December 15, 2025 • 43 mins
Brody explores Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1 and connects it with Isaiah 9, seeing how God keeps His promises through broken and unexpected people. From Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth to Mary, We see how Jesus’ family line tells a story of grace, mercy, and faithfulness in the middle of human failure. Brody also looks at the titles given to Jesus in Isaiah, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and what they reveal about the kind of King He is. This Advent series from Red Oak offers hope for anyone who wonders if their past disqualifies them and points us toward the coming kingdom marked by peace, justice, and righteousness.
Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas | Rahab
Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas | Tamar
Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas | Ruth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Okay, what we're gonna do this week is uh gonna
be a little different.
We're going to uh play back amessage that I gave at Red Oak
Church uh last let's see, twoSundays ago.
And it was the first Sunday ofour Advent series at Red Oak.
And the reason we want to dothis is uh actually a couple of
(00:21):
reasons.
Uh first, there was a ton offeedback.
I got more feedback from thatfrom that message than I've uh
seen in a while.
And it was a l it was positivefeedback, but it was also a lot
of continued conversation, um,just a lot of dialogue with
people that said, Man, I'venever thought of this or I've
never I've never looked at thesepassages that way.
And it was nothing nothing new,but it was maybe something that
(00:44):
uh would be useful for you.
And so as a as an NSR listener,we want to what we want to do is
we want to share that messagebecause it's a message that
looks at the genealogy of Christand then the prophecies of
Isaiah that sort of merge withthe genealogy of Christ and
Matthew's Matthew chapter oneand Matthew's recording of that
(01:04):
and how those two passages linkup and then what that means for
us today, what that would havemeant for the Jews back then.
But what we'll do is we'll we'regonna we're gonna have this
episode where we're just gonnaplay that.
It was a it had more of alecture, not lecture, I don't
like that word.
It had more of a conversationalfeel than a sermon feel.
At least that was the feedback Igot, and that was my goal and
(01:25):
the way I presented it.
And then we're gonna come backafter this episode, and JB and I
are just gonna sit down.
We're gonna have a bonusfollow-up episode because we a
couple weeks ago we didn't postan episode.
So we owe y'all an episodeanyway.
We're gonna have a bonusfollow-up episode where we're
gonna we're gonna unpack sometalking points from that message
and just have a dialogue aboutit, kind of do a deep dive into
(01:48):
that, kind of a beyond theflannel graph.
So that's what the next twoepisodes are gonna look like.
We're gonna drop those together,and I hope you enjoy it.
And then we'll actually haveanother episode later this week
that's uh sort of Christmasfocused.
So anyway, uh appreciate youlistening.
Welcome to No Sanity Required.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
Welcome to No Sanity Required, from the Ministry of
Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters,a podcast about the Bible,
culture, and stories from aroundthe globe.
SPEAKER_01 (02:20):
Well, let's take our Bibles and turn to Matthew
chapter one, and we'll also bein Isaiah 6.
This uh this evening begins ourAdvent series, which is what we
do each December, where we lookat different passages that
remind us of the coming of Jesusand why we celebrate this
season.
This morning, uh Kilby and Greghave been to Hardy's, because if
(02:40):
you've been out of the country awhile, you know.
You know, if you know Hardy'sbreakfast, you know, you know,
and so uh had to go get someHardee's.
And uh we were we were laughingbecause they said some folks
pulled in in these little sportscars.
Uh y'all see them in groups ofcars.
They're headed over to ride thedragon.
Have y'all seen this?
(03:00):
You'll see them on thefour-lane, they come through in
big waves and they'll be eightor ten or twenty.
And uh they're going over thereto drive to drive their sports
cars on the tail of the dragon.
And said they overheard one ofthose guys say, Man, this is
awesome.
This is the first time I've everate at Hardy's.
And I thought he grew up in acompletely different family than
I did.
You grow up in Andrews, going toHardee's is like a big deal, you
(03:22):
know.
Like that's going to town, man.
You're going out to eat.
And so uh I I think about uh theimportance of family, and and
all of us uh have differentstories and backgrounds.
I I loved when I was growing up,I loved my on my mom's side, my
granddad, he was a bit of ahistorian.
When he retired, he moved uh upinto kind of like up into the
(03:46):
highlands.
And uh it's crazy.
He actually moved to Scotland tothose highlands um and spent a
year over there researchingfamily lines, and then uh, and
then he spent a good bit of timelike in uh Watauga County and
like up around Boone and thenGrandfather Mountain up in there
uh researching our family lineand literally could can trace on
(04:08):
both sides my mom and my dadcould trace family back into
like Blunt County, Tennessee inthe late 1600s.
That's crazy, isn't it?
That's a long time.
And I know some of you have donelike uh what is it, Ancestry, uh
Ancestry.com, or you've done thethe saliva test, whatever, and
kind of trace your family line.
That's a lot of fun.
I really I enjoy uh you knowlearning about that stuff.
(04:29):
And we all we all have differentuh family backgrounds.
Some of us don't really knowmaybe a lot about our family
background.
And in our society, our ourculture, it's not a real,
there's not a big emphasis puton it.
You know, it's like uh we'rejust that's why they call this
country a melting pot.
You know, we might not even knowwhere where our people came
(04:50):
from.
And um, but I did I loved my mymom's dad would tell this one
story.
So he had, I'll tell you thisand then we'll move on.
I won't bog down with stories,but uh I loved when he would
talk about this.
He had one granddad, this was inthe 20s, 20s and then early 30s,
like uh the uh depression.
He had one granddad who was arevenuer.
(05:12):
If you don't know what that is,a revenuer was a locally
commissioned federal agent whowas tasked with stopping the
illegal sale of moonshine.
And moonshine was alcohol thatwas homemade.
Um and there's a y'all, this,y'all know we live in moonshine
country right here.
Like it's that's our you talkabout a legacy.
Um, that's history here, youknow.
(05:33):
And as a matter of fact, thehouse that we live in, we're on
a spring, and at that springhead, there's there's remnants
of an old steel.
And I talked to the guy thatgrew up in that holler, and he's
like, Oh, yeah, I used to carrycorn.
Uh, this guy's in his 90s, he'sstill living.
He's like, I used to carry cornup there to the steel that make
moonshine.
And so my granddad, one of hisgranddads, so that would have
(05:53):
been like my great-great orgreat-great-great-granddad, was
a revenuer.
So their job was to stop themoonshiners.
Can't have people drinkingalcohol.
I'm sure they were all Baptists,you know.
So they're not gonna have that.
And so um, but then my othergreat-great-great-granddad was a
bootlegger.
Now, bootlegger is a person thatmakes moonshine, and their son
(06:14):
and daughter married each other.
Isn't that fun?
That's a good time.
So he would tell me all thesestories, and I just loved it.
I love I and I heard the samestories uh, you know, over and
over and over because mygranddad was like a little boy
and when all this was going on,and I just loved it.
And so I, you know, family forus is more entertainment, it's
interesting, it's intriguing.
But for the Jewish people, yourfamily line was very important.
(06:38):
And one of the reasons it was soimportant was because the line,
the lineage of people in theJewish culture gave credibility
to the prophecies that had beenmade by God through his prophets
in ancient Israel.
If you go back in history, a lotof us might be familiar with
something called the Tower ofBabel.
And the Tower of Babel, you canread about that in the book of
(07:00):
Genesis.
Uh, and in the book of Genesis,the Tower of Babel, I believe
it's Genesis 11.
Does that sound right?
The table of nations is whatthat's referred to.
And it's sort of the time inhistory where the nations or the
people groups of the worldstarted to form and move into
different parts of the earth.
And so if you ever wonder why dowe have people in Africa and
Asia and North America, andwell, there was a point in
(07:21):
history where everybody was sortof one speech, one language, one
culture, and then there was aseparation that occurred, and
that's another story altogether.
But from that point forward,there were different nations and
people groups that were poppingup all over the world.
So God raised up through thisone man, his name was Abraham,
and God said to Abraham, I'mgoing to raise up a new nation
(07:43):
of people, and they're going tobe my people.
And he would refer to thatnation as Israel, and he would
actually refer to that nation ashis firstborn son.
He would refer to the nation ofIsrael as his son.
And so what he did with thisnation is he gave them certain
structure.
One of the structures he gavethem was he gave them, he
divided them into 12 tribes.
(08:04):
And each of these tribes wasnamed after one of a dozen
brothers that were born asgrandsons to this man Abraham.
And it's really fascinating toread.
And so each of these tribeswould have different history and
story, but all part of one bigstory.
And in the middle of this uhnation of people, these 12
tribes, there was one tribecalled Judah.
(08:26):
And Judah was the tribe that wasnamed after, I believe Judah was
the fourthborn son.
Maybe he's one of the sons.
And Judah was the son who wouldbe the head of the tribe that
God said, this will be the lineof kings.
The kings will come out of thistribe.
And so one of the kings thatwould come out of that tribe was
a king called David.
And so David would be the kingthat would come in the line of
(08:49):
Judah.
And so Judah was sort of likethe kingly tribe.
And then also something that Goddid with all of these 12 tribes
of people that made up thisnation called Israel is he gave
them a series of covenants.
And covenants are promises thatGod gives to his people that he
then fulfills.
God makes the promise, then hefulfills the promise.
(09:09):
And so through this man Judah,he promised that he would bring
a king into the world who wouldbe a different kind of king.
And that's what we're going tostudy tonight.
And so the lineage of the peopleof Israel was important because
you could trace it back to thepromises that God had made even
thousands of years ago.
This really strong defense ofthe faith to go, oh, we have a
(09:32):
record that goes all the wayback thousands of years that
tells us that God made certainpromises that different times in
history were fulfilled.
And the greatest of thosepromises was that God would send
a Savior into the world to savepeople from their sins.
But this Savior would not onlybe the Savior to the line of
(09:53):
Judah or the people of Israel,he would be the savior to all of
humanity.
Now, that doesn't mean all ofhumanity will be saved.
It means he's the answer to allof humanity for salvation.
And so we're going to considerthat tonight as we work through
Matthew's genealogy.
I appreciate Zach doing thatsong.
I'd ask him to do it, and I waslike, man, I know some people
(10:15):
think this is a silly song.
It's not a silly song, it's abeautiful song.
It's wonderful.
It's fun to sing.
And uh and I love singing it,and it's really helped me a lot.
And so you might want tomemorize that song.
I still can't, I've been singingfor 20 years, and I still don't
have it all memorized.
My getting so tongue-tied.
Um, but I love that song and Iappreciate uh them doing that
song.
But what we're gonna do is we'regonna work through Matthew's
genealogy in Matthew chapterone.
(10:36):
We're just gonna take a fewpauses and I want to highlight a
few things in this genealogy aswe as we look to the coming of
Jesus, and then we'll jump overto Isaiah 9 to wrap things up.
So it says the book of the bookof the genealogy of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, theson of Abraham.
Now, first thing in the firstverse is that Matthew's
genealogy starts with Abraham,which is that's the beginning of
(10:59):
the Jewish people or the nationof Israel.
If you if you want to go over toLuke and read Luke's genealogy,
it goes all the way back to uhto Adam, which shows us that all
the people of the earth began atthe same place under Adam and
God's creation of the first man.
But what uh Matthew does, hefocuses on the people who
(11:20):
descended from Abraham, who wasthe man that God made the
covenant with that he wouldraise this nation up.
And then he goes into thelineage of Abraham or the
lineage of Jesus.
Abraham was the father of Isaac,and you're gonna recognize some
of these names.
Isaac, the father of Jacob,Jacob the father of Judah and
his brothers, and Judah thefather of Perez and Zarah, those
(11:41):
were twin boys by Tamar.
Now we'll stop right there.
And let me just say um one ofthe things that's uh unique to
the Christian faith and to theBible is that in in all of
antiquity, um, women were weresort of suppressed and oppressed
and kept under um sort of theauthority of men.
And so one thing that's uniqueto the lineage that we'll read
(12:02):
tonight is that five women arenamed in this.
No other historical record wouldhave ever included women.
So if anyone ever says to you,Christianity is oppressive to
women, let me tell yousomething.
Christianity was revolutionaryin its day, in that Jesus
elevated women to a position ofequality in the image of God.
That's a powerful defense of theChristian faith.
(12:24):
And so these five women, theother thing that's so amazing
about these five women is eachof these five women is part of
the story, the the big story ofthe line of Jesus, but these
little stories that are made upof each of these five women are
fascinating in the sense thatthey're all sort of wrapped in
scandal.
And so this woman, Tamar, whatI'll say about her is that she
(12:47):
was a woman who was um abused,she was taken advantage of, she
was used and discarded.
And yet God used her to bringabout a man into the world who
would be in the line of Jesus.
And then God would name her inthe line of Christ.
Isn't that powerful?
If you're a lady here, that'spowerful because even in the
(13:07):
ministry of Jesus, we see thatit was women who gave testimony
and witness to the birth ofJesus.
Y'all, the world will try tocreate a feministic idea that
says women are this or women arethat.
And what we need to know is thatthe word of God has already
declared the value and worth ofwomen based on the fact that
(13:28):
they're image-bearers of God.
The word of God gives us anamazing validation to the way
God has not only used women, butused women even in the midst of
scandal.
And so Tamar was a woman who wasabused, she was used, she was uh
discarded, and yet God shows herto be more righteous even than
the men in her life.
And so then it says uh Perez,the father of Hezron, Hezron the
(13:50):
father of Ram, Ram the father ofAminadab, Aminadab the father of
Nashan, Nashan the father ofSalmon.
Now, stop here and I'll tellyou, uh, I love the story about
Nashan.
Now, this is not biblical, thisis extra-biblical, or this is
what we would call apocryphal.
Have you ever heard the wordapocrypha?
It doesn't just refer to aseries of uh uh writings that
(14:11):
were included in the CatholicBible or that were ancient
Jewish writings.
The word apocrypha or apocryphalmeans uh sort of like uh folk,
like uh like um what's the bigguy with the axe and the blue
ox, Bunyan?
Uh I always want to say JohnBunyan, but that was the
Pilgrim's Progress guy.
Paul Bunyan.
Paul Bunyan is an apocryphalstory from American history.
(14:33):
That's apocryphal.
Y'all with me?
Okay.
And so there's an apocryphalstory about Nashan that the that
people in Jewish culture willteach their sons and daughters.
And the and the story is this: that when the the ancient (14:42):
undefined
Israelites came up to the RedSea and the Egyptian army was
coming after them, that they'reabout to walk into the Red Sea,
and that Nashan was such a manof fate that he walked straight
out into, he was the leader, hewas like the chieftain of the
tribe of Judah at that time, andthat he walked straight into the
(15:03):
Red Sea before Moses could evensee the waters parted, and that
when the water hit Nashan'snose, the waters parted.
Now that's apocryphal, but ittells you how this man was
revered in Jewish culture, somuch so that the Jews had a
saying, and the saying was thisthat guy's got the nose of
Nashon.
And it was another way ofsaying, that guy has courage,
(15:24):
that guy's bold, he'll goanywhere, do anything.
And so Nashan was a person whowe know was a great chief at a
time of at the time of theExodus out of Egypt.
And so then it's pretty coolbecause he had a son named
Salmon, and it says Salmon, thefather of Boaz by Rahab.
Now, if you know Rahab's story,another woman is now grafted
(15:45):
into the story, and this isanother scandalous story because
we know that Rahab's uh uhprofession was that she was a
prostitute.
And so be careful because we wedon't have Roy Jr.
going on, and so we have all thelittle people in here, and so
we'll be careful how we wordthat.
But um, so I already used thatword.
Uh so good luck, mom and dad,and you're welcome.
And now you have an opportunityto parent your kids and coach
(16:07):
them up.
Okay, so uh um, but anyway, uh Ilove the story of Rahab.
You can find that story in uhJoshua chapter two, and I love
that story because I've alwaysfelt like um so if you remember
the story, uh Joshua decides tosend a uh to send a couple of
spies into the city of Jericho.
(16:29):
And those spies are gonna go inthere and scout the city out,
and while they're there, theymeet Rahab and she makes three
declarations to them.
She basically says, I've heardwhat your God did.
He defeated the kings of Sihon,the kings Sihon and Og, which
were these kings that led analliance of pagan kings that
were very powerful.
And he's like, she says, I knowyour God defeated these armies.
(16:52):
And so she declares the powerand the might of Yahweh.
And then she says, and I knowhe's great and he can do
anything.
And would you ask him to havemercy on me?
And so in Rahab, we have thisbeautiful power conversion,
powerful conversion of a personwho calls on the name of Yahweh
just based on what she's seenand heard about Yahweh.
(17:14):
And it gives us a lot of uh hopeand courage when it comes to
missions.
Like the reason we want to takemissions that we want to support
missions to take the gospel tothe ends of the earth is because
there are people waiting to beintroduced to Jesus because a
sovereign God is moving andworking before we ever get to a
place.
Before Joshua and the peopleever got to Jericho, God was
(17:37):
working and stirring in theheart of a prostitute, a woman
of the night, in that city tobring about an openness to the
gospel.
And then it is through thatwoman that God would then bring
the Messiah into the world.
And I love it because uh she'sshe's brought out of the city,
she's saved after that city isuh is taken and conquered, and
she's married by uh this guynamed Salmon, who his granddad
(17:59):
was Nashin.
Salmon probably had the nose ofNashan too, you know.
He's probably just a bold guy,and he was like, I don't care
what people think.
So they have a son.
That son's name is Boaz.
Now I want you to imagine Boazis raised in the house of a dad
who was a fighter warrior whenthey came into Canaan and a mom
who was a pagan uh non-Jewishprostitute.
(18:23):
That's interesting.
That's like I wonder if theyhomeschooled.
You know, like I wonder if theyhad game night.
You know what I mean?
Like I wonder, like what wasconversation around the dinner
table.
But I love it because this guy,Boaz, will go on and eventually
marry a Moabite widow namedRuth, who came from Moab, which
(18:45):
was the people that haddescended from the incestuous
relationship between Lot and hisdaughter.
And this woman Ruth, we see thatin the next line.
It says, Boaz, uh Salmon thefather of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz
the father of Obed by Ruth.
He married Ruth.
You go back and you study thestory of Ruth, and I always
think, can you imagine thisscene where Boaz and Ruth start
(19:07):
talking and he starts to courther?
And you can read it in thelittle four-chapter book of
Ruth, where he's like, Hey, Iwant to date you.
Hey, I want to court you, hey, Iwant to marry you.
And I wonder if anybody eversaid, Hey, Boaz, you know she's
a pagan Moabite.
And he's like, My mom was aprostitute in Jericho.
I'm not scared of that.
Like, what a big view of Godthese people had.
(19:30):
And I love the way, and I wantto just pause.
Let me just say this.
At this point, we're halfwaythrough the lineage of Jesus,
from Abraham to Jesus, whichmeans we're a quarter of the way
through.
If you take the big picture.
If you're a child of God, youare washed in the blood of
Jesus, regardless of where youcame from or what you did.
(19:50):
The blood of Jesus cleanses usfrom unrighteousness.
If the blood of Jesus cancleanse and wash.
The broken life of a paganprostitute can cleanse and wash
the Moabite widow who descendedfrom an incestuous relationship
between Lot and his daughter.
(20:10):
If he can not only cleanse andwash them in the blood of
Calvary's cross, but graft theminto the line that Jesus would
come into.
Don't you ever believe the liethat you come from a background
that's so broken that God can'tuse you, save you, or move you
forward?
I don't care what your addictionwas.
I don't care what yourpromiscuity was.
I don't care that I do care thatyou were abused, but I don't
(20:33):
care in the sense that itdoesn't define God's purpose for
you.
God saves broken people.
And in fact, we know from theministry of Jesus, he's most,
like the most incendiary momentsin the ministry of Jesus was
when the pompous, pious,religious people who didn't
think they needed us needed asavior would confront Jesus.
(20:57):
He's a savior to the broken.
(21:20):
And these women, when they cameinto faith, they were then led
by the Spirit of the living Godthe rest of their days.
So that what defined them wasthe relationship they had with
God and the righteousness he hadbestowed on them, not their
past.
It's a powerful word for us whenwe think of where we've been and
what we've done.
When you think of where you'vebeen and who you are and what
(21:42):
you've done, think of whereJesus has been and who he is and
what he's done.
Say it again.
When you wrestle with who youare and where you've been and
what you've done, remember whoJesus, where who Jesus is, where
he's been and what he's done.
Because that's what defines thechild of God.
(22:02):
That's what defines us.
His righteousness is bestowed onus.
It's imputed to us, is the wordthat we use.
And we're given therighteousness of Jesus, not by
our own merit.
But I love the idea.
I love to just imagine somebodysaying to Boaz, You sure you
want to marry her?
He's like, Yeah, man, that'd beawesome.
(22:22):
Like that, I think it'd beawesome because he had seen that
story played out in his life.
Obed the father of Jesse, Jessethe father of David the king.
So then we come to David, whowas the who was the greatest
king in Israelite history.
But David was the father ofSolomon by the wife of Uriah.
Here's something interesting.
Uriah's name is mentioned in theline of Jesus, and Uriah was
(22:43):
from a pagan nation called theHittites.
Uriah the Hittite.
And there's this moment herewhere we go, oh, wait.
Jesus came in the line of Judah,but he was the savior for all
people because we've got theprostitute from Jericho and the
widow from Moab and Uriah theHittite, and his wife was, and
so you see, even in the line ofJesus, in the lineage of Jesus,
(23:04):
he's grafting the peoples of theworld into the salvation that he
would uh supply.
And Solomon, the father ofRehoboam, Rehobam the father of
Abijah, Abijah the father ofAsaph, Asaph the father of
Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat thefather of Joram, Joram the
father of Uzziah, Uzziah thefather of Jotham, Jotham the
father of Ahaz, Ahaz, the fatherof Hezekiah, Hezekiah the father
(23:27):
of Manasseh, Manasseh the fatherof Amos, Amos the father of
Josiah.
Josiah was one of those, if yougo back and you study the kings
of Judah, I think there wereseven righteous kings in Judah
and 13 kings that wereunrighteous.
So even there in this line, wecome all the way down to Josiah
before we see a king whorestored the worship of Yahweh
(23:48):
in Israel.
And there were, there were otherkings who were faithful in their
seasons, but more kings wereunfaithful.
And do you know that in the inthe Israelite, when the when the
kingdom divided and you had two,basically the nation of Israel
became two nations, Israel andJudah, that there were there
were 13 kings in Judah that didnot serve the Lord.
(24:09):
There was not one king in Israelthat served the Lord.
And yet God remained true to hispromise to bring a savior into
the world.
That's a big theologicalimportant uh implication.
That means this (24:19):
when God makes a covenant, and I'm using, I got
my pen in my hand and I'mpointing at y'all with it.
Um, when God makes a covenantwith with his people, when God
makes a covenant with anybodyand he ratifies that covenant in
blood, what that means is himfulfilling that covenant is
never dependent on our abilityto fulfill our end of it.
(24:40):
God does what he does because hehas the authority and the
sovereignty and the power to doit.
And even when Israel as a nationwas unfaithful, God was still
faithful to provide a way forsalvation to all the peoples of
the earth, because Jesus wasstill coming into the world.
He was still coming into theworld.
And so you get down to the veryend.
(25:01):
The last, the last lady that ismentioned is in verse 16.
Jacob, the father of Joseph, thehusband of Mary, of whom Jesus
was born.
Even the generation in whichJesus came into the world, he
came at a time of scandalbecause she was she was unwed.
And so people, for all of hischildhood and all of his life,
(25:21):
would have said, oh man, he's anillegitimate child of Mary and
Joseph.
And there was this thing thatsort of hung over Jesus, even in
his childhood, no doubt.
But God was faithful.
And there's uh there's there'ssomething that I thought about
in these stories.
There's actually um two thingsthat I thought about.
One is that in these stories,we're reminded of the
(25:42):
sovereignty of God.
That just means that God is inhis own power, he does whatever
he pleases, regardless of howbroken the world is.
And the other thing that I wasreminded of is that um there is
significance to understandingthe Jewish line.
It's important to understandthat what we have in the Jewish
line is a preserved lineage thatshows us like not only when
(26:06):
Jesus came into the world, butthe promises that were made
going back up through his line.
See, in Israel, if the kingswere to come from Judah, which
by the way, they didn't all comefrom Judah because the people
did not follow God's planalways, the kings were to come
from Judah.
Where were the priests to comefrom?
What tribe?
Levi.
And then the prophets came fromabout eight different tribes.
(26:28):
And so you had God working atdifferent times throughout
history, but by having theselines, these family lines, we
can trace through history whatGod was doing at any point.
And then we can see what Paulwrites to the Galatians when he
says, and when the fullness oftime had come, God brought forth
his son into the world, born ofa woman.
And we all know when ithappened, where it happened, and
(26:50):
to whom it happened.
And we know now therepercussions and implications
of it.
Here's let me give you a quickfive thoughts from the lineage
of Jesus.
The first one is this all peopleare born and all people die.
Seems obvious, doesn't it?
Every human is born that thatlives and breathes and has life
on the earth is born, thenthey're also gonna die.
Everybody that's born is gonnadie.
(27:13):
All people die who are born.
So born, live, die.
You can break it down into threesteps.
Like all of your life can becondensed into three things:
born, live, die, right?
But for Jesus, the first andlast steps were revolutionary
and unlike anyone else inhistory.
His birth was unique in that hewas born of a virgin.
(27:36):
How can that be?
Because the Holy Spiritsupernaturally put him into the
womb of this woman, and then hewas born totally human, fully,
truly human, born of a woman,but born without an inherited
sin nature in the line of Adam.
The Bible says he's like thesecond Adam.
So his birth was revolutionary.
His death was revolutionary inthat he didn't stay dead.
(28:00):
Y'all realize that's not normal.
Objects at rest tend to stay atrest.
Objects in motion tend to stayin motion.
When people die, they tend tostay dead.
Science.
And Jesus on the third day didexactly what he said he would
do, and he rose from the dead,conquering the grave, conquering
sin, conquering what you and Iare enslaved to and proven
(28:24):
victorious, so that he might dothat in our place and lead us
into eternal life.
So his birth and death wererevolutionary.
The second thing that we drawfrom the lineage of Jesus is
that it's one lineage from allthe peoples of the earth.
I did a little research andfound that it's estimated, I
don't know how they estimatethis, 107 billion humans have
(28:45):
lived in history.
If it's the same people thatcome up with a Darwinian
evolutionary timeline, we can'ttrust it.
But it sounds like probablylegit 107 billion.
If there's what, there's 8billion people on the earth
right now, about 107 billion inhistory, we can go back to the
beginning of time and trace onebloodline from Adam to Jesus.
That's a gift from the Lord tobolster and encourage and
(29:09):
strengthen your faith.
Young people, when your collegeprofessor is saying, you don't
really believe that, do you?
Actually, I do because I cantrace it.
With documents that are not onlybloodstained by what Jesus did,
but are proven through textualcriticism that all the way
through history we've we've gota preserved um history that
traces the line of Jesus.
(29:30):
Number three, he's the son ofAdam and the Son of God.
We're all sons of Adam, and inAdam we all sinned.
And thank God that in Jesuswe're all made righteous.
Those who call on Jesus, the sinof Adam is uninherited in one
century.
It's removed, and therighteousness of Jesus is given
us.
Number four, I love the factthat this lineage includes
(29:52):
prostitutes, thieves, kings,preachers, adulterers, farmers,
businessmen, chieftains,peasants, scholars, slave
traders, and warlords.
It's a pretty traceable group ofpeople and a pretty broken group
of people that ends in Jesus ofNazareth.
He was literally born amongsinners, but he himself was not
a sinner.
(30:13):
He's different in his ownbloodline.
And last, Jesus became fullyhuman.
Matthew and Luke's purpose inrecording this lineage is to uh
illustrate with facts andknowable data the humanity of
Jesus, as they will then go intohistorically show that how we
can know he is fully God.
That's how we can know he isfully God.
This is critical to the identityof Jesus as the Messiah, the God
(30:36):
man.
Jesus is truly and fully God whobecame truly and fully human.
That is the miracle of theincarnation of Jesus that we
celebrate at Christmas.
This God become man, became oneof us.
And I love the fact that Luke,when he records, when he records
this, he actually prefaces itwith the baptism of Jesus.
(31:00):
And I used to always wonder, whydid you ever wonder why did
Jesus get baptized?
He ain't never sinned.
He never sinned.
Why do you have to get baptized?
To identify with sinners and beobedient to the Father's plan
and will.
Jesus' baptism is the ultimateact of him identifying with us
in our sin.
And it's an act of obedience tothe Father.
(31:23):
So for the Jewish people whounderstood this, the bloodline
of Jesus, this was important forthis to be recorded.
But if you go back to Isaiah 9,and we'll jump over there and
finish kind of our conclusion inIsaiah 9, verses 6 and 7, you're
going to get a Christmas card.
Somebody gonna send you aChristmas card, and it's gonna
be the whole family, and it'seither gonna be the picture they
(31:44):
took last summer on the beachwhere they're all everybody
wearing white shirts, bluejeans, and barefooted, or it's
gonna be a more recent pictureat a Christmas tree farm where
they're all wearing green andred, but it's gonna be a picture
of the family, and you're gonnaget it, and it's gonna be all
and they're gonna say, MerryChristmas.
And some of you will get a cardthat's got these two verses on
it.
And for us, we look at Isaiah 9,6 and 7.
(32:06):
Let me just read it.
It says, For uh, for to us achild is born, to us a son is
given, and the government shallbe upon his shoulder, and his
name shall be called WonderfulCounselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince ofPeace.
Of the increase of hisgovernment and of peace, there
will be no end on the throne ofDavid and over his kingdom to
establish it and to uphold itwith justice and with
(32:27):
righteousness.
From this time forth andforevermore, the zeal of the
Lord of hosts will do this.
You're gonna get a ver uh aChristmas card, it's gonna have
those verses.
And for us, we look back at thatand we go, I know what this all
means.
I know what this all means.
This is talking about Jesus, andwe get excited about it because
I go, hundreds of years beforeJesus came into the world,
Isaiah prophesied what theMessiah would do and who he
(32:48):
would be and how he would comeand and fulfill his uh his um uh
commission from the Father.
But for the Jewish people inIsaiah's day reading this, this
is a very, very perplexingpassage of scripture.
So perplexing that hundreds ofyears later, when Jesus
(33:09):
fulfilled it, for Jews whoembraced and accepted Jesus,
they go, Oh, Isaiah's prophecymakes sense to me now.
Let me show you why it wasperplexing and why it didn't
make sense to them back then.
For starters, it says, for to usa child is born.
So for to us means this child isgonna be born to us and for us.
And he's gonna be a child, whichmeans the Messiah is not gonna
(33:32):
show up on a white horse todefeat the armies of the world.
He's gonna come into the worldby natural means as a baby.
From day one, as a baby, theMessiah is gonna have a purpose.
For to us, a child is born.
But here's where it getsperplexing.
Because this child, there'sthree things that make sense to
us, but would have beenmind-blowing and maybe confusing
(33:52):
to these people.
The child would be called mightyGod.
Look right there in verse six.
For to us a child is given, andthen down at the end of that
verse six, it says, Mighty God.
A child who would be calledmighty God.
Okay, church, theology quiz.
Does God have a beginning?
No, he is eternal.
(34:13):
We teach this to our children inthe children's program.
The reason young families cometo this church is because they
know their children are going tobe taught faithful biblical
theology.
One of those most importantthings is that God is eternal,
he's always been.
He is the uncaused cause thatspoke everything into creation.
So, how can he be a child?
(34:34):
Jesus, fully God, truly andfully human.
God become man, a little childwho is mighty God.
The second thing that would haveconfused them, that makes sense
to us, is that the Son, a Son isgiven, would be called
Everlasting Father.
How can an everlasting father,by definition, the everlasting
(34:54):
father, he's been the father ofall things for all time and
before time?
Before the sun was sitting thereand and and our solar system was
spinning around it and we werecounting hours and minutes and
days and weeks.
Before all of that, God existed.
He's the everlasting father.
So how can he be a son?
(35:15):
Well, if he's a son, wouldn'this dad actually be the
everlasting father?
And as a son, he would have hada starting point.
Y'all with me?
Isn't that perplexing to theJewish mind?
But to us, we go, oh no, no, theeverlasting father.
God became a son.
He entered humanity for us andbecame one of us.
And the third thing that wouldhave been really confusing to
them, but makes sense to us, isthis child who will be born will
(35:38):
have a beginning, but he also iseverlasting and eternal.
Because it says, of his kingdomthere will be no end.
It's describing Jesus, who wouldbe truly and fully 100% human,
but also truly and fully 200%eternal God.
And each of these names that'sused combines two words.
And each of these words isdescriptive.
(35:58):
Honestly, you could use this,could be eight names.
You could where it sayswonderful counselor, that's the
first word, the first name.
Mighty God, that's the secondone.
Everlasting Father, that's thethird one.
Prince of Peace, that's thefourth one.
You could actually break thatdown and you could say, His name
shall be called wonderful,counselor, mighty God,
(36:20):
everlasting Father, Prince,peace.
But we condense these, and Ifound out this through a
phenomenal commentary on Isaiah,where the guy described that
there's a Hebrew literarytradition where they would take
words and names and combine themto emphasize and strengthen the
(36:42):
title.
So the wonderful counselor,what's wonderful about Jesus?
His ministry, the fact that hehealed the blind and he touched
the leper, and he and he tookthe prostitute and he made her
whole and he raised the dead.
He was wonderful, but he's acounselor because he would say
to that person, he saved, go andsin no more.
And here's how you can do that,and here's how you can live your
life.
And let me get, oh, oh, I'mleaving.
(37:03):
Let me send my spirit to liveinside of you so that you have
the good counselor with you atall times.
He's wonderful and he's ourcounselor.
He's mighty and he's our God.
He's everlasting and he's ourfather.
And why is that last name, thePrince of Peace, so important?
We'll end with these four thingsthat are described and revealed
about the government because thePrince of Peace is the idea that
(37:25):
he's going to rule as the kingwho comes and sits on the throne
of David there in verse 7.
It says, There will be no end onthe throne of David and over his
kingdom to uh and over hiskingdom to establish it and to
uphold it.
See, if you go back to 2 Samuel7, you can read about this
eternal and perpetual kingdomthat was going to come into the
(37:46):
world.
Let me share in closing thesefour things that are described
and revealed about thegovernment that'll be
established under this king.
Number one, this ruler willestablish and expand a kingdom
where there is peace.
Where there's peace.
No one will ever challenge oroppose his authority or
undermine the effects of hisgovernment.
(38:09):
Because Satan's going to bebound and cast into an eternal
lake of fire.
Y'all, he's going to burn.
He's going to burn and fry androast and scream and anguish,
and his teeth are going to grindagainst the one who has put him
there, but he's not going tobother us in the kingdom of
peace, where our king sits on athrone, ruling and reigning,
where there is no sin, notemptation, no sorrow, no
(38:32):
addiction, no abandonment, noadultery, no guilt, no shame, no
self-harm.
No daddies leave their families.
We're whole under a king who iswhole, who is ruling and
reigning, because the one whohas come against him has been
bound for eternity.
It's already been prepared forhim.
That's a good kingdom.
I'm going to live there.
Hope you are too.
(38:52):
And if you're not, let's talktonight before you leave.
We'll make sure you get there.
It's real simple.
It's actually easy because Jesushas done all the lifting.
He said, Take my yoke.
It's easy.
My burden's light.
I'll do the work for you becauseyou can't do it for yourself.
The second thing that'sdescribed about this government
is that this king will be thecovenant and promise king of uh
(39:12):
that God spoke of to King David.
If you go back to 2 Samuelchapter 7, you can read it.
God said to David, here's what'sgoing to happen.
There's going to be a king whocomes in your line who's going
to be a different kind of king.
He's not just going to rule overearthly Israel, he's going to
rule over an eternal kingdomthat'll never end.
And that's Jesus.
And number three, his governmentand rule will be just and
(39:34):
righteous.
Look there at the end of verse 7with justice and with
righteousness.
Y'all realize the bestgovernments on earth don't
always get it right.
Your candidate will makemistakes.
Good judges convict innocentpeople.
(40:00):
System as long as there areimperfect people running it.
But in this government, onlyjustice and only righteousness.
And if you're a person who'sbeen abused or abandoned, if
you've been hurt and you'vewondered where is God in all of
this, oh, he's building akingdom where people like you
are never going to have to worryabout it again.
Because he's going to deal withthe unrighteous and he's going
to put sin to death forevermore.
(40:22):
It's a good promise.
And last, number four, GodHimself is going to see that
this is done.
You ever hear, there's twosayings I think of.
One is, if you want somethingdone right, do it.
Yep.
Or women, ladies, uh, if youwant something done right, get a
woman to do it.
That's I've I've heard that onetoo.
So, like when it comes to thiskind of a task, no people could
(40:42):
ever establish something likethis.
And so I love what it says atthe end of verse 7.
It says, the zeal of the Lord ofhosts will do this.
God himself is going to see thatthis is done.
There'll be no question as towhether or not this is going to
be accomplished because GodHimself is going to establish
this kingdom.
In fact, we might even say he'salready done it through the work
(41:03):
that Jesus did when he came intothe world.
This Advent season, let'sremember who Jesus is and what
Jesus has done.
That's why we celebrate.
And let's celebrate.
Amen.
Gotta pray tonight that you takeyour word and you'd make it make
sense in the most real andtangible way, and that you would
shape and change our livesbecause of it.
(41:26):
Lord, if there's anybody heretonight that doesn't know you,
doesn't have a relationship withyou, I pray that tonight,
through the hearing of your wordand the promises of scripture
and the declarations of truththat we read and the stories of
Matthew one, stories of Rahaband Boaz and Tamar and Judah and
(41:46):
Mary and Joseph and Josiah, wesee you work in different ways
in people's lives, and I praythat we'd be encouraged by it.
We'd learn to trust you.
Thank you for the power of yourforgiveness and the way that you
graft broken people into yourstory.
But thank you that you don'tcompromise your plan.
Your kingdom will be one ofrighteousness and justice.
(42:08):
And the only way we can be apart of that is through the
righteousness and justice thatJesus provides by trusting in
the work that He did on thecross for us.
If there's anybody here tonightthat hasn't put their faith and
their trust in that, I pray thatthey would, even tonight before
they leave.
Lord, I pray that as wecelebrate what Isaiah prophesied
looking forward, we celebratelooking back, but also the
(42:32):
already not yet aspect of whatyou're still gonna do.
Pray that we'd rejoice over thefact that you came into the
world, but we'd rejoice maybejust as much over the fact that
you're coming again.
And we're gonna be a part of akingdom that'll never end, with
a king that'll never let usdown, a rule of peace and
righteousness and justice withno evil or wicked opposition.
(42:55):
That's what we have to lookforward to, and we're grateful.
We pray these things in Jesus'name.
Amen.
SPEAKER_00 (43:02):
Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required.
Please take a moment tosubscribe and leave a rating.
It really helps.
Visit us at swoutfitters.com tosee all of our programming and
resources.
And we'll see you next week onNo Sanity Required.
Okay, what we're gonna do this week is uh gonna
be a little different.
We're going to uh play back amessage that I gave at Red Oak
Church uh last let's see, twoSundays ago.
And it was the first Sunday ofour Advent series at Red Oak.
And the reason we want to dothis is uh actually a couple of
(00:21):
reasons.
Uh first, there was a ton offeedback.
I got more feedback from thatfrom that message than I've uh
seen in a while.
And it was a l it was positivefeedback, but it was also a lot
of continued conversation, um,just a lot of dialogue with
people that said, Man, I'venever thought of this or I've
never I've never looked at thesepassages that way.
And it was nothing nothing new,but it was maybe something that
(00:44):
uh would be useful for you.
And so as a as an NSR listener,we want to what we want to do is
we want to share that messagebecause it's a message that
looks at the genealogy of Christand then the prophecies of
Isaiah that sort of merge withthe genealogy of Christ and
Matthew's Matthew chapter oneand Matthew's recording of that
(01:04):
and how those two passages linkup and then what that means for
us today, what that would havemeant for the Jews back then.
But what we'll do is we'll we'regonna we're gonna have this
episode where we're just gonnaplay that.
It was a it had more of alecture, not lecture, I don't
like that word.
It had more of a conversationalfeel than a sermon feel.
At least that was the feedback Igot, and that was my goal and
(01:25):
the way I presented it.
And then we're gonna come backafter this episode, and JB and I
are just gonna sit down.
We're gonna have a bonusfollow-up episode because we a
couple weeks ago we didn't postan episode.
So we owe y'all an episodeanyway.
We're gonna have a bonusfollow-up episode where we're
gonna we're gonna unpack sometalking points from that message
and just have a dialogue aboutit, kind of do a deep dive into
(01:48):
that, kind of a beyond theflannel graph.
So that's what the next twoepisodes are gonna look like.
We're gonna drop those together,and I hope you enjoy it.
And then we'll actually haveanother episode later this week
that's uh sort of Christmasfocused.
So anyway, uh appreciate youlistening.
Welcome to No Sanity Required.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
Welcome to No Sanity Required, from the Ministry of
Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters,a podcast about the Bible,
culture, and stories from aroundthe globe.
SPEAKER_01 (02:20):
Well, let's take our Bibles and turn to Matthew
chapter one, and we'll also bein Isaiah 6.
This uh this evening begins ourAdvent series, which is what we
do each December, where we lookat different passages that
remind us of the coming of Jesusand why we celebrate this
season.
This morning, uh Kilby and Greghave been to Hardy's, because if
(02:40):
you've been out of the country awhile, you know.
You know, if you know Hardy'sbreakfast, you know, you know,
and so uh had to go get someHardee's.
And uh we were we were laughingbecause they said some folks
pulled in in these little sportscars.
Uh y'all see them in groups ofcars.
They're headed over to ride thedragon.
Have y'all seen this?
(03:00):
You'll see them on thefour-lane, they come through in
big waves and they'll be eightor ten or twenty.
And uh they're going over thereto drive to drive their sports
cars on the tail of the dragon.
And said they overheard one ofthose guys say, Man, this is
awesome.
This is the first time I've everate at Hardy's.
And I thought he grew up in acompletely different family than
I did.
You grow up in Andrews, going toHardee's is like a big deal, you
(03:22):
know.
Like that's going to town, man.
You're going out to eat.
And so uh I I think about uh theimportance of family, and and
all of us uh have differentstories and backgrounds.
I I loved when I was growing up,I loved my on my mom's side, my
granddad, he was a bit of ahistorian.
When he retired, he moved uh upinto kind of like up into the
(03:46):
highlands.
And uh it's crazy.
He actually moved to Scotland tothose highlands um and spent a
year over there researchingfamily lines, and then uh, and
then he spent a good bit of timelike in uh Watauga County and
like up around Boone and thenGrandfather Mountain up in there
uh researching our family lineand literally could can trace on
(04:08):
both sides my mom and my dadcould trace family back into
like Blunt County, Tennessee inthe late 1600s.
That's crazy, isn't it?
That's a long time.
And I know some of you have donelike uh what is it, Ancestry, uh
Ancestry.com, or you've done thethe saliva test, whatever, and
kind of trace your family line.
That's a lot of fun.
I really I enjoy uh you knowlearning about that stuff.
(04:29):
And we all we all have differentuh family backgrounds.
Some of us don't really knowmaybe a lot about our family
background.
And in our society, our ourculture, it's not a real,
there's not a big emphasis puton it.
You know, it's like uh we'rejust that's why they call this
country a melting pot.
You know, we might not even knowwhere where our people came
(04:50):
from.
And um, but I did I loved my mymom's dad would tell this one
story.
So he had, I'll tell you thisand then we'll move on.
I won't bog down with stories,but uh I loved when he would
talk about this.
He had one granddad, this was inthe 20s, 20s and then early 30s,
like uh the uh depression.
He had one granddad who was arevenuer.
(05:12):
If you don't know what that is,a revenuer was a locally
commissioned federal agent whowas tasked with stopping the
illegal sale of moonshine.
And moonshine was alcohol thatwas homemade.
Um and there's a y'all, this,y'all know we live in moonshine
country right here.
Like it's that's our you talkabout a legacy.
Um, that's history here, youknow.
(05:33):
And as a matter of fact, thehouse that we live in, we're on
a spring, and at that springhead, there's there's remnants
of an old steel.
And I talked to the guy thatgrew up in that holler, and he's
like, Oh, yeah, I used to carrycorn.
Uh, this guy's in his 90s, he'sstill living.
He's like, I used to carry cornup there to the steel that make
moonshine.
And so my granddad, one of hisgranddads, so that would have
(05:53):
been like my great-great orgreat-great-great-granddad, was
a revenuer.
So their job was to stop themoonshiners.
Can't have people drinkingalcohol.
I'm sure they were all Baptists,you know.
So they're not gonna have that.
And so um, but then my othergreat-great-great-granddad was a
bootlegger.
Now, bootlegger is a person thatmakes moonshine, and their son
(06:14):
and daughter married each other.
Isn't that fun?
That's a good time.
So he would tell me all thesestories, and I just loved it.
I love I and I heard the samestories uh, you know, over and
over and over because mygranddad was like a little boy
and when all this was going on,and I just loved it.
And so I, you know, family forus is more entertainment, it's
interesting, it's intriguing.
But for the Jewish people, yourfamily line was very important.
(06:38):
And one of the reasons it was soimportant was because the line,
the lineage of people in theJewish culture gave credibility
to the prophecies that had beenmade by God through his prophets
in ancient Israel.
If you go back in history, a lotof us might be familiar with
something called the Tower ofBabel.
And the Tower of Babel, you canread about that in the book of
(07:00):
Genesis.
Uh, and in the book of Genesis,the Tower of Babel, I believe
it's Genesis 11.
Does that sound right?
The table of nations is whatthat's referred to.
And it's sort of the time inhistory where the nations or the
people groups of the worldstarted to form and move into
different parts of the earth.
And so if you ever wonder why dowe have people in Africa and
Asia and North America, andwell, there was a point in
(07:21):
history where everybody was sortof one speech, one language, one
culture, and then there was aseparation that occurred, and
that's another story altogether.
But from that point forward,there were different nations and
people groups that were poppingup all over the world.
So God raised up through thisone man, his name was Abraham,
and God said to Abraham, I'mgoing to raise up a new nation
(07:43):
of people, and they're going tobe my people.
And he would refer to thatnation as Israel, and he would
actually refer to that nation ashis firstborn son.
He would refer to the nation ofIsrael as his son.
And so what he did with thisnation is he gave them certain
structure.
One of the structures he gavethem was he gave them, he
divided them into 12 tribes.
(08:04):
And each of these tribes wasnamed after one of a dozen
brothers that were born asgrandsons to this man Abraham.
And it's really fascinating toread.
And so each of these tribeswould have different history and
story, but all part of one bigstory.
And in the middle of this uhnation of people, these 12
tribes, there was one tribecalled Judah.
(08:26):
And Judah was the tribe that wasnamed after, I believe Judah was
the fourthborn son.
Maybe he's one of the sons.
And Judah was the son who wouldbe the head of the tribe that
God said, this will be the lineof kings.
The kings will come out of thistribe.
And so one of the kings thatwould come out of that tribe was
a king called David.
And so David would be the kingthat would come in the line of
(08:49):
Judah.
And so Judah was sort of likethe kingly tribe.
And then also something that Goddid with all of these 12 tribes
of people that made up thisnation called Israel is he gave
them a series of covenants.
And covenants are promises thatGod gives to his people that he
then fulfills.
God makes the promise, then hefulfills the promise.
(09:09):
And so through this man Judah,he promised that he would bring
a king into the world who wouldbe a different kind of king.
And that's what we're going tostudy tonight.
And so the lineage of the peopleof Israel was important because
you could trace it back to thepromises that God had made even
thousands of years ago.
This really strong defense ofthe faith to go, oh, we have a
(09:32):
record that goes all the wayback thousands of years that
tells us that God made certainpromises that different times in
history were fulfilled.
And the greatest of thosepromises was that God would send
a Savior into the world to savepeople from their sins.
But this Savior would not onlybe the Savior to the line of
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Judah or the people of Israel,he would be the savior to all of
humanity.
Now, that doesn't mean all ofhumanity will be saved.
It means he's the answer to allof humanity for salvation.
And so we're going to considerthat tonight as we work through
Matthew's genealogy.
I appreciate Zach doing thatsong.
I'd ask him to do it, and I waslike, man, I know some people
(10:15):
think this is a silly song.
It's not a silly song, it's abeautiful song.
It's wonderful.
It's fun to sing.
And uh and I love singing it,and it's really helped me a lot.
And so you might want tomemorize that song.
I still can't, I've been singingfor 20 years, and I still don't
have it all memorized.
My getting so tongue-tied.
Um, but I love that song and Iappreciate uh them doing that
song.
But what we're gonna do is we'regonna work through Matthew's
genealogy in Matthew chapterone.
(10:36):
We're just gonna take a fewpauses and I want to highlight a
few things in this genealogy aswe as we look to the coming of
Jesus, and then we'll jump overto Isaiah 9 to wrap things up.
So it says the book of the bookof the genealogy of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, theson of Abraham.
Now, first thing in the firstverse is that Matthew's
genealogy starts with Abraham,which is that's the beginning of
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the Jewish people or the nationof Israel.
If you if you want to go over toLuke and read Luke's genealogy,
it goes all the way back to uhto Adam, which shows us that all
the people of the earth began atthe same place under Adam and
God's creation of the first man.
But what uh Matthew does, hefocuses on the people who
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descended from Abraham, who wasthe man that God made the
covenant with that he wouldraise this nation up.
And then he goes into thelineage of Abraham or the
lineage of Jesus.
Abraham was the father of Isaac,and you're gonna recognize some
of these names.
Isaac, the father of Jacob,Jacob the father of Judah and
his brothers, and Judah thefather of Perez and Zarah, those
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were twin boys by Tamar.
Now we'll stop right there.
And let me just say um one ofthe things that's uh unique to
the Christian faith and to theBible is that in in all of
antiquity, um, women were weresort of suppressed and oppressed
and kept under um sort of theauthority of men.
And so one thing that's uniqueto the lineage that we'll read
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tonight is that five women arenamed in this.
No other historical record wouldhave ever included women.
So if anyone ever says to you,Christianity is oppressive to
women, let me tell yousomething.
Christianity was revolutionaryin its day, in that Jesus
elevated women to a position ofequality in the image of God.
That's a powerful defense of theChristian faith.
(12:24):
And so these five women, theother thing that's so amazing
about these five women is eachof these five women is part of
the story, the the big story ofthe line of Jesus, but these
little stories that are made upof each of these five women are
fascinating in the sense thatthey're all sort of wrapped in
scandal.
And so this woman, Tamar, whatI'll say about her is that she
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was a woman who was um abused,she was taken advantage of, she
was used and discarded.
And yet God used her to bringabout a man into the world who
would be in the line of Jesus.
And then God would name her inthe line of Christ.
Isn't that powerful?
If you're a lady here, that'spowerful because even in the
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ministry of Jesus, we see thatit was women who gave testimony
and witness to the birth ofJesus.
Y'all, the world will try tocreate a feministic idea that
says women are this or women arethat.
And what we need to know is thatthe word of God has already
declared the value and worth ofwomen based on the fact that
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they're image-bearers of God.
The word of God gives us anamazing validation to the way
God has not only used women, butused women even in the midst of
scandal.
And so Tamar was a woman who wasabused, she was used, she was uh
discarded, and yet God shows herto be more righteous even than
the men in her life.
And so then it says uh Perez,the father of Hezron, Hezron the
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father of Ram, Ram the father ofAminadab, Aminadab the father of
Nashan, Nashan the father ofSalmon.
Now, stop here and I'll tellyou, uh, I love the story about
Nashan.
Now, this is not biblical, thisis extra-biblical, or this is
what we would call apocryphal.
Have you ever heard the wordapocrypha?
It doesn't just refer to aseries of uh uh writings that
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were included in the CatholicBible or that were ancient
Jewish writings.
The word apocrypha or apocryphalmeans uh sort of like uh folk,
like uh like um what's the bigguy with the axe and the blue
ox, Bunyan?
Uh I always want to say JohnBunyan, but that was the
Pilgrim's Progress guy.
Paul Bunyan.
Paul Bunyan is an apocryphalstory from American history.
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That's apocryphal.
Y'all with me?
Okay.
And so there's an apocryphalstory about Nashan that the that
people in Jewish culture willteach their sons and daughters.
And the and the story is this: that when the the ancient (14:42):
undefined
Israelites came up to the RedSea and the Egyptian army was
coming after them, that they'reabout to walk into the Red Sea,
and that Nashan was such a manof fate that he walked straight
out into, he was the leader, hewas like the chieftain of the
tribe of Judah at that time, andthat he walked straight into the
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Red Sea before Moses could evensee the waters parted, and that
when the water hit Nashan'snose, the waters parted.
Now that's apocryphal, but ittells you how this man was
revered in Jewish culture, somuch so that the Jews had a
saying, and the saying was thisthat guy's got the nose of
Nashon.
And it was another way ofsaying, that guy has courage,
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that guy's bold, he'll goanywhere, do anything.
And so Nashan was a person whowe know was a great chief at a
time of at the time of theExodus out of Egypt.
And so then it's pretty coolbecause he had a son named
Salmon, and it says Salmon, thefather of Boaz by Rahab.
Now, if you know Rahab's story,another woman is now grafted
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into the story, and this isanother scandalous story because
we know that Rahab's uh uhprofession was that she was a
prostitute.
And so be careful because we wedon't have Roy Jr.
going on, and so we have all thelittle people in here, and so
we'll be careful how we wordthat.
But um, so I already used thatword.
Uh so good luck, mom and dad,and you're welcome.
And now you have an opportunityto parent your kids and coach
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them up.
Okay, so uh um, but anyway, uh Ilove the story of Rahab.
You can find that story in uhJoshua chapter two, and I love
that story because I've alwaysfelt like um so if you remember
the story, uh Joshua decides tosend a uh to send a couple of
spies into the city of Jericho.
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And those spies are gonna go inthere and scout the city out,
and while they're there, theymeet Rahab and she makes three
declarations to them.
She basically says, I've heardwhat your God did.
He defeated the kings of Sihon,the kings Sihon and Og, which
were these kings that led analliance of pagan kings that
were very powerful.
And he's like, she says, I knowyour God defeated these armies.
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And so she declares the powerand the might of Yahweh.
And then she says, and I knowhe's great and he can do
anything.
And would you ask him to havemercy on me?
And so in Rahab, we have thisbeautiful power conversion,
powerful conversion of a personwho calls on the name of Yahweh
just based on what she's seenand heard about Yahweh.
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And it gives us a lot of uh hopeand courage when it comes to
missions.
Like the reason we want to takemissions that we want to support
missions to take the gospel tothe ends of the earth is because
there are people waiting to beintroduced to Jesus because a
sovereign God is moving andworking before we ever get to a
place.
Before Joshua and the peopleever got to Jericho, God was
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working and stirring in theheart of a prostitute, a woman
of the night, in that city tobring about an openness to the
gospel.
And then it is through thatwoman that God would then bring
the Messiah into the world.
And I love it because uh she'sshe's brought out of the city,
she's saved after that city isuh is taken and conquered, and
she's married by uh this guynamed Salmon, who his granddad
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was Nashin.
Salmon probably had the nose ofNashan too, you know.
He's probably just a bold guy,and he was like, I don't care
what people think.
So they have a son.
That son's name is Boaz.
Now I want you to imagine Boazis raised in the house of a dad
who was a fighter warrior whenthey came into Canaan and a mom
who was a pagan uh non-Jewishprostitute.
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That's interesting.
That's like I wonder if theyhomeschooled.
You know, like I wonder if theyhad game night.
You know what I mean?
Like I wonder, like what wasconversation around the dinner
table.
But I love it because this guy,Boaz, will go on and eventually
marry a Moabite widow namedRuth, who came from Moab, which
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was the people that haddescended from the incestuous
relationship between Lot and hisdaughter.
And this woman Ruth, we see thatin the next line.
It says, Boaz, uh Salmon thefather of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz
the father of Obed by Ruth.
He married Ruth.
You go back and you study thestory of Ruth, and I always
think, can you imagine thisscene where Boaz and Ruth start
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talking and he starts to courther?
And you can read it in thelittle four-chapter book of
Ruth, where he's like, Hey, Iwant to date you.
Hey, I want to court you, hey, Iwant to marry you.
And I wonder if anybody eversaid, Hey, Boaz, you know she's
a pagan Moabite.
And he's like, My mom was aprostitute in Jericho.
I'm not scared of that.
Like, what a big view of Godthese people had.
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And I love the way, and I wantto just pause.
Let me just say this.
At this point, we're halfwaythrough the lineage of Jesus,
from Abraham to Jesus, whichmeans we're a quarter of the way
through.
If you take the big picture.
If you're a child of God, youare washed in the blood of
Jesus, regardless of where youcame from or what you did.
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The blood of Jesus cleanses usfrom unrighteousness.
If the blood of Jesus cancleanse and wash.
The broken life of a paganprostitute can cleanse and wash
the Moabite widow who descendedfrom an incestuous relationship
between Lot and his daughter.
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If he can not only cleanse andwash them in the blood of
Calvary's cross, but graft theminto the line that Jesus would
come into.
Don't you ever believe the liethat you come from a background
that's so broken that God can'tuse you, save you, or move you
forward?
I don't care what your addictionwas.
I don't care what yourpromiscuity was.
I don't care that I do care thatyou were abused, but I don't
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care in the sense that itdoesn't define God's purpose for
you.
God saves broken people.
And in fact, we know from theministry of Jesus, he's most,
like the most incendiary momentsin the ministry of Jesus was
when the pompous, pious,religious people who didn't
think they needed us needed asavior would confront Jesus.
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He's a savior to the broken.
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And these women, when they cameinto faith, they were then led
by the Spirit of the living Godthe rest of their days.
So that what defined them wasthe relationship they had with
God and the righteousness he hadbestowed on them, not their
past.
It's a powerful word for us whenwe think of where we've been and
what we've done.
When you think of where you'vebeen and who you are and what
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you've done, think of whereJesus has been and who he is and
what he's done.
Say it again.
When you wrestle with who youare and where you've been and
what you've done, remember whoJesus, where who Jesus is, where
he's been and what he's done.
Because that's what defines thechild of God.
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That's what defines us.
His righteousness is bestowed onus.
It's imputed to us, is the wordthat we use.
And we're given therighteousness of Jesus, not by
our own merit.
But I love the idea.
I love to just imagine somebodysaying to Boaz, You sure you
want to marry her?
He's like, Yeah, man, that'd beawesome.
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Like that, I think it'd beawesome because he had seen that
story played out in his life.
Obed the father of Jesse, Jessethe father of David the king.
So then we come to David, whowas the who was the greatest
king in Israelite history.
But David was the father ofSolomon by the wife of Uriah.
Here's something interesting.
Uriah's name is mentioned in theline of Jesus, and Uriah was
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from a pagan nation called theHittites.
Uriah the Hittite.
And there's this moment herewhere we go, oh, wait.
Jesus came in the line of Judah,but he was the savior for all
people because we've got theprostitute from Jericho and the
widow from Moab and Uriah theHittite, and his wife was, and
so you see, even in the line ofJesus, in the lineage of Jesus,
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he's grafting the peoples of theworld into the salvation that he
would uh supply.
And Solomon, the father ofRehoboam, Rehobam the father of
Abijah, Abijah the father ofAsaph, Asaph the father of
Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat thefather of Joram, Joram the
father of Uzziah, Uzziah thefather of Jotham, Jotham the
father of Ahaz, Ahaz, the fatherof Hezekiah, Hezekiah the father
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of Manasseh, Manasseh the fatherof Amos, Amos the father of
Josiah.
Josiah was one of those, if yougo back and you study the kings
of Judah, I think there wereseven righteous kings in Judah
and 13 kings that wereunrighteous.
So even there in this line, wecome all the way down to Josiah
before we see a king whorestored the worship of Yahweh
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in Israel.
And there were, there were otherkings who were faithful in their
seasons, but more kings wereunfaithful.
And do you know that in the inthe Israelite, when the when the
kingdom divided and you had two,basically the nation of Israel
became two nations, Israel andJudah, that there were there
were 13 kings in Judah that didnot serve the Lord.
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There was not one king in Israelthat served the Lord.
And yet God remained true to hispromise to bring a savior into
the world.
That's a big theologicalimportant uh implication.
That means this (24:19):
when God makes a covenant, and I'm using, I got
my pen in my hand and I'mpointing at y'all with it.
Um, when God makes a covenantwith with his people, when God
makes a covenant with anybodyand he ratifies that covenant in
blood, what that means is himfulfilling that covenant is
never dependent on our abilityto fulfill our end of it.
(24:40):
God does what he does because hehas the authority and the
sovereignty and the power to doit.
And even when Israel as a nationwas unfaithful, God was still
faithful to provide a way forsalvation to all the peoples of
the earth, because Jesus wasstill coming into the world.
He was still coming into theworld.
And so you get down to the veryend.
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The last, the last lady that ismentioned is in verse 16.
Jacob, the father of Joseph, thehusband of Mary, of whom Jesus
was born.
Even the generation in whichJesus came into the world, he
came at a time of scandalbecause she was she was unwed.
And so people, for all of hischildhood and all of his life,
(25:21):
would have said, oh man, he's anillegitimate child of Mary and
Joseph.
And there was this thing thatsort of hung over Jesus, even in
his childhood, no doubt.
But God was faithful.
And there's uh there's there'ssomething that I thought about
in these stories.
There's actually um two thingsthat I thought about.
One is that in these stories,we're reminded of the
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sovereignty of God.
That just means that God is inhis own power, he does whatever
he pleases, regardless of howbroken the world is.
And the other thing that I wasreminded of is that um there is
significance to understandingthe Jewish line.
It's important to understandthat what we have in the Jewish
line is a preserved lineage thatshows us like not only when
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Jesus came into the world, butthe promises that were made
going back up through his line.
See, in Israel, if the kingswere to come from Judah, which
by the way, they didn't all comefrom Judah because the people
did not follow God's planalways, the kings were to come
from Judah.
Where were the priests to comefrom?
What tribe?
Levi.
And then the prophets came fromabout eight different tribes.
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And so you had God working atdifferent times throughout
history, but by having theselines, these family lines, we
can trace through history whatGod was doing at any point.
And then we can see what Paulwrites to the Galatians when he
says, and when the fullness oftime had come, God brought forth
his son into the world, born ofa woman.
And we all know when ithappened, where it happened, and
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to whom it happened.
And we know now therepercussions and implications
of it.
Here's let me give you a quickfive thoughts from the lineage
of Jesus.
The first one is this all peopleare born and all people die.
Seems obvious, doesn't it?
Every human is born that thatlives and breathes and has life
on the earth is born, thenthey're also gonna die.
Everybody that's born is gonnadie.
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All people die who are born.
So born, live, die.
You can break it down into threesteps.
Like all of your life can becondensed into three things:
born, live, die, right?
But for Jesus, the first andlast steps were revolutionary
and unlike anyone else inhistory.
His birth was unique in that hewas born of a virgin.
(27:36):
How can that be?
Because the Holy Spiritsupernaturally put him into the
womb of this woman, and then hewas born totally human, fully,
truly human, born of a woman,but born without an inherited
sin nature in the line of Adam.
The Bible says he's like thesecond Adam.
So his birth was revolutionary.
His death was revolutionary inthat he didn't stay dead.
(28:00):
Y'all realize that's not normal.
Objects at rest tend to stay atrest.
Objects in motion tend to stayin motion.
When people die, they tend tostay dead.
Science.
And Jesus on the third day didexactly what he said he would
do, and he rose from the dead,conquering the grave, conquering
sin, conquering what you and Iare enslaved to and proven
(28:24):
victorious, so that he might dothat in our place and lead us
into eternal life.
So his birth and death wererevolutionary.
The second thing that we drawfrom the lineage of Jesus is
that it's one lineage from allthe peoples of the earth.
I did a little research andfound that it's estimated, I
don't know how they estimatethis, 107 billion humans have
(28:45):
lived in history.
If it's the same people thatcome up with a Darwinian
evolutionary timeline, we can'ttrust it.
But it sounds like probablylegit 107 billion.
If there's what, there's 8billion people on the earth
right now, about 107 billion inhistory, we can go back to the
beginning of time and trace onebloodline from Adam to Jesus.
That's a gift from the Lord tobolster and encourage and
(29:09):
strengthen your faith.
Young people, when your collegeprofessor is saying, you don't
really believe that, do you?
Actually, I do because I cantrace it.
With documents that are not onlybloodstained by what Jesus did,
but are proven through textualcriticism that all the way
through history we've we've gota preserved um history that
traces the line of Jesus.
(29:30):
Number three, he's the son ofAdam and the Son of God.
We're all sons of Adam, and inAdam we all sinned.
And thank God that in Jesuswe're all made righteous.
Those who call on Jesus, the sinof Adam is uninherited in one
century.
It's removed, and therighteousness of Jesus is given
us.
Number four, I love the factthat this lineage includes
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prostitutes, thieves, kings,preachers, adulterers, farmers,
businessmen, chieftains,peasants, scholars, slave
traders, and warlords.
It's a pretty traceable group ofpeople and a pretty broken group
of people that ends in Jesus ofNazareth.
He was literally born amongsinners, but he himself was not
a sinner.
(30:13):
He's different in his ownbloodline.
And last, Jesus became fullyhuman.
Matthew and Luke's purpose inrecording this lineage is to uh
illustrate with facts andknowable data the humanity of
Jesus, as they will then go intohistorically show that how we
can know he is fully God.
That's how we can know he isfully God.
This is critical to the identityof Jesus as the Messiah, the God
(30:36):
man.
Jesus is truly and fully God whobecame truly and fully human.
That is the miracle of theincarnation of Jesus that we
celebrate at Christmas.
This God become man, became oneof us.
And I love the fact that Luke,when he records, when he records
this, he actually prefaces itwith the baptism of Jesus.
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And I used to always wonder, whydid you ever wonder why did
Jesus get baptized?
He ain't never sinned.
He never sinned.
Why do you have to get baptized?
To identify with sinners and beobedient to the Father's plan
and will.
Jesus' baptism is the ultimateact of him identifying with us
in our sin.
And it's an act of obedience tothe Father.
(31:23):
So for the Jewish people whounderstood this, the bloodline
of Jesus, this was important forthis to be recorded.
But if you go back to Isaiah 9,and we'll jump over there and
finish kind of our conclusion inIsaiah 9, verses 6 and 7, you're
going to get a Christmas card.
Somebody gonna send you aChristmas card, and it's gonna
be the whole family, and it'seither gonna be the picture they
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took last summer on the beachwhere they're all everybody
wearing white shirts, bluejeans, and barefooted, or it's
gonna be a more recent pictureat a Christmas tree farm where
they're all wearing green andred, but it's gonna be a picture
of the family, and you're gonnaget it, and it's gonna be all
and they're gonna say, MerryChristmas.
And some of you will get a cardthat's got these two verses on
it.
And for us, we look at Isaiah 9,6 and 7.
(32:06):
Let me just read it.
It says, For uh, for to us achild is born, to us a son is
given, and the government shallbe upon his shoulder, and his
name shall be called WonderfulCounselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince ofPeace.
Of the increase of hisgovernment and of peace, there
will be no end on the throne ofDavid and over his kingdom to
establish it and to uphold itwith justice and with
(32:27):
righteousness.
From this time forth andforevermore, the zeal of the
Lord of hosts will do this.
You're gonna get a ver uh aChristmas card, it's gonna have
those verses.
And for us, we look back at thatand we go, I know what this all
means.
I know what this all means.
This is talking about Jesus, andwe get excited about it because
I go, hundreds of years beforeJesus came into the world,
Isaiah prophesied what theMessiah would do and who he
(32:48):
would be and how he would comeand and fulfill his uh his um uh
commission from the Father.
But for the Jewish people inIsaiah's day reading this, this
is a very, very perplexingpassage of scripture.
So perplexing that hundreds ofyears later, when Jesus
(33:09):
fulfilled it, for Jews whoembraced and accepted Jesus,
they go, Oh, Isaiah's prophecymakes sense to me now.
Let me show you why it wasperplexing and why it didn't
make sense to them back then.
For starters, it says, for to usa child is born.
So for to us means this child isgonna be born to us and for us.
And he's gonna be a child, whichmeans the Messiah is not gonna
(33:32):
show up on a white horse todefeat the armies of the world.
He's gonna come into the worldby natural means as a baby.
From day one, as a baby, theMessiah is gonna have a purpose.
For to us, a child is born.
But here's where it getsperplexing.
Because this child, there'sthree things that make sense to
us, but would have beenmind-blowing and maybe confusing
(33:52):
to these people.
The child would be called mightyGod.
Look right there in verse six.
For to us a child is given, andthen down at the end of that
verse six, it says, Mighty God.
A child who would be calledmighty God.
Okay, church, theology quiz.
Does God have a beginning?
No, he is eternal.
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We teach this to our children inthe children's program.
The reason young families cometo this church is because they
know their children are going tobe taught faithful biblical
theology.
One of those most importantthings is that God is eternal,
he's always been.
He is the uncaused cause thatspoke everything into creation.
So, how can he be a child?
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Jesus, fully God, truly andfully human.
God become man, a little childwho is mighty God.
The second thing that would haveconfused them, that makes sense
to us, is that the Son, a Son isgiven, would be called
Everlasting Father.
How can an everlasting father,by definition, the everlasting
(34:54):
father, he's been the father ofall things for all time and
before time?
Before the sun was sitting thereand and and our solar system was
spinning around it and we werecounting hours and minutes and
days and weeks.
Before all of that, God existed.
He's the everlasting father.
So how can he be a son?
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Well, if he's a son, wouldn'this dad actually be the
everlasting father?
And as a son, he would have hada starting point.
Y'all with me?
Isn't that perplexing to theJewish mind?
But to us, we go, oh no, no, theeverlasting father.
God became a son.
He entered humanity for us andbecame one of us.
And the third thing that wouldhave been really confusing to
them, but makes sense to us, isthis child who will be born will
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have a beginning, but he also iseverlasting and eternal.
Because it says, of his kingdomthere will be no end.
It's describing Jesus, who wouldbe truly and fully 100% human,
but also truly and fully 200%eternal God.
And each of these names that'sused combines two words.
And each of these words isdescriptive.
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Honestly, you could use this,could be eight names.
You could where it sayswonderful counselor, that's the
first word, the first name.
Mighty God, that's the secondone.
Everlasting Father, that's thethird one.
Prince of Peace, that's thefourth one.
You could actually break thatdown and you could say, His name
shall be called wonderful,counselor, mighty God,
(36:20):
everlasting Father, Prince,peace.
But we condense these, and Ifound out this through a
phenomenal commentary on Isaiah,where the guy described that
there's a Hebrew literarytradition where they would take
words and names and combine themto emphasize and strengthen the
(36:42):
title.
So the wonderful counselor,what's wonderful about Jesus?
His ministry, the fact that hehealed the blind and he touched
the leper, and he and he tookthe prostitute and he made her
whole and he raised the dead.
He was wonderful, but he's acounselor because he would say
to that person, he saved, go andsin no more.
And here's how you can do that,and here's how you can live your
life.
And let me get, oh, oh, I'mleaving.
(37:03):
Let me send my spirit to liveinside of you so that you have
the good counselor with you atall times.
He's wonderful and he's ourcounselor.
He's mighty and he's our God.
He's everlasting and he's ourfather.
And why is that last name, thePrince of Peace, so important?
We'll end with these four thingsthat are described and revealed
about the government because thePrince of Peace is the idea that
(37:25):
he's going to rule as the kingwho comes and sits on the throne
of David there in verse 7.
It says, There will be no end onthe throne of David and over his
kingdom to uh and over hiskingdom to establish it and to
uphold it.
See, if you go back to 2 Samuel7, you can read about this
eternal and perpetual kingdomthat was going to come into the
(37:46):
world.
Let me share in closing thesefour things that are described
and revealed about thegovernment that'll be
established under this king.
Number one, this ruler willestablish and expand a kingdom
where there is peace.
Where there's peace.
No one will ever challenge oroppose his authority or
undermine the effects of hisgovernment.
(38:09):
Because Satan's going to bebound and cast into an eternal
lake of fire.
Y'all, he's going to burn.
He's going to burn and fry androast and scream and anguish,
and his teeth are going to grindagainst the one who has put him
there, but he's not going tobother us in the kingdom of
peace, where our king sits on athrone, ruling and reigning,
where there is no sin, notemptation, no sorrow, no
(38:32):
addiction, no abandonment, noadultery, no guilt, no shame, no
self-harm.
No daddies leave their families.
We're whole under a king who iswhole, who is ruling and
reigning, because the one whohas come against him has been
bound for eternity.
It's already been prepared forhim.
That's a good kingdom.
I'm going to live there.
Hope you are too.
(38:52):
And if you're not, let's talktonight before you leave.
We'll make sure you get there.
It's real simple.
It's actually easy because Jesushas done all the lifting.
He said, Take my yoke.
It's easy.
My burden's light.
I'll do the work for you becauseyou can't do it for yourself.
The second thing that'sdescribed about this government
is that this king will be thecovenant and promise king of uh
(39:12):
that God spoke of to King David.
If you go back to 2 Samuelchapter 7, you can read it.
God said to David, here's what'sgoing to happen.
There's going to be a king whocomes in your line who's going
to be a different kind of king.
He's not just going to rule overearthly Israel, he's going to
rule over an eternal kingdomthat'll never end.
And that's Jesus.
And number three, his governmentand rule will be just and
(39:34):
righteous.
Look there at the end of verse 7with justice and with
righteousness.
Y'all realize the bestgovernments on earth don't
always get it right.
Your candidate will makemistakes.
Good judges convict innocentpeople.
(40:00):
System as long as there areimperfect people running it.
But in this government, onlyjustice and only righteousness.
And if you're a person who'sbeen abused or abandoned, if
you've been hurt and you'vewondered where is God in all of
this, oh, he's building akingdom where people like you
are never going to have to worryabout it again.
Because he's going to deal withthe unrighteous and he's going
to put sin to death forevermore.
(40:22):
It's a good promise.
And last, number four, GodHimself is going to see that
this is done.
You ever hear, there's twosayings I think of.
One is, if you want somethingdone right, do it.
Yep.
Or women, ladies, uh, if youwant something done right, get a
woman to do it.
That's I've I've heard that onetoo.
So, like when it comes to thiskind of a task, no people could
(40:42):
ever establish something likethis.
And so I love what it says atthe end of verse 7.
It says, the zeal of the Lord ofhosts will do this.
God himself is going to see thatthis is done.
There'll be no question as towhether or not this is going to
be accomplished because GodHimself is going to establish
this kingdom.
In fact, we might even say he'salready done it through the work
(41:03):
that Jesus did when he came intothe world.
This Advent season, let'sremember who Jesus is and what
Jesus has done.
That's why we celebrate.
And let's celebrate.
Amen.
Gotta pray tonight that you takeyour word and you'd make it make
sense in the most real andtangible way, and that you would
shape and change our livesbecause of it.
(41:26):
Lord, if there's anybody heretonight that doesn't know you,
doesn't have a relationship withyou, I pray that tonight,
through the hearing of your wordand the promises of scripture
and the declarations of truththat we read and the stories of
Matthew one, stories of Rahaband Boaz and Tamar and Judah and
(41:46):
Mary and Joseph and Josiah, wesee you work in different ways
in people's lives, and I praythat we'd be encouraged by it.
We'd learn to trust you.
Thank you for the power of yourforgiveness and the way that you
graft broken people into yourstory.
But thank you that you don'tcompromise your plan.
Your kingdom will be one ofrighteousness and justice.
(42:08):
And the only way we can be apart of that is through the
righteousness and justice thatJesus provides by trusting in
the work that He did on thecross for us.
If there's anybody here tonightthat hasn't put their faith and
their trust in that, I pray thatthey would, even tonight before
they leave.
Lord, I pray that as wecelebrate what Isaiah prophesied
looking forward, we celebratelooking back, but also the
(42:32):
already not yet aspect of whatyou're still gonna do.
Pray that we'd rejoice over thefact that you came into the
world, but we'd rejoice maybejust as much over the fact that
you're coming again.
And we're gonna be a part of akingdom that'll never end, with
a king that'll never let usdown, a rule of peace and
righteousness and justice withno evil or wicked opposition.
(42:55):
That's what we have to lookforward to, and we're grateful.
We pray these things in Jesus'name.
Amen.
SPEAKER_00 (43:02):
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