Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 1 | Date: December 17, 2017 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

It’s good to be back. It’s always good to be back with you folks. We appreciate you so much over the years, particularly now in a personal way, those of you who look in so much on my mother and take such good care of her. We appreciate that more than we can say. Thank you very much. Wonderful service this morning. I have to say it’s been very frustrating coming off the tail end of a cold, not able to sing along with the congregation like I would like, but it has been very good. It has been a blessed time already.

If you would, take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. And I’d like to begin reading with verse 1. We’ll read through verse 25.

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob. Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez, the father of Hezron. Hezron, the father of Ram. Ram, the father of Amminadab. Amminadab, the father of Nashon. Nashon, the father of Salmon. Salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth. And Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph. Or as an alternate reading there, you might see in a margin of your Bible, Asa. And Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, or again if you’ll see the alternate reading, Amon. And Amon the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah, and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel, the father of Zerubbabel. And Zerubbabel, the father of Abiud, and Abiud, the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim, the father of Azor. Azor, the father of Zadok, Zadok, the father of Akim, Akim, the father of Eliud, and Eliud, the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar, the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, what a wonderful event that we have to celebrate. As it was read to us earlier this morning already, our Savior traveled that unimaginable distance from creator to creature. That he who was eternally with God, he who was God himself eternally, became flesh, dwelt among us, come to be our Savior. Our Father, we marvel at your grace in sending your Son to such lengths. Lord Jesus, we marvel that you loved us such that you would come to such lengths to save us. We praise you for it and we ask now that as we turn our attention to your word, that you would drive our attention to the Lord Jesus that we would come through this to have a greater appreciation of the love of the Father in sending, the love of the Son in coming, the greatness of our redemption and come to a greater, deeper faith in Christ, greater appreciation for Him. In His name we pray, amen.

The Connection to Genesis

Well, if you have ever read a biography before, I doubt that you have ever read a biography that began like this: “The father of, the father of, the father of, the father of, the father of, the father of.” Boring. Ruthie emailed me some time ago and said we would like to have the title and text of your sermon that you’ll be preaching and I thought immediately if I tell them I’m going to preach from the genealogies, no one will show up. But here they are.

What we’re going to try to do this morning is connect that to the larger story of the Bible and see why Matthew would begin his gospel in what would otherwise seem to be such a boring way. I’ll begin with one connection that I think is important and we’ll see a little bit more about it later, but I think it’s beyond coincidence. If you’d like to turn back just quickly, look at Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter two and notice verse four: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Notice that first line, “these are the generations.” Notice again now in chapter 5, Genesis chapter 5 and verse 1: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.”

Now, students of Genesis have long noticed that this expression, “these are the generations of,” or “this is the book of the generations of,” is something of a marker that tracks out the history of the book of Genesis in its various sections. These two up front are very important in that “these are the generations of”—an odd way of saying it, isn’t it?—”the heavens and the earth when God created them.” And then, chapter 5, “this is the book of the generations of Adam.” And now we have tracked for us the beginnings of humanity. And so God marks out for us the beginnings of the world history, the beginning of the world itself, and then the beginning of human history with Adam as well.

What’s interesting then is that Matthew picks up that very same expression here from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and begins his gospel with the very same words, but then gives us something else: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Well, you have to wonder what is so significant about that that Matthew would pick up on that otherwise seemingly insignificant phrase from the book of Genesis and pick it up here. Is he presenting right off the bat Jesus as a new Adam? A new beginning? Redeemer of a new world order? Well, I think we may come back to some of that.

The Son of David

Coming back to Matthew here in Matthew chapter one, clearly the emphasis is on the genealogies. Think they’re boring or not, Matthew wants to draw our attention to the genealogies of Jesus, tracing it back to David—no, back to Abraham as well. In fact, he gives us two genealogies here. He sums up the entire genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham in verse one: “Book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” And then he starts over and tracks it out in more detail. And he gives us all of these 14 and 14 and 14 generations back from Jesus to the deportation, the exile to Babylon, back before that to David and back before that 14 generations to Abraham.

Well, that’s an interesting thing, and what’s particularly interesting is that all of this is divided up into 14, 14, and 14. You know, that was pretty convenient. Did God really arrange that, that 14 generations come and then this, 14 generations? That’s pretty neat. Until you realize, if you look at 1 Chronicles 3 and the genealogy that’s listed there, Matthew skips a few in order to make 14 and 14 and 14. In fact, critics have used that to say that Matthew evidently didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, it gets more complicated than that. You’ll notice a particular attention is drawn here to David. But in order to do that with 14, 14, and 14, instead of 42 generations, we have 41. And that’s because David is listed as the last step of the first 14, and then listed again as the first step of the second 14.

You think, okay, that’s interesting. We’ve got 14, 14, and 14, and we’ve got somehow our attention is being drawn to David. What’s all that about? And I think we can say off the bat that obviously, Matthew was not intending his genealogy to be exhaustive. And in fact, that expression, “the son of,” “the son of,” or “the father of,” “the father of,” can mean the ancestor of, or the descendant of, the son of. It can skip generations, just like we do in verse one. “The son of David, the son of Abraham”—we immediately know what that means. The descendant of. He’s not intending to be exhaustive. And in fact, the records were clear in the temple and everybody could have checked Matthew’s genealogy.

I think what we have here is a reflection of a memory device that was already in use in the early church that Matthew is picking up to memorize the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham. Back to David, back to Abraham. You think, okay, that’s great too, all right, then why would he do that? And then you notice that there is this particular emphasis drawing our attention to David. He’s mentioned in verse one, he’s mentioned twice. In verse six, he’s mentioned again. In verse 17, why all the attention given to David?

And in fact, there’s more interesting to this. Well, it is to me anyway. I don’t know if this is interesting to you. Maybe this is just tedious to you. But to me, it’s interesting that he comes up with this 14, 14, and 14. Why? Why 14? Why not just be exhaustive? Well, in Hebrew—same with ancient Greek as well for that matter—they didn’t have separate numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, numbered out. Instead, they would just use the alphabet. So in Hebrew, it’s Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, He, Vav, Zayin. And you count that way. And so instead of “first,” it’s Aleph. And when you do that, every name then has a numerical value. So with David, in English, it’s D-V-D. In Hebrew, it would be Daleth, Vav, Daleth. Well, what does that add up to? Can you guess? There’s four. Hang on to that, four. There’s six. Four, six, and four—we already had that. Four, six, and four, what do you got? 14.

Okay, there’s some kind of memory device going on here to memorize 14, 14, and 14 to the genealogies back to David, back to Abraham. Okay, that’s cool. But again, why? Why did he do all of this to draw our attention to David? He’s mentioned in verse one, he’s mentioned twice in verse six, he’s mentioned in verse 17, and now the whole thing’s organized around David’s name. And what’s the point of all of that?

Well, there’s a big story behind that as well. And I’m sure you’re familiar with it, 2 Samuel chapter seven. You remember David had built his palace, big house for himself, and he gets this really good idea. And he says to the prophet, Nathan, “It’s just not right that I have this nice big house to live in and God is still living in a tent. I’m gonna build a big house for him. I’m gonna build a temple.” And Nathan says, “That’s a good idea. You do that.” Nathan goes home that night and God speaks to the prophet and says, “Who told you that was a good idea? I never told you that was a good idea.” And for all of the nice motives behind David in wanting to do that, and all of the good motives are behind it, it was presumptuous. Where are you to take initiative where God should dwell? That’s his business to do that, and God speaks that way to Nathan. This is for me to decide.

So Nathan goes back to David the next day with a message from God. And you remember the message from God? “You will not build a house for me. I’ll build a house for you.” And there’s that intended pun. You wanted to build a house, a building for me, and I’m gonna build a house for you. I’m gonna build a dynasty for you. And your son will reign on the throne forever and ever. Now of course there’s no way for that to happen unless David has a son who reigns on the throne, who has a son who reigns on the throne, who has a son who reigns on the throne, who has a son who reigns on the throne, and on and on and on and on. Or he has a son who never dies. But David is going to have a son somewhere along the line who’s going to sit on the throne and reign forever.

Now that introduces then the kingship theme that becomes so big in the Old Testament. And the kingdom of God theme becomes so big in the Old Testament. And it grows and it expands. And the psalmist, David himself, picks up on it. The prophets pick up on it. The king will come. They even speak of David coming. David’s son coming. David coming to reign. “I will establish David over them. David’s son will come.” This is where we get our expression, “Great David’s greater son will come and rule.” And the prophets are just filled with this. Unto us a child is born, a son is given, the government will be on his shoulder. This is the Davidic promise expanding through the Psalms, through the prophets. And it’s just a huge dimension of the Old Testament story, isn’t it?

We find this promise expanding that David will rule. David’s son will come. And Matthew now starts out introducing Jesus as that son of David. Now if Jesus is that son of David, if you’re going to say that, the first thing you have to do is establish his genealogical credentials. And so he lists out 14 and 14 and 14 and we come to Jesus, the promised son of David.

The Son of Abraham

But it’s not just David. The son of David, working backwards, the son of Abraham as well. Well, why is that important? Well, there’s a big story behind that as well. You might remember how it all started out: God creates and man is given this great dignity to rule over his creation for him and in his place reflecting God, imaging him in the created order. And humanity blows it. There’s a miserable failure; there’s the fall. God makes a promise, a champion is going to come, and humanity continues to destroy itself and plunge itself into sin. Till finally, God sends a flood, wipes them all out, except for Noah and his family. Starts over again with a promise to Noah, and humanity begins as well again, all over to destroy itself, plunging into sin all over again, fallen.

Until finally we come to the Tower of Babel, the dispersing of the nations. And this place is just wicked all the time. And then God calls up Abraham and says, “I’m going to bless you and I’m going to make you a blessing. And in your seed, all of the families of the earth will be blessed.” And it’s something of a turning point. It is the major turning point in the Pentateuch. We have humanity plunging itself into sin, going down, down, down, down. And God intervening and making a promise to Abraham: “My purpose to bless will not be frustrated.”

Go back to Genesis 1. He created and He blessed and He blessed and He blessed and He blessed. And you see this very quickly that God created with the intention of blessing His creation. And humanity rebels—”we won’t have your blessing, we’ll do it our way.” And God intervenes again now in chapter 12 and says, “My purpose to bless will not be frustrated. I will make your seed—in your seed, the blessing to the whole world. All of the families of the world will be blessed by you.” And it traces on and it becomes David’s son who will be the king that will carry out this blessing to the whole world. And so we have the promise given to Abraham. Genesis chapter 12 becomes the turning point in the Pentateuch; it really becomes the turning point in the whole Bible. Humanity plunging its way into sin, God making a promise, and from there everything fanning out.

The promise is reaffirmed to Abraham, Genesis chapter 15, again chapter 17, again chapter 22, reaffirmed to Isaac and Jacob later in the Genesis narrative. God is going to bless humanity. He’s gonna make of Abraham a great nation. Gonna give him a big piece of land. And in his seed, the entire world will be blessed.

Well that, in a nutshell, is the whole Old Testament hope, isn’t it? God is going to bless and his purpose will not be frustrated. He’ll bless through this great nation. He’ll bless through Abraham’s seed. And he’ll carry it out through a king named David, his son. And that is the Old Testament hope.

The Missing Movement

But I have to say that while that is the Old Testament hope, that’s the Old Testament theology. Old Testament history seems to read very differently, doesn’t it? And in fact, some of the Old Testament writers have to grapple with this problem. In fact, Psalm 89 is a famous one that grapples with the Davidic covenant—that God has made a promise to David and he’s going to reign and the promise is reaffirmed and restated all through Psalm 89—and you get to the end of the Psalm and it’s, “But God, it doesn’t look that way. Things are falling apart here. What happened to the promise?”

And so you have this Old Testament hope on the one side, and contrasting with it, you have this Old Testament history that seems very different. Promise is given to David. Solomon succeeds. Is he gonna be the one? Well, he’s probably not. Had some problems with him. How about Rehoboam? No, not going to be Rehoboam. Certainly not going to be Jeroboam. And you keep reading this refrain then throughout the kings. Remember the empire splits. You have the northern and southern kingdom. And you keep reading this refrain about the kings: “And he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did that which is evil in the eyes of the Lord. And he did that which is evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did that which is evil in the eyes…” over and over again.

And if you’re tracking the story from the promise onwards, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. It’s falling. Is this gonna be the king? Nope. Is this gonna be the king? Nope. Is this gonna be the king? Nope, not him either. And you get to the end of the book and you think, “God, we need a king.” In fact, when we come to the early chapters of Matthew and then of Luke as well, what you find is the Davidic tree has been cut down to a stump. And it’s barely a memory of what it was, let alone what it was promised to be.

The Old Testament is a wonderful story. It’s got all the ingredients of a great story: you have a protagonist, and you have the antagonist, you’ve got the plot line, you’ve got the promises, and you’ve got the developing thing, and you’ve got the tensions built in, and you’ve got certain bursts of heroes, and you’ve got some bad guys coming in and really getting the edge on the good guys, and you’ve got this wonderful story, and it gets to the end and just stops. It’s like watching a movie with the plot developing and it’s building toward the climax and then just stops. It doesn’t really resolve. The Old Testament is like that. It’s a wonderful story, but it seems like it can’t happen. Humanity keeps destroying itself with sin. One king after another comes and shows himself to be unfaithful, unfaithful, unfaithful. The people of Israel, as a result, follow the king, and they’re unfaithful, and they’re unfaithful, and they’re unfaithful. We don’t have a faithful people, we don’t have a faithful king, and we don’t have anything like what God promised to David.

C.S. Lewis, as you know, is a master of imagery. And he gave what I think is just a wonderful illustration of all of this. He said if you would imagine a beautiful orchestral piece that’s been written by some famous composer, and it’s played over the centuries. Orchestras will play it, perform it. It’s done in universities. It’s done in other concert settings. And every time it’s played, the music critics, informed observers, professors in the university, musicologists, students of music of all kinds, agree that this piece is beautiful, but it doesn’t seem to resolve. It seems like it needs something else on the other end. It just never happens.

And then Lewis says, imagine now, one day, somebody’s rummaging around in the basement of some university library in Europe, comes up with a piece of music by this same composer. “Oh, here’s a new piece of music. We didn’t know about this one.” And they get it out, and it’s played, and it’s performed. And now the musicologists and the critics and everybody look at it. Well, this is a wonderful piece of music. And as they listen to it, they begin to think, as wonderful as this is in itself, it doesn’t seem to stand alone. And then it doesn’t take long to think, “This is that missing movement from the concerto that we thought we needed.” They put it together, bang, it fits, and we’ve got the whole thing.

Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1 functions in basically that kind of way. The Old Testament story moves and it moves and it moves and it doesn’t happen. God promises a king, he promises a great kingdom, and it doesn’t happen until finally the nation of Israel, kings and all, are all taken off into exile. Northern Kingdom is just erased. The southern kingdoms last another 150 years or whatever. Finally, they’re carried off into exile into Babylon. God has promised a great return. We read of some return in Ezra and Nehemiah, but compared to what’s been promised, it’s just a fizzle. It doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen. We’re still saying, “God, where’s that king?”

Then we open to volume two. It starts out: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Here in Jesus Christ, God is coming good on his promise. God had promised the seed of Abraham would bless the world. God had promised that the seed of David would reign on the throne forever. And here he is, and his name is Jesus. And that’s the announcement of these genealogies. And that’s what makes them so important here for Matthew to begin with them. Promise kept.

If the Old Testament is marked by anticipation, if the Old Testament is marked by hope, expectation; Matthew now begins the New Testament with hope realized, fulfillment—here he is. Matthew begins by saying if you want to understand this man Jesus, first thing you need to do is understand two of his ancestors, David and Abraham. And I think it’s worth noticing that Matthew begins his narrative with a reminder of the promise to Abraham to bless the world, and with Gentile magi coming to offer worship to Jesus and acknowledging him as king. And then Matthew ends his gospel with an acknowledgement of Jesus’ kingship by the pagan ruler Pilate: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” It ends with Pilate’s acknowledgement of Jesus’ kingship, and then with Jesus’ resurrection and his triumphant announcement after the resurrection, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go and make disciples of all the nations.”

He’s here, the son of Abraham, the son of David. More than that, not only the son of David and the son of Abraham, he’s a new Adam, the head of a new humanity, the head of a new creation and a new world order. God’s purpose to bless will not be frustrated. And here in the incarnation of Jesus, God delivers on his promise. I said I would bless. And here he is.

A Hall of Shame

And in this context, I think it’s worth noticing, as I’m sure you’ve seen pointed out before as well, several of the names mentioned here in the genealogy. In particular, there are four women who are mentioned. Sorry, ladies, but in ancient genealogies, the women were not important. They were never mentioned in ancient genealogies, but here we have four. And you gotta think, okay, what’s so important about these four?

Well, what’s interesting about them is each of these four who are mentioned—and that’s Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba (Bathsheba, verse six, is not named, but it’s “the wife of Uriah”)—what these four have in common is shame, disgrace. You’ve got Tamar who disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law, Judah. You’ve got Rahab in verse 5 who’s a prostitute again, by profession even, and again a Gentile. And then verse five, you have Ruth, who is presented for us as an honorable woman, of course, but she’s a Moabite, polytheistic religion. They made sacrifices to false gods like Chemosh. And in fact, the Moabite people themselves were descended from that incestuous union of Lot and his oldest daughter. And then, of course, the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, in verse 6, not exactly a model of virtue either. Why are we mentioning these? In a day when they don’t mention women at all in the genealogy, why mention these?

There’s a very old Presbyterian church nearby us. It’s in Chamonix, Pennsylvania, and it goes back into the early 1700s. It has some fascinating history behind it; that’s why I was there visiting. But in their foyer they have a marble plaque, a big stone marble, kind of like a poster, but it’s made of marble. And in it they have engraved the first—I think it’s a dozen or so—pastors of the church. And there’s the first one, and he’s engraved in the next line, the second, the third, and the fourth, and on down it goes, for the first many pastors of the congregation.

Well, what’s interesting in that is that on the third line down, the name’s gone. It’s just been scraped out. And you got this slide right across. And it’s just smooth stone, no name. One, two, four, five, six. I was talking to the pastor about it, and I said, “What’s the story here?” He said, “Well, that’s an interesting story.” He said the pastor who was here was from Ireland. This was back in the 1700s. Had a nice family here, the congregation. Turns out he had a nice family back in Ireland as well. He had a wife there, a wife here, and they said, “Let’s just forget this man. He was never here.” Scrape, he’s out.

In fact, you see the same thing in a lot of ancient genealogies. In Egyptian lists of the Egyptian pharaohs and kings and whatnot, you’ll often find huge gaps. “Oh, we don’t want to remember the Hyksos. Nope, they never happened.” Run around with Egyptian kings. People like that, you just erase from memory, you don’t wanna remember them.

So it brings the question: why then do you wanna mention people like this in a genealogy of Jesus? And of course the answer is very obvious that it seems at least that these are mentioned as something of illustrations of the reason for his coming—that he has come to bring broken sinners, unworthy sinners into fellowship with himself and into his own family.

And guys, let’s not pick on the women. It’s the same if you read through the rest of the genealogy as well. You look through this thing and you find just as much a hall of shame with the men as you do anything. I mean, you got some supposedly good guys, but even some of the supposedly good guys got some real problems. For instance, Judah, whom I’ve already mentioned, the thing with his daughter-in-law. You’ve got David—good guy, unless your name is Uriah, you probably don’t think he’s such a good guy. Verse 7, you’ve got Solomon; there are some problems there. You’ve got Rehoboam, of whom it is said in the Old Testament, “Judah did that which is evil in the eyes of the Lord, under Rehoboam.” And then on it goes.

You’ve got Abijah, who is unfaithful, verse 8. You’ve got Joram, or Jehoram, who is unfaithful, verse 9. You have Ahaz, who is evil, verse 10. You’ve got Manasseh, who is evil. Amon, who is evil. Manasseh was wonderfully converted later, but was a famously wicked king. Amon was evil, verses 11 and 12. You’ve got Jeconiah, who was evil. In fact, he was the one who brought the curse on the Davidic line that God had promised to bless. There are very few names in this entire genealogy to be proud of.

And it’s all very gospel sounding, isn’t it? Gender, no matter. Ethnic background? No matter. Moral background? No matter. Here is a king who is perfectly suited for every one of us. No matter where you’ve been, no matter what your background, no matter if you’re male or female, no matter what ethnicity, and yes, no matter what you have done, here is a Savior who is perfectly suited to your needs. He is the world’s king, the Savior of all the families of the world.

God to the Rescue

And with all of that in mind, it’s easy to see then verses 21 to 23, we have the climax of the passage. “She’ll bear a son” and it was said to Joseph, “you will call his name Yeshua.” The Greek is Jesus. Yeshua, Yehoshua: “the Lord saves.” Remember that old Joshua? The Lord saves. This Joshua is not named after him. That Joshua is named for this one. He brought about a deliverance and brought his people into the land of promise and brought them into rest. This Joshua, he brings them into a better rest. Not only that, his name is not only “the Lord saves,” his name, verse 22 and 23, is Immanuel, “God with us.”

The Lord saves and God with us. You put that together and it means God to the rescue. And here is the announcement that Matthew is making. God made a promise that he would bless. He had every intention to bless. And despite all of the hell-bent determinations of sinful humanity to destroy itself, God’s purpose to bless was never rescinded. He made a promise to Abraham. He made a promise to David. And he’s coming good on the promise, and himself—God incarnate—coming to the rescue of his people.

And the announcement of it all is no matter who you are, no matter where you’ve been, here’s a Savior that you need. And in fact, you can’t read this passage, if you’ve read the book of Matthew even once, you can’t read this passage without thinking of where the narrative takes us. Our climax is in a story of a passion. Crucifixion, where this promised deliverer, God with us, takes the place of sinners on a cross, bears their sin and establishes his kingship to rescue them and bring them into his kingdom.

The Incarnation stands at the center of history. And it’s that which gives meaning to all the rest, all that went before and all that comes after. Here we have the centerpiece. God come to the rescue. Savior has come. There’s more to say. He’s the Lord from heaven. He’s virgin born. He’s one of us. He’s from the line of David, from the line of Abraham. But here’s a man who can stand in the place of sinners everywhere and bring them to God through his work.

Matthew’s whole announcement then is just exactly that. The promised Savior has come and he is just the Savior you need. He has come to save sinners just like you. And in fact, he himself said, until you acknowledge that you’re one of those sinners, he’s of no value to you at all. He’s not come to call the righteous. You think you can make it on your own, you have at it. He’s come to call sinners to repentance. And coming to Him as broken sinners and acknowledging that we need this King, He says, God will have you. And this is the announcement that Matthew makes. Amen.

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we are so grateful that you have sent to us your Son to come to our rescue. How lost, how lost we would be without him. Lord Jesus, we thank you for coming to rescue us by the sacrifice of yourself. We give you praise today for the great grace that is ours. As one who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich. Amen.