A Descendant of David and Abraham — Jim Cymbala

Jesus’ Genealogy as the Fulfillment of Old Testament Promise

I bet you never heard a sermon from the first verse of the New Testament. This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of King David and of Abraham. This is a record, listen, of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of King David and of Abraham.

And then what follows, and Luke has the same thing as part of his Christmas story, is how many verses, from 2 to 16, is what's called a genealogy, and it says this, Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of who?

Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, their mother was Tamar, Perez was the father of Hezron, all the way, and then when it gets to the end, and Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

Matthew runs the ancestry of Jesus Christ from Abraham through Joseph, the foster father, shall we say, of Jesus Christ, for he was born of a virgin. When Luke tells the story, he gives the Jewish genealogy that leads up to Mary.

Why do you list all these names? Why are there genealogies in the Bible? What's important? If it's all scriptures inspired by God, why waste all of that stuff with names that we can hardly pronounce? What is a genealogy?

A genealogy is a family tree. You ever look up your family tree? Someone gave me last Christmas something from the National Geographic and if you take a scraping from inside your mouth and another scraping and you put it in and you send it, they check through your DNA and they tell you where your ancestry supposedly comes from.

After a couple of months, I plugged into it and found out that my ancestry, as I thought, came from Eastern Europe, Ukrainian, Polish, but they go further back from that into the Middle East and then down to Africa.

This genealogy is in the Bible to prove Matthew is the Jewish, called the Jewish gospel. What are the four gospels, Matthew, Mark? Mark, Matthew is the one written to the Jewish person in mind and he wants to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the prophecies made in the Old Testament to the Jewish people that one day God would send a Messiah.

What does Messiah mean? He's the promised one. He's the deliverer. The Old Testament word is Messiah. The New Testament word in the Greek language is Christ. So Messiah and Christ are the same words in meaning to a Hebrew word, a Greek word.

This Messiah was the one everybody was waiting for and Matthew wants to make sure that everyone knows this Jesus was not some Johnny come lately, somebody that was slipped in. No, he had the heritage starting from Abraham and then Luke tells us another genealogy to prove this is the one who had the credentials to be qualified to be the one that the Jewish people could claim as their Messiah.

In fact, they rejected him, but Matthew wants to be sure and tell the story. This is his family tree. He didn't come from outside of the people of the covenant, the Jewish people. Jesus was Jewish, but the mystery of Jesus, of course, is that that baby that was born, something we can't fully understand.

The Fully Human and Fully Divine Messiah

He was fully man, fully human baby, but he was also fully God. Where did the human stop and the God part begin? The Bible doesn't explain that to us. We just know that his name was Emmanuel, which means God with us.

In other words, God walked on this planet. God himself walked on this planet. He put two feet on the planet and put one foot in front of the other and he walked and he wept and he cried and he got hungry and he got tired and he felt pain, especially on the cross.

So he was fully man, but he was fully divine. He was the one that was promised, but none of the people who were waiting for him understood what he would be like because they had a preconception from their religious traditions of what the Messiah would look like.

So now Jesus was five feet in front of the religious leaders with their big Old Testament Torahs and they didn't even know that God was in front of them. How in the world could you be that blind that God was in front of you and you're a religious leader and you don't pick it up?

Spiritual Illumination and Religious Blindness

Which warns us every time we come to church, we have to say, God, open our eyes. Every time we read the Bible, God, give me illumination in my heart that I might hear your voice and understand what you're doing.

How many say amen? Otherwise we can get religiously blind. The first verse, though, just picks two people out. It says, this is the list of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah. He was a descendant of King David and of Abraham.

David and Abraham. Then it starts all over, starting with Abraham, Abraham is mentioned again, David is mentioned again, but in some unique way, Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says, Jesus is the Messiah and he's the son, he's the descendant of David and then Abraham before that.

So today in these brief moments, I want to talk to you about why is that in the Bible? Why is David special? Why is Abraham specially named? And what does it have to do with us? How do I apply this verse to my life and how can I learn something to encourage me?

What is God trying to say to me through Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham? I understand Abraham because Abraham was the father of the Jewish people. So his name is prominent in the Old Testament and in the New Testament because he's the progenitor of all the Jewish people.

The Jewish race, the Hebrew people, start with Abraham, who himself was an idolater living in Ur of the Chaldees and God spoke to him and he obeyed God, followed God, trusted God, and he began to have children, Isaac and Jacob and so forth, and that's the Jewish people.

Abraham’s Covenant Line and Jesus’ Jewish Heritage

And Jesus was born of a Jew. So I understand that. Okay, so Matthew, I know what he's saying to us, he's saying, Jesus is Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. Now David, I understand that in a way because I keep thinking Jesus in the New Testament is always called never son of Moses, never son of Isaiah, never son of Abraham, but what is Jesus always called in the Bible?

Jesus son of David. But what's the spiritual lesson behind it? Jesus is Jewish, he's a descendant of Abraham. Jesus is the son of David because David was God's choice as the king and Jesus is a king, the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

But let's probe deeper, shall we, just briefly and see what we can gather from this. Jesus is a descendant of David. How can I link Jesus to David and then David and Jesus to me? Because I'm connected to Jesus.

If you're a believer, you're connected to Jesus. So I know my connection to Jesus, but now what can I learn that Jesus is connected to David? What's the lesson for me? Because David stands out and so does Abraham.

David’s Anointing, Obscurity, and Persecution

Jesus a descendant of David. Well, David was like Jesus, a prophetic symbol of Jesus in this way. God spoke a word about David, but it was to an obscure person who nobody cared about and before that word was fulfilled, oh my goodness what he went through.

For those of you who don't know the story of David, David was a little shepherd boy and yet the Lord had been tracking him, had him on his radar and he told the prophet Samuel, this king Saul that's on the throne, the one the people wanted, who was the first king of Israel, he was the people's choice.

God said to Samuel, I'm displeased with Saul. I want you to go and anoint one of Jesse's children. Samuel goes at a difficult time when Saul is persecuting the people who really believe in God and he gets to Jesse's house and he says, all I know is that God has shown me one of your boys is going to be the next king of Israel.

Could I please see the boys? Listen, the father thought so little of David, he didn't even bring him in the house. He lets all the other sons pass by and the first couple of them were so big and strapping and bulked up and looked so charismatic and handsome that Samuel, who was a prophet, said surely that's the one that God is going to pick and God said, no, I don't look at people the way you look at people.

People look at the outside but I look at the inside. So then all the sons go by and the Lord doesn't indicate any of them and he turns to Jesse and he says, is this it? These are all your boys? He goes, no, I got another one, but he's like, it's not even, he's out there watching the sheep.

He's just a kid. He says, I'm not eating until you bring them in. And when he walks in, the Lord speaks to Samuel and says, get your horn of oil and anoint him, obscure, insignificant. And then that word is given, you're anointed, you're going to sit on the throne, you're going to be the, you're telling a kid, you're telling a shepherd boy he's going to be the king of Israel.

Does that make any sense? Saul's in charge and Saul is not from the house of Judah. He's going to want one of his sons to sit on the throne. But God speaks an unlikely word and now David has this anointing on him and God's blessing is on him and he begins to achieve certain things through the strength of the Lord.

But what does it bring on him? Persecution. Most of the Psalms were written because David was running for his life from King Saul who was trying to kill him. He's hiding in caves. He's out in the desert.

He's writing Psalms that say, God, where are you? You know, that was great that Samuel anointed me and I was supposed to be the king. Forget the king. How about just keep me alive? I'll just take live rather than king.

Persecution for no reason, hated for no reason, helps people, even Saul, hated, turmoil, cut off from his family. But in the end, God's word is fulfilled and he sits on the throne. Jesus, a descendant of David.

Jesus’ Obscure Birth and Rejection

Jesus was born the same way. Obscure. We don't capture that in Christmas because Christmas is so popular and so worldwide. Do you realize nobody knew about this baby? Do you realize he was born in a stinking manger with the smell of manure?

Do you understand there was no room at the inn? Do you realize that Joseph and Mary were nobodies? Do you realize that they were so poor that when they brought an offering, when they presented him in the temple, they had to give little birds?

They didn't even have money to buy an animal, a real animal. He was a nobody. He was obscure. He had no halo over his head. He didn't look like anybody fancy or important. But God spoke over him before he was born.

God spoke over him at the Jordan River. This is my son, my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. It was spoken about him in the prophets. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father.

And all kingdoms of the earth will come under his rulership. How in the world can that happen to a kid born in a manger? If a kid's going to be great, send him to the best schools. Let him be born in a palace.

You don't let somebody important be born in a stinking manger. Then when he's ministering, he has nowhere to lay his head. Then when he begins his ministry, people begin to hate him. Hate him, why? He didn't say anything wrong.

He didn't hurt anybody. Why do you hate somebody like that? Because such is the human heart. He was dragging people into the light. And a lot of people who love evil, they don't want to be brought into the light.

They want to live in the dark because they don't want their deeds to be exposed. But when you met Jesus and he looked at you, he brought you into the light quick. Everything you knew was revealed to him.

And then the cross. I mean, where is this word about king of kings and Lord of lords? They're sticking spears in his side. They're putting a crown of thorns on his head. They're spitting at him. You realize when he was crucified, there was still spittle running down his face and neck.

I mean, where is all this fulfillment? Where is this king of kings and Lord of lords? His name shall be called wonderful. Oh, but listen. They buried him, but on the third day, God raised him from the dead.

Christ’s Resurrection and Universal Kingship

Can we all put our hands together? Do you get it? Listen, do you get it? It was spoken about David. Obscure, obscure. Jesus was raised in an obscure place, Nazareth, up in Galilee, which was looked down like Podunk.

He's from Podunk. He's from Nowheresville. Just like David, a shepherd boy, nobody caring about him, nobody acknowledging him. Jesus, then trouble, persecution, being hated, being rejected, fighting battle after battle.

But the word of the Lord came true for David. The word of the Lord came true for Jesus. For every knee will bow and every tongue will confess one day that Jesus Christ is Lord. Right now, he's seated at the right hand of the father and he's waiting for all of his enemies to submit to him and to be made his footstool.

But the people who mock Jesus now, the people who curse Jesus now, the people who hate Christmas, they want him now replace Christ with an ex. This board of education, these mayors and senators and governors, godless, anti-Christian.

Every one of their knees will bow. Every one of their tongues will confess. Come on, do we say amen to that? Just like they had to acknowledge David as king, they're gonna acknowledge that Jesus Christ is king of kings and Lord of lords.

Hey, listen, we're on the winning side here. And isn't that the same about us in another way? Paul says in 1 Corinthians, speaking to the Christians, he says, there's not many wise among you. Not a lot of rich people.

Not a lot of famous folks. Not a lot of PhDs. No. For his church, God has chosen the foolish things of this world, just common people. Oh yeah, there's a couple, especially educated, especially wealthy.

If you're one of those especially wealthy ones, I'd love to meet you for coffee at the end of the service. No, God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. He chooses the things that are not.

Does that bother you? Are some of you wrestling against that? Your ego and your pride says, no, don't define me like that. No, I'm not defining you. I'm telling you what God's word says. There's not many of us that are super wise and smart in the eyes of this world.

In fact, God has chosen the people that are not to bring down the people that are. An obscure person, just like us. We're not well known and famous and all of that, but God has put his hand on us and he's spoken a word over us.

He spoke a word over David and it came to pass, but there were trials and tribulations. He spoke a word over Jesus and it came to pass even though it led through the cross. He has spoken a word over you and me.

The good work that I have begun, I'm gonna finish it. One day you will wear a crown. One day you and I are gonna wear a crown and we're gonna be in that choir in front of the king of kings and the lord of lords.

Come on, can we put our hands together and celebrate it? So when you go through trials, you go through tribulations, when people mock you and make fun of you and say this or say that, that's something we can just dismiss and say it's all part of the process.

Jesus the King and the Kings We Serve

Jesus Christ, a descendant of David. And we're descendants of Jesus Christ through being born again. But then there's of course this about Jesus. He was a king. That's what they came, the wise men came to Jerusalem and said, where is this one who's born king of the Jews?

Herod didn't like that. He didn't wanna hear about another king. So Jesus, like David, came to be a king. But David sat on a throne and ruled people and if they didn't obey, he had to use force. But Jesus is a different kind of king.

Jesus' kingdom is right in here. Now you might say, I don't want a king. The days of kings are over. Oh no, the days of kings are right now for today because all of us here has a king. All of us have a king.

Everyone here has a king that you submit to. Yeah, it's true. And the people who say, no, I don't want any king. I don't want Jesus. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. I don't want the Bible telling me what to do.

You just have another king other than Jesus. Sometimes it's greed. That's your king. Money is your king. And you make decisions based on the king who rules over you. Sometimes it's a lust, a desire of the flesh like these terrible things they were hearing about, scandals, men driven to hurt innocent little boys.

Why? Because they had a king. But what a tyrant they had as a king. What a horrible king to have, to be driven like that. Other people, it's pride. Everything in life is based on how I look and I want people to be impressed by me.

Other people, it's peer pressure. That's your king. You wanna fit in with everyone. How you dress, how you act, who accepts you. You compromise your principles because you're king. My king becomes my peer group.

I want acceptance. But everyone has a king. But I wanna tell you today, the best king that you could ever have is Jesus. Because when Jesus becomes your king, he rules over you and he brings peace and joy.

He brings peace and joy. He's the best king you could ever have. He's the shepherd who protects you. He brings you into green pastures where you're refreshed and renewed on the inside. Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, if you're sitting here and Jesus is not your king, you're not gonna enjoy Christmas.

You're not gonna enjoy Christmas the way he wants you to. You gotta bow and say, Jesus, I have other kings in my life and they're wearing me out. Look at me. Look at me. I had other kings in my life. I went through college with a whole bunch of other kings and I was the most miserable, empty person you could meet.

But my goodness, when Jesus is the king of your life, oh, he changes everything about your life. How many have found him as the best king, best friend? Lift your hand up high. How many have him as king?

Just wave it at me. He is our king. That's why we're not embarrassed to worship him. They bow down to superstars and athletes and royalty and people scream and all of that. And then when we make a little noise and praise our king, they call us all kinds of names.

I don't care what anybody calls us. Come on, let's put our hands together for the king. For the king. David was obscure. David went through trials and tribulations, but the word of the Lord came to pass and it did for Jesus and it will do it for you.

Don't give up today. He who has begun a good work in you, he's gonna complete it. I know right now it's tough, but he's gonna bring you through. He brought David through. He brought Jesus through. What do you think?

He's not gonna bring you and I through? He's gonna bring us through as we make him king and submit to his rule. But you know the writer Matthew, he's very risky in mentioning David because in some ways, if you had David as an ancestor, that would be something you would hide.

David’s Sin, Repentance, and the Grace of God

My late father-in-law went to the Alamo because he had heard that he had ancestors who fought in the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. And he wanted to check the registry to see how his ancestor fought there and did he really die there.

He looked up the record and found out that he had a great, great, great, great, great, whatever uncle, grandfather, whatever, who was at the Alamo. And when the battle ensued, he got afraid and ran and the officers told him to stop running and he didn't and he shot him.

That was what his ancestor did. He said, boy, Jim, I came home disappointed here. I thought my great, great, great, great had fought and showed valor and was a hero. He turned coward and he ran. And his own side had to shoot him dead.

His own side. He never went back to the Alamo again. After that, he said, let it go. Did you know about David? That Jesus is the son of David? Did you know that when David became king, he went out one night when he should have been fighting and he saw a woman taking a bath on a rooftop and he desired her and he brought her to his house even though she was married to one of his generals, Uriah the Hittite.

And he slept with her but his little one night stand turned nasty because she became pregnant. So then David, who wrote all those Psalms, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not. That David said, how am I gonna get out of this?

So he brought Uriah home for a leave. You know the king can do anything he wants. Send him home with some for R and R. I gotta get him home to be with his wife so that he won't count the days and the months and he'll be with his wife and when the baby's born, nobody will know the better.

But you know the guy was so loyal, he wouldn't go home. He said, no David, your men are fighting and I'm so loyal to you, I won't even go home to be with my family. I'm gonna sleep right here on the steps of the palace and David is going like, what is wrong with this guy?

So then he thinks craftily, I'll get him drunk. So the next night he feeds him wine and he goes, Woozie, go home. He got so drunk he fell asleep before he could get home. So now David, as in Jesus the Messiah, is a descendant of David.

He sends him back to the battle and then he sends a note. How crazy was he to put this in writing through a messenger? And he tells Joab, his main general, when you attack, suddenly everybody withdraw from the enemy but leave Uriah dangling out there.

And he did. And sure enough, Uriah got killed. And did you know they sent a message back to David and said, by the way, we won the battle, we got a lot of spoils and we took over a lot of new territory.

Oh, and by the way, on the downside, Uriah the Hittite died in battle. And David said, you know what, it's a shame but that's what war is about. Some live, some die. Jesus, son of David. And then for months he couldn't write a psalm because he was blocking out God and all that conviction that God was trying to bring to his heart.

And the baby was born but the baby got sick. And the baby hung between life and death. And he lost the baby. But in that process, a prophet came to him and told him a story about somebody who robbed somebody else's choice lamb and killed it so he could feed some people.

And David, like we are, full of righteous indignation, said, tell me, who did something like that and robbed the little choice lamb from a family to feed it when he could have used his own supplies? And the prophet said, you wanna know who the man is?

You're the man. That's where that all started, you're the man. You're the man. And David said, I'm the man. How many times has God told me that? How about you? How many times has God told you when we're judging other people and we're acting so self-righteous?

And we've all been like sheep and gone astray. Why would God put that in the Bible? I mean, even if it happened to David, couldn't you leave it out? Every day of David's life is not in the Bible. Every day, every month is not in the Bible of David, nor Jesus.

So couldn't you skip over that? If you're gonna do a biography of somebody, couldn't you leave out that you had a loser of an ancestor like that? Do something that dirty, that low down, ah, God put it in so you and I could be encouraged.

That we're sin abound, grace even more abound. That Jesus came to help people like David, like you, like me, who have broken down and messed up. Am I the only person here who's ever broken down and messed up and failed God?

How about you up in the balcony? Haven't you ever broken down and messed up and the devil comes and accuses you? You can't even sleep at night. Your conscience is tormenting you. You're afraid of dying.

And he tells you that God has no use for you. That God will never pick you up again. That you've gone too far. That thing that you did, that sin you committed, it's over, it's too much. You had too much light to do it.

And to have that much light, didn't the devil ever attack anybody like that? And that's why when the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to write the first verse of the New Testament, he said, do it this way.

These are the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah who was a descendant of David and Abraham. Can you believe that? Because that's what Abraham's about. Can you believe that God is that good? Can you believe that he'll give you a new start?

Can you believe that he'll wipe out the record against you? Can you believe that you can have a new beginning in your life? Because if you can believe, all things are possible. This is why Jesus came.

The Call to Believe and Receive a New Beginning

He provided a way for us so we can overcome the mess ups of David. He wasn't embarrassed to link himself to David because he wanted all of us to know. That's why I came. I didn't come for a perfect world.

I came for people who mess up. But I love them so much despite their mess ups that I want them to come so that I can cleanse them and give them a new start. Let's close our eyes together. We want to just proclaim in one way or another the good news of Jesus Christ.

The good news of Jesus Christ. Is there anybody here in the balcony or downstairs to say, Pastor Simba, I needed to hear that. I am so glad that Jesus the Messiah is a descendant of David. And I want to make Jesus my king today.

I want a new beginning. I've got a lot of baggage. I got a lot of junk that only Jesus can take care of. I got a lot of pain that only he can lift. I've got my situation and I've been convicted today that Jesus is the only one who can help me.

Would you just get out of your seat and come up here? I would love to pray over one person or 100 people. And say, God, Jesus, give them a new beginning. Give them a new start. Maybe you've never been born again.

Maybe you've never confessed your sins and asked Christ to come in. Just come out of your seat, come up here. Or maybe you've drifted away like David drifted away. David drifted so far away after living so close to God, being so blessed.

And the Lord gave him a new start. Anybody here want to come up? I would love to pray for you. Just come out of your seat and come up here. We'll pray together. Pray with me everyone out loud. Dear God, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

Give me a new heart. Give me a new mind. Cleanse me. Make me a new person. Live through me. Think through me. Speak through me. Love through me. I crown you as my King, King Jesus. Give me your thoughts and your ways.

And I submit to them because I love you. And I believe in you that you died for me, that you shed your blood for me in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Now look at me, those of you in the front, just look up at me, okay?

Today is the first day of the rest of your life and God's gonna do something beautiful now in your life. Congregation, can we encourage them by just putting our hands together? Do you believe? Do you believe?

I know you're crying, but do you believe? Because when you believe, God begins to work on your behalf. Congregation, would you turn and hug one another and greet one another in the name of the Lord?