The Secret of Christmas
A Personal Struggle with Christmas
Over the last few weeks that we've been in this Advent season, we've taken a time as a church to look at and to prepare for the celebration of the birth of our Savior. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say for many of us and for many people that Christmas is easily their favorite time of the year. And I think some of you even have the audacity to start playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. I guess I should be honest with all that—I was one of those people this year. So that's until my wife very lovingly pointed out in the car one day how incorrect I was.
Point is, people love Christmas.
What People Love About Christmas
You know, if we were to just hit the streets and ask people what they love most about Christmas, what do you think that they would say? Maybe things like being with family or the feeling of nostalgia, maybe hot chocolate sitting by a fire, or Christmas music, Christmas movies, opening presents.
But here, my question is: When is the last time, maybe outside of these walls, that you've met someone who just gets in awe of the Christmas season simply because of Jesus? Nothing else.
Like West Texas Sunsets
Put it this way—and I'm just speaking for me here—for years, Christmas was almost like growing up with West Texas sunsets. I haven't brought a few photos to show you this morning what I'm talking about. I think there's a slideshow if we could put that up on the screen.
And this last photo to show my point, I guess the last photo of this—this one—I took this photo just walking out of a Walmart one night in Lubbock. I wasn't even trying to capture a sunset. I got a new phone that took these like 360-degree photos, and I was just trying to make sure that it worked. But later looking back, pretty amazing.
See, the point is that I would get so used to seeing sunsets like these—these kind of sunsets—that over time they would start to lose their wonder and their grandeur. Get so used to seeing them I become blind to the magnificence that was displayed all the time before me.
A Disconnect Between Head and Heart
And over the years I've found that I've had a harder and harder time, I guess, saying that I really get excited for Christmas. I'm no humbug by any means—still enjoy seasonal things at the time of year like I talked about earlier. Being with family, driving around looking at Christmas lights, listening to Christmas songs, and eggnog is one of my favorite drinks ever that I've had since a kid. I would drink it all year round if they would sell it. But I don't add anything to it, by the way.
But what I'm saying is that for a long time I've had a sort of disconnect of what I know to be true in my head and then allowing that truth to go down to my heart during the Christmas season. Maybe you feel the same.
The Reality of Christmas Struggles
See, I know that Christmas time, while it's a season which we recognize the hope, love, joy, and peace that Christ brings, it can easily feel like the opposite of that for many of us. You know, often we can feel things like despair, loneliness, sadness, frustration, or even disappointment. And I know that for some this might be the first Christmas that you spend without a loved one. My family included—Cassie lost her grandfather unexpectedly this year.
You know, maybe some of you will go home and be reminded of dysfunction that's been part of your family, or maybe it's another year of being single, maybe it's another year closer to retirement you just look back with disappointment.
And I don't say all this at the very beginning, six days before Christmas, with the intention of bumming you out, but instead to say that my hope for you today and that what my hope and prayer has been for all of you this entire Advent season is that we all come back to just being in awe of Jesus.
Opening Prayer
So before we get started, let's pray.
Dear Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your son, the Word that became flesh. Thank you for this church, and thank you for the church. And I pray that as we dive into your word this morning that we'll be enveloped by your goodness toward us and that we will be awakened in wonder, that we'll marvel at the birth of our Savior and reflect in the promises that you keep. In his precious and holy name we pray, amen.
The Scripture: Matthew 1:1-17
So if you brought your Bibles this morning, we're going to be in Matthew 1:1-17. I'll read through these verses and you can follow along with me.
Starting in verse one: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
Thank you!
So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ 14 generations.
Why Start with a Genealogy?
So we're not going to talk about how many times I practiced those names. Instead, let me ask you a question: When reading the Bible, how many of you just skip the genealogies?
The version that I grew up reading, the NKJV, read like "Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah" and so forth. I just used to mentally refer to it as "the begats."
But you know, it's interesting that Matthew starts the way it does, especially in light of how the other gospels start. See, John starts with the famous verse "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." While Luke's gospel, it does include a genealogy, he starts by saying to Theophilus in verse 4, "I'm writing this so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught."
In Mark—I love how Mark starts—he wastes no time at all. He says, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Bingo! There it is right to the point.
But Matthew: "An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."
Matthew's Background and Purpose
Now I can assure you that Matthew wasn't trying to win an award for the most boring intro to a book of the Bible. Instead, it's quite the opposite.
See, Matthew, also known as Levi, worked as a tax collector, which was one of the most despised vocations that any Jew could hold. However, it's specifically because of his training as a tax collector that Matthew was acquainted with lists and genealogies from the public registry. So he would know the family history of the people being taxed.
And beyond just this, family histories were important not just to Matthew but to Israel and to Jews in that it proved one's identity as a Jew, a partaker of the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and part of the people chosen by God.
See, if a person was not a Jew, he or she could not truly be a Jewish citizen and participate in all the aspects of Jewish life and culture. So family history was also important due to where one lived. See, each of the Jewish tribes, they had received a land inheritance from Israel—or in Israel, not from Israel—but for a person to inherit land in a particular tribal area, that required evidence that they were descended from that particular tribe. Makes sense.
So a family's history could also show an affiliation with people of significance. So similar to today and how we may delight in finding proof that our ancestors are famous people like John Adams or Wyatt Earp or something along those lines, in the same way a Jew descended from someone like Moses or Gideon was considered to possess a significant blessing.
But back to Matthew. So obviously he was literate, which is important to note for the time, and most likely even spoke two or three different languages. The point being is that his work as a tax collector with all this background, his work as a tax collector under the providence of God was the Lord's preparation for Matthew to begin his most important and celebrated task. And so his gospel has been called even by critics of historical Christianity the greatest book ever written.
So instead of giving Matthew the award for the most boring intro to a book of the Bible, rather I'll say this: I think that the genealogy that we just read is probably one of the most meaningful and striking passages in all of scripture.
Marvin Rosenthal's Analogy: Three Targets
So I'd like to tell you about a man that converted from Judaism to Christianity. His name is Marvin Rosenthal. He gave a talk in which he shared how Matthew's genealogy was actually one of the proofs that convinced him that Jesus is the Messiah.
So a little background about Mr. Rosenthal. He was a U.S. Marine many decades ago, and he used an analogy when he was discussing this text in his talk. So he talked about at the rifle range, he along with a few other soldiers, they would practice their aim by shooting at targets from different distances—from 200, 300, and 500 yards. That's quite a far distance to see if you've hit the target with a naked eye.
So in order to truly determine their accuracy, another soldier—very brave soldier—would hide down in a 9-foot ravine behind the targets until he heard 10 shots be fired. Then this soldier that was hiding, he would get up and he'd check the targets to determine the sharpness of the shooter, and he would then add up the score and then would relay the results by slipping a colored disc on the end of a pole, and he would raise it up in the air.
So based on the color of the disc, the soldiers would know how accurate they were. And so here's basically how it worked: if you missed every shot, there was no disc and no pole, just a big flag would be waved around basically saying that you should be embarrassed. But for each bullseye, a red disc would be placed on the pole, and then the pole would go up and then down. So if you were four out of 10, they'd raise this pole up and down four times. But if you were 10 out of 10, a bullseye every single shot, the pole would go up and then the disc would just spin around once. That's how you would know.
And here's where Rosenthal uses this analogy of his experience to apply the text. He said in his talk that for a Jewish audience who would have completely understood the significance and the necessity of genealogical records like we talked about, Matthew's genealogy hits the bullseye 10 times out of 10.
So today as we discuss this genealogy laid out by Matthew, I'd like for us to keep with this analogy that was laid out by Mr. Rosenthal, but we're going to modify it just a little bit for us this morning. So I want us to think of this passage like three targets that are set out on a range in front of us—200, 300, 500 yards. And so the shooter in our analogy is God. And actually, we're going to change that part a little bit too. Psalm 64:7 describes God as an archer, so let's go with that. So he's an archer with a bow and three arrows, a little more biblical. And in this we are the spotters, so it's our job to look at where God hits the targets.
Target #1: The Right Line (200 Yards)
So the first target, 200 yards, we'll call it the right line. So Matthew says it right from the start—Jesus is from the right bloodline. Verse 1 says "the son of David, the son of Abraham."
So don't miss these names—David and Abraham. We see them several times in this passage in verses 1, 2, 6, and 17. So if we miss these, we miss everything.
The Abrahamic Covenant
And what's so important about these two men out of all the names listed? It's two promises. So God gave each a specific promise that I want us to look at together. So read with me in Genesis 12:1-3.
Starting in verse 1 says: "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'"
So this is the beginning of the Abrahamic Covenant in which God will raise up a people, Israel, from Abraham and his offspring, and these people will be a blessing to the entire world, the Gentiles.
The Davidic Covenant
And now this covenant is further specified now by the Davidic Covenant, the promise that we see made in 2 Samuel 7:12-13, where David is promised that one of his descendants would establish a forever kingdom. So let's read with me again in 2 Samuel 7:12-13.
Says: "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."
So what Matthew is showing us here is that God hits the lineage target right in the bullseye. Jesus is a descendant from both Abraham and David. He comes from the right line, which requires three things: it requires that the Messiah must be a Jew or a son of Abraham, as we see in verse 2; that the Messiah must also be from the tribe of Judah, which we see from Genesis 49:8-10; and that the Messiah must be from one specific member of that tribe, David.
But here's the question: Is Jesus the only Jew with this bloodline? No. Literally every single person from Matthew 1:6-16 all have that same lineage. So Christ's four brothers also had that same lineage. So did the famous Rabbi Hillel.
It reminds me of when our former youth pastor Pete and his wife Becca lived in Spring Hill. I was over at their house one afternoon and Becca, who was into ancestry stuff, told me that the last name Duncan ultimately comes from Scotland, and not only that but from nobility in Scotland, which honestly wasn't a surprise to me that I come from nobility. However, the surprise came when she told me that at one point Scotland was ruled by all sorts of various nobles, so basically if you have a last name that ultimately comes from Scotland, you're also descended from nobility or royalty. So not that special.
But the good news in all of that is that Jewish genealogies don't work the same way as Scottish. In fact, only a select group of men in the entire history of the world came from both Abraham and David. But a select group is still bigger than one, meaning Jesus wasn't the only Jew who could claim this lineage from the Jewish patriarch Abraham and King David. So that's why there's two more targets set in place.
In fact, I love Charles Spurgeon's commentary on Matthew. He's going through the genealogies and he just pauses from making observations for a time and he just simply engages in pure adoration while talking about the genealogy. And here's what he says:
"Marvelous condescension that God should be a man and have a genealogy, even he who was in the beginning with God."
Do we think it's incredible when we see things like a rich businessman volunteering his time at a homeless shelter, giving food and comfort to the poor? Or when a professional athlete gives of his or her time to host a clinic for inner-city kids? Or when a doctor travels to parts of the world to provide his services for those in need?
Those are all wonderful things that we recognize and appreciate and should applaud the humility and condescension of people. But what marvelous and unfathomable humility and condescension it was when God became man.
When we read Matthew 1:1, when it says "the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ," next to Matthew 1:23 "and they shall call his name Emmanuel," that alone should be enough for us to stop and think, for us to stop and praise.
It reminds me of the carol we sing each Christmas: "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel. Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King."
Target #2: The Right Time (300 Yards)
So first we had that Jesus is from the right line. That was target number one, and it's important and it's completely necessary because without it we can't move on to the next targets. Without it we'd have to stop, we'd have to look for a messiah elsewhere. But we don't have to.
So we move on to the second target, and we'll call this one the right time, meaning that Jesus was born at the right time. So again continuing with our analogy, a target in which God's arrow hits dead center.
The Pattern of 14 Generations
Look at Matthew 1:17 with me: "So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ 14 generations."
See, Matthew is showing us that God's arrow goes straight into the middle of the target. And in verse 17, he's making sure that we see this. Here's what I mean: This verse shows us that there's three key distinct periods thus far in redemptive history.
And I love the way that Frederick Dale Bruner—he's an American theologian and a biblical scholar—suggests that we think of the history here, these 14 generations, a way to make it easier—it's like the capital letter N. So the first 14 generations head upward from Abraham to David. Then the second 14 generations move downward from Solomon to the Babylonian exile. And the last 14 generations move upward again in hope and fulfillment from the exile to Christ. I think it's a great way to think of that.
So further, scholars and theologians, they debate on the exact reasons that Matthew structures the genealogy the way that he does by breaking it up into 14 generations. But what I'd like to talk or touch on this morning isn't necessarily the arguments behind the numerical or the mnemonic value behind this passage, but rather for our purposes this morning to talk about the theological value that it has.
See, no matter the argument, both sides agree that Matthew selected names—all real historical people who are truly part of Joseph and Mary's lineage—and he arranged them in a manner to make the same theological point that Paul makes in Galatians 4:4, which says, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law."
See, in other words, we can see that the entirety of history has been designed by God around the birth of Jesus.
This is what I meant earlier when I said that so often around Christmas time I have such a hard time letting the truth I know in my head make it down to my heart. Because on paper we agree Christmas is at the center of history. We might write things like BC—Before Christ—or AD—Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord. We may say "Merry Christmas" to people that we meet at the store or send Christmas cards to friends and family.
But often for many of us, and myself included, I think it's easy for us to be, I guess in a sense, almost removed theologically and emotionally from the importance of the reality of the words that we're saying. Something as simple as AD carries huge significance. "Merry Christmas"—huge significance. And it's easy to lose sight of that at times.
Why Not Now?
Have you ever wondered to yourself or maybe asked others why didn't Jesus come to Earth in this day and age? And why the first century? Could you imagine if he came to Earth during the era of radio, television, and the internet? Like why didn't he come to Earth during an era when nearly everything he said and did would be almost instantaneously broadcast to millions of people?
See, I could easily imagine news crews and reporters camped as close as they could get to Jesus and the disciples for three years straight, couldn't you? His miracles live-streamed with hundreds of thousands of viewers, and the 10 o'clock news would start each night with something like "Jesus feeds 5,000 women and children with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Tonight we have exclusive interviews with 10 of those in attendance."
Who wouldn't believe, though? It'd all be right there.
Taking Faith Out of Faith
See, sometimes we prefer our timing over God's timing. And really, what that means deep down at the root of that thought is that sometimes we wish God took the faith part out of having faith. Very good.
See, Carl Sagan, the brilliant scientist, yet I would argue just as foolish man, once said this about faith: "Why not a commandment, for instance, 'Thou shalt not exceed the speed of light'? Or why not engrave the Ten Commandments on the moon in such a way that they would not be discovered until now?"
See, what Sagan wanted was to take the faith out of faith. Or the equivalent of taking the mystery out of romance, or oxygen out of the air, or Christ out of Christmas. See, he wanted to believe—and see if this makes sense—he only wanted to believe in God if God wasn't what God is.
Here's my point: When the Bible tells us that Jesus came at the fullness of time, it means God designed history with the fall of one empire and the rise of the next, this person born here, that person born there, this event happening at this moment and that one at another—all of that to prepare us for Jesus, all of that to give room for faith.
So maybe we should be glad that God didn't etch the Ten Commandments on the moon or perform miracles during a live stream. And even though his ways are hidden to some extent, as Romans 1:20 tells us, his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, but when we die and we are with him, they will be as obvious as the North Star to traveling wise men, or as obvious as the oxygen and air that we breathe keeping us alive every second of the day.
See, I say this to say that God is real. God is faithful. We see such attributes in creation and in scripture. But that doesn't mean that faith isn't required. Because how dull and boring would that be? How lifeless and robotic, right? How completely opposite than he who created this unbelievably complex, mysterious, and beautiful universe.
Here's another way to think of it. What if as a child I came home from school every day and I did my homework right away and definitely didn't play video games or go to friends' houses first—that was for my mom, by the way, she's watching—and then my dad came home from work, we sat down for dinner, one of—I looked at him and saw his facial features and heard him speak and, you know, recognized the characteristics of his personality, but then was like, "Nah, not my dad. Don't know who you are, but not my dad."
And he'd say something like, "Yes, Austin, I'm your dad. You see me every day, brought you into this world."
"Nope. Think I need a DNA test."
He'd say something like, "What?"
"Yeah, I just need exact proof beyond seeing you every day and recognizing you."
See, I'm aware that illustration almost doesn't even hold up because it's so ridiculous. But how ungrateful, right? How overly demanding would that be? Yet God has given us creation, the theater of his glory, and he's given us scripture, the evidence of his faithfulness. Yet how many people in this world demand that DNA test before calling him Father?
So let's have faith. And I'm not saying that we don't, but I guess the challenge is let's have even more faith than we had when we walked in here this morning. Let's look at the middle of the target, recognizing that Jesus came at the right time in history—not our time—and then moving on to the next target.
Target #3: The Right Design (500 Yards)
So let's move on. We're here sitting, waiting in the 9-foot ravine like—whack! We rose up to see that God hit the first target dead center. Jesus, the son of David and Abraham—the incarnation.
And then another arrow—dead center. We rise up and see that God has hit the second target. Bullseye. Jesus came at the right time. 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations. We see his faithfulness. We see his sovereign rule of this world and the design of history, our faith elevated.
So finally, crouched in the ravine, next arrow—whack! Sure enough, three for three. So targets: the first one being the right line, the second being the right time, and the third—and yes, it rhymes—the right design.
So it's not enough that Jesus came as a Jew from a lineage of kings at the perfect time in history, but it's also the design of all of it. What I mean by this is why he came to Earth and who he came to Earth for. And that's what we'll explore last this morning.
See, this is the 500-yard shot that strikes with such accuracy and force that if it were actually God shooting the arrow, this arrow would go straight through the target altogether. It's a shot that we're supposed to stand up, jaws agape, and applaud.
The Inclusion of Women
So it's a strange design. It is a scriptural one. See, in my opinion, Matthew's genealogy is unparalleled. We covered that it was written by a Jew for Jews about a Jew. Yet there's at least three peculiarities that would have been offensive to Jews in this genealogy. See, it would have been offensive to those who valued racial, moral, and patriarchal purity in genealogies.
The first thing in this genealogy that would have been offensive to the original audience is that Matthew includes women in this genealogy, and not just once either, but five times. We have:
Tamar (verse 3)
Rahab (verse 5)
Ruth (also verse 5)
The wife of Uriah, whom we know as Bathsheba (verse 6)
Mary, the mother of our Savior Jesus (verse 16)
See, this is peculiar given the culture of the time that this was written. It would be just as strange as when we also see in Matthew 28:1-10 that we had Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as the first two official witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. And see, this is because at that time a woman's testimony wasn't valid in a court of law, and on that same thought, a woman's name in the genealogy of a Jewish person was of little if not zero significance.
Gentiles in the Lineage
And see, the peculiarity doesn't stop there. In other places in scripture we also see women mentioned in genealogies, such as in the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles, but it's believed that these genealogies include women to show the purity or to enhance the dignity of a bloodline. But that's not the case here.
See, the great Hebrew matriarchs are missing from this genealogy. Where's Sarah, Rebecca, or Leah?
See, this is what I like to call peculiarity with a purpose, or in other words, part of the plan. See, if it's not bad enough—sarcasm by the way—that there were women in the genealogy, only one of those was Jewish, and that was Mary. The rest? Gentiles.
Specifically, Tamar and Rahab were Canaanites, a race which the Israelites were forbidden to marry. Ruth was a Moabite, which the Moabites by the way traced their lineage back to the incestuous Lot, which is a terrible but true story. You know, it makes me think every season The Bachelor promises to be the most dramatic yet, but none of them have read Genesis 38. It wins.
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah before she was the wife of David—see, Uriah was a Hittite, as we learned from 2 Samuel 11:3, a Gentile. So through marriage, legally she became a Hittite. So now we're to King David, whose great-grandmother was a Moabite and his wife, the mother of King Solomon, a Hittite. So the bloodline's already impure right there. Before David, it's impure here.
Irregular Sexual Liaisons
So the first peculiarity is the mention of five women. The second being that at least three of them are Gentiles. And the third being that most of them were involved in—and there's no way to delicately put this—irregular sexual liaisons.
Say Tamar dressed up as a prostitute in order to get her father-in-law Judah to give her lawful offspring, which is where we get the twins Perez and Zerah in the genealogy. But Rahab didn't have to dress up as a prostitute because she was one in Jericho, remember the wicked town whose walls came tumbling down. Yet she, as we learned, became a woman of faith.
And last we have Bathsheba, who was definitely taken advantage of by King David, but she wasn't innocent either, taking a bath out in the open in the king's view, not saying no to his advances when the law said that a woman should in those situations. But either way, even if she wasn't to blame at all, she was still involved in an adulterous affair that cost the life of her first husband and her first son and one that certainly marred her reputation.
See, I don't say all that just to bash the women in the genealogy, but to show that they prepare us for the most irregular sexual—or I guess non-sexual rather—encounter of all time: the virgin conception and birth.
So for those who have doubts that God would work through an unmarried teenage girl to bring about the Savior, Matthew's saying here, take a look at Grandma Tamar and Bathsheba. Look at the line. Look at the design. See, if David and Solomon could come from where they came from, then the King of Kings could certainly come from, as Isaiah prophesied, a virgin—this pure girl of unmarred reputation named Mary. Doesn't really seem out of the question anymore, does it?
Jesus Comes from Sinners
So even though Jesus is from the right stock, he's from bad stock. A commentary I was reading actually put it this way: "There is no pattern of righteousness in the lineage of Jesus."
See, the point being this: Jesus comes from a bunch of sinners. And I don't just mean the women either. So let's look briefly at this list of wicked kings here.
We have Rehoboam and his son Abijah, who we're told committed all the sins of his father and that his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his forefather had been. It's in 1 Kings 15:3.
Then we have Ahaz, who sacrificed his own children and desecrated the temple by shutting the doors to the temple and placing altars at all the street corners in Jerusalem and high places for worshiping false gods in every city in Judah. Pretty wicked.
Further, we have those who we regard as righteous men of old who all still sinned. You have Abraham who lied, Judah whose idea was to sell his brother Joseph into slavery, David with his adultery and murder, Solomon with polygamy, and Hezekiah—good Hezekiah—with all his pride in being so good.
So if you're worried about seeing family at Christmas because your family's a mess, okay—it's almost like we have a criminal lineup right here at the beginning of the New Testament.
But why? What's the point of this method?
See, it's almost as if we're being told Jesus didn't belong to the nice, clean world of middle-class respectability, but rather he belonged to a family of murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers, and liars.
What Matthew wants to show us is again what Paul teaches in 1 Timothy 1:15 when he says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost."
See, Jesus came not for the righteous but the unrighteous, for sinners like Matthew the tax collector, or like Rahab the prostitute, or for sinners like me and sinners like you.
A New Genesis
So see, the Greek word for genealogy means Genesis, can be translated to Genesis. So we could render verse 1, if we were to reread that, we could render verse 1 as "the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ."
See, with Christ we have a new beginning, one far greater than the first. In the first Genesis, God carved out the deepest oceans and raised the highest mountains. And in the new Genesis, his Son poured into those places grace upon grace.
Remember the hymn "Grace Greater Than Our Sin" says, "Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin."
The Arrow of Grace
See, in our analogy, grace isn't a poison on the tip of the last arrow. Instead, it's a potion on the tip of the last arrow that passes through the target and sticks into your heart.
See, Jesus came from the right line at the right time and indeed in the right design—a design specifically for sinners like you and like me.
A Christmas Challenge
So lastly, I have a challenge for all of us. In six days from now, the morning of Christmas, when everyone races into the living room or wherever your spot in your house is, and before the feeding frenzy of opening presents begins, take just a moment as a family. Doesn't have to be long, but maybe just spend a couple of minutes together and give thanks.
Because what better example could we give to others? Those presents will still be there in three or four minutes, but what a great way to thank and honor him, right? If you have kids, what a great Christmas tradition to instill from an early age, and one that they'll remember for years from now.
See, I can admit that I was one of those that for the vast majority of my childhood and maybe into adulthood, I've just beelined it straight for the tree. 6 a.m.—you can ask my parents, they were very happy about me getting up that time. No other time of the year would I get up at 6 a.m., but Christmas morning I was there. I just run up to it, grab the big one, tear into it.
But if we take just a second to stop and just thank God for the lives that we have, for the moment that we're about to have, for his sacrifice—it's something that Cassie and I are doing this year. So I just ask you to pray about it and to join us in doing the same.
Communion
So now let's enter into a time of communion. See, in this time of Advent, with joy, hope, love, and the peace of all that Christ brings, we can reflect on, praise, and thank Christ for his sacrifice on our behalf on the cross, and that through this sacrifice we have the greatest gift of all: eternal life.
And while here on Earth, we also have the gift of being able to send our worries, fears, and anxieties to him. And what a gift, right?
Further, it's through his body broken on the cross that we can be unified as one body that Satan cannot divide, cannot conquer, because the victory has already been won. And through his blood shed for us so that we can live forever with him in paradise.
So let's pray, and you may take of the elements.
Dear Lord, thank you again for your word. Thank you for being who you are—faithful, that all of history has been centered around the birth of your son Jesus. Thank you for the greatest gift of all, and thank you for caring for us. Thank you for guarding our hearts and for guarding our minds, and for the unity that we get to experience as one body of believers in you and your grace. Thank you for your sacrifice, for taking our place and our punishment on the cross so that we may have eternal life. It's in Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.
