Jesus wants us in His family!!
Matthew 1:1-17
Matthew 1: 1-17 Read
Let me say a few
things about genealogies in general, and then we’ll get into Matthew’s
genealogy of Jesus in particular.
·
Number one: children should
know their father and fathers should know their children.
o For the first time
in the nation’s history, the majority of children born to women under the age
of thirty are born out of wedlock, they don’t know their dad, and they don’t
have a dad active in their life.
o Many don’t even have
the father listed on the birth certificate. They don’t know who their dad is.
·
Number two: God loves people
and he knows us by name.
o God knows you by
name,
o God loves you by name,
o God calls you by
name.
o Just like a father
knows every single one of his kids, God’s a Father who knows us all by name.
·
Number three: God works through
families.
o Here we’re seeing
God working through a family line, one generation to the next, to bring into
human history Jesus Christ.
·
Number four: every family tree
has some knots.
Frist man, Abraham
Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV) 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. 3 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.”
·
He’s
mentioned more than three hundred times in your Bible, hugely important.
·
Eleven
of the New Testament books mention him.
·
Every
one of the New Testament gospels mentions him.
·
He
is a towering figure.
·
God
loves all people equally, but he doesn’t work through all people equally. He
works through Abraham uniquely, to the degree that he is called the father of
faith, that all who are in Christ are ultimately adopted spiritually into the
family of Father Abraham.
·
Three
religions today would say that they are founded on his teaching: Islam,
Christianity, and Judaism.
·
He
was not a Jew, but he was a Gentile.
But
I want you to see here that though Abraham is a magnificent man, he’s still a
sinful man who needs a Savior. He was a lost, sinner when God came to him, and
even through the course of his life, he continually needs the grace of God.
In
two examples he actually tried to give away his own wife to avoid conflict with
others.. It shows that Abraham wasn’t always a man of faith; sometimes he was a
man of cowardice. And even though he was a man who was magnificently used of
God, he’s a man who continually needed God. He needed a savior!
Second Man, David
David
had a mighty kingdom, but he died and his kingdom came to an end, and the
prophecy is given that through his line would come a greater King, the King of
kings, with a kingdom that would never end.
But
even David was not always a godly man. He needed a Savior as well. It just goes
to show; even the best among us are still sinners in need of the grace of God.
And ultimately, Matthew hints at this. Here’s how he says it: “But David was
the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” Did you catch that?
(The story of the
adultery)
Even David needed
Jesus! We all need a SAVIOR!
Tamar
Now
we are going to look at the women in Jesus’s family tree!! So, the first gal mentioned, Tamar, Matthew 1:3. You can
read more about her in Genesis 38. Here’s her story.
·
Judah.
He’s a descendant of Abraham. He’s got some sons.
One of his son’s names is Er.
o Er is a godless man, so God kills him.
o his brother’s name
was Onan. Onan is a horrible guy.
it
was customary in that day that if the husband died, the closest living male
relative, the brother, would marry the widow, would love her, serve her, protect
her, provide for her, raise a family with her, care for her. There wasn’t
social service, welfare safety net. Your family looked after you when you were
in trouble.
·
Onan
is a horrible guy. Onan was very glad to sleep with her, but didn’t want to
marry her and didn’t want to be in any way obligated to her.
How
many of you, you’re going; this is kind of like your family history. There’s
stuff they don’t talk about! This is in the family of Jesus. Here’s the big idea: even people who do bad
things are still welcome in the family of Jesus.
RAHAB
Rahab
is mentioned in Matthew 1:5 and in Joshua 2 and 6 . Her name means pride,
insolence, and savagery.
Tell
the story, of what she did
·
She’s
from a race called the Canaanites. These are the enemies of God’s people,
always at war seeking to put them to death.
·
She’s
a prostitute. She’s a pagan prostitute.
·
She’s
a lying, Canaanite prostitute. But she gets converted because God is a Father
who’s willing to adopt anyone into his family.
God
is a Father who’s willing to look at even the most troubled, difficult,
obstinate, rebellious kids and say, “I will be your Father and my love will
change you.”
·
If
you say, “I’ve done some horrible things,” you’re welcome in Jesus’ family.
There’s room for you, amen? There’s room for you.
·
See,
it’s not just about who you’re born by, but whether or not you’ve been born
again.
·
It’s not just about your earthly father, but
if you have been adopted by your Heavenly Father.
·
It’s not just who your relatives are, it’s
whether or not Jesus is your big Brother.
·
She
had faith in the coming of Jesus. She turned from sin and trusted in the God of
the Bible. She had a life change, she became converted, and she became the
great-great-grandmother to King David. She’s part of the family line of the
coming of Jesus.
Ruth
·
she
comes from a line of people called the Moabites
·
Moabites
can trace their ancestry all the way back to the days of Abraham with a man
named Lot.
o He was not a great
guy, not a bright guy, not a godly guy necessarily.
Tell
the story of Lot and his daughters
·
Now,
the Moabites are considered “that” side of the family.
·
We
don’t want to spend time with them.
·
We don’t want to talk about them.
·
In
fact, we don’t think that they’re equal to us.
·
There’s
something wrong with that side of the family.
·
Well, the Moabites eventually get their own
god, they get their own religion, and they go their own direction. They’re
godless.
Well,
what happens then is God’s people, through a famine, a handful of them end up
in the region of the Moabites and near this woman, Ruth. And you know what? She
gets converted.
·
She’s
not just born, but she’s born again.
·
She doesn’t just have her earthly father;
she’s now adopted by God, her Heavenly Father.
·
And she joins the family of God, and she
becomes one of the godliest women in the whole Bible.
·
She
becomes King David’s great-grandma.
Don’t
you love that? Wrong family, wrong history, wrong geography, wrong
spirituality, you meet God, you’re part of the family, there’s no second-class
citizen in the family of God. She’s a magnificent woman, she has a transformed
life. And here’s the big idea: you may come from a horrible family, but
everything could change with you in the grace of God. You could become the
first generation in a whole new legacy, and the way that you can put an end to
the history of your family is by getting a new Father so you can start a new
family. That’s the story of Ruth. I find great encouragement in her.
Bathsheba
She
was Uriah the Hittite’s wife, and she had an adulterous affair with King David,
and her husband was murdered, and would there be any hope for a woman like
that?
·
To
this day we would say that a woman who commits adultery, it’s a bad thing.
·
While
her husband’s at war, it’s a bad thing.
·
And
gets pregnant, it’s a bad thing.
God
uses what is evil for good, because he’s that good, and from her comes Solomon,
a man who writes Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Proverbs, three books of
the Bible; the man who constructs the temple that was organized by God’s
sovereign decree as delivered through his father, David, so that God would be
present with his people and that his people could worship him and deal with
their sin.
·
Have
you committed adultery?
·
Have
you had a child out of wedlock?
·
Have
you slept with someone you shouldn’t have slept with?
·
Have you done something you shouldn’t have
done?
·
Is
it something that you can’t undo?
There’s
hope for you. Bathsheba’s loved by God and she’s used by God, and even though
her sin is great, God’s grace is greater still. I want you to see this.
Of
all the families God could enter the world into, he chose this one to show that
he loves sinners, he welcomes sinners, and he’s here to save sinners. He’s here
to enable us, and allow us, to be adopted by the Father into a new family and
leave a new legacy.
Closing!
There’s Room for You
in Jesus’ Family
Ultimately,
the Bible is about God and people. And we’re not just individuals, we’re part
of a lineage, and a legacy, and a family, and a history. And even the best
among us have a sinful pedigree.
Let
me ask you a few questions in closing.
·
Do you come from a
godly family, a godly family line?
o If so don’t break
the ling in the family chain
·
Do you come from an
ungodly family or a godless family, a sinful family, a wicked family, a
rebellious family, a discouraging family, a shameful family?
o So did Jesus. It
didn’t destroy him, and it doesn’t have to destroy you.
o You don’t need to be
ashamed, you need to be honest. That’s what the Scriptures here are doing.
o It’s being honest,
not angry, not bitter, not mean-spirited, but honest.
o God would welcome
you to be honest about your family history
·
When you hear of
some of these stories, do you just see yourself as one of those guilty sinners?
o How many of you are
at the point where you’re not going to try to explain it, or justify it, or
excuse it, or ignore it? You would say, “You know what, everybody knows I’ve
done stuff like that. Sexual sin, murder, I have said and done things that I
simply regret and I can’t undo, I can’t take back. It’s devastating.” There’s
room for you in the family of God. There’s room for you in Jesus’ family, and
you won’t be the first, you probably won’t even be the worst, but there’s room
for you in Jesus’ family.
·
Lastly,
how many of you, in reading this, are like the original recipients: moral,
religious, self-righteous, and proud.
o Two things I would
say: number one, your family’s probably way more messed up than you know, they
just didn’t tell you,
o Number two, pride is a sin that is at least
equal to incest, adultery, murder. Pride says, “I don’t need the grace of God
because the grace of God is for sinners, and I don’t really need the grace of
God because I’m not really a sinner
o There is room, as
well, for those of you who are religious, and moral, and spiritual, and proud,
and self-righteous in the family of God.
