The King Has Come, And Is Coming Again

The King has Come, and is Coming Again

Text: Matthew 1:1-18

If you will, please take your Bible and open it up to the Gospel of Matthew – the First Chapter. We are kicking off our Advent messages, and as such we’re going to spend some time looking at the comings of Jesus… That word Advent literally means “Coming”… and if you were listening, you would’ve noticed that I said the “coming’s” of Jesus. Jesus came 2000 years ago at His incarnation… but He is coming again. And so, we’re going to be looking at those “comings” during our Advent messages.

This morning we’re in Matthew 1:1-18. Please follow along as I read our text.

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Now to be honest, I used to struggle with these genealogies in the Bible. To me they were just names. I mean, I understood the historical significance of them, but it was more of an academic thing… but a few years back something occurred to me and it changed how I read through this. What happened was that I was working on a family history for my aunt. She was hosting a family reunion, and she asked me to do some research back into our family line… and so, I did… and as I was going through some of our family history – especially way back in Scotland, I was coming across, not only names and dates, but events. Lives… and stories. I really dug in to where my family originated from, along the north-western coast of Scotland… how some of them migrated to Ireland… and others stayed… and others came here to the USA. How they fought side by side with Robert the Bruce against the tyrant Edward , and later on alongside William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, lots of other things… story after story, after story. And each generation added to the story of the whole.

What I’m trying to get at here is that each of these names was a real person, who lived a real life… so imagine for a moment, Joesph talking to Jesus when He was little… And telling Him this genealogy. Joseph probably didn’t just say, “Abraham was the father of Isaac…”. Instead it probably went something more like this, “Abraham… was your great, great… great, great, great (however many it was) grandfather. He lived in a terrible place called Ur, where the people there were trying to build a tower… but God, in His great mercy called Abram out of Ur and changed his name to Abraham…. And let me just tell you – that place Ur… it was bad, wicked. The people there were ruled by a tyrant named Nimrod for a while, and he was not good.”

Or maybe… like when you get down to Josiah. I bet Joseph didn’t just say, “Josiah the father of Jechonia and his brothers”…. Instead, it might have gone like this, “Josiah, he was your great grandfather – 8 times back… and he battled against the Babylonians when they invaded. He was a warrior and fought hard against the invasion.” He might even go into detail about some of Josiah’s heroic deeds.

So, my point is – IS that this is an actual, historic account. It gives us a historic and academic account of the genealogy of Jesus, but it’s also the story of His family line. Those things, those events, those people who have gone on before us shape us, and inspire us, and teach us… sometimes they teach what we should do, and sometimes they teach us what we shouldn’t do, or what we should avoid. Like “David, the father of Solomon BY THE WIFE OF URIAH.”

Our faith is rooted in historical truth! Not in myths or legends, or made up accounts… but in the truth!

Now understand that Matthew’s Gospel was written primarily with Jewish readers in mind. And what this does is establish a direct line from Jesus to David, and to Abraham before that. And that’s important, because Isaiah had prophesied that a King was coming. A Messiah. A Savior. In Isaiah 9 he prophesied that this king would be the offspring of David, and His throne would remain forever. So it wasn’t going to be Solomon, David’s son… or even Solomon’s son Asaph… this was going to be a King who’s reign never ended. It would be an eternal kingdom. And so Matthew was writing, with a Jewish audience in mind, and he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this in order to show them, that Jesus is that King. Jesus has a direct line back to David.

And if you look at Luke’s Gospel… in Luke chapter 3 you’ll see another genealogy. It also goes back to David, and Abraham, and even to Adam.