October 20, 2025 • 43 mins
In this inaugural episode of the new series "Kingdom Now," Pastor Karl introduces an in-depth journey through the Gospel of Matthew. Titled after Jesus's prayer in Matthew 6, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," this series explores the unique perspective of Matthew’s Gospel, emphasizing the kingdom of God in an upside-down way that challenges expectations. Pastor Karl sets the stage by providing background on the four Gospels, highlighting Matthew’s distinct focus on Jesus as the royal Messiah from the line of David, written specifically for a Jewish audience. He delves into Matthew’s identity as a former tax collector, illustrating how Jesus transformed his life, changing his identity and direction. Through Matthew’s story, Pastor Karl introduces the discipleship process of "belong, become, give, and go," encouraging listeners to reflect on their own spiritual journey. The episode focuses on Matthew 1:1-17, exploring Jesus’s genealogy and its purposeful inclusion of unexpected figures, reinforcing the message that when God writes the story, nothing is a mistake. Join us as we begin this transformative study, learning how God uses broken backgrounds for His kingdom purposes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
I'm going to do my
best this morning the best I can.
But I ask you to pray for me.
I'm really not doing well.
And so,
just be praying that God gives me
clarity and coherency as we go through,
part of thisfirst chapter of look at Matthew.
(00:23):
We're starting this seriesthrough the book of
Matthew is going to take us a long time,
because there's 28 chaptersin the book of Matthew.
And they are all full of things worthyof our study and worthy of our time.
So it's going to take us quite a whileto get through it.
I've titled this seriesKingdom Now, based on
Jesus's teaching on prayer
(00:46):
and, in Matthew six.
Part of that prayer goes,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earthas it is in heaven.
And our desire is that the kingdom of Godwould come in our midst, and we would be
able to live in the presence of the King,
(01:06):
even on this earth.
And so we're going to look at the bookof Matthew, desiring the kingdom
to come and see what Matthew has to sayabout the kingdom of God.
That's unique to the book of Matthew thatframed the idea of the kingdom of God.
That's really unique to Matthew.
I want to spend a lot of this morning
giving you some backgroundon the Gospel of Matthew
(01:29):
to set the stagefor what it is we're going to read,
through these next many, many, many weeks.
And to do that,I need to help us understand, as a church,
the four Gospelsand what's unique about Matthew,
these four gospels,Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
they were written by four very distinctpeople
(01:49):
with a distinct perspective and priority
in their recording of the life of Jesus.
Matthew was a disciple of Jesusand an apostle.
Mark was an assistant to Peterthe Apostle, but he was not a disciple.
Luke was a Gentile doctorand the author of both Luke and Acts.
(02:11):
But he was not a disciple of Jesus.
He was not an apostle.
And John, who was a disciple of Jesusand an apostle.
So of the four Gospels, onlytwo of them were written by the disciples
Matthew and John.
Mark and Luke were not.
Luke did a lot of research
after the ascension of Jesus and recordswhat he learned from, the
(02:36):
from the disciples in personal interviews,eyewitness interviews.
Mark was an assistant to Peter,who was a disciple.
But of the four Gospels, only Matthewand John
were disciples of Jesusand the apostles of Christ.
And they each Matthew, Mark, Luke,and John write
from a very different perspectivewith the different priority.
(02:58):
Matthew's concern is to write to the Jews
about the royal line of Jesus,
and that it is the royal linethrough David that
Matthew uses the
this idea of the the royalty, the royal
line of David, that Jesus comes from thatroyal line en route to the juicers.
(03:21):
Over 130 references and referrals tothe Old Testament in the Book of Matthew.
And so it's very, very, very Jewish.
And if we're going to understandin any depth
the book of Matthew, we have to understanda lot of the Old Testament.
So as we go through this study,I'll I'll draw a lot of that out.
Help us understand,the depth of the Jewishness
(03:43):
and the Old Testament,that, from which Matthew writes,
Mark,
as a different perspective.
Mark writes basically to the Romans,
Jews and Gentile Romans
and really presents Jesus as the servant.
Luke is different.
Luke presents Jesus as the Son of Man.
(04:05):
It's written specifically to Gentiles.
And so a lot of Jesus's humanity,how he treats the poor
and and women and childrencome out in the book of Luke.
And then John presents Jesus to the world,
and it talks about Jesusas the Son of God, the Eternal One.
And so in Matthew,we have this gospel written to the Jews.
(04:28):
In Markwe have this gospel written to the Romans
in Luke, written to the Gentiles,and in John written to the world.
And so they present Jesus in different.
It's like a different facet of a diamond.
They're all right.
It's just a different look at this.
Jesus, who is the Christ,the eternal one, the Messiah.
(04:52):
In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,three of them are very, very,
very similar to each other,and we call them the synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,the Synoptic Gospels.
That means they sharea lot of the same information.
A lot of the what we'll read inMatthew will also be recorded.
And Markand Luke for or very similar things.
(05:14):
For instance,
very famous message that Jesus preachedcalled the sermon on the Mount.
Matthew five six and seven,very similarly is recorded in Luke,
but it's called theThe Sermon on the plain
because it it's just a differentperspective of that, of that message.
And so they're very similar information.
John is different.
John is not like the Synoptics at all.
(05:36):
John is a very unique,
presentation of Jesusbecause it's written to the entire world.
There's not a single audience,that John has in mind.
And so as we go through this, I just wantI want to help you be good Bible
students and understand that Matthew,Mark, and Luke are the Synoptic Gospels.
John is is very, very different.
For instance, in the book of John
(05:57):
we have things that we don't havein Matthew, Mark and Luke.
One of those is that in John,
John records for sevenI am statements of Jesus says
I'm the I'm the door, I'm the gate, I'mthe good shepherd.
I'm the resurrection,the life, the seven I am statements.
And we don't have those anywhere elsein all of the Bible.
(06:17):
And so it's unique to itself.
So I just want to help you understand
a little bit about these four gospelsthat will be, that will be study. And,
Matthew really
presents the kingdom of God in upside downfashion.
Like says, look, I know you.
He was it.
He was a Jew himself.It comes from the Hebrews.
And thisI know that we've been hoping for this
(06:37):
Messiah that would overthrow the Romansand, and and,
you know, give us backour national power and identity.
And I know that's what we were hopingthat the Messiah would be.
But but Jesus is the Messiah,and he's doing a little bit differently.
Because I want to understand that.
I mean, that's how God works.
God rarely does things according to whatwe think he ought to do things right?
(07:00):
Right.
Like he's like, I have my like,let me be me.
God says, quit trying to be me.
I know what I'm doing.
My ways are higher than yours.
My thoughts are beyond yours.
And I'mthere's not a mistake in my economy.
Let me do my thing.
And so Matthew presentsJesus and the kingdom of God.
(07:20):
That's uniqueto Matthew in a way that this
this look, this is going to be upsidedown from what you think.
And it's a
really unique perspective,Matthew, as other name
that we know him in the Bible is Levi,and there's some indication
that he comes from thehe may come from the tribe of Levi.
And if you know, biblical,
(07:41):
history in the 12 Tribes,
Levi was one of the 12 tribesand Levi was the priestly tribe.
And so it could be that Matthew comesfrom the priestly tribe.
And as such, Matthew should have beena really, really, really good, devout Jew.
Really good religiousJew should have been.
But he wasn't
(08:02):
at all, Matthew was a tax collector.
If any of you heard that that Matthewwas a tax collector, you've heard that.
And so tax collectors werethey were an oddity,
in, in, in the amongst
the Jews because, in the, in Israel,
the Roman governmentwas the ruling authority.
(08:25):
They were the occupying force.
They were the greatest military,greatest empire in the world at the time.
And they had taken overkind of this the, the
they were occupying the Promised Land.
So all these Hebrew,
these Jews were livingunder the oppression of the Roman Empire.
And in order for the Roman Empireto propagate
throughout the world,they it cost a lot of money.
(08:47):
And the way they gotthat money was through exorbitant taxes.
We know something about that.
And so the way they would collecttheir taxes
is they would employ Jews
to collect taxes from their fellow Jews.
And so what you had were thesethese Jews living in the land,
(09:07):
the promised land and their own peopleare collecting taxes from them
to give to the occupying force,so the occupying force could continue
to oppress them and take over,you know, other parts of the world.
So tax collectorswere hated by their own people.
The interesting thing about taxcollectors, the only people who knew
(09:28):
how much tax the Roman authorities wantedwere the Romans and the tax collectors.
The people did it know.
So whatever the tax collectorsaid, that's what I owed.
Whether
whether
it was what the Romans said or not.
So here's what the tax collector did.
If the Romans said we need x,Y, and z in taxes,
(09:50):
the tax collector had the authoritybecause you don't know how much Roman Rome
has wanted to say x,Y, and z, and A, B and C,
and so they would take x, y and z
and give that to Rome, and they would keepA, B and C for themselves.
And so they were thieves.
They had no integrity,they were dishonest,
and they were really rich.
(10:11):
And so they're stuck.
I mean, unfortunately,they were stuck in this no man's land
because they're all fellow Jews.
And he was hated.
Because how can you workfor the occupying force
and steal money from usand get rich off of this?
And the Romans didn't really like himbecause they were dirty Jews anyway.
And so they were stuck in thisno man's land.
They didn't have relationships.
They didn't have friends.
(10:33):
They didn't have, like a, a familythey were a part of.
It's very likely that their own family,like, disowned them
because how could you live like that?How could you do that?
After the Romans and a pressure on people.
And so they were in this,this really, really, really tough spot.
And so the moment Jesus calls Matthew,
(10:56):
it was so transformative for Matthew
because he had been shunnedand discarded by his people.
He was simply used as a dog by the Romans.
And now you have thisJesus who says there's
something about you that I value.
There's something about youthat's worth redeeming.
There's something about you,
(11:19):
that that I cherish.
Matthew had never experiencedthat from anybody before.
And so the moment Matthew heard Jesus say,Matthew, I want you to follow me.
It changed his whole world because now
somebody invited him into
a healthy relationship.
(11:40):
And so Matthew chose to follow Jesus,
and he never looked back.
It changed Matthew's identityand it changed Matthew's direction.
And friends,please hear me when I say this.
This is what is intendedwhen we give our life
to Jesus, to change our identityand to change our direction.
(12:02):
Most people
want Jesus to come in their livesto make their life better.
I want to add God to this part of my worldto make that better
and God says, that's notthat's not the point.
The point is this
I want you to add your life to me,
not me, to you,because I want to change your identity.
I want to change your direction.
(12:24):
Do you understand that?
Like we don't addJesus to us to make stuff better,
we attach our life to him,
to change our identityand to change our direction.
And that's what Matthew did.
And and this,this is what discipleship is.
This is what being a Christian really is.
(12:45):
It's these four words I want youto remember, belong, become, give and go,
belong, become, give and go.
This is what we'll see in Matthew.
That's what we see in all the disciples.
And every bit of the followJesus in the in in the New Testament
we see these four things belong, become,give and go.
They will join their lives to Christ.
(13:08):
They belong to the family of God.
And the expression of the family of Godin the world, the church they belong.
And because they belong to Christ,
they become something they weren't before.
Jesus says, if you, those in me
become a new creation, creations,the old is gone.
The news comes.
So we become something we weren't before.
(13:30):
And when those two internal things happen,
they flesh themselves outinto external things.
I then give Matthew is going to leave
his tax collector booth, which means he'sgoing to leave his identity.
He's going to leavehis money is going to leave his position.
He's going to leave his poweris going to leave all of that behind.
And he's going to give all of thatto Jesus
(13:52):
because he belongs to the family of God.
He's becoming somethinghe never was before.
He's going to give of himselfin his resources,
and he's going to go onbehalf of the Kingdom
and tell other people about thisJesus that radically transformed his life.
Of the disciples and apostles,
we don't know a lot throughout historyof where and how they end it.
(14:14):
We know about a few of them, buta lot of them we just have church history,
to rely on thathistory tells us that Matthew,
because he belonged to the family of Godand he became somebody he wasn't
previously, and he gave everythingin his life to the kingdom of God.
He then would go into Ethiopia
(14:34):
and become a martyr for the kingdom
belong, become give and go.
So if you're if you ever start wonderinglike what's next in my spiritual journey,
just think about those four thingsbelong, become, give and go.
Do you belong to the family of Godand the local expression through?
Have you given yourselfto God and His family?
(14:58):
Are you becoming continually
becoming someone new?
Are you giving of that
which God has given youto further his kingdom in the world?
And are you going on behalf of the Kingdom
to tell other people in your huddleand those in your world about Christ?
(15:18):
Do you understand that? Yes.
Belong, become give and go.
That's the that's thethat's the process of a disciple.
And that's what we'll see in Matthewover and over and see in all these
in the New Testament,that to follow Jesus.
So I would just ask you, justconsider yourself for yourself right now.
Do you belong to the family of Godand the expression of God through the
(15:40):
in the world, through the church?
Are you becoming a new creation
like things are changing?
Are you giving sacrificially?
Are you going until another be about you?
Like where are youand what's your next step?
This is how we grow up in our faith.
Matthew follow Jesus.
(16:02):
He left his former identityand he did two things.
He opened his heart to Jesusand he opened his his home to Jesus.
He opened his heart to Jesus,and he opened his home to Jesus.
The soon after, Matthew decided
to follow this invitation of Jesusto to apprentice after him.
We know in the Biblethat Matthew threw a party
(16:24):
and he's like, look, I've been an outcastmy whole life.
My own people didn't like me,I didn't have a place.
And Jesus accepted me.
And he's making me a whole new person.
I'm going to throw a party and invitemy friends to to to be around Jesus.
I gotta tell my friends about him.
And so Matthew throws a party.
But who do you think Matthewinvited to his dinner party?
(16:51):
Yeah.
Who's going to be friendswith tax collectors?
Tax collectors?
There's one other groupthat's friends with corrupt rich people.
Prostitutes?
Yeah, so that's what the Bible says.
He invited tax collectorsand prostitutes to a dinner party.
Because, after all, who's going to befriends with corrupt, super rich people?
(17:12):
And so he throws this partywith all these tax collectors and process
because there's only ones that he'sconnected to.
Think about it.
And he invites Jesus,
which let me just say,this is a great evangelism strategy
to throw parties for people who don't knowJesus and invite
(17:33):
some of us who do know Jesus to be thereto talk to them about Jesus.
Some of you are great invites
and some of your great party planners,and some of you are great cooks.
And if you're a great party plannerand cook really good food, throw a
party and invite me.
Now listen,
I don't want to go to all your parties,
(17:55):
but some of you who are really goodcooks and bakers.
Yeah,
but so this is a greatthis is a great event.
And so this is,this is what hospitality is like.
In the first church, they used hospitalityto introduce people to their faith.
And so Matthew throws this partyand it's it's so typical.
The freaking religious people,they're kind of standing on the outskirts
(18:16):
and they see Jesus and Matthew hanging outwith tax collectors and prostitutes,
and they're like, how can he do that?
Doesn't he know who these people are?
And Jesus confronts him and he says,listen,
it's not the healthy who need a doctor.
It's the sick.
I've come to seek and save the lost.
Here's what I love about Jesus response.
It's pretty profound, he said.
(18:38):
I have come to seek and save you.
Religious people come to seek and condemn.
That's all they wanted to do.
They want to seek outwho's breaking the law and condemn him
for being lawbreakers.
This is the difference between, you know,
most religion and Christianity.
Religion wants to seek you out and condemnyou for all the wrong we've done.
(19:01):
Jesus wants to seek us out and save us.
But here's here's what we have to realize.
He wants to save us from our old sin life.
He says it's not the healthyou need, doctor, but the sick.
Listen,Jesus can't save anybody who doesn't first
admit they're sick.
They understand.
(19:23):
Like there has to be the acknowledgment.
I realize the way I'm livingis contrary to your standard.
That's sick.
It's sin. Sick.
I have to acknowledge my sin, sickness
before I can be saved from it.
There's a lot of talk amongst,
(19:43):
you know, church people, religious people.
I want to be carefulbecause I want to communicate this well.
But this idea that Jesus loves you
just like you are, and he just wants youto experience his love.
We got to be real careful.
I think it's more along the linesbiblically that Jesus loves us, though
(20:04):
we are
not just as we are,because if he just simply loved us
as we are, he wants us to know his love.
He would never have to die on the cross,
and they would never haveto be forgiveness of sin.
So he loves us, though we are.
The Bible says while we were sinnersseparated from him, he loved us.
(20:24):
And so there has to be the acknowledgmentI don't I can't just add
Jesus to my sin lifeand him make my life better.
There has
to be the acknowledgment there sin.
I have to repent of thatand there has to be a change.
That's what repentanceis, to turn and go the other way.
(20:46):
And so Jesus says, look, yes,I've come to save people,
but I've come to save sick peoplewho admit they're sick.
You can't be saved.
It's until for some it you're sick.Does it make sense?
You understand?
Have you ever heard that sayingthat people who are nothing like
Jesus, like Jesus?
(21:06):
Let me say that againbecause some of you missed it.
People who were nothing like Jesus likedJesus.
Matthew is nothing like Jesus,but he sure liked Jesus.
And that is so true.
But Jesus didn't just want to be liked,he wanted to heal people from their sin
like they couldn't.
(21:28):
Just can't like,Jesus can't be a part of my life,
but I'm going to continuein my sinful ways.
There has to be a dying of that.
And the fact
that Jesus healsall of that makes me like him,
because he doesn't leave me in my old sinways.
(21:48):
You know, I'm
going to get to Matthewone one in just a minute.
But one of the things I like about Matthewis the only thing
Matthew tells us about himselfis that he was a tax collector.
He doesn't tell us much of the good,
the the fact that Matthew left everything
and sacrificed everything his position,his power, his money, his wealth.
(22:12):
He doesn't tell us that Luke does it?
Matthew doesn't tell us about his,
you know, this great party he throughand invite all these people and Jesus.
He doesn't tell us that Luke does.
The only thing Matthew tells us is,look, I used to be a tax collector.
And then Jesus and I love his humility.
(22:32):
He's not it's not self-deprecating.
He's just like, look, this is what was.
And I want to tell you who I wasbecause it's not who I am.
I was.
And then Jesus said, listen,some of you have that very story.
And that is another great evangelism tool.
You some of you have a great I used to beand then Jesus story,
the great thing about your personal storyis nobody can argue with it.
(22:56):
It's your story.
And some of you can say, I used to be.
And then Jesus.
And if you have a I used to beand then Jesus story,
you need to tell your story
not to glorify who you used to be,but to glorify and magnify
who Jesus is and the mercyand grace of God to change you.
(23:18):
Does that make sense? You understand.
It's a great evangelism strategy.
I also like the fact that Matthew,the tax collector,
I mean, these guys had to be so preciseand so detailed.
I mean, you know what CPAs are like,right?
Like the all the detailsand not a penny out.
(23:38):
And they just know all this that like,I couldn't live like like,
but he was so detailed and so precise.
And that's exactly what God you like.
Here's what I know. God will read it.
God will you God will repurpose whatever,
whatever we're like.
(23:59):
God repurposes that.
If we allow him for his kingdom.
In other words,
when God was going to use Mosesto liberate
his people out of Egypt, he said, Moses,what do you have in your hand right now?
Moses was like, I got a stick.He goes, great, we'll use it.
When he went to David, he
(24:20):
said, David, you're going to be the one toto lead my people.
There's a giantwe got to get rid of first.
What do you have in your hand?
And David said, well, I got a sling. God.
So great. We'll use that.
And so now Jesus was like, look,
I need some guys to follow me and recordthis.
So. So, Matthew,what do you have Matthew like?
(24:41):
Well, I got a real detailed mineand a pen and a paper
and just like, well, that's great.
It's exactly what I need.
And the Gospel of Matthew is so preciseand so detailed.
So here's what I'm saying.
Whatever you are, whoever you are,
God wants to repurpose that for hiskingdom advancement, just like you are.
(25:08):
When I was young,
I thought, man,I wish I could play the guitar.
That'd be so cool.
So I became a youth pastorand I taught myself to play the guitar.
I say play the guitar.
That's a really generous statement.
I could strum a few chords,
but I thought, God,
if you would just give me a voice,I would love to be like these guys.
(25:29):
I would love be able to sing like thatright?
Right.
Some of you think you can sing like thatand you
just.
It's like God's like, Carl,I don't need you to sing.
I got plenty of singers.
I need people to tell stories.
So when I was young, my mom told me this.
She said, Carl,you are a great storyteller.
(25:50):
I think what she was really sayingwas, Carl, you can really tell great lies
and make people believe you.
Like, yeah,I think that's really what she was saying.
And I remember when
she told me that I thought,Big Lottie, duh, I'm a storyteller.
I tell you, listen,there's usually there's not a young man
trying to understand his manhoodwho was like, yes, I'm a storyteller.
(26:14):
That's.
But you know what I do every week?
I think God finally got a hold of me.
He said, Carl,what do you do? I'm like, I tell stories.
He goes, right,
that's what I need.
So God takes whoeverwe have repurposes it for his kid.
(26:35):
That's what he did with Matthew.
And so Matthew one one,
here's the big idea
when God writes the story,nothing is a mistake.
When God writes the story,nothing's a mistake.
Matthew is very concernedwith the genealogy of Jesus.
(26:55):
It's very important.
Matthew wants to drive home
the point to his Hebrewlearners, his Jewish learners, hearers
that Jesus is of the royal line of David,that he has a legal right
to rule, has a legal right to the throne,
and so chapter one, verse one.
(27:19):
Yeah.
Chapter one, verse one,
the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,the Son of David, the son of Abraham,
Matthew is driving homethe point of the royal line of Jesus
through King David to ruleand to reign his people.
There's three titles.
He speaks of Jesus in this oneverse of Jesus Christ.
(27:41):
We have to understandChrist wasn't Jesus's last name.
There were.
There were a lot of Jesus's inthis time is a very common name.
He was probably called Jesus bar Joseph.
Jesus, the son of Joseph.
Christ is a title.
It's not a name.
(28:03):
Christ is the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Messiah,
which means the chosen one,the Anointed One, the one that
all of Jewish history throughoutthe Old Testament was looking forward to.
The coming of the Messiah.
So it's Jesus, the Christ.
That's what Matthew saying.
And then he uses these two other title,the Son of David, the son of Abraham.
(28:26):
When he says, the son of David,he's saying, Jesus is of the royal line
and the Son of Abraham,he's of the racial line,
because the Jews knew thattheir Messiah would be
of the royal line of Davidand the racial line of the Jews.
And so right at the beginning, he'ssaying this Jesus, he's
not just a good teacher, he'snot just a moral man.
(28:48):
He is of the royal line of David.
So he has a right to rule,and he's of the racial line of Abraham.
He is the chosen one.
And then Matthew goes through from verses
one through 16, this listing of names.
And it just sounds likeit sounds like the telephone book.
(29:08):
We'll have telephone books and more.
Dewey, Dewey,my dating myself, how old I am.
It sounds like just a list of names.
And what he's doing,he's saying there's three sections.
He lists three sections in versesone through 17.
And these three sections relate to three
eras of God's people, from the patriarchy
(29:30):
to the monarchy, from the monarchyto the captivity to the captivity.
The activity from the PatriarchAbraham to the monarchy David
from the monarchy,David to the captivity in Babylon
and from the Captivity in Babylonto the Nativity, the birth of Christ.
These are the three areas that Matthewis detailing here, because why?
(29:51):
Because he's drawn the line from Jesusall the way back through David,
the monarchy to Abraham, the patriarchy.
Draw on this line
and over and over.
Just look at these.
Look, I wantI I've thought through the names,
all the people here beforeand I'm not going to do that
because it's going to take usway too long.
(30:12):
But you can research that.
I've donea lot of teaching on that myself.
But let me just give you an example.
So verse two,Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac the father of Jacob, but Jacobthe father of Judah and his brothers,
and dueto the father Perez and Sarah by Tamar,
And Perez, the father of his reign,who has run the father of Ram,
and ran the father of a minute,in a minute as the father of nation.
(30:34):
And that's on the father of salmon,who was a fisherman.
Skin and salmon,the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz
the father of Obed by Ruth, and oh,by the father of Jesse, and Jesse,
the father of David the king, and Davidwas the father of Solomon,
by the wife of Uriah and Solomon,and the father Rehoboam, or the father.
I bet all these people it just sounds likeone name after one name after winning.
But listen, what was our big idea?
(30:55):
When God writes the story,nothing's a mistake.
These names here aren't just haphazardnames.
They're here for a reason.
These people are here for a reasonand purpose.
Nothing is here by mistake.
And what Matthew is doing,and he's saying, look down in verse 17.
So all the generations from Abrahamto David, this is everything that he's
just talked through, all the generationsto Abraham, to David were 14 generations.
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And from David to the deportationof Babylon, 14 generations
after the deportation to Babylon,to the Christ, 14 generations, he's
saying, from the patriarchy to monarchy,14 from the market to captivity.
14 and from the captivity Tivity 14. Why?
If you look at the true history,there's a lot more than 14 generations.
(31:39):
Matthew collapses it all down to 14, 14,
14. Why?
Okay, I'm glad you're here.
I'll tell you,
Matthew loves numbers.
He's very detailed.
Not if God writes the story.
Nothing's by a mistake.
(32:01):
Okay?
Numbers are important to Matthew,
and he wants to trace Jesus linethrough back to King David the royal line.
And prove that Jesus has a right to rule
in Hebrew.
Before the Gospels were written,it was all human.
They spoke Hebrew.
(32:22):
The Hebrew has no
vowels, only has consonants.
And so he wants to draw everybody'sattention back to David,
the Jesus from the line of David.
The name David would be spelled
in our world DVD,because there's no vowels
(32:42):
in the ancient languages
every letter has had,it had a numerical equivalent.
That's why in the book of revelationsays those you know with wisdom
will understandthat his number is six, six, six.
So every letter had a hada numerical equivalent.
So, David,the numerical equivalent of David d
equals four v equals six, d equals four.
(33:05):
What does that add up to 14.
And so when Matthewwas saying from the from the
patriarch to the monarchy 14 David
from the monarchy to captivity, 14 David
from the captivity activity.
14 David
(33:28):
do you see what he's doing?
His Jewish hearerstheir minds would go automatically back to
Jesus really is of the royal line.
Jesus deserves to rule and to reign.
We can't deny it.
He's he's he'she's over and over and over again.
Matthew is saying, Jesus is of the royalline of David, over and over and over.
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Listen, what appears to us to be haphazardat of no value?
We have to understand thatwhen God is writing the story,
nothing is a mistake.
What appears in your life to be haphazard?
If God is writing your story,
it's not a mistake
(34:14):
to understand
this.
Nothing is there by accident.
And when you look through this list,
you see verse three,
Judah,the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar.
You go down to verse five.
Sam of the father of bulls by Rahaband boys, the father of Obed by Ruth.
(34:37):
You go down to verse six.
And David was the father of Solomonby the wife of Uriah.
He uses four women in this genealogy.
This was very uncommonin the Jewish mindset.
They wouldn'tuse the women in their genealogy
because the line ran through the men.
So why is he using these four women?
Well, he's drawn our attention back to
(34:59):
Jesus and what God does in people.
Tamar.
But think about who these people are.
If you know their story.
Tamar,
that it's a story of incest.
In Genesis 38,
her father in law impregnates her
(35:20):
at her request.
She dresses up as a prostitute.
Rahabwas actually a prostitute in Jericho.
She attached her life
to the people of God,was part of their liberation and
and her whole life was changed.
(35:41):
She belonged to them.
And then she became something.
But she started this prostitute, Ruth.
She wasn't Hebrew at all.
She was a moabite.
And they were despised, like there werecurses on the Moabites by God's people.
And Bathsheba,
your adultery of King David.
(36:02):
And this is who Matthew putsin the lineage of Jesus.
Like these are onesthat you don't talk about
when the family gets together, right?
Like,
Why does he put them in their.
Sheep?
Matthew is saying,look, God does things differently.
(36:24):
And if you come from
broken backgrounds,you're the one God uses.
There were four thingsthat were really important to the Jews.
One of them was family responsibility.
And the story of Tamar, her father in law
shunned and neglectedhis responsibility to his family.
It was horrible.
(36:45):
Sexualpurity is really important to the Jews.
So you put Rahab in there.
She was a prostitute.
That's like the opposite of sexual purity.
Racial puritywas really important to them.
So you put a moabite in there?
She's not Jewish at all.
And the head of the super proud history,who they were as people.
(37:07):
And so then theythey put in the greatest mistake
of King David's life with Bathsheba.
That's a black spot on their history.
And so Matthew was saying, look,
when God's right in the story,none of this is a mistake.
I know for them, at that time,it looked like these were deal breakers.
Nothing's a dealbreaker, and God's right in the story.
(37:31):
Nothing.
He says God's doing stuff differently.
It's an upside down kingdom here, here.
Here's what I want.
So said the grace of God is evidentbecause he uses people with bad
backgrounds.
If you got a bad broken background,if you got a dirty past,
(37:53):
you're in a great positionto be used of God.
Because when hewhen you give him the authority
to write your story, nothing's a mistake.
And I love in in verse,
in verse 18,now the birth of Jesus Christ.
No, what I see in that is Matthew saying,there's all this stuff,
(38:18):
all that it looks to uslike a, like a list of names.
This is purposeful.
And there's allkinds of junk in this list.
And now,
out of all this mess, Jesus.
Friends,I want you to understand something
that whatever the mess is of your past,
(38:40):
Jesus
is the seed bed for Jesus,
for his complete renovationand restoration
of everythingthat's been broken and destroyed.
See, in Christ,
when you're in Christ,your heritage doesn't define you.
Think of Jesus as heritage.
(39:05):
Right.
I mean, how many times have we usedthis as a as a crutch? Wow.
You know, I just come from a family of,you know, divorce, family.
I'm a child of a of an alcoholic.
And you know, I got this,
this, this whole thingthat's been in my family forever.
And I just can't I can't ever get past.
I can't get.
(39:26):
That's just an excuse.
Because in Christ, all things are new.
And you're.
Your heritage doesn't define you.
It identify in Jesus.
Do you understand this?
See, the truthis that the heritage you receive
isn't as importantas the legacy you leave.
(39:51):
And that legacy
can be absolutely transformed.
Not by your effort
and not by your ability,and not by yourself.
Will,
but by allowing Jesusto rewrite your story.
So nothing, then, is a mistake.
(40:16):
Do you understand? Yes.
So that that's thethat's the intro to the book of Matthew.
And this is going to driveeverything that we go through from
for these next few months together.
We go through the book of Matthew.
So here's my request
this week.
Read Matthew one and read Matthew two.
The second half of Matthew
(40:37):
is the Christmas story, and so.
You've probably heard most of that.
And I might come back to itaround, around,
Christmas time.
But here's my planfor the book of Matthew.
I'm not exactly sure how much we're goingto get through each week.
We're just going to
start reading through itand talk through it and learn as we go.
(40:59):
Okay, so so just to get yourself ready,
read Matthew, want to read Matthew doover and over
and over again.
And let God write your story.
Come before him with authenticity.
Admit what is out of line.
Confess your sin, repent,and let God write your story
(41:22):
so nothing then becomes a mistake.
You got it.
And you pray with me, father.
Thank you, thank you,thank you that you love us.
Thank you that.
That will allow you to write our story.
This.
There's no mistake.
(41:44):
Thank you that you repair
broken people and broken things.
Thank you that you restore.
Thank you that you make new.
Thank you.
That way back in the day,you reached out to Matthew
and that he respondedand gave us this gospel.
That's amazing to me.
(42:05):
Father, I pray that we in
this place would respond.
Would belong to you and your kingdom.
That we would allow you to
to make us become that which we aren't.
Yeah. Yet
that we would giveand we would go on behalf of your kingdom
(42:25):
to those around us who don't know you.
That you would allow,
as you taught us to pray,your kingdom to come in our midst.
Father,thank you for what we're about to learn
as we go through this gospel page,you'd open up your word to us.
(42:45):
That revive us.
That it would restore us.
That we would become new peoplethrough it.
For that, father, we give you thanks.
You're a good God.
And your name I pray.
Amen.
I love you, I'm proud of you.
Thank you for being here.
Read Matthew oneand to invite your friends next week
(43:06):
and start deciding which of thethree services you're going to go to.
Most areas we had Rosestanding in the back of the first service.
They need to show up to the first one.
Some of you need to show upto the last one.
You got it.
All right, let's sing.
I'm going to do my
best this morning the best I can.
But I ask you to pray for me.
I'm really not doing well.
And so,
just be praying that God gives me
clarity and coherency as we go through,
part of thisfirst chapter of look at Matthew.
(00:23):
We're starting this seriesthrough the book of
Matthew is going to take us a long time,
because there's 28 chaptersin the book of Matthew.
And they are all full of things worthyof our study and worthy of our time.
So it's going to take us quite a whileto get through it.
I've titled this seriesKingdom Now, based on
Jesus's teaching on prayer
(00:46):
and, in Matthew six.
Part of that prayer goes,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earthas it is in heaven.
And our desire is that the kingdom of Godwould come in our midst, and we would be
able to live in the presence of the King,
(01:06):
even on this earth.
And so we're going to look at the bookof Matthew, desiring the kingdom
to come and see what Matthew has to sayabout the kingdom of God.
That's unique to the book of Matthew thatframed the idea of the kingdom of God.
That's really unique to Matthew.
I want to spend a lot of this morning
giving you some backgroundon the Gospel of Matthew
(01:29):
to set the stagefor what it is we're going to read,
through these next many, many, many weeks.
And to do that,I need to help us understand, as a church,
the four Gospelsand what's unique about Matthew,
these four gospels,Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
they were written by four very distinctpeople
(01:49):
with a distinct perspective and priority
in their recording of the life of Jesus.
Matthew was a disciple of Jesusand an apostle.
Mark was an assistant to Peterthe Apostle, but he was not a disciple.
Luke was a Gentile doctorand the author of both Luke and Acts.
(02:11):
But he was not a disciple of Jesus.
He was not an apostle.
And John, who was a disciple of Jesusand an apostle.
So of the four Gospels, onlytwo of them were written by the disciples
Matthew and John.
Mark and Luke were not.
Luke did a lot of research
after the ascension of Jesus and recordswhat he learned from, the
(02:36):
from the disciples in personal interviews,eyewitness interviews.
Mark was an assistant to Peter,who was a disciple.
But of the four Gospels, only Matthewand John
were disciples of Jesusand the apostles of Christ.
And they each Matthew, Mark, Luke,and John write
from a very different perspectivewith the different priority.
(02:58):
Matthew's concern is to write to the Jews
about the royal line of Jesus,
and that it is the royal linethrough David that
Matthew uses the
this idea of the the royalty, the royal
line of David, that Jesus comes from thatroyal line en route to the juicers.
(03:21):
Over 130 references and referrals tothe Old Testament in the Book of Matthew.
And so it's very, very, very Jewish.
And if we're going to understandin any depth
the book of Matthew, we have to understanda lot of the Old Testament.
So as we go through this study,I'll I'll draw a lot of that out.
Help us understand,the depth of the Jewishness
(03:43):
and the Old Testament,that, from which Matthew writes,
Mark,
as a different perspective.
Mark writes basically to the Romans,
Jews and Gentile Romans
and really presents Jesus as the servant.
Luke is different.
Luke presents Jesus as the Son of Man.
(04:05):
It's written specifically to Gentiles.
And so a lot of Jesus's humanity,how he treats the poor
and and women and childrencome out in the book of Luke.
And then John presents Jesus to the world,
and it talks about Jesusas the Son of God, the Eternal One.
And so in Matthew,we have this gospel written to the Jews.
(04:28):
In Markwe have this gospel written to the Romans
in Luke, written to the Gentiles,and in John written to the world.
And so they present Jesus in different.
It's like a different facet of a diamond.
They're all right.
It's just a different look at this.
Jesus, who is the Christ,the eternal one, the Messiah.
(04:52):
In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,three of them are very, very,
very similar to each other,and we call them the synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,the Synoptic Gospels.
That means they sharea lot of the same information.
A lot of the what we'll read inMatthew will also be recorded.
And Markand Luke for or very similar things.
(05:14):
For instance,
very famous message that Jesus preachedcalled the sermon on the Mount.
Matthew five six and seven,very similarly is recorded in Luke,
but it's called theThe Sermon on the plain
because it it's just a differentperspective of that, of that message.
And so they're very similar information.
John is different.
John is not like the Synoptics at all.
(05:36):
John is a very unique,
presentation of Jesusbecause it's written to the entire world.
There's not a single audience,that John has in mind.
And so as we go through this, I just wantI want to help you be good Bible
students and understand that Matthew,Mark, and Luke are the Synoptic Gospels.
John is is very, very different.
For instance, in the book of John
(05:57):
we have things that we don't havein Matthew, Mark and Luke.
One of those is that in John,
John records for sevenI am statements of Jesus says
I'm the I'm the door, I'm the gate, I'mthe good shepherd.
I'm the resurrection,the life, the seven I am statements.
And we don't have those anywhere elsein all of the Bible.
(06:17):
And so it's unique to itself.
So I just want to help you understand
a little bit about these four gospelsthat will be, that will be study. And,
Matthew really
presents the kingdom of God in upside downfashion.
Like says, look, I know you.
He was it.
He was a Jew himself.It comes from the Hebrews.
And thisI know that we've been hoping for this
(06:37):
Messiah that would overthrow the Romansand, and and,
you know, give us backour national power and identity.
And I know that's what we were hopingthat the Messiah would be.
But but Jesus is the Messiah,and he's doing a little bit differently.
Because I want to understand that.
I mean, that's how God works.
God rarely does things according to whatwe think he ought to do things right?
(07:00):
Right.
Like he's like, I have my like,let me be me.
God says, quit trying to be me.
I know what I'm doing.
My ways are higher than yours.
My thoughts are beyond yours.
And I'mthere's not a mistake in my economy.
Let me do my thing.
And so Matthew presentsJesus and the kingdom of God.
(07:20):
That's uniqueto Matthew in a way that this
this look, this is going to be upsidedown from what you think.
And it's a
really unique perspective,Matthew, as other name
that we know him in the Bible is Levi,and there's some indication
that he comes from thehe may come from the tribe of Levi.
And if you know, biblical,
(07:41):
history in the 12 Tribes,
Levi was one of the 12 tribesand Levi was the priestly tribe.
And so it could be that Matthew comesfrom the priestly tribe.
And as such, Matthew should have beena really, really, really good, devout Jew.
Really good religiousJew should have been.
But he wasn't
(08:02):
at all, Matthew was a tax collector.
If any of you heard that that Matthewwas a tax collector, you've heard that.
And so tax collectors werethey were an oddity,
in, in, in the amongst
the Jews because, in the, in Israel,
the Roman governmentwas the ruling authority.
(08:25):
They were the occupying force.
They were the greatest military,greatest empire in the world at the time.
And they had taken overkind of this the, the
they were occupying the Promised Land.
So all these Hebrew,
these Jews were livingunder the oppression of the Roman Empire.
And in order for the Roman Empireto propagate
throughout the world,they it cost a lot of money.
(08:47):
And the way they gotthat money was through exorbitant taxes.
We know something about that.
And so the way they would collecttheir taxes
is they would employ Jews
to collect taxes from their fellow Jews.
And so what you had were thesethese Jews living in the land,
(09:07):
the promised land and their own peopleare collecting taxes from them
to give to the occupying force,so the occupying force could continue
to oppress them and take over,you know, other parts of the world.
So tax collectorswere hated by their own people.
The interesting thing about taxcollectors, the only people who knew
(09:28):
how much tax the Roman authorities wantedwere the Romans and the tax collectors.
The people did it know.
So whatever the tax collectorsaid, that's what I owed.
Whether
whether
it was what the Romans said or not.
So here's what the tax collector did.
If the Romans said we need x,Y, and z in taxes,
(09:50):
the tax collector had the authoritybecause you don't know how much Roman Rome
has wanted to say x,Y, and z, and A, B and C,
and so they would take x, y and z
and give that to Rome, and they would keepA, B and C for themselves.
And so they were thieves.
They had no integrity,they were dishonest,
and they were really rich.
(10:11):
And so they're stuck.
I mean, unfortunately,they were stuck in this no man's land
because they're all fellow Jews.
And he was hated.
Because how can you workfor the occupying force
and steal money from usand get rich off of this?
And the Romans didn't really like himbecause they were dirty Jews anyway.
And so they were stuck in thisno man's land.
They didn't have relationships.
They didn't have friends.
(10:33):
They didn't have, like a, a familythey were a part of.
It's very likely that their own family,like, disowned them
because how could you live like that?How could you do that?
After the Romans and a pressure on people.
And so they were in this,this really, really, really tough spot.
And so the moment Jesus calls Matthew,
(10:56):
it was so transformative for Matthew
because he had been shunnedand discarded by his people.
He was simply used as a dog by the Romans.
And now you have thisJesus who says there's
something about you that I value.
There's something about youthat's worth redeeming.
There's something about you,
(11:19):
that that I cherish.
Matthew had never experiencedthat from anybody before.
And so the moment Matthew heard Jesus say,Matthew, I want you to follow me.
It changed his whole world because now
somebody invited him into
a healthy relationship.
(11:40):
And so Matthew chose to follow Jesus,
and he never looked back.
It changed Matthew's identityand it changed Matthew's direction.
And friends,please hear me when I say this.
This is what is intendedwhen we give our life
to Jesus, to change our identityand to change our direction.
(12:02):
Most people
want Jesus to come in their livesto make their life better.
I want to add God to this part of my worldto make that better
and God says, that's notthat's not the point.
The point is this
I want you to add your life to me,
not me, to you,because I want to change your identity.
I want to change your direction.
(12:24):
Do you understand that?
Like we don't addJesus to us to make stuff better,
we attach our life to him,
to change our identityand to change our direction.
And that's what Matthew did.
And and this,this is what discipleship is.
This is what being a Christian really is.
(12:45):
It's these four words I want youto remember, belong, become, give and go,
belong, become, give and go.
This is what we'll see in Matthew.
That's what we see in all the disciples.
And every bit of the followJesus in the in in the New Testament
we see these four things belong, become,give and go.
They will join their lives to Christ.
(13:08):
They belong to the family of God.
And the expression of the family of Godin the world, the church they belong.
And because they belong to Christ,
they become something they weren't before.
Jesus says, if you, those in me
become a new creation, creations,the old is gone.
The news comes.
So we become something we weren't before.
(13:30):
And when those two internal things happen,
they flesh themselves outinto external things.
I then give Matthew is going to leave
his tax collector booth, which means he'sgoing to leave his identity.
He's going to leavehis money is going to leave his position.
He's going to leave his poweris going to leave all of that behind.
And he's going to give all of thatto Jesus
(13:52):
because he belongs to the family of God.
He's becoming somethinghe never was before.
He's going to give of himselfin his resources,
and he's going to go onbehalf of the Kingdom
and tell other people about thisJesus that radically transformed his life.
Of the disciples and apostles,
we don't know a lot throughout historyof where and how they end it.
(14:14):
We know about a few of them, buta lot of them we just have church history,
to rely on thathistory tells us that Matthew,
because he belonged to the family of Godand he became somebody he wasn't
previously, and he gave everythingin his life to the kingdom of God.
He then would go into Ethiopia
(14:34):
and become a martyr for the kingdom
belong, become give and go.
So if you're if you ever start wonderinglike what's next in my spiritual journey,
just think about those four thingsbelong, become, give and go.
Do you belong to the family of Godand the local expression through?
Have you given yourselfto God and His family?
(14:58):
Are you becoming continually
becoming someone new?
Are you giving of that
which God has given youto further his kingdom in the world?
And are you going on behalf of the Kingdom
to tell other people in your huddleand those in your world about Christ?
(15:18):
Do you understand that? Yes.
Belong, become give and go.
That's the that's thethat's the process of a disciple.
And that's what we'll see in Matthewover and over and see in all these
in the New Testament,that to follow Jesus.
So I would just ask you, justconsider yourself for yourself right now.
Do you belong to the family of Godand the expression of God through the
(15:40):
in the world, through the church?
Are you becoming a new creation
like things are changing?
Are you giving sacrificially?
Are you going until another be about you?
Like where are youand what's your next step?
This is how we grow up in our faith.
Matthew follow Jesus.
(16:02):
He left his former identityand he did two things.
He opened his heart to Jesusand he opened his his home to Jesus.
He opened his heart to Jesus,and he opened his home to Jesus.
The soon after, Matthew decided
to follow this invitation of Jesusto to apprentice after him.
We know in the Biblethat Matthew threw a party
(16:24):
and he's like, look, I've been an outcastmy whole life.
My own people didn't like me,I didn't have a place.
And Jesus accepted me.
And he's making me a whole new person.
I'm going to throw a party and invitemy friends to to to be around Jesus.
I gotta tell my friends about him.
And so Matthew throws a party.
But who do you think Matthewinvited to his dinner party?
(16:51):
Yeah.
Who's going to be friendswith tax collectors?
Tax collectors?
There's one other groupthat's friends with corrupt rich people.
Prostitutes?
Yeah, so that's what the Bible says.
He invited tax collectorsand prostitutes to a dinner party.
Because, after all, who's going to befriends with corrupt, super rich people?
(17:12):
And so he throws this partywith all these tax collectors and process
because there's only ones that he'sconnected to.
Think about it.
And he invites Jesus,
which let me just say,this is a great evangelism strategy
to throw parties for people who don't knowJesus and invite
(17:33):
some of us who do know Jesus to be thereto talk to them about Jesus.
Some of you are great invites
and some of your great party planners,and some of you are great cooks.
And if you're a great party plannerand cook really good food, throw a
party and invite me.
Now listen,
I don't want to go to all your parties,
(17:55):
but some of you who are really goodcooks and bakers.
Yeah,
but so this is a greatthis is a great event.
And so this is,this is what hospitality is like.
In the first church, they used hospitalityto introduce people to their faith.
And so Matthew throws this partyand it's it's so typical.
The freaking religious people,they're kind of standing on the outskirts
(18:16):
and they see Jesus and Matthew hanging outwith tax collectors and prostitutes,
and they're like, how can he do that?
Doesn't he know who these people are?
And Jesus confronts him and he says,listen,
it's not the healthy who need a doctor.
It's the sick.
I've come to seek and save the lost.
Here's what I love about Jesus response.
It's pretty profound, he said.
(18:38):
I have come to seek and save you.
Religious people come to seek and condemn.
That's all they wanted to do.
They want to seek outwho's breaking the law and condemn him
for being lawbreakers.
This is the difference between, you know,
most religion and Christianity.
Religion wants to seek you out and condemnyou for all the wrong we've done.
(19:01):
Jesus wants to seek us out and save us.
But here's here's what we have to realize.
He wants to save us from our old sin life.
He says it's not the healthyou need, doctor, but the sick.
Listen,Jesus can't save anybody who doesn't first
admit they're sick.
They understand.
(19:23):
Like there has to be the acknowledgment.
I realize the way I'm livingis contrary to your standard.
That's sick.
It's sin. Sick.
I have to acknowledge my sin, sickness
before I can be saved from it.
There's a lot of talk amongst,
(19:43):
you know, church people, religious people.
I want to be carefulbecause I want to communicate this well.
But this idea that Jesus loves you
just like you are, and he just wants youto experience his love.
We got to be real careful.
I think it's more along the linesbiblically that Jesus loves us, though
(20:04):
we are
not just as we are,because if he just simply loved us
as we are, he wants us to know his love.
He would never have to die on the cross,
and they would never haveto be forgiveness of sin.
So he loves us, though we are.
The Bible says while we were sinnersseparated from him, he loved us.
(20:24):
And so there has to be the acknowledgmentI don't I can't just add
Jesus to my sin lifeand him make my life better.
There has
to be the acknowledgment there sin.
I have to repent of thatand there has to be a change.
That's what repentanceis, to turn and go the other way.
(20:46):
And so Jesus says, look, yes,I've come to save people,
but I've come to save sick peoplewho admit they're sick.
You can't be saved.
It's until for some it you're sick.Does it make sense?
You understand?
Have you ever heard that sayingthat people who are nothing like
Jesus, like Jesus?
(21:06):
Let me say that againbecause some of you missed it.
People who were nothing like Jesus likedJesus.
Matthew is nothing like Jesus,but he sure liked Jesus.
And that is so true.
But Jesus didn't just want to be liked,he wanted to heal people from their sin
like they couldn't.
(21:28):
Just can't like,Jesus can't be a part of my life,
but I'm going to continuein my sinful ways.
There has to be a dying of that.
And the fact
that Jesus healsall of that makes me like him,
because he doesn't leave me in my old sinways.
(21:48):
You know, I'm
going to get to Matthewone one in just a minute.
But one of the things I like about Matthewis the only thing
Matthew tells us about himselfis that he was a tax collector.
He doesn't tell us much of the good,
the the fact that Matthew left everything
and sacrificed everything his position,his power, his money, his wealth.
(22:12):
He doesn't tell us that Luke does it?
Matthew doesn't tell us about his,
you know, this great party he throughand invite all these people and Jesus.
He doesn't tell us that Luke does.
The only thing Matthew tells us is,look, I used to be a tax collector.
And then Jesus and I love his humility.
(22:32):
He's not it's not self-deprecating.
He's just like, look, this is what was.
And I want to tell you who I wasbecause it's not who I am.
I was.
And then Jesus said, listen,some of you have that very story.
And that is another great evangelism tool.
You some of you have a great I used to beand then Jesus story,
the great thing about your personal storyis nobody can argue with it.
(22:56):
It's your story.
And some of you can say, I used to be.
And then Jesus.
And if you have a I used to beand then Jesus story,
you need to tell your story
not to glorify who you used to be,but to glorify and magnify
who Jesus is and the mercyand grace of God to change you.
(23:18):
Does that make sense? You understand.
It's a great evangelism strategy.
I also like the fact that Matthew,the tax collector,
I mean, these guys had to be so preciseand so detailed.
I mean, you know what CPAs are like,right?
Like the all the detailsand not a penny out.
(23:38):
And they just know all this that like,I couldn't live like like,
but he was so detailed and so precise.
And that's exactly what God you like.
Here's what I know. God will read it.
God will you God will repurpose whatever,
whatever we're like.
(23:59):
God repurposes that.
If we allow him for his kingdom.
In other words,
when God was going to use Mosesto liberate
his people out of Egypt, he said, Moses,what do you have in your hand right now?
Moses was like, I got a stick.He goes, great, we'll use it.
When he went to David, he
(24:20):
said, David, you're going to be the one toto lead my people.
There's a giantwe got to get rid of first.
What do you have in your hand?
And David said, well, I got a sling. God.
So great. We'll use that.
And so now Jesus was like, look,
I need some guys to follow me and recordthis.
So. So, Matthew,what do you have Matthew like?
(24:41):
Well, I got a real detailed mineand a pen and a paper
and just like, well, that's great.
It's exactly what I need.
And the Gospel of Matthew is so preciseand so detailed.
So here's what I'm saying.
Whatever you are, whoever you are,
God wants to repurpose that for hiskingdom advancement, just like you are.
(25:08):
When I was young,
I thought, man,I wish I could play the guitar.
That'd be so cool.
So I became a youth pastorand I taught myself to play the guitar.
I say play the guitar.
That's a really generous statement.
I could strum a few chords,
but I thought, God,
if you would just give me a voice,I would love to be like these guys.
(25:29):
I would love be able to sing like thatright?
Right.
Some of you think you can sing like thatand you
just.
It's like God's like, Carl,I don't need you to sing.
I got plenty of singers.
I need people to tell stories.
So when I was young, my mom told me this.
She said, Carl,you are a great storyteller.
(25:50):
I think what she was really sayingwas, Carl, you can really tell great lies
and make people believe you.
Like, yeah,I think that's really what she was saying.
And I remember when
she told me that I thought,Big Lottie, duh, I'm a storyteller.
I tell you, listen,there's usually there's not a young man
trying to understand his manhoodwho was like, yes, I'm a storyteller.
(26:14):
That's.
But you know what I do every week?
I think God finally got a hold of me.
He said, Carl,what do you do? I'm like, I tell stories.
He goes, right,
that's what I need.
So God takes whoeverwe have repurposes it for his kid.
(26:35):
That's what he did with Matthew.
And so Matthew one one,
here's the big idea
when God writes the story,nothing is a mistake.
When God writes the story,nothing's a mistake.
Matthew is very concernedwith the genealogy of Jesus.
(26:55):
It's very important.
Matthew wants to drive home
the point to his Hebrewlearners, his Jewish learners, hearers
that Jesus is of the royal line of David,that he has a legal right
to rule, has a legal right to the throne,
and so chapter one, verse one.
(27:19):
Yeah.
Chapter one, verse one,
the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,the Son of David, the son of Abraham,
Matthew is driving homethe point of the royal line of Jesus
through King David to ruleand to reign his people.
There's three titles.
He speaks of Jesus in this oneverse of Jesus Christ.
(27:41):
We have to understandChrist wasn't Jesus's last name.
There were.
There were a lot of Jesus's inthis time is a very common name.
He was probably called Jesus bar Joseph.
Jesus, the son of Joseph.
Christ is a title.
It's not a name.
(28:03):
Christ is the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Messiah,
which means the chosen one,the Anointed One, the one that
all of Jewish history throughoutthe Old Testament was looking forward to.
The coming of the Messiah.
So it's Jesus, the Christ.
That's what Matthew saying.
And then he uses these two other title,the Son of David, the son of Abraham.
(28:26):
When he says, the son of David,he's saying, Jesus is of the royal line
and the Son of Abraham,he's of the racial line,
because the Jews knew thattheir Messiah would be
of the royal line of Davidand the racial line of the Jews.
And so right at the beginning, he'ssaying this Jesus, he's
not just a good teacher, he'snot just a moral man.
(28:48):
He is of the royal line of David.
So he has a right to rule,and he's of the racial line of Abraham.
He is the chosen one.
And then Matthew goes through from verses
one through 16, this listing of names.
And it just sounds likeit sounds like the telephone book.
(29:08):
We'll have telephone books and more.
Dewey, Dewey,my dating myself, how old I am.
It sounds like just a list of names.
And what he's doing,he's saying there's three sections.
He lists three sections in versesone through 17.
And these three sections relate to three
eras of God's people, from the patriarchy
(29:30):
to the monarchy, from the monarchyto the captivity to the captivity.
The activity from the PatriarchAbraham to the monarchy David
from the monarchy,David to the captivity in Babylon
and from the Captivity in Babylonto the Nativity, the birth of Christ.
These are the three areas that Matthewis detailing here, because why?
(29:51):
Because he's drawn the line from Jesusall the way back through David,
the monarchy to Abraham, the patriarchy.
Draw on this line
and over and over.
Just look at these.
Look, I wantI I've thought through the names,
all the people here beforeand I'm not going to do that
because it's going to take usway too long.
(30:12):
But you can research that.
I've donea lot of teaching on that myself.
But let me just give you an example.
So verse two,Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac the father of Jacob, but Jacobthe father of Judah and his brothers,
and dueto the father Perez and Sarah by Tamar,
And Perez, the father of his reign,who has run the father of Ram,
and ran the father of a minute,in a minute as the father of nation.
(30:34):
And that's on the father of salmon,who was a fisherman.
Skin and salmon,the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz
the father of Obed by Ruth, and oh,by the father of Jesse, and Jesse,
the father of David the king, and Davidwas the father of Solomon,
by the wife of Uriah and Solomon,and the father Rehoboam, or the father.
I bet all these people it just sounds likeone name after one name after winning.
But listen, what was our big idea?
(30:55):
When God writes the story,nothing's a mistake.
These names here aren't just haphazardnames.
They're here for a reason.
These people are here for a reasonand purpose.
Nothing is here by mistake.
And what Matthew is doing,and he's saying, look down in verse 17.
So all the generations from Abrahamto David, this is everything that he's
just talked through, all the generationsto Abraham, to David were 14 generations.
(31:17):
And from David to the deportationof Babylon, 14 generations
after the deportation to Babylon,to the Christ, 14 generations, he's
saying, from the patriarchy to monarchy,14 from the market to captivity.
14 and from the captivity Tivity 14. Why?
If you look at the true history,there's a lot more than 14 generations.
(31:39):
Matthew collapses it all down to 14, 14,
14. Why?
Okay, I'm glad you're here.
I'll tell you,
Matthew loves numbers.
He's very detailed.
Not if God writes the story.
Nothing's by a mistake.
(32:01):
Okay?
Numbers are important to Matthew,
and he wants to trace Jesus linethrough back to King David the royal line.
And prove that Jesus has a right to rule
in Hebrew.
Before the Gospels were written,it was all human.
They spoke Hebrew.
(32:22):
The Hebrew has no
vowels, only has consonants.
And so he wants to draw everybody'sattention back to David,
the Jesus from the line of David.
The name David would be spelled
in our world DVD,because there's no vowels
(32:42):
in the ancient languages
every letter has had,it had a numerical equivalent.
That's why in the book of revelationsays those you know with wisdom
will understandthat his number is six, six, six.
So every letter had a hada numerical equivalent.
So, David,the numerical equivalent of David d
equals four v equals six, d equals four.
(33:05):
What does that add up to 14.
And so when Matthewwas saying from the from the
patriarch to the monarchy 14 David
from the monarchy to captivity, 14 David
from the captivity activity.
14 David
(33:28):
do you see what he's doing?
His Jewish hearerstheir minds would go automatically back to
Jesus really is of the royal line.
Jesus deserves to rule and to reign.
We can't deny it.
He's he's he'she's over and over and over again.
Matthew is saying, Jesus is of the royalline of David, over and over and over.
(33:51):
Listen, what appears to us to be haphazardat of no value?
We have to understand thatwhen God is writing the story,
nothing is a mistake.
What appears in your life to be haphazard?
If God is writing your story,
it's not a mistake
(34:14):
to understand
this.
Nothing is there by accident.
And when you look through this list,
you see verse three,
Judah,the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar.
You go down to verse five.
Sam of the father of bulls by Rahaband boys, the father of Obed by Ruth.
(34:37):
You go down to verse six.
And David was the father of Solomonby the wife of Uriah.
He uses four women in this genealogy.
This was very uncommonin the Jewish mindset.
They wouldn'tuse the women in their genealogy
because the line ran through the men.
So why is he using these four women?
Well, he's drawn our attention back to
(34:59):
Jesus and what God does in people.
Tamar.
But think about who these people are.
If you know their story.
Tamar,
that it's a story of incest.
In Genesis 38,
her father in law impregnates her
(35:20):
at her request.
She dresses up as a prostitute.
Rahabwas actually a prostitute in Jericho.
She attached her life
to the people of God,was part of their liberation and
and her whole life was changed.
(35:41):
She belonged to them.
And then she became something.
But she started this prostitute, Ruth.
She wasn't Hebrew at all.
She was a moabite.
And they were despised, like there werecurses on the Moabites by God's people.
And Bathsheba,
your adultery of King David.
(36:02):
And this is who Matthew putsin the lineage of Jesus.
Like these are onesthat you don't talk about
when the family gets together, right?
Like,
Why does he put them in their.
Sheep?
Matthew is saying,look, God does things differently.
(36:24):
And if you come from
broken backgrounds,you're the one God uses.
There were four thingsthat were really important to the Jews.
One of them was family responsibility.
And the story of Tamar, her father in law
shunned and neglectedhis responsibility to his family.
It was horrible.
(36:45):
Sexualpurity is really important to the Jews.
So you put Rahab in there.
She was a prostitute.
That's like the opposite of sexual purity.
Racial puritywas really important to them.
So you put a moabite in there?
She's not Jewish at all.
And the head of the super proud history,who they were as people.
(37:07):
And so then theythey put in the greatest mistake
of King David's life with Bathsheba.
That's a black spot on their history.
And so Matthew was saying, look,
when God's right in the story,none of this is a mistake.
I know for them, at that time,it looked like these were deal breakers.
Nothing's a dealbreaker, and God's right in the story.
(37:31):
Nothing.
He says God's doing stuff differently.
It's an upside down kingdom here, here.
Here's what I want.
So said the grace of God is evidentbecause he uses people with bad
backgrounds.
If you got a bad broken background,if you got a dirty past,
(37:53):
you're in a great positionto be used of God.
Because when hewhen you give him the authority
to write your story, nothing's a mistake.
And I love in in verse,
in verse 18,now the birth of Jesus Christ.
No, what I see in that is Matthew saying,there's all this stuff,
(38:18):
all that it looks to uslike a, like a list of names.
This is purposeful.
And there's allkinds of junk in this list.
And now,
out of all this mess, Jesus.
Friends,I want you to understand something
that whatever the mess is of your past,
(38:40):
Jesus
is the seed bed for Jesus,
for his complete renovationand restoration
of everythingthat's been broken and destroyed.
See, in Christ,
when you're in Christ,your heritage doesn't define you.
Think of Jesus as heritage.
(39:05):
Right.
I mean, how many times have we usedthis as a as a crutch? Wow.
You know, I just come from a family of,you know, divorce, family.
I'm a child of a of an alcoholic.
And you know, I got this,
this, this whole thingthat's been in my family forever.
And I just can't I can't ever get past.
I can't get.
(39:26):
That's just an excuse.
Because in Christ, all things are new.
And you're.
Your heritage doesn't define you.
It identify in Jesus.
Do you understand this?
See, the truthis that the heritage you receive
isn't as importantas the legacy you leave.
(39:51):
And that legacy
can be absolutely transformed.
Not by your effort
and not by your ability,and not by yourself.
Will,
but by allowing Jesusto rewrite your story.
So nothing, then, is a mistake.
(40:16):
Do you understand? Yes.
So that that's thethat's the intro to the book of Matthew.
And this is going to driveeverything that we go through from
for these next few months together.
We go through the book of Matthew.
So here's my request
this week.
Read Matthew one and read Matthew two.
The second half of Matthew
(40:37):
is the Christmas story, and so.
You've probably heard most of that.
And I might come back to itaround, around,
Christmas time.
But here's my planfor the book of Matthew.
I'm not exactly sure how much we're goingto get through each week.
We're just going to
start reading through itand talk through it and learn as we go.
(40:59):
Okay, so so just to get yourself ready,
read Matthew, want to read Matthew doover and over
and over again.
And let God write your story.
Come before him with authenticity.
Admit what is out of line.
Confess your sin, repent,and let God write your story
(41:22):
so nothing then becomes a mistake.
You got it.
And you pray with me, father.
Thank you, thank you,thank you that you love us.
Thank you that.
That will allow you to write our story.
This.
There's no mistake.
(41:44):
Thank you that you repair
broken people and broken things.
Thank you that you restore.
Thank you that you make new.
Thank you.
That way back in the day,you reached out to Matthew
and that he respondedand gave us this gospel.
That's amazing to me.
(42:05):
Father, I pray that we in
this place would respond.
Would belong to you and your kingdom.
That we would allow you to
to make us become that which we aren't.
Yeah. Yet
that we would giveand we would go on behalf of your kingdom
(42:25):
to those around us who don't know you.
That you would allow,
as you taught us to pray,your kingdom to come in our midst.
Father,thank you for what we're about to learn
as we go through this gospel page,you'd open up your word to us.
(42:45):
That revive us.
That it would restore us.
That we would become new peoplethrough it.
For that, father, we give you thanks.
You're a good God.
And your name I pray.
Amen.
I love you, I'm proud of you.
Thank you for being here.
Read Matthew oneand to invite your friends next week
(43:06):
and start deciding which of thethree services you're going to go to.
Most areas we had Rosestanding in the back of the first service.
They need to show up to the first one.
Some of you need to show upto the last one.
You got it.
All right, let's sing.
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