in 1
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Chronicles 3, 11 through 12, those three names are in there. But in Matthew, they don't show up. So he's skipping generations as he's writing this genealogy.
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But what we notice here in verse 17 is the number 14 is very important.
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There's a symbolic meaning to the number 14. What he says is that all the generations from Abraham to David are 14.
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From David to Babylon, the Babylonian exile, were 14. From the
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Babylonian exile, which took place in the 6th century BC, from the
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Babylonian exile to Christ coming to the earth are 14 generations. So we see three different parts of history where he highlights 14 generations.
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Now we know that he skips generations because 1 ,000 years is in the first category.
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600 years, I think, let me get my numbers right here. 1 ,000 years is in the first category. 400 years is in the second.
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And 600 is in the third. So it clearly is not even. So he's just highlighting certain people that he wanted to, and he wanted to get the number 14 in each of them.
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So he does this for a reason. So the question is, well, why is the number 14 so important to Matthew as he writes this?
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Now Jesus, as I mentioned, he's called the Son of David. In verse 2, that is the Messianic title, as we have seen.
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The promise to David was that there would be this line of kings, and there would be this final king, the
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Messiah, who would sit on the throne forever. This throne known as the Davidic throne.
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So what about the number 14? The number 14 has to do with the name
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David. You're going to learn a little bit about Hebrew right now. And I apologize, there's a lot of details here today.
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So I'm trying to do my best to have you stay with me. But the number 14 has to do with the name
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David, which, by the way, is my middle name. Anyone else named David here? No?
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Okay. It's funny, one of my pastor's groups, we have two
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Davids, and my middle name is David. And there's only five of us, so we're like, you have to be a David to be in this group.
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David is a very common pastor's name for whatever reason. God just made it that way. But my pastor back home's name is
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David also. But anyway, so the name David, the fourth letter of the
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Hebrew alphabet is Dalet. The sixth letter is a letter known as Vav.
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The Hebrew language does not have vowel letters like we do in the English alphabet. I learned a consonant and vowels just like every other
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American, right? Real fortune, right? We have all the consonants, and what are the vowels? A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes
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Y, right? I never understood the last one. But what the
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Hebrew language does, they have points. If you were to look at the Hebrew text, they have points under the consonants.
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The points under the consonants are the vowels. So in other words, the name
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David only has three letters. Dalet, Vav, Dalet. And the vowel points are under the letters.
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So in other words, the consonants here, Dalet is the fourth letter of the
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Hebrew alphabet. Vav is the sixth letter. And then Dalet again is the fourth letter.
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Okay, so let's do a little math here. Four plus six plus four is what?
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Fourteen. There we go. Mark, you're pretty good at math. There we go. Good job. So the letters of King David's name add up to fourteen.
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So what the author Matthew wants us to take away from this genealogy is that Jesus is the son of David, the Messiah. He is the one the whole
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Old Testament was pointing to. And so Matthew starts off his gospel by showing his readers the royal lineage of people that led to the
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Messiah's arrival on the earth. So this is the main idea he's getting after. And this drives home the point, he wants us to see the royal lineage.
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And so that's why he says fourteen, because he's pointing to the head of this line,
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David, and it's the throne that Jesus sits on. He sits on the Davidic throne, the
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Messianic throne. Okay, so there we go. So this sermon has had a ton of information, so I thank you again for staying with me.
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But if we're staying with the text, we have to get all this information. And what I want to emphasize as we close here is that genealogies have meaning to them.
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They are not just a bunch of names thrown together. When you look at your ancestry, typically we're not thinking, okay, do we want to highlight some meaning in this line of people?
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We usually just want to know who do we come from, right? But when the Bible puts a genealogy in there, it's more than just who we came from.
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I mean, that's important, too, but he's trying to highlight the significance about who we came from or who these people came from in Scripture.
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And it shows the Lord's faithfulness, that the Lord was faithful to bring all of this to pass because he made all of these promises.
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He made the promise of the Abrahamic covenant, and Jesus came eventually. Then he makes the promises to David, the
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Davidic covenant, and Jesus came. You see the fulfillments taking place in him, and Matthew is highlighting that very thing right here.
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So this morning we saw God's orchestrating hand is seen as he weaved together
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Christ's royal line of ancestry. All of these kings that preceded Jesus on the Davidic throne died.
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All of them were temporary holders of the most important throne this world has ever known or will ever know.
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But they prepared the way for one who would live forever. When Jesus was raised from the dead, he would forever sit on the throne, and there would be no king after him.
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Jesus is the son of David, the messianic king. And what we will see starting next week is his arrival to this earth.
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Then a few chapters down, we will see the start of his ministry that lasted about three years and would change the world forever.
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Now next Sunday is not Christmas, but next Sunday we are going to look at the birth of Christ, starting in verse 18.
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And what we will see is this important verse, And I look forward to opening that with you next
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Sunday. Let's pray. Father in heaven,
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I pray that with all the information that was received today, that we would take away what we need to take away from this. We need to see your faithfulness in this,
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Lord. We need to worship you for it. Lord, if we come away from this like it's a dry lecture, it misses what you want to be taken away from this.
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And so may we worship you for your faithfulness in bringing this line together. To see Jesus' fulfillment of the messianic prophecy that he would be the fulfillment of this royal line that starts with David and goes all the way to him.
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Father, I thank you for the word of God that is able to make us wise for salvation.
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And we will see that as we go through the gospel that Jesus is the only hope for the world.
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He is our treasure. He is our everything. And may everyone in this room be able to say that he is my treasure, he is my everything.
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That apart from him, life is not worth living. But with him, oh, what an abundant life it is.
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And what a treasure he is to know him now and to live with him forever. I pray that everyone in this church would know
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Jesus Christ as their Lord, Savior, and treasure. And that we would grow, Lord, to reflect this son of David all the more.