002 - the Genealogy of Jesus

All right, let's get into the Gospel of Matthew as we start our journey through the entire New Testament chronologically. If you've got your Bible, open it to Matthew chapter 1. Of course, Matthew, most scholars believe that his target audience were Jews, believing and unbelieving Jews, of course. More so than anybody else, Matthew is the guy who quotes from the Old Testament to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jesus is indeed the Messiah of the Jews.

As we start reading in Matthew today, I hope you realize we're cutting into what could be considered the middle of the story. If you're a believer in Jesus and you've got a Bible, notice that your Bible is not just the New Testament. It's what we call the Old and the New Testament.

In fact, that's a differentiation that Paul and Peter and James and John would have not even recognized. When they went out and preached to the Jews, of course, they always appealed to the Old Testament scriptures. Everything in the Old Testament anticipates what we're about to read, the most astounding story in the history of all human history, and that is the life of Jesus Christ.

It's so important that it's been recorded for us, get this, four times by four different people. I think that says something about what God feels is the most important. I don't want to be controversial here, God forbid that I be controversial, but I'm afraid that much of the church has pushed aside the Gospels, the life of Christ, as if it were irrelevant.

I've even heard people teach that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, for example, is irrelevant because he was ministering to Jews under the Old Covenant. Well, Jesus finished out this Gospel that we're about to read by telling his followers, go into all the world, preach the Gospel, go and make disciples, teach them to obey all that I've commanded you. Everything that Jesus commanded his disciples, Jesus considered that relevant for all the subsequent generations of disciples.

The Gospel of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John is very relevant to us. There were no epistles for the early church to read. It's going to be Acts 11 before we even jump into the first epistle that was written.

That was James. So many times we think, oh, the epistles is where it's really at. This is written to the churches and so on and so forth.

It's much more relevant to me than the Gospels are. No, one of the writers of the New Testament epistles, Paul, said, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. So the early church was focused on making disciples, teaching them to obey all that Christ commanded.

Okay, Matthew starts his Gospel with this genealogy of Christ. If you're English, if you're American, rather, you'll say genealogy. I understand if you're British, you'll say genealogy.

So we just want to make everybody happy here on our broadcast, no matter which continent you live on. And here's the record of the genealogy, Matthew says in Matthew 1.1, of Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one. Okay, so right from the start, he's very bold to tell his Jewish audience, this is the one, folks.

I'm telling you his story. And to kind of add fuel to the fire there and to undergird that, he says, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Why did he mention those two well-known folks? Well, because Abraham was promised, of course, that the Messiah would come through him and through his descendants.

You may recall early on there when God first started dealing with Abraham, before he even named him Abram, he was already making promises to him, and that in you, in you, he didn't say at first in your seed, he said in you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Well, that is a clear reference to the Messiah who would come through Abraham. And later on in Genesis chapter 22, God said after Abraham was willing to offer up his only son Isaac on an altar on the very mountain where Christ would ultimately be crucified, where the son of God would give his life, God says to him, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your only son from me, I'm going to greatly multiply your seed.

And I'm reading here now from Genesis 22 and verse 18. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you've obeyed my voice. All right, so I mean way back in Genesis 22, we're already anticipating the grand scheme of God to bring the Messiah.

And what was the purpose? To bring blessing to all the nations of the earth. Peter preached a sermon and he gave us a little more specifics in the book of Acts about how that blessing would come. He said to turn every one of you from your wicked ways.

Okay, and Jesus came right from the start, of course, preaching repentance, calling people to turn away from their sins. That's where the blessing starts, because people are rebels against God, they're sinners, they're going their own way, all we like sheep have gone astray, but Jesus bore our sin in his body on the cross, and it's only through him that salvation is made possible to everyone on planet earth. Praise God.

In fact, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, eventually, that's the only way salvation has ever been offered. Whether people realized it or not, before the time of Jesus, salvation was made possible by the work of Christ. So Jesus was clearly the son of Abraham, of course, son, not literal son, as we would think first generation, but simply a descendant, and then he's also a son of David.

Of course, David was also promised that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of David, and he would reign and rule forever and ever. And so the Messiah had to be in the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and everyone all the way through, of course, to get up to David, and that's why, no doubt, those are the two who are emphasized. Now, the genealogy here that ensues, taking us all the way through verse number 17, is a pretty accurate record of Jesus' genealogy through his stepfather, Joseph.

Both Mary and Joseph can trace their lineage back to David. And when we get to Luke's gospel, we'll see the other side of Jesus' family through his true mother, Mary, as it were. But you'll see a lot of familiar names as you read through this, and for us to do that, of course, it's like if we looked at every single person, we'd probably study the entire Old Testament.

Okay? All right. Very good. This has been good.

A good start. Okay. See you next time.

Bye.