Welcome church family!
- If you’re new a special welcome – like all families we enjoy meeting together we meet in small groups during the week too >>>
- Today we’ll be looking at Jesus’ family
About a decade ago the BBC began screening a series of programs called ‘Who do you think you are’
- Celebrities have their ancestry explored by a research team and then they’re taken through it on camera
- They find out about their forbears – the good the bad and the ugly!
- This is Brendan O’Carrol <ppt>, the star of Mrs Brown’s Boys
- A sticom in which he plays Agnes Brown <ppt>, a loud, foul-mouthed Irish matriarch who works in a Dublin veg market and is always looking out for her family after the death of husband Redser.
- But in ‘Who do you think you are?’ he is shown a gun. It was the weapon that was used to murder his grandfather Peter in the Irish war of independence.
- … and he weeps <ppt>. He never realised anything as dark as that was lurking in his family history.
It would be so easy to come into church, look around and think that every else here has a squeaky clean life with a nice family >>>
- it ain’t true!
And it wasn’t in Jesus family – in fact in his family line there were a lot of skeletons in the cupboard – things you just don’t talk about!
And we stumble across them in Matthew chapter 1
Today we’re starting a new series of Sunday talks – the life of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel – Cutting Edge Christ. <ppt>
- We’re going to see how ‘out there’ Jesus was.
- How he challenged presuppositions, how he exposed irrelevant tradition and upheld god-honouring tradition
- Right at the very end of the gospel of Matthew Jesus says ‘All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me, so go and make disciples!”
- i.e. You 12 (actually 11 by this time) have followed me wholeheartedly – lived your lives with me, set your standards by mine, trusted your heavenly Father as I have – now my commission to you is to go and make that happen in other people!
And if at the end of this series you find yourself
- knowing him more clearly, loving him more dearly and following him more nearly
- I will be a happy pastor and (much more importantly) we will have a glorified Saviour! – God will get the credit!
Christianity was never intended to be a comfort-inducing soporific religion. Christianity is made for the cutting edge of life – with all its complexity, all its issues, all its excitement, all its pain and everything in between.
Let’s set out some basics
4 gospels – 4 biographies of Jesus Christ:
- Matthew – written mainly for Jewish people
- Mark – written mainly for Roman people
- Luke – written for gentiles
- John – entirely different! – written mainly for Greek people
Matt, Mark, Luke similar – called synoptic gospels but John very different – 90% of John’s gospel is only found in John.
Matthew starts his gospel with a long list of names!
- Have you ever thought that listening to Ian’s sermons is like reading the telephone book?!
We’re going to do that – Matthew’s telephone book!
And so Matthew starts by telling them their history. And a curious fact is that Matthew, himself, is an unlikely person to tell us about Jesus. He was Jewish in orientation, but he worked for the Roman government, which was a godless, pagan government.
- And he was a tax collector, meaning he would go to the people of God and he would take from them as much money as he possibly could.
- He would pay a set amount to the government from the money that he received, and anything above and beyond their tax was his personal income.
- So, he’s an extortionist, he’s a thief, he’s a crook. In our day, this would be like someone who works for the HMRC and is also a terrorist.
- BUT he met Jesus, he had a change of heart and mind, he was born again into the family of God and adopted by God the Father, and he demonstrated his life change by walking away from a very lucrative business to live generously and to serve others compassionately.
And so you have an unlikely man, writing to a religious people about their unlikely family history through which Jesus Christ came.
See Matthew 1
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
4 Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
6 and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,
7 Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa,
8 Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,
Jehoram the father of Uzziah,
9 Uzziah the father of Jotham,
Jotham the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
10 Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amon,
Amon the father of Josiah,
11 and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
12 After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
13 Zerubbabel the father of Abihud,
Abihud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor,
14 Azor the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Elihud,
15 Elihud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
17 Thus 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.
18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: his mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’
Massive principle: God works through families – even long family lines like this one – 42 generations at least.
- a family that loves, that is compassionate, that is generous, that is serving
- The church should be (and is, by and large) a family where we love genuinely, where we care compassionately, where we give generously and serve sacrificially
Every family tree has some dark branches! – Things about which you wish you could say “let’s just no go there” (and secretly you might wish you could rewrite history!)
Tell the truth – be honest – that’s what’s happening here!
Abraham
A hugely important man in God’s plan!
God loves all people equally but he doesn’t work through all people equally. Abraham was a towering figure. Mentioned in all 4 gospels and 7 other NT books.
What is unique about him?
He lived by faith –
trusting in God who he couldn’t see!
His faith was counted by God as righteousness – just as it is for us today, so in that sense he was our spiritual father.
BUT – when God came to him he wasn’t a Jew
- God had judged a group of people for trying to usurp his command at the Tower of Babel,
- These were people who were in rebellion against God, the Babylonians. And God came to Abraham, who himself was probably a Babylonian. His home town (Ur) is in Babylon.
- So here’s a pagan man with a pagan father from a rebellious people. He wasn’t seeking God, but God was seeking him. He wasn’t calling out for God, but God came calling out to him.
BUT in Abraham’s life there is drunkenness that got him into trouble
There was lying – he tried to cover up who his wife was – twice! So he wasn’t always a man of faith – he continually needed God.
David
David was a king – probably Israel’s greatest king
Another towering figure in the Bible.
There is a prophecy in Micah (5:2) that says that through David the King of all kings will arrive.
David was a wonderfully God-centered leader. He designed and prepared the great temple that Solomon eventually built.
He was a worship leader (danced his praise to the Lord) , a poet (wrote many of the psalms), a warrior (killed Goliath. Chant “Saul has killed his thousands and David his 10,000s!)
I wouldn’t mind being in that family line!
BUT
David and Uriah >>>
Most genealogies of this type trace the male line – but in Jesus’ genealogy there are 5 women mentioned.
Tamar
See Genesis 38. A tangled story for which we need to know a bit about the culture of their day.
Judah had 2 sons Er and Onan – (maybe he couldn’t remember name?)
Tamar was married to Er (maybe she couldn’t remember name?)
Both sons turned out to be nasty characters whom God wiped out for their viscousness.
So Judah is left with no family line. In their culture this was a disaster and a disgrace.
So Tamar decides she will disguise herself as a prostitute and try to seduce her father-in-law – and succeeds in becoming pregnant. So now we have incest. (Story in Genesis 38)
A woman who tried to continue her family line by doing something that was forbidden – tough one to square!
Rahab
She didn’t pretend to be a prostitute, she really was.
When Israelite spies came into the city of Jericho to spy out the land, he house in the wall was perfect cover for them.
But she did something that made a difference, she hid the men and helped them fulfil God’s plan.
Here’s how Hebrews describes it …
- Heb 11:31 “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed [when God destroyed Jericho]”
Ruth
If you’ve been coming for a few weeks you’ll know all about Ruth(!)
She’s an odd inclusion because she’s not Jewish. In fact she was one of the people God told the children of Israel they were never to marry – a Moabitess.
Why? This all goes back to origins.
A few generations previously, Lot and Abraham had parted company (Gen 19:30-38) and God had rescued Lot and his two daughters from Sodom.
Lot ended up in hiding, living only with his daughters. They were getting frustrated that there was no family line (again!) so they decide to take things into their own hands.
They hatch a plan to get Lot drunk, have sex with him and hopefully have a child. The plan works and one of the children who is born is called Moab.
So Moab was ‘the other side of the family’ – the branch of the family you don’t even talk about! All the Israelites knew was ‘don’t marry a Moabitess!’
But two of them did and that led to Ruth being stuck with her mother-in-law.
But a crucial thing that happened in Ruth’s life. She saw something of God’s love in Naomi. And she turned away from her Moabite roots to follow this impoverished Jewess.
Here’s what Ruth said
- Ruth 1:16 ‘Naomi, don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.’
and here she is in the line leading up to Jesus Christ.
So we could go on!
When you dig into the line of ancestors in Matthew 1 we find the great and the good as well as a warped and the wacky.
But the fact that these people are there tells us a huge amount about the character of God.
Victoria is a family – and in just the same way there is messy stuff behind the scenes sometimes. But God delights to act with grace and to bring redemption to even the toughest of situation. If we will let him.
This is a wonderful example of God’s grace – taking something that is sad or bad and using it to achieve his purpose.
It’s an example of redemption – God redeeming a tough or even sinful situation and turning it around for good.
Don’t you love positive people? I want to be around them all the time. They always seem to see the good and the best in life and (being a bit on an eeyore) I want some of it to rub off on me!
God is the greatest positive thinker ever! He can see stressful situations, sinful situations, impossible situations and sees the redemptive possibilities in them!
These most unlikely people, with skeletons in the cupboard, by God’s grace became part of the line leading up to the greatest birth ever – Jesus Christ.
If he can do that for them, what can he do for you? and your family?
Prayer
Thank you Lord that we are a family, in Christ.
We know there’s mess in any family, but you see through all that
We’re all born again into the family Jesus Christ and so all the riches and graces of Christ are there for us to receive and to live out.
We want to be more like Christ.
We want to be a family that loves deeply, gives generously, serves compassionately
A family that doesn’t reject people because we’re mentally ill, because they look a bit different, because we’re gay, because we’re from another country or culture.
>>>
Amen
