Dennis Tuuri

and at the same time trying to communicate to what the lesson was on, what the sermon was about while listening. Now, maybe you can’t do that. I’m not encouraging you not to be attentive to what I’m going to say. But I am suggesting that maybe in reviewing this with your children during the week if you care to do that, that these bolded words may be pictures that they could draw the very young ones to remind them of the essence of the flow of this particular sermon.

And by way of introduction, the first thing that I want us to maybe think about in terms of this series of Advent sermons is who it is that we meet with at communion.

My wife when she saw this outline said, “Well, we’re not meeting with the wine glass, the bread, and the table. Certainly not.” The point is your children may want to draw a picture of something that reminds them of communion as we begin to think about today and will for the next month or so, who it is that we meet with at communion. And I know that we know we meet with the Lord Jesus Christ. But by way of looking at these gospel accounts and particularly the gospel of Matthew, I want us to remind ourselves again of who it is as we come weekly to the Lord’s table who greets us. Who is it that we have union and communion with? Who is it that we ascend to eat at his table and he descends knocking at the door and coming in and dining with us? That is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So as we think about this, we want to do this on the basis of the gospel accounts and particularly the gospel of Matthew.

Now the word gospel that is found in the title “the Gospel according to Matthew” – this English word gospel comes from “God’s spell” or it reads essentially “good tidings,” “good news.” We know that for instance in another gospel account when the angel goes to announce the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ the angel says unto them, “Be not afraid for behold I bring you good tidings. I bring you gospel of great joy which shall be to all the people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David prominent also in our genealogy in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord.”

This gospel, these good tidings, were of course proclaimed in the Old Testament and prophesied there. In Isaiah 52:7 we read, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace that brings gospel and publishes peace.” Every Lord’s day the gospel is proclaimed it is published as it were in the context of the congregation and the response of the congregation is the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah goes on to say, “that bringeth good tidings of good that publisheth salvation that saith unto Zion thy God reigneth. The voice of thy watchmen they lift up the voice together do they sing for they shall see eye to eye when Jehovah returneth to Zion. Break forth into joy sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem. For Jehovah hath comforted his people. He hath redeemed Jerusalem. Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”

The proclamation of the gospel is the proclamation that the savior king has ascended to the throne and he now reigns. God has made bare his holy arm. The Magnificat talks in the past tense of what has been accomplished in the incarnation. And we come to worship God on the basis of what that was and is and shall work itself out to be. In Isaiah 61, we read, “The spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, unto the humble, unto the submissive, those who are broken to Christ’s harness. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the year of Jehovah’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”

A two-pronged message. The Savior reigns. He’ll exalt his people, those elect, but he will also bring vengeance to his enemies, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Jehovah that he may be glorified.

So we come to the gospel account of Matthew with its particular emphasis. As I said, this word gospel has its roots in an old English word, a Saxon word, “God’s spell,” something that is charming, a charm that is said. In our way of thinking of it today, a spell or a charm is something magical, an incantation that produces things magically or mystically. Of course, that’s not the meaning of the gospel. God doesn’t work that way. But it certainly is true that the end result of the gospel is that those who are elect in Christ are indeed charmed by the beauty of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in righteousness, strength, power, holiness, majesty, in love and grace and mercy to his people to redeem them to accomplish redemption that they might be delivered from their sins and might also be delivered from the power of all those who oppose them and oppose the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul said that this gospel was his gospel. That’s what he says in the epistles. May this gospel be our gospel as we appropriate it as we submit ourselves unto the preaching of the good news of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, having ascended to the throne. May we appropriate it. May we understand it. And may we rejoice in it. And may we proclaim it then in all that we do and say throughout our lives. And may we thus also with Paul say that it is our gospel.

Well, let’s turn specifically then to this text from Matthew. The outline is given in a threefold manner. First, we’ll look at a pedigree from the past and that’ll occupy most of our time. But I do want to look at the other bookend of the Gospel of Matthew—the great commission which ties together with the opening refrains of this gospel. James B. Jordan did an analysis of the book of Matthew a year and a half ago or so. And in that analysis he talks about these correlations of the beginning and into the book and we see that here that we have a pedigree from the past but then at the conclusion of the book we have a commission or a commissioning for the future and if we understand that the gospel involves this look backward and then this look forward it helps us in the context of our present duty the present moment that we have as Christians to have joy and service to the king of kings that’s portrayed in this pedigree from the past and in this commission for the future but let’s look first at this pedigree from the past.

This term pedigree is one that’s found in J. Alexander’s commentary on Matthew. He takes this from the opening title of the gospel here where we read in verse one that this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Book here could be used not just in the sense of a book but in the sense of a historical record, a document and the genealogy refers to the genesis or beginnings of this person that is named Jesus Christ.

And so what Matthew does here is he takes these statistical records and begins the gospel of our savior with these statistical records as a pedigree of his messiahship. A pedigree of his messiahship. Now it’s interesting to note then first of all before we move into the balance of the outline that Matthew begins with facts, does he not? He begins with genealogical records. He begins with what most of us would consider to be quite boring and useless sort of information—dull, dull and boring parts of the book are usually looked at as the genealogical records. But not so because these genealogical records, these facts rightly interpreted demonstrate to us the messiahship, the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are a pedigree from the past that indicates that he is qualified as Messiah in terms of his genealogy.

Matthew traces his genealogy and you’ll notice children or your parents might notice this next bolded term on your outline is a family tree. What we have here is a family tree of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we have his roots as it were drawn out from us. So you could draw maybe a family tree to remind yourself that the gospel of Matthew opens by telling us who it is that we meet at communion by giving us a family tree of the savior.

Now Matthew gives us a particular genealogical look. He traces the genealogy of Christ by way of emphasis from Abraham and David. And he draws that genealogy down not to Mary, the biological mother, but rather to Joseph, the legal father of our savior. Genealogical records then are confirmed to us not just by the custom of the Jews, which was true at the time. But we are to think in terms of covenantal realities, the covenantal headship of Joseph, as it were, as the one who begot through Mary, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The term begot does not mean actually sired necessarily in a physical sense. In some of these genealogical records in Matthew 1, generations are skipped. Two or three generations may be skipped. So it indicates the progression of line from a particular individual. So he takes these dry historical facts and correctly interprets them and gives us great joy in knowing that our savior is indeed of the required line of Abraham and of the required line of David. It is Matthew’s intent to portray Jesus as the King of Kings, the Messiah, the great king predicted in the context of the Old Testament.

And so Matthew’s genealogy has as its emphasis the Messiah credentials, the pedigree as it were to use Alexander’s terms, the pedigree of the Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah. Mark, the next gospel, who portrays Jesus largely as the servant as Matthew portrays him as the king, gives no genealogical records. Luke, who portrays the Lord Jesus Christ as the son of man, traces the genealogical records of Jesus from Mary back to Adam and then lists Adam as the son of God, as we’ve spoken of in our series on Genesis and marriage recently.

So Luke’s particular genealogy stresses Jesus as the son of man and the son of Adam and essentially the son of God. John in his particular gospel giving us the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ has no genealogical records either, but rather we read in John that “the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So the very beginning of these gospels are distinctive to their particular purpose.

And as I said, Matthew’s purpose is to portray the Lord Jesus Christ as the sovereign whereas Mark presents him as a servant. Luke is the son of man and John as the son of God. And taken together then the gospel record of the one that we have communion with is that he is sovereign God and servant man. Taking the four Gospels together. Now some observations on these genealogical records. Then this pedigree from the past.

First of all, this pedigree from the past tells us that there is essential continuity in the context of the scriptures. So maybe a visual image of this is that we have one Bible and it obviously has two parts to it so to speak, old covenant and new covenant. But that the link, the lynch pin between those two, the entrance point into the new covenant books is the book of Matthew. Matthew, which begins with this genealogical record that goes back to the Old Testament. So you see the unity of the word of God, the unity of the scriptures is given to us in this genealogical record and particularly in God deciding in his providence to begin the New Testament accounts and the gospels with the book of Matthew.

I say that because Matthew has as its particular emphasis this connection of Christ the Messiah to the Old Testament revelation. So for instance we read in a guide to the gospels that there are 53 quotations from the Old Testament and 76 references to Old Testament passages, a total of 129 references or allusions in the book of Matthew to the Old Testament.

There’s a bulletin insert that we had out this morning from the Voice of the Martyrs and it tells the story of a man who was martyred at the age of 26 having in the providence of God pastored a church of 400 and then recently being martyred this man became a Christian through a New Testament that he’d been given and for the life of that church that is described in that bulletin insert that’s what they had by way of a Bible was a New Testament alone. God is not bound to any particular way of working. God can use New Testament alone to bring people and has repeatedly in the history of our country certainly to the Lord Jesus Christ and to salvation.

But imagine how difficult it would be to take that New Testament to begin reading that New Testament from the book of Matthew and not to have any Old Testament there to understand what you’re reading about in these 129 allusions to the Old Testament, to not know really who Abraham or David or any of these people were. As you read this genealogical record of the savior. Now, yes, you can come to the position of believing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ through these records, but think how difficult it would be to understand the nature of who it is that you have communion with every Lord’s day if all you had was the New Testament.

Matthew presupposes a continuity of the scriptures that there is one word from God and he ties those testaments together by these repeated allusions, quotations and references to the Old Testament. And he ties them very specifically at the opening of the gospel by tying in the very first line of this text of the gospel of the New Testament by tying the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ to the fact that he is born of the line of Abraham and of the line of David. He brings us to an Old Testament understanding.

Now, I just said, you know, how difficult it would be to fully comprehend, to rejoice, to know who it is we have union and communion with at the Lord’s supper, apart from an Old Testament understanding. But how difficult is it for you perhaps? And how difficult is it for our children? My point is how good a job have we done since the scriptures stress the importance of the revealed word of God and the continuity of that word being one word from God, understanding the New Testament based upon its Old Testament roots.

How good a job have we done in instructing the children of this congregation, the children in your family, of instructing yourself in who these people are from the Old Testament. Do you know the life of Abraham? Do you know why he is quoted here in terms of being important that Jesus came from his line? Do you know why David enters into this? You see, I’m afraid that while we can look at illustrations such as the Voice of the Martyrs story of the man who only had a New Testament and say, “Wow, we really need to do better work in terms of getting the Old Testament and the New Testament together, the one word of God into the mission field,” I’m afraid that we have a mission field in our own nation, in our own state, in our own city, and probably in our own homes as well.

Repeatedly, we’ve stressed, and I was so pleased to hear that Dave H., deacon, stressed to the children that gathered, the teenagers that got together Friday night at his house, the importance of knowing the word of God cannot be overstated. Otherwise, you have no idea what this genealogical record is. Now, it’s true that God has given particular men giftings and calling to study this word and to share it with you. But we’ve got basically one hour together in terms of the corporate nature of the church to exposit some of these scriptures.

And my job isn’t primarily to teach you during this hour. My job is to proclaim the gospel of the savior and to put it out there in as pure a way as possible, understandable way as possible, so that we can rejoice in our finished salvation. We can rest assured that this Messiah has paid the price for our sins and we can worship him in spirit and truth and we can open up our mouths in loud joy and songs of praise to him who has died and risen again and ascended for our salvation.

Now we do have Bible classes occasionally. We’ve got an ongoing catechism study Tuesday nights that Elder May is teaching. But do you see what I’m saying? As we look forward to this next year, the end of the year is a way to kind of take evaluation, take stock, think of where we’re at. The elders are in the process of preparing a budget for the coming year. And a budget drives us to consider the priorities that we have for our particular ministry and what God would have us to do.

Somewhere in the context of our mission as a church must be based on the implications of this text alone must be the teaching ministry of the church to the children and to the adults that we might be a people of the book who know the book and who then rejoice at the communion table having a firmer understanding and grasp of the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ and his mission. We must be people of the book, people of the word.

I exhorted you all, you young people, a couple of months ago, to make commitments to try diligently to read your Bibles every day. I’d exhort you that way again. I exhort the parents in this congregation. I exhort myself as one of the officers of this church and the other officers of the church that we somehow continue to have as one of the mission statements of this church that we would know this book. Praise God that we’re no longer New Testament Christians. That we know the fullness of the word of God. May we then truly appropriate all of that through our study and interaction with that word. Pray for us. Pray for the priorities of this church.

Somehow. I really am not at all convinced that homeschooling alone can provide the kind of instruction in the word of God that’s required to be truly rejoicing Christians. I’m not at all convinced that we shouldn’t have regular Bible classes, not just through the catechisms, those are good, but through the content of the scriptures themselves that we might know these things and might not be an ignorant people.

Well, okay, enough stress on that. We do—the scriptures do in these opening pages of Matthew stress this continuity and then they stress also a discontinuity and these probably are not the right words. I don’t know how quite to put this, but Matthew certainly stresses the importance of seeing the scriptures as one word that this link between old covenant and new covenant has all these old covenant references and has this relationship of Christ to the old covenant. But we don’t want by that—not we, I don’t want to with that statement to somehow obscure the fact that the new covenant and the fact that Jesus is coming was somehow just sort of the same thing as in the old testament.

There is a somewhat of a discontinuity I guess I’m not sure it’s the right word but there is a change with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ and his incarnation there is somewhat of a radical discontinuity given here and we see it again in the opening words of this book. This is the book of the generations of Jesus Christ. The word generation is the word Genesis essentially in a different form and it’s the same word that is used to translate the opening words or the title rather of the book of beginnings or origins of Genesis itself.

And so with the old covenant we have it beginning with a statement of the generations the genesis the beginnings of the created order. And here we have in place of that the genesis, the beginnings of the advent of Jesus Christ taking upon himself human flesh coming as Messiah. Not the genesis or origins of Christ of Jesus. He is the eternal member of the Godhead. But his incarnation, his advent is here portrayed for us by way of the same terminology. It is a genesis. It is a new genesis and it is a radically better genesis than the description of the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of his advent or incarnation.

And so we have this sense of progression, radical progression, jump into hyperspace as it were as we move from the old covenant into the new covenant. And in the context of this, it’s interesting as well to note other correlations between the Old Testament and the New Testament that shows this kind of radical change. I mean, the very fact that we read Matthew in Greek as opposed to the Hebrew of the Old Testament shows this radical shift that now the word is published in the vernacular so to speak in the context of the ordinary language of the people, the language of the created world then and there’s this shift then from being directed to a particular priestly people to now being directed to all men and to the church.

James B. Jordan has articulated that the book of Matthew recapitulates not just by way of this allusion to Genesis, really recapitulates the Pentateuch of the Old Testament. He talks about the fact you have these genealogies that correlate to the book of Genesis in chapter 1. We have the birth of Jesus which he correlates to the birth of Moses in the last half of chapter 1. We have wealth of our savior and his descent into Egypt given in this particular gospel in chapter 2 and then an exodus away from Egypt correlating of course to the book of Exodus and the descent into Egypt and the ascent out of it.

We have the baptism of Jesus then recorded in chapter 3 which reminds us of the Red Sea crossing and the baptism of the church of the Old Testament. In chapter 4 we have Jesus wandering or wrestling rather wrestling in the wilderness for 40 days even as the people of God, the Israel of the Old Testament wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. We have Jesus’s initial ministry given for us in chapter 4 which can be seen as correlating to the initial conquest in the book of Numbers. And then in chapters 5 through 7, we have the Sermon on the Mount with its obvious allusions to the book of Deuteronomy where Jesus is seen as the greater Moses preaching sermons in a retelling as it were a recasting of the law of God.

So we have these correlations and then he suggests that the great commission at the end of the book of Matthew can then be seen as correlating to the commission to Joshua to go in and conquer the promised land. So we can see this continuity with the Old Testament. But we also see this radical discontinuity in the sense of a heightened aspect of what these things all pointed toward. This is the greater Moses. These are the greater conquests. This is the greater and successful resisting of the temptation of the devil.

And this is the greater conquest that is pictured in Matthew 28. No longer is Joshua commanded to go into just a portion of the land and to conquer it. Now Jesus, the greater Joshua—Jesus means Joshua. It’s the same, it’s the Greek name for the Hebrew named Joshua. Yahweh saves—this new Joshua, the greater Joshua commands us to go into all the earth and make disciples of all the nations. So now things have changed radically. There is continuity. But as I said, it’s like going and going through hyperspace then into what Christ has now accomplished through his advent in history.

This is the Christ we meet with at the communion table. There is a significance to this history. There is the squaring off of history. Another point on your outline under lesson number two—the squaring off of history is also given to us. What do I mean by that? Well, in verses 16 and 17 of this genealogy, we read that the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David into the captivity in Babylon are 14 generations and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are 14 generations.

Now, Matthew has taken a set of facts here but he has changed them somewhat. He has decided to arrange these genealogies in three sets of 14. Now the why of this is not agreed on by all men or by many men. It’s not exactly certain why he did this. Some say that in the first set of 14 from Abraham to David there are no omissions to the genealogical records there. There are in David to the captivity and from the captivity on to Jesus, we’re not really sure because those records aren’t really, of course, Old Testament records. So in the first group, the way David, the way Matthew decides to group these particular genealogies, there are indeed 14 generations.

And it could be he omitted a list of three kings in the middle list from David to the captivity for the sake of making each of them come out to 14 generations. It gives a symmetry to the account. It also may be useful if our children were memorizing these genealogies and the personages in them, what we know of them. It would be useful to them to memorize them in six sets of seven, right? Because 14 is 7 times 2. Now, there’s also the fact that Matthew uses a double witness throughout his gospel.

So, we have this doubled seven repeated three times summing up the history of the last half of the ages of the earth. From Abraham on to Christ. The earth is there’s 2,000 years roughly before Abraham, 2,000 years from Abraham to Christ. And those 2,000 years are lumped together by way of Matthew in three sets of 14. So we give three sides here of the building. And that’s why I say we can look at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as squaring off history. History finds its culmination in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These six sevens will now take on the seventh seven, through the genealogies of Christ as his people then move in the proclamation and the commissioning they receive in Matthew 28 to recall the earth to dominion under the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’ll be the squaring off of history. So that’s one way to teach our children history is by way of these three groups of 14 from Abraham to David, the ascendancy up to the King David, and then a partaking of the kingdom period for another 14 generations and then a being taken into captivity in preparation for the greater Abraham, the greater David to come. History is squared off as it were. Jesus is the culmination point of these genealogies of these three sets of genealogical records.

One other point I wish to make here is one of perseverance and patience. If we read these genealogical records in the individual details or in just the big scope of history. We recognize that there were promises given that took a long time to fulfill. This is why in the bolded part of this particular outline, I’ve got a potential picture for your child of a water pitcher and a water pitcher that is being filled up a drop at a time.

And what I suggest in that picture is that your child draw himself watching this water pitcher fill up a drop at a time and that he portray himself on the drawing as having a smile on his face. You see, God had promised things to Abraham and he had promised things to David and he had actually of course promised things in the context of the fall of Adam and God’s declaration, his judgment of Adam, Eve and the serpent. You remember that was where the evangel, the first glimpse of the good news is proclaimed there that one will come who will crush the head of the serpent.

So God had promised these things, but God took a long time on delivering on these promises. And one what we should see from that is that God is faithful to fulfill his promises. He may work very slowly over time as he did in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, think of it. We talked about the life of Abraham, the patience of Abraham who has to wait, you know, decades before he gets the promised son Isaac. Who never really receives the land for 430 years are going to be in bondage to Egypt. He’s been promised the land. He sees other people on that land. He’s been promised a son. Takes him forever to get the son in his way of thinking. And then he’s called to sacrifice the son on the mountain in obedience to God.

The patience of Abraham. But that patience of Abraham really is even longer than that because for 2,000 years, this promise is being worked out by God and his providence. Providentially arranging the affairs of each of these people listed in these genealogical records of our savior. God is providentially moving surely, sovereignly, in the minutest detail. And yet, he is going to take 2,000 years for that savior, the promise to Abraham to be fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what we take away from that is the need that when we come to the table of the Lord, we meet with the one in whose lineage, in whose advent we see the slow but faithful outworking of the promise of he who has called you into relationship through Jesus Christ. You may have something you’re impatient about today, this week, this month, this year, in your lifetime. You may be impatient as I am over the fact that my children don’t know the Bible as well as I would like them to know the Bible.

And I know that God will faithfully bring about generation after generation, a generation who comes who will know that Bible much better than I know the Bible, much better than my children know the Bible. God will work faithfully to bring his people to maturation. You know that it has been a desire, those of you who have been here from the beginning, it’s been a great desire of myself and the other men of this church and families that we see developed institutional Catholicity in the context of the body of Christ.

You know that we have produced documents. We’ve worked hard. I have flown to various places across the country to try to work toward taking small steps toward the realization of what Christ prayed for that is true organically that we are united in him. And yet institutionally the church is scattered and divided. In our Sunday school class, we talked about the need for churches to demonstrate Catholicity through honoring the suspension of people from the table. We don’t even have that small step worked out in very much detail are with the broader body of Christ in the context of a city such as Portland.

Now, it’s beginning to happen. There’s beginning phases of that happening and we don’t want to despair over that taking a long time. God is faithful. I believe that the elect in the context of the reformational churches will come into institutional Catholicity with those that are now in the context of Baptist churches, charismatic churches, Assembly of God churches and I believe also there will be in the days to come institutional Catholicity with the Eastern Orthodox, what is now known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and with the Roman Catholic Church.

I believe that eventually that organic unity we have in Christ will be demonstrated in institutional unity. But we want to be patient. We want to know—we must know—that’s going to be a multi-generational, multi-centuries long process. And God in his providence knows what he’s doing. He knew what he was doing in waiting for 2,000 years to bring Messiah. And he knows if it takes another 2,000 years to bring us to institutional Catholicity that the scriptures seem to declare, he knows that it’ll work out for his most glorious purposes.

God is a God who loves to delight us with his marvelous works. We sing that part of the Psalter. “He only doeth wondrous works.” He is the only one who does these kind of wondrous works. Who brings Messiah after 2,000 years of promise to Abraham, fulfills that promise when the line of David has been lost through obscurity. And when the people of Abraham, that proud people—I mean proud in a proper sense of having relationship with God and enjoying that union and communion with him—they’ve now been brought into subjection to a pagan force of Romans.

And God in the midst of that breaking of things down, moving from Abraham and David to the captivity to the humiliation of Israel. Then brings the Lord Jesus Christ in to fulfill his promise. And it doesn’t even end there because the rest of the book of Matthew is all about opposition to the Savior. Mary’s going to have problems right away. When he’s born, Herod’s going to want to strike out at him. You know, Matthew is filled with resistance, filled with difficulties as the task of Messiah is brought to fruition. Now, it’s not difficulties for God. It’s difficulties for us who are required to have the patience of Abraham and his generations that followed him as they waited for Messiah.

God’s perseverance in the promise is demonstrated in these genealogical records and they are required then of us to be patient letting the water pitcher fill up a drop at a time with smiling faces not grumbling about the time it takes for God to fulfill his trial or tribulation. Remember hearing a tape many years ago. How long will a trial take in your life? An affliction in your life? How long will it take? Long enough for God to do his work in your soul that’s being worked through the difficulties you have.

Now, I know that we all have difficulties. Some of us have large difficulties that have been looming on them for several years in terms of family matters in this congregation. Others have difficulties in the context of their immediate family. We have difficulties as a church looking for institutional Catholicity and not seeing it realized. We have difficulties in meeting in the context of rented facilities and not being able to do what we want to do in terms of the accoutrements, the accompanying setting for the worship of God that we wish to offer him. Got to wait slowly while that building fund is gathering money. We wait slowly but we wait patiently and we look for the opportunities that God provides for us.

There is a beautiful blend as we look at these genealogical records. We’ll do this at the end of the talk of both a passive patience in the waiting for God’s work and an active seeking out to do those very things. We can fall off the wagon either way. We can try to rush into something and not patient for God and do things wrong. Or we can just pull back and be stoic and never move toward teaching our children the scripture. Institutional Catholicity, the resolution of family problems, whatever it is. God says the beautiful way and the middle path is the way of submission and patience and an active seeking by means of prayer and then secondary means what God is drawing us toward in Christ.

Okay. So, we have these promises of our savior brought to fruition in the context of this gospel account and he tells us to have trust to have perseverance, to have patience, and to have joy in the context that God is indeed a God who brings to pass what he has promised for us.

So we have this continuity and discontinuity pictured for us in these opening verses of Matthew’s gospel. We also have preeminently—now this is the big picture of what these gospel or genealogical records are about. They are a pedigree because point number three, this is Jesus Christ the savior king that is being given here as the one who is the end result of this pedigree of these genealogical records.

You know there is this—there’s an old song that keeps running through my head the last few days “Jesus there’s just something about that name.” You’ve probably heard the song Master Savior. It’s a nice song and it can certainly be listened to appropriately and appropriated by Christian people. But I wonder how many of us do know what it is about that name Jesus Christ that is to be so wonderful to us and so joyous in its effects upon our countenance.

Jesus, as I said, is the form for Joshua. It means savior. And we’re told later in this particular account that Joseph was to name the child Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. He is the savior. But this record here particularly emphasizes the beginning of this gospel that he is Messiah. Messiah had to come from the tribe of Abraham. Messiah had to come from the lineage of David because these promises were made to them. And this pedigree is to assure us that the one that we meet at the communion table with during the Lord’s supper is indeed qualified according to God’s word.

Now, the qualifications that God’s word places upon Messiah that he must come from the loins of Abraham and from the line of David, the whole purpose of this genealogical record is to assert the Christ character of Jesus. To assert that he is Messiah. Messiah was the anointed prophet, priest and king of the old testament. He was to come rather—he was preeminently the anointed king of kings. The great king who would come and reverse finally and definitively the effects of the fall of Adam. Who would crush the head of the serpent. Who would redeem his people? Who would release his people from all of their sins, effect deliverance for them, and more than that also would bring that two-edged sword that is peace to the elect and destruction to the enemies of God and enemies of the gospel and Messiah.

This was the great promise of the Old Testament that is brought to fruition in the genealogical records before us in Matthew 1:1-17. And so here, children, the bold word is draw a crown with a cross on it. I spoke about it at the wedding service a little over a week ago—a crown with a cross on it. Jesus is king and he reigns because he is savior as well. He is savior king. That’s what the word means. Jesus Christ. There’s something about that name. The name is savior king. And Jesus is that great king to come.

Turn to 2 Samuel 7:12-16. And here we have David’s side of these Old Testament promises. 2 Samuel 7:12-16 says this: “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you which will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and He shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.”

God here promises that the one to come, the Messiah, the great King of Kings, must come from the line of David. Now, this has partial application to David’s son Solomon who was indeed chastened by God. But it doesn’t ultimately find its fruition in Solomon because Solomon immediately then somewhat immediately apostatizes, falls into great sin and then his son Rehoboam loses the kingdom you know it’s it’s divided up in two and then eventually the total kingdom is lost through captivity. So the physical lineage of David the immediate progenitors the immediate generations of David Solomon Rehoboam and his generations cannot be the ultimate recipients of this particular promise by God because their throne is not established forever.

But the one who is of David, the king, is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this lineage stresses very distinctly a lineage from David the king. Now it does that by way in verse one of Matthew 1 of saying that this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. It places David first, the son of Abraham. It also does this because when it gets around to talking about David, we read in verse 6, “Jesse begot David the king and David the king begot Solomon. So the fact that this is the kingly lineage of Christ that’s being portrayed here is stressed with that the king title being given to David. He was the preeminent Old Testament king but he is to be succeeded which is also obvious from the genealogy in this way.

It follows by saying that Jesse begot David the king. David the king begat Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. So while David the king and his preeminence is the great king of the old testament is given. His sin and his failure to meet the requirements of Messiah are also given to us to show that there is a greater David who is the end result of this lineage. That’s the David side of the promises that are fulfilled in this lineage.

Turn to Genesis 17 and we’ll look at verses 4 and following. Now, we know that in Genesis to Abraham, we have verses such as this from 12:3. While you’re turning, you can listen to this, I’m sure. Genesis 12:3, “I will bless those who bless you. I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” We know that. And we know in verse 18 of 22, “in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.” So Abraham will usher up—usher in—a seed definitively, the Lord Jesus Christ in whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

But in Genesis 17, we’re told of the particular kingly aspect that I think is the focus again of this genealogical record as it points out the kingdom of Jesus, the messiahship. In verse 4 of Genesis 17, we read, “As for me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall you be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.”

The change of the name from Abram to Abraham is associated in immediate context of this text with the fact that kings are going to come from Abraham. And so, his name is changed. The word means the same thing’s true.