Parkland First Baptist Church
December 6, 2020

      • John 5.24ESV

      • Nehemiah 4–6ESV

      • Psalm 98ESV

      • Revelation 6ESV

      • Nehemiah 7–9ESV

      • Psalm 140ESV

      • Revelation 7ESV

      • Nehemiah 10–13ESV

      • Revelation 8ESV

      • Psalm 2ESV

      • Revelation 9ESV

      • Job 1–3ESV

      • Psalm 29ESV

      • Revelation 10ESV

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    Introduction

    As we are approaching Christmas, we began a series last week the birth narratives of the four gospels.
    We, however, started by seeing when the time of complete God sent His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to save those who were sinners. Galatians 4:4-5
    God moved in history to prepare the world for the coming of His Son, Jesus, and the rapid spread of the gospel through the church.
    Rome provided the roads and safety, the Greeks provided the common language, and Jews provided the need for a savior.
    So today we begin looking at the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
    The word “gospel” means an announcement of good news.
    In the Greek it is a combination of 2 words meaning good message.
    Matthew has written for the purpose to give us an account of what Jesus did, said, accomplished, how He came, and how all that changes our lives and the world.
    It’s not a comprehensive biography and not in chronological order, but logical to get his purpose across.
    He has arranged his book around the major teachings of Jesus.
    Matthew is making it clear that Jesus is the King, coming from the line of David, the Promised Messiah from the line of Abraham
    Let’s look at Matthew 1:1-25
    Read verse 1
    Matthew 1:1 CSB
    1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham:

    Jesus Is The Center Of History Verses 1-17

    Matthew takes what the world would have considered to be an insignificant family line and organizes all of human history around it.
    Here’s why that is important—at this point it certainly didn’t seem like Jesus was the focal point of history.
    Remember from last week we said the time was right but to the rest of the world, they didn’t have a clue to what God was up to.
    Israel was a small, backwater, Middle Eastern country that was under the rule of somebody else.
    Nobody in Rome was paying attention to this family line.
    But God had made a promise to Abraham to bring salvation to the world through Jesus and to bring the whole world into subjection to Jesus.
    Let me give you one example of how was working in the world at that time preparing the world for Jesus to fulfill the prophecies.
    One of the details most people know about Christmas is that Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem because Rome was taxing everyone and you had to go to your home city to be registered.
    But Luke explains to us that God’s purpose in that was so that one of the prophecies about the Messiah would be fulfilled, the one that said he’d be born in Bethlehem.
    So God moves Rome to this tax so he can get Mary and Joseph back to Bethlehem.
    Why did He do that?
    He did it to demonstrate to you that God moves powerful nations around like chess pieces to bring to accomplish his purposes in Jesus.
    He taxed the whole world to move two people 90 miles.
    Many of the Israelites were, at this point, discouraged.
    They looked around and didn’t see how God was fulfilling his promises.
    Rome was in charge.
    Many of you look around and are discouraged; you see unbelief growing; secularism taking over, corrupting our institutions, destroying our nation.
    Don’t be deceived.
    It didn’t look back then like God was accomplishing his purposes.
    But he was. He was doing his greatest work.
    The same thing is true in your life.
    You may be discouraged because it may look like you are subject to forces you can’t control.
    But God has an infallible purpose in your life.
    To reveal Jesus to you and glorify himself in you. Everything in your life has ultimately been about that.
    The Genealogies of Jesus - You have 3 sets of 14 generations
    In the first 17 verses we meet 46 people whose lifetimes span 2,000 years.
    All were ancestors of Jesus, but they varied considerably in personality, spirituality, and experience.
    Some were heroes of faith—like Abraham, Isaac, Ruth, and David.
    Some had shady reputations—like Rahab and Tamar.
    Many were very ordinary—like Hezron, Ram, Nahshon, and Akim.
    And others were evil—like Manasseh and Abijah.
    We learn in this genealogy that God’s work in history is not limited by human failures or sins, and he works through ordinary people.
    Just as God used all kinds of people to bring his Son into the world, he uses all kinds today to accomplish his will.

    Introduction to the King

    Back up to verse one. This one verse is loaded. “The book of the genealogy of Jesus …”
    He is the Savior!
    First thing Matthew is saying here. He is the Savior! “The book of the genealogy of Jesus.”
    Jesus is the Greek term, Greek form of the name “Joshua,” which means, “Yahweh saves,” or “the Lord is Salvation.”
    Remember Joshua in the Old Testament.
    The Lord saves. Yahweh saves. That’s what his name means.
    And Joshua was the appointed leader who would lead the people into the Promised Land.
    Now you’ve got Jesus in the New Testament, Yeshuah, the Lord Saves, appointed by the Father to lead sinful men and women into eternal life.
    He is the Savior. He will lead them to salvation. He is the Savior.
    He is the Messiah
    “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.”
    Christ is not His last name. Christ literally means Messiah, or the Anointed One.
    All throughout the Old Testament there were promises of a coming Anointed One—a Messiah—Who would deliver God’s people in power.
    And Matthew’s saying, “This is Him! It’s the One we’ve waited for—we’ve looked forward to—to deliver the people of God. He’s here! Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Messiah.”
    He is the Son of David
    In 2 Samuel chapter 7, God promised David that his throne will last forever/
    But David’s dead!
    But God had made a promise that through the line of David God’s Kingdom would be established forever!
    So to a people who have longed for generations for the coming King from the line of David, a promised Messiah …
    Matthew is not just giving a list of names here.
    He’s shouting in Matthew one loud and clear.
    The Son of David, the honored Son, the continual Seed—He’s here!
    Jesus is the Son of David and He’s the Son of Abraham.
    He’s the Son of Abraham
    Now we need to remember the covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 12
    Through Abraham, God promises to form a covenant people.
    God will give them a promised inheritance on earth.
    God will form them as His people, in His place, for His purpose.
    Form a covenant people, give them a promised inheritance on earth, and God will use them to accomplish a global purpose.
    God says He will send a King through Abraham’s line and His Kingdom will one day expand to all people groups.
    And one day all peoples will bow down to Him as King.”
    Matthew writing primarily to the Jews was presenting Jesus as their long awaited Messiah King.

    Introduction to the Child Verses 18-25

    Matthew 1:18–25 CSB
    18 The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way: After his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. 20 But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married her 25 but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. And he named him Jesus.
    After establishing the fact that Jesus has the lineage to be the King, Matthew turns to how Jesus came into the world.
    We see this part of the story primarily through the eyes of Joseph.
    It starts with Mary and Joseph being engaged or betrothed in verse 18.
    First let’s talk about the being engaged at that time
    By custom a young man and his fiancée would get legally married, but they had to wait a year before they were allowed to live or sleep together.
    One of the reasons was to make sure the girl was pure.
    In those days marriages were arranged; your parents got to choose your spouse
    When you chose a wife for your son you’d pay this huge bride price to the bride’s family.
    Since the parents paying the price wanted to make sure that the girl was pure, so they required a year of waiting before you could live or sleep together to make sure she wasn’t pregnant.
    After a year that was clear, so then you could live together and have sex.
    But in every other way, during the engagement or betrothal, you were considered married.
    To get out of it you had to get an official divorce.
    Well, during this betrothal period Mary shows up pregnant.
    Can you imagine for a minute how painful and humiliating this was for Joseph?
    What would it have been like to hear this from the girl you just “married” but haven’t been allowed to sleep with yet?
    He had two options: Stone her or divorce her and publicly humiliate her.
    But Joseph was, for whatever it was worth, a good guy, and kind, so he arranged to break the betrothal quietly.
    So in a dream an angel explains to Joseph that Mary has not been unfaithful and that her child has been supernaturally conceived.
    He reminds Joseph of his messianic lineage by calling him “son of David.”
    He commands Joseph not only not to divorce Mary but to go ahead and marry her.
    The child will therefore legally be Joseph’s son and thus legally son of David
    The angel’s address to Joseph as “son of David” reminds us what is at stake in the decision Joseph has just reached: the loss of Jesus’ royal pedigree if he is not officially recognized as Joseph’s son.
    So, despite his previous decision, he is called to take two decisive actions, first to accept Mary as his wife rather than repudiating her and
    Secondly to give her son a name, which will confirm his legal recognition of Jesus as his own son and hence as also a “son of David.”
    Matthew interjects here a quote from Isaiah 7:14 and how this fulfills the prophecy.
    The interpretations given to the two names (“he will save his people from their sins” and “God with us”) invite the reader to reflect on the nature of the Messiah’s mission
    You see, the baby Jesus would be born to save His people from their sins.
    From the very start, the book explains, to a Jewish audience, that Jesus would not save the people from Rome or from tyranny, nor would he set up an earthly kingdom. Instead, Jesus would save people from sin

    How Jesus Came Into The World

    To a virgin mother.
    A shocking pair or words. Virgin mother—naturally impossible.
    He came to a virgin mother so that physically Jesus is Mary’s Son—physically, biologically Mary’s Son.
    Not Joseph’s.
    Matthew never explicitly refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father.
    Here in the genealogy you have, “This person was the father of that person. This person was the father of that person.”
    Until you get to verse 16. Look back at what it says. It says, “And Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
    So physically Jesus was the Son of Mary, a virgin mother. So to a virgin mother …
    To an adoptive father
    He came to an adoptive father. In naming Jesus and taking Jesus into his family, legally Jesus became Joseph’s Son.
    This is key, right?
    Based on we’ve already seen, this adoption ties Jesus to the line of Joseph, which is the line of David.
    Amidst a fallen world
    So Jesus came to a virgin mother, to an adoptive father amidst a fallen world—a world of sin in need of salvation.
    And in this way, ultimately, see that Jesus is God’s Son.
    Ultimately Jesus is God’s Son.
    Don’t miss why this is important.
    Part of the purpose of the virgin birth of Jesus is to show us beyond the shadow of a doubt that salvation does not come from man but from God.
    Salvation is clearly not the natural work of man.
    There is nothing you and I can do to save ourselves from our sins.
    Salvation is not the natural work of man; salvation is totally the supernatural work of God.
    And this is evident from the very way that Jesus enters into the world as the Son of God.

    Who Is Jesus?

    Jesus was God in the flesh; thus, God was literally “with us.”
    The point was not that Jesus would ever bear the name “Immanuel,” but rather this name described Jesus’ role—to bring God’s presence to people.
    Jesus Christ, who was himself God (John 1:1), brought God to earth in his human body—living, eating, teaching, healing, dying.
    Matthew closed his Gospel with the same promise of “God with us” because, before his ascension, Jesus promised his followers, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
    Matthew shows us that Jesus is the King of Kings,
    The Son of David promised to the nation as their Messiah
    The Son of Abraham that would bless the world including each one of us.
    We also see that Jesus is the Savior for the world
    Do you know Him as such?
    Pray

      • Matthew 1:1CSB

      • Matthew 1:18–25CSB

Parkland First Baptist Church
office@parklandfirst.com
253-531-0121
http://www.parklandfirst.com
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