Son of Exile - Matthew 1:12-17

Good morning

It is so good to be with all of you today and continue our series in Matthew

We are continuing our Christmas at Harvest series as we begin the Gospel of Matthew, so go ahead and open up your Bible or your scripture journal to Matthew chapter 1 and we're gonna continue in this genealogy that Matthew gives us at the beginning of his gospel

And just to catch us all up:

Matthew is showing us in these opening chapters of his Gospel that Jesus is the king who reigns over all

And the genealogy that begins his Gospel is meant to show us what kind of king he is by showing us how he is the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham and to David

We looked at those promises over the last two weeks

So if you missed either of those sermons, be sure to go to the app or the website or the youtube page and give them a listen.

But these promises that God makes to Abraham and David are called covenants, promises that define his relationship to them.

And so what we have seen up to this point is that when Matthew is talking about the lineage of Jesus, it is inseparable from the covenants that God makes with his people in the Old Testament

If you want to understand who Jesus is as the promised savior to God's people, you must be familiar with the covenant promises that God made to his people, because Jesus is the fulfillment of those covenant promises.

He is the fulfillment of the covenant promise to Abraham that he would have an offspring whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed

He is the fulfillment of the covenant promise to David that he would have an offspring who would reign as king forever

And this third section of the genealogy, we will see that Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is the fulfillment of the New Covenant that is promised to those who were in exile in Babylon.

So we have seen him as a Son of Abraham, we have seen him as a Son of David, and this morning, we will see him as a Son of Exile, the one promised to those who were in captivity in Babylon

But before we get to the text, I want you to think and consider:

Where do you go when things get really dark in your life?

We all have good days and we all have bad days, but for all of us at different times and for different reasons we go through very dark seasons.

Perhaps it is because of grief - something that has happened or someone you have lost

Perhaps it is because things that you put your let you down to the point that you know it was a waste to to ever put your hope in them in the first place and now you are in a place of despair

Perhaps it is simply seasons of depression and you don’t even have an explanation for why you feel the way you do.

Regardless of the reason, all of us know what it is like to feel like darkness and despair is closing in

And perhaps for some of you you know that feeling very well even today

And our purpose this morning is not to discover the reason for those dark seasons… our purpose today is to be honest about where we run when that darkness creeps in

Perhaps you run to alcohol or drugs

Perhaps you run to a computer or a phone to escape

Perhaps you try to numb the pain or distract yourself

Perhaps you go to a relationship that you know is bad for you

Regardless of what it is, we all know what it looks like, and feels like, to run to things when we go through dark times

[Hook] And we all need to be honest about the fact that when we run to those things, it is because we don’t have a right view of our situation, of our need, or of our hope

You run to alcohol because you think your situation is unchangeable so your only hope is to feel numb

You run to sexual images or relationships because you don’t like how you feel so your hope is to replace it with a different, temporary feeling

You disconnect from people when things are dark because it is easier to disconnect than to reflect and interact

What we are going to see this morning is that in the darkest times, there is hope for the Christian

We don’t need to disconnect

We don’t need to numb our hearts

We need the hope that only Jesus can bring.

So let’s give this txt our full attention so that we can have that hope as well.

Matthew 1:12–17 ESV

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 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. 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.

These are God’s words for us

Big idea: In our darkest days, King Jesus is our brightest hope. [9:00]

The focus of this big idea comes from the phrase at the very beginning of this list in verse 12

“The deportation to Babylon”

And the list of names that follows, this genealogy in v. 12-16, is the timeline and story of that dark time in their history.

When they were taken from the Land that God had promised to give them because of their disobedience and were taken to a far off land, living under the rule of a foreign, pagan, godless kingdom.

And for Matthew’s readers, that phrase would have immediately called to mind just how bleak and dark that time was

And Matthew is showing, through this list of names, that Jesus is the bright hope that breaks in during that dark time.

And to see how this is, we are going to go to the passage that was the promise God made to those in exile and the future hope that those in exile in Babylon held on to

It is a passage that no doubt Matthew has in the front of his mind when he writes this and it is a passage he wants his reader to remember, because it is the covenant promise that God made to the captives in Babylon

And it is a promise that helps us to know who Jesus is as the coming king

So keep your finger in Matthew 1, but turn over to Jeremiah 31.

We are going to use 4 very important verses in Jeremiah 31 to understand the promise God made and how Jesus is the fulfillment of that covenant promise.

And we will answer the question:

[OUTLINE QUESTION] “What does Jesus bring in our darkest days that gives us a bright hope?

What truth do we need to know through this section of Jesus’ genealogy that will sustain us and give us hope, regardless of what we are facing?

Jesus brings…

Restoration, not condemnation (Jer. 31:31-32) [12:00]

We need to answer the question, “Why were they deported to Babylon?”

Wasn’t part of the promise that God gave to Abraham to give them a place as a people with a purpose? Why did they get removed from the place? From the land?

If you go back to the book of Exodus, as the people are heading to the land God had promised, God makes a covenant with his people and tells the people of Israel that they will be his treasured possession and will enjoy peace in the land he is giving them if they will fulfill their kingdom purpose of honoring him as God and walking in his ways.

The covenant had a condition attached to it - Things will go well for you if you do things my way

Things will go poorly for you if you do them your way.

But in the centuries that follow, they do not live according to their kingdom purpose as his people and so he warns them over and over and over again that they will be removed from the place where he is planting them precisely because as his people they are not fulfilling their purpose.

And so, when we come to Jeremiah 31, he has told them, “You are going to be removed from the land and taken into captivity by a foreign nation.”

And the passage that we come to is a new promise God makes to them, even after they are deported to Babylon. And it is a promise that will be fulfilled in Christ.

Jeremiah 31:31–32 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”

God could have just condemned them for their disobedience.

He could have just said, “You had your chance… I'm done with you.”

End of story.

But he doesn’t.

Notice, he does highlight their failure:

“my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.”

He is using marriage language to say, “I was faithful to you, but you were not faithful to me.”

But remember what Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:13 “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.”

God made a promise to Abraham and to David, and God keeping those promises is not dependent on what people do, but on who he is.

He did not condemn the people of Israel for their disobedience, but instead makes a new promise to restore them.

Look at v. 31 - “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt…”

God’s new covenant promise will be distinctly different from the one he made in Exodus, the one with the condition attached to it.

That one was broken - This one won’t be able to be broken

That is how it will be different.

How was it broken?

Because of Israel’s disobedience

So how will it be different?

It will won’t be based on their obedience, but on the obedience of one who was to come.

Israel lived in disobedience to God's commands, but Jesus will live perfect obedience to his commands

Israel was given the sacrifices as a means of atoning for sin, sacrifices that they profaned, but Jesus death on the cross will be the perfect payment for all sin.

Rather than saying, “Enough! I am done.”

God says, “Don’t worry - I’ll do it for you through Jesus.”

If being right with God were based on our obedience, we would be condemned.

Just like Israel in the Old Testament, you and I have failed God over and over again

We have worshiped other things, disregarded God’s commands, rebelled against God’s word

And it would be so easy to think that God just says, “Enough! I am done with you.”

And the result is to go to a very dark place because you think that you have lost the love of God because of your disobedience.

And now, because of your sin - You are unlovable

But because being right with God is based on Jesus perfect obedience and perfect sacrifice, we are restored to being right with God.

Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans 5:18–19 “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

And when you follow Jesus by faith, his perfect righteousness is credited to your account and his perfect sacrificial death pays for all of the ways that you have failed God, and so Jesus brings restoration not condemnation

Regardless of what is in your past, recent or distant, God’s faithfulness is based on God, not on us.

If you are living in darkness right now because of the guilt and shame that you feel for your sin, Jesus is your brightest hope

He paid the penalty and God has forgiven you - Who is there to condemn you? No one

So stop condemning yourself

Remember again that God’s promise is for you by faith to be restored, and not condemned.

Because Jesus brings restoration not condemnation for all who accept his promise by faith.

So that is the first thing Jesus brings to give us bright hope in our darkest days,

Restoration, not condemnation.

Second, Jesus brings…

Transformation, not obligation (Jer. 31:33-34) [20:00]

The covenant that God mentions in verse 32, like I said previously, was dependent on the people to follow it.

But this then led to the people just following it out of obligation.

But that wasn't the intention.

Moses told the people of Israel that they were to love God with all their heart, soul, and might

They were to write their commands on their hearts, he told them in Deut. 6:6

They were to be a people who obeyed God's command because they saw in those commands everything that was right and good for their lives

But listen: When you want your way, when you see God commands as being restrictive and sucking the enjoyment out of life, you will just obey them out of obligation, and a point in your life will come where you no longer feel obligated to follow them but instead feel the license to disregard them.

And in v. 33-34, God promises to change their hearts so that they obey him out of transformation, not obligation.

But I want you to see that he first describes what the results of the transformation will be

Jeremiah 31:33–34 “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.”

This new covenant will result in people loving God’s ways because their hearts have been changed

Not obeying out of obligation, but obeying as a result of transformation.

This begs the question what is going to be the means of the transformation?

And he says it at the end of verse 34

“For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”

The means by which God will transform his people is by forgiving their sins and no longer holding those sins against them.

[Family Fued]

Survey 100 people, top answers are put up on the board

If you were to survey 100 people and ask what the world’s biggest problem is, you would get a variety of answers

Power

Greed

The Dallas Cowboys

Sin is our biggest problem in the world.

We live in a world with the ongoing effects of sin in general and we live lives that are marked by sin and this all affects our lives

And we are absolutely wrong to think that we will just through sheer effort of ourselves pull ourselves out of the muck and mire of the darkness that is constantly weighing on us.

Because sin is the problem and sin must be dealt with

And you and I cannot deal with sin through sheer human effort

What we need is transformation - We need sin to be dealt with in our hearts and in our lives

But when I know that Jesus is my brightest hope because through his life death and resurrection…

I can be forgiven of my sins and God will not hold my sin against me

But instead I will be transformed

God’s word will be written on my heart

His Spirit will testify to mine that I belong to him, that I am one of his people, and he is my God

I will know God and desire to honor him

I live for Christ, not because I am obligated to obey him, but because I want to obey him because he has changed my life

Then come what may in this life I can know that I have a bright hope and a future because I have been forgiven by the blood of the lamb and he has changed me.

[Question I was asked the most - Dark times in life]

Answer: Do you want to obey him?

If yes, that is because he has changed your heart, and the presence of sin and brokenness in your life doesn’t prove that you aren’t saved - The desire to obey proves that you are

If no, then that is because your heart hasn’t been changed - So run to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and the transformation of your heart.

Because in my darkest days, Jesus brings transformation and so I have a bright hope because he does not hold my sin against me and remembers it no more.

Third, Jesus brings…

Expectation, not frustration (Matt. 1:12-16) [27:00]

So often in life it is unmet expectations that lead us to seasons of darkness and depression

We have in mind how we think something will go and we can't think of a better way for it to go than that way and so we pray for it and we look for it and we get excited for it…

And then it doesn't happen

Too often because we build our hope on getting that thing that we envisioned, when we don't get it we lose hope

But when we see Jesus as our brightest hope then we can live with an expectation of his promises coming true in our lives, regardless of the way that it plays out

Matthew gives us the genealogy of the people in the period of the deportation to Babylon and their return home

And all of these people in this section were expectantly waiting for God to fulfill his promises.

They knew God's promise to Abraham that he would make him into a nation and put them in a place as a people with a purpose

They knew God promise to David that he would give him a son who would reign on the throne forever forever

They knew that a savior was coming to restore God's people

And with each passing generation for 400 years, he didn't show up.

As they live under the reign of Babylon

Then Persia

Then Greece

Then Rome

Waiting, hoping… and questioning.

Imagine being one of the people in Israel during the period of the exile and in the land after returning.

They are looking for the coming King who was promised, who would rescue them, and as you read the list of names, you can almost start to feel the fatigue.

Matthew 1:12–15 “And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob…

With each passing generation, the question looms: How long? How long must we wait? How long do we have to keep living like this?

But in the darkest time of Israel’s history, living as exiles and longing for hope, we read…

Matthew 1:16 “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”

The brightest hope in the darkest days, just as he was promised.

God never forgot his promise

God was never slow to fulfill his promise

Instead, the apostle Paul says in Galatians for that it was precisely “at the fullness of time”

At the right time when everything necessary had taken place, Christ came.

And as we survey Scripture, it becomes so apparent that this is how God always works.

His promise.

His way.

In his time.

And so regardless of what we are living in, we know that we can expect God to be faithful to his promises and to not delay.

When we take God at his word, but it isn’t going how we thought it would go, our response can be expectation, not frustration.

So let me just ask you:

What promises in scripture are you clinging to that you are beginning to become frustrated that they are not taking the form you thought they would take?

It's OK to name it and it's OK to be honest about how you're feeling about it

But it is not OK to conclude God has somehow stopped listening or stopped being faithful.

No, it is our expectations that need to be adjusted

Perhaps the way that I envisioned those promises playing out in my life is not actually the way that God is going to do it

But that does not change the fact that in the darkest of days, my brightest hope is that Jesus is faithful and he will fulfill his promises the way he intends.

And listen: The people in this list didn’t know when the Christ would arrive

But we read it now on the other side of it and see that he came precisely when he needed to

And now as we read it, it is as if we are saying to these people, “He is coming - I know you can’t see it, but we see it and it is glorious!”

Sometimes, when you don’t see what God is doing, it is hard to not be frustrated

That is why we need one another in our lives - Some of us are in the middle of things right now and cant see the other side

Some of us have walked through that same thing and know what the other side looks like

And we need to remind one another “He is coming - God is going to come through. He is working - You just need to trust him and wait on him.”

[Living together expectantly]

So Jesus brings

Restoration, not condemnation

Transformation, not obligation

Expectation, not frustration

And finally, Jesus brings…

Completion, not deviation (Matt. 1:17) [35:00]

To this point, Matthew has walked us through the lineage of Jesus Christ

Showing us that he is the one who is promised to Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed

Showing us that he is the one who was promised to David, the king who would reign on David's throne forever

Showing us that he is the one who brings about what God promised through the prophet Jeremiah in the new covenant with his people

3 sections - 3 covenants - All fulfilled in Christ.

And he highlights the number of generations that passed between each section

Matthew 1:17 “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.”

What could possibly be the reason that Matthew would highlight the number of generations between Abraham and David, David and the exile, and the exile to Christ?

Is there something super-spiritual about the number 14?

In the Hebrew language, they would take the Hebrew characters of a person's name and using the Hebrew numeric system, assign a number to each person's name.

Essentially, the letters of your name would have numeric value to them and when you put the letters together and add up the numeric value, you would have a number corresponding to your name

And 14 is the numeric value of the Hebrew name “David”

What is Matthew doing?

And I have mentioned over the past few weeks that the first few chapters of the gospel are intended to show us that Jesus arrival proves that he is king over all.

And Matthew is using the number 14 to show that even the passage of time leading up to Jesus proves that Jesus is that king.

What Matthew is doing is he is highlighting the flawless execution of God’s sovereign plans

Centuries and centuries transpired, millennia even, between Abraham and Jesus.

Yet, there was absolutely no deviation from God's plans throughout all that time and through all those generations

Even when it seemed like everything was going wrong, it was all going precisely as it needed to.

And Jesus brings to completion what God was doing throughout all human history.

And listen: we, as the people of God, live in that same work that God is doing

God is still working his purposes out in the world

He is still flawless in his execution of them

And because we belong to Jesus we know that God's purposes in our lives will be brought to completion in the name of Jesus, because God's plan in human history was brought to completion through Jesus.

This is why Paul can say in Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

I know that it is easy when life is not going the way that you thought it would or should to think that something has deviated from God’s plan.

The circumstances that you might be living in right now feel like something went wrong somewhere and God lost the plot

But I promise you… From Abraham to Jesus, the generations that passed, the people thought that God lost the plot, but he never did.

He was actually accomplishing precisely what needed to happen for all of his promises to find their yes and Amen in Christ and when Jesus showed up, it was all brought to completion.

When Jesus arrived as described by Matthew, it was the definitive statement that God’ never fails.

He didn’t back then, he won’t today, nor any day for all time.

[CONCLUSION]

And that is why Jesus is our brightest hope in our darkest days.

he brings:

Restoration, not condemnation

Transformation, not obligation

Expectation, not frustration

Completion, not deviation

So let’s live this week as people who have a bright hope in Jesus

Amen.