The Arrival Of God | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Today we're starting a new series called The Arrival of God that's going to take us all the way through the Christmas season. So maybe you can jot that down in your notes, The Arrival of God. And what we're going to do is we're going to look at each of the Gospels and what they uniquely have to say about God's arrival amongst humanity through the God -man, through the person of Jesus Christ. And look at their unique perspectives. In other words, we're going to look at what are the first things that the Gospel writers want you to know about Jesus. Because the first things that they have to say about Jesus is the first thing that they want you to know about God's arrival into our midst.

And all four of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, of course, are harmonious with one another. They all tell a unified story about how Jesus is the Lord of the world and the Savior of the world. At the same time, they also accent this story about Jesus in their own unique way. And all you have to do to see that is just look at the beginning of each Gospel, and they all start in a unique way, in a different way. And so it's really awesome to be able to consider each of these portraits of Jesus.

And it's not just awesome for, like, our minds to understand the Bible better. It's actually awesome for our spiritual life as well. Because Romans chapter 10 and verse 17 says this, that faith comes from hearing. That is, hearing the good news about Christ. And so that's what we're going to experience throughout the Christmas season together. We're going to hear the good news about Jesus Christ from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And as a result of that, we're going to grow in our faith. Our faith is going to be strengthened as we just meditate upon the most amazing story humanity has ever known, the story of Jesus.

And we're going to begin today in the Gospel of Matthew. And I'm going to preach for three hours on just verse one. It's going to be awesome. Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1. And verse 1 is where we're going to be hanging out today. I won't really preach for three hours. But you probably could, honestly, because there is a universe full of theological meaning and significance in just this one little verse at the start of Matthew's Gospel. And we'll cover a lot of ground today. But even with that, we won't say everything that could be said about Jesus based upon this verse.

Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1. If you have a paper Bible, why don't you turn there to that. I always like you guys to be able to see the Scriptures that we look at in your own Bible. Because I try to teach in such a way that doesn't just give you the finished meal, but that teaches you how to cook as well, so that you grow in your understanding of how to read Scripture. Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1 says this. This is the genealogy. Genealogy is just a word for family history, for lineage. This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Now, the context for this verse is that it is an introduction. This verse is an introduction to the entire Gospel of Matthew. So all 28 chapters in Matthew's Gospel, all the contents of Matthew's Gospel, all of the major themes in Matthew's Gospel are summarized right here in this one single verse. Now, you've heard me say this before, that Matthew was an absolute literary gangster. Matthew was an absolute genius. Like, it's no wonder that the Holy Spirit chose him to write this account of the life of Jesus. And it's no wonder that the Holy Spirit chose him death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, because his Gospel is so, so layered and so, so stunning. You could spend a lifetime studying it.

And so today what we're going to do is we're going to click on three components of this Scripture right here, three parts of this one sentence, and uncover the meaning that's contained inside, and then apply it to our lives. And the application for what we're going to learn is really simple, but the truth is super rich. And so it'll bless you if you open up your heart to it. I think it's going to be really sick. So we're going to begin in just the first part. If you guys could bring up the next version of this verse for me, that'd be awesome. Matthew 1 and verse 1. This is the genealogy. Okay, never mind, you've already got it. Yeah, so this is the genealogy of Jesus. If you can tell, we've got that part italicized right there. To emphasize that, this is the genealogy of Jesus. Now, that phrase, this is the genealogy, is literally translated from the Greek, the book of Genesis.

Of origin, the book of beginning. That's what that is in the Greek. Now, do you ever hear a preacher, like, read Scripture to you and say, actually, what that says in the Greek, and then it's like something entirely different from what it actually says in the English, and then you think to yourself, well, why doesn't it just say that in the English? It'd be a whole lot simpler and easier to follow. Well, the reason for that is because the practice of translating the Bible from Greek and from Hebrew, the primary languages that the Bible is written in, the practice of translating into modern languages actually requires some interpretation to happen along the way by the translators.

And because there are some words in Greek, which is what your New Testament is written in, there are some words in Greek, just like in English, that have more than one meaning. And so the context of the word, or the context of a phrase, is what actually helps the translators best decide the right way to translate it. And so the reason this phrase is often translated as, this is the genealogy, is because contextual textually, it is taken to be the introductory sentence just for the genealogy, the long list of names. If you've got a paper Bible, you can see it right there in your Bible, the long list of names that's about to follow in Matthew chapter 1, that goes from Abraham to David to Jesus.

And of course, this sentence is pulling double duty in a way. It is easing us into that genealogy, giving us a heads up that we're about to read where Jesus comes from, from a human perspective, and so you could translate this phrase that way. But remember what I said at the start is that this sentence is not just introducing the genealogy of Jesus. This sentence is actually, its primary role is to introduce the entire gospel of Matthew. So it is actually likely better to translate it. A lot of scholars will say this today. It is likely better to translate this phrase, the book of Genesis. And that'll make a lot of sense in a moment when we consider one of the major themes of Matthew's gospel.

But let's finish with the rest of the phrase. The entire thing says, the book of Genesis of Jesus. Or as we would say, if we're looking at this contextually, the book of Genesis by Jesus. And that translation works really, really well. In fact, would be the better translation since this sentence is summarizing the whole story that's about to follow in Matthew's gospel. And one of the themes, one of the major themes of the story of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew is the theme of brand new creation. the life and the death and especially resurrection of Jesus Christ equals new creation.

So the book of Genesis by Jesus makes a ton of sense. Because what does the story of the original book of Genesis tell in your Old Testament? It tells the story of creation, right? And that's exactly what Matthew's original audience, who are predominantly Jewish, would have thought when they read these opening words to his gospel. They would have seen Genesis and thought of themselves creation. In fact, the phrase in Greek, Biblos Geneseos, Biblos, Biblos, book Genesis, that appears in exactly that form twice at the start of the book of Genesis. I want to show them to you because it'll help you see what Matthew was thinking about as he writes this account.

In Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4, it says, this is the account, literally Biblos Geneseos, book of Genesis, of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And then Genesis chapter 5 and verse 1, this is the written account, same thing, of Adam's family, of the human family line, line when God created them. And then Genesis chapter 5 and verse 1, this is the written account, created mankind. So right there you have the whole creation story, both of the heavens and the earth and the creation story of humanity. And both of those are book of Genesis, the same Greek phrase that Matthew uses here in Matthew 1 and verse 1.

And it's because he wants you thinking about the original creation story because he's about to tell you the story of new creation that has come through Jesus Christ, the recreation of the world and the recreation of humanity through the person of Jesus. That's what should be on our mind when we're reading Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1. Isn't the Bible so amazing the way that it all just links together like that? Let's go a little bit deeper. Let's look at Matthew chapter 3 and verse 16. It says this, as soon as Jesus was baptized, now from Matthew chapter 1 to 3, we've jumped ahead into Jesus's adulthood. As soon as Jesus was baptized, that is water baptized, he went up out of the water and at that moment heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God, that is the Holy Spirit, descending like a dove. Everybody say like a dove. Yeah, descending like a dove and alighting or resting on him.

So as I said, Jesus is an adult here and he's about to begin his three -year -long ministry that's going to culminate in him going to the cross, being crucified, and paying the penalty for the forgiveness of our sins. But before he begins his ministry, Jesus undergoes water baptism. Now water baptism was a baptism of repentance of sin. And so what Jesus is doing here is he's identifying himself with sinful humanity, right? Because at the cross he's going to take our sins upon him. He's going to pay the price for those sins. So here at the start of his ministry, he's identifying himself with sinful humanity. And when he comes up out of the water, it says that he sees the Holy Spirit descending upon him like a dove.

Now the point of this verse isn't to say that this is when Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit. Jesus lived a sinless life by the power of the Holy Spirit. So what we're reading here is not a story about when Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit. The point of the Spirit descending like a dove upon Jesus is to say this is when his mission of new creation is beginning. This verse is recalling two moments again in the book of Genesis. The first one, Genesis chapter 1 and verse 2. It says, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the deep waters. That word hovering in the Hebrew is hovering like a bird.

And then it recalls the moment, of course, of the destruction of the earth and the flood coming and Noah in his ark. And Noah is sailing along in the boat and 40 days and nights go by. And then what does Noah do? He sends out a dove to go and see if the waters had receded and if land had appeared. And the dove comes back to Noah with an olive branch in its beak to signal to Noah that he's coming. And he sends out a dove to go and see if the waters had receded. And the dove comes back to Noah and sees that the destructive waters were receding and new life was appearing.

And so when Jesus comes up out of the waters of baptism and the dove descends on him, the Spirit descends like a dove and the voice of the Father speaks, this is my Son whom I love. What you have here is you have a picture of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all working in unison together through the work of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Why? To bring about new creation into the world. And all of that would have been incredibly significant to Matthew's initial audience, not just because they were Jewish and familiar with the Old Testament and therefore would have made these connections intellectually. This was significant to them because they themselves needed new creation.

The last seven centuries leading up to the time of Jesus for Israel had spelled disastrous consequences for their nation. Every time they turned around, it seems like there was a new empire conquering them, exiling them, occupying them, and the empire of Rome is just the latest one on a seemingly growing list. And so they need a new beginning as a people. And not just in the sense of being freed from external pressures, but also in the sense that they need freedom from their internal turmoil and sin and failure as well. Because a lot of their disaster that they'd been facing as a nation was a result of the incredible wickedness that they'd devolved into as a people, that they had broken their covenant with God, and turned their back on Yahweh in the most awful ways.

And so for Matthew's initial audience to open up the scroll of Matthew and see the very first words say the book of Genesis by Jesus Christ wasn't just clever literature, it was good news. Because that's who Jesus is. Jesus is good news for every single person who recognizes that without Him they are as good as dead. But with Him, no matter how chaotic life is, no matter how corrupted life is, no matter how much destruction is going on, He is the God of new creation. He's the God who brings about new beginnings.

And so the obvious question is for us today, do you need a new beginning? Do you need healing? Is your body broken? Does your heart need mending? Does your marriage need help? Have you lost hope? Are you bearing the burden? Are you bearing the consequences for your sin? The good news that Jesus Christ is good news. The good news that Jesus Christ brings new creation means quite literally that nothing is too dead. Nothing is too difficult for Him to renew, redeem, or restore. There is no thing that is too far gone, too broken, too corrupted because Jesus Christ makes all things new.

You see, ultimately that's what the activity of Jesus' ministry signified. The healings, deliverance from demonic oppression, those aren't just random acts of kindness. Those are acts of new creation. Jesus' resurrection from the dead, that's not just a miracle that validates Him as the Son of God and Messiah. That was the first fruit of new life sprouting up as a result of the seed of God's Son sown into the earth. The resurrection of Jesus was the victorious, stubborn, unstoppable emergence of new creation bursting onto the scene in the midst of the cosmos that was full of decay and death.

So if you need new creation today, then come to Jesus. It is literally who He is. You see, a new beginning isn't just part of the Christian faith. New creation isn't just ancillary. It's not an appendage to what God wants to do in your life. It's everything. New creation is the ultimate goal of God's plan of redemption for humanity. Look at what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Beginning in verse 17, the church in Corinth was struggling with the idea of resurrection. They had some false teachers come in, teaching them that Jesus didn't actually raise from the dead and that they weren't actually going to be resurrected at the end of the age. And Paul thinks quite differently than that.

He says, If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. That's how important the resurrection is to the Christian faith. Those who have already fallen asleep in Christ, they're lost if Christ hasn't been raised for the dead. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn Christ, the firstfruits. And then when He comes, and friends, He is coming again, then those who belong to Him will be raised to resurrection life as well.

You see, the reality is, is that even if some of us here today don't feel like we need a new beginning, or even if by the mercy of God you go your whole life and then for some reason you never feel like you're going to be a new beginning, never feel like you need new creation, though I doubt that will be the case, but if by some miracle of God you go your whole life never feeling like you need a restart, it does not change the fact that eventually you will come to the end of the line, you will come face to face with the weakness and the corruption of your human body, you'll come face to face with death, and you will need new life. You will need new creation. And Jesus has new life to give. Why? Because He has defeated death.

I always like to say that if your plan for life hasn't defeated death, then you need a new plan for life. I'm grateful to God that Jesus Christ has overcome death, sin, hell, and the grave, so I got the greatest plan for life available to mankind. And because Jesus has overcome death, that means that the life He gives isn't just new, it's eternal.

And so if He is capable of giving that kind of life to you, then why couldn't He help you with whatever new beginning you need right now?

Or as Paul says it in Romans 8 .32, Now, of course, the point is not that God is a vending machine who dispenses whatever you want. The point is that nothing is too hard for God that He delights in being gracious towards His children. So, friends, if you are faced with the need for renewal and the need for

restoration, then you need to draw near to Jesus today. Just like Israel was meant to recognize that the help that they needed as a result of their failures was in Christ, and they were supposed to draw near to Him. You see, here's the first thing that Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1 teaches us about the arrival of God into the world. Here's what Matthew has to say to us today. It's this, No failure is too great.

No failure is so great that it could ever stand in the way of the new beginning that Christ can bring about. And while we're at it, no list of failures is too great. No failure is too long either. Colossians 2 .14, He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. How long is your record? How long is your list? See it hanging from the cross, nailed to the cross in the body of Jesus Christ. Sin covered, penalty paid, death overcome because of the victorious crucifixion of Jesus Christ our Lord. No matter how long your list is, is no failure that is too great. Matthew goes on in Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1. This is the genealogy of Jesus. Look, we got all of that from just the first six words. How good is that? Isn't the Bible cool? It's cool, isn't it? This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David. The Messiah, the son of David. Those two phrases, they are synonymous with one another and they both signify the same thing, that Jesus, Jesus is the anointed, everyone say anointed, anointed king. Everyone say king. Jesus is the anointed king that is promised all throughout the Old Testament. And when you trace that promise of the anointed king throughout the Old Testament, there's a lot that ends up getting attached and contained within that idea. I thought it'd be helpful maybe just to pull a summary from a scholar whose name is Charles Quarles. Like you don't get a better name than Charles Quarles, ladies and gentlemen. And this is a summary. What the Old Testament has to say about the anointed king. And it says this, the anointed son of David will reign forever with righteousness and justice over all peoples of the earth. In other words, his reign will be universal. It'll be over the whole world and it'll be perfectly righteous and perfectly just. And he will establish peace over all creation. He'll be endowed with the Holy Spirit. He won't be acting in his own strength. He'll be endowed with the Holy Spirit. In fact, he will be the incarnation, the inflection, of Yahweh, of God himself. He will serve as judge and at the end of time, and he will destroy the wicked by his mere command. This anointed son of David will do away with wickedness once and for all, and it won't be hard for him. It'll be by the breath of his mouth, Paul says in the book of Thessalonians. He will be a king who also serves as the high priest. Now this is significant because he's going to do away with wickedness. And let's be honest, we all have wickedness in our hearts. That sounds like bad news. Here's the good news. He's going to be a king who also serves as the high priest, mediating the new covenant, the relationship between God and man, by providing forgiveness of sins through his sacrificial death. That's all that's wrapped up in this theme of the anointed, the Messiah, which is what Messiah means. Anointed son of David. It's all wrapped. Basically the entirety of God's plan of redemption and new creation is wrapped up in this phrase. Messiah, son of David. And Matthew's point is that, you would understand that in order to enter into the new creation family of God, you must put your faith in Jesus as the king and submit to him as the Lord of your life.

Now here's the tension that Israel was facing in the time of Jesus. It's a very real tension. The Messiah was supposed to come through the line of David. David was a king in Israel. And that's why the Messiah is called the son of David. He's supposed to come through the lineage of David. God had promised David, you'll never lack a descendant on the throne. And one day there'll be a descendant who have rule over an everlasting kingdom. He will reign forever. That was God's promise to David. The problem was that by the time you get to Jesus's day, there hadn't been a son of David, a Davidic ruling over Israel in 600 years. Right? Remember all those nations that had conquered Israel and occupied Israel and exiled Israel. That had put a really big damper on God's promise, to David and all of the promises of redemption that are wrapped up in that Davidic king. And so by the time you get to the day of Jesus, it looks like that promise is hopelessly lost, completely lost. But Israel shouldn't have been too surprised by the state of things. Because there was a prophet named Isaiah, who actually prophesied 700 years before Christ, that that would be the conditions, that would be the state of things when the Messiah came. Look at Isaiah chapter 11 verses 1 and 2. It says this, A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him. So this is a person. The spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord. And then from there, you can go read in Isaiah 11, the prophecy goes on to talk about all of the things that we just read on that slide, that he's gonna rule with justice and righteousness, that he'll, destroy the wicked, that he'll bring about new creation to such an extent that the lion will lay down with the lamb. But what I want you to pay attention to, based upon that verse, is where this Davidic king, this messianic figure, where does he come from? He comes like a shoot, like a little branch out of the tree stump of Jesse. Now Jesse was King David's father. And so the phrase stump of Jesse is a poetic way of saying, David's fallen kingdom. Like an oak tree that once stood tall and mighty. Isaiah is looking at that mighty oak tree and he's saying, one day that tree is gonna be cut down so severely that all that will remain is a stump. And things will look completely hopeless. The promise of an anointed king who reigns eternally with righteousness will look completely impossible. Isaiah says, that's gonna be the state of things when the Messiah comes. But at the same time, for those who know God, the character of God, for those whose hope is in God, they'll recognize that although a stump might be a cut down tree, it still has roots. It's still connected to the source of life. And so new life will come from that stump in the form of a little offshoot, of a little branch like life from the dead. And that branch will bear fruit. And so when Matthew, at the start of this gospel, announces that Jesus is the son of David, arriving into the midst of a hopeless people who were in every way like a cut down tree, he's saying to his audience, hey, do you see it? The branch is sprouting. Come Fruitfulness is coming for all who will receive him. Very And the key will be having the humility to recognize that your salvation will not be in your own strength. Right.

It will be in you accepting the fact that the salvation of the world could come through a vessel as humble as a little branch shooting off, from a dead looking stump.

Can you submit to a king who comes in the place of the lowest servant? That's the message. And that's the story of Jesus. That's the story. That's the theme that Matthew develops as you go throughout his gospel. Look at Matthew chapter two, verse 23. Wow, amazing art, by the way, incredible. Michaela, so, so beautiful and brilliant. Look at Matthew 2, 23. And he, that's Jesus, he went and he lived in a town, called Nazareth. So was fulfilled. This is what Matthew's saying. So was fulfilled what was said through the Prophets, that is in the Old Testament, that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Now there's just one problem with what Matthew says here. There's not a single verse in the Old Testament that says the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. Not one verse that says he would be from Nazareth. And the key to understanding what Matthew is doing here and the key to understanding what Matthew is doing here, is taking note to the fact that he doesn't quote a specific Bible verse. What he says is that prophets, plural, multiple prophets, said that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. And what Matthew was referencing is that multiple prophets in the Old Testament, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah, all referred to the Messiah as the branch of David. And branch, in Hebrew, is netzer, from which we get Nazareth, Nazarene. Literally, branch town. Jesus is the branch man from branch town.

And it could not be any more perfect, because Nazareth is nowhere's ville. It's in the backwoods of Galilee of no significance whatsoever. Nazareth is a humble place, not the kind of place you would expect the king of the world to be born. Nazareth was so humble, in fact, that when one of Jesus' potential disciples Nathaniel heard that Jesus was from Nazareth, he says in John 1 .46, Nazareth, can anything good come from there? But soon enough, Nathaniel would figure out that Jesus of Nazareth was the branch, the messianic son of David, who would fulfill every single one of God's promises of redemption and restoration. coming back to Matthew 1 .1, his intention is that every Jewish, every initial Jewish reader of this gospel, that's Matthew's first audience, every Israelite reading this gospel would look at this, and they would recognize that they're facing nothing more than a stump of a life, and that Jesus Christ is their son of David, and they would go, wow, I see the branch. I see hope. And you are meant to draw exactly the same correlation for your own life, because God's promises of redemption, righteousness, justice, peace, forgiveness, those promises are for you as well. No matter how big your fallen tree of lost promises seem, no matter how low and lifeless you feel as a stump, no matter how many years it's been since you experienced genuine hope for the future, you need to know that because of Jesus Christ, no low is too low.

It doesn't matter how far you've fallen, how big your tree was, and how big your crash. No low is too low. And rather than trying to climb your way up, and reach your way up for salvation from that lowly place, the answer is in fact to embrace the branch. Embrace the humble king who came down to you, and turned the cut down tree of your failure into his own cross, and paid the penalty for your sin on the hill of Calvary. Isaiah 57 and 15, for this is what the high and exalted one says, he who lives forever whose name is holy, I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, not just to leave them there, but to revive the spirit of the lowly, to revive the heart of the contrite. No low is too low, because Jesus Christ will go as low as you have fallen, in order to pick you back up again. Friends, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you don't feel your faith rising, then something is wrong with you, because God is so good.

It's amazing. Finally, Matthew says, at the end of verse one, this is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So just like Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise to David for an everlasting kingdom, so also is he the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham, and that primary promise was a promise of worldwide, far -reaching salvation. God makes that promise in Genesis 22, in verse 18, God says to Abraham, through your offspring, all nations, everyone say all nations, all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. So this is the promise of worldwide salvation that God says to Abraham, I'm gonna bring through your offspring, through your descendants. And then God repeated that same promise to Abraham's son, Isaac, and again to Isaac's son, Jacob. Three times God repeats that promise in the book of Genesis, because he really, really meant it. But his plan is not just to bring one nation through the lineage of Abraham, his plan is to, to use that nation of Israel to be a light to the world, to bring about the redemption and the rescue of the nations of the earth. But Israel failed to do that, and for all the same reasons that we've talked about today, it looked as if that promise of salvation was dead as well. And what Matthew is saying is that in Jesus, the son, the offspring of Abraham has arrived. And what that meant is that it was time for the nations to come home. That's one of Matthew's major themes. That's why his gospel ends, with the great commission. Sending the disciples out into the world to make disciples of the nations. It's a story that Matthew was telling from start to finish. And if you go read Matthew's gospel with these kinds of eyes, you're going to see stories of non -Jews, of Gentiles coming to faith in Christ. Even such faith that Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, I've not even seen faith like this in all of Israel. Matthew was telling the story of the son of Abraham who came for the salvation of the world. In fact, you don't even need to go past Matthew chapter one to see that. You don't even need to get past the genealogy. You thought the genealogy was boring. The genealogy is not boring. You're boring. The genealogy is awesome, friends and family.

You read through that genealogy, typical in this culture, those family lines were traced strictly through the male line. And Matthew follows that standard except at four points of deviation. Where Matthew mentions four different women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. And it seems really unusual, but what Matthew is doing is right at chapter one, he's telling you the story about how Jesus is the son of Abraham who came for the salvation of the whole world. Because what all four of those women have in common is that all four of them are Gentiles. Bathsheba may have been an Israelite, but she was married to a Gentile, and so that factors into her identity. So Matthew's telling the story of how Jesus came through Gentiles, and he came for Gentiles, for their healing, for their restoration, for their salvation. Now we hear that and go, what's the big deal? They weren't Jewish, who cares? But to them, it was a huge deal. To them, to hear that the Messiah came through a lineage of Gentiles was a huge deal. And what Matthew is communicating is not just the fact that these people were another ethnicity. What he's communicating is that these people were far from God. Jesus came for people who are far from God. In fact, one other thing that the Holy Spirit may intend for us to believe, pick up on, in terms of what these women have in common, is if you go and read their story, all of them share, to varying degrees, some story of sexual impropriety. Rahab is a prostitute. Bathsheba's an adulterer. Tamar dressed up as a prostitute to trick her father -in -law into sleeping with her. That's pretty rotten.

And Ruth, she's the most innocent -sounding one of the bunch. All she did was uncover Boaz's feet, but we all know what that means.

The Bible is not a fairy tale. Friends and family, there's some graphic details in there. And so it actually may be that the Holy Spirit means for us to note that theme of sexual impropriety and see what? The theme of redemption, of restoration, how Jesus comes for people who are far from God. So if you are far from God this morning, here's what the arrival of God, according to Matthew chapter one, and verse one says to you. It says this, no person is too far.

Nobody's too far. The Bible constantly tells the story of people who had done terrible things, who were forgiven by Jesus and brought into the family of God. the question we may want to ask is, how can that possibly be true? How can a perfectly just, a perfectly righteous God include such sinful people into his family?

And the answer to that question is also in Matthew chapter one and verse one. It's in the last chapter. It's the last thing that we'll look at today that also has to do with Jesus being the son of Abraham. Except this time, it's in reference to Abraham's literal son, Isaac. You see, Jesus isn't just the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham of worldwide salvation. Jesus is also the new Isaac. He's the fulfillment of the means by which God is going to accomplish this worldwide salvation. Of course, the most significant thing surrounding the story of Isaac in the Old Testament is what? It's that God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham had waited decades for God to fulfill his promise of giving him a son. And at long last, Isaac is born. And then later on, Isaac grows up. God puts Abraham's devotion to the test to give Isaac up. kind of a squeamish story for us, but that's the story. But it was only a test. And when Abraham goes to slay his son, the Lord stays his hand. The Lord stops him. And there, caught in a bush, is a ram for them to sacrifice. Look at Genesis 22. It says, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son, Isaac. And he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and he said to his father, Abraham, Father, yes, my son, Abraham, replied, the fire and wood are here, Isaac said. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. And of course, God did provide a lamb for the offering. And it was actually in response to Abraham's obedience in the story that God then makes that promise of worldwide salvation. The two are right there together. And what the scripture is trying to get you to see, even from the beginning, from the very first book of the Bible, is that the theme of the salvation of the world is linked to the sacrifice of the son.

In fact, by the time you get to Jesus, the Jewish people had developed a very strong tradition that Isaac himself was actually a willing participant in this act. That he was a type, he was a symbol of the soon coming Passover lamb as they were exodus out of slavery. And of course, the New Testament goes on to tell the story of how Jesus is the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment of that Passover lamb. He himself is crucified, during the Feast of Passover. Now, it doesn't take a Bible scholar to see the connection between Isaac and Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice. In fact, at the baptism of Jesus, when the voice of the Father speaks and says, this is my son whom I love, that is a direct echo of what God says to Abraham in Genesis 22. Abraham, take your son, your only son whom you love. Matthew is telling the story that the son of Abraham, the new Isaac, is fulfilled in the son, the person of Jesus Christ. And that the salvation of the world is now possible because the son has laid down his life. Because in the death of Jesus, the sins of humanity are justly punished. God is still just because sin is paid for. The penalty is paid. The power of sin is overcome. And that's why no person, is so far from God that they can't come home. Because Jesus Christ has cleared the path for you.

And so it is true. No failure is too great.

No low is too low. No person is too far. Why? Because Jesus died and rose again so that anyone could become a new creation. So that anybody could be written into the Genesis, the new beginning of the human story, that begins with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the message of the arrival of God, according to Matthew chapter one, in verse one.

Father, we thank you the richness of your word, for the power of the gospel. We thank you that you did come, that you arrived into our midst, joined yourself to our story, so that we could be brought into the loving life of the Trinitarian God. we could be brought into relationship with you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We thank you, Lord, that the same love that you share amongst yourself is the love that you have poured out upon us. because of the Lamb of God who laid down his life. It's in his name that we pray.