I'm going to do my
best this morning the best I can.
But I ask you to pray for me.
I'm really not doing well.
And so,
just be praying that God gives me
clarity and coherency as we go through,
part of this first chapter of look at Matthew.
We're starting this series through the book of
Matthew is going to take us a long time,
because there's 28 chapters in the book of Matthew.
And they are all full of things worthy of our study and worthy of our time.
So it's going to take us quite a while to get through it.
I've titled this series Kingdom Now, based on
Jesus's teaching on prayer
and, in Matthew six.
Part of that prayer goes,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And our desire is that the kingdom of God would come in our midst, and we would be
able to live in the presence of the King,
even on this earth.
And so we're going to look at the book of Matthew, desiring the kingdom
to come and see what Matthew has to say about the kingdom of God.
That's unique to the book of Matthew that framed the idea of the kingdom of God.
That's really unique to Matthew.
I want to spend a lot of this morning
giving you some background on the Gospel of Matthew
to set the stage for what it is we're going to read,
through these next many, many, many weeks.
And to do that, I need to help us understand, as a church,
the four Gospels and what's unique about Matthew,
these four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
they were written by four very distinct people
with a distinct perspective and priority
in their recording of the life of Jesus.
Matthew was a disciple of Jesus and an apostle.
Mark was an assistant to Peter the Apostle, but he was not a disciple.
Luke was a Gentile doctor and the author of both Luke and Acts.
But he was not a disciple of Jesus.
He was not an apostle.
And John, who was a disciple of Jesus and an apostle.
So of the four Gospels, only two of them were written by the disciples
Matthew and John.
Mark and Luke were not.
Luke did a lot of research
after the ascension of Jesus and records what he learned from, the
from the disciples in personal interviews, eyewitness interviews.
Mark was an assistant to Peter, who was a disciple.
But of the four Gospels, only Matthew and John
were disciples of Jesus and the apostles of Christ.
And they each Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John write
from a very different perspective with the different priority.
Matthew's concern is to write to the Jews
about the royal line of Jesus,
and that it is the royal line through David that
Matthew uses the
this idea of the the royalty, the royal
line of David, that Jesus comes from that royal line en route to the juicers.
Over 130 references and referrals to the Old Testament in the Book of Matthew.
And so it's very, very, very Jewish.
And if we're going to understand in any depth
the book of Matthew, we have to understand a lot of the Old Testament.
So as we go through this study, I'll I'll draw a lot of that out.
Help us understand, the depth of the Jewishness
and the Old Testament, that, from which Matthew writes,
Mark,
as a different perspective.
Mark writes basically to the Romans,
Jews and Gentile Romans
and really presents Jesus as the servant.
Luke is different.
Luke presents Jesus as the Son of Man.
It's written specifically to Gentiles.
And so a lot of Jesus's humanity, how he treats the poor
and and women and children come out in the book of Luke.
And then John presents Jesus to the world,
and it talks about Jesus as the Son of God, the Eternal One.
And so in Matthew, we have this gospel written to the Jews.
In Mark we have this gospel written to the Romans
in Luke, written to the Gentiles, and in John written to the world.
And so they present Jesus in different.
It's like a different facet of a diamond.
They're all right.
It's just a different look at this.
Jesus, who is the Christ, the eternal one, the Messiah.
In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, three of them are very, very,
very similar to each other, and we call them the synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels.
That means they share a lot of the same information.
A lot of the what we'll read in Matthew will also be recorded.
And Mark and Luke for or very similar things.
For instance,
very famous message that Jesus preached called the sermon on the Mount.
Matthew five six and seven, very similarly is recorded in Luke,
but it's called the The Sermon on the plain
because it it's just a different perspective of that, of that message.
And so they're very similar information.
John is different.
John is not like the Synoptics at all.
John is a very unique,
presentation of Jesus because it's written to the entire world.
There's not a single audience, that John has in mind.
And so as we go through this, I just want I want to help you be good Bible
students and understand that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the Synoptic Gospels.
John is is very, very different.
For instance, in the book of John
we have things that we don't have in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
One of those is that in John,
John records for seven I am statements of Jesus says
I'm the I'm the door, I'm the gate, I'm the good shepherd.
I'm the resurrection, the life, the seven I am statements.
And we don't have those anywhere else in all of the Bible.
And so it's unique to itself.
So I just want to help you understand
a little bit about these four gospels that will be, that will be study. And,
Matthew really
presents the kingdom of God in upside down fashion.
Like says, look, I know you.
He was it.
He was a Jew himself. It comes from the Hebrews.
And this I know that we've been hoping for this
Messiah that would overthrow the Romans and, and and,
you know, give us back our national power and identity.
And I know that's what we were hoping that the Messiah would be.
But but Jesus is the Messiah, and he's doing a little bit differently.
Because I want to understand that.
I mean, that's how God works.
God rarely does things according to what we think he ought to do things right?
Right.
Like he's like, I have my like, let me be me.
God says, quit trying to be me.
I know what I'm doing.
My ways are higher than yours.
My thoughts are beyond yours.
And I'm there's not a mistake in my economy.
Let me do my thing.
And so Matthew presents Jesus and the kingdom of God.
That's unique to Matthew in a way that this
this look, this is going to be upside down from what you think.
And it's a
really unique perspective, Matthew, as other name
that we know him in the Bible is Levi, and there's some indication
that he comes from the he may come from the tribe of Levi.
And if you know, biblical,
history in the 12 Tribes,
Levi was one of the 12 tribes and Levi was the priestly tribe.
And so it could be that Matthew comes from the priestly tribe.
And as such, Matthew should have been a really, really, really good, devout Jew.
Really good religious Jew should have been.
But he wasn't
at all, Matthew was a tax collector.
If any of you heard that that Matthew was a tax collector, you've heard that.
And so tax collectors were they were an oddity,
in, in, in the amongst
the Jews because, in the, in Israel,
the Roman government was the ruling authority.
They were the occupying force.
They were the greatest military, greatest empire in the world at the time.
And they had taken over kind of this the, the
they were occupying the Promised Land.
So all these Hebrew,
these Jews were living under the oppression of the Roman Empire.
And in order for the Roman Empire to propagate
throughout the world, they it cost a lot of money.
And the way they got that money was through exorbitant taxes.
We know something about that.
And so the way they would collect their taxes
is they would employ Jews
to collect taxes from their fellow Jews.
And so what you had were these these Jews living in the land,
the promised land and their own people are collecting taxes from them
to give to the occupying force, so the occupying force could continue
to oppress them and take over, you know, other parts of the world.
So tax collectors were hated by their own people.
The interesting thing about tax collectors, the only people who knew
how much tax the Roman authorities wanted were the Romans and the tax collectors.
The people did it know.
So whatever the tax collector said, that's what I owed.
Whether
whether
it was what the Romans said or not.
So here's what the tax collector did.
If the Romans said we need x, Y, and z in taxes,
the tax collector had the authority because you don't know how much Roman Rome
has wanted to say x, Y, and z, and A, B and C,
and so they would take x, y and z
and give that to Rome, and they would keep A, B and C for themselves.
And so they were thieves.
They had no integrity, they were dishonest,
and they were really rich.
And so they're stuck.
I mean, unfortunately, they were stuck in this no man's land
because they're all fellow Jews.
And he was hated.
Because how can you work for the occupying force
and steal money from us and get rich off of this?
And the Romans didn't really like him because they were dirty Jews anyway.
And so they were stuck in this no man's land.
They didn't have relationships.
They didn't have friends.
They didn't have, like a, a family they were a part of.
It's very likely that their own family, like, disowned them
because how could you live like that? How could you do that?
After the Romans and a pressure on people.
And so they were in this, this really, really, really tough spot.
And so the moment Jesus calls Matthew,
it was so transformative for Matthew
because he had been shunned and discarded by his people.
He was simply used as a dog by the Romans.
And now you have this Jesus who says there's
something about you that I value.
There's something about you that's worth redeeming.
There's something about you,
that that I cherish.
Matthew had never experienced that from anybody before.
And so the moment Matthew heard Jesus say, Matthew, I want you to follow me.
It changed his whole world because now
somebody invited him into
a healthy relationship.
And so Matthew chose to follow Jesus,
and he never looked back.
It changed Matthew's identity and it changed Matthew's direction.
And friends, please hear me when I say this.
This is what is intended when we give our life
to Jesus, to change our identity and to change our direction.
Most people
want Jesus to come in their lives to make their life better.
I want to add God to this part of my world to make that better
and God says, that's not that's not the point.
The point is this
I want you to add your life to me,
not me, to you, because I want to change your identity.
I want to change your direction.
Do you understand that?
Like we don't add Jesus to us to make stuff better,
we attach our life to him,
to change our identity and to change our direction.
And that's what Matthew did.
And and this, this is what discipleship is.
This is what being a Christian really is.
It's these four words I want you to remember, belong, become, give and go,
belong, become, give and go.
This is what we'll see in Matthew.
That's what we see in all the disciples.
And every bit of the follow Jesus in the in in the New Testament
we see these four things belong, become, give and go.
They will join their lives to Christ.
They belong to the family of God.
And the expression of the family of God in the world, the church they belong.
And because they belong to Christ,
they become something they weren't before.
Jesus says, if you, those in me
become a new creation, creations, the old is gone.
The news comes.
So we become something we weren't before.
And when those two internal things happen,
they flesh themselves out into external things.
I then give Matthew is going to leave
his tax collector booth, which means he's going to leave his identity.
He's going to leave his money is going to leave his position.
He's going to leave his power is going to leave all of that behind.
And he's going to give all of that to Jesus
because he belongs to the family of God.
He's becoming something he never was before.
He's going to give of himself in his resources,
and he's going to go on behalf of the Kingdom
and tell other people about this Jesus that radically transformed his life.
Of the disciples and apostles,
we don't know a lot throughout history of where and how they end it.
We know about a few of them, but a lot of them we just have church history,
to rely on that history tells us that Matthew,
because he belonged to the family of God and he became somebody he wasn't
previously, and he gave everything in his life to the kingdom of God.
He then would go into Ethiopia
and become a martyr for the kingdom
belong, become give and go.
So if you're if you ever start wondering like what's next in my spiritual journey,
just think about those four things belong, become, give and go.
Do you belong to the family of God and the local expression through?
Have you given yourself to God and His family?
Are you becoming continually
becoming someone new?
Are you giving of that
which God has given you to further his kingdom in the world?
And are you going on behalf of the Kingdom
to tell other people in your huddle and those in your world about Christ?
Do you understand that? Yes.
Belong, become give and go.
That's the that's the that's the process of a disciple.
And that's what we'll see in Matthew over and over and see in all these
in the New Testament, that to follow Jesus.
So I would just ask you, just consider yourself for yourself right now.
Do you belong to the family of God and the expression of God through the
in the world, through the church?
Are you becoming a new creation
like things are changing?
Are you giving sacrificially?
Are you going until another be about you?
Like where are you and what's your next step?
This is how we grow up in our faith.
Matthew follow Jesus.
He left his former identity and he did two things.
He opened his heart to Jesus and he opened his his home to Jesus.
He opened his heart to Jesus, and he opened his home to Jesus.
The soon after, Matthew decided
to follow this invitation of Jesus to to apprentice after him.
We know in the Bible that Matthew threw a party
and he's like, look, I've been an outcast my whole life.
My own people didn't like me, I didn't have a place.
And Jesus accepted me.
And he's making me a whole new person.
I'm going to throw a party and invite my friends to to to be around Jesus.
I gotta tell my friends about him.
And so Matthew throws a party.
But who do you think Matthew invited to his dinner party?
Yeah.
Who's going to be friends with tax collectors?
Tax collectors?
There's one other group that's friends with corrupt rich people.
Prostitutes?
Yeah, so that's what the Bible says.
He invited tax collectors and prostitutes to a dinner party.
Because, after all, who's going to be friends with corrupt, super rich people?
And so he throws this party with all these tax collectors and process
because there's only ones that he's connected to.
Think about it.
And he invites Jesus,
which let me just say, this is a great evangelism strategy
to throw parties for people who don't know Jesus and invite
some of us who do know Jesus to be there to talk to them about Jesus.
Some of you are great invites
and some of your great party planners, and some of you are great cooks.
And if you're a great party planner and cook really good food, throw a
party and invite me.
Now listen,
I don't want to go to all your parties,
but some of you who are really good cooks and bakers.
Yeah,
but so this is a great this is a great event.
And so this is, this is what hospitality is like.
In the first church, they used hospitality to introduce people to their faith.
And so Matthew throws this party and it's it's so typical.
The freaking religious people, they're kind of standing on the outskirts
and they see Jesus and Matthew hanging out with tax collectors and prostitutes,
and they're like, how can he do that?
Doesn't he know who these people are?
And Jesus confronts him and he says, listen,
it's not the healthy who need a doctor.
It's the sick.
I've come to seek and save the lost.
Here's what I love about Jesus response.
It's pretty profound, he said.
I have come to seek and save you.
Religious people come to seek and condemn.
That's all they wanted to do.
They want to seek out who's breaking the law and condemn him
for being lawbreakers.
This is the difference between, you know,
most religion and Christianity.
Religion wants to seek you out and condemn you for all the wrong we've done.
Jesus wants to seek us out and save us.
But here's here's what we have to realize.
He wants to save us from our old sin life.
He says it's not the health you need, doctor, but the sick.
Listen, Jesus can't save anybody who doesn't first
admit they're sick.
They understand.
Like there has to be the acknowledgment.
I realize the way I'm living is contrary to your standard.
That's sick.
It's sin. Sick.
I have to acknowledge my sin, sickness
before I can be saved from it.
There's a lot of talk amongst,
you know, church people, religious people.
I want to be careful because I want to communicate this well.
But this idea that Jesus loves you
just like you are, and he just wants you to experience his love.
We got to be real careful.
I think it's more along the lines biblically that Jesus loves us, though
we are
not just as we are, because if he just simply loved us
as we are, he wants us to know his love.
He would never have to die on the cross,
and they would never have to be forgiveness of sin.
So he loves us, though we are.
The Bible says while we were sinners separated from him, he loved us.
And so there has to be the acknowledgment I don't I can't just add
Jesus to my sin life and him make my life better.
There has
to be the acknowledgment there sin.
I have to repent of that and there has to be a change.
That's what repentance is, to turn and go the other way.
And so Jesus says, look, yes, I've come to save people,
but I've come to save sick people who admit they're sick.
You can't be saved.
It's until for some it you're sick. Does it make sense?
You understand?
Have you ever heard that saying that people who are nothing like
Jesus, like Jesus?
Let me say that again because some of you missed it.
People who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus.
Matthew is nothing like Jesus, but he sure liked Jesus.
And that is so true.
But Jesus didn't just want to be liked, he wanted to heal people from their sin
like they couldn't.
Just can't like, Jesus can't be a part of my life,
but I'm going to continue in my sinful ways.
There has to be a dying of that.
And the fact
that Jesus heals all of that makes me like him,
because he doesn't leave me in my old sin ways.
You know, I'm
going to get to Matthew one one in just a minute.
But one of the things I like about Matthew is the only thing
Matthew tells us about himself is that he was a tax collector.
He doesn't tell us much of the good,
the the fact that Matthew left everything
and sacrificed everything his position, his power, his money, his wealth.
He doesn't tell us that Luke does it?
Matthew doesn't tell us about his,
you know, this great party he through and invite all these people and Jesus.
He doesn't tell us that Luke does.
The only thing Matthew tells us is, look, I used to be a tax collector.
And then Jesus and I love his humility.
He's not it's not self-deprecating.
He's just like, look, this is what was.
And I want to tell you who I was because it's not who I am.
I was.
And then Jesus said, listen, some of you have that very story.
And that is another great evangelism tool.
You some of you have a great I used to be and then Jesus story,
the great thing about your personal story is nobody can argue with it.
It's your story.
And some of you can say, I used to be.
And then Jesus.
And if you have a I used to be and then Jesus story,
you need to tell your story
not to glorify who you used to be, but to glorify and magnify
who Jesus is and the mercy and grace of God to change you.
Does that make sense? You understand.
It's a great evangelism strategy.
I also like the fact that Matthew, the tax collector,
I mean, these guys had to be so precise and so detailed.
I mean, you know what CPAs are like, right?
Like the all the details and not a penny out.
And they just know all this that like, I couldn't live like like,
but he was so detailed and so precise.
And that's exactly what God you like.
Here's what I know. God will read it.
God will you God will repurpose whatever,
whatever we're like.
God repurposes that.
If we allow him for his kingdom.
In other words,
when God was going to use Moses to liberate
his people out of Egypt, he said, Moses, what do you have in your hand right now?
Moses was like, I got a stick. He goes, great, we'll use it.
When he went to David, he
said, David, you're going to be the one to to lead my people.
There's a giant we got to get rid of first.
What do you have in your hand?
And David said, well, I got a sling. God.
So great. We'll use that.
And so now Jesus was like, look,
I need some guys to follow me and record this.
So. So, Matthew, what do you have Matthew like?
Well, I got a real detailed mine and a pen and a paper
and just like, well, that's great.
It's exactly what I need.
And the Gospel of Matthew is so precise and so detailed.
So here's what I'm saying.
Whatever you are, whoever you are,
God wants to repurpose that for his kingdom advancement, just like you are.
When I was young,
I thought, man, I wish I could play the guitar.
That'd be so cool.
So I became a youth pastor and I taught myself to play the guitar.
I say play the guitar.
That's a really generous statement.
I could strum a few chords,
but I thought, God,
if you would just give me a voice, I would love to be like these guys.
I would love be able to sing like that right?
Right.
Some of you think you can sing like that and you
just.
It's like God's like, Carl, I don't need you to sing.
I got plenty of singers.
I need people to tell stories.
So when I was young, my mom told me this.
She said, Carl, you are a great storyteller.
I think what she was really saying was, Carl, you can really tell great lies
and make people believe you.
Like, yeah, I think that's really what she was saying.
And I remember when
she told me that I thought, Big Lottie, duh, I'm a storyteller.
I tell you, listen, there's usually there's not a young man
trying to understand his manhood who was like, yes, I'm a storyteller.
That's.
But you know what I do every week?
I think God finally got a hold of me.
He said, Carl, what do you do? I'm like, I tell stories.
He goes, right,
that's what I need.
So God takes whoever we have repurposes it for his kid.
That's what he did with Matthew.
And so Matthew one one,
here's the big idea
when God writes the story, nothing is a mistake.
When God writes the story, nothing's a mistake.
Matthew is very concerned with the genealogy of Jesus.
It's very important.
Matthew wants to drive home
the point to his Hebrew learners, his Jewish learners, hearers
that Jesus is of the royal line of David, that he has a legal right
to rule, has a legal right to the throne,
and so chapter one, verse one.
Yeah.
Chapter one, verse one,
the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham,
Matthew is driving home the point of the royal line of Jesus
through King David to rule and to reign his people.
There's three titles.
He speaks of Jesus in this one verse of Jesus Christ.
We have to understand Christ wasn't Jesus's last name.
There were.
There were a lot of Jesus's in this time is a very common name.
He was probably called Jesus bar Joseph.
Jesus, the son of Joseph.
Christ is a title.
It's not a name.
Christ is the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Messiah,
which means the chosen one, the Anointed One, the one that
all of Jewish history throughout the Old Testament was looking forward to.
The coming of the Messiah.
So it's Jesus, the Christ.
That's what Matthew saying.
And then he uses these two other title, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.
When he says, the son of David, he's saying, Jesus is of the royal line
and the Son of Abraham, he's of the racial line,
because the Jews knew that their Messiah would be
of the royal line of David and the racial line of the Jews.
And so right at the beginning, he's saying this Jesus, he's
not just a good teacher, he's not just a moral man.
He is of the royal line of David.
So he has a right to rule, and he's of the racial line of Abraham.
He is the chosen one.
And then Matthew goes through from verses
one through 16, this listing of names.
And it just sounds like it sounds like the telephone book.
We'll have telephone books and more.
Dewey, Dewey, my dating myself, how old I am.
It sounds like just a list of names.
And what he's doing, he's saying there's three sections.
He lists three sections in verses one through 17.
And these three sections relate to three
eras of God's people, from the patriarchy
to the monarchy, from the monarchy to the captivity to the captivity.
The activity from the Patriarch Abraham to the monarchy David
from the monarchy, David to the captivity in Babylon
and from the Captivity in Babylon to the Nativity, the birth of Christ.
These are the three areas that Matthew is detailing here, because why?
Because he's drawn the line from Jesus all the way back through David,
the monarchy to Abraham, the patriarchy.
Draw on this line
and over and over.
Just look at these.
Look, I want I I've thought through the names,
all the people here before and I'm not going to do that
because it's going to take us way too long.
But you can research that.
I've done a lot of teaching on that myself.
But let me just give you an example.
So verse two, Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac the father of Jacob, but Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
and due to the father Perez and Sarah by Tamar,
And Perez, the father of his reign, who has run the father of Ram,
and ran the father of a minute, in a minute as the father of nation.
And that's on the father of salmon, who was a fisherman.
Skin and salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz
the father of Obed by Ruth, and oh, by the father of Jesse, and Jesse,
the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon,
by the wife of Uriah and Solomon, and the father Rehoboam, or the father.
I bet all these people it just sounds like one name after one name after winning.
But listen, what was our big idea?
When God writes the story, nothing's a mistake.
These names here aren't just haphazard names.
They're here for a reason.
These people are here for a reason and purpose.
Nothing is here by mistake.
And what Matthew is doing, and he's saying, look down in verse 17.
So all the generations from Abraham to David, this is everything that he's
just talked through, all the generations to Abraham, to David were 14 generations.
And from David to the deportation of Babylon, 14 generations
after the deportation to Babylon, to the Christ, 14 generations, he's
saying, from the patriarchy to monarchy, 14 from the market to captivity.
14 and from the captivity Tivity 14. Why?
If you look at the true history, there's a lot more than 14 generations.
Matthew collapses it all down to 14, 14,
14. Why?
Okay, I'm glad you're here.
I'll tell you,
Matthew loves numbers.
He's very detailed.
Not if God writes the story.
Nothing's by a mistake.
Okay?
Numbers are important to Matthew,
and he wants to trace Jesus line through back to King David the royal line.
And prove that Jesus has a right to rule
in Hebrew.
Before the Gospels were written, it was all human.
They spoke Hebrew.
The Hebrew has no
vowels, only has consonants.
And so he wants to draw everybody's attention back to David,
the Jesus from the line of David.
The name David would be spelled
in our world DVD, because there's no vowels
in the ancient languages
every letter has had, it had a numerical equivalent.
That's why in the book of revelation says those you know with wisdom
will understand that his number is six, six, six.
So every letter had a had a numerical equivalent.
So, David, the numerical equivalent of David d
equals four v equals six, d equals four.
What does that add up to 14.
And so when Matthew was saying from the from the
patriarch to the monarchy 14 David
from the monarchy to captivity, 14 David
from the captivity activity.
14 David
do you see what he's doing?
His Jewish hearers their minds would go automatically back to
Jesus really is of the royal line.
Jesus deserves to rule and to reign.
We can't deny it.
He's he's he's he's over and over and over again.
Matthew is saying, Jesus is of the royal line of David, over and over and over.
Listen, what appears to us to be haphazard at of no value?
We have to understand that when God is writing the story,
nothing is a mistake.
What appears in your life to be haphazard?
If God is writing your story,
it's not a mistake
to understand
this.
Nothing is there by accident.
And when you look through this list,
you see verse three,
Judah, the father of Perez and Zera by Tamar.
You go down to verse five.
Sam of the father of bulls by Rahab and boys, the father of Obed by Ruth.
You go down to verse six.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.
He uses four women in this genealogy.
This was very uncommon in the Jewish mindset.
They wouldn't use the women in their genealogy
because the line ran through the men.
So why is he using these four women?
Well, he's drawn our attention back to
Jesus and what God does in people.
Tamar.
But think about who these people are.
If you know their story.
Tamar,
that it's a story of incest.
In Genesis 38,
her father in law impregnates her
at her request.
She dresses up as a prostitute.
Rahab was actually a prostitute in Jericho.
She attached her life
to the people of God, was part of their liberation and
and her whole life was changed.
She belonged to them.
And then she became something.
But she started this prostitute, Ruth.
She wasn't Hebrew at all.
She was a moabite.
And they were despised, like there were curses on the Moabites by God's people.
And Bathsheba,
your adultery of King David.
And this is who Matthew puts in the lineage of Jesus.
Like these are ones that you don't talk about
when the family gets together, right?
Like,
Why does he put them in their.
Sheep?
Matthew is saying, look, God does things differently.
And if you come from
broken backgrounds, you're the one God uses.
There were four things that were really important to the Jews.
One of them was family responsibility.
And the story of Tamar, her father in law
shunned and neglected his responsibility to his family.
It was horrible.
Sexual purity is really important to the Jews.
So you put Rahab in there.
She was a prostitute.
That's like the opposite of sexual purity.
Racial purity was really important to them.
So you put a moabite in there?
She's not Jewish at all.
And the head of the super proud history, who they were as people.
And so then they they put in the greatest mistake
of King David's life with Bathsheba.
That's a black spot on their history.
And so Matthew was saying, look,
when God's right in the story, none of this is a mistake.
I know for them, at that time, it looked like these were deal breakers.
Nothing's a deal breaker, and God's right in the story.
Nothing.
He says God's doing stuff differently.
It's an upside down kingdom here, here.
Here's what I want.
So said the grace of God is evident because he uses people with bad
backgrounds.
If you got a bad broken background, if you got a dirty past,
you're in a great position to be used of God.
Because when he when you give him the authority
to write your story, nothing's a mistake.
And I love in in verse,
in verse 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ.
No, what I see in that is Matthew saying, there's all this stuff,
all that it looks to us like a, like a list of names.
This is purposeful.
And there's all kinds of junk in this list.
And now,
out of all this mess, Jesus.
Friends, I want you to understand something
that whatever the mess is of your past,
Jesus
is the seed bed for Jesus,
for his complete renovation and restoration
of everything that's been broken and destroyed.
See, in Christ,
when you're in Christ, your heritage doesn't define you.
Think of Jesus as heritage.
Right.
I mean, how many times have we used this as a as a crutch? Wow.
You know, I just come from a family of, you know, divorce, family.
I'm a child of a of an alcoholic.
And you know, I got this,
this, this whole thing that's been in my family forever.
And I just can't I can't ever get past.
I can't get.
That's just an excuse.
Because in Christ, all things are new.
And you're.
Your heritage doesn't define you.
It identify in Jesus.
Do you understand this?
See, the truth is that the heritage you receive
isn't as important as the legacy you leave.
And that legacy
can be absolutely transformed.
Not by your effort
and not by your ability, and not by yourself.
Will,
but by allowing Jesus to rewrite your story.
So nothing, then, is a mistake.
Do you understand? Yes.
So that that's the that's the intro to the book of Matthew.
And this is going to drive everything that we go through from
for these next few months together.
We go through the book of Matthew.
So here's my request
this week.
Read Matthew one and read Matthew two.
The second half of Matthew
is the Christmas story, and so.
You've probably heard most of that.
And I might come back to it around, around,
Christmas time.
But here's my plan for the book of Matthew.
I'm not exactly sure how much we're going to get through each week.
We're just going to
start reading through it and talk through it and learn as we go.
Okay, so so just to get yourself ready,
read Matthew, want to read Matthew do over and over
and over again.
And let God write your story.
Come before him with authenticity.
Admit what is out of line.
Confess your sin, repent, and let God write your story
so nothing then becomes a mistake.
You got it.
And you pray with me, father.
Thank you, thank you, thank you that you love us.
Thank you that.
That will allow you to write our story.
This.
There's no mistake.
Thank you that you repair
broken people and broken things.
Thank you that you restore.
Thank you that you make new.
Thank you.
That way back in the day, you reached out to Matthew
and that he responded and gave us this gospel.
That's amazing to me.
Father, I pray that we in
this place would respond.
Would belong to you and your kingdom.
That we would allow you to
to make us become that which we aren't.
Yeah. Yet
that we would give and we would go on behalf of your kingdom
to those around us who don't know you.
That you would allow,
as you taught us to pray, your kingdom to come in our midst.
Father, thank you for what we're about to learn
as we go through this gospel page, you'd open up your word to us.
That revive us.
That it would restore us.
That we would become new people through it.
For that, father, we give you thanks.
You're a good God.
And your name I pray.
Amen.
I love you, I'm proud of you.
Thank you for being here.
Read Matthew one and to invite your friends next week
and start deciding which of the three services you're going to go to.
Most areas we had Rose standing in the back of the first service.
They need to show up to the first one.
Some of you need to show up to the last one.
You got it.
All right, let's sing.