Why Those Parents?

Family photos

Remember film?

Christmas time is filled with tradition.

Remember when you actually used a camera to take pictures of people, places or things?

You’d have your camera.

It’s filled with images.

You’d put in this little spool of film.

And a good question to ask is why?

Wind it up.

Aim at the scene you want to take a picture of.

Why do we do the things that we do?

Click the shutter.

Then wind it.

Think of a nativity, why do we care about that nativity scene.

As you wound it, the film would move, and it would load up and new piece of film to take the next picture.

It’s

There was that little counter on the top of the camera that told you how many pictures you had taken.

Then when you hit the magic number, when you had taken the last of your photos:

You’d wind up all the film.

The film would go back inside the cassette it came from.

You’d remove the film, and put it inside a film canister.

You’d take it to a place to get developed.

Or if you were like us, you’d mail it in to be developed.

Then it would be mailed back to you.

Months later.

We didn’t take very many pictures growing up.

One roll of film would cover a year of photos.

We would send in film to be developed and you would get back a smorgasbord of events from just one roll.

There would be little league games, trips to the zoo, and birth pictures all in the same roll.

My parents treasured those pictures of babies being born.

One time one of these undeveloped rolls of film that had pictures of the birth of one of my brothers or sisters on it went missing.

There were tears.

One year, one of my brothers, went into the drawer where

My poor mom was so upset, because she would never be able to relive that moment.

About a year later, at Christmas, it was Christmas morning and we were opening presents.

My parents had taught us that you get presents for everyone in the family.

You either save your allowance, or you make a gift.

My mom was opening a present from one of my brothers.

And what do you know?

It was the film that had gone missing.

And there were tears again.

But this time they were tears of joy.

My mom was happy to have recovered the pictures of a birth.

My brother, thought he had given the perfect gift.

Apparently, he gone into the drawer and taken that roll of film with the intent of giving it to her at Christmas.

My mom was happy to recover those birth pictures, and no one else wants to see those pictures.

A parent is the only one who wants to relive those very personal moments.

Now fast forward to Christmas time.

What do we decorate our homes with?

A picture of someone else’s birth scene.

We put nativity scenes in our homes.

Some people collect nativity scenes.

Some people even decorate their front yards with this nativity scene.

There is a kneeling Mary, who is glowing blue.

Looking over her shoulder, is a glowing pink Joseph.

I don’t know why Joseph’s are always pink, but they are.

Why?

Why do we do this?

Why do we put out these nativity scenes?

Why do we care about these parents?

We know about the baby, it’s Jesus, but why the parents?

That what we will set out to look at today.

There actually is a need for these parents.

There’s a reason why we have Mary and Joseph.

Neither of them are pointless.

We begin with a Covenantal Need For These Parents

Let’s start way back in the Old Testament, in .

David is king at this time.

There’s a reason why we have

He sees the Ark of the Covenant inside the old Tabernacle and he thinks something is wrong.

So he asks if he can build a temple.

Read

David is king at this time.

He sees the Ark of the Covenant inside the old Tabernacle and he thinks something is wrong.

The Tabernacle was this tent that had traveled with Israel since they had left Egypt.

David sees the tent, and asks if he can build the Lord a temple.

The prophet Nathan sees nothing wrong with this request, and says, “Go ahead and do it.”

But then that night God appears to Nathan, and Nathan passes on this message to David.

David is not the one to build a house.

Then in verse 11, God changes gears.

This is something called the Davidic Covenant.

It sets a promise from God that extends into eternity.

It tells us that the day will come when God will raise up a descendant of David.

This descendant will have a kingdom.

He will have an eternal throne.

He will be the Son of God.

And He will rule forever.

And its because of this covenant that we have Joseph and Mary.

Matthew and Luke each have genealogies at the beginning of their Gospels.

It tells us that

These genealogies show us how Jesus fulfills this Davidic Covenant, but in slightly different ways.

These genealogies are important.

In order for Jesus to be the Messiah, there needs to be a way to trace Him back to David.

That’s important.

It’s like a detective looking for the murder weapon.

It confirms how the crime took place.

It’s critical.

The genealogy confirms how Jesus is related to David.

And the Jews took these genealogies seriously.

There was a time, in the book of Nehemiah, when a number of priests couldn’t prove their genealogy.

They didn’t know their ancestors.

And they were actually kicked out of the priesthood.

So this is a big deal.

Let’s look at the legal line to Jesus.

We have seen the Covenantal need for these parents, now let’s look at

This is found in Matthew’s genealogy.

I’m not going to read it to you, but lists Jesus’ genealogy from Joseph.

I’m not going to read it to you, but lists Jesus’ genealogy from Matthew.

It goes back all the way to Abraham.

One of the big focuses of that Davidic Covenant is that the future Christ would be from David and he would be a king.

And so, the focus of Matthew’s genealogy focuses on the kings.

Verses 1-6 get us caught up do David.

Then from the rest of verse 6-11, it’s the kings of Israel.

David becomes the father of Solomon.

Solomon becomes the king of Rehoboam. and on and on it goes.

It describes the way a monarchy is passed on.

A king has a son.

That son is the prince.

The prince becomes king.

And on the cycle repeats itself.

That is the legal line of a king.

And so you follow Matthew’s kingly genealogy all the way to verse 16 and we see that Joseph is in this line.

If there were a king of Israel, it would be Joseph.

Putting Jesus right in line to be king.

But there is a problem.

The kings weren’t necessarily good people.

Some of those kings are people who did things we’d rather forget.

David was the father of Solomon.

Do you remember how David became the father of Solomon?

Matthew doesn’t pull any punches in his genealogy.

“And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ...”

Solomon’s mom was married to someone else.

David had an affair with Bathsheba.

She became pregnant, and David sent her husband, Uriah to his death.

That baby was miscarried.

But now that Bathsheba was single again, David moved in and married Bathsheba.

And the next son was Solomon.

David’s sin put a curse upon his descendants, that there would be violence in their blood.

Solomon becomes king.

But because of his own gross sexual sin, God told him that the kingdom would be shattered after him.

Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, becomes king.

He is proud.

He is arrogant.

And he oppresses Israel.

The nation revolts and splits under his rule, never to be reunited.

Fast forward to verse 10, Manasseh is king.

He was an idolater.

He performed child sacrifices with his own kids.

It was said that he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with blood.

And then there is the last king, Jechoniah.

Jechoniah refused Jeremiah’s counsel.

Refused to obey God.

Listen closely because I want you to have this cool aha moment, In , God cursed Jechoniah and his descendants,

“Is this man Coniah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land that they do not know? O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord: “Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.”

God said that no offspring of Jechoniah would sit on the throne again.

That cut off that line from ever being king.

No descendants of Jechoniah could be king.

Yet that was the legal line of kings.

Now back to Matthew’s genealogy.

Joseph is in this line.

Therefore Joseph’s descendants, though fulfilling the legal line of a king,

Kings having sons who become princes and so on ...

Joseph’s son could not actually sit on a thrown because it has been cursed, and cut off from sitting on the throne.

This tells us that if you were following a kingly line to Jesus, he’s right in line.

But because of the curse upon Jechoniah, the son of Joseph couldn’t actually sit on the throne.

That would be a problem, except for two things:

Jesus wasn’t actually the physical son of Joseph.

Because remember, while a virgin, Mary became pregnant the Holy Spirit.

Joseph wasn’t the biological father of Jesus.

Jesus was the adopted son of Joseph.

But the other reason why this is not a problem is because of the other the Blood Line to Jesus, Mary’s ancestry.

This is found in .

Again, I’m not going to read it to you.

It’s a little different from Matthew’s genealogy.

Instead of starting at Abraham and going down to Jesus.

This one starts at Jesus, and actually goes up, all the way to Adam.

Now think back to the requirements of the Davidic Covenant.

The Messiah had to be:

A descendant of David.

Would rule.

And would be considered the son of God.

Matthew shows us the line of David coming from Solomon.

But Luke’s is different.

David certainly had more than 1 son.

He had a bunch of them

It didn’t have to come from Solomon.

Where Matthew follows the line from Solomon, the son of David.

Look at , we see “the son of Nathan , the son of David” ...

This line branches off from David differently.

It’s not a contradiction, it’s just following a different side of the family tree.

It follows a different son of David.

So what we see in Luke’s Gospel is a blood line from David.

But this one does not follow the kings.

It follows the lesser known lineage of David, and ends up at Mary.

The conclusion of all this is that on His earthly father’s side, Jesus satisfies the kingly legal requirements of being the Messiah.

There is that curse from Jechoniah, and since He’s actually not a descendant of Jechoniah, but lives as the adopted son of Joseph, He qualifies as the king.

And on His mother’s side, He fits in with the qualification as well.

He’s able to trace His lineage back to not just David, but all the way to Adam.

Meaning that Jesus is doubly qualified to be the Messiah.

He is qualified on Joseph’s side.

And He is qualified on Mary’s side.

This means that Jesus fits the parameters of being the Messiah.

And by the way, this could never happen again.

These kinds of records don’t exist anymore.

Modern day Jews don’t have these records.

This was a once in a history of mankind opportunity and it happened.

Hidden within these genealogies is grace.

Because as noble and powerful as those in these records are … they are filled with sinful people.

He fits the requirements from the legal side.

Matthew’s genealogy contains the kings.

There is a pageantry with kings.

There is sophisticated etiquette with royalty.

There are things you can do if you are royalty.

There are things you cannot do if you are royalty.

And there are things to do when you are in the presence of royalty.

Apparently, in 2011 when Prince William married Kate Middleton were engaged to be married, the invitations that were sent to the guests, came with a 28 page book on etiquette.

It contained things you can wear to the wedding.

Things you better not wear.

How high a woman’s heels can be on her shoes.

All women’s shoes needed to be close toed.

Men no hands in your pockets.

And get there an hour early.

Royalty is expected to follow these as well.

If royalty does it … then the common people obviously must do it.

Royalty brings with it a type of super morality.

They are good.

They are better than us.

And yet, Matthew’s genealogy doesn’t do that.

It reminds us that even the lofty … are nothing more than sinners.

I’ve titled Matthew’s genealogy, from Kings to Cursed.

He fits the requirements from the blood side.

As great, noble and wonderful as kings are, it also contains:

Prostitutes

Foreigners

Murderers

Adulterers.

They were judged.

In the end, the genealogy presented in Matthew ends with judgment.

The kings ended.

Jechoniah’s sons could not be king.

The mighty fell.

No one is too big to fail.

There have been three instances in my life where there were people that I looked up to.

They were people that I admired.

I saw them as morally superior.

I saw them as spiritually superior.

They were above reproach.

These 3 men ended up falling in sin.

Big time.

They were all involved in ministry.

And all 3 of them fell.

Their sin was exposed.

Their ministry was destroyed.

I saw these men who I considered people I wanted to be like, and was terrified.

If they can fall.

I can fall.

From Kings to a Curse.

The greatest of men fall under God’s judgment.

says, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.”

Meaning, that God controls even the strongest of men.

I’m sure none of you are trying to actually become a king or a queen.

What are you pushing for?

Never be so proud that you think that you can’t fall.

None of you are trying to build yourself an empire.

Because people much greater than you have.

The kingly line in Matthew confirms that.

It shows us that all people are in need of God’s grace.

Remember the Lord’s prayer - Lead us not into temptation.

On the night Jesus was arrested, He told the disciples, “Watch and pray that you not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

In humility, we must continue to turn and depend upon the Lord in our own battle against sin.

But think about when things go haywire in your life.

True repentance is something that is granted to you.

Faith is a gift.

Tasks pile up.

It is something that is given to you.

People nag.

You start getting stressed.

You start worrying.

What is going on here?

You are getting frustrated because life isn’t in your control.

And when you control things, you think things are good.

So your quest is to always be in control.

Be in control of the people around you.

Be in control of your surroundings.

Be in control of your circumstances.

And yet, the Lord turns the kings heart like a stream of water.

Pushing for control isn’t the solution.

Because in reality … you don’t have control.

The Lord is the one who is in control.

Rather, what needs to happen is see your own sin.

If the kings ended up cursed … then that should raise

From Kings to a Curse

From Kings to a Curse

But maybe you’re sitting there, and you think to yourself, “I know I’m nothing special. I’m just your regular guy.”

And so you try to live life just normal.

Not to extreme.

Your aim is to be a wallflower.

Just sit and observe and hope that no one pays any attention to you.

You just blend in to life.

That’s when Mary’s line, or the genealogy from Luke comes into play.

I call Luke’s genealogy, From Nobodys to Sinners.

From Nobodys to Sinners.

Because as you read Luke’s genealogy, once you get to David, there’s no one very notable.

You’re not going to recognize a whole lot of the names.

They weren’t kings.

They weren’t anyone special.

Comparing Matthew’s genealogy to Luke’s genealogy is like comparing the puritan laden Princeton Cemetary in New Jersey, to the Menifee Valley Cemetary, which is operated by Miller-Jones in Meniffee.

Princeton Cemetary has people like:

Jonathan Edwards.

BB Warfield.

Aaron Burr

And Grover Cleveland.

People visit that cemetery to visit the tombs of great people.

Then there is our Menifee Valley Cemetary.

I know people who are buried there.

I have a sister buried there.

But none of the people there are on the same plane as those found at the Princeton Cemetary.

And it’s easy to think that the two don’t compare.

Yet, what do they still hold in common?

They are filled with dead people.

When we read Matthew and Luke’s genealogies it’s like comparing Princeton to Menifee.

One has recognizable names.

The other has forgettable names.

And yet they are still filled with sinners.

Matthew’s is a tale of Kings to Cursed.

Luke’s is a tale of Nobody’s to sinners.

If Matthew’s genealogy is a recording of Joseph’s line, then Luke’s genealogy is a recording of Mary’s line.

We don’t a whole lot about Mary.

We see her family tree

She was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus.

And in the absence of clear details, over the years people have tried to fill in the blanks.

Especially, the Roman Catholic Church.

They’ve tried to teach:

That she remained a virgin the rest of her life.

That she never died, but ascended to heaven.

And perhaps the worst is that she was born sinless, and remained sinned.

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, in chapter 1, is a passage called The Magnificat.

It’s found in .

In Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,”

That one little statement tells us a ton.

It tells us that Mary saw herself as someone who needed saving.

She needed a Savior.

Just like the rest of mankind, she is a sinner in need of being saved by grace.

From nobodys to sinners.

You read Luke’s genealogy and it’s painless.

A bunch of forgettables

Nothing too terrible in it.

Like a walk through the Menifee Valley Cemetary.

But at the tip of it, right before Christ, is Mary, who rejoiced because her Savior had arrived.

So here we are living a normal life.

They were sinners.

Mary was the mother of Jesus.

You’re not famous.

And a damnable false teaching has at times infested the church.

You don’t necessarily standout among the rest of the world, or even in history.

And it’s this idea that Mary

I’m not going to find a picture of you on the cover of National Inquirer filled with some strange tidbit of gossip about you.

And you are completely happy about that.

And it’s this idea that Mary was somehow sinless.

You’re sitting there, just trying to be normal.

But maybe you’re sitting there, and you think to yourself, “I know I’m nothing special. I’m just your regular guy.”

Don’t draw any more attention to you then is required.

Think about filing your taxes, you don’t really want to try and grab the IRS’s attention.

When Amanda and I first got married, I filed our taxes.

We didn’t have a whole lot and it wasn’t too complicated.

I used one of those programs on the computer that did it all for us.

The problem with those programs is that they can only work with what you give it.

So if you give it a bad number, it’ll submit a bad result.

It came to filing our taxes, and I accidentally added a zero at the end of our deductions.

I told the IRS I gave more money than I made.

So instead of giving 10%, I gave 100%.

It was an error like that.

Apparently, that raises red flags with the IRS.

It was easily fixed, and I didn’t go to jail.

But that taught me, don’t want the IRS to have suspicions about me.

I want to live under it’s radar.

Luke’s genealogy is filled with people living under the radar.

And maybe that’s you.

You are living trying not to attract too much attention to you.

You don’t want to be famous.

You don’t want to be expected to do too much.

And you don’t to grab God’s attention too much.

You haven’t done anything too terrible.

You try to live as a wallflower, knowing that there are people worse than you in the world.

Here’s the thing, God knows the nobodys.

God knows the wallflowers.

Your aim is to be a wallflower.

There was this time, Jesus was walking through the country.

Just sit and observe and hope that no one pays any attention to you.

There were crowds around Him, pressing in on him.

You just blend in to life.

In the crowds was a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.

She’d seen doctors.

No one could find a solution to her problem.

She had heard about Jesus being able to heal people.

She didn’t want to make too much of a scene.

She didn’t want to bother Jesus and slow Him down.

She didn’t want to draw too much attention to herself.

So she thought to herself, “If I touch His garment, I’ll be well.”

No awkward conversations.

And Jesus can move on.

She pushes her way through the crowds.

She touches Jesus clothing and immediately she was healed.

The blood dried up.

Jesus sees the nobodys.

Jesus stopped and called out for the woman, saying, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

That was a good moment of God seeing a nobody.

Yet God also sees the nobodys when they don’t want to be seen.

In it records the fall of Jericho.

Israel was told to walk around the city a bunch of times.

And finally on the last time around, the walls to the great city plummeted to the ground, and Israel conquered it.

God gave very specific instructions to keep nothing from the city.

It was all devoted to destruction.

And yet, there was one guy, named Achan.

Unknown to anyone else,

He was a nobody.

He kept some of the treasure.

Without anyone else’s knowledge, he buried the treasure under his tent.

This nobody’s sin was seen and known by God.

And because of that nobody’s sin, the nation was defeated in their next battle.

says, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

Therefore, we must go to the other side and know that God also sees our sins.

Regardless of who we are.

And these unknown, nobody sins, are actually huge in God’s eyes.

Achan’s unknown sin resulted in the nation’s defeat, and his death.

says that if you break one of God’s laws;

One nobody, breaking one small law, is equivalent to breaking all of God’s laws.

So to the famous kings and queens, or to the obscure nobodys, all are sinners.

Those in the public eye.

Those hiding from the public’s eye.

Mary was a nobody.

She said, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. ...”

And she saw that in her lowliness, God gave her grace, and saved her.

God sees the nobodys.

The world might say the nobodys aren’t worth anyones time.

In , God says, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

You don’t have to hide from Him.

Rather run to Him.

No matter where you are on the spectrum, you have sin that needs removed.

That’s why Jesus came.

We look back at the family photo of Jesus.

The nativities have Mary kneeling at the manger..

Joseph is right behind her.

This family photo reminds us of the Messianic line of Jesus.

The kingly line seen in Joseph.

The blood line seen in Mary.

They show us the type of people God is saving.

The powerful.

The weak.

Hopefully as you look at the nativity you see yourself in the mix.

The Messianic line of Jesus.

And it shows us the type of people that God is saving.

He saves the noble.

And you can echo Mary’s own words and rejoice in the birth of God your Savior.

He saves the lowly.