to Matthew chapter 1. We’ll be looking at verses 1 through 17 this evening. Pastor Ryan’s sermon was fantastic this morning, and when we were talking about sermons we were going to be doing in the month of December, sort of Christmas-inspired sermons, he had told me that he was planning on doing that idea for this morning’s sermon, kind of tracing the seed throughout the Old Testament, the promises. And I got to thinking, and what should I do in the evening, and I thought it would be interesting to do the genealogy of Matthew, to kind of where we see the fulfillment of the seed, the seed that’s finally come.

So a lot of what I’ll be preaching and talking about this evening will hopefully not just be a rehash of what Pastor Ryan’s saying this morning, but will complement it. I’ll be looking at some of the same passages to show that Christ, the fulfillment of the seed, what we read about in these verses in Matthew, is the fulfillment of those promises. A lot of what Pastor Ryan talked about this morning.

So, I’m getting right into it. I’m going to go ahead and read the first 17 verses of Matthew 1. Bear with me as I attempt to read these names.

Matthew chapter one, starting verse one. The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amenadab, Amenadab the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salmon. Selmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa. Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah. Uzziah was the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Ammon, and Ammon the father of Josiah. Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers, the time of the deportation to Babylon. After the deportation of Babylon, Jeconiah became the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor. Azor was the father of Zadok, Zadok was the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud. Eliud was the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Mathan, and Mathan the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations, from David to the deportation of Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation of Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for passages even like the genealogy that we just read where we can learn more about your son and where he came from and the line where he came from and the preservation of that line and the seed. I pray that you bless the sermon this evening and you speak through me as I preach. In Jesus’ name, amen. I’m sure many of us are familiar with the image of a new young father playing with his new child, whether it be a six month old or even a year old. And even if you are not a parent, this is something you can probably visualize or something you’ve seen, the father sitting with the child on his knee or watching the father play. It’s the ever watchful gaze of the father as his child crawls or stumbles around. The father’s never away, he’s never far away, and sometimes he’ll have to swoop in to protect his child for something, or redirect the child. But the point is, the father’s always watching the child, and he’s always there to see where it goes.

However, as wonderful as these fathers are, these newborn fathers are, that are watching their children, it pales in comparison to our heavenly father. And unlike human fathers, our heavenly father is truly in control of all things. The human father can’t control everything his new child does, can’t always control where the child goes, but our heavenly father is in control of all things.

And when we come to this genealogy in Matthew chapter one, these 17 verses that are difficult to read, and sometimes we have to wonder why they’re in the Bible, we see that this passage shows us that God is sovereign in all that he does. And before moving on, I want to just dissect this word sovereign a little bit. In our church, and in many churches, you often hear sovereignty, the sovereignty of God, the word sovereign thrown around a lot. And sometimes I think we have to pause and just remind ourselves, what is it we’re talking about when we say that? We’re talking about one of God’s attributes, one of his incommunicable attribute, an attribute he does not share with us, and we need to understand what is it we’re talking about.

A sovereign would be a ruler with ultimate power and authority. So think of the kings and queens of old, the different monarchies, the king of England in the medieval period. They were sovereigns. They had ultimate rule and authority. What they said went. If you disagreed, you could die. So on its most basic level, sovereignty deals with God’s ultimate power and authority over all things. He knows all and is in control of all things.

Isaiah 49 verse 10 says this, talking about God. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done. Saying my plan will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. He accomplishes all his plans. The creation of life, death, natural disasters, broken limbs, and salvation. He is over it all. Nothing is outside the sphere of God’s power. Nothing is outside the sphere of His sovereignty. He knows all. He sees all. He’s sovereign on the good days and the bad days. In our most trying times, He’s still sovereign and in control.

Bruce Ware, who’s a theologian and actually was a pastor of mine in Louisville and one of my professors, described sovereignty in this way. God meticulously plans and exhaustively carries out his perfect will as he alone knows his best over all that is in heaven and earth and he does so without failure or defeat. And that’s important. He does so without failure or defeat. Oftentimes we look at our lives and we look at things that are going on around us and we think, What’s going on? Is God’s plan failing? This can’t be what he wants, but his plans go according to the way he wants them to. There’s no failure or defeat in God’s plans. His son died, his son literally died, but that was all part of the plan. So it’s important to understand this word sovereignty and what it means.

And we just read this genealogy, this first 17 verses, and it’s important to understand that family lineage in the ancient world was a big deal. Your heritage was important to who you were. Even today, we have a lot of people that go on Ancestry.com or even the new thing, 23andMe. People are curious about their ancestry, curious about where their ancestors came from, what countries they came from, what they were like. And back then, it was even a bigger deal. Biographies in the ancient world would have started with genealogies to show the lineage of the individual. Where you came from, who was in your family line was a big deal.

Let’s not forget that Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem for the census because Joseph was of David’s line. So his lineage, his family heritage, dictated where he had to go for the census. Josephus, who’s the famous ancient Jewish historian, explains that many Jewish families would have had maintained detailed files of their lineage. And this genealogy that we read here shows us the royal lineage of Jesus, that he came from kings. The Messiah had to come from Abraham and David because that’s what God had foreordained, that’s what He had planned, that’s what He had promised. And Joseph, as we read in verse 16, was his legal father. Jesus was legally from the line of David.

If we’re gonna compare this genealogy to the one found in Luke, we see that Luke’s genealogy most likely traces Jesus’ line through Mary. So he is the son of Abraham and son of David legally by his father Joseph, and he’s also the son of Abraham and son of David via blood relations. So he is truly the son of Abraham and David.

So God is sovereign in all that he does, and we’re going to be looking at this main theme, we’re going to be examining it in three different ways. That God keeps his promises, God uses sinners, and God preserved the line.

So, God keeps his promises. And I addressed this in my sermon last week, that we have a promise keeping God, but in light of this passage, it’s important to kind of go over some of it again. So we see right off the bat the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. It doesn’t start with the son of Joseph or the son of Mary. It doesn’t start with his granddad. It goes all the way back to Abraham and David. And that’s significant. Going back to Abraham and even David, we’re reminded of what Pastor Ryan talked about this morning with the seed, Genesis 3.15, the seed that’ll come through Abraham. It goes back to the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, and it shows us that Jesus is the fulfillment of those two covenants.

We read of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis chapter 12, 15, and 17, and we read it again in Genesis 22, like Pastor Ryan read this morning, that’s where it’s reiterated, after Abraham has obeyed God, and God told him to sacrifice his son, Abraham went to do it, and God stopped him, and God reiterates the promises to Abraham. These were the promises made to Abraham in this covenant. Offspring, land, and a universal blessing. God promised that he would make Abraham’s offspring into a great nation and that he would inherit a land. God told Abram to leave Ur and go to Canaan, that he will be a great nation, that his name will be blessed, and through him all families of the earth will be blessed. And we see this talked about in Genesis, and we see it again in Genesis 22.

And this covenant that’s been referred to and called the Abrahamic covenant, it encapsulates God’s plan for the restoring of his beautiful creation in Abraham. and creates blessing through one people, the people of Israel, that will fill the earth and ultimately lead to the one who will bring salvation of sins. That seed comes all the way through and is in Jesus. We see the fulfillment in Jesus.

Two verses, Galatians 3 verses 14 and 16, which Pastor Ryan read this morning, I’m going to read them again. Paul writes, in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Verse 16, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say and to seeds as one would in referring to many, but rather is in referring to one. And to your seed, that is Christ.

So Jesus is the fulfillment of what was promised to Abraham. And that’s why it’s significant that Abraham is mentioned in the very first verse. Matthew’s saying, hey, the fulfillment has come. Here is the seed. Here is the fulfillment of those promises. Jesus is the way all the nations will be blessed.

But we also see David. Jesus is referred to as the son of David. And Matthew’s also saying here, hey, this is the son of David. This is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant that we first read about in 2 Samuel 7, verses 8 through 17. This covenant, the Davidic covenant was made between God and David, a covenant God made with David. And it promised that the throne of David would never sit empty. And we learn later that the Messiah will come from this line, the line of David.

Jeremiah 33 verses 14 through 17 talk about this. Jeremiah writes, In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called, the Lord is our righteousness. For this is what the Lord says, David shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel. So what we read in Jeremiah 33, he’s saying there will be a fulfillment of the promise of the covenant made with David, that God made with David. And the fulfillment of that is what we read about in Matthew. It’s Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah.

So it’s significant that that first verse says Jesus the Messiah, the promised one, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the one who the Jewish people have been looking for for hundreds and hundreds of years, he has arrived. He’s here.

J.C. Ryle comments on this idea of God keeping these promises by saying, these 16 verses of this first chapter prove that Jesus was the son of David and the son of Abraham and that God’s promise was fulfilled. This passage shows that the sovereign God keeps his promises. A God who knows everything has created the plans and they don’t fail. They will succeed, and he knows they will succeed. He keeps his promises. He has sent the Messiah, and it’s the Messiah that will bless the nations and rule from David’s throne.

And we need to remember that we can trust what God says, and I talked about this some last week, but we can trust what he says in his word, what he’s laid out in all these 66 books, One of the reasons Pastor Ryan and I are doing these two sermons is we wanna show that the Bible, the promises that we’re reading here, the scriptures, it’s a coherent narrative. It’s a coherent story. It’s not just 66 random books. There were some guys thought about some wise things to say. This has an overarching story, an overarching message. And when I use the word story, I don’t mean it in the fictional sense. It’s a true story. It’s coherent. And we need to trust what it says.

And it’s easy to do on the good days where things are going well, Christmas is here, many of us will have a great Christmas, we’ll enjoy presents, food, family, but not all of us will enjoy that in the way we normally do. And even on those days, it’s important to trust what this book says. We need to trust that the sovereign God keeps his promises, and we also need to remember that he uses sinners.

Which brings us to the second thing, that God uses sinners, and more specifically, he uses sinners to accomplish his will, his good will. And this genealogy, if you really look at it, you look from the first name toward the end, you see that it’s really just a long list of one sinner after another, minus Jesus, of course. Starting all the way with Abraham and going to Joseph and Mary, it’s one sinner after another. Some of these are great people, people of great faith, but one thing they have in common is that they’re all sinners.

And we don’t have time to look at all of them, what they did, but we think of Abraham and David, some of the first two mentioned. Abraham in Genesis 16, God had already given him the promise that I will give you son, but his wife Sarai wasn’t satisfied with that and said, here’s my slave, Hagar, sleep with her. And Abraham sleeps with her and they have a child. So we see that Abram lacked faith and also slept with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

In Genesis 30, we read about Jacob who had two wives and then had 12 children. But he fathered those 12 children with four different women. The Old Testament is rampant with adultery, or polygamy to be more exact. Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 is a truly depraved story. In verse three of Matthew chapter one, Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And this is interesting. In this first chapter of Matthew, you see in several different places it says, and this child was fathered by this child, and then it lists the wife. And when it lists the wife, that’s significant, it’s not random. So why does it mention that Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar? It’s because when we read in Genesis 38, we read that Judah slept with his daughter-in-law, who was pretending to be a prostitute. because he had not given, provided a husband for her like he should have. A truly awful, depraved story.

And the list goes on. We read about Rahab in here. Verse five, Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Why is Rahab mentioned? Rahab we meet in the first few chapters of Joshua. She was a prostitute in the city of Jericho who had faith in God and protected the spies. David, a man after God’s own heart, who slept with another man’s woman and then had the husband killed. Solomon had a thousand wives. And the many kings of Judah who were wicked.

And let’s not forget that even some of these good people in here, we see Josiah and Hezekiah who were great kings of Judah. Even these good kings were still sinners and still at times lacked faith. But all these sinners that we read about here also have something else in common besides just their sin. It’s that God worked through their sin to bring about the birth of his son. And this is one of the biggest things we can take away from these genealogies. As we look at this list of wicked people and we say, man, these are bad people, but God used them. and use their sin for his glory and for his plans. And this is what is amazing about God. He takes what is ugly, evil, and destructive, and he can still use it for his glory. He can use anything for his will. And it’s significant to say that because we can’t do that. We can’t do what God does. We can’t take what’s evil and destructive and always bring it into something good. Yes, maybe if there’s a painting that’s messed up, we can, well, I can’t, but someone can repaint it, or a sculpture that’s messed up, it can be fixed. But God can take people’s sins and their lives and use it for his plan and his good and his glory. We can’t do that.

Genesis 50, 20, one of the most powerful verses referring to God’s sovereignty in the face of evil. Joseph says this to his brothers. He’s telling them, you know, you meant it. He’s talking about when they threw him in the well and then sold him. And Joseph says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to keep many people alive. It’s amazing what God can do and read this all throughout scripture. How He can work through people despite their sin.

I’ll never forget when I was in nursing school, we would, on test days, we would all sit in this big room and we’d take our tests. And afterwards, the professor would say the answers and we would grade it. I remember one day I took a test and I did well. And I was like, yeah, I did well. And I was carpooling on the way home with a buddy, and we were talking about one particular question. And as we were talking about this question, I realized that I had gotten it right, but I’d gotten it right with faulty logic and faulty thinking. So we were talking about it, I was realizing, oh my goodness, I got that wrong, but I got it wrong with not the proper way of thinking. In fact, if I had followed my logic and picked a different answer, I probably would have gotten it wrong. But I realized I got this question right with bad thinking and poor logic. And I use that example just to say God can use our mistakes and our sins, and we see in the scripture that he does that for his good and for his glory.

He is the grand architect of this tapestry we call life. It’s kind of a dramatic and poetic way of saying what I’ve been saying, but he controls all things. It means he’s over the good and the bad. And he can use it all for his glory. And it doesn’t mean that sin suddenly becomes good. I think we need to say that. Sin doesn’t automatically become good when God uses it. It just means that God can use it as part of his good plan to bring about good.

God used the sin of these people that we read about in this chapter to bring forth his son into the world so that he could pay the penalty for sins. In fact, to pay the penalty for some of the sins of the people in this genealogy. We see that God uses sinners. And when we think about that idea of God using sinners and think about it in our own life, we need to remember that he can use our sins for his plan and for his glory and it’s something we should be thankful for. It’s something we need to thank Him for every day, that He is in control of all things, and He can take our wicked deeds and bring some good out of it, because like I said, we cannot do that. We are incapable of doing such a thing.

And we also need to remember how sinful we are. It’s easy to look at these different people, look at Abraham and say, how could you do that, Abraham? How could you do that, David? How could you do it, all these kings? But before we do that, we need to remember that we are sinful too. And if you are here today and you’re saved, you need to remember what you’ve been saved from. A life enslaved to sin.

And we need to remember that every sin, whether adultery or a lie, is an offense against the holy, infinite God. You can go around thinking my sin’s not as bad as somebody else, but it’s still an offense against God, no matter what it is.

The sovereign God keeps his promises, uses sinners, and preserve the line. And that’s our final theme that we’re looking at is God preserve the line. And when I say the line, I’m talking about the line that Jesus came from, the line of David. Pastor Ryan this morning talked about the seed, and I’m talking about the seed too, but I’m talking about the line using that word because I’m talking about genealogy.

But we see all throughout the Old Testament, like Pastor Ryan talked about this morning, references to the seed. We see it first in Genesis 3.15. But the seed is another way of talking about the line that would come. Or more specifically, the seed refers specifically to Jesus, but when we see the word seed, we think of all those people that will be in his line, in the genealogy. And this seed is Jesus.

And we see in this genealogy that this line, this line of people was preserved for the birth of Jesus. It was preserved by God for the birth of Jesus. And it is only by God’s sovereign power that this line was preserved. And it’s incredible that it was preserved. This line of people, this genealogy survived wars, bad family relations, murder, lies, being conquered, and literal deportation to another nation. In theory, if you were taking odds, this line should have been wiped out. There’s no way it could have survived, but it did. God preserved it. He preserved the seed that would come from this line for the fullness of time.

Galatians 4 verses 4 through 5 say this, and Pastor Ryan read this this morning, but these passages say this. But when the fullness of time came, God sent his son born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.

It was the perfect moment in God’s plan to send his son. That phrase, the fullness of time, is important. This is the fullness of time, the perfect moment for Jesus to come. Rome was the conquering nation at the time, they controlled the known world. All roads led to Rome, they controlled the Mediterranean. It was the perfect time for the message of Jesus, for the message of Christianity to spread. One reason it was able to spread so rapidly was because of the trade routes established by the Romans, the roads built by them. This was the perfect time for Jesus to come in God’s plan.

Jesus the seed, The fulfillment of these promises, and the last one on the line, came exactly when he’s supposed to, as part of his father’s plan. And I also want to note that we see four women in this genealogy, and we already talked about how they, when we read about them in the genealogy, they refer often to specific instances. in the history of Israel. But one scholar also noted something interesting. He said that the connection with these women shows that Jesus has come to save the Gentiles as well. The majority of these women we read about in here are actually Gentiles. They weren’t Hebrews, they weren’t Jewish.

So we’re reminded as we continue on through Matthew, continue on through the Gospels, continue on through the rest of the Bible, and even as we look at the Old Testament, we see that salvation is not just for the Jewish people, it’s for all nations. Part of the promise to Abraham made by God was that you will be, through your seed will be a blessing to all nations. Jesus is the fulfillment of that. He brings salvation to all nations.

We see that God preserved the line. And as we sing Christmas carols this season, open presents, and gaze upon nativity sets, let us not forget the reason for the season. That’s often, we see that a lot on maybe bumper stickers or signs in people’s yards, and it’s easy to just kind of gloss over it, but we do need to remember that Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas, and he should be. It’s all about Jesus Christ, God, coming to earth as a baby so that he might take away sins and give the free gift of eternal life.

the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, the fulfillment of the promise made to David, the seed, the line that God preserved up until this point in history so that he might come, pay the penalty for sins, die, and then rise again. And we must believe that message and repent of our sins and give our lives to him and believe that he is the Savior.

We have a truly sovereign God and he is sovereign in all that he does. His sovereignty stretches to his keeping of his promises, his using of sinners to accomplish his will, and preserving the line, the line of David, the line that Jesus would come from.

I’ve recently, over the past few months, been listening to the Chronicles of Narnia, and I’ve really enjoyed it. And one of the ones I’ve enjoyed the most is the one called The Horse and His Boy. And the main character in the story is Shasta, and one of the themes in the book deals with luck. The main character is always talking about, oh, I was lucky, or we got lucky with that. And one of the things Lewis is trying to explain in this book is that, no, no, there’s no luck. This idea of luck, that’s not true.

And there’s a scene where the main character meets Aslan, the lion, who, of course, in these novels, is meant to be God. And the main character is having this conversation with Aslan, and Aslan says this to him.

I was the lion, and as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the voice continued. I was the lion who forced you to join with Erebus. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you would reach King Loon in time. And I was the lion, you do not remember, who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you.

And you don’t have to understand the whole story to understand that paragraph. What Aslan is saying is, I have been in control of everything from the time you were a baby to the things that have happened the past week in your life. I am the author of it all, and I am in control of it all.

And we have a God who’s in control of everything.

Let’s pray as we close this service this evening. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, and we do thank you that you are a sovereign God who is in control of all things. What comfort and peace that brings, that no matter what’s going on in life, even how difficult it might be, we can still trust you and trust that you have a plan that you are working. I pray that you bless us all as we leave here this evening, and I pray that you bless the rest of our weeks. In Jesus’ name, amen.