to read several different verses and we'll have people read them out so we can see parallels as well that we read in the Old and New Testament that parallel with Matthew's
message.
So if someone can please turn and read Zechariah 14 and verse 9.
It's Zechariah 14 and verse 9.
show there being one.
So he's king over all the earth.
So that's universal kingship.
Daniel 22 and verse 24, the next verse shows that the kingdom cannot be destroyed.
Let's have someone read Isaiah 32 and verse one.
Let's see how Jesus rules.
Because we know he's the universal king and we know that the kingdom's not going to ever be destroyed, but how does he rule in his kingdom?
Isaiah 32 and verse one.
He rules in righteousness.
Of course we wouldn't expect anything less of Jesus Christ.
While conducting this study through Matthew, I couldn't help but think, and I always try to think of key words ah that go with each chapter in each book.
I think the key word that we're going to use this morning for the book of Matthew is the word fulfilled.
I think that properly sums up the meaning of Matthew's text in a single word.
The heart of the Matthew's gospel is this idea.
It's in a nutshell that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament.
We have prophecies all throughout the Old Testament.
showing that Jesus is coming and what He's going to be, how He's going to rule, and even how long His kingdom is going to exist.
In fact, Matthew uses the phrase that it might be fulfilled which was spoken.
This phrase he actually uses 11 times throughout the book of Matthew.
So it's all being fulfilled.
But when we open up to Matthew chapter 1, we're going to notice that it starts out with a laundry list of boring names.
That's how I viewed it the first time I opened the book.
Most of the time I'm reading through Genesis.
You pick up the schedule, I'm read through the Bible in a year, and you start getting to Genesis, Numbers, Job, and it's so and so, but got so and so, but it got so and so, but it
got so and so, but it got so But this is very important.
This could be one of the most important portions of the Bible is because of the genealogies that it gives here.
Matthew begins with a genealogy that ties Jesus to Abraham.
This would be the father of the nation and David who is known as Israel's greatest king.
He uses the title son of David more than all other gospel writers combined in the book of Matthew.
Two, Jesus fulfills the law.
Jesus often looks like he was breaking the law.
Now how so?
He may look like he's breaking the law, of course we know that that's not the case.
The Gentiles, the ones in power, the sect of the Jews, would claim that he was healing on Sabbath and that was a work.
He shouldn't be doing that because you weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath.
He would also ignore man-made washings and claim to have the authority to forgive all sins.
Now to those that don't know, it would have been blasphemous to say that you could forgive someone's sins.
But it says in Matthew chapter 5,
Think not that I have come to destroy the law, but to fulfill.
Christ was not breaking the law.
He was here to fulfill it completely and entirely and perfectly.
True righteousness, Jesus shows, is deeper than the Pharisees outward obedience.
It's a righteousness of the heart.
You see, the Pharisees would go through all the motions.
They'd punch the time clock in the back.
They'd wear the proper garment.
They'd be on time.
They looked great.
But what was in their hearts wasn't what it should have been.
They were sinning.
Three, Jesus fulfills Israel's story.
Matthew shows Jesus living out of Israel's, living out Israel's entire story.
So we see Israel going to Egypt.
And here we see parallels.
Israel fleeing all the way to Egypt.
Jesus was taken to Egypt.
He did this as a small child where he learned.
Israel passed through the Red Sea.
We have a parallel with Jesus passing through baptism.
He didn't do this for the remission of his sins.
He did it as an example for all of us.
Here's another parallel I saw.
Israel was tested for 40 years.
Jesus was tested for 40 days.
It's interesting all the parallels that we can see between the Old and the New Testament.
Moses gave the law on the mountain.
What mountain did Jesus give his sermon on?
Sermon on the mountain, right?
My notes just jumped all over the place.
There we go.
Some calls Matthew's of Jesus a new Moses.
Now these are commentators.
I wouldn't go as far as to say he's a new Moses.
He's the first Jesus, not a new Moses.
But there are five books of Moses and five major teachings within the section of Matthew, another major parallel.
Throughout the book, Jesus repeatedly calls Israel to repent.
When they refuse, he weeps over the city and warns of judgment, which was fulfilled in 8070 when Jerusalem fell and was taken over.
So the theme, what is the central theme of Matthew as a book?
Well, it's that Jesus Christ is King, right?
If the key word is fulfilled, who's fulfilling and what is he fulfilling?
Jesus Christ being the King.
Matthew is the gospel of the king and his kingdom.
So we have a few different key verses.
And I'm going to skip over this section because I picked out key verses of the book.
But I prefer to go through key verses of each chapter as we're able to get to those.
ah So we'll hit those.
And you can feel free to highlight those verses.
Now, these are not anything written in stone.
These are just ones that kind of called out to me that I thought.
summarized the full meaning of what was in that specific chapter.
so overview of Matthew.
Part 1.
is going to be chapters one through four.
This is going to be the introduction to Jesus because we see His birth, His boyhood, His baptism, and His battle with Satan all in the first four verses.
Then we can section it off into two more sections.
We have part two, which is the ministry in Galilee.
This is going to be chapter four to chapter 18.
This divided would be what Jesus taught.
This would be chapters five through seven, which is the Sermon on the Mount.
You have what Jesus wrought.
or brought, either one.
Us preachers, like to rhyme things, so.
That would be chapters 8 through 10 and his miracles, what Jesus wrought.
And what people thought.
These are the varied reactions from chapter 11 through chapter 18 of how they reacted to the gospel message and all of his miracles.
And part three is the climax in Judea.
This is chapter 19 through chapter 28.
Jesus presents himself in Jerusalem, 19 through 25.
Jesus is crucified, 26 through 27.
And Jesus rises and commissions his disciples in chapter 28.
So that completes an overview of the book of Matthew.
So let's go ahead and get into chapter one.
aah We'll go ahead.
and ask why are we studying specifically this chapter.
This chapter looks simple, but it's a genealogy.
I genealogies were important, followed by a birth announcement.
And this actually helps us in chapter one defeat one of the largest arguments made for Jesus Christ being the Messiah, which is that he was not a Levite.
This genealogy helps us prove
how he came from the order of Malkizideq, which I'm hoping to get to either today or at the next class, and proved that he was the Messiah despite not being a Levite.
Because in Old Testament law, you had to be a Levite to be a priest.
And we know him to be both our high priest and our king.
Again, this is one of the most foundational chapters in the entire New Testament.
Most importantly,
Matthew does not begin with a miracle or teaching, but with a legal record.
All right, so we have a roadmap that I've created for chapter one.
So here's the roadmap, and you can feel free to mark this in your Bible if you want with little connotations.
I like to just put a little line and section them off so I can see the different sections.
But verses 1 through 17 is Joseph's ancestry.
We're going to examine the genealogy of Jesus, who these people were, why genealogy mattered to the Jews, and why Matthew includes certain surprising names, and what all this
teaches us about the Messiah.
That's going to go deeper into the whole argument for the order of Melchizedek.
The second section of Matthew chapter one is verses 18 through 19, very small, but I noted this as Joseph's quandary, his question.
We're gonna look at Joseph's situation when he learns Mary's pregnant, how he reacts to this.
We're gonna talk about Jewish betrothal, Joseph's options, his emotional struggle, and the character he shows and what he decides to do when he finds all this out.
Because he did have options.
And some of the...
uh
some of the marriage laws in antiquity for the Jews is very different from how we see things now, but we'll get into that.
Section three for chapter one, we Joseph's dream, this is verses 20 through 23, where they examine the angel's message to Joseph, the meaning of the name Jesus, what it actually
translates to, and how prophecy is fulfilled.
So be thinking about what the word Immanuel,
means.
Jesus goes by many different names, but each one of these has different meanings, and they're very important meanings.
And finally, we have section four, which is Joseph's decision.
This is verses 24 through 25.
We're going to see how Joseph responds with obedience and faith, and what teaches us about righteousness itself, because Joseph can be a very good teacher on what a good Christian
attitude can be, what righteousness looks like, and how Joseph's choices help establish Jesus as the legal heir of David's throne.
So.
Does anyone know why Jews kept genealogies?
Why do we keep genealogies?
For the most part, it's kind of cool to see where you came from, right?
If you're, you know, one third part Samoan or Japanese or whatever it may be.
um But we need to know that while it's cool, every word in scripture is very, very important.
Every comma, every apostrophe showing ownership, all of these things are important.
So that list of boring names that we were talking about earlier,
They all have a major purpose.
uh So let's go ahead and start.
Let's have someone read section, actually I'll go ahead and read section one.
So I'll read one through 17 so we can kind of see what's going on.
So we're in Matthew chapter one versus 17.
One through 17.
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham begat Isaac.
Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren.
And Judas begat Pharez, and Zahra of Tamar, and Pharez begat Esrum, and Esrum begat Aram, and Aram begat Aminadab, and Aminadab begat Nason, and Nason begat Salem.
I don't go to sleep on me.
And Salem begat Boaz of Rechab, and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth, and Obed begat Jesse.
And Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon.
of her that had been the wife of Uriah.
And Solomon begat Reboam, and Reboam begat Abba, and Abba begat Asa, and Asa begat Jehoshaphat.
And Jehoshaphat begat Joram, and Joram begat Osias, and Osias begat Jotham, and Jotham begat Haz, and Haz begat Ezekias, and Ezekias begat Manasseh, and Manasseh begat Amon, and
Amon begat Joesis, and Joesis begat Jeconias, and his brother, about the time that they were carried away to Babylon.
And after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconias begat Selepheal, and Selepheal begat Zerubbabel.
And Zerubbabel begat Abuid.
And Abuid begat Elekin.
And Elekin begat Azor.
And Azor begat Saddock.
And Saddock begat Achim.
And Achim begat Eluid.
And Eluid begat Eleazar.
Eleazar begat Mathen.
And Mathen begat Jacob.
Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, so we see it all coming to a head, and whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.
So the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations.
So that long laundry list of boring names that we just wrote were 14 generations of families.
Seems boring on the top, but there's a lot of very important information and stories that we gain from that.
From the carrying away from the Babylon onto Christ are 14 generations.
All right, so let's go through this.
Starting off, why genealogies were so important to the Jews.
It has a lot of similarities with why genealogies are important to us today.
Number one, land inheritance in ancient Jewish culture depended a lot on genealogy.
If you didn't know who owned the land before you, you wouldn't know who's supposed to inherit the land once the person died, right?
It's the kind of same thing with us, with wills.
And we can read this if someone will get Leviticus chapter 25 and verse 23.
It'll be Leviticus 25, 23.
We're going back into the Old Testament to see why the genealogies were so important, how they relate to property management.
So the lamb belonged to God.
Families needed to prove their ancestral line to reclaim it during the year of Jubilee.
That's what it's talking about here.
They needed to be sown for that time.
Another reason for genealogies that we see in Ezra 2 and verse 62 is that priestly qualifications depended on this.
We had hinted at this earlier about the tribe of Levi, but priests had to prove that they were descended from Aaron.
Without genealogical records, you weren't allowed to serve.
You could say you were a Levi all the time.
but they weren't going to allow you to.
So let's look at Ezra 2 and verse 62.
I'll get this one.
These sought their register among those that were mocked.
I'm sorry, those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found.
So they couldn't find their genealogies.
Therefore were they as polluted, put from the priesthood.
So without proof of the record of their genealogy, they weren't allowed to serve.
It'd be kind of like today, without that passport, we can't leave the United States.
Without our driver's license, we're legally not allowed to drive the car.
They pull you over, see that you don't have the driver's license, they're going to take you out of the vehicle rather quickly.
Another reason for why the genealogical line mattered was the Messiah had to come from a specific line.
Now why?
Let's go back to Matthew, but let's skip ahead and go to Matthew chapter 22 and verse 42.
saying what things he approached to the Son is, they say unto him, the Son of David.
The Son of David.
Every Jewish reader knew that the Messiah had to be descended from Abraham, from David.
He had to come from that line.
So genealogies weren't filler, they weren't, you know, to use a modern term today, but it was important.
These were legal documents, identity markers.
They were spiritual records as well.
So genealogies were very important.
Now the structure of the genealogy that we see in the first part, the first 17 verses of Matthew chapter 1, it can be organized into three different groups of the 14 generations.
We have Abraham to David.
We have David down to the Babylonian exile and the Babylonian exile all the way to Christ.
It's an easy structure that I came up with.
That way it's intentional, it's memorable.
It's something to help me kind of break down the sections in my head.
It helps make a little more sense when you're reading through that long list of names.
It shows Israel's rise of the Abraham to David.
We see the decline of Israel, which is David to the exile, and the restoration, which would be the exile to Christ.
So three different sections to look at the genealogy a different way.
But there are key names throughout the genealogy, very important ones.
Abraham.
Who is Abraham?
Father of the faithful, recipient of God's promise, in thy seed shall all nations be blessed.
That's what he was told by God.
All right, what about Isaac?
Was Isaac the child of promise?
God promised that they would have a child.
In a way, was foreshadowing Christ's virgin birth as well.
Jacob.
Who was Jacob?
What'd say?
Isaac's son, yes, and he was the father of the twelve tribes, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
He was a perfect, but he was chosen, and he did a very good job.
What about Judah?
Judah received the promise of kingship.
We read that in Genesis chapter 49 and verse 10.
The Messiah must come from Judah, as it reads, okay?
That's something else to look.
We have four women located in the genealogy.
It's kind of shocking for the Jews to put women in genealogies.
It was a mostly patriarchal society.
So it would have had the king at the head.
We see that later on with the Queen of Sheba, right?
The Queen of Sheba didn't have a whole lot of power.
In fact, she was thrown out at one point.
But he includes women.
And more notably, it's not the women that we would expect in the genealogy of Christ.
And yet they're there.
But it teaches us something.
Let's look a little deeper.
Do we see the name Tamar?
Who knows who Tamar is?
Genesis chapter 38.
She did pretty despicable things.
We don't have to say it out loud.
It's all right.
Her story is messy.
It's very scandalous, right?
But God works through her, right?
We see Rahab.
We read about Rahab in Joshua chapter two.
This was a Gentile prostitute, but she had great faith.
She's also included and talked about in Hebrews chapter 11.
But these women are in the genealogy of Christ.
Okay.
Let's keep reading.
We're going to learn something.
Ruth.
Ruth was a Moabite outsider, adopted into God's family through loyalty and faith, right?
Ruth was a stand-up person.
Now, she's not named specifically, but we see David's name and who he bore, Solomon, through who?
It says the wife of Uriah.
Who was that?
Pashiba.
It's okay, you guys can talk out loud.
I teach a little different than Aaron does, for sure.
um
She's mentioned as the wife of Rirai.
I think this is because he's reminding us of David's sin.
He's not going to name her by name.
These women teach us that Jesus' family includes a few different things.
We see outsiders, we see sinners, we see broken stories.
We see Gentiles, don't we?
Full of Gentiles.
We see scandals and we see redemption.
Jesus didn't come from a perfect family.
But he didn't use that and become a victim of it, did he?
He came for imperfect families.
The big difference.
We can learn a lot by looking at the genealogical list.
So we move forward to David and the kings.
Also in the genealogy, it's almost a centerpiece, right?
They're the names that stick out to us most when we read that laundry list of boring names.
God promised them eternal throne and Jesus is the fulfillment of that.
Solomon follows, then a line of kings, both good and evil.
We see Hezekiah.
Was Hezekiah faithful or evil?
Faithful.
He was faithful, yes.
What about Manasseh?
It's a bit a trick question.
Manasseh was terribly wicked to begin with, but then he repented, changed his ways, right?
What about Josiah?
Mm-hmm.
God preserved the messianic line through faithful kings, through wicked kings, through crises, and even through an exile.
And yet the genealogy proves that Christ's line never left the planet.
But here we come into the Jeconiah problem.
and God's solution.
I'm going to use the word curse here, but it's not a curse as we think, like, you know, voodoo curse.
It's just the best word that I can think of to use to signify what happened.
But we see Jeconiah, your translation may say Jehoiakim, and he was cursed in Jeremiah 22 and verse 30.
Can somebody please get that?
We want to read that.
Jeremiah 22 and verse 30.
the Lord.
Okay, so God said that no descendant of his would sit on the throne of David.
So we had a problem, right?
If he was part of that line, how could Christ be sitting on the throne of David?
How could Christ be the Messiah?
Okay, so here's the perfect solution that God gives us, Joseph's genealogy includes Jeconiah, right?
This gives Jesus legal right to the throne.
But Jesus is not biologically descended from Joseph, is he?
No, he's not.
Who's he descended from?
through Mary.
Yeah.
So would he be able to avoid that curse?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So through Mary's genealogy, which we read through Luke chapter three, this avoids Jeconiah altogether and traces his lineage back through Nathan instead.
So we avoid the Jeconiah problem.
That's not an issue.
Jesus receives the throne without receiving the, as I said before, the curse that was put on Jeconiah.
But then we come into section two, moving past the genealogy.
We're going move into Joseph's quandary.
This is section two, verses 18 through 19 of Matthew chapter one.
Jump back over here.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on the rise.
When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.
Then Joseph, her husband, being just a man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.
Who can tell me the meaning of the word privily?
Secretly.
Privately.
It's an old fancy word, but Mary's found to be pregnant.
She knows Joseph isn't the father, right?
She knows that it's not Joseph's son.
They're betrothed, but are they legally married yet?
No, no.
And yet, now we get back into why I said earlier we need to look at Jewish law in antiquity.
It was a lot different back then than what it is today.
Joseph would have been heartbroken, he would have been confused, but when you are betrothed to a woman in ancient Jewish culture, you actually had to get a divorce.
Before you were even like completely submerged in marriage, right?
You had to get divorce papers just to get rid of the being betrothed to one another.
When you're in the fiance state, that was just as legally binding for them as it would have been for us today being completely married.
Which is kind of odd.
It's something that stuck out to me.
but moving forward from that.
Yeah, engaged, promise, yeah.
But it was kind of like a legal status back then.
And so you would have had to have went to what would be the equivalent of the local courthouse, and you'd have to get documentation.
He would have to embarrass her publicly and put her away for that.
But he had a mind to do so privately, right?
When we look at verse 19, it calls Joseph what kind of man?
A just man.
That's right.
This means that Joseph would be righteous, merciful.
A just man would be self-controlled.
A just man would be patient.
A just man would be wise.
He would be conscious of his decisions.
He wouldn't just leap into things, right?
So Joseph decides to put Mary away quietly instead of shaming her publicly.
I think this speaks volumes of his character because he doesn't want to ruin the life of someone else.
So a lesson that we can learn from Joseph when looking at this is as Christians, should we think before deciding to act?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, we notice Joseph doesn't panic.
He doesn't lash out in anger.
had every right to.
I mean, he thinks that it's someone else's child.
It is someone else's child.
It's not his.
And it's his betrothed.
But he doesn't assume the worst either.
We see no indication of that.
He doesn't react emotionally.
He finds this unique balance between justice and mercy, doesn't he?
He's trying to think through.
So as Christians, I think we need to not act on emotion, but we need to think.
We need to pray, most importantly.
Then we need to decide on what action we're supposed to take whenever we're faced with very tough and hard decisions with people.
Joseph's example here is one of mature.
m
disciplined righteousness, isn't it?
So moving on to section three, Joseph's dream.
This is going to be verses 20 through 23.
If I can get someone to read that.
Matthew chapter one, 20 through 23.
But while he thought about these things behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream Saying Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take him marry your wife for that
which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit and She will bring forth a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins
How many verses?
That's a 23.
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, behold the virgin shall be with child and bear a son and they shall call
his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.
Now, when we look back at the verse, it says that which was conceived in him was of the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, depending on your translation.
The Holy Ghost there, that word in Greek means guest.
Doesn't mean like cat's birds, not a wispy spirit floating around.
Just a side note.
But as Joseph considers what to do, God intervenes, doesn't he?
We see an angel appearing to him.
And what does he tell Joseph?
Two words, very important for Joseph.
Fear not.
One, it'd be frightening to have an angel standing right in front of you.
But also it could be frightening the situation as well as what he's in, right?
We're not sure the context of which one those would be, but he tells him, fear not.
This also kind of gives us a glimpse into his emotional state, right?
We can assume, and I'm not going to say verbatim, but we can assume that Joseph's internal state was afraid.
He would have been hurt.
I would have been confused with this kind of a situation.
He was clearly worried about Mary's reputation, and he would have been worried about his own son, right?
The angel reveals that Mary is innocent, doesn't it?
Shows him that the child was of the Holy Spirit.
And then it kind of gives him a command.
He says, must take Mary as your wife.
And Joseph, you must name him Jesus.
Does anyone know what the name Jesus means or translates to?
Savior?
Yep.
Yahweh saves.
is the most direct literal translation of the name that you can get.
So Jesus being completely anglicized from the Greek would be Yahweh saves or savior.
Absolutely.
That name would denote his entire mission on this planet, right?
For Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
I chose this verse, for He shall save His people from their sins, as the key verse for the entire chapter.
In fact, this is the one that I made the boys memorize whenever we taught them this class.
But we see prophecy fulfilled here, right?
Everyone turn back over to Isaiah chapter 7 and verse 14.
We're going to point back to the scripture that was prophesying that this would happen.
Matthew is quoting Isaiah in Matthew chapter 1.
Isaiah chapter 7 and verse 14.
and bear a son shall call his name Immanuel.
Well, which one was it?
Was it Jesus or was it Immanuel?
It can be both, right?
Matthew quotes Isaiah that shows this birth fulfills the prophecy.
A virgin shall conceive, his name shall be called Immanuel.
And Immanuel, literally translated, simply means God with us, right?
Be very similar to Yahweh saves.
The Creator enters creation.
We see it happen.
God walks among his people and God becomes man, which brings us on to chapter four.
I'm sorry, section four.
Joseph's decision.
This is going to be verses 24 and 25 of Matthew chapter one.
Matthew one, 24 and 25.
Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and
he called his name Jesus.
What does Joseph do the moment he wakes up from his dream?
Runs to Mary.
Does he obey?
He obeys God.
The moment he wakes up, he obeys God.
Another testament to Joseph's character.
He had a great character.
He cared about Mary.
He cared about himself.
He wanted to do what was right.
He didn't want to ruin someone's life.
He wanted to think and pray about what he chose before he acted on it.
Stand up, gentlemen.
He names the child Jesus.
Something I noted, it kind of stuck out to me when studying chapter one, was that we never see Joseph speak a single line in scripture.
Nowhere in scripture does Joseph speak.
He's simply just there.
And we get a testimony of his character.
Sometimes some of the best lessons we can learn is from someone who speaks less.
Because actions speak louder than
words, many, many times.
That's right.
would know.
I put my foot in my mouth a lot.
Of course.
His actions declare his faith.
He chooses God's reputation over his own reputation, doesn't he?
Because if it got out, people would wonder, well, that's not your kid.
You guys aren't even fully married yet.
You're just betrothed.
But he wants to protect God's reputation.
That speaks volume of him.
If we had to, we'll end the class on this because I know the bell just rang and we're right at getting to chapter two and we'll go through the priesthood in Mount Kizidek next
time.
But if you had to use one word to define Joseph, what would you use?
Just would be a good one.
Anyone else?
I like the word obedience.
to always see him do is obey.
It's fantastic.
All right.
We've got just a minute or two left.
Does anyone have any questions?
I was just thinking, I don't know about you, but if an angel showed up to me and told me to do something, I kind of not change what I was told.
Yeah.
Well, what if he tells you, fear not?
It's kind of a tall earth.
We'll get an angel in the eye, right?
Yeah.
All right, thank you guys very much for your attention this morning.
We'll continue about the Order of Melchizedek in Chapter 2 next class.
Thank you.