Alright, so we are beginning the Gospel of Matthew, and if I could summarize the entire book for you, I would do so with what you see below the Gospel of Matthew, in that it's covering the question, or answering the question, why did the king come, but not the kingdom? Why did the king come, but not the kingdom? Now, with that, I want to deal with this question that maybe you have, why another gospel? Why are there four? Perhaps it's because we are dull and we need reminding, maybe we need it four times over in order to get the point across, and those are perhaps valid. But the question might remain for you, why another gospel? Well, Every gospel has its own particular focus or emphasis for why that writer chose to give his side of the story, if you will. None of these things contradict, despite many attempts to prove that scripture contradicts itself because of the gospel narratives being slight variants within that. But the reason there are four gospels, basically because of the emphasis or purpose that that writer had. Now Matthew's narrative comes from a Jewish perspective. Now you could say all Gospels kind of come from that. Well, that's true. They're all Jewish men that wrote it, but Matthew writes a distinctively Jewish gospel, and I believe his main purpose, and we'll develop this more as we get deeper into the book, his focus is to basically provide the information to all the Jews questioning in the first century, okay, if Jesus is the Messiah, where's his kingdom? You tell me, where is it? The Old Testament prophets that we well revere, they said when the Messiah comes, here comes his kingdom. Well, if what you say is true about Jesus being the Messiah, where's his kingdom? I don't see it. And so Matthew gives a very comprehensive answer to that question, and it has a distinctive Jewish perspective. And you might be asking, well, if it has a Jewish perspective, we're not particularly Jewish. Why would we study this? Well, as Trevor alluded to, and Donald alluded to in their conversation, I think we miss a great deal of Scripture if we don't understand the context. Namely, that the majority of them are Jewish. The writers, the stories, the accounts, all of it Jewish. And so we are served well by understanding this background. And there's plenty of application that we will draw from this amazing book. Not only is it from a Jewish perspective, but it's a Jewish audience. As I mentioned, he's writing to Jews. Now does that mean it's not profitable for us? Well, Paul said all scripture is profitable. Is the gospel of Matthew scripture? Okay, some head nodding. Okay, yes, of course it is, right? So that means it's profitable. We will find out how so as we unpack the great contents. And it has a Jewish purpose. It is centered on the gospel of the kingdom. Now, I want to deal with this book because not understanding the distinction between the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of the cross, or by the way, this time of year, we talk about the good tidings or glad tidings, that's gospel, the gospel of the birth of Christ. Gospel is a non-technical word, it just simply means good news. Now we create it, we make it a technical term when we talk about, did you preach the gospel to them? Now we all know what's meant by that statement, but perhaps we need to be more precise. Well, what do you mean? The good news that my house is under contract and is about to sell? The good news that I'm about to have a child? What good news are you talking about? Well, context, right? Now there is a difference. There's not two Gospels that save you eternally, but there are many Gospels in Scripture. The Gospel of the Kingdom is one of them. And so we're going to rightly or accurately handle the Word of Truth to the best of our abilities. in the Gospel of Matthew and unpack what is meant by the Gospel of the Kingdom. Because if you take them as synonymous, the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of the Cross, you will find yourself in error when it comes to understanding the difficult teachings of Christ. Do they apply to us? Do they apply to us primarily, secondarily, none at all? How do we deal with these questions? Here's a hopefully helpful chart to kind of explain the four Gospels. Now, the circles are representing the events or certain narratives that exist within the Gospel. Now, all four Gospels may touch on the same area or the same topic. So the red circles, for example, that could be the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They all cover it, right? Only two of the Gospels perhaps deal with a certain narrative, the other two don't. Maybe three of them do and one of them doesn't. This demonstrates again that they all are dealing with the life of Christ. So what I want to present to you in your understanding of understanding the Gospels is think of everything Jesus did as that circle, the black circle. And John alludes to this, right? If we wrote about everything that Christ did, and I know he's being hyperbolic, but maybe not, the oceans would run dry. There's not enough parchment to write the things that he did. And so that begs the question, well, why do we have what we do have? We may ask, why only four Gospels? Why not more? Why didn't everyone know? Well, that's the gospel of the cross that we'll deal with later, but the gospel, it's a particular type of narrative that gives a historical account of the life of someone, namely Christ. And so with that, again, all four gospel writers had a particular purpose. And there's been many commentators that try to summarize that concisely. The way we remembered it at Frontier School of the Bible was Matthew, king of the Jews. Mark, servant of man. Luke, son of man. John, son of God. Those are good. Those are good summaries, but there's maybe a little bit more than just that rough summary. Because they all kind of touch on those things. But Mark, for example. frequently talks about the acts of service that Christ did. Well, that seemed to be an emphasis of his. It could be that, in fact, I think Mark is much more Jewish than we give him credit. Mark was a disciple of Peter. Peter was the apostle of the Jews, and I think he dealt with a lot of acts of service by Christ. Why? Oh, the suffering servant of Isaiah. Very Jewish. Now, that doesn't mean it's not applicable to us, but it's something we need to keep in mind. Now, I'm going to draw a lot from this man you see on the screen. Stanley Toussaint, wonderful commentary on the book of Matthew. Not everything do I agree with, but his commentary, Behold the King, A Study of Matthew, is phenomenal and very worthwhile if you were to pick it up. But he adds this in the beginning of his book. He says, these books were not written merely to convey theological concepts or to relate a story. These are important, but the primary purpose of gospel writers was to prove a point. In other words, they wrote their Gospels with the intention of setting forth an argument. In order to attain this objective, the evangelists were very selective in their choice of materials. Those elements were placed in the fore, which would assist them in accomplishing their purpose. Therefore, one writer may at times emphasize doctrine. At other times, he may underscore a series of events. Both doctrine and narration may be used, but their use is all for the sake of setting forth an argument. And so it's up to us to determine what is the argument, and then how does he argue for his argument. So some preliminary considerations to the Book of Matthew. Now, what I'm gonna do, it's not gonna be a typical book introduction where I'm gonna give every detail. I have a pastor friend of mine who's, in fact, all my pastor friends have either gone or going through Matthew. There was, I think, I think he said 12 parts to his introduction to the Book of Matthew. And it's all important. I'm not mocking that at all. It's very worthwhile to go through all 12 hours of that. But I won't do that to you. But what I do want to do is as we move through the book, the certain introduction type things, you know, date, the character of Matthew, those types of things, I think we can bring those up as we go. And that way we're gaining progress through the book and making it through the book before the kingdom does come. So a few considerations to the book of Matthew. It's written to Jews and primarily for Jews, but with profitability for all. We have to keep that in mind. And I've made this point before, but did you know that really almost no scripture is written to you directly? except maybe a handful of portions, and maybe portions of those certain books. Now what I mean is, they were written to certain churches, certain people, certain individuals. They have certain purposes. They weren't written to Jacob Heaton living in Denver, Colorado. But it was written for Jacob Heaton, right? All scripture is profitable for us. And it's our job to determine what that is, whether it's teaching us something, whether it's correcting or rebuking us, maybe it's training us or correcting us for righteousness so that we're thoroughly equipped. And that verse, you know, I mentioned the sufficiency of Scripture downstairs, that verse emphasizes the sufficiency of Scripture. Another reason I love this book is it's a perfect bridge to the Hebrew scripture. If you want to make sense of what the Old Testament is building up to, and what our eschatological hope is, and what the eschatological end times hope for the Jew is, the book of Matthew is perfect for that purpose. And so we're going to study it. It's an explanation for why the Messiah came, but not the kingdom. That's the heart of his argument. Why did the king come, but not the kingdom? Because that's on the mind of every Jew, is okay, if you say that he's the Messiah, where's the kingdom? And Matthew, I think, very much so could have said, well, I'm glad you asked that question. And with that, this next point, I have come to the conclusion that the book of Matthew is a polemic against the religious leaders and unbelieving Jews. Maybe not entirely, but I think it certainly serves that purpose. that purpose. Now, what's a polemic? A polemic is essentially a strong public argument decrying something or exposing something. And that is exactly what Matthew does. And we're going to see it even in the genealogy. The certain people that he includes, the certain ways he goes about his argument is all essentially pointing the finger. You ask the question, why the kingdom's not here? It's you. Religious Jew, unbelieving Jew, You rejected your Messiah and you forfeit the kingdom to another generation. And so he very much gets into a polemic against it. In fact, I think the Sermon on the Mount, very excited to get there, I think is very much exposing the false teaching of the religious leaders. And Jesus has to hold their hand and walk with them and say, you may have heard it said this, but I tell you this, he's not giving a new law. He's accurately interpreting the law that was misinterpreted by the religious leaders. As far as date, I will throw you a bone. It's written sometime between 33 and 70 AD. That's pretty broad, right? Now, 33 is the date assigned to his death, at least conservatively, I think, according to the dates of Harold Toner. 70 AD is the destruction of the temple. Now, the reason I think it's earlier than that is, one, there's no mention to the destruction of the temple except that it's future. And then also, even within the genealogy, there are certain names that Matthew gives for Jesus' genealogy that could only be given with the temple records. But with the destruction of the temple, those records are destroyed. And tracing your genealogy back to certain tribes and families, unless it's passed down orally through your family, it's not gonna happen. So Matthew had access to those, I believe. Now, with that, I would entertain an early date for the Book of Matthew. I think it's perhaps even the second book written in all of the New Testament. The Book of James, number one, and I think Matthew, number two, which would precede Paul even. Now, can I prove that? not without a shadow of a doubt, but I think there's a strong argument with the Jewish nature, there would have been an urgency to explain the life of Christ, to answer this question, when the church was predominantly Jewish, before the ministry of Paul. And so I would give a conservative date of perhaps 45, maybe a little bit later, into 50 AD, I know that gets into not the second book, because Galatians was written before that, but anyways, we'll leave that there. It's written by Matthew, also known as Levi, the seventh disciple of Jesus. Now, how do we know he's the seventh? Well, you have to do a little bit of comparison with the life of Christ, which is another point I want to add. This is the study of the gospel of Matthew, not the life of Christ. With that, there will be times we'll try to piece together the chronology of things as difficult as that task is. but our focus is gonna be on Matthew. We might compare it with some other parallel texts in other Gospels, but it's Matthew. We're gonna focus on Matthew. If you have questions along the way, please feel free to reach out to me during the week or after a message, and I would love to do a little bit more digging on that question. So here's how I would outline this book. Now, the two main divisions are mine. All of the others I shamelessly stole from Stanley Toussaint. All the subpoints follow his seven main divisions outlined in his commentary. And so the incarnation and preparation of the king, declaration, all of those, those are from Stanley Toussaint, and I couldn't find a better way to summarize or outline those portions, so I stole. But I'm giving him credit, so I didn't steal. But the two main divisions, you can break up the book two-way into two main parts. The king has come, chapters 1 through 13, and the kingdom has not, 13 through 28. So the first half of the book, he's dealing with the pronouncement, behold the king, he has arrived. And then the rest of his book, he deals with the kingdom has not. And there's a major turning point in chapters 12 and 13, where 12 is a formal rejection by the religious leaders, the unpardonable sin that they committed by accusing the miracles done by Christ as the power of Satan rather than than the Holy Spirit. And at that point, I believe, that generation's fate was sealed. They would not receive their kingdom. And so the rest of the way, we start to see the kingdom, the explanation as to why that is. Why did the kingdom not come? I thought I would mention this as well. Here's a Chiastic structure of Matthew. This was stolen, but given credit to Gary Derrickson, article written in 2006 in Bibliotheca Sacra. Matthew's chiastic structure and its dispensational implications. Now, a chiastic structure is essentially a parallelism. So point A matches point A, B, B, C, C, so on and so forth. So you see chapters 1 through 4 has a parallel to 26 and 28. 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount, has a parallel with the Olivet Discourse, 24 through 25. 8 through 9, the miracles and instructions. Well, there's also miracles and instructions in 19 through 23. There's instruction to the 12, chapter 10, and chapter 18. Then there's the opposition to the king, 11 through 12, 14 through 17. And notice, what's at the center? Now, the center of the chiasm, that's always the focus of the chiasm. That's chapter 13. I think that's the turning point of this book. the Mystery Kingdom parables, Jesus transitions to a new form of ministry, where at once he was teaching out in the open, declaring the truth to all, now through parables he's veiling it to those who rejected him, but exposing it to those who have an ear to hear, let them hear. And I'm really excited to get to that portion of Matthew probably later next year. With all that being said, the title of this message is The Promise Seed, The Pedigree of the Messiah, Matthew 1, 1-17. And so this is in the first section, The King Has Come, and it's in that first subheading, The Incarnation of the King. And so we'll be here over the next few weeks. There's three parts to this genealogy that I want to draw your attention to. Number one, the seed of Abraham, verses 1-5. Number two, the seed of David, verses 6-15. And then number three, the incarnation of God, verses 16-17. Now looking at the seed of Abraham, verses 1-5, I'll read the text in its entirety. Matthew starts the book, it says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez and Zerah, by Tamar, Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, Ram begot Aminadab, Aminadab begot Nashon, Nashon begot Salmon, Salmon begot Boaz, by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed, by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse. Now you might notice something peculiar. Maybe it's not peculiar to you, but I want to direct your attention that when it comes to genealogies, women are never mentioned. Never. It's just a formality. It's out of form. It doesn't go that way. They didn't trace genealogy through women. So why are five women listed in this genealogy? Well, I think it plays into Matthew's argument. He's doing something, and I think it's almost hysterical, because it flies in the face of the religious leaders, and he's almost saying, stop me. I'm going to include it, despite you, because they have value, and you know exactly who they are. And they have a message that screams to the religious leaders of their own sin. And he exposes them using these five women. So some observations, number one, the toledote of Jesus. Now, I think another way that this is a great bridge to the Old Testament is the same way Moses wrote Genesis. And you can outline Genesis through the toledote structure or the genealogy structure. He uses that to sometimes cap off a line. So, you know, we're gonna get back to Genesis one of these days. And we're going to start in 37 with the narrative of Joseph. Well, just before that, in 36, we got Edom's or Esau's genealogy. And what he's doing is he's tying up that loose end. We're done. Now we're going to focus on the nation of Israel. So sometimes the Toledot is closing a story or it's introducing a story. And Genesis does that to focus us from the table of nations down through Shem to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons. And so I think very much in the same way, this is what Matthew is doing, providing the genealogy to Jesus before he gives the story of who this man, this God-man is. And we have the patriarchs listed in verse 2. So we think of the significance, you know, history, I love genealogies, I'm not gonna bore you with all of the observations and interpretations we can glean from this genealogy, but I encourage you to dig in. There's a wealth of information here. Namely, he gives the history of Israel in this genealogy. If you know the names and the events that took place in those people's lives, it all comes together in a very beautiful way. So when we think of the patriarchs, we think of Abraham. The man in whom God came down and promised great things, too. And those were passed on to his son Isaac, and to his son Jacob. Well, it gets more specific as Genesis continues on, and we'll get to this point again one of these days. When, at the end of Jacob's life, he's about to die, he blesses his sons, and he blesses his son Judah, and Judah receives, essentially, the inheritance. And we'll talk about why that is. Judah's the fourthborn. Why does he get it? Well, Reuben, the firstborn, forfeited it, right? Because he slept with his father's concubine. Simeon and Levi, they destroyed all the people deceiving them. And so as men of violence, they forfeited their inheritance. Next in line is Judah. And I think that's the reason for that. And so Judah, the prophecy there, for sake of time, we won't go, but Genesis 49, eight through 10, one of the things he says there is, the scepter shall not depart from Judah. And then also in our worship, we shared Micah 5 too. Bethlehem Ephratah, a tribe of where? Judah. Is where the ruler will come. One whose beginning is of old from beginning of days. And so, Judah now is something to keep our eye on. The Messiah will come from Judah. And we'll focus on this point as we get into the birth narrative of Christ. Then we have Judah to David, verses three through five. This causes us to think about the Davidic covenant. So things get more specific now where God is focusing the fulfillment of his promise to the line of David. And we see that in verses one through five, the seed of Abraham. And so the reason Matthew goes back to Abraham and not Adam like Luke does is because Matthew has a purpose. His purpose is to draw the connection from Matthew to Abraham and David, two significant Jews, in order to prove his point, whereas Luke is drawing them to the same people, but he goes all the way back to Adam, and showing, I think, also some significance related to the Genesis 3.15 promise, the seed promise. So now the seed of David, we pick up with David through 6 through 15, And let's butcher some names starting in verse six. And Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon begot Rehoboam. Rehoboam begot Abijah. Abijah begot Asa. Asa begot Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat begot Joram. Joram begot Uzziah. Uzziah begot Jotham. Jotham begot Ahaz. Ahaz begot Hezekiah. Hezekiah begot Manasseh. Manasseh begot Amen. Amen begot Josiah. Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon. After that, or after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot Shealtiel, Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel begot Abiad, Abiad begot Eliakim, Eliakim begot Azor, Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot Akem, Akem begot Eliud, Eliud begot Eliezer, Eliezer begot Matan, Matan begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who was called Christ, and a partridge in a pear tree, right? And that's kind of how we feel when we repeat those genealogies. But to point out some significant observations with this latter half, drawing from David to Christ, we see David through Solomon listed in verses six or seven. We see Solomon to the southern kingdom. So again, if we're looking and understanding the history behind these names, we know that after Solomon died, what happened? His son, Rehoboam, takes the throne. And everything was peaceful. and everyone enjoyed life and good days. No, what happened? The famous narrative, Rehoboam draws his older counselors to him for advice, because he's now king, and they say, Lord, your father was hard on the people, and they cried out to him. So we would suggest that perhaps you grant leniency, and your people will love you for it, and they will serve you for it. And then the bonehead, got his bonehead friends, the young people, and they counsel on the opposite. Those, their problem, you know what their problem is? They're lazy. They need to work harder. Sounds very much like what happened in Egypt, right? Pharaoh's response. And who to decide with? The men with the crown of wisdom, the gray hairs. the ones that granted wisdom and had experience with things. No, he listened to his bonehead friends, and he inflicted them with a harsher sentence than his father, and so it caused the northern tribes to revolt. And they literally said, what have we to do with the tribe or house of Jesse? In other words, with David. Now, it sounds like, oh, how could they just totally disregard the word of God and the covenant to David? And that's fair. But we're not them. Would we want to submit to a man that is, not only we're overwhelmed by our work, Lord, but now adds to it? I think they would have heard the stories of what happened in Egypt, and they would have identified him with the same type of thing with Pharaoh. And so then we get this split. The kingdom is fractured. We have the northern kingdom, now the southern kingdom of Benjamin and Judah. And so with that, another important contextual thing is that prophets, I made this point before, but in summarizing the function of the prophet in the Old Testament, they were God's attorneys. And they would bring prosecution to the nation of Israel based on them breaking the covenant that they made, spoken of in the book of Deuteronomy. They made this covenant with God that if they obey, they'll be blessed. If they disobey, they'll be cursed. And they knew, they understood, they agreed. And so when they broke it, God was fair to his end of the deal. But in fact, maybe we could say he was merciful, gracious, and he sent prophets rather than curses. And he said, and the prophets would declare the word of the Lord. If things continue the way that they are, then the curses will come. Grace always comes before judgment. I mentioned the Gnostic heresy downstairs of the God of the Old Testament is evil and capricious and full of wrath. Every time God judges, every time God pours out His wrath, grace always precedes it. Every time, every single time. And so we see that with the prophets ministry calling them back to the Deuteronomy covenant. That's gonna come into play as Jesus begins his ministry. I think Jesus, in very much the same way, similar ways, functioning like an Old Testament prophet, but he just happens to be the Messiah. But he's calling them back to their covenant responsibilities under the Mosaic law, and should they do so, and they understand their, and let the law function like it should in exposing their sin, then they believe on him, they're saved, and then the kingdom comes. They didn't get that. The religious leader said, well, if you don't do this and you do that, you're righteous. You're good. Jesus says that's not the purpose of the law. It exposes your sin. And so that's what Jesus does. Then we see Josiah's reign, verses 10 through 11. Josiah is my hero, a young man. not given a great upbringing with his pedigree of fathers, although there were some godly kings in the southern tribes, but grew up in a difficult circumstance, destroyed all the idols and the false prophets, and this kind of encompasses the prophecies of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. And so again, this name would spark these memories in the Jewish mind. And so when he begins to tell the story of Christ, they're prepped to see the fulfillment of all of these prophecies in Christ. Especially Daniel, right? The timeline of things. Jeremiah. Isaiah, the suffering servant. Then we have the post-exilic line of Judah, so the kingdom fractures, the northern kingdom full of wicked men, they go into Assyrian captivity years before the southern kingdom. So the prophets are sent and sometimes were successful because the king would do what they were supposed to do, and sometimes they weren't. And so their captivity was delayed, but eventually in 586, I believe, they go into Babylonian captivity, and then they come out of Babylonian captivity under the timeframe of Nehemiah and Ezra, rebuild the temple, and everything, the stage is now getting set for the arrival of the Messiah. And we see this all with the prophets Ezekiel, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi and their prophecies, prepping everyone for the Messiah and the kingdom. Downstairs I mentioned mnemonic devices, memory devices, things that can help us remember large bodies of information. So everything I just covered you, I'm gonna give you five easy ways to remember them using the fingers on your hand Pardon if that is not true of anyone listening, but Thinking of five main points we have number one the Abrahamic Covenant you understand it you know what the ramifications are land seed and blessing promise to this man and All nations will be blessed through him Number two that was passed to Isaac and Jacob Passed to his son Isaac not Ishmael and it passed to his son Jacob not Esau Number three, 12 tribes become a nation. 12 tribes become a nation. Number four, the real estate or Davidic covenant. Now I like to call it the real estate covenant because it's the land covenant, as opposed to the Palestinian covenant, which is a misnomer because that's not ever what the land was called. It was called that by Emperor Hadrian, who hated the Jews. And he called it Palestinian land in order to erase all memory of the Jews. And so I think that is a misnomer, so I like to call it real estate, but if you read old commentaries and it says Palestinian covenant, it's okay, that's what they mean. Now the land covenant is a conditional covenant attached to the unconditional Abrahamic covenant. Now what that means is these promises are Israel's. It will happen. God will make sure of it. The conditional aspect of the land covenant deals with whether or not a generation will live and experience the blessings in the land. And even within that, the Book of Deuteronomy prophesies of a future generation that will, that will repent, and upon their repentance will receive the full Abrahamic blessings. Now, I'm foreshadowing here, but I think that's the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. I think that's the offer, is upon their repentance and the law functioning as it should to reveal their sin and their unrighteousness and their need for a savior. They turn to him and are saved. And then they receive the full Abrahamic blessings. But that didn't happen. They thought they were good enough. They thought, if I follow what the religious leaders are telling me, I'm good. Number five. Messiah and kingdom so that the Old Testament can be summarized in this these five points the Abrahamic Covenant passes Isaac and Jacob twelve tribes become a nation real estate and Davidic Covenant so the Davidic Covenant deals with the reign of the line of David Christ and then all the prophecies concerning the Messiah and the kingdom that's what the Old Testament builds us to and that's the background that Matthew's audience would have and Now I wanna deal with the incarnation of God, verses 16 and 17. Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Now there's something very interesting here. Joseph is mentioned as the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. You see what Matthew did there? Joseph is not the father, biologically. Now, whom, that word whom there is a relative pronoun in the Greek. It's a genitive singular feminine. Now, a feminine pronoun, and we have a hard time knowing here when our society has a hard time with pronouns, but what is a feminine pronoun? A girl, a woman, a female. That's all it can be. So when he says whom, he uses that pronoun, he's speaking of a woman. Is Joseph a woman? No. Is Mary a woman? Is she a near-antecedent? Yes. It's talking about Mary. So, Joseph is the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. And he said, I know it's repetitive, but so-and-so got, so-and-so got, so-and-so got, so-and-so... Joseph didn't beget, but he was the husband of Mary who did, the mother of Christ. Joseph is the husband but not the father. This means Jesus has the throne rights through Joseph by means of adoption. Now there's issues here because there's a name I mentioned, you might not be familiar with it, Jeconiah. Jeconiah was a wicked king and there's a prophecy that was issued to him and it's called the Jeconiah Curse. And what God says is that your seed will never sit on my throne. Never. So, problem, if you are of the line of David, but also of Jeconiah, you can't sit on the throne, right? But is Jesus off the seat of Joseph? Nope. So he has throne rights because of the adoption of his stepfather, Joseph. Joseph not being the father means that Conniah curse is not applicable. Luke 3, 23 through 31, I believe, gives Mary's line. So this is Joseph's line. Luke, I believe, is Mary's line, and it goes from David to Nathan, and it misses, because you might say, well, if he's related to Jechoniah through Mary, but it says both, he just said both to David. But Mary's line goes through one of David's sons, Nathan, not Solomon. This means Jesus also has the genetic purity of the house of David to be the heir of God's covenant with David. So to summarize this portion, there are liars in this list, there are deceivers in this list, there are adulterers in this list, there are killers in this list, there are pagans in this list, there are harlots in this list, there are idolaters in this list, there are foolish men in this list, There are selfish, ambitious people in this list, but praise God, there's a Savior in this list. That is Matthew's point. All these sinful, wicked people are the benefactors of God's gracious, long-suffering mercy that from the beginning promised a Savior, and he's here. And we're celebrating his birth this time of year. That is what Christmas is about. Yes, it's beautiful to think about the incarnation and God becoming man. But as Christians and believers, we understand the depth. That precious baby boy is destined for death. In fact, some historical context for you. I don't believe he was in a barn. I believe it was a cave that he was born. Levitical shepherds took him in, and they put him in a feeding trough, and they wrapped him in burial clothes, because caves were also used as tombs. And those cloths, the swaddling cloths that he was wrapped in, were used to wrap dead people. Oh, the significance. Praise God, there's a savior in this. I want to touch on the five women before we close. Tamar. She was a Gentile, stained by sin, redeemed by Christ. Now, I'm not trying to pick on these people, but I'm just highlighting what the Jewish mind would think of when they thought of these people. Rahab, a Gentile, stained by sin, redeemed by Christ, but also showing remarkable faith. A Gentile, Ruth, showing remarkable faith, redeemed by Christ. I love the story of Ruth. One of my favorite stories. Where you go, I go. Your God is my God. Bathsheba, she's not explicitly mentioned, but we know. A Gentile, stained by sin, redeemed by Christ. Now we might say, how do we know she's a Gentile? Well, she would have been considered a Gentile, having married a Hittite husband, and so she would have been considered a Hittite. And then we have Mary, a Jew, unstained by sin. Now what I mean by that is an explicit, you know, she's sinful. We need to get this idea, you know, this is the thing I hate about the worship of Mary, is that it causes us to almost... She doesn't deserve that. She doesn't deserve to be worshipped. She would smack us upside the head if she saw what we're doing. We don't worship her, we worship her son. We don't ask her for things, we go to her son. She's a great example of faith, perhaps the greatest. Unseen by sin, showing remarkable faith, and redeemed by Christ. Now in light of the list, Matthew summarizes 17, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14. from David until captivity to Babylon 14, and from the captivity of Babylon until Christ 14. Now what's half of 14? Seven. I think this is a mnemonic device by Matthew that some names are skipped, by the way, and it's not an error, it's just Matthew's doing something. The names he includes are pertinent to his argument. Now, we think in terms of tens, right? Sets of ten. Unless you're a football fan, you might think in terms of seven. I always did well in my multiplication of sevens when I was growing up, unless you have a bad kicker, and then it's six and seven, but anyway. You think in terms of seven. Well, the Jewish mind, seven, the number of completion, that's how their mind worked. So seven complete, seven complete, seven complete, seven complete. Tom Constable, quoting Edgar J. Goodspeed, says, another view is that Matthew, the tax collector, good with numbers, who made many references to numbers in his gospel, may have intended to portray Jesus as beginning a seventh perfect and final group, following six seven-person groups. So illustrate, Abraham to Ram, seven. Ammonitab to David, seven. David to Joram, seven. Uzziah to Josiah, seven. Jeconiah to Zadok, seven. Achim to Jesus, seven. Is this exactly what happened? Maybe, maybe not. I do think it's a mnemonic device in the sense of remembering a large chunk of not only names and people, but the history that's attached to them to remember these things. So to summarize, Jesus is a Jew. I'm reminded of a joke that I heard recently by Arnold Fruchtenbaum. He told a story about a rabbi that went to a Greek Orthodox Church, and he wanted to see what their services were like. So he attends, and the priest comes up to the rabbi and says, you can't be here. We don't like your kind. We don't want you here. He says, well, can I stay just to see the service? I'd like to see how you worship. And he says, no, you have to leave right now. And so he goes, and he's in the back of the Sanctuary and he takes the cross off the wall and he rips the body of Christ or the depiction of the body of Christ Off the cross and he leaves the church saying come on. They don't want us around here anymore We got to go and I love that joke because it depicts how foolish anti-semitism is Because the very one we're worshiping this season in Christmas is a Jew Born to Jewish parents Born of a Jewish kingly tribe, he will be the king in Israel. Jesus is a Jew. Jesus is the Davidic heir. He has the throne rights, he has the genetic purity, and he's also God. Gentiles show remarkable faith that can shame the Jews who didn't. So I think the example of the women, many of them are Gentiles. Something we're gonna see Matthew do along the way is use Gentiles in their remarkable faith, despite being stained with sin, to shame the religious leaders that aren't believing, who thought they were righteous, who thought they were pure. So Matthew is again, I think, partly a polemic against them. He's exposing their foolishness. Jesus was born of Mary without any involvement of Joseph. Jesus was born of Mary without any involvement of Joseph. This will become more clear in the next passage of how that happened. And Joseph is another man that he's commended, by the way. Jesus was born of God and is fully man and fully God. I mentioned this downstairs, but really quick, we'll unpack this much more. Jesus is eternal. He did not begin when he was born. He always has been, he's eternal. Now, he took on flesh at a certain point in history, and so the way we need to understand that is it's not that his deity was diminished, you know, he cut off 50% of his person and put 50% of his humanity, so he's 50% God, 50% man. He's 100% God and 100% man. Does that make sense to anyone? No, right? It might make sense if we understand that that's simply what it teaches, but we might not be able to wrap our head around it. How can you be 100% of two different things? That's mathematically impossible. Well, it's doctrinally possible, and we'll go with that. Because God's ways are not our ways, right? He's different. He's the Creator, not the creation. He's not defined by our limitations. So he took on flesh. He took on man. So he added humanity to his deity. And Bernie alluded to this in his prayer, but in his humanity, he didn't stop being God. He didn't give up his powers entirely. He set aside the individual use of his attributes. He still had every one, every single one, but he set aside the individual use and subjected it, I believe, to the father to utilize according to his will. And thus he humbled himself and demonstrated perfect obedience and humility for us to follow. Another summary application, Jesus has been born. I know timeline for those who like to really get in the Christmas season. We don't really declare that until Christmas Day, but you know, it's been 2,000 years. He's been born. And with the power of the sovereignty of God and the prophetic promises of the Old Testament, him being born meant there's no going back. And God knows that. And we need to know that. What that means is He's born, which means He will die for our sins. And lo and behold, He has. It's all been done. It's history now. Jesus has been born. That's great. Father, we thank you for the start of this wonderful book. We thank you for your servant, Matthew. We thank you that even he himself as a tax collector, a faithful, well, a Jew who became faithful, stained by sin, yet was used mightily for you. We love you so much and we pray for the rest of our day. We pray that, I pray you'd bless everyone here and those listening and that you'd be with them. In Jesus' name, amen.