The manager of a large office noticed a new employee and asked, “What’s your name?”
The worker replied, “John.”
The manager scowled and said, “Look, I don’t know where you worked before, but I don’t call anyone by their first name. It breeds familiarity and that leads to a breakdown in authority. I refer to my employees by their last name only… Smith, Jones, Baker… you got it? I’m to be referred to as Mr. Robertson. Now that we’ve got that straightened out, what’s your last name?”
The new guy sighed, “Darling. My name is John Darling.”
To which the boss replied, “It’s nice to meet you, John.” (Brian Brill, The Forgotten Family Tree, www.SermonCentral. com)
Names are important, especially when it comes to the names in your family tree. If you’ve ever researched your own genealogy, you’ve probably discovered some darlings along with some real disasters.
That’s the case even in Jesus’ genealogy, whose birth we celebrate this Wednesday. There are some darlings in His family tree, along with some real disasters, but they all show us who Jesus really is, giving us hope in the midst of our own disasters. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Matthew 1, Matthew 1, where we have Jesus’ family tree.
Matthew 1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (ESV)
First, we start with the “darlings” in Jesus’ genealogy: David and Abraham. In the midst of a sin cursed world, God promised to bless the world through Abraham’s seed (Genesis 12:1-3). And in the midst of disappointment, God promised that David’s seed would rule the world forever (2 Samuel 7). Thus, Jesus is the King, whose rule brings blessing to all who welcome Him as their King.
Even His name bears this out. He is called “Jesus CHRIST,” which means Anointed One. That is to say Jesus is KING, because Israel’s kings were all anointed with oil. So, after centuries of anticipation, the opening lines of the New Testament invite you to...
RECEIVE JESUS AS YOUR RIGHTFUL KING.
Welcome Jesus as your Sovereign Lord, and accept His rule over your life.
In her book, The Fire of Your Life, Maggie Ross recounts the story of Emma, a survivor of the Holocaust, who regularly at 4 p.m. each day stood outside a Manhattan church and screamed insults at Jesus.
Finally, the pastor, Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, went outside and said to Emma, “Why don't you go inside and tell him?”
She disappeared into the church. An hour went by, and the bishop, worried, decided to look in on her. He found Emma, prostrate before the cross, absolutely still. Reaching down, he touched her shoulder. She looked up with tears in her eyes and said quietly, “After all, he was a Jew, too.” (Diane Karay. Rantoul, Illinois, Leadership, Vol. 5, no.3; www.PreachingToday. com)
Emma, who blamed Jesus for all her problems, came to realize that He was her Messiah, her Anointed One, Her King! After all, He was a descendant of Abraham like she was, and He suffered on the cross as much or more than she did in the Holocaust. She accepted Jesus as her King and found peace.
You can find peace, as well, if you relinquish control of your life over to Him. Please, stop fighting what Jesus wants to do in your life, and just submit to Him. Receive Jesus as your rightful King. Then...
RELY ON JESUS AS YOUR GRACIOUS KING.
Depend on Christ as your merciful Lord. Trust in Him as your Ruler, who loves you despite your sin.
There are some wonderful “darlings” in Jesus’ genealogy, people like Abraham (vs.2) and David (vs.6), and people like Uzziah (vs.8) and Hezekiah (vs.9), great reformers in their day. These are the kind of people I would expect to see in Jesus’ genealogy.
But there are some I would NOT expect to see, some real “disasters,” if you will. Unlike most royal genealogies, God includes four women in Jesus’ genealogy.
In fact, Barclay says in His commentary on Matthew, “It is not normal to ?nd the names of women in Jewish pedigrees at all. Women had no legal rights; a woman was regarded not as a person, but as a thing. She was merely the possession of her father or of her husband, and therefore his to do with as he liked. In the regular form of morning prayer, the Jew thanked God that he had not made him a Gentile, a slave or a woman. [So] the very existence of these names in any pedigree at all is a most surprising and extraordinary phenomenon” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol.1)
Including women in your genealogy just wasn’t done in Jesus’ day; but if you’re going to include them, you might at least include the more noble women. However, that’s not what God does in Jesus’ genealogy. He includes some of the four most ignoble women in Jewish history.
First, there’s Tamar (vs.3). She seduced her father-in-law to have sex with her, so she could have a child (Genesis 38:12-26).
Second, there’s Rahab (vs.5). She was a Gentile prostitute, who sold her body at Jericho’s city wall every night (Joshua 2:1-7).
Third, there’s Ruth (vs.5). She was a Moabite, who was excluded from worshipping with God’s people in Israel (Deuteronomy 23:3-4). The Moabites had tried to stop Israel from going into the promised land, hiring Balaam to curse Israel. He suggested that the Moabite women seduce the men of Israel to bring God’s judgment, but God turned the curse into a blessing and excluded the Moabites from assembling with the Israelites forever!
Finally, there’s “the wife of Uriah” (vs.6). What she did was so shameful, the genealogy doesn’t even mention her name, but everyone knew it was Bathsheba. She seduced King David into committing adultery with her, who killed her husband to cover up his sin when she became pregnant.
Of all the women in Jesus’ genealogy, why include these women? Two of the four were Gentile “dogs,” as the Jews in Jesus’ day would call them. And three of the four were seductresses. Why treat these sinners as saints and dignify them by putting them in Jesus’ family tree?
It’s because Jesus came to save sinners. Later on, in the chapter, an angel would tell Joseph that he should call Mary’s son Jesus (which means Yahweh saves), because (Matthew 1:21) “He will save his people from their sins.” Then in Matthew 9:13, Jesus Himself declares, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Unlike all the other rabbi’s in Jesus’ day, who wanted only the best and most devout people to follow them, Jesus chose to call sinners to follow Him. That included Matthew, the author of this Gospel, who was the worst of sinners in Jewish society. He was a tax-collector for the Roman government, a traitor to the Jews, cheating them out of their money to get rich at their expense. Yet at Jesus’ call, he left it all behind to follow Jesus.
Martin Luther, the great 16th Century reformer, said, “Christ is the kind of person who is not ashamed of sinners—in fact, he even puts them in his family tree! (Martin Luther, “Sermon on the Day of Mary's Birth,” 8 Sept. 1522, quoted in Dale Bruner, The Christbook, Word Books, 1987, p. 8; www.PreachingToday.com)
Jesus came to save sinners, to turn them into saints, to dignify them by His association with them, and He will do the same for you if you let Him. Just trust Him with your life and answer His call to follow Him.
The movie A Knight's Tale, set in medieval England, tells the story of a young would-be knight named Ulrich. In those days, men had to be descended from noble stock in order to become a knight. But Ulrich does not have a drop of royal blood in him. Even so, he attempts to secure his place in history by winning a famous tournament.
It is traditional for the knight's squire to introduce him at such tournaments, usually delivering a grandiose recitation of the knight's royal lineage. In one of the deleted scenes, Ulrich's squire, Geoffrey Chaucer, does just that as he cranks up the hype in his introduction. He cries out to the crowd:
“I cannot look upon my Lord Ulrich, for I weep to see his shining face. My Lord is a gift to your eyes, for we shall never, ever see his like upon this Earth again. I would list his lineage if it served to honor him. Most men here—it's sad, but it's true—they look to their past to prove their worth; they look to the deeds of their fathers. Now, Sir Ulrich has great ancestors, make no mistake about that... but these great, great men pale into insignificance next to him. I do not list them to honor him; I list him to honor them!” (A Knight's Tale, Columbia Pictures, 2001, DVD Deleted Scenes: “Chaucer's Second Speech”; www. PreachingToday.com)
That was all hype, of course, but that’s exactly what Jesus does for anyone associated with Him, great or small. They don’t honor Him; He honors them.
Please, let Jesus honor you no matter what you have done. Answer His call to follow Him and trust Him with your life. 1st, Receive Jesus as your Rightful King. 2nd, Rely on Jesus as your Gracious King. Then 3rd...
REVERE JESUS AS YOUR DIVINE KING.
Worship Christ as God in the flesh. Adore Him for who He is, your Lord and your God.
When you read through Jesus’ genealogy, it follows pretty much the same formula throughout: Name 1 was the father of Name 2, and Name 2 was the father of Name 3, and Name 3 was the father of Name 4, etcetera, etcetera. However, when you get to the end of the genealogy, the formula changes, which grabs your attention. Take a look at it in verse 16.
Matthew 1:16 ...and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. (ESV)
Notice, Joseph is not listed as Jesus’ father. He is listed as Mary’s husband. That’s because Joseph was not Jesus’ father; God was! Verse 18 makes this very clear! Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, not Joseph, so Jesus is the Son of God! He is God in the flesh, John 1:18 says, God’s only Son, John 3:16 declares, and the Great I AM, Jesus Himself claimed in John 5:58. He took on the same name with which God introduced Himself to Moses in Exodus 3.
Michka Assayas once asked Bono, the lead singer of the rock group U2, if he thought the claim of Jesus' divinity was farfetched.
Bono answered, “No, it's not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius.
“But actually, Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says... ‘I'm the Messiah... I am God incarnate.’ And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take… [Otherwise], we're gonna have to crucify you.
“So what you're left with is: either Christ was who he said he was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson… This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head...
“The idea that the entire course of civilization... could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched” (Michka Assayas, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, Riverhead Books, 2005; www.PreachingToday.com).
When you consider Jesus’ claims for Himself, to say that Jesus was just another prophet, is about as farfetched as you can get. No! Jesus is who He claimed to be – God in the flesh!
A. W. Tozer once said, “The baby Jesus once cradled in the manger straw... was still the Creator who made the wood of that manger, [and] made the straw” (A. W. Tozer in “Renewed Day by Day,” Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 14; www.PreachingToday. com)
Jesus is God, who deserves all the adoration of my heart, all the worship of my soul, and all the praise of my lips. So come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ, the newborn King! (James Montgomery, Angels from the Realms of Glory)
1st, Receive Jesus as your Rightful King. 2nd, Rely on Jesus as your Gracious King. 3rd, Revere Jesus as your Divine King. And finally...
HOPE IN JESUS AS YOUR RESTORING KING.
Be confident in Christ’s ability to redeem you from a wasted life. Be sure that He can rebuild your life if you just give it to Him.
Look at the summary to Jesus’ genealogy in verse 17
Matthew 1:17 So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. (ESV)
Matthew divides Jesus’ genealogy into three sections of 14 generations each. Now, there are gaps in this genealogy, especially when you compare it to the Old Testament record, but Matthew presents it this way to make it easier to memorize and to make a point.
And the point is found in the structure of the genealogy itself. In the first section, Matthew records Israel’s rise to greatness from Abraham to David. David and Solomon, his successor, brought Israel to the zenith of their power and glory. In the second section, Matthew records Israel’s fall to shame, tragedy and disaster from David to their deportation to Babylon. Matthew uses the word “deportation” (or migration) instead of captivity, because the Jews in his day found the word “captivity” too shameful (Jamison, Faucet, and Brown). It was the lowest point in their history. In the third section, Matthew records Israel’s rise again to the hope of restoration in their Messiah, Jesus Christ.
So, from the shame of their past, Matthew invites his readers to put their hope in Christ, to have the confidence that Jesus will restore them to a place beyond their former glory. That’s his invitation to you! Put your hope in Christ, who can redeem your past. Put your hope in Christ, who can restore you from the depths of your fall.
In his book The Faith, Chuck Colson describes the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. D-Day was the largest seaborne landing in history. More than 150,000 U.S. troops were committed to the initial invasion, employing 6,900 vessels, 4,100 landing craft, and 12,000 airplanes... Ten thousand tons of bombs were dropped on German defenses... [The Germans resisted], but the invasion of Normandy was so massive and successful, that it allowed the Allies to turn every counterattack into another victory. Colson writes, “As if preordained, the outcome was clear; the evils of Hitler and fascism would be conquered.”
Colson then goes on to compare the invasion of Normandy with the invasion of God on Christmas Day. He writes: In one sense, the great invasions of history are analogous to the way in which God, in the great cosmic struggle between good and evil, chose to deal with Satan's rule over the earth—He invaded. But not with massive logistical support and huge armies; rather, in a way that confounded and perplexed the wisdom of humanity.
It was a quiet invasion... Most of the people in Palestine at the time of Jesus' birth were expecting a Messianic invasion like we saw at D-day—conquerors in armor bringing a sword to set the people free from oppression. (Chuck Colson, The Faith, Zondervan, 2008; www.PreachingToday.com)
But God came through a virgin on a “silent night” in Bethlehem, where only some farm animals and Joseph witnessed His entrance into the world as a tiny, little baby. Even so, that invasion has profoundly affected the world and brought about Satan’s defeat when Christ disarmed Him on the cross. The outcome was clear on that first Christmas day. Evil would be conquered.
That’s the hope of Christmas. God will restore this sin cursed world, and God will restore you if you let Him. Please, don’t lose your hope in Him!
This Christmas, receive Jesus as your Rightful King; rely on Jesus as your Gracious King; revere Jesus as your Divine King; and hope in Jesus as your Restoring King.
Saigyo Hoshi, a 12th Century Buddhist, visited a Shinto Grand Temple, hoping to find God. After that, he wrote these words: Gods here? Who can know? Not I. Yet I sigh and tears flow tear on tear. (Tae Aung, “The Study of World Religions in a Time of Crisis,” Books and Culture, May/June 2016; www.PreachingToday.com)
How sad. If only He knew Jesus. You don’t find God in a temple; you find God in Him. He is Immanuel – God with us! So, in your search for God and all that is good this Christmas, turn to Jesus, your God and King.
