Jesus Christ: The One And Only Series

Sermon 12/3/06-Jesus Christ: The Only One-Matt. 1:1-25

Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. Because both of these are true He is the only one who is able to be our Savior.

Turn to Matthew 1

This morning begin series through Matthew.

A Sunday School Christmas pageant

One boy really wanted to be Joseph, but when the parts were handed out, a boy he didn’t like was given that part, and he was assigned to be the inn-keeper instead. He was pretty upset about it, but he didn’t say anything to the director.

During all the rehearsals he tried to think of what he could do the night of performance to get even with this rival who got to be Joseph. Finally, the night of the performance, Mary and Joseph came walking across the stage. They knocked on the door of the inn, and the inn-keeper opened the door and asked them gruffly what they wanted.

Joseph answered, "We’d like to have a room for the night." Suddenly the inn-keeper threw the door open wide and said, "Great, come on in and I’ll give you the best room in the house!"

For a few seconds poor little Joseph didn’t know what to do. Thinking quickly on his feet, he looked inside the door past the inn-keeper then said, "No wife of mine is going to stay in dump like this. Come on, Mary, let’s go to the barn." -And once again the play was back on track!

Be here next Sunday for our xmas play, should be a great time.

There is so much we can learn from the birth of X and the Biblical accounts, this morn. 2 main things I want us to see from Matt. 1-understand what matt. Is trying to show us about who X was and why it matters.

Matt. 1:1-17-Geneology of X

Vs. 1 “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

-won’t take the time to read the entire genealogy, point out a few things.

-importance of genealogies:

-Genealogies in the Ancient Near East were used not only to show family relationships, but also used for practical and legal purposes to establish someone’s heritage, inheritance, legitimacy and rights.

-Matthew uses the genealogy to establish the royal line to validate X’s claim to the throne of David.

Because, even though Joseph was not Jesus natural father, he was his legal father and the right to the throne was passed down from father to Son.

So we see the family tree of Christ, through his legal father, Joseph.

Starting w/ Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. (vs. 2)

Through not just David, but look at vs. 6 “King David”, emphasizing the Jesus was part of the kingly line. from David through the Babylonian exile the genealogy follows the kingly line of succession.

One other point to make from the genealogies.

In his wording of the genealogies Matthew is setting up his presentation of the virgin birth that he will introduce in vs. 18.

The pattern “Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, etc….” repeatedly uses a verb with the active voice, emphasizing the human descent of each generation until vs. 16, he writes “and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ”

The same verb is used only this time it is in the passive voice. Every other occurrence of this verb in the genealogy is active, emphasizing the human action in conceiving a child, but only here is it the passive voice indicating that the subject of the verb, Mary received the action.

Sets the stage for vs. 18-25

18-”This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.”

Set the stage-betrothal and marriage customs

-most likely marriage was arranged between the families, agreed upon by the fathers, settled on a bride price to be paid to Mary’s family, Joseph would have proposed, when Mary accepted, the betrothal period began.

The agreement was sealed by the payment of the bride price to Mary’s family, at this point it was a legally binding contract that could only be broken by a formal process of divorce. The betrothal period would have lasted anywhere from 6 months to 2 years as Joseph went to prepare the place that he and Mary would share.

It was a time of preparation for their marriage. During this time the would have had little if any, social contact. And sexual relations between them would not have been permitted.

It was during this period of betrothal that Joseph finds out about Mary’s pregnancy.