Matthew 1:1-17, What Child Is This?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Matthew 1:1-17 Kin, King, Christ I. Can You Re-create Yourself? 1. We look up to the “self-made” man, the one who “picks himself up by his boot-straps.” 2. Today Jesus is often sold as the one who will help you re-invent yourself, to tap your potential. 3. We’re told we can re-invent ourselves, and be somebody. “You can do it. It’s in you.” 4. Mormonism teaches, “As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be.” II. Jesus Is the Kin (1:2-6) A. The Son of Abraham 1. “Son” can often mean, not just the immediate male child, but any descendant. 2. The genealogy begins with Abraham, not with Adam. Salvation history begins with Abraham. 3. Jesus isn’t “unhitched” from the Old Testament, He fulfills all the promises made in it. 4. The covenant with Abraham was dependent on God alone. The answer is not in us. 5. When we believe in the gospel, we then become sons and daughters of Abraham. 6. When Abraham heard that promise, he heard the gospel in advance (Galatians 3:8). B. Kinsmen-Redeemer 1. Four women gentiles in the genealogy from Abraham to David: a) Tamar: was abandoned but tricked her way back into Israel, carrying on her family’s name. b) Rahab: a Canaanite who believed the spies and so was saved by her faith. c) Ruth: a Moabite who loyally following her mother-in-law, appealing to her kinsman-redeemer. d) “the wife of Uriah”: she became mother to the whole line of kings that came from David. (1) Bathsheba is not named, only described as “the wife of Uriah” even after marrying David. (2) the Bible is not stories about how we can be do-it-yourself righteous people. (3) It’s about how God saved His people through Jesus Christ, great David’s greater Son. 2. The promise to Abraham was never really about physical descent but about faith. 3. God can redeem, no matter how cursed her background, through the grace of the kinsman redeemer. 4. It’s God who does it. Don't look inward. Look upward. Look backward to what He did. III. Jesus Is the King (1:6-11) 1. Jesus is the Son of David “The King.” David is “the king” because God made a covenant with him. 2. For the next 14 generations, from David to the exile to Babylon, the line of kings is listed. 3. The “deportation to Babylon” is the low-point, the temple destroyed, the nation hauled to Babylon. 4. Matthew says that the promises have been fulfilled. They are fulfilled in Jesus. 5. The hopes and fears of all the years are not met by our spirituality within but in Him right now. IV. Jesus Is the Christ (1:12-17) A. Who Is the Christ? 1. The “anointed one” is not just a King, but empowered to fulfill all the promises of God. 2. God re-affirms to Zerubbabel, through Haggai and Zechariah, the covenant made with David. 3. “`Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty.” (Zechariah 4:9.) 4. The people of Matthew’s day believed the Messiah would be the Son of David to restore to Israel. 5. Jesus asked the leaders, “Whose son is the Christ?” (in Mt. 22:41ff). Just David’s? 6. Jesus quotes David in Psalm 110,,“The LORD said to my Lord, . . .” He calls the Christ “Lord.” 7. David is saying that the One who is to come is so much higher than him, he has to call him “master.” B. Joseph Betrothed, Not Begat 1. After 42 generations, one man begetting another, fathering, suddenly, there is an interruption. 2. It does not say that Joseph begets Jesus, as we would expect. Joseph betroths Mary. 3. The repeated active verbs from verses 2 to 16 give way to a passive. “Jesus was born” is passive. 4. Jesus is the “son of the woman”, promised in the garden, who will crush the serpent’s head. 5. Jesus eternally begotten by the Father but never begotten by an earthly father. 6. Jesus is not just a trailblazer to follow but the Christ whom even the greatest king must call “Lord.” V. Invitation: 2. The false gospel of do-it-yourselfism appeals to our pride, our sense that we have all the potential in ourselves, if only we can tap it. That has a natural appeal to our first parents who fell for the lie that they could be like God. 3. History we love to believe in ourselves. We see here, in this simple genealogy, that the answer is not in us. We need a kinsmen-redeemer, that we need someone to make a covenant with us that is unconditional, because if it depends on us, we will fail. We need saving. We need someone who is our Lord. This genealogy tells us that the answer is in Him. He came and did what we could not. Is He your kinsmen-redeemer, your king, your Christ?.