Matthew 3:1-12

Transcript

Are you ready to get into Matthew three? Are you ready? I am having so much fun in Matthew. I don't know if it's going to come across because it's just a mess in my head, but man, I am loving Matthew three and each week there's just so much there to cover. So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter three. We're actually going to just do one through 12. I was going to try to do the whole thing, but it is just not going to happen, right? Matthew three, one through 12 next week we'll look at the baptism of Jesus. So do you have your Bibles? Get your Bibles out. We're going to cover a lot of Bible today. Matthew chapter three. Now, before we do that, do you know who this is? Do you know who this character is? This is Roger Banister and up until 1954, nobody had ever ran a sub four minute mile and he decided that he would try to break the record and he did a lot of planning and preparation.

That's the key word here, preparation to be able to accomplish this. He had a scientific method that he followed, unlike many athletes of his time, banister applied a methodical, almost scientific regimen to his training. He balanced his medical studies with his targeted workout schedule. He also had a strategic team that worked with him of pace setters, fellow runners, Chris Bashir and Chris Chataway helped him maintain the needed speed during his attempt. This was a strategic part of his preparation and then also psychological preparedness. He prepared his mind focusing on the goal, visualizing it and refusing to let naysayers divert him. And on May 6th, 1954, a small event in Oxford, banister did it. He broke the four minute barrier completing the mile in three minutes, 59.4 seconds. I want you to have in your mind this morning that idea of preparation, that idea of preparation. You do this every day.

You prepare for things every day, and this chapter, chapter three, is going to show us how God was preparing a nation for the Messiah. Let's read the text together and then we'll get into it and study it and see what the Holy Spirit has for us this morning. Starting in verse one, he says, in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near for he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make paths straight. Now, John had a camel hair garment with leather belt, a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locust and wild honey. Then people from Jerusalem, all Judea and all the vicinity of the Jordan were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River confessing their sins.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don't presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. The ax is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I. I'm not worthy to remove his sandals. He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire his winnowing. Shovel is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.

Lord, we pray that you would speak to us this morning. We give you permission to speak into our lives, Lord, we need help understanding the Bible. Some of us have not spent a lot of time in scripture and now all of a sudden we've got a character wearing camel skin and eating locusts and honey, and we need you somehow to speak to us. We know we've heard that the Bible is important and it's God's word and it's food for us. And Lord, we just need you to work in our life. And God, we bring to you the mess of our life, the things that we're anxious and scared about, the things that we're upset about and the hopes that we have. And Lord, we just pray that somehow by doing what we're doing right now of spending a little bit of time in your word, that we would have a spiritual experience that is transformative, that you would speak into our lives.

I pray for the young people that are here, even down to the young kids, that Lord, they would know you as their personal Lord and Savior, that they would have a personal relationship with Jesus that would go with them, that that would go with them through their whole life. Bless our time together, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So there's going to be three sections that we cover this morning since we've read the text up front. What I will do is I will summarize and dip in and out of the text, but you've gotten this broad view that there's this character named John the Baptist, which we're going to spend a good bit of time trying to understand. Before we do that though, what I want to put in front of you is just some tools. I know that the text is small. We used to have this slide on a big projected screen and that's difficult to see, but this is, if you're new to the Bible, this is how the latter half of your Bible is organized.

This is called the New Testament, and we have these first four books, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, and those are called the Gospels, and those tell the story of Jesus. Each one tells the story of Jesus from a different perspective. And then we have the Book of Acts. Acts is the history of the early church, and then we have a bunch of letters. We often call them epistles, but they're letters written by either Paul. He's got his letters there, Thessalonians, Galatians Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Romans, colo, colos, Colossians, Ephesians, Timothy Titus, and then we have the general epistles, Peter, James, Jude in Hebrew, Hebrews, and so those are letters. And then we have the book of Revelation, which is in its own, it's the final book and it is this image of the victory of Jesus at the end. It's all this great beautiful picture that shows that Jesus wins the day.

Okay, so we are looking at the historic part of the Bible. We're here in Matthew another way, if we're just going to look at it on a timeline, the biblical history, going back to the very beginning. We have 2000 years from Adam to Abraham. We have another 2000 years from Abraham to Christ. You see here, this is Genesis one through 12, Genesis 12 through the rest of the Old Testament, and then we have 2000 years from Christ to the present time. That's another way for you to see it. And also one more just visualization here, just a timeline. Jesus, we see he's born in three bc. He starts doing ministry just before 30 ad he's probably crucified around 30 AD and then we have acts telling the story of the early church. There's where the epistles fit in and we have the book of Revelation.

I know some of you're just kind of getting used, wrapping your head around how the Bible works and how it's organized, and I thought I'd put that up there in front of you just to give you that visualization of where we're at. The X marks the spot of what we are looking at this morning in the book of Matthew on a map. We're looking at this region here in Israel, Israel and the Mediterranean Sea really kind of, this is Israel over here on our map. This is the Dead Sea. This is the Sea of Galilee, and right there where it says Rama is close to Jerusalem and the Jordan River where John is baptizing, zoomed in this, again, this is kind of an older map. You probably have this at the back of your Bible, but here is the Bethany beyond Jordan. There's two possible spots.

This is probably the area down here in the south, but there's also a Bethany beyond Jordan that's up there in the north. But we're going to say that John is down here close to Jericho, Jerusalem and Bethany, do you see that? So that's where our story is occurring and we get into this first section, Matthew chapter one, Matthew chapter three, one through six. It's the introduction of John, the preparer of the way. Do you notice I changed his name? Do you see that? Because what do we normally call him John the Baptist, but that is not, that's just something he does, right? He's actually has a calling in life just like you have a calling in life and he's called to prepare the way. Now he does baptisms to prepare the way, but I wish we could name him John, the preparer of the way.

Again, there's that theme preparation. Now it says here in our text, let's go over to this phrase here. This is his message. He says, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near. Now we look at the story of Luke and we find out about John's origin story that he's a cousin of Jesus, probably he's related to Jesus. He's probably born six months prior to Jesus and John, he kind of rolls off the scene. He's a miraculous birth because his mom couldn't have babies. And then she conceives of John, his parents are Elizabeth and Zacharia. He's named John. It's this whole crazy thing. But he's given this command, which we're going to see in the next verse, but he has this message, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near the kingdom of heaven is one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk about Matthew. The kingdom theme goes all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. Do you know where the kingdom theme first pops up? I mean, I kind of gave it away there, but what chapter does kingdom come up in?

I would suggest Genesis chapter two, Genesis chapter two, where God has already said he's creating humans in his image, but then he commands these humans to rule and subdue over the creation that he's made. That's royal language. The calling of humanity is different from the calling of animals. Humans were entrust. They were given the image of God. Animals don't bear the image of God, the word image, by the way, in Genesis chapter one, it's the same word as idol. So humans are walking idols of God. They bear the image of God on earth. They're God's representatives on the earth, and then they're told to do God's rule of ruling. So literally, humans are created to take this authoritative position within creation and to rule and subdue. It's this royal appointment given to humans. Now, the Bible, do humans keep up with that calling? No, they turn away from that calling.

They stop obeying God. They forsake that authoritative position with God to reign and rule. They're rebellious and they fall from royalty with God and they're estranged from God. And so the Old Testament continues to raise up kingdom like figures and develop this kingdom theme because God's kingdom is always about to break out God. This is going to be a kind of a disgusting analogy, but some of you are in the medical field. Sometimes there's these diseases that are kind of subdermal, but then they break out. I think that's like psoriasis or that kind of thing, right? It's this breaking out of something that's under the surface that's like God's kingdom. I know that's gross, but I can't think of a better analogy right now. Okay? It's like it's this interruption. I'm going to just break into history. God's ruling and reigning, it's been anticipated all the way back since Genesis chapter three where God's saying, I'm going to send something to crush the serpent's head.

The seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent's head. Then you have an Abraham figure, you have a Noah figure. You have these different characters where there're symbolizing this reigning and ruling, this authoritative acting on God's behalf in the midst of a totally broken world. But none of those characters, whether it's Moses or Abraham or Noah or David or Solomon, they all have failures. You're like, oh, maybe this is the guy, and then they fail. And so there's this anticipation throughout the Old Testament waiting for the kingdom of God. And now here is John the Baptist comes on the scene and he says, repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. Now, Matthew tells us, he says that John did this because he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah who said, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. So here's the interesting thing. We're going to look at Isaiah 40 in just a second, but Matthew says, John preached this message because Isaiah, Isaiah prophesied that there would be this one crying out in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord, making his paths straight. It's fascinating how John fulfills this calling.

Now, let's look a little bit, let's look at this passage out of Isaiah. Here's what Isaiah 40 literally says, because the quote you have in your text in the Bible in front of you, you have Isaiah 40, verse three quoted in Matthew. But listen, listen. This is what Isaiah 41 through three actually says, comfort. Comfort my people says, your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and announce to her that her time of hard service is over. Her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins, a voice of one crying out, prepare the way of the Lord in the will. Do you see that? Here it is in Isaiah, what Matthew quotes. This is happening seven, 800 years before Jesus. This is being spoken by Isaiah. Do you know that Israel God's people were taken captive into Babylon because God's people had disobeyed God?

And God said, okay, your time in the promised Land, it's up. I'm going to let you be taken captive into Babylon, into Assyria. But God raised up a generation of prophets, these different men who would speak on God's behalf to the nation and the surrounding nation saying, listen, yeah, things are bad right now, but you need to know that God is at work and this is his promise. The crazy thing is sometimes they would have these prophetic words from God that spoke of way in the future 800 years. In fact, Isaiah prophesied of things that still to this day have not yet come to pass about the second coming of Christ, but here in Isaiah chapter 40, God gives Isaiah this word about this one who's crying out in the wilderness, and his job is to make straight paths or straight highways for our God in the desert.

It's this beautiful, beautiful image. It's interesting to compare the explicit prophecies about John the Baptist with his practice. Notice how vague the prophecies are, and yet John are and John to figure out how to be. I don't know what happened to that sentence. I apologize. This was me brainstorming on this. The idea is that John gets this word out of Isaiah, but what do you do with that? What do you do with when God's speaking to you and he gives you these principles? It's amazing just the humanity involved here because our character, John, he has to decide how to make the paths straight, right? This is what it looked like in Israel. Notice all the rocks when you had to make a Roman road at the time of John the Baptist, it primarily means just get the bunch of rocks out of the way. And that's the image here is that the Messiah is going to come on the scene.

We got to clear the streets for we got to clear a path so that the Messiah, but is he talking about construction? Is he talking about a literal road? No, he's talking about the hearts of the people. He's talking about the hearts of the people. And this is the question for you and I this morning is like if you were listening to John, would your heart be ready for the Messiah? And so John, what he does is he is baptizing in the Jordan River. He's saying, repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's just this fascinating method to accomplish the purpose of spoken 800 years in advance. And I think the thing that gets me excited about this is that God is wanting to bring about his work in your life and in my life, and he has a way of getting our lives ready for the rain and the rule of Jesus.

And so there may be things that you're encountering that seem like, man, what is going on here? Why is this happening to me? And if you're a disciple of Jesus, the disciple of Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus means that Jesus paid for you with his blood. He owns you because he died on the cross. If you've given your life to him, that's the idea of being a follower of Jesus. And so he's not going to just trash your life when you've become a follower of him. He now has access and he wants to give you a life that he designs. And so he is free to orchestrate the activities of your life. I don't want to use the word mess with you, but in a sense he's is in charge of really beautifully designing your life so that your heart is prepared for the Messiah.

So we have this guy, John, let's talk a little bit about him. The identity of John was perplexing and oftentimes enmeshed with Jesus or Elijah. They're kind of confused with each other. The accounts themselves are intention with each other. Jesus refers to John the Baptist as Elijah in the gospel of Matthew, but in John's gospel, John the Baptist denies that he is the prophet. Now, here's what he's talking about in Matthew 17, Elijah, this is Jesus speaking. Jesus says, Elijah is coming and will restore everything he replied. But I tell you, Elijah has already come and they didn't recognize him. On the contrary, they did whatever they pleased to him. In the same way the son of man is going to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them about John the Baptist. Do you remember what we were talking about last week about the layering and how there's this repeated patterns in the Bible and things map onto each other?

Here? This text is saying John's life maps onto the image of Elijah. And John was the Elijah. John was the Elijah, but then there's an Elijah that's also still to come. Now John the Baptist himself over in John one 19, he says this, this was John's testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, who are you? Here's what John said about himself. He didn't deny it, but he confessed, I am not the Messiah. And they said, what? Then are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Because remember what happened to Elijah? Remember, he got taken up to heaven, right? So there was always this anticipation. Well, maybe Elijah's going to come back because Elijah, and who's the guy in the beginning of Genesis that didn't die?

Enoch. Enoch, yes. Enoch and Elijah, the two characters in the Bible that didn't experience death. Maybe Moses would be a third one possibly, but that's debatable. So they asked him, are you Elijah? Are you kind of come back from heaven to us? He said, I'm not. And they said, are you the prophet? He said, no. Now, what is he talking about when they ask, are you the prophet? This goes back to Deuteronomy 19. Deuteronomy 18 and 19, Moses told the nation There's going to be another prophet like me that's going to come. You need to discern is he the prophet? Moses was talking about the Messiah. So you see that these individuals, these religious leaders are testing and trying to figure out who does John think he is? And he said, no. And they say, who then are you? And they asked, we need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What can you tell us about yourself? And so I didn't add the rest of the, I don't know why I didn't add it, but this is where he says, what we're going to read in a little bit where I'm not worthy to you on loose his shoes. So that's John the Baptist. Okay? John is this fascinating character that again, repeats some earlier ideas. Now he's there. The main thing that I am hoping that you see is this idea of preparation because God is over and over again in the old and the New Testament is just doing this work of preparing his people, preparing the scene, right? What did Moses do? Did he just go and take Israel out? No. He had this whole work of like, I'm going to go to the Pharaoh and the whole soil, spiritual soil of the land is churned up because Moses is doing this thing with the 10 plagues and the calamities that come on, Pharaoh and Egypt.

It's this whole preparatory work. Same with Joshua. There's a whole preparation that happens with Joshua, and so it's this repeated idea, and I would suggest that God is doing that and does do that in our own lives. Now, let's look at this second section. John's message and confrontation with the religious leaders in verses seven through 10. Now, we've already seen that the message that John preached was this repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but now he encounters these religious leaders, so we get to kind of drill down on some of the preaching of John. When he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.

We're going move through this. I read this to you and I just want to help you give you a framework for the Pharisees. These guys are the primary bad guys of the gospels, right? It says, the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to John. They're in the crowd, and so here's who the Pharisees are. The name is stems from a Hebrew word, Perus, which means separatist. It's developed out of the Hasidim, the pious ones of the Maccabean period. And were closely connected to the oral tradition or the official interpretation of the Torah for that day. They were teachers of the law and advocated a scrupulous observance of purity and piety regulations. They saw themselves as building a fence around the law so as to help the common people keep its rules. Now, they developed in the Maccabean period because remember I told you a second ago that the children of Israel rebelled against God, and God allowed them to be taken captive to Babylon.

They went into exile. When they came back after 70 years, there was this zeal that we see in Ezra, in Nehemiah. The people were zealous. Never again do we want to fail God by going into adult idolatry. And so there was this passion that became the Pharisees and other responses of that kind, but we see that it becomes misguided. It becomes a legalism where these individuals are so concerned about drawing this fence around the law that they completely miss the idea of the Messiah. Here's a picture of John. This is not actual the actual John. This is just a drawing, an artistic rendering of John engaging with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Pharisees were the party of the common people, but the Sadducees, the name probably coming from the priest Zadok in one Kings one, eight, they were the party of the aristocrats consisting of many chief priests and the upper class.

So we do have John saying to them, you are a brood of vipers. He's calling them out. I don't know what a Palestinian viper was, but in Africa, a viper was always feared because it would hide on the side of the path and it would jump out. It had this ability to spring out and just grab you by the heels, and this is what John says of these Pharisees, you are a brood of vipers, but he continues with his picturesque language and he calls them to bear fruit or to produce fruit consistent with repentance. Consistent with repentance. Listen, Paul came and he said, in a pretty zealous way, you need to repent. You need to repent all throughout the Bible, even back in Genesis chapter three, when Adam and Eve failed in the garden, God came to Adam and Eve and what did he say? What was the first question that God posed? Adam and Eve, where are you? Yeah, where are you?

He's posing these questions, not because God doesn't know, but because God is inviting Adam and Eve to repent. An aspect of this idea of the fruit of repentance is this word that we have called confession. If you grew up in a Catholic tradition, you know that confession has been formalized into something you do with a priest where you literally go into a little box and you confess your sins. Now, whether or not that's good or bad, I don't know. I don't think it actually hurts because in James chapter four, it says that we are to confess our sins to one another. There's a healthiness about confession, but God's not just concerned about our lips, but he's concerned about our life. But God's always inviting his people to repent. He's inviting us this morning. If you feel far away from God, he's inviting you to repent.

That's not a scary thing. It's the beginning of relationship is there's this breach and you need to repent. You need to come and agree with me on what I say is right and wrong in the world, and you need to align your life with that value system. Repent. There was this crazy story that happened in Corinth where there's this church like our church, and there was a guy in the church and he was sleeping with his father's wife like his stepmom, and the church was permitting this to go on. It was just completely. Paul says, this isn't even something that the heathen do. I mean, this is gross immorality. Like, why are you doing this? And the church is told you need to get this guy out of the church until he repents and turns. And so he does. And in second Corinthians, Paul writes a follow-up letter to the church, and he uses the same language.

He says, now, I rejoice not because you were grieved when I wrote that first letter to you about the situation. He's like, I'm not happy that I got you upset when I wrote that letter, but I am rejoicing because your grief led to repentance. For you are grieved as God willed so that you didn't experiencing any loss from us for godly grief. There's that word again, produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. But worldly grief produces death for consider how much diligence this very thing this grieving of God's will has produced in you. And he begins to list out all of the ways that they're demonstrating the fruit of repentance as a church. It's producing them this desire to clear themselves. In other words, we're totally in the clear. We're not guilty of this anymore. We're not just welcoming in completely immoral people and just saying, yeah, yeah, that's good.

God's okay with that immoral life. What indignation it produced in them, this indignation and fear of like, man, we don't want that ever to happen again. What a deep longing. What zeal, what justice in every way you showed yourself to be pure in this matter. So John the Baptist has as an audience, I imagine him, he's in there in the Jordan River baptizing people and preaching to the audience on the banks of the river, and he's saying, you brood of vipers. You need to produce the fruit of repentance in your life. And this is all in line with what Isaiah said about John, that he's there to prepare the people for Jesus the Messiah. Do you see? Think about that road where the rocks are God, in order for God to work in your life, in my life, there has to be this day of reckoning where it's like, you know what?

This junk needs to go. These rocks need to be moved out of the way so that Jesus can come and have his full way. In my heart, it's not just for salvation, but listen, you can give your life to Jesus, but leave a rocky path there. We read that in Hebrews. In Hebrews. He says, listen, mend the broken out of joint bones, clear the path, so the valleys are brought up high and the hills are brought down low. So it's a smooth path for God's work in your life. The path is prepared. God wants to work in your life and in my life, and he sent John here to do this, and he is not messing around. When you start calling people snakes, you're not messing around. Third section, John's description of the coming Messiah. This is the last two verses. He says this, I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I.

I'm not worthy to remove his sandals. He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire his winnowing shovel in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out. He's continuing with the imagery. He's saying, these sandals, I'm not worthy to even undo the sandals. In this time, John had disciples. Jesus had disciples. Teachers had their apprentices who would follow 'em around, and these disciples would act kind of like slaves. They would be the runners, but they would not be asked to clean feet or untie feet that was left to a foreign slave that was lower than a disciple's job. And so John uses this image and says, there's somebody coming that I'm preparing the way for the Messiah whose feet I'm not even worthy to loose his sandals.

And you need to know that he has a winnowing fork, a winnowing fork. Now, we don't use winnowing forks every day because we're not harvesting wheat, but they would be familiar with this picture where the wheat is harvested brought to a flat surface and the wheat would be scooped up like a snow shovel and thrown up into the air and the husks, the outer shell around the wheat kernel would blow away. That was called the chaff. And John uses this image to say that this is what's going to happen. His winnowing shovel is in his hand. He's clearing the threshing floor and gathering his weeded into his barn. This is what you need to know about this whole study about Jesus is that Jesus is not an accommodator. Jesus doesn't come to make you feel fuzzy and improve your identity and give you something warm, fuzzy to feel in the morning.

Jesus is like, look, you're either wheat or you're chaff and I'm here to get the wheat and the chaff is going to get burned up, and you need to decide, are you going to follow me or are you going to get burned up? There's no middle ground in this. There's no like I'm going to tiptoe around and come to church on Sunday and maybe I'll get into heaven when I die. That's not how it works with Jesus or with John. It's straight up. You're going to follow him. Then you need to obey him because he's ready to come with fire in judgment. I just want to read for you from Malachi chapter three, one through three. Do you know where Malachi is in the Bible?

The last book of the Old Testament, the last thing that was said before Jesus came, there was a 400 years of silence between this message and when John got there, and here's what it says. See, I'm going to send my messenger. He will clear the way before me. Does that sound familiar to you? Yeah. Then the Lord, you'll suddenly, then the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant. You delight in. See, he is coming, says the Lord of armies, but who can endure the day of his coming who will be able to stand when he appears, for he will be like a refiner's fire and like a launderers bleach. These people in the Old Testament, this Jewish tradition, they've been primed. So this is why you get a John the Baptist flaming prophets saying, you vipers, you need to repent.

You need to recognize, prepare your hearts for the coming King. He'll be like a refiner's fire and purifier of silver. He'll purify the sons of Levi, refine them like gold and silver. Then they'll present their offerings to the Lord in righteousness. It's beautiful. Well, let's land the plane. I with this God is actively preparing you for his Jesus agenda. Do you know that He's not preparing you for your agenda? He's preparing you for his agenda. We belong to him. We've said we're going to be followers of you, Jesus. And the beautiful thing is we have all the Bible to see that he does good things with his people. He gives him promised land. He gives him his word. He gives him prophetic warning. He gives him defense. That's the God we're following. That's the one we're brought to. But he's preparing you every day for the Jesus agenda.

The Holy Spirit is working in your life. So Jesus can one establish his reign and rule in your life. He wants to be in charge. He wants to rule as your king, but not only that, he wants to reestablish Genesis chapter two through you. You can join him in the Genesis two rule and subdue human mandate. Jesus has come to restore you back to that garden vision so that you can be there in the garden flourishing with him, fruitful, multiplying, ruling, subduing, bearing his image all the way out to where you are operating from that position of authority. We don't have time to go into it now, but this is where prayer is so important because in Psalm one 10, it says that you extend, he extends his scepter from Zion. Go and look at that. How do kings and priests act throughout the New Testament? It's always tied in with this idea of prayer. The most royal thing you can do this week is pray. That is the most reigning and ruling act that you can take in cooperation with God. So we have John preparing the way, inviting us in and saying, the good thing is coming. This kingdom is coming. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for being the good Messiah.

Thank you for being the king that baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Lord, we are so grateful that we stand at this point in history looking back on this account, seeing that there's this long, beautiful tapestry of your good work. Lord, would you weave our life into that tapestry this week? Would you let us be a part of that beautiful pattern of your good work? Lord, I pray that you as strengthen the saints, strengthen us to stand in the evil day, to look into the face of the things that we're afraid of. We're concerned about our insufficiency, and to trust in you that you're at work. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Matthew 2

Transcript

We are called to be just like these wise men because we don't have the full picture yet. We are those that don't see Jesus, the risen Christ. We're relying upon the witness and testimony of others just like these astrologers were, and we're putting the pieces together hoping for a future coming of Christ. And Jesus tells us to store up our treasures in heaven. So when you and I are making a decision tomorrow to love somebody that's unlovable, to sacrifice our time and or our possessions for the good of somebody else, which is what Jesus is going to teach in his sermon on the Mount, we are reenacting what these wise men were doing where we are offering ourselves as a living sacrifice to Jesus. There is this way of living in a worshipful way in the same way that these individuals do. Now, do you know what's missing from this story?

The number of wise men? Did you see that There's no number of wise men. How many wise men are in your nativity at home? Usually it's how many? Three. Three, right? Because there's three gifts, gold, frankincense, and my, but it is likely that there were many more than three wise men that made this trek, but we're just not told. We're not told how many. There are a beautiful scene. Let's move to this next section, the flight to Egypt. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and warns him and warns him to flee Joseph. Then obeys fulfilling the prophecy of Hosea 11, one out of Egypt. I called my son. Now, just for you Bible nerds, Hosea 11 one, if you were reading Hosea 11 one, you would not look at that and go, that's a Messianic prophecy. And so when you go to seminary, you take a hermeneutics class.

This verse comes up because the writers of the New Testament are using the Old Testament in an interesting way. And so the question becomes, what is inbounds and out bounds in our interpretive method? How are we allowed to use the Old Testament and connect the dots from the Old Testament to the new Hosea 11 one is one of those examples. It's interesting how Matthew says this is. So one of the options is like, well, maybe Matthew knew this because Jesus just taught Matthew that he was fulfilling Matthew, his life story connected with Hosea 11 one.

But there's a range of different hypothesis and it does influence the way that you and I decide that we are going to interpret the Old Testament and what rules we're going to follow. This is the passage that is quoted. It says, when Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son very much in the context there. It's speaking of the children of Israel in their first journey out of Israel under Moses' leadership, but yet Matthew applies it to Jesus. Here's the thing that I wanted to show you. Matthew is taking the story of Israel and he's layering it onto the life of Jesus. Jesus is reenacting Israel's story. So here's Joseph has a dream and f flees and has to lead his family to Egypt. Who else had to flee to Egypt as a place of refuge?

Israel did right with Jacob and his sons. And so Israel has a significant part of their story is being in Egypt and then they are delivered from Egypt. Here we have Jesus. It's important for Jesus to be able to kind of replay the story of Israel because the life, one of the major things about Jesus is that he's going to do Israel, but he's going to do it well. He's not going to make the same mistakes that Israel made. So just keep that in the back of your head as we go through chapter two, and we go through chapter three because Matthew's just saying, do you see the parallels? Do you see when you cut a piece of wood and it's like you want to do some kind of, for me, it would be like crafting a guitar and you want the front of the guitar to be book matched, right?

The wood looks like it mirrors each other. That's the idea here of Matthew. He's like, do you see the book matching the parallelism between Israel's story and Jesus's story? So Jesus goes down there. I emphasize that mirroring pattern because it will guide us in our use of scripture. Do you know what this is called? What do you call this? It's a projector. What kind of projector? An overhead projector. That's right. It took me a little while to remember what it was called and you would stick on it. What are these called? Transparencies. Transparencies, that's right. Yeah. What else? I think technically they're called acetone sheets, right? Or overheads. They're overheads, transparencies. This is the image that comes to my head over and over again as you look at the design patterns

Of, and this idea of overlapping, because here the way that this was used when I was a kid was you would draw, you'd buy these sets where it's a map, but you could have layers. You'd have the base map, but then you could add a layer with roads, and then you could add a layer with geography, and then you could add another layer, another transparency with the names of locations, right? And you could write on it and they would layer up. So for me, this is the visual image of how Matthew writes and what he wants to see, he wants you to see is do you see how Jesus's life maps onto the children of Israel? And I think that's important for you and I because if that is the way in which God works, the question is, is what pattern am I in right now?

In fact, this ought to be a prayer for you and I this week. Holy Spirit, what motif in scripture best maps onto my life? Am I in a season where I'm a prodigal and I'm running against a way far from God and I need to be brought back? Am I the lost sheep that needs to be brought back? Am I replaying the story of Joseph where I've just been beat up by my brothers and I'm subject down here and I am kind of a victim just depending on the presence of God in a foreign land? Am I a Moses that's called the lead a people out of their bondage into their promised land? The question I have for you is what motif you see? Scripture is written in such a way that it contains these patterns, and I think you'll gain wisdom if you're able to recognize your motif.

Where does God have you? What principle, what pattern applies to your life in this moment? You're going to see this over and over and over again. Let's go to the third section. It's this of Herod's slaughter of the innocent. You're going to see a pattern here as well. Herod realizes that he's been deceived by the Magi. They also were warned in a dream to go back another way. And when Herod realizes it, it says that he flies into this rage and he orders the massacre of all male children, two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was just a small town, and so we're looking at baby boys between zero and two years old. It tells us in the text he's relying on the timing that the Wiseman had given him about when the star had appeared. And so he's calculating that. Well, that star appeared in the last two years. And so I need to wipe out boys that are under the age of two

Horrible, horrible scene that occurs. It's probable that this was maybe 20 to 15 little boys that were killed in this setting. And again, God's word is found to be true because he has warned Joseph that this would happen and Jesus is spared. But look at this in Revelation chapter 12, this tells the story of Israel. So there's a woman here in this grand scene, and there's a dragon being Satan, and it's an image of how this scene has played out. A couple of times in Israel's history, a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with a sun with a moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. Now that image goes back to Joseph in Genesis, having his dreams, right? Joseph was pregnant and cried out in labor. She was pregnant and cried out in labor and agony, and she was about to give birth.

Then another sign appeared in heaven. There was a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns on it were seven crowns. It's tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. So this is the fall of Satan. The dragon stood in front of the woman who is about to give birth so that when she did give birth, it might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male who is going to rule all nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne, the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God to be nourished there for 101,260 days. So weird imagery, but again, it's this idea that, look, this happened with Moses and the babies. Remember in Exodus chapter one and two, Pharaoh says the same thing that Herod does and commands that these baby boys be destroyed, and amazingly enough it happens again.

In fact, Satan is just looking to devour this because Satan didn't even know when is the Messiah going to be born. And there's this constant battle that Satan is in against God's plan. In Acts chapter seven, we see the martyrdom of Stephen. We see the crucifixion. Satan is at work behind the scenes with an agenda using human rulers to try to bring about the destruction of God's people and God's plan. And yet we see the resiliency of God's plan over and over again. This event fulfills Jeremiah 31 15 where it says, A voice is heard in Rama, a lament with bitter Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children because they are no more. You remember that Rachel is married to Jacob. There's Jacob married to Rachel and Leah, Rachel's the favored wife. Rachel is buried in Bethlehem. Jeremiah is writing his prophetic letter from Rama, and he's describing how Rachel would mourn, Rachel would mourn the destruction of these.

Well, Jeremiah would mourn the destruction of Jerusalem. Rachel's mapped onto that, and then this kind of maps its way and layers onto the death of these baby boys. Do you see that? Are you seeing the layering, the mapping that's going on? It's pretty wild. Let's look at this last section as we run out of time here. Verse 19 and 23, we see Herod died. An angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, get up, take the child in his mother, go to the land of Israel because those who intended to kill the child are dead. Have you ever heard of a guy in the Bible named Joseph interacting with dreams in Egypt?

You've heard that story. Do you see what I'm saying? It's just on repeat. It's the same name. The guy's named Joseph. He's having dreams. He's in Egypt. Isn't that crazy? So after Herod's death, this angel appears to Joseph in a dream telling him it's safe to return to Israel. Joseph takes his family back. But hearing that Aus Herod's son is still alive and reigning in Judea, he settles in Nazareth. This fulfills the prophecy that said that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Now, here's the thing. That prophecy doesn't exist. This quote from Matthew is a play on words and it references loosely a Psalm. So if you have time to kind of go deep on, look at some commentaries about this last verse in Matthew, Matthew 2 22, you'll see some really fascinating stuff about what Matthew May be quoting from. And even the way when he says it fulfills the prophecy, it's written differently from like in chapter one, where it's like this was written. Matthew doesn't say this was written. He says, no, no, no. This is fulfilling kind of what was alluded to in the prophets.

Let's kind of wrap this up. Land the plane here. First of all, notice the guidance of God. In this passage we have as stars for astrologers. God's using stars for astrologers. He's using dreams for the magi and for Joseph, he's using the scriptures for the chief priests and the scribes, and he's using the witness and testimony for Herod. Do you see how God is making himself very apparent, very apparent. And the Bible says that God is able to be known. And if you are not yet a, you haven't surrendered your life to Jesus. If you're not yet in a place where you've made a personal decision to own it and say, I want to be a friend of God through Jesus, you need to know that the Bible teaches that God is a one who speaks to us and guides our life. He wants to walk with you through your life and direct your steps.

Now, I know nobody personally that's guided by stars, but these astrologers were, I don't know many people that have had angels come to them in dreams, but I do know many people that have found the guidance of God in the scriptures. And yet do you see the people who are farthest from God? In this text, it's the scribes and the chief priests. The ones who had the Bible are the ones who are not on their knees offering frankincense and myrrh. They're only five miles from the Messiah, only five miles from the Messiah knowing the location of the Messiah, hearing about a star. And yet they don't go and worship. And I think this morning there's a warning in this text for you and I that having God's word, having what we call as special revelation, not just relying on a star, but like a clear explanation of who God is and his planned for the world.

We have that. Are we reading it? Are we basing our life on it? Are we tapped into its guidance for our life? And then you have the witness and the testimony that was given to Herod. God has a plan. He has a plan for your life. He is not ignorant of what's going on in your life. In fact, he's the designer of you and the things around you. He's very capable of preserving his work. And that's the last thing I want you to see is the resiliency of God's plan. That God wasn't afraid to send his son into the world as a toddler, as a baby, even with a treacherous king that has murderous intent, even with religious leaders that completely miss the boat, God is able to accomplish his purposes. And so saints, there should be a great sense of comfort that you

Have this morning that God's plan cannot be thwarted by evil, tyrants or dumb religious leaders. He's at work in your life. He's got a good plan and he's invited you and I to be followers of him. Would you take encouragement from these seven verses? What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He didn't even spare his own son, but he gave up his own son. How will he not also grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God's elect? God is the one who justifies, who is the one who condemns Christ. Jesus is the one who died, but even more has been raised. He also is at the right hand of God and he intercedes for us who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it is written because of you, we are being put to death all day long.

We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. Know in all these things. Look at this saints in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. God loves you. He's for you. He's not against you. He sent his son Jesus into the world to remedy what is wrong. Whatever it is, whatever you say is wrong. He's come to remedy it. He can save you. He can rescue you from your present circumstances and your eternal destruction. And I'd invite you afresh to return to the Lord. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for being so powerful. So in control for directing when there was a need for direction for rescuing, Lord, would you find in us a group of people that are just worshipers full on worshipers? Before we even see the end, we want to be worshipers of you bowing down, saying You deserve all the glory and all the honor and all the praise. We love you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Matthew 1:18-25

Transcript

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter one, Matthew chapter one. I'm going to have Albert read to us starting in verse 18. It will also be up on the screen. I'm going to give you a second to find it. Settle yourselves. Matthew 18. Do we have any more Bibles, Marvin, or are we cleared out? We cleared 'em out. Good for you. All good for you guys. We'll bring some more next week. Everybody have Matthew 18 or some way to follow along or you can see the screen? Alright. This is Albert, Albert Miller and he'd be happy to pray for you, but he is also happy to read us the Bible this morning and minister to us with his voice.

The birth of Christ came about this way after his mother Murray had been engaged to, it was discovered that they came together, that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. So her husband, Joseph being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. But after he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Murray as your wife because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you ought to name him Jesus because he will save his people from this sins. Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated God is with us. When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord's angel has commanded him to do. He married her. He did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son and his name was Jesus. Amen. Thank you

Father. We ask now that you would speak a word, a fresh word to us in our lives. Lord, I pray that you would just intersect our life with wisdom, with truth, where we need to be corrected, where we need to be comforted. Lord, we want to hear from you. We give you our minds and our hearts, Lord, let them be tender and ready to receive all that you have for us this morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Now we've been saying that Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. He's writing to a Jewish audience and he is trying to help you. And I connect the dots between how the Old Testament story unfolded and with Jesus. So you have this whole unfolding of God's plan from Genesis all the way up through Malachi of God, continually interrupting history with these little Messiahs people that are correcting whether it's the judges or it's Moses or Joshua or David or a prophet.

You have God just interrupting the world and the course that it's on, this being really off course and God brings in these different humans to bring about correction and healing and God's word. And yet there is no final remedy. We get to the end of the Hebrew Bible and we're still waiting to see where's the Messiah. We go back to Genesis chapter three. You know the story about how Adam and Eve were told do not eat from the tree of good and bad. And that's because God wanted to be their source of good and bad and yet they didn't follow God's instructions. They took from the tree and God's word was fulfilled in the day you eat of it, you will surely what die. And this wasn't just a physical death, they were on the clock. Now their life, their physical body was going to expire, but immediately they experienced relational separation from God.

There was a sense of shame that they had. They were running away from God because they felt ashamed. They were also at, there was some animosity between Adam and Eve. They're blaming each other for the problem. They're covering up their nakedness. There's a separation in their relationship with the garden. They're put out of the garden. So death just in a comprehensive way comes into the world and it has been that way from the beginning. But in Genesis chapter three, God said that he promised, he made a promise that he would deal with this curse that came by the serpent. He was going to send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. And so all of Israel is waiting who's going to do it? And by the time we get to Malachi, we still don't have that salvation. And so Matthew, who was one of Jesus's disciples is telling the story of Jesus and he is helping his readers understand this.

Jesus is that promised Messiah from Genesis chapter three. He's the one that we've been waiting for. And so we have this story of the birth of Jesus, the conception and the birth of Jesus. Now do you notice, and many of you have grown up around the church and you've heard the Christmas story, but it's easy to kind of blend together the Christmas story from Luke along with Matthew. But do you see this story is particularly told from the perspective of Joseph. In fact, the genealogy is a genealogy of Joseph and the narrative here is very focused on what happens with Joseph. Lemme give you just a little bit of a timeline of where we are at in this story. If you take Luke chapter one and you kind of mix it together with this, we see in both accounts that Mary and Joseph are in engaged.

Then in Luke, we see in Luke chapter one verse 26 that Gabriel comes to Mary before she is pregnant and tells her This is what is about to happen to you. You are going to conceive and you're going to have a baby and you're going to name him Jesus. Then you go a little bit further in Luke chapter one, and Mary goes to stay with her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth is six months ahead in her pregnancy and it says in Luke 1 39 and 56 that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months. So Mary's first trimester was spent with her relative. Elizabeth, the Matthew account that we're studying this morning picks up somewhere there in that first trimester or early on in her second trimester. And it tells us that it became evident, it was discovered that Mary was with child. So let's go through the text together verses 18 and 19.

I'm calling this Joseph's dilemma. I'll put it up on the screen here. It says that the birth of Jesus Christ came about this way. Now those of you that were with us last week, you remember that the book of Matthew starts by saying that this is the beginning of the story of Jesus, but really it's the account of the genesis. It is literally the same word that we use for genesis is found in verse one, Matthew one, one, this word here is the same word, the genesis of Jesus. It can be properly translated to be the birth of Jesus, the birth, but it's that same word. So we have this mirroring from verse one and then we have a new section starting in verse 18 and it's going to say, this is the origin story of Jesus. Now if any of you have done therapy, you know that early on in therapy, what do you focus on?

The origin story, right? What's your origin story? Because part of our understanding who we are is understanding where did we come from, how were we shaped? Because that factors into a bit of who we are and how we process life, how we receive love, how we respond to others. And so Matthew here is giving us Jesus's origin story and it says that it came about in this way after his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph. It was discovered before they came together, before they had sex, it was discovered that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Let me just give you a quote. We'll come back to the text, but this is from one commentary. It says in Jewish law, betrothal, which lasted one year, about one year, it was much more than our concept of engagement. It was a binding contract terminable only by death, which left the betrothed as a widow or by divorce as as if it were a full marriage.

The ban was already the husband, but the woman remained in her father's house. The marriage was completed when the husband took the betroth to his home in a public ceremony. So the wedding and the engagement process culturally was different from Mars and Matthew says that Joseph and Mary are in this place. They are betrothed. Now interesting. The custom at the time was that usually men are between 18 and 20 would be betrothed to a girl who had just gone through puberty between the ages of 12 and 14. So it's very likely that Mary was somewhere between 13 and 15 years of age when this happened. Joseph himself probably late teens, early twenties, and it says in our text here that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Now we're going to get this again. When the angel comes to Joseph and explains what's going on, the angel's going to say this is from the Holy Spirit.

So Matthew mentions the Holy Spirit two times in our text. Now remember the primary audience that's listening to this is very familiar with the Hebrew Bible and in Genesis chapter one we have this text right at the beginning of creation. It says The Earth was formless and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths. And what is it? It's the spirit of God hovering over the surface of the waters. The spirit of God was involved in the creation account and it seems very likely that Matthew wants to call to his reader's attention that parallel idea that the creation account occurred through the Holy Spirit and now Mary is pregnant through the Holy Spirit. And so what we find is that there is a problem. It says her husband, Joseph being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly decided to divorce her secretly.

First of all, this is the problem and then we get Joseph's solution. Now, there's two solutions in the text, but the problem is the fact that Mary's pregnant before she is married and that is a problem of timing and order. It's also a problem of origin. So a woman has become pregnant before she's married and the pregnancy is not a result of a sexual relationship with the one she's engaged to. So we have two problems that Joseph runs into and this is his response. Now, the interesting thing for Joseph is says that he's righteous. Your version may say that he's just, what this means is that he's a law observing Jew. He caress about the Bible, he caress about God's instructions about marriage, sexual fidelity. And so that being his moral compass, he is in a difficult position. Deuteronomy chapter four, I believe it's Deuteronomy four, but it's in Deuteronomy, gives a provision of what do you do in this instance?

And since he didn't participate in pregnant impregnating her, he needs to go through a divorce. Basically he's kind of put into a position where obviously the trust would be undercut in the relationship. It would affect his public relationship is like his social standing. But he had an option at this time. He could do a public trial. He could bring Mary into the town square and put on kind of a show to say, look, she's pregnant. I wasn't with her and this is an illicit pregnancy and it would have caused her this disgrace, but he didn't want to do that. His other option was to go and quietly through a divorce process that would only require one other witness to be present. It would've saved her face and it was a gentle way to handle the situation. Now, that's not what God's plan was, but that was the solution.

Now, I just want to say this as we go through this, God has no problem with letting good people be between a rock and a hard place. All throughout the story of the Old Testament and the New Testament, God allows there to be these types of felt tension. You kind of look at this and it's just like Joseph, he must have felt like what in the world is happening to me? What is going on? I did not sign up for this situation and it probably gets even more so as the story goes on, it caused him a moral dilemma as a law abiding man. He is trying to figure out what do I do now? Last week when we looked at the genealogy of who are the characters in Jesus's lineage, one of the things that we saw was the messiness of that genealogy. Do you remember that some of the women, there was a prostitute that was in that story.

There was Tamar who had an illicit relationship with her father-in-law in order to continue on the line. There's scandal after scandal in Jesus's story, and it should give us a sense of like, wow, Jesus came from a messy situation. And again, in this story we're looking at this morning, it is messy. It has this appearance of scandal overshadowing Jesus. And in fact, when Jesus is grown and Jesus is in this contentious relationship with the Pharisees, the Pharisees throw at Jesus, they say, well, we know who our father is, but you're a bastard. You have an illegitimate birth. So what happens? This origin story is known publicly when Jesus is like 30 years from now, this goes with Jesus. Why would God do this? Why does God need to birth his son into the world in the midst of scandal? It's like mind blowing. Why would you give the son of God his origin story being scandalous?

We know it's a virgin birth, but yet the people at his time, it's like, how do you prove it's a virgin? You say it's a virgin birth. Everybody's like, no, there's no way. Come on. No, nobody's taken that seriously and the Pharisees are happily throwing it into Jesus' face. And yet this is the plan of God. I was asking myself this question this week, why would God choose to bring Jesus into the world under the shadow of scandal? This is a God caused mess. Now we're good at creating our own messes, right? Amen. Anybody ever causing a mess? Yes, we're good at creating messes. This is a God caused mess. You have Mary who we hear is like, she's a great lady or young girl, Joseph. He's a righteous man and God's like, yeah, I'm going to mess up your life. That's crazy. One of the things that I was thinking about, and I think we have a little bit more answer to that question the further we go on in the text, but I wonder this, I don't know if this is the answer, but I wonder if this is a parallel to the Adam story.

Do you remember how Eve comes into the world? Eve is not a product of a man and woman conceiving a child. Eve is the result of a man being put to sleep and God just sovereignly takes half, the guy takes a half and makes the woman. And again, you have to wonder, is God just putting his methods on repeat? And I'm biased towards that. God does put his methods on repeat. If you've been around long enough that look, you've got to pay attention to how God works in your life because God puts his things on repeat. And oftentimes this is the thing, the way God works in your life is different from how he works in my life, but it's probable that if he worked in your life one way and you had to exercise faith and you saw God reveal himself in that way, it's very likely that that scenario plays out again and again and again, not in my life but in your life.

And so there is a reason to pay attention to the way in which God works. And here we have kind of a repeat of the Genesis story with a miraculous birth, a miraculous conception. Okay, so we've seen the problem, we've seen Joseph's solution. Let's look at the second solution that's offered to us. The angel's message in verses 20 and 21 after this is Joseph, after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, well, you know what? Before we even get there, before we get to what the angel said, I just want you to sit with this for a second. Look at what it says right there. It says, but after he had considered these things, this means that Joseph lived with this tension in his life for a little while. He was uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable, right?

Joseph was in this place where life was hard and there was this issue that was open-ended. Have you ever been in that place? Do you have questions in your life right now where it's just like, I don't know how this is going to get worked out, and there's a place where you are considering it and you're mulling it over and you're like, God, I don't know how this is going to get solved. Listen, don't feel bad if you're in that place because God works in that context. Do you know how I was in a play when I was probably in seventh or eighth grade? I was Aslan. Yes, I drove stressed up in a full lion's outfit. Yes. And so here's the thing.

I participated in setting that stage. They borrowed my desk from my bedroom. We set the stage so that it was like a little homeschool play thing, and we were participating in not just acting, but the props. And this is what I want to propose to you is that God sets the stage in your life so that he can look good in your life. Now you have to be a willing participant in that. And here in Joseph's life, God is setting the stage. Joseph's Joseph didn't decide like, okay, I'm in high school. What do I want to do for college? I want to sign up to be the virgin's husband. I want to get a degree in that. No, this was not Joseph's plan. This is like God's historic redemptive purposes like bisecting the lives of people who are completely blindsided by this. And he's sitting there considering these things and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

So I don't know why God does it this way for Joseph, but it's not like a dream is good enough, but it's like, hey, you're going to have a dream, but in your dream is going to be an angel and the angels are going to give you the message which is wild. And so here's what the angel says to Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

God gives Joseph a dream with an angel telling him, first of all, to not be afraid, not be afraid. You see, when you're encounter God in your place of tension and God is just speaking to you and ministering to you, one of the things that goes away that God wants to take away is your fear. Because when you're living in this place and you're in that place of tension and you're considering you're afraid, you're afraid, how's the future going to work out? And what God wants you to know is that you don't have to fear That's for you this morning. If you're willing, if you're a willing participant, if what God is doing in your life on the stage of your life, you can confidently let go of fear. You can confidently let go of fear and trust that God has a good plan. Not only does God tell him to stop being afraid not to be afraid of the marriage, he says, God explains to Joseph that this pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit. So this angel provides Joseph with some more data, which is important because look, if the girl you're engaged to comes and says, Hey, I'm pregnant, it's the Holy Spirit, believe me, it's like, I don't know. I really want to dream with an angel. I think that would be helpful, right?

So that's the second thing is that this angel explains to Joseph the origin of this pregnancy. Then the third thing God gives Joseph instructions on what to name the baby boy. He says, I want you to name him, but God explains to Joseph why he is giving him this name. I want you to name him Jesus, but that he says, I want you to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. In Matthew, Jesus, Jesus, it reflects the Hebrew Joshua, my name Joshua, and it means Yahweh saves. So Jesus is based off of the Hebrew Yeshua in English, it's Joshua. So basically what we could say is that Jesus' name was Joshua, but when it gets translated over to Greek, it is Jesus, right? That's a little confusing. But anyway, let's keep going with the quote In the Jewish world, names were not just marks of identification, but their symbols containing the hopes and prayers of the parents for their children. Jesus means that through him, God promises that salvation will come to his people. The very name that is given to Jesus contains a promise of God that he's going to take away their sins.

This is really important if you're considering a relationship with Jesus, fundamental to being a follower of Jesus, is that you understand that Jesus is saving us from our sins, not saving us, saving good people from sinners. I talk to people who are coming through the compassion center, people who are in the line, and I talk about Christianity, people who are not yet followers of Jesus. And I oftentimes get this idea of like, well, I'm a good person, so I'm just going to keep being a good person and maybe I'll go to church and God's God have me. I've earned a place in heaven because I'm so good. But fundamental to the person of Jesus and being a follower of Jesus is that you understand you are in a position where you're drowning in your own guilt and you need to be rescued from your sin.

Jesus comes on the scene where all of us, all of humanity is condemned for sinning against God. The word here is harm. Tia sin refers to the basic self-centered aversion towards God's laws. I dunno why the word sin is there. There should be a period after laws. This is harmatia here. The basic New Testament term, 48 times in Romans alone means a failure to keep God's standard and contains also the results, the guilt that one has before God. The Bible teaches a lot about Jesus, but the stage, again, that stage that's set in order to have a relationship with Jesus is a understand a fundamental acceptance that you're guilty. Now, some people don't like to be told they're guilty. Some people are like, I don't want to have anything to do with Jesus because I don't like to admit that I'm wrong. I don't want to admit that I've failed God.

And if that's where you're at, you just need to know that the Bible comes along and just says, it's not just you, it's everyone. We've all sinned. We've all had that self-centered aversion towards God. So some people say, well, okay, I'm willing to admit I've done some things wrong. I've told some lies and maybe I lost my temper over here and I've been selfish and stingy maybe at this point, but look all my good, it outweighs the bad. And if God's way of judging the world was like just this comparison amongst humans, then that logic would work. But you see the standard for God is that God is absolutely perfect and has never sinned. He is what we call holy. He is. There's no sin in him. And he says that's the standard. You have to be absolutely perfect. If you want to be in the garden with Adam and Eve before the fall, you have to be absolutely perfect.

And when it's put and your good is not going to outweigh your bad. And when it's put like that, all of a sudden you realize, wow, if that's the standard of justice, then I do fall short. I am guilty. I can't remove my own guilt. But the Bible doesn't just come along and say, you're guilty. That's not the point. And if you ever hear a Christian that's really trying to beat you over the head and tell you you're guilty, you've got to be listening for the other part of the story, which is that God sent his son Jesus into the world to have the name Jesus, which means that he's going to what? Save, save us from our sins. God sent his son Jesus to save you and I from our sins. It's something that we need Jesus to save us from. It's corrosive, it's destructive to our life.

It's destructive to the life that you want to live. Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what David told me, and I don't know, did any of you get a chance to listen to the podcast this week? If you didn't go back and listen to the podcast, the sermon podcast on the church website. Because what I'm trying to do now is give you a little bit of man on the street interviews in preparation for my sermon this week. It's going to be David. And he asks a really good question, which I'm going to share with you here in just a second. But let's look at verses 22 through 23, because Matthew steps away from this dream and he says, listen, Joseph got a dream right? God told Joseph what to do because of this dream. Now, all of this took place, the dream, the naming of Jesus as Jesus, the virgin being found with child.

All of that took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. And then he's going to quote from Isaiah, Isaiah, I think it's seven 14, yeah, Isaiah seven 14, the version will become pregnant and give birth to a son. They will name him Emmanuel, which is translated. God is with us. God is with us. Now, here's what David asks. We sat on Friday and I said, listen, this is what I'm teaching on Sunday. What do you think about this name, Jesus? And the fact that it means God's going to take you away from God's going to save us from our sins. He said, I like that, but I really struggle because I'm going through really painful things in my life right now. I've gone through some really hard stuff. And if God sent Jesus to save us from our sins, why is there so much evil in the world?

Why is there so much pain and suffering? Why am I going through the things that I'm going through? And I think as I reflected on his question, and this is for David, if you're answering this too, I think that the answer comes here in verse 23. They will name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. In the Old Testament, God revealed himself in a special way to be with the children of Israel. They called it Shekinah. The Shekinah glory of God. God's presence came down in the form of like a cloud over the tabernacle. In the tabernacle. It filled this tent, the meeting place with God. That was the presence of God. And then we get to the New Testament and we see that Jesus is the presence of God. But then after Jesus ascends to heaven, he doesn't leave us alone. He leaves what's called the Holy Spirit to be the presence of God with us.

But that even the Holy Spirit is not the end of the story. We see in Revelation chapter 21 that Jesus is going to come back and be physically present in a new heavens and new earth reigning from Jerusalem. And so the reality is that Jesus came to save us from our sins. He's left the Holy Spirit as a restraining force against evil in the world to a degree. So God is present through Christians and the church, God's present by His spirit through the church, but there's even more to come. And so the story is not over. So there is still a reign of death. Satan is still at work in the world and we are still waiting, just like the Hebrews, the saints of the Old Testament. We're waiting for the Messiah. We have something that we're waiting on, which is the physical presence of God in our midst where he puts all things under his feet, sin and death, and he reigns. He completely reigns.

So we get to verse 24. Verse 24 says this, when Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord had commanded him. He married her, but he did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to his son. And he named him Jesus. He did what he was told to do. He obeys. This was costly to Joseph. We don't know much more about Joseph other than the dream he has. They go down to to Egypt. He's alive during the first few years, probably the first, at least five or six years, or even we know 12 because we know that Jesus stays back in Jerusalem. So Joseph is on the scene, at least through Jesus being 12, but he's not around when Jesus is doing his ministry at the age of 30, although Mary is.

But Joseph obeys what God tells him to do. And in your life, God is setting the stage. He's at work in your life. He's inviting you to into a relationship with him. He's wanting to undo and unravel the destructive forces of sin in your life. And he wants to use you as an instrument, a herald, a light, a piece of salt that's in his world to make him known. While we're waiting for the return of Christ, I just want to show you one final passage from Matthew chapter nine. We'll get here eventually, but I love this. Look at this is the Jesus. This is Jesus who came to save people from their sins. Jesus went on from there and he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. This is the writer of this book. And he said to Matthew, follow me. Got up, followed him.

And while he was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Now, when he heard this, he said, it's not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice for, I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners. Jesus came for sinners. He came for you and I, and if you and I can accept that reality that we are guilty and self-destructive and in need of a savior, it's the beginning of a good drama that plays out for our good and for God's glory. Amen. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for the fact that we are not in control. And I know that some of my friends here this morning feel like your divine plan has just cut their life in two, and you're at work and it's like, Lord, what are you doing? And sometimes there's consternation. Lord, would you put on display your redemptive work? Lord, thank you that you can take an origin story that is messy and bring about your good purposes, that you can demonstrate your power. We give you ourselves this week. We want to be filled and used by you in our context.

We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Matthew 1:1-17

Transcript

We are starting the book of Matthew Over this last year, I was looking at about a year ago, we were in looking at the seven letters to the seven churches out of Revelation two and three. Then we finished that and we did a series called Promise Believers where we were looking at basing our lives on the promises of God and emphasize the fact that God is not looking for us to make promises to him. He's looking for us to respond to his promises in faith. And then we went into the book of Hebrews, and Hebrews is all about how Jesus is so much better than the shadow of Judaism and the Levitical order. And the writer, the pastor of Hebrews is saying, look, don't leave Jesus. Don't leave Jesus. He's the one that came and died and is your high priest and he's advocating for you and he wants you to be close to the Father.

And as we've gone through this journey, I've personally been like, this is awesome. I love this. But I'm at a place where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to go back. Let's just study Jesus. Let's go to the source. Let's talk about Jesus for a few months together. So we're going to be in Matthew and we're going to see the teachings of Jesus. We're going to see the sermon on the Mount, the infancy and the birth of Christ. There's five times where Jesus teaches at length. We're going to see the parables. There's a bunch of different things that we'll encounter as we go through Matthew. And I'm really excited. I don't know about you, but life is sometimes confusing and especially right now having come out of Covid, a lot of things feel like they've been turned on its head. And there's a lot of pieces where you're just like, what is up?

What's true north? And I think people are still trying to figure that out. There's a lot of distrust around leadership, whether it's in the church or with political leaders and there's scandals that exist. And I think, yeah, for me there's this sense of, you know what, just give me Jesus. I know that that really is the true north that we need in the midst of all what's going to happen with the economy. Some people are like, we're going to go into a recession. And some people are like, oh, we're going to have a soft landing. And then other people are going to have, there's no landing and the economy's fine and unemployment is record breaking. And who knows? We have no idea, right? It's kind of confusing to know what's going to happen next, but in the midst of all of that, we just can sink our teeth in the person of Jesus.

And so that's what I'm excited about. As many of you know, this church plant, this church is a very personal expression of my own spirituality. Why do we feed poor people or people in need or people suffering and on a fixed income? Because that's something I was passionate about and God opened up the door for us to do it right. Why are we going into Matthew? Because I wanted to do it. So that's my leadership style. That is how I do things. So let's read this together. Now I know if you're here for the first time and if you're new to the church, you're going to be like, what is going on here? But this is Matthew chapter one, verses one through 17. It says this, an account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac, father Jacob, Jacob, father Judah and his brothers, Judah fathered Perez and Zara by Tamar Perez, fathered Heran heran fathered Ara arum fathered aab aab fathered na hasan Han fathered Salman Salman fathered Boaz by Rahab Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth Obed fathered Jesse and Jesse fathered King David.

David fathered Solomon by Uriah's wife Solomon fathered em. Boem fathered Aja Aja fathered Asa aa father Jehoshaphat Jehoshaphat father Jora Jem fathered Siah Siah fathered Jotham Jo Joseph fathered ahaz. Ah fathered Hezekiah. Hezekiah fathered manasses, manasses fathered. Amen. Amen. Father Josiah, Josiah fathered kinaya and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon after the exile to Babylon, Kinaya fathered shield. Teel and shield till fathered, Zaza fathered abada or abad fathered eliakim, Eliakim fathered azo, Azer fathered Zac, Zac fathered Aki, AKI fathered Eli, ID fathered Azar, fathered Matton. Matton father Jacob, Jacob Father Joseph, the husband of Mary who gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. And from David until the exile to the exile to Babylon, 14 generations and from the exile to Babylon until the Messiah, 14 generations. Welcome to church.

Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would just speak to us. It says in the book of Timothy that the scriptures are profitable for teaching, for instruction, for correction, reproof. And somehow this genealogy can intersect with our week in the middle of August, 2023 and our story and the things that we've experienced and the wounds that we've felt and the wins and the losses that we have and the relationships that we have. All this scripture, it can just speak wisdom into us, but we need the spirit of God to meet with us this morning and to teach us. And we want to have ears to hear what you have to say. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So yes, let's jump into Matthew. Let me give you just a little bit of material here just in terms of introducing this book. If you're brand new to the Bible, you need to know that there's two major sections to the Christian Bible.

There's the Old Testament and there's the New Testament. The Old Testament can also be called the Hebrew scriptures. If you go to a Jewish person and you ask them about their Bible and you talk about the Old Testament, they're going to say, well, that's my Bible. My Bible is the Old Testament Bible. They don't use the New Testament because if they're not a follower of Jesus, they reject the New Testament. So you have the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament tells the story of creation on through Israel and how God is trying to redeem the world through his people Israel. He's starting a journey, right? We're going to talk a little bit more about that this morning. And then you get to the New Testament, and the first book in the New Testament is Matthew. Matthew. We have no idea when it was written, whether it's written as early as 50 ad or as late as in the eighties, maybe the nineties 80.

There's a bunch of different ideas of how early it was or how late it was written, but it's very clear that it was written by Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus. The early church fathers clearly attributed it to Matthew. There was no question about that. And it was written, it was believed by the urge of the church fathers that Matthew was written in possibly Hebrew or written in Greek. But for a Jewish audience, it's really, really occupied with the idea of explaining the person of Jesus to a Jewish audience. There are five considerable sections of teaching that we're going to come across. Do you know what chapters five through seven are called?

Chapters five through seven is oftentimes called the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, if you go and listen to the podcast, our podcast starting with this sermon moving forward, I'm going to be including little clips of audio at the beginning before you hear this teaching of people that I'm talking to from the Compassion Center about Matthew. I'm having kind of on the street conversations about Matthew and I did it this last week. One of the things I did was I said, Hey, what do you know about Matthew? And a number of people said, oh, that's where the sermon on the Mount is, and that's where we're going to cover. That's chapters five through seven, chapters 10, 13, 18. We're going to hit some parables and then we're going to get a lengthy teaching about just the end times in the second coming of Christ and a final judgment.

So there's these big sections of teaching. Now, some commentators say that Matthew's kind of giving a new Torah. So if you go to the Old Testament, you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers in Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible Moses is writing. And that Matthew here is kind of imitating that. There's some definitely mapping on New Testament to Old Testament, but that's just an idea. Some other people disagree with that opinion. There is this real Jewishness about the book. This comes from Craig Keener. He says, the writer seems concerned throughout to show that Christianity is the true continuation of the Old Testament, the true Judaism. So if you're familiar with the Old Testament, you see how God shapes a nation. He gives that there are common people that come from Abraham, they're given a common land in Israel, and then they have a common constitution with the law and their religious practices.

And that forming of culture and a people leads into, and there's these holidays that they're celebrating. It all leads up to Jesus. It's fulfilled in Jesus. And Matthew really works hard to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism. It is true Judaism, Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish scriptures. I want to show you this pattern throughout the first time we come across this and we'll look at this text next week, but this is found, I believe this. This formula is found 61 times in the book of Matthew. Now all of this, this is Matthew writing, he says, now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. And then you go to 23, it's going to quote the Old Testament passage. So the Greek New Testament lists 61 quotations from the Old Testament in the gospel of Matthew compared to 31 in Mark, 26 in Luke and 16 in John.

So again, here's Matthew writing to a Jewish audience saying here is what's happened in the story of Jesus, and here's how it connects to the Old Testament. Now kids, you guys remember we were in Matthew three, we were talking about John the Baptist, and it took us weeks to just kind of get through those first verses because Matthew is saying about John the Baptist, Hey, this is what Isaiah 40 was talking about. And there's this really trying to help this new audience of Christians, these new followers of Jesus that may not have witnessed the crucifixion, the resurrection to understand the story of Jesus, but to understand that it was a fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures. It's more so in the book of Matthew than any other gospel. Now, this isn't in my notes, but I'll mention it to you.

There is a lot of correlation between Mark, Matthew and Luke. And then John is also a gospel telling the story of Jesus. But it's very, so the three gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke are called synoptic gospel. Can you say synoptic synoptic gospels? And they probably are based on mark or what we call a Q document. There might've been some missing document that we don't have but is kind of a written, or maybe it's a messy document of just what Jesus did and what he taught. Scholars call it the Q. But mark was probably the first synoptic gospel that was written. And then we have Matthew and Luke and there's some differences there, but it's very clear that Matthew is really emphasizing some Jewish points. Now, I want to show you a couple of things from the actual text. We'll kind of walk through this text together, the opening line, just go to Matthew one one.

In the c s b version, it says, an account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. I want to show I never do this, but just give me a second, okay? I want to show you this in Greek. Okay? It says, and then I don't know how to say that last word, at least not in the moment because my Greek is a little bit rough. But here's what I want you to see, okay? Because in our version it says an account of the genealogy, but some of these words, what does that sound like? Bible and Genesis, right? This is not the normal word for genealogy. If you were a Jew at the time of this writing, and you receive this, you receive the book of Matthew, you would see language here. That was the title for the first book of the Old Testament, genesis, the book of Genesis.

So what Matthew here is doing is he's starting his letter by essentially saying that the book of the new Genesis brought by Jesus, or in other words, Matthew is saying, this story you're about to read is about the recreation of the whole world. So there's this Jewish nature right from the very beginning, borrowing language from the Book of Genesis, the book, it literally says the book Genesis, but of Jesus. Isn't that interesting? So it opens up, but it doesn't just say the opening. But do you see that we have some names of Jesus? Jesus. This is not his last name, by the way. He was not Mr. Christ. This is Latin for Messiah, the anointed one. Okay? So Jesus is the name that Mary and Joseph gave to him, and then Christ is the term Messiah. So the Jews were told all the way back in Deuteronomy, my Moses, to wait for another character like Moses who would be anointed, that there would be an anointed one who would serve the purpose of a Messiah.

Now, Matthew also calls him the son of David. And again, if you're Jewish, you've been waiting for about 1400 years for the person who's going to sit on David's throne, but be a better king than David. David had been promised that his reign would not end, but there was these promises that were yet unfulfilled to David with this flourish and that you go into the prophets, it's just flourishing of the kingdom, and yet the nation had been in decline. So Jews at this time, we were living in anticipation. Where's the son of David? Where's the one that's going to fulfill these prophetic words? It hasn't happened yet. So Matthew says, this is Jesus Christ, the son of David. Oh, the son of Abraham. The son of Abraham. So he's tying it in all the way back with this goes back to Genesis 12 when Abraham was told, Hey, leave earth of Cies.

Go to a land that I'm going to promise you and I'm going to turn you into a nation that's going to bring a blessing to the whole world that's given to a barren man and his wife, that promise. And yet here we have the story of Jesus starting off just showing us this is the fulfillment of the Jewish story. Like you got to love what God did through the people, the Hebrew people, going back to Abraham to love who Jesus is. It just shows design in this amazing, amazing way. The next thing I want to show you is just the long story of redemption. Let's look at verse two and just to kind of take away any fears that you have. We're not going to go through every one of those verses we could, but not on a Sunday morning. So here he says, Abraham fathered Isaac.

So he's telling the story of Jesus, giving his genealogy, and he says that Abraham fathered Isaac and Isaac fathered Jacob, father Judah and his brothers the work that God did starting early on in Genesis, after the flood, after the Tower of Babel, God designates this man Abraham, and the world is basically lost and broken in sin from basically Genesis three on there is this search for a repair, and there's this thought, well, maybe it's Noah, right? Maybe it's Noah. But Noah, after the flood fails, basically there's something occurs with his sons that shows like, man, he's not going to be the anointed one. So then you fast forward and you get to the story of Abraham and God's promising it's through you that I'm going to bring this anointed one, this seed, and there's this anticipation, in fact, the whole Old Testament, it's just written with this anticipation. If you finish the Old Testament, Malachi, you see that the Hebrew scriptures do not have a resolution. If you read through with just faithful interpretation, you are left waiting for the story to be wrapped up.

There is not a happy ending. There is just this vacuum waiting to be filled by a messiah. So we have the long story. You look at I Abraham, and if you're not familiar with these characters, it's worth reading. I know that sometimes the Bible, the Old Testament is intimidating. You get into Genesis and you're like, how does this connect to God's plan for my life? You start reading Abraham's story, you start reading Isaac's story. It's just like, man, this is just a really, really old story. But here's what you got to understand is it should be priming your hearts for the Messiah. And it is, it's a long story, but it's getting you ready for Jesus to show up.

One more thing that I want to show you from this story, and that is the women. Did you see them in there? Did you see the women that were in this genealogy? Now, if you know the Old Testament story, what women would you expect to be in this genealogy? Sarah. That's right. Who else? Mary Ruth. No, you wouldn't expect Ruth. She's a Moabite Mary. Yes, she's in there, right? Yeah. Who would you expect if you know the Old Testament? Who are the women that are famous? Deborah, okay, yeah, we got who's after we got Rebecca, Rachel, Leah. Yep. You got Rahab in here. But this is the point. You wouldn't expect to find Rahab in this store. You'd expect to find Sarah. Is she in here? She's not. She's not listed in here. In fact, we have five women that are listed that are surprising characters. Tamar, we have a mixed audience with young people here. So I'm not going to explain the story of Tamar here, but you can go back and you can read about Tamar. Just look in your Bible and it'll give you the scripture reference of where in Genesis you can see everything that happened with Tamar. I think it's Genesis 38 or thereabouts.

It was a scandal, right? It was a scandal. And yet she's included in the genealogy of Jesus Rahab. This is early on in the book of Joshua. Again, somebody who's in an industry that is illicit, she would have not been a character that you would've expected to be in the story or the lineage of the Messiah, and yet here she is, Rahab who hid the spies on a roof is included in the story. Then we get Ruth, who's a Moabite. Do you remember the story of the Moabites is that they're just the arch enemies of the Jews. They mistreat the Jews as they come into the land. There's just animosity against the Moabites. There's curses against the Moabites. The Moabites are not a good character, and yet here's a Moabite woman who's included into this story. That's in verse five. And then in verse six, we get the story of, or we get the reference to Uriah's wife, who is who?

Bath Bathsheba. Yes. And so David took Uriah's wife in an illicit way, and she's pregnant with Solomon, and that's included in the story of Jesus. And then we have Mary also in verse 16. So these characters, there's a couple of things that happen by including these women. Let me actually just read this quote to you. Tamar bore children by her father-in-law. Judah Rahab was the Harlett who hid the spies and became the mother of Boaz. Ruth was the Moabite widow who married Boas and became the mother of Obed. Finally, Bathsheba, who's not named in the Mathian genealogy, was the wife of Uriah, whom King David had murdered in a desperate grid to cover up his adultery.

There's two things here that this tells us by including these women in the story. One, that the Gentiles are a part of God's plan. So if you look at the work of Jesus and you interpret Jesus as something just for Jewish people, then you've made a mistake. It should be showing, it should be indicating to the Jewish reader that Jesus is, and God's plan is for more than just the Jews. The second thing that it indicates is that God has this redemptive ability to work through broken lives, people that are finite and have messed up to accomplish his purposes and his plans.

As we journey through the lineage of Jesus, we will witness a tapestry that reflects our shared human experience. When you look at just some random character, maybe that's not well known, or maybe they have just a chapter out of the Bible dedicated to them in the Book of Kings or something like that, it's amazing that that character did their life. Just like you eat, sleep, have family, have relationships, laugh, cry, just the gamut of human experiences they had, and yet God's purposes were accomplished through those characters. We see in this the same seasons, in situations that we all face from our connection to heritage, to navigating life's transitions, and from our imperfections to our deepest aspirations. There is just a normalness about this genealogy, people that worked. I mean, just think about even Abraham, who's this hero of the faith we know of just a few incidents from the life.

Can you imagine how normal Abraham's life was? And yet he's this hero of the faith. I hope that encourages you this week as you're thinking and desiring with me. God, I want to live a life that's pleasing to you, and yet my life seems so normal. Well, just look at this genealogy. How normal were the lives of these characters? But more profoundly, we find in this lineage and echo of the garden, an echo of the garden of Eden, a reminder of our original design and the nobility as bearers of God's image. You see, as these characters are playing out, God's reflecting in his purposes like, look, I'm going to use you for more than just your menial task, but you bear my image and literally you are going to be a bearer. You're going to participate in bringing forth the Messiah. Do you see that? In Genesis chapter one, he says, let's make man in our own image so that they can reflect, they can bear the image of God. And yet here these individual are having families and women are having babies that then lead to they're bearing out the image of God, who's going to come from them is going to come. Jesus.

A reminder of our original design and nobility as bears of God's image, each name in Christ's genealogy serves as a testament to God's relentless love, his merciful grace, sovereign knowledge, and unwavering justice. You were not merely a product of your past. You're not a product of your failures or your triumphs. All of us are a part of a grand design woven by the master's hand, from Abraham to David, from David to the exile, from the exile to Christ, we see a story that is both ours and God's. And now, as followers of Christ, we are invited to partake in this divine legacy. We're called back to our garden beginnings, to our original purpose of worship, community, vocation, and character. Were summoned to realign ourselves with our inherent nobility, recognizing that we are not merely lost sinners, but also cherished children, beloved by our creator.

When we leave here today, we want to lift our heads up high, not in arrogance, but in assurance of our worth and our calling. We want to embrace our place in God's family, knowing that our story is interwoven into his, that our story that began in the garden leads us to the eternal embrace of our heavenly Father. May we live with hope, joy, purpose as those who recognize their roots in the garden. And may we extend that same love, mercy, knowledge, and justice to the others, reflecting the very attributes of God. This genealogy should shout in our face that God has a good plan. And if you're a follower of Jesus, like it says in Romans, you're grafted into the tree of God. You're a part of that plan, and there needs to be in us, a recognition that work, community, vocation, family, location, body.

All of those things are a part of God fulfilling his purpose through your life. I love looking at your smile. So I was talking to Maria when we were coming in. She's got a great smile. Have you guys seen Maria smile? She's got this great smile. We're going to try to recruit her for our welcome team. God made that smile, right? It's a part of God's design. Some of you have faced tragedy in your life. You've had things that are just so disappointing, and yet God is able to take, just like he took Ruth, a Ruth who lost her husband's right, lost her husband, God's able to take a foreign woman and just bring up forth a beautiful story for her, right? You read Ruth, and it's just like, what a fairytale story that happens to Ruth. But by the way, there's the long story of God's redemption that's being accomplished through her.

So let's afresh. Let's give ourselves to the Lord and tell the Lord God, we want to turn fully to you and give our lives to you. Lord, we bow our heads before you and surrender. We thank you for being the one who designs along long, long story, long before we came on the scene, and were born and long after we die. You have a good plan and you've invited us to be a part of it, and we are so grateful for that invitation, the purpose, the meaning, the identity, the love that comes with that grafting in what I pray for my brothers and sisters that they would glean fully, they would grab a hold of these truths this morning, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Hebrews 13:20-25

Transcript

We are in Hebrews chapter 13, Hebrews chapter 13, and this is our last week in Hebrews. So some of you will recall those of you that have been with us through this journey, that this is some intense pastoral counseling. These Christians, primarily Jewish Christians, they're facing a crisis in their own lives and they're considering going back to the old Covenant Judaism. And they were looking at backsliding basically away from what Jesus had purchased for them. They were in a difficult spot because of being socially ostracized. Some of these people were being kicked out of their families. Others were just kind of being pushed to the perimeter of society because of their identification with Christ. And it seems apparent having gone through this letter that the temptation for them was to not stop being religious, but to stop being a follower of Jesus. They were going to just return to the Levitical laws, the priesthood.

And so it's a difficult place and this pastor who wrote this has been calling these believers to recognize Jesus as so much better than anything in their Jewish tradition. So it's like, Hey, you need to go back to Jesus as you're sorting through. It's interesting, many of the conversations I had before church, you're going through changes with your career or in life. You've maybe new to the city, you're kind of navigating life. And there is this sense, there can be a sense of deep turmoil, kind of like you have that ever have a vinegarette dressing where if you let it sit on your shelf, everything you get your layers that are going on in there, you've got your balsamic vinegar and then your oil and your seasoning kind of goes, but then sometimes your life feels like it's all shook up and there's no layers.

And what this pastor is saying here is like, listen, as you're kind of going through the turbulence of life and all of the unsettled feeling that comes from suffering, Jesus is the primary thing that you need to grab onto. You need to grab a hold of the priesthood of Jesus, that Jesus is your pie priest today, this very moment, Jesus, not in the future when you're going to be with him, but today in this very same time as you occupy this time, Jesus is interceding on your behalf. His full-time job is to help you be close to God. And so he's called these believers to just please hold on to Jesus. But he also talked about having a soft heart and responding in faith to the promises of God that listen. And here's the temptation. If you've grown up in Judaism, you don't have to grow up into Judaism to understand the temptation, to check out of a daily vibrant relationship with the Lord.

And to kind of go back to the routine of like, well, I'm going to go to church on Sundays and I'll read some nice verses here and there and I'll kind of play Christian, but not engage it as a living and active thing that impacts my daily life. That's a safe form of religion and that is what religion is. It's like it doesn't engage me personally and cost me a whole lot, but I can still be associated with it. And that is where these Christians are at. And so this pastor, he's written so much that we, I will not try to summarize here, but we are going to be in these last five verses six verses 20 through 25. Let me put them up in front of you and then I'll pull some stuff out that I think is beneficial for us. Now, may the God of peace who brought up from the dead, our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, equip you with everything good to do His will working in us, what is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Brothers and sisters, I urge you receive this message of ex for I've written it to you briefly. Be aware that our brother Timothy has been released. If he comes soon enough, he will be with me when I see you greet all your leaders and all the saints, those who are from Italy send you greetings, grace be with you all. Let's pray for a moment and ask the Lord to speak to us through this text. God, we again surrender our minds and our hearts to you. We want to have a listening ear and a heart that has that posture of faith where we're ready to trust you. And as Tracy was sharing, there's that can be that wrestling in our own life. Sometimes it's a resisting you and other times it's just a confusion and a swirl. And God, I pray you would just see in us and you would help us to have that disposition where we're ready to obey whatever you say to us this morning.

We want to be a people that are following you, not trying to lead you in our own lives. And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So to be candid, I'm going to just really focus in on verses 20 and 21, this greeting. I'll mention it here at the end. It's a short greeting, some notes probably by the hand of the writer where he takes the scroll from the e Emmanuel and he signs it with these notes at the end. But what I really want to do is focus in on this prayer. It's oftentimes maybe even called a benediction in your Bible. Benediction is a Latin word, meaning it's a blessing. It's fascinating. There's two real parts here. You have the prayer and then you have this final greeting. And it is fascinating how the New Testament contains these written prayers. So we have in verses 20 and 21 this, do you see the direction, who this is different from the rest of the text in that this is not instructions given to you.

This is the pastor is writing about something that relates to his audience, but he's asking God to do a work on behalf of them. Do you see that? Now may the God of peace and then he comes down to what he's actually asking for here, equip you, equip you. He's praying for their equipping. May the God of peace who brought you, who brought up from the dead, our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Now, the New Testament writers would write out their prayers. As you look at the epistles, you can see Paul praying very specific things for these different churches. You look at the church in Ephesus and in Ephesus chapter one, he prays that their eyes of their understanding would be enlightened, that they would know what is the hope of their calling. He literally uses, he talks about the heart being as if your heart is like a shutter on a camera that opens up.

And you know how an old fashioned camera with film would work, the shutter opens up, it lets a little bit of light in, and that light hits the A film material and you get a photograph or you get a negative that has to then be turned into a photograph. So Paul's prayer for the Ephesians church is this super surgical prayer, like specific for them that they would have this spiritual experience where their heart just captures this new vision, the hope of their calling and the power of God. It's this beautiful prayer that's Ephesians one. You go a couple of chapters later, you get to Ephesians three, and there's this prayer that you would know the love of God for Paul praying for the Ephesians, he's praying a lot about. Here's what I want you to know. I want this to be, I want you to have this given to you by God in your understanding ending.

So you get to Colossians or Philippians, I would encourage you at some point go and look at the specificity of these prayer requests that the Holy Spirit is leading Paul to pray. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. In your own life, I would encourage you to even consider writing out your prayers so that you can be specific. There's a couple of reasons why the writers would do this, why Paul would do this, and the pastor who wrote Hebrews would write this. Can you imagine? Why are these prayers written out? Why would you take a prayer and write it out and say, here's what I'm praying for you. What does that do?

Communicate it to other people.

You can communicate it. Maybe it's a modeling, right? It's a modeling of like, oh, that's a good prayer to pray. I appreciate that. I could pray that for others. That's good. What else? You

Can amplify it saying the same prayer,

Amplify it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, you could pray the same thing. That's right. What else? Yeah,

You can remember when God answers your prayers when you go back,

Ah, yes, you could remember. So you can see, oh, that prayer request was answered. I love those. I put down two more. One is that if you know what somebody's praying for you about, then you can have a sense of anticipation. It's kind of like what you're saying, Beverly, where as it's unfolding, you recognize it. Oh, that's what I prayed for. And if it's not specific, then it's hard to recognize. So the more specific you are, the more recognizable it is as it occurs in your life. The second reason that I think that the New Testament has these written prayers is so that you can cooperate with God. Now it's God who's going to do this work, but somehow in the mystery of God's government, our cooperation is necessary. And so if you're telling somebody, Hey, this is what I'm praying for you about, it would encourage them to be open to the work of God in their life.

So we have this benediction, this prayer. Now, I was talking with my wife about this week, and so we were on vacation, we were sitting on the beach and I was kind of wrestling with this text. So my relationship with the Bible is kind of, I love the Bible, but I kind of wrestle with the Bible where I'm kind of frustrated with it. And this text, I was, it's so wordy. In fact, I used the term I used with her. As I says, if you cut out the fat, you can get to the request. But as I was thinking about it some more after the fact, I realized that the reason why there's fat, or it's so wordy, is because it's a prayer. And it's like climbing a theological mountain. When you climb a mountain and it's steep, you really can't jog up it. You are looking for one place to put your hand after another, after another.

And the reason that this is written in such a roundabout way is because as each phrase is encountered, it stirs up a sense of prayer in our hearts. So he doesn't, I mean, could just, if this was a command, let's say you wanted to command a kid to perform this act, right? You would just say, be equipped to do his will, right? We could shorten it down to that much or we could say, he could have just said, God, I pray that you would equip these people so they could do your will, but instead he adds all this fluff. But again, if you go back to these prayers, I don't think he's just trying to be poetic. I think that each one of these phrases are a foothold and a hand grip for faith. So as you're going through this, you're reading that who is the God that he's praying to?

It's the God of peace who throughout this whole book, this pastor has been appealing to this audience, to recognize that it's through Jesus that peace has been made on our behalf. He is the God who's trying to bring people who are in a turbulent setting to recognize that your God is a God of peace, and that God is the one who brought up from the dead, our Lord Jesus, the resurrection power of God. So again, you take a hold of that and it's like, oh yeah, he's the God of resurrection and who is Jesus? Well, thank you for asking here. We'll call him the shepherd of the sheep, the shepherd of the sheep. In 13, if you go back, he's been talking quite a bit the earthly leaders that were appointed in these churches and the need for recognizing and honoring leaders and their God appointed role. But here he comes along, he says, Jesus is the chief shepherd. Well, that's Peter here. He's the shepherd, the great shepherd of the sheep. And it's through the blood of the covenant. So I mean, here we have that God is a God of peace, the resurrection, Jesus as the shepherd, we have the covenant, and then we get to the request that God would equip you.

The author of this prayer is anchoring. This prayer is anchored to what is true. They're not trying to explain. He's not trying to explain the point. Instead he is trying to give them these faith footholds in your own prayers. Can I give you a little homework to do this week? Just a little homework. Just write out one prayer, one prayer, and I would encourage you to make it fluffy, not for fluffy's sake, but who are you addressing in prayer? I know it's God that you're praying to, but what do you know about God that you're praying to? Then what do you know that he's capable of? Add that to your prayer. The God of peace or the God of power or the God who created all things. What is he capable of? What is he demonstrated that he's able to do? And then the third thing, what has he said that makes you so bold as to make your request?

Can I give you an example of this? I don't want to belabor the point, but I just want to show you how the early church did this. This is Acts chapter four. After Peter and John are released from prison and they've been threatened. They go back to the church and they report back to the church. And when the church heard this, they raised their voice to God. They heard about the threats from the religious leaders in Jerusalem. They raised their voice together to God, and they said, master, you are the one who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. Do you see that how they're addressing God? Do you see that they're not just saying God, they've given him a name master. They've said, here's what you have done. You've made heaven, earth, the sea, everything in them. Does that remind you of Psalm 46, that whole passage, Psalm 46, is de creation.

If the whole world falls apart that you happen to make, I'm going to trust in you. You've got me. God, here, it's you made all of these things. You said, oh, here they're going to quote Bible back to God. Do you think that's because God forgot what he said? No, it's because he's stirring up their own faith. You said through the Holy Spirit by the mouth of our father, David, your servant. Why do the Gentiles rage? The people's plot futile things. The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers assembled together against the Lord and against the Messiah. I mean, they're quoting a huge passage out of Psalm two. For in fact, in this city, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel assembled together against your holy servant. So now they're getting to current times. Here's the situation against your servant Jesus whom you anointed to do whatever your hand and your will had preed to take place, and now Lord, consider their threats.

And finally, we get to the request. Grant that your servants may speak your word with all boldness. That's what they're asking for, but do you see how it's packaged? They're not just trying to be religious. These are people who are deeply tied in to a relationship with God and they understand the economy of faith. Do you understand the economy of faith? You should, because we've gone through Hebrews together and we read Hebrews 11, six which says, without faith, it's impossible to please God. When you look at Jesus and the miracles that he did, he's looking for faith, the economy of faith. Do you have faith in God? When he goes back to his hometown, it says He's not able to do many miracles there because of their lack of faith in Capernaum.

And by composing a prayer in this way, what's happening is that the hearts of those praying, this prayer are stirred up to trust God more. And so yeah, as I wrestled through the text that we're studying this morning, it was a bit frustrating because I'm kind of like, get to the point. Make your request quest, and this pastor is like, no, feed your faith on what's going to get this prayer answered. It's this God. It's the God of peace, the one who raised up our Lord from the dead, the one who is the great shepherd of the sheep by or through the blood of the covenant.

Here's, here's the outcome. While you stretched out your hand, back in acts, while you stretch out your hand for healing and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. Look at when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly. That's an answer to prayer, isn't it? That's crazy. The place where they were had an earthquake, so it's a wordy prayer, but I do want you to see that there is a request, and we're going to kind of hang out here in this for a bit here. It's this word quip in verse 21. I want to give you just a summary of this word or before I give you the summary. If we do cut away what is fluffy? This is the request.

May God equip you to do his will. May God equip you to do his will. I love this word because it is so strategic across the New Testament. This is weby defining the word equip. He says, it's a translation of one Greek word, Tito. This is an unfamiliar word to us, but it is familiar to the people who received this letter. The doctors knew it because it meant to set a broken bone to fishermen. It meant to mend a broken net to sailors. It meant to outfit a ship for voyage to soldiers. It meant to equip an army for battle. It is a beautiful word. I've talked about it. Some of you were around a couple of years ago when we ordained Tony Johnson and with his ordination, I gave him a antique tool that is for mending fishing nets. This wooden kind of looks like a shuttle that you'd use when you're designing a beautiful tapestry, but it's used to mend nets because in Ephesians chapter four, it says that God gifts the church with evangelist, pastors, bishops, prophets for the work of the ministry to equip.

It's this word to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. God puts spiritual leaders into the, so that the people that are in that church are equipped, they're outfitted to do the work, but it doesn't just mean outfitted. I love this word, this idea of the doctor using, of setting a broken bone. Some of you in your spiritual journey, that's what you need right now. You're just in this place where you're all broke up and you just need to be put back together and the great physician needs to just touch you, and you need spiritual healing to occur in your life. Others of you, you're like, you're ready to go and it's this season of fishing others of you're ready for a journey, and then some of you, it's like, yeah, we need to be ready for battle. It has these different ideas or it's conveys this idea of just being ready for the moment.

Weirs being the same. Just a couple paragraphs later, he talks about how God equips us, how God equips us by tracing the word QSO in the New Testament, we can discover the tools that God uses to mature and equip his children. He uses the word of God. Two Timothy two. Second Timothy three 16 and 17, prayer one, thesal, one Thessalonians three 10 in the fellowship of the local church. That's the one I was talking about from Ephesians chapter four. He also uses individual believers. Galatians six, one. Finally, he uses suffering to perfect his children, and this relates to what we learned from Hebrews 12 about chastening, so I'll include those texts this week. I'm going to put up a blog post that includes those texts so that if you just want to kind of go look up the words you can, but God wants to equip you.

Many of you at some point have gotten to a place in your spiritual journey where you've really wrestled with this idea of what is God's will. What is God's will for my life? This can happen at different seasons. It happens for new believers because a person understands and hears that Jesus came into the world to forgive their sins, to set them free from the bondage of death and destruction and to restore them in their relationship with God, and it's like, yeah, I want that. I want to follow Jesus. I want to surrender my life to him, and all of a sudden, God turned your life upside down. You have this new vision for life, and you're looking at the world around you as designed. That's one of the wonderful things about being a follower of Jesus is that God is at work and he's at work in the world around you and in your life, but it births a question that is kind of upsetting, which is, well, God, if you designed everything outside and around me, what have you designed for me to do?

What is your will for my life? You can ask that question right after you become a Christian, but later on down the road things can get turned upside down. Job situations can change, and you end up at that place of God, what is your will for my life? And I love the companionship here of the idea of equipping and God's will. One of the things that you should be asking yourself if you're wrestling with God's will in your life is What has God equipped me for? Because I believe that if you begin to write out the equipping of God and the story, your experiences, your gifts, go take a personality test. Look at the Enneagram. Do the, what's the other one? Briggs, the Myers-Briggs. Go and do another personality test. Do strength finders. I don't care what it is, what jobs have you had? What people have you had in your life, and look at your life through that lens of God's equipping you, that is probably going to give you a sense of direction of it's probably God's will in your life to do this or that you may not know.

You may wish that the clouds would part and God's will for your life would be written in the clouds, and it's just like, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. But that's oftentimes not how it works, but there is a patterned way of God's work in your life. How has God equipped you? What is the trajectory of God's equipping in your life? Wrestle with that. Wrestle with that. This is a process, a journey filled with growth and learning. It may not always be easy, but we can trust that God has a plan for us like a broken bone that is being set or a torn net that is being mended or a ship being prepared for a voyage. God is actively at work in us, fixing us, preparing us, transforming us. His tools are his word, prayer fellowship, individual believers, and even suffering.

We need to embrace his equipping, recognize what God is doing in our lives. That means you're taking notes on the activity of God in your life, trusting his will, responding in faith. We're not merely passive recipients of his grace, but active participants in his grand design, and let's hold tightly to the anchor of faith in our theological mountain climbing, believing in the promises of God. Let's not be afraid to be wordy in our prayers, celebrating the greatness of our God. What he has done and what he has said. The pastor ends with this. He says, brothers and sisters, I urge you to receive this message of exhortation. For I have written to you briefly, be aware that our brother Timothy has been released. If he comes soon enough, he will be with me. When I see you greet all your leaders and all the saints, those who are from Italy send you greetings, grace, be with you all. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for that grace that remains with us, the grace that we celebrate every time we take communion together, as we take the cup. We are so thankful that when this letter ended, your work continued and that it has laid down a template, a pattern of your work in the world. Lord, would you continue to equip us, accomplish this equipping in our life just as this pastor prayed for the recipients of this letter, Lord, equip us to do your will. Thank you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.