The Birth of a King: The Backstory
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Some of the worst dreams are the dreams that i’m not prepared.
Its Sunday and I don’t have sermon ready
a big presentation and i don’t have my notes
getting ready to preach and i seem to be missing articles of clothing
We have lots of people at the house for dinner and its complete mess and there is no food.
Those dreams (or nightmares) of not being prepared for something are the worst.
You wake up in a panic and once you realize it was just a dream there is a huge sigh of relief but often times still a sense of shame or worry…
Preparation is crucial!
Christmas is a season that is marked with weeks of preparation.
How many of you have already pulled out your Christmas decoration?
For many, the preparation for Christmas is hectic—shopping for presents, looking for the right deals, making decorations, hanging lights, setting up trees, mailing cards, managing the travel plans, attending Christmas parties, and so forth.
And all of these things demand that you be prepared.
Christmas time, and all good things, demand preparation. but Christmas time uniquely calls us to prepare ourselves.
Sadly, this is preparation that often falls to the bottom of the list.
Are we prepared for the coming of the king?
Are we prepared to come into his presence and worship?
Are we prepared to bow down and adore him?
As the Christmas song Joy to the World says,
Let every heart prepare him room.
It’s so easy to be caught up in the chaos, even the joyous chaos, of all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, and yet fail to worship and adore Christ.
In the midst of this frenetic season, how do we prepare ourselves spiritually?
How do we prepare ourselves, our hearts, minds, and souls, our families to truly worship and adore the God who put on flesh and dwelt among us?
How do we celebrate well what God has done for us in Christ, and how do we rightly hope for what God will do for us in Christ?
This sort of worship and adoration demands preparation.
This is what Advent is all about.
Advent is a time of preparation
Advent prepares us to celebrate Christmas well and to the glory of God
It calls us to recalibrate the way we think,
It calls us to reconsider the way we spend our money and time
It calls us to redirect our affections from the selfish desires of the flesh toward the good, the true, and the beautiful gifts of God.
I find that often times Christians look at advent not as a time of preparing but as a time of pretending.
As if we are to, for a few weeks before Christmas, pretend that he hasn’t come and try to muster up a sense of longing for his arrival.
Advent is not a time to pretend that Jesus has not come,
its not a time to pretend that we too are waiting for the messiah to be born.
This would not only be foolish, but it would be strangely wicked.
Christ coming to the world is the greatest, most earth shattering, the most revolutionary, the most transformative event that has not only changed the course of history into eternity, but it also transformed the past into a glorious tapestry of Christ… to somehow try and pretend that it never happened is truly sub-christian.
Advent is not a time to pretend we are old testament saints waiting for Jesus to return.
But rather, during Advent, we look ahead to the return of the king, we hope for the second coming of Christ, while celebrating the first!
we look back at his first coming with great joy and cheer, And we look forward to the second coming with hope and anticipation.
Transition***
This is the preparation we are to engage during this season of Advent.
We are going to be spending the next four weeks in the gospels exploring how Matthew and Luke tell the story of the the birth of the long awaited king.
We are going to begin this series in Matthew chapter 1.
Now, when you compare how each of the four gospels begin, at first glance you might think that Matthew really missed the mark for a good introduction.
The Gospel of Luke begins with a personal note to Theophilus and then gently brings us into the story of Christ with some historical context.
The Gospel of Mark jumps right into the action. Mark begins with prophetic words from Isaiah and Malachi, and then right into Jesus’ baptism.
John begins his gospel at the mountain top of trinitarian theology.
Yet when we look at Matthew’s gospel its different… he begins with a list of names, a genealogy.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
typically, genealogies are the most difficult sections in the bible to get through…
They seem dry, boring, not relevant, and tedious. Yet this is how Matthew decides to begin his gospel.
He begins his story of Christ coming into the world with a list of names...
There are notable names on this list such as
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
Judah and Boaz
Of course David and Solomon
Hezekiah and Josiah
There are also the four notable women
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.
So we might be thinking, how does this long list of names in Matthew 1, work as as an Advent sermon?
Actually, quite well!
You see, Lists tell stories. The question is, do we have eyes to see and ears to hear the story this list is telling.
Lists are fascinating forms of literature because they are the most simplistic and pedestrian forms of writing.
Yet, lists are loaded with meaning.
If you look at a grocery list you can learn a lot about both the shopper and the occasion.
A grocery list for thanksgiving will look much different then a list for the 4th of July.
a bucket list tells a different story than a supply list for a work project.
You can learn a lot about a person based off their reading list.
Lists tell arresting stories and paint vivid pictures.
And the list of names in Matthew chapter 1 tells the story of God’s unrelenting faithfulness to his promises.
And this is the story we need to be refreshed in, and reminded of, this advent season!
God is faithful to his promises!
He was faithful to Israel, and he is faithful to us.
This in a nutshell is the story of the genealogy of Matthew 1.
However, the meaning of a story seems meaningless unless the story is told.
So lets look at the story of God’s faithfulness at told in the list of names in Matthew 1.
And we can see this story told in two ways.
The story of the king
The story of the kings people
The Story of the King
The Story of the King
What we see in the genealogy is an amazing story of who Jesus truly is.
Matthew writes an entire gospel helping us to understand Jesus and to see him clearly.
He wants us to see that Jesus is not just another teacher or prophet, but rather comes as a new Moses, who brings his people out of slavery of sin and death into the promise land of his grace.
But also as a new David, the royal king who will sit on the eternal throne
But not only that, we see Matthew presenting Jesus as a the new Israel, one who remained faithful to the covenant when the old Israel fell away and rebelled.
But there’s more... Matthew also presents Jesus as the God of Israel.
Matthew shows Jesus as the both the covenant giver and the covenant keeper. as the law giver and the law keeper.
Matthew shows us a Jesus who is both the beginning and the end.
in fact we see this pictured right here in the genealogy.
Matthew starts his genealogy with an overview sort of verse
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Who’s name is first in the genealogy? Jesus Christ!
The last verse of the genealogy comes in verse 16
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.
Who has the very last name in the genealogy? Christ
Matthew presents Jesus as the first and the last, the alpha and the omega. The promise giver and the promise keeper.
But the story of the King in Matthew’s genealogy gets even more interesting
Look back at 1:1
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Now, this verse again might seem like a strange and dry way to introduce your gospel… however what we see Matthew doing is anything but dry.
The word translated as genealogy is the greek word genesis
The book of the “Genesis” of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
What Matthew is doing at the very start of his gospel is taking hold of phrase from Genesis 2 to help tell the story of who this king is.
Genesis 2:4 in the LXX says,
Genesis 2:4 (LES)
This is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth, when they came into being, on which day the Lord God made the heaven and the earth,
Matthew is writing a story about Jesus not only as a new Moses, a new David, the new Israel, the alpha and Omega, but he is also telling the story of a new genesis,
The story of Jesus is the story of a new creation. And a story of a new Adam.
What Israel has been waiting for is far greater than they had hoped!
The king is coming not only to establish a kingdom that will overthrow the enemies of God, but he is coming to bring about a whole new creation.
What other stories are wrapped into this list of names?
Matthew 1:1
The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
The book of the genesis of Jesus CHRIST
Matthew refuses to get through the first 10 words of his gospel before calling Jesus “the Christ.”
Christ is not Jesus’ last name
but rather it is a title, a royal title, a prophetic title.
Its the title of the one Israel had been waiting for.
The word Christ means, in Hebrew, Messiah, which means anointed one - this is a title given to the promised KING!
And what sort of King is he?
He is not a king like Herod
he is not a king like Cesar
He is not like Alexander the Great.
What kind of King is he? He is a king like David.
“The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, The Son of David”
Matthew is telling us in the first verse that Jesus is the promised son of David.
The one who would sit upon the eternal throne to rule in the eternal kingdom!
He is a king like David who destroys the enemies of God
he is a king like David who is both a shepherd and a king
He is both a leader and a servant
He is both a warrior and worshipper of the most high
Now Matthew wants us to see David as the very center of the prophetic pattern of Jesus.
side note… 14 = David in Hebrew dwd
We are going to be looking at Jesus as the son of David in more detail over the next couple weeks.
...you know, the David/Jesus connection is actually at the very center of the heart of the gospel.
The gospel is the good news that David’s Son has finally arrived! THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS! The king has come!!
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,
which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures,
concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh
and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
And what has the son of David, this king, come to do?
He has come to establish his Kingdom
he has come to defeat the enemy
he has come to be victorious
The king has come to save us, redeem us, love us, forgive us, fight for us, draw us, and bring us into his kingdom to feast with us.
And he has come to bless us.
And this takes the the story of the king to yet another level in Matthew’s genealogy…
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
The Son of Abraham
Jesus is the son of promise
He is the greater Isaac, the greater Jacob, the greater Judah.
Jesus is the promised seed through whom God would keep his promise to Abraham to bless all the nations of the world.
This story of the king could continue to be told throughout all the names of Matthew’s genealogy.
but there is another side to this story to look at. Matthew not only tells the story of the king in his genealogy, but he also tells the story of the King’s people.
The Story of the King’s People
The Story of the King’s People
Now, we cannot separate the story of the king from the story of his people… they are always connected.. And this is the beauty of how Matthew’s genealogy tells the story of God’s covenant faithfulness.
Though the king’s people are constantly rebelling, falling short, missing the mark, though they are consistently fearful and faithless the King remains faithful!
It is the faithfulness of the king that allows the story of the kings people to be a comedy, rather than a tragedy.
Matthews genealogy tells the story of the Kings people in three chapters, each chapter contains 14 generations.
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.
The first chapter is the story from Abraham to David.
Chapter 1: Abraham to David
Chapter 1: Abraham to David
Matthew lists 14 generations between Abraham and David
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
And we see Matthew work his way down from Abraham to David in 5-6
Matthew 1:5–6 (ESV)
and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.
This first chapter of the story is the best out of the three.
Though it is marked with horrible rebellion, enslavement, wanderings, curses, and cowardice… we also see faithful men and women following God, trusting in his promises.
The first chapter concludes with David the King.
David represents the very hight of Israel’s history.
God makes a covenant with David, like he had done with Abraham, and told him that it would be his son, his descendent that would sit upon the eternal throne.
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
God is promising David, and all of God’s people, that there will be another King, like David, who will sit on the eternal throne and rule over not just Israel, but all the nations of the world.
However, Israel would have to continue to wait for this eternal king to arrive.
They would have to continue to hope and trust in the promises of God.
David’s rule is the high point of the genealogy, and the high point of Israel’s history.
From David forward we see Israel beginning to collapse…
And this is where we come to the second chapter in Matthew’s story of the Kings People.
Chapter 2: David to Exile
Chapter 2: David to Exile
After David, the kingdom he had established split in two due to his immature grandson, Rehoboam who refused the council of the elders and followed the foolish words of the young.
After this we see:
Israel runs after other gods
They abandon YHWH and his law and his promises
There are a couple bright spots on the radar such as Hezekiah and Josiah
But the overwhelming trajectory of Israel was decending into chaos and exile.
Eventually, after 14 more generations, Israel ends up in exile, they are given over to Babylon and are punished for their rebellion.
And this brings us to the final chapter in Matthew’s genealogy
Chapter 3: Exile to Jesus
Chapter 3: Exile to Jesus
This is now the lowest point in Israel’s history.
The temple has been destroyed, the people have been scattered
10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel have essentially assimilated into the pagan culture of the Assyrians
The two remaining tribes, Benjamin and Judah, are as wicked as any other nation.
After the exile Israel is in a place of obscurity,
For another 14 generations Israel is in a state of strange gloominess and insignificance.
They are constantly oppressed, lacking good leadership
They experience civil wars, and revolts
The temple they tried to rebuild was torn down again and
The king of Syria captured Jerusalem and sacrficed a pig in the holy place thus desecrating God’s house.
God closed his mouth and was silent and did not sent a prophet to his people in over 400 years.
The story of Israel at this time is the story of a dark tomb.
Israel is like a valley of dry bones… They are forest of smoldering stumps,
demons have taken up residence in their synagogues, they live in utter darkness.
But there is still the promise, there is still the prophecy, there is still the covenant. And YHWH was still faithful.
Matthew wants us to see this story in his genealogy, the story of God’s unrelenting faithfulness in the midsts of man’s flagrant rebellion.
He wants us to see that no matter how high or low Israel became, God is good. God is faithful. God is constant.
God is faithful to his promises, he is faithful to his covenant, no matter what!
When Israel was in a state of complete debauchery, God was still faithful to his promise to Abraham and to David.
he did not forget or change his mind
When Israel was giving themselves to other gods, YHWH remained a faithful husband to his unfaithful bride.
No matter how dark the world’s sin became, God was still faithful.
And this is why we celebrate Christmas! Because Christmas celebrates the moment when the Light of the World cracked through the darkness of man’s sin.
Christmas is the shoot that grew from the smoldering stump of Jessie.
Christmas points to the Son of Man who calls the dead bones to live.
This is the story we need to hear for Advent this year!
God was faithful to Israel to bring the Messiah, to bring the king. He did not fail at his promises.
Even when the world was out of control, even when the people forgot who he was, even when they were sacrificing their own children to Moloch, God remained faithful to his promise.
And today, church, God still remains faithful to his promises!
When grief is knocking on the door… God is faithful.
When depression and sorrow seem to grip your mind and emotions… God is still faithful.
When we look around our world, when we look at the state of the American church, when we see people losing their way, bowing before the idols of our day,
we stand firm on the promises of God.
God has promised that he will never leave or nor forsake us
God has promised victory for his people
God has promised that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not stand.
God has promised that all the nations would one day be discipled, baptized, and taught the truth of Christ’s commands.
God has promised joy and peace
Grace and mercy
Love and faithfulness
Hope and life
Christ is the rock upon which we stand.
We have been given the promise that Christ will come again, that he will raise the dead, that he will wipe away the tears, that he will dwell with his people.
The kings story is the story of victory over satan, sin and death. The story of the kings people is the same. For the king has come to his people, he has called us his own, and he has seated us with him upon the throne of his kingdom.
This advent, let us long for the return of the King.
Let us prepare ourselves for his return by understanding our place in his story.