Sermon Tone Analysis

Video #1: It all begins here

It all begins here in the manger.

Everything.

Everything about this season.

Everything about life.

Because this manger is going to end in a cross.

For me and for you.

What do you really want for Christmas?

Christmas is less than a week away.

All of our anticipation will come down to Saturday.

All the presents, all the lights.

By the time Christmas morning arrives, Christmas Eve at the Little League field will be over.

What are your expectations this year?

What do you really, really want for Christmas?

If money were no object, what do you want?

We watched a cute new Christmas movie called “8-bit Christmas” a couple of nights ago.

There are no spoiler alerts here, I’m not going to give away the ending.

It had a lot of the same plot lines that a lot of Christmas movies have.

However, it did have the look and the feel of the classic Christmas Story.

There were a lot of the same elements there, including the main plot line.

Instead of a b-b gun, the main character of the story, living in the 1980s, wants a brand new Nintendo.

It’s all he thinks about, dreams about, lives for… is the brand new Nintendo.

And of course, it’s all part of the comedy.

Along the way, though, this story about a quest for the Nintendo, like many of our Christmas movies do, rides on that question: what do you really, really want for Christmas?

Jesus’ family tree

That is the question we are asking ourselves this morning as we come to our text.

We have been tracking the story of the birth of Jesus as one of his best friends tells it.

Before Matthew gets to the good stuff about how Jesus was born, Matthew starts the whole thing off with Jesus’ family tree.

Matthew is telling his story in a way to connect Jesus to King David, the greatest of Israel’s kings in the Old Testament.

So this family tree is tracing the line of Jesus through King David.

Matthew is saying “here’s how Jesus is related to King David”.

Only he’s doing much more than this.

We’re looking at the names of 5 women who are included in this family tree.

Again, this is unusual because women’s names were not included in Jewish genealogies.

These women are unexpected, unlikely, undeserving, and unworthy.

This isn’t your typical family tree.

This little baby that is arriving in the story isn’t simply related to King David.

He’s better than King David.

And he’s going to save his people from their sins.

That includes people in Jesus’ family tree.

Jesus’ family tree is dysfunctional.

Jesus’ family tree is littered with the pleasant and not-so-pleasant.

Along the way in laying out the family tree, Matthew strategically and interestingly highlights some people in the tree who are truly a part of it but people who because of their past, because of their embarrassment to the family, because of their sin they are known for, might be people at least if they were in our family, we would try to hide and probably not invite to Christmas because of what others might think if they knew we were related.

That includes these five women.

When Matthew included these women, he does so because they are connected to the men in Jesus line and they have some really interesting stories.

Stories that are part of the lineage of Jesus because sinners aren’t just a part of the story they are the point of the story.

Sinners who couldn’t make themselves worthy by trying harder and promising to do better next time.

Sinners who needed a savior.

Someone who could take care of their sin forever and transform their stories of brokenness to stories of forgiveness and grace.

This line includes Tamar who in her own bit of notoriety with Judah who was part of a promise that a special king would come through his family.

There’s Rahab, another woman of notoriety, who places her faith in the same promises of a coming Messiah.

And Ruth, the Gentile, who ties her destiny to that of Tamar and Rahab.

Woman #4: Bathsheba

And that brings us to the fourth woman mentioned.

If Tamar is the story nobody wants to tell, Bathsheba is the story nobody wants to remember.

Of these four women, Bathsheba is the one we all want to bury under the rug.

This is who you don’t invite over for Christmas.

This is the one who didn’t just bear the shame in her day, but the shame continues in the way people still talk about her.

There is shame.

There is failure.

There is stigma.

There is dysfunction.

It’s all over Bathsheba and her story.

Just the mention of Uriah’s wife brings to mind David’s greatest failure and the dysfunction it caused.

A failure as a husband, A failure as a father, A failure as a friend, A failure as a leader.

And with just that one name Matthew is reminding his readers that as great as King David was.

As much as people to that day still talked about the glory days in Israel when David was King and Solomon his son followed him.

David was not perfect.

That David was a sinner too.

Instead of all the wonderful things he could have said mention about David he says doesn’t mention her name but instead says Uriah wife brings to mind His morality running around with another man’s wife, his character willing to commit murder, his ethics, his parenting with His kids went to war against him and killing each other.

Dysfunctional family, yep that is David the 25th great grandfather of Jesus.

And in the middle of it all, is Bathsheba.

Her name is left out because make no mistake, even as this little one on the way, this Jesus is being tied to the royal line of David and is a legitimate heir to David’s throne, David is fatally flawed.

Jesus is coming to save Bathsheba.

Jesus is coming to save David.

David was the King of Promise.

David is the Anointed One.

He’s the Chosen One.

Even God says, a man after my own heart.

David gets a great idea that he wants to acknowledge the Lord God for all that God has done.

The best way he can do this is to build a temple so that there can be in Jerusalem a permanent dwelling place for God instead of the mobile home tabernacle that they had been using since the Exodus days.

God sends the new prophet Nathan to David to tell him that isn’t what I need from you.

Instead, God gives David a Promise, a Promise that began way back with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Judah, and now will continue through David as a King with a throne.

Here’s what Nathan tells David.

The LORD himself will make a house for you.

12 When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

13 He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

14 I will be his father, and he will be my son.

When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals.

15 But my faithful love will never leave him as it did when I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.

16 Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever.’

This is breath-taking.

Abraham will have a people forever.

Now one of his descendents, David, will have a throne forever.

Between these two, that covers everything in all of history.

A throne, a kingdom, and a people forever.

It doesn’t get any grander than this.

Those promises can’t get much bigger than this.

David, I’m promising you the world.

I’m promising you all of history, for all time.