“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.” – J.I. Packer
TEXT: Matthew 1:1-17
MESSAGE: “The Lineage of a King”
William Barclay says, “Matthew’s picture of Jesus is of the man born to be King. Jesus walks through his pages as if in the purple and gold of royalty.”
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” – Blaise Pascal’s (Pensees)
TEXT: Matthew 1:1-17
What can the lineage teach us about Jesus’ Kingship?
It reveals the…(1. Historical Angst; 2. Raw Details 3. Glorious Hope)
- Historical Angst (v. 1)
1 “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
Richard A Burridge says, “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that anymore.”
2. Raw Details (v.3;5;6)
“…and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar…5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah…”
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” – Isaiah 9:2
3. Glorious Hope (v.17)
“So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”
TAKEAWAYS: How do we respond?
- Do you believe you need the King?
“It remains a startling story to those who never understand that men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence.” – Brennan Manning
- Do you believe Jesus could embrace you?
In his book, Hidden Christmas, Timothy Keller writes …
“In the New Yorker Anthony Lane said about Tolkien’s novel (Lord of the Rings): ‘It is a book that bristles with bravado and yet to give in to it—to cave in to it as most of us do on a first reading—betrays…a reluctance to face the finer shades of life, that verges on the cowardly.’ (Impossible) And then Keller responds…The great fairy tales…did not really happen of course…And yet they seem to fulfill a set of longings in the human heart that realistic fiction can never touch or satisfy. That is because deep in the human heart there are these desires – to experience the supernatural, to escape death, to know love that we can never lose, to not age but live long enough to realize our creative dreams, to fly, to communicate with nonhuman beings, to triumph over evil. If the fantasy stories are well told, we find them incredibly moving and satisfying. Why? It is because even though we know that factually the stories didn’t happen, our hearts long for these things, and a well—told story momentarily satisfies those desires…”