Anticipating Jesus
The Genealogy Of Jesus Shows How The Entire Bible Points To His Arrival
Dan Franklin
Feb 5, 2023 39m
The Gospel of Matthew starts with the genealogy of Jesus, which illustrates how the entire bible points to His arrival. Knowing He came from a lineage of broken people, we can all walk forward with hope because Jesus is the one we've all been waiting for.
Video recorded at Upland, California.
TranscriptionmessageRegarding Grammar:
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
Dan Franklin: [00:00:00] Hey there. Thanks so much for checking out one of our messages here at Life Bible Fellowship Church. And we know there are two great ways you can connect with us. You can visit our website at LBF.church to learn more about all of our ministries and what we believe. And also, you can subscribe to us on YouTube to make sure that you don't miss one of our future videos.
Paul Seawright: [00:00:19] Good morning, my name is Paul Seawright. Today's Scripture reading comes from the book of Matthew, chapter 1 verses 1 through 17, 1This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah b the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah c and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Elihud, 15Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah." And this is God's Word.
Dan Franklin: [00:02:48] Thank you, Paul, you deserved a hand for that. Now, you guys don't know this, but we gave Paul the chance for any passage in this series to do it, and he was like, give me the genealogy. In fact, Paul's family is vacationing in Europe right now, and he stayed home just to read that for us. No, that's not true? All right.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:11] I'm really excited about this morning. And I want to start us off with a question that I'm going to put up on the screen for all of us, and the question is, what are you waiting for? Now, I realize usually when we ask this question, it's not a legitimate question, it's more a question that we ask if we're being impatient. You're sitting at the red light, you're behind somebody else, the light turns green, and they don't go anywhere. And you say, What are you waiting for? The light's green, let's go. But I want to ask this question seriously, of all of us, I want you just to pause and think, what would you answer if you had to give an answer to this question? What are you waiting for? Because at the end of the day, we're all waiting for something.
Dan Franklin: [00:04:01] Some of you right now are waiting for the end of school. Maybe not even the end of school as a whole, just for summer. You're just like, once school gets out, once I'm in the summertime and its vacation and I don't have to go to school every day and I don't have to do homework, that's going to be worth a life worth living, and you're longing for that. And some of you are reaching the end in some other way, and you're like if I can just get that high school diploma and be done with high school, or if I can just get that college degree and be done with school forever, life will really be what life is meant to be. What are you waiting for?
Dan Franklin: [00:04:36] Some of you are waiting for marriage. You're like, if I can just find that woman or if I can just find that man, and really, we can start a family together and be together and I can have somebody that understands me and that I understand and we can build this life together that's going to be a life worth living, that's going to be real life, you're waiting for marriage. What are you waiting for?
Dan Franklin: [00:04:59] Some of you are waiting for a job or a promotion where you'll finally be able to have all the things that you want as far as status and money. Some of you are waiting for doctors to finally find a solution to your chronic pain or the disease that you have. Some of you are waiting for the next presidential election, you're like, let's get somebody else in there. We're all waiting for something. What are you waiting for? And at the end of the day, we're all waiting for something or someone to arrive and make our lives what we think our lives should be.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:38] Enter into this, the Gospel of Matthew, and the story of Jesus. This morning we start what's going to be a long journey through the gospel of Matthew. And if you're familiar with how the New Testament is made up, you know that the New Testament starts with four accounts of Jesus' life Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And we're going to be going through the Gospel of Matthew, we're going to take breaks along the way for Easter and eventually for Christmas and fall off and things like that, but we are going to, for a while, be going through this book of the Bible, and I'm so excited about it for a couple of reasons. One is just because, you know, every week when we're up here, you'll hear at some point whether it's in the hosting time or in the music time or in the message, one of us typically will get up and say, everything we do around here is about Jesus. And every message that we do around here is about Jesus. So if we're in the Old Testament, the message is still about Jesus. If we're in the New Testament, the message is about Jesus. If it's topical, if it's through a book, everything we talk about, it's all about Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:06:43] In fact, if you're here and you're a little bit new and you're trying to sort of figure out what we're about, you might be asking the question like, all right, can these people here at this church, can they help me with my marriage and with my parenting and with my money and with my friendships? And at the end of the day, here's the deal, what we have to offer is Jesus. Our message is not better families and cleaner living, our message is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Jesus is Lord, that's our message. So that's every week, but in a special way, in the Gospel of Matthew, we're going to get to, each week, encounter Jesus in his earthly life. We're going to get to be reminded of who our Lord is. So I'm really excited about us going through this series.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:31] And as you noticed, the Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy. And these are, sometimes, if you're reading the Bible, sometimes these are sections that we just skip. We're like, all right, let me just get past this, it's just a bunch of names, kind of father to son, father to son, we can just skip this. But Matthew starts with a genealogy, wo we're starting the gospel of Matthew with a genealogy.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:54] And just so you're prepared for what we're going to do because you might be wondering in your head right now, what is the sermon going to be like? I'm not going to just go through the list of names and kind of comment on each person and tell you more about them, we're going to highlight some of the people in the genealogy. What we're going to look to do is we're going to look to get a big picture of what's going on in the Gospel of Matthew.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:16] And we get a clue right away as to why Matthew begins with this genealogy and what it's about in the very first verse. The very first verse says, "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah." And the Messiah means the anointed one, this was the one God had promised that he would send to his people Israel to be their Savior. And Matthew's not hiding it for a big reveal later on, it's not like we're going to get to chapter 22, and finally, he's going to spring on us that this Jesus is the Messiah. He tells us in verse one, that's who Jesus is, and then He gives Jesus two titles, the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:58] And those two titles are going to form just sort of an outline of how we're going to walk through this genealogy today. Jesus is the son of David, the great king of Israel, and the son of Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel. And we're going to take him in chronological order because Abraham comes before David. We're going to talk about both of them and what that means for who Jesus is and what that means for us as we respond to him. I started with that question, what are you waiting for? And here's what we're going to get to see throughout this message this morning, what we're going to get to see is that whether or not we realize it, Jesus is the one all of us have always been waiting for. Jesus, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:52] Now, let's start with Jesus as the son of Abraham, and what this means. For each of them, I'm going to tell you something that it means. Jesus being the son of Abraham means that Jesus is the universal blessing that God promised to his people. And also, when you hear about the whole idea of Jesus being the son of Abraham, if you're familiar with the Bible, you know that Abraham is the father of the Jewish nation. All of the Jewish people came from him, so this is a very Jewish statement, the idea that Jesus is the son of Abraham.
Dan Franklin: [00:10:24] In fact, I heard a testimony several years ago about a man who was ethnically Jewish and came to faith in Jesus. And he said before he came to faith in Jesus, friends kept telling him, you've got to read the New Testament. And he was like, why do I need to read the New Testament? Like I'm a Jew, I'm about the Old Testament, the New Testament has nothing to do with us as the Jewish people. And then he finally opened up the New Testament to the first book and the first verse, and it said, Son of Abraham, and he said, maybe this does have something to do with me. And you'll notice as we go through the Gospel of Matthew, it's a very Jewish gospel, it's very steeped in Judaism. In fact, there are about twice as many quotations and citations from the Old Testament in Matthew as in any of the other three gospels.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:08] You're going to see this over the next couple of weeks, just in chapters 1 and 2, you're going to see over and over again, Matthew, pointing back to the Old Testament and saying, Jesus fulfilled this. So this is a very Jewish gospel. And there's a specific promise that was made to Abraham that points to this idea of Jesus being the son of Abraham. And I want to put it up here for us. It's Genesis chapter 12, verse 3, when Abraham was called to become the father of a nation, God said to him, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.", hence the title universal blessings. Abraham and his wife Sarai had no children, but God said, you're going to have a child, and then through that child, there's going to be more children, and eventually you're going to have so many children that they're more than the stars that you can see in the sky. But then he said, not only are you going to have a great nation come from you, he said, all people on earth will be blessed through you. When Matthew says Jesus is the son of Abraham, he's saying that Jesus is the universal blessing who was sent not just to the Jewish people, but to all mankind. And Matthew has different elements in his gospel, in this genealogy, that point to this reality.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:27] Now, real quick, I'm about to put up on the screen something that will kind of help us see this visually. But this is true not only when you're reading a genealogy, but when you're reading the Bible. If you're doing personal Bible reading time, one of the things that you want to look out for is just anything that's kind of odd. Anything that strikes you is like, I'm not sure why that's there, or I'm not sure why that needs to be there, that maybe that has significance because it seems a little bit out of place. The Gospel of Matthew is made up of a whole bunch of fathers to son relationships, and you can see if you can see up on the screen this sort of breaks down how the genealogy comes. And this is the way genealogies were done, you know, this father had this son, then he had this son, and it just goes on and on and on.
Dan Franklin: [00:13:12] You may have heard it in the reading, and you may notice it up on the screen, there are interruptions every so often. And four times in leading up to Jesus, five, if you count Mary right beforehand, four times Matthew interrupts this cycle of fathers and sons to mention four women who are part of this genealogy. Now, that should just strike us, we should just say when you're doing a genealogy, you don't need to do that, that's not a normal way that they would have kept the genealogy. Because it was meant just to show, all right, how did we get from point A to point B? How do we get through all the fathers and sons and end up at Jesus? But four times, Matthew intentionally interrupts himself to mention four women. And just on the starting point, before we get where we're going to go a little bit deeper in this, but before we get any deeper, we can just say, well, that's kind of cool, if Jesus is the universal blessing in a list that normally would have just been men, normally would have just been father, son, father, son, father, son, Matthew interrupts to remind us all that women are very much a part of the story of Jesus, and women are very much a part of what God has done in the world. So even right off that, even if we didn't go any deeper than that, it's like, well, that's kind of cool. Matthew wants to make sure we know, Jesus came for men, Jesus came for women, and Jesus came for a universal blessing to bless all of us.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:32] But we can then take it a step deeper, because if you know something about these four women and you can see them up there, it's Tamar, then Rahab, then Ruth, then the wife of Uriah, who's Bathsheba, these four women, at least two of them, and almost certainly all four of them were not Jewish. Rahab and Ruth, we know for sure we're not Jewish. Rahab shows up in Joshua Chapter 2. She's a citizen of the city of Jericho, and she hides the Jewish spies when they go in to spy on the land before they're going to take over Jericho. And then Ruth has a whole book of the Bible named after her, it's called Ruth. All right, Good job, all right, I just wanted to make sure everybody was listening. Just a beautiful book of the Bible called Ruth, that tells the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman, not part of the nation of Israel, being enveloped into the nation of Israel because she embraced the one true God, the God of her mother-in-law, Naomi.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:30] Just as Rahab, who is a member of the city of Jericho, ends up being enveloped into Israel because she says, you know what, if you guys are coming into the land, I think your God is the real God, so when you come in to take over Jericho, take me with you. And she and her whole family end up getting involved in Jericho, and she ends up marrying one of the members of the nation of Israel, and both of them end up in the genealogy of Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:54] Now, with Tamar, and with Bathsheba, we don't have explicit references to this, but Tamar was early enough that she almost certainly was a foreigner. And then with Bathsheba, her husband was Uriah the Hittite, not the Israelites, so probably she was the same. So Matthew not only interrupts and says, all right, I'm going to highlight four women, which is like, that's kind of cool. He didn't have to do that, but he did that. He highlights four, almost certainly all four, foreign non-Israelite women, reminding us that while Jesus came specifically as the Savior for the nation of Israel, he came as a universal blessing for all who would believe in him?
Dan Franklin: [00:16:36] But there's one more step of depth I want us to take in this. Because not only does he mention these four women, and not only are all four of them most likely foreign and not Israelite, but at least three of them had something about what they were known for that made them, let's just say, not model citizens. Ruth would be the exception, Ruth would be the one, you know, Jewish mothers would talk to their Jewish daughters, and they would say, be like Ruth. Ruth would have been a model in that way. The other three, not so much.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:08] You can read these stories later on if you want, but with Tamara, she shows up in Genesis chapter 38, and it's a complicated story, but the complicated story ends with her hiding her identity and seducing her father-in-law, Judah. And by the way, if you're like, well, Tamar, she was bad, by the end of the story, you find out Judah was actually really the culprit in the whole thing, he ends up saying she's more righteous than I am. And yet still at the same time, you probably didn't have the mothers saying to their Jewish daughters, be like Tamar.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:40] You have Rahab, and Rahab is this great woman of faith who ends up embracing the God of Israel. But really, the full title for Rahab, most of the times that she's mentioned in Joshua, is Rahab, the prostitute. Once again, not somebody that at the dinner table on Sabbath, the Jewish mothers were saying, be like Rahab.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:59] Now with Bathsheba, similar to the story with Tamar, in the Bathsheba story and her affair with David, David is by far the culprit in the story. Bathsheba, in many ways, is much more the victim than sort of a coconspirator. And at the same time, she's not somebody that the Jewish mothers would have pointed their daughters to and said, that's the model of how you live a good life.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:20] So we not only have these women in this genealogy, and not only are they foreign, but they're kind of unexpected women. You could say they have a little bit of a checkered or shady past. And by the way, some of you are looking at other names on the list, not just the women. And you're like, oh, yeah, there's some more shadiness going on up there. There's a lot of people mention up there that you're like, oh, yeah, you remember what he did? Do you remember this thing that he did? It's the list not of the who's who of the pure people in the line of Jesus, it's a whole bunch of people who had, some of which would have what you might call spectacular sins, loud sins that got written about in the Bible, and yet here they are in the genealogy of Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:04] Now, this doesn't mean if you're in the genealogy of Jesus, you're all automatically this great person. What it means is that included in the story of Jesus are a whole bunch of unexpected people, and what we get to see in this is this initial sign that Jesus has come as the savior for everyone, not just the men, but the women, not just the Jews, but the Gentiles, not just the rich, but the poor, everyone is invited in on this.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:34] And I think it's worth us taking a minute on this, because some of you may feel unconvinced. You may even be willing to say, yeah, if asked, if push comes to shove, I would say, yes, everybody can be included in this. But some of you have some reason that you're tempted by the enemy to think, not me, I'm not qualified for this. And maybe it's because of something as simple as you just saying, I'm not really that important. I'm not famous. I don't have any kind of showy talents. I don't seem to be that much of an important person with any kind of status. I don't know how I could be important to God. And I want to just remind you that by even mentioning these four women in the genealogy, Matthew was pointing us towards people who didn't have status being included in the story.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:24] Some of you might feel like, I don't know if I could be qualified to be part of God's family because I was born into the wrong family. Like, my family was full of dysfunction and chaos, not a Christian family, that's not my heritage. So maybe Jesus is good for all these other people who are sort of mostly clean in their upbringing, I don't think I can get in on this. Don't forget that Matthew interrupts himself to talk about four women who were born into the wrong families and then became a part of God's story.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:59] And maybe most importantly, some of us think I'm not qualified to be in on this because I have some shame and I have some failures, and I don't think God can get past that. For some of you, that shame and those failures are in the past. For some of you, you're like, yeah, they're in the past, if the past is like yesterday, they're fresh. And you just feel like, I just don't know that I could be a part of this because of the things I've done and because of the ways that I failed. I want you to know that Matthew doesn't skip over the people in the genealogy who have spectacular sins that God forgave.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:36] One of the things that we're tempted to think is that God's forgiveness can reach many, but not to us. And for some of you, you might feel like, all right, maybe I am a Christian, maybe I believe that technically I'm going to heaven, maybe it's on a technicality because God had to do it because I said the prayer, so now he's got to let me in. But the idea that God actually loves you deeply just seems like a foreign pipe dream. And what I want you to know is that Jesus came as the Savior for everyone, you are included in this. If you put your faith in him. Hebrews 4 talks about the idea that we boldly approach the throne of grace, we go before God as if we belong there and He wants to hear from us. Not because we did something, but because Jesus did something for us.
Dan Franklin: [00:22:23] So before even moving on to talk about Jesus as the son of David, I want us to pause here and take in this reality. And in fact, I want you to pause. I'm going to invite you to bow your head right now, let's not skip over this too fast. Maybe there's some reason right now, passive, or active, that you are having a hard time believing that God wants to hear from you. I want to invite you right now in the quietness of this moment to boldly go before the throne of grace, to call out to God in your heart, believing by faith that you belong because of what Jesus has done for you.
Dan Franklin: [00:23:24] Father, thank you that you see us, you see us at our worst, and you don't cast us out. You see us at our lowest point, and you still receive us with joy. Thank you for sending Jesus as a Savior who came for all of us, Father, help us to believe that. Help us to come with boldness, help us to pray with joy, to worship with joy, and to walk before you with joy, knowing that you're not welcoming us begrudgingly, but that you're welcoming us with joy because of what Jesus has done for us. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dan Franklin: [00:24:03] Jesus is the universal blessing, he's the son of Abraham, but Jesus is also the son of David, and what those points to are the idea that He is the Eternal King. Now, when Jesus is mentioned as the Son of David, this is a big theme. You may have noticed in the genealogy, David is named five times, he's a kind of core person in this genealogy. And the reason why Jesus is referred to as the Son of David is mainly because of a specific prophecy that was given from God to David in Second Samuel chapter 7, verse 16, it says, God. Speaking to David, he says, "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’” And the Jews came to believe that God was going to send a descendant of David who wouldn't just rule for a little while but would rule with peace and justice forever. And Matthew points, just even in the structure of the genealogy, he points to the idea that Jesus is coming as the fulfillment of all of this.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:15] So I'm going to put this back up here on the screen for you all to see. You'll notice, and you'll notice when Paul was reading, he talked about the idea that we have basically four groups of 14 names here. Now, here's the thing with genealogies, the way that they were organized, it was normal for people who are writing the genealogies to skip generations. It wasn't something where you had to name every single name, it was normal just to show, all right, you might skip to the great-grandson just to show that the line continues. Matthew does that, Matthew doesn't include every single name that would have been in here if this was a strict historical genealogy, he skipped some generations. And that makes it weird because he makes a point of saying, hey, there are 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the exile, and then 14 generations from the exile to Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:03] But if we looked at it historically, we'd say, well, no, actually there's not, there's more, he skipped some to make it fit into these groups of 14. And you might say, why would he do that? Why is that significant? Well, people debate it, some people think that it's just to show sort of the orderliness of how God does things, and that's possible.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:24] More than likely Matthew is doing something creative that we would miss, but that the first-century Jews would have got right away. Now, follow me on this, some of you know this, and for some of you, this is going to be kind of weird. In Hebrew, each Hebrew letter had a numeric association with it, We don't do this in English, but it would be like a1,b2, it's sort of like that. Also in Hebrew, they supply the vowels later, there aren't actually letters for the vowels. So the name David, for instance, would just be three letters, it would just be the D, the V, and the D. D has the numerical value of four, V has the numerical value of 6, four plus six plus four equals. 14. It's dangerous to do math in public, but the number is 14. Now, some of you might feel like this feels like a real stretch, it does to us in the 21st century in the United States, but it would not to the Jewish people they would have been very aware, 14, that's David's number, that's the number of David's name. It seems like in a subtle way, Matthew is trying to point all attention to saying Jesus has come to fulfill this prophecy of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:27:36] And one of the cool things that we're going to see as we go through the gospel is there's this constant wondering surrounding Jesus being the son of David. You have a passage in Matthew chapter 9, verse 27, when there are two blind men calling out to be healed, and when they call out to be to Jesus, they say, "Have mercy on us Son of David." Later on in chapter 12, verse 23, Jesus casts out a whole bunch of demons, and people who see it start to whisper to one another and they say, "Could this be the son of David?".
Dan Franklin: [00:27:55] Eventually, probably like six years from now, we'll get to chapter 21. It won't be quite that long, but the great passage tells the story of what we now call Palm Sunday. Jesus entering into Jerusalem, and the people call out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” People were anticipating, there was saying all right, eventually, there's going to be a descendant of David, he will be an even better king than David, he'll rule with peace and justice. Jesus comes as that son of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:43] And one of the reasons why this is so significant is because if you look up on this list and you're familiar with it, you know, there's a lot of kings listed here, a lot of kings of Israel are listed here. And none of them, first of all, all of them died, so none of them had any eternal reign. But also, none of them lived up to what they should be. I mean, even starting with David, the best king of Israel, we've already talked about some of his failures and not only his affair with Bathsheba but then covering up her pregnancy by sending her husband, Uriah, to the front lines of the battle so that he would be killed. David was a great king; he was not the king they were longing for.
Dan Franklin: [00:29:25] Then there was Solomon. Solomon, in many ways, was also a great king, the wisest king ever. And yet he used his great knowledge and wisdom to accumulate a bunch of wives, a bunch of riches, and a bunch of resources at the expense of obedience to God, he was a disappointment. Some of you ladies, right now, there were about 75 ladies this last Monday that were getting together to study through different Kings and the Old Testament. Now, catch me up, you all did Rehoboam this last week, right? Rehoboam shows up as the Son of Solomon. A quick note on Rehoboam, he came in a great time of peace and harmony in Israel because he came right after Solomon, and then the very first thing he did was split the kingdom in half because of his pride. He listened to the wisdom of his buddies instead of the wisdom of his father's advisors, and he split the kingdom in half. He was not the king they were waiting for.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:17] I'm not going to go through all of them but let me highlight just a couple more. You go down the list a little bit, you get to Uzziah. Uzziah was a great king, one of the really good kings in Israel, he had a really good reign, and was a godly man, and he ended horribly. He ended by basically believing his own press clippings, thinking he was really important, and deciding that even though only priests were supposed to do this, he was going to go and offer a sacrifice in the temple. The priests all got in his way and said, don't do it, you're not supposed to do this, but he said, get out of my way, I'm going to do it. God punished him by striking him with leprosy, and the end of Uzziah's reign was in isolation. He was not the king they were looking for.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:57] In fact, really on this list, other than David, probably the best king was Hezekiah. It's like, all right. Hezekiah came and had this great reign. He was a godly man, who led Israel through a good time. Then he dies, his son Manasseh takes over and Manasseh is the most evil king in Israel out of all of them. Even when you have a good king, he's only around for a little while and you never know what's coming afterwards. But the middle list ends with Jeconiah, who is so evil that he led into the time of exile.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:25] And the list goes on and on, the king they were waiting for hadn't yet come until we get to Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, that we finally get to the one who came to be the one king they were all waiting for.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:43] And this might be a hard sell, what I'm about to say. It's not only that the Jewish people were longing for a king, every single one of us, no matter how independent we think we are, are all longing for a king. Because some of you right now are like, not me. Like, I don't want any government at all, I want to be in charge of my own life. I'm the captain of my ship. I'm the ruler of my life. I don't want anybody else in charge of me. But what I want to say is, first of all, the fact that we complain so much about the government typically means that we think that it's possible that there could be some government setup that would actually do for us what we're longing for it to do. And not only that, the fact that in the United States, where we are so independent, we practice such a high level of hero worship, reveals that there's something inside of us longing for a king. And the fact that a week from right now, there's going to be people who will have paid tens of thousands of dollars to watch their favorite football players down on the field says something about the hero worship that we practice. The fact that we broke the Internet because of Taylor Swift shows something about the kind of hero worship that we practice. The fact that we chant names and hold up signs at sporting events and at red carpet events and even at political rallies shows that we're longing for somebody to come and fix things for us. We all want a king.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:15] And follow me on this, Israel didn't always have a king, but when they first asked for a king, it was in First Samuel chapter 8, they went to the Prophet Samuel and they said, we want a king. And they said, here's why we want a king, we want a king to fight our battles for us. I want you just to think about this whole idea, we want a king to fight our battles for us. You know, folks, you know why we need a king, we need a king because there are battles, we can't win and we need a king to go fight our battles for us, and Jesus is that king?
Dan Franklin: [00:33:51] Let me just preview some of the things that you're going to see as we go through the Gospel of Matthew. You are going to see Jesus fight a battle against injustice in Israel at that time. And you're going to see Jesus see so clearly through the titles and the status that we sometimes put on, to Jesus it didn't matter if you were a Pharisee and had a whole bunch of status in Israel, or if you were a prostitute and you had very low status. Jesus saw you for your true humanity. He fought a battle against injustice, the battle that we can't win, but that he can win. Jesus fought a battle against disease, you see Jesus healing all the time, all over the place. And every time he heals, it's this preview of a time in the future when all disease would be eradicated, and we would all finally be healed. You see Jesus fight a battle that we can't win, a battle against our enemy, the devil. You see Jesus casting out demons. You see Jesus victorious in the spiritual realm to the fact that demons are falling down at his feet, saying, what are you going to do to us? Jesus goes and fights a battle that we can't win because he's our King.
Dan Franklin: [00:35:04] And finally, here's the kicker, Jesus goes and faces down death. You know, lately, I feel like this happens in bunches. Lately, we've been experiencing a lot of grief in our church family. Just even over the last week, we've lost some members, and sometimes these things feel like they come in bunches. Death is the great enemy, Jesus faced down death through his death, and then he conquered death through his resurrection. Jesus fought the battle that we can't win, death has a 100% success rate except for Jesus. Jesus won the battle that we couldn't win because Jesus is the King that we have always been longing for. And that means that we get to go to Jesus, and first of all, we bow the knee to him. If you were in here this morning and you're not a believer in Jesus, my encouragement, my calling to you today is to bow the knee to King Jesus. He is the king of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords. Your faith is well set in him. When we come to Jesus, we're coming to the King who fights our battles for us.
Dan Franklin: [00:36:14] And so let me come back to a question that I asked at the beginning. What are you waiting for? In fact, here's another way to ask this question, what are you waiting for? You might ask the question, where is your hope? I was reminded this week, we have a sign just outside the worship center, some of you notice it when you walk in, and some of you probably walk by it every week and don't notice that it's there. But the sign just says Hope Found Here. And that's not us as a church claiming, like in comparison to other churches, you really find hope here. This is us saying, we're proclaiming Jesus, and so hope is found here. And it got me thinking about just the whole idea of signs, and how signs point to something. The idea of that sign out there isn't that you look at it and you're like, what a great looking sign, it's that it points to something great.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:07] Have you ever been in the car going somewhere that takes a little while to get to, but you're really excited to be there? And, you know, and maybe traffic is bad. Maybe there's even a little bit of danger along the way because there are some bad drivers, not you other bad drivers who are out there, and so it's a tough journey. And finally, you're sort of getting close, you know the people in the car have been fighting with each other, but you're finally close. And then as you get closer, you see that sign, you see that sign that says next exit Dodger Stadium or fill it in with whatever else. You get that sign, and it's not that you look at the sign and you're like, that sign is really, really cool, it's that the sign is pointing to something great.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:50] Here's the deal, I fully recognize the genealogy, you're like, this does not feel like great reading. Like if you need to get to sleep at night, read the genealogy, it'll tire you. It's not that we're looking at this and saying, this genealogy is so amazing, it's that this genealogy is a giant sign pointing at Jesus. It's a giant sign pointing at Jesus, saying, Son of Abraham, the Universal Blessing. It doesn't matter where you are born, who you are, what you look like, where you came from, or what you've done, Jesus came as your Savior. And it points a giant finger at Jesus and says, Son of David the Eternal King, who will never get old and will never die and will win the battles that we could never win. We get to come to him, we get to come with boldness, we get to cast our cares at his feet, and we get to walk forward with hope. Because Jesus, at the end of the day, whether we realize it or not, is the one that all of us have always been longing for.
Dan Franklin: [00:38:51] Let me pray for us right now. Father, thank you so much that you sent Jesus because you didn't have to. We were in a mess that we made with our own sin and failure, and you sent Jesus as our Savior. Father, thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus as that universal blessing and as that eternal King. And Father, what we're really waiting for, is we are longing for the day when our Savior Jesus returns and when all is made right, we're longing for an end of disease, an end of death, an end of injustice, and an end of all the grief that we experience here in this life. Give us hope in Jesus now and give us the strength that we need to walk with you as he fights our battles for us. I pray all this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, amen.
Recorded in Upland, California.
Paul Seawright: [00:00:19] Good morning, my name is Paul Seawright. Today's Scripture reading comes from the book of Matthew, chapter 1 verses 1 through 17, 1This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah b the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah c and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Elihud, 15Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah." And this is God's Word.
Dan Franklin: [00:02:48] Thank you, Paul, you deserved a hand for that. Now, you guys don't know this, but we gave Paul the chance for any passage in this series to do it, and he was like, give me the genealogy. In fact, Paul's family is vacationing in Europe right now, and he stayed home just to read that for us. No, that's not true? All right.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:11] I'm really excited about this morning. And I want to start us off with a question that I'm going to put up on the screen for all of us, and the question is, what are you waiting for? Now, I realize usually when we ask this question, it's not a legitimate question, it's more a question that we ask if we're being impatient. You're sitting at the red light, you're behind somebody else, the light turns green, and they don't go anywhere. And you say, What are you waiting for? The light's green, let's go. But I want to ask this question seriously, of all of us, I want you just to pause and think, what would you answer if you had to give an answer to this question? What are you waiting for? Because at the end of the day, we're all waiting for something.
Dan Franklin: [00:04:01] Some of you right now are waiting for the end of school. Maybe not even the end of school as a whole, just for summer. You're just like, once school gets out, once I'm in the summertime and its vacation and I don't have to go to school every day and I don't have to do homework, that's going to be worth a life worth living, and you're longing for that. And some of you are reaching the end in some other way, and you're like if I can just get that high school diploma and be done with high school, or if I can just get that college degree and be done with school forever, life will really be what life is meant to be. What are you waiting for?
Dan Franklin: [00:04:36] Some of you are waiting for marriage. You're like, if I can just find that woman or if I can just find that man, and really, we can start a family together and be together and I can have somebody that understands me and that I understand and we can build this life together that's going to be a life worth living, that's going to be real life, you're waiting for marriage. What are you waiting for?
Dan Franklin: [00:04:59] Some of you are waiting for a job or a promotion where you'll finally be able to have all the things that you want as far as status and money. Some of you are waiting for doctors to finally find a solution to your chronic pain or the disease that you have. Some of you are waiting for the next presidential election, you're like, let's get somebody else in there. We're all waiting for something. What are you waiting for? And at the end of the day, we're all waiting for something or someone to arrive and make our lives what we think our lives should be.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:38] Enter into this, the Gospel of Matthew, and the story of Jesus. This morning we start what's going to be a long journey through the gospel of Matthew. And if you're familiar with how the New Testament is made up, you know that the New Testament starts with four accounts of Jesus' life Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And we're going to be going through the Gospel of Matthew, we're going to take breaks along the way for Easter and eventually for Christmas and fall off and things like that, but we are going to, for a while, be going through this book of the Bible, and I'm so excited about it for a couple of reasons. One is just because, you know, every week when we're up here, you'll hear at some point whether it's in the hosting time or in the music time or in the message, one of us typically will get up and say, everything we do around here is about Jesus. And every message that we do around here is about Jesus. So if we're in the Old Testament, the message is still about Jesus. If we're in the New Testament, the message is about Jesus. If it's topical, if it's through a book, everything we talk about, it's all about Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:06:43] In fact, if you're here and you're a little bit new and you're trying to sort of figure out what we're about, you might be asking the question like, all right, can these people here at this church, can they help me with my marriage and with my parenting and with my money and with my friendships? And at the end of the day, here's the deal, what we have to offer is Jesus. Our message is not better families and cleaner living, our message is Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Jesus is Lord, that's our message. So that's every week, but in a special way, in the Gospel of Matthew, we're going to get to, each week, encounter Jesus in his earthly life. We're going to get to be reminded of who our Lord is. So I'm really excited about us going through this series.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:31] And as you noticed, the Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy. And these are, sometimes, if you're reading the Bible, sometimes these are sections that we just skip. We're like, all right, let me just get past this, it's just a bunch of names, kind of father to son, father to son, we can just skip this. But Matthew starts with a genealogy, wo we're starting the gospel of Matthew with a genealogy.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:54] And just so you're prepared for what we're going to do because you might be wondering in your head right now, what is the sermon going to be like? I'm not going to just go through the list of names and kind of comment on each person and tell you more about them, we're going to highlight some of the people in the genealogy. What we're going to look to do is we're going to look to get a big picture of what's going on in the Gospel of Matthew.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:16] And we get a clue right away as to why Matthew begins with this genealogy and what it's about in the very first verse. The very first verse says, "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah." And the Messiah means the anointed one, this was the one God had promised that he would send to his people Israel to be their Savior. And Matthew's not hiding it for a big reveal later on, it's not like we're going to get to chapter 22, and finally, he's going to spring on us that this Jesus is the Messiah. He tells us in verse one, that's who Jesus is, and then He gives Jesus two titles, the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham.
Dan Franklin: [00:08:58] And those two titles are going to form just sort of an outline of how we're going to walk through this genealogy today. Jesus is the son of David, the great king of Israel, and the son of Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel. And we're going to take him in chronological order because Abraham comes before David. We're going to talk about both of them and what that means for who Jesus is and what that means for us as we respond to him. I started with that question, what are you waiting for? And here's what we're going to get to see throughout this message this morning, what we're going to get to see is that whether or not we realize it, Jesus is the one all of us have always been waiting for. Jesus, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:52] Now, let's start with Jesus as the son of Abraham, and what this means. For each of them, I'm going to tell you something that it means. Jesus being the son of Abraham means that Jesus is the universal blessing that God promised to his people. And also, when you hear about the whole idea of Jesus being the son of Abraham, if you're familiar with the Bible, you know that Abraham is the father of the Jewish nation. All of the Jewish people came from him, so this is a very Jewish statement, the idea that Jesus is the son of Abraham.
Dan Franklin: [00:10:24] In fact, I heard a testimony several years ago about a man who was ethnically Jewish and came to faith in Jesus. And he said before he came to faith in Jesus, friends kept telling him, you've got to read the New Testament. And he was like, why do I need to read the New Testament? Like I'm a Jew, I'm about the Old Testament, the New Testament has nothing to do with us as the Jewish people. And then he finally opened up the New Testament to the first book and the first verse, and it said, Son of Abraham, and he said, maybe this does have something to do with me. And you'll notice as we go through the Gospel of Matthew, it's a very Jewish gospel, it's very steeped in Judaism. In fact, there are about twice as many quotations and citations from the Old Testament in Matthew as in any of the other three gospels.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:08] You're going to see this over the next couple of weeks, just in chapters 1 and 2, you're going to see over and over again, Matthew, pointing back to the Old Testament and saying, Jesus fulfilled this. So this is a very Jewish gospel. And there's a specific promise that was made to Abraham that points to this idea of Jesus being the son of Abraham. And I want to put it up here for us. It's Genesis chapter 12, verse 3, when Abraham was called to become the father of a nation, God said to him, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.", hence the title universal blessings. Abraham and his wife Sarai had no children, but God said, you're going to have a child, and then through that child, there's going to be more children, and eventually you're going to have so many children that they're more than the stars that you can see in the sky. But then he said, not only are you going to have a great nation come from you, he said, all people on earth will be blessed through you. When Matthew says Jesus is the son of Abraham, he's saying that Jesus is the universal blessing who was sent not just to the Jewish people, but to all mankind. And Matthew has different elements in his gospel, in this genealogy, that point to this reality.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:27] Now, real quick, I'm about to put up on the screen something that will kind of help us see this visually. But this is true not only when you're reading a genealogy, but when you're reading the Bible. If you're doing personal Bible reading time, one of the things that you want to look out for is just anything that's kind of odd. Anything that strikes you is like, I'm not sure why that's there, or I'm not sure why that needs to be there, that maybe that has significance because it seems a little bit out of place. The Gospel of Matthew is made up of a whole bunch of fathers to son relationships, and you can see if you can see up on the screen this sort of breaks down how the genealogy comes. And this is the way genealogies were done, you know, this father had this son, then he had this son, and it just goes on and on and on.
Dan Franklin: [00:13:12] You may have heard it in the reading, and you may notice it up on the screen, there are interruptions every so often. And four times in leading up to Jesus, five, if you count Mary right beforehand, four times Matthew interrupts this cycle of fathers and sons to mention four women who are part of this genealogy. Now, that should just strike us, we should just say when you're doing a genealogy, you don't need to do that, that's not a normal way that they would have kept the genealogy. Because it was meant just to show, all right, how did we get from point A to point B? How do we get through all the fathers and sons and end up at Jesus? But four times, Matthew intentionally interrupts himself to mention four women. And just on the starting point, before we get where we're going to go a little bit deeper in this, but before we get any deeper, we can just say, well, that's kind of cool, if Jesus is the universal blessing in a list that normally would have just been men, normally would have just been father, son, father, son, father, son, Matthew interrupts to remind us all that women are very much a part of the story of Jesus, and women are very much a part of what God has done in the world. So even right off that, even if we didn't go any deeper than that, it's like, well, that's kind of cool. Matthew wants to make sure we know, Jesus came for men, Jesus came for women, and Jesus came for a universal blessing to bless all of us.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:32] But we can then take it a step deeper, because if you know something about these four women and you can see them up there, it's Tamar, then Rahab, then Ruth, then the wife of Uriah, who's Bathsheba, these four women, at least two of them, and almost certainly all four of them were not Jewish. Rahab and Ruth, we know for sure we're not Jewish. Rahab shows up in Joshua Chapter 2. She's a citizen of the city of Jericho, and she hides the Jewish spies when they go in to spy on the land before they're going to take over Jericho. And then Ruth has a whole book of the Bible named after her, it's called Ruth. All right, Good job, all right, I just wanted to make sure everybody was listening. Just a beautiful book of the Bible called Ruth, that tells the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman, not part of the nation of Israel, being enveloped into the nation of Israel because she embraced the one true God, the God of her mother-in-law, Naomi.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:30] Just as Rahab, who is a member of the city of Jericho, ends up being enveloped into Israel because she says, you know what, if you guys are coming into the land, I think your God is the real God, so when you come in to take over Jericho, take me with you. And she and her whole family end up getting involved in Jericho, and she ends up marrying one of the members of the nation of Israel, and both of them end up in the genealogy of Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:54] Now, with Tamar, and with Bathsheba, we don't have explicit references to this, but Tamar was early enough that she almost certainly was a foreigner. And then with Bathsheba, her husband was Uriah the Hittite, not the Israelites, so probably she was the same. So Matthew not only interrupts and says, all right, I'm going to highlight four women, which is like, that's kind of cool. He didn't have to do that, but he did that. He highlights four, almost certainly all four, foreign non-Israelite women, reminding us that while Jesus came specifically as the Savior for the nation of Israel, he came as a universal blessing for all who would believe in him?
Dan Franklin: [00:16:36] But there's one more step of depth I want us to take in this. Because not only does he mention these four women, and not only are all four of them most likely foreign and not Israelite, but at least three of them had something about what they were known for that made them, let's just say, not model citizens. Ruth would be the exception, Ruth would be the one, you know, Jewish mothers would talk to their Jewish daughters, and they would say, be like Ruth. Ruth would have been a model in that way. The other three, not so much.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:08] You can read these stories later on if you want, but with Tamara, she shows up in Genesis chapter 38, and it's a complicated story, but the complicated story ends with her hiding her identity and seducing her father-in-law, Judah. And by the way, if you're like, well, Tamar, she was bad, by the end of the story, you find out Judah was actually really the culprit in the whole thing, he ends up saying she's more righteous than I am. And yet still at the same time, you probably didn't have the mothers saying to their Jewish daughters, be like Tamar.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:40] You have Rahab, and Rahab is this great woman of faith who ends up embracing the God of Israel. But really, the full title for Rahab, most of the times that she's mentioned in Joshua, is Rahab, the prostitute. Once again, not somebody that at the dinner table on Sabbath, the Jewish mothers were saying, be like Rahab.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:59] Now with Bathsheba, similar to the story with Tamar, in the Bathsheba story and her affair with David, David is by far the culprit in the story. Bathsheba, in many ways, is much more the victim than sort of a coconspirator. And at the same time, she's not somebody that the Jewish mothers would have pointed their daughters to and said, that's the model of how you live a good life.
Dan Franklin: [00:18:20] So we not only have these women in this genealogy, and not only are they foreign, but they're kind of unexpected women. You could say they have a little bit of a checkered or shady past. And by the way, some of you are looking at other names on the list, not just the women. And you're like, oh, yeah, there's some more shadiness going on up there. There's a lot of people mention up there that you're like, oh, yeah, you remember what he did? Do you remember this thing that he did? It's the list not of the who's who of the pure people in the line of Jesus, it's a whole bunch of people who had, some of which would have what you might call spectacular sins, loud sins that got written about in the Bible, and yet here they are in the genealogy of Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:04] Now, this doesn't mean if you're in the genealogy of Jesus, you're all automatically this great person. What it means is that included in the story of Jesus are a whole bunch of unexpected people, and what we get to see in this is this initial sign that Jesus has come as the savior for everyone, not just the men, but the women, not just the Jews, but the Gentiles, not just the rich, but the poor, everyone is invited in on this.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:34] And I think it's worth us taking a minute on this, because some of you may feel unconvinced. You may even be willing to say, yeah, if asked, if push comes to shove, I would say, yes, everybody can be included in this. But some of you have some reason that you're tempted by the enemy to think, not me, I'm not qualified for this. And maybe it's because of something as simple as you just saying, I'm not really that important. I'm not famous. I don't have any kind of showy talents. I don't seem to be that much of an important person with any kind of status. I don't know how I could be important to God. And I want to just remind you that by even mentioning these four women in the genealogy, Matthew was pointing us towards people who didn't have status being included in the story.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:24] Some of you might feel like, I don't know if I could be qualified to be part of God's family because I was born into the wrong family. Like, my family was full of dysfunction and chaos, not a Christian family, that's not my heritage. So maybe Jesus is good for all these other people who are sort of mostly clean in their upbringing, I don't think I can get in on this. Don't forget that Matthew interrupts himself to talk about four women who were born into the wrong families and then became a part of God's story.
Dan Franklin: [00:20:59] And maybe most importantly, some of us think I'm not qualified to be in on this because I have some shame and I have some failures, and I don't think God can get past that. For some of you, that shame and those failures are in the past. For some of you, you're like, yeah, they're in the past, if the past is like yesterday, they're fresh. And you just feel like, I just don't know that I could be a part of this because of the things I've done and because of the ways that I failed. I want you to know that Matthew doesn't skip over the people in the genealogy who have spectacular sins that God forgave.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:36] One of the things that we're tempted to think is that God's forgiveness can reach many, but not to us. And for some of you, you might feel like, all right, maybe I am a Christian, maybe I believe that technically I'm going to heaven, maybe it's on a technicality because God had to do it because I said the prayer, so now he's got to let me in. But the idea that God actually loves you deeply just seems like a foreign pipe dream. And what I want you to know is that Jesus came as the Savior for everyone, you are included in this. If you put your faith in him. Hebrews 4 talks about the idea that we boldly approach the throne of grace, we go before God as if we belong there and He wants to hear from us. Not because we did something, but because Jesus did something for us.
Dan Franklin: [00:22:23] So before even moving on to talk about Jesus as the son of David, I want us to pause here and take in this reality. And in fact, I want you to pause. I'm going to invite you to bow your head right now, let's not skip over this too fast. Maybe there's some reason right now, passive, or active, that you are having a hard time believing that God wants to hear from you. I want to invite you right now in the quietness of this moment to boldly go before the throne of grace, to call out to God in your heart, believing by faith that you belong because of what Jesus has done for you.
Dan Franklin: [00:23:24] Father, thank you that you see us, you see us at our worst, and you don't cast us out. You see us at our lowest point, and you still receive us with joy. Thank you for sending Jesus as a Savior who came for all of us, Father, help us to believe that. Help us to come with boldness, help us to pray with joy, to worship with joy, and to walk before you with joy, knowing that you're not welcoming us begrudgingly, but that you're welcoming us with joy because of what Jesus has done for us. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dan Franklin: [00:24:03] Jesus is the universal blessing, he's the son of Abraham, but Jesus is also the son of David, and what those points to are the idea that He is the Eternal King. Now, when Jesus is mentioned as the Son of David, this is a big theme. You may have noticed in the genealogy, David is named five times, he's a kind of core person in this genealogy. And the reason why Jesus is referred to as the Son of David is mainly because of a specific prophecy that was given from God to David in Second Samuel chapter 7, verse 16, it says, God. Speaking to David, he says, "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’” And the Jews came to believe that God was going to send a descendant of David who wouldn't just rule for a little while but would rule with peace and justice forever. And Matthew points, just even in the structure of the genealogy, he points to the idea that Jesus is coming as the fulfillment of all of this.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:15] So I'm going to put this back up here on the screen for you all to see. You'll notice, and you'll notice when Paul was reading, he talked about the idea that we have basically four groups of 14 names here. Now, here's the thing with genealogies, the way that they were organized, it was normal for people who are writing the genealogies to skip generations. It wasn't something where you had to name every single name, it was normal just to show, all right, you might skip to the great-grandson just to show that the line continues. Matthew does that, Matthew doesn't include every single name that would have been in here if this was a strict historical genealogy, he skipped some generations. And that makes it weird because he makes a point of saying, hey, there are 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the exile, and then 14 generations from the exile to Jesus.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:03] But if we looked at it historically, we'd say, well, no, actually there's not, there's more, he skipped some to make it fit into these groups of 14. And you might say, why would he do that? Why is that significant? Well, people debate it, some people think that it's just to show sort of the orderliness of how God does things, and that's possible.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:24] More than likely Matthew is doing something creative that we would miss, but that the first-century Jews would have got right away. Now, follow me on this, some of you know this, and for some of you, this is going to be kind of weird. In Hebrew, each Hebrew letter had a numeric association with it, We don't do this in English, but it would be like a1,b2, it's sort of like that. Also in Hebrew, they supply the vowels later, there aren't actually letters for the vowels. So the name David, for instance, would just be three letters, it would just be the D, the V, and the D. D has the numerical value of four, V has the numerical value of 6, four plus six plus four equals. 14. It's dangerous to do math in public, but the number is 14. Now, some of you might feel like this feels like a real stretch, it does to us in the 21st century in the United States, but it would not to the Jewish people they would have been very aware, 14, that's David's number, that's the number of David's name. It seems like in a subtle way, Matthew is trying to point all attention to saying Jesus has come to fulfill this prophecy of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:27:36] And one of the cool things that we're going to see as we go through the gospel is there's this constant wondering surrounding Jesus being the son of David. You have a passage in Matthew chapter 9, verse 27, when there are two blind men calling out to be healed, and when they call out to be to Jesus, they say, "Have mercy on us Son of David." Later on in chapter 12, verse 23, Jesus casts out a whole bunch of demons, and people who see it start to whisper to one another and they say, "Could this be the son of David?".
Dan Franklin: [00:27:55] Eventually, probably like six years from now, we'll get to chapter 21. It won't be quite that long, but the great passage tells the story of what we now call Palm Sunday. Jesus entering into Jerusalem, and the people call out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” People were anticipating, there was saying all right, eventually, there's going to be a descendant of David, he will be an even better king than David, he'll rule with peace and justice. Jesus comes as that son of David.
Dan Franklin: [00:28:43] And one of the reasons why this is so significant is because if you look up on this list and you're familiar with it, you know, there's a lot of kings listed here, a lot of kings of Israel are listed here. And none of them, first of all, all of them died, so none of them had any eternal reign. But also, none of them lived up to what they should be. I mean, even starting with David, the best king of Israel, we've already talked about some of his failures and not only his affair with Bathsheba but then covering up her pregnancy by sending her husband, Uriah, to the front lines of the battle so that he would be killed. David was a great king; he was not the king they were longing for.
Dan Franklin: [00:29:25] Then there was Solomon. Solomon, in many ways, was also a great king, the wisest king ever. And yet he used his great knowledge and wisdom to accumulate a bunch of wives, a bunch of riches, and a bunch of resources at the expense of obedience to God, he was a disappointment. Some of you ladies, right now, there were about 75 ladies this last Monday that were getting together to study through different Kings and the Old Testament. Now, catch me up, you all did Rehoboam this last week, right? Rehoboam shows up as the Son of Solomon. A quick note on Rehoboam, he came in a great time of peace and harmony in Israel because he came right after Solomon, and then the very first thing he did was split the kingdom in half because of his pride. He listened to the wisdom of his buddies instead of the wisdom of his father's advisors, and he split the kingdom in half. He was not the king they were waiting for.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:17] I'm not going to go through all of them but let me highlight just a couple more. You go down the list a little bit, you get to Uzziah. Uzziah was a great king, one of the really good kings in Israel, he had a really good reign, and was a godly man, and he ended horribly. He ended by basically believing his own press clippings, thinking he was really important, and deciding that even though only priests were supposed to do this, he was going to go and offer a sacrifice in the temple. The priests all got in his way and said, don't do it, you're not supposed to do this, but he said, get out of my way, I'm going to do it. God punished him by striking him with leprosy, and the end of Uzziah's reign was in isolation. He was not the king they were looking for.
Dan Franklin: [00:30:57] In fact, really on this list, other than David, probably the best king was Hezekiah. It's like, all right. Hezekiah came and had this great reign. He was a godly man, who led Israel through a good time. Then he dies, his son Manasseh takes over and Manasseh is the most evil king in Israel out of all of them. Even when you have a good king, he's only around for a little while and you never know what's coming afterwards. But the middle list ends with Jeconiah, who is so evil that he led into the time of exile.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:25] And the list goes on and on, the king they were waiting for hadn't yet come until we get to Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, that we finally get to the one who came to be the one king they were all waiting for.
Dan Franklin: [00:31:43] And this might be a hard sell, what I'm about to say. It's not only that the Jewish people were longing for a king, every single one of us, no matter how independent we think we are, are all longing for a king. Because some of you right now are like, not me. Like, I don't want any government at all, I want to be in charge of my own life. I'm the captain of my ship. I'm the ruler of my life. I don't want anybody else in charge of me. But what I want to say is, first of all, the fact that we complain so much about the government typically means that we think that it's possible that there could be some government setup that would actually do for us what we're longing for it to do. And not only that, the fact that in the United States, where we are so independent, we practice such a high level of hero worship, reveals that there's something inside of us longing for a king. And the fact that a week from right now, there's going to be people who will have paid tens of thousands of dollars to watch their favorite football players down on the field says something about the hero worship that we practice. The fact that we broke the Internet because of Taylor Swift shows something about the kind of hero worship that we practice. The fact that we chant names and hold up signs at sporting events and at red carpet events and even at political rallies shows that we're longing for somebody to come and fix things for us. We all want a king.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:15] And follow me on this, Israel didn't always have a king, but when they first asked for a king, it was in First Samuel chapter 8, they went to the Prophet Samuel and they said, we want a king. And they said, here's why we want a king, we want a king to fight our battles for us. I want you just to think about this whole idea, we want a king to fight our battles for us. You know, folks, you know why we need a king, we need a king because there are battles, we can't win and we need a king to go fight our battles for us, and Jesus is that king?
Dan Franklin: [00:33:51] Let me just preview some of the things that you're going to see as we go through the Gospel of Matthew. You are going to see Jesus fight a battle against injustice in Israel at that time. And you're going to see Jesus see so clearly through the titles and the status that we sometimes put on, to Jesus it didn't matter if you were a Pharisee and had a whole bunch of status in Israel, or if you were a prostitute and you had very low status. Jesus saw you for your true humanity. He fought a battle against injustice, the battle that we can't win, but that he can win. Jesus fought a battle against disease, you see Jesus healing all the time, all over the place. And every time he heals, it's this preview of a time in the future when all disease would be eradicated, and we would all finally be healed. You see Jesus fight a battle that we can't win, a battle against our enemy, the devil. You see Jesus casting out demons. You see Jesus victorious in the spiritual realm to the fact that demons are falling down at his feet, saying, what are you going to do to us? Jesus goes and fights a battle that we can't win because he's our King.
Dan Franklin: [00:35:04] And finally, here's the kicker, Jesus goes and faces down death. You know, lately, I feel like this happens in bunches. Lately, we've been experiencing a lot of grief in our church family. Just even over the last week, we've lost some members, and sometimes these things feel like they come in bunches. Death is the great enemy, Jesus faced down death through his death, and then he conquered death through his resurrection. Jesus fought the battle that we can't win, death has a 100% success rate except for Jesus. Jesus won the battle that we couldn't win because Jesus is the King that we have always been longing for. And that means that we get to go to Jesus, and first of all, we bow the knee to him. If you were in here this morning and you're not a believer in Jesus, my encouragement, my calling to you today is to bow the knee to King Jesus. He is the king of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords. Your faith is well set in him. When we come to Jesus, we're coming to the King who fights our battles for us.
Dan Franklin: [00:36:14] And so let me come back to a question that I asked at the beginning. What are you waiting for? In fact, here's another way to ask this question, what are you waiting for? You might ask the question, where is your hope? I was reminded this week, we have a sign just outside the worship center, some of you notice it when you walk in, and some of you probably walk by it every week and don't notice that it's there. But the sign just says Hope Found Here. And that's not us as a church claiming, like in comparison to other churches, you really find hope here. This is us saying, we're proclaiming Jesus, and so hope is found here. And it got me thinking about just the whole idea of signs, and how signs point to something. The idea of that sign out there isn't that you look at it and you're like, what a great looking sign, it's that it points to something great.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:07] Have you ever been in the car going somewhere that takes a little while to get to, but you're really excited to be there? And, you know, and maybe traffic is bad. Maybe there's even a little bit of danger along the way because there are some bad drivers, not you other bad drivers who are out there, and so it's a tough journey. And finally, you're sort of getting close, you know the people in the car have been fighting with each other, but you're finally close. And then as you get closer, you see that sign, you see that sign that says next exit Dodger Stadium or fill it in with whatever else. You get that sign, and it's not that you look at the sign and you're like, that sign is really, really cool, it's that the sign is pointing to something great.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:50] Here's the deal, I fully recognize the genealogy, you're like, this does not feel like great reading. Like if you need to get to sleep at night, read the genealogy, it'll tire you. It's not that we're looking at this and saying, this genealogy is so amazing, it's that this genealogy is a giant sign pointing at Jesus. It's a giant sign pointing at Jesus, saying, Son of Abraham, the Universal Blessing. It doesn't matter where you are born, who you are, what you look like, where you came from, or what you've done, Jesus came as your Savior. And it points a giant finger at Jesus and says, Son of David the Eternal King, who will never get old and will never die and will win the battles that we could never win. We get to come to him, we get to come with boldness, we get to cast our cares at his feet, and we get to walk forward with hope. Because Jesus, at the end of the day, whether we realize it or not, is the one that all of us have always been longing for.
Dan Franklin: [00:38:51] Let me pray for us right now. Father, thank you so much that you sent Jesus because you didn't have to. We were in a mess that we made with our own sin and failure, and you sent Jesus as our Savior. Father, thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus as that universal blessing and as that eternal King. And Father, what we're really waiting for, is we are longing for the day when our Savior Jesus returns and when all is made right, we're longing for an end of disease, an end of death, an end of injustice, and an end of all the grief that we experience here in this life. Give us hope in Jesus now and give us the strength that we need to walk with you as he fights our battles for us. I pray all this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, amen.
Recorded in Upland, California.
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