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Today marks a key day in history.
This is the first official worship service held on this property by The Church at River Mills.
As The Church at River Mills is a new church in the Owens and West Limestone community, the question may be raise: What will this church be?
Who will this church be?
With new beginnings, defining moments take place.
This is a landmark moment for The Church at River Mills.
This is a moment that will be looked back upon.
It is my prayer that as time progresses this moment will be a moment that is looked back up in later years with joy as the church continues in obedience to Jesus Christ.
However, as we arrive here today, we know that we are The Church at River Mills.
We are a church.
In that, we are a church that boldly proclaims Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected.
We are a church that stands on the Bible as the authoritative, inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.
We are a church that holds fast to Christ and the Word regardless of what is going on the outside in the culture.
With that, this morning we embark on our devotion to the Word by beginning our stance on biblical preaching.
Preaching verse-by-verse through books of the Bible in order that God’s Word speaks to His people drawing sinners to salvation and saints to sanctification.
The church shall receive a healthy diet of the Bible.
Would you take your Bibles and open with me to Matthew 1.
While you are turning there, Matthew is the author of this Gospel account, and he is writing to a predominantly Jewish audience around 50-60AD.
As Matthew writes, he seeks to point his readers to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
In today’s passage, Matthew recounts the genealogy of Jesus as well as His birth.
Pray.
While this is a text of Scripture that many of us are very familiar with, I want to challenge you to walk with seeing how the birth of Jesus applies to more than just Christmas.
This text of Scripture carries supreme weight as we seek to understand who Jesus is and what He has done for us.
This passage of Scripture points both to God’s sovereignty in the salvation of sinners and our commitment to Jesus Christ.
Main idea: God is sovereign in bringing about the salvation of His people through Jesus Christ whom we proclaim.
From this passage of Scripture, we will see three proclamations that we make as Christians and The Church at River Mills.
First,
We proclaim Jesus Christ the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan.
While we are most often tempted to look over genealogies when reading the Bible, this genealogy deserves our attention.
Throughout history and even today, many advocate and argue that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah or God’s Son.
Most of the false religions such as Islam and Hinduism will argue that Jesus was merely a prophet.
They do this taking away the divinity or divine nature of Jesus.
However, Matthew places this genealogy before a primarily Jewish audience and us today to reveal to us that Jesus is the Son of promise from Scripture that is God’s Son the Savior of the world.
Notice how Matthew begins his gospel account.
He begins by identifying Jesus as the son of David and the son of Abraham.
Remember, Matthew is writing to a primarily Jewish audience in which these two descriptors carry much weight.
To identify Jesus as the Son of David and Son of Abraham specifically proclaiming that He is the Messiah come to save God’s people.
Matthew does not shy away.
He writes to make his point clear.
Likewise, Matthew does not shield his readers from the truth.
In this genealogy, Matthew strategically walks through the lineage of Jesus pointing to certain ancestors particularly fourteen generations at a time.
He does this for symbolism.
We know that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve.
God had created the world and called it good.
Yet, in the face of temptation, Adam and Eve fell to sin and disobeyed God’s command.
Therefore, sin entered into the world.
However, God would promise that a son would come.
This son would come and bruise the head of the serpent, the deceiver.
Continuing on in Genesis, God would choose a man by the name of Abraham to make a covenant.
In that, Matthew begins with Abraham.
Abraham was chosen by God to be a father of a nation that would in turn bless the world.
There is this covenant made by God to Abraham that he will have offspring that will bless the world.
Now, Matthew is displaying Jesus as the Son of Abraham.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.
A blessing to all people.
That is why Matthew starts with Jesus as a Son of Abraham.
Then, Matthew does not hid the sinfulness of Jesus’s ancestors by listing Tamar who deceived her father-in-law into sexual immorality, Rahab who was sexually immoral as a prostitute, and Ruth who was a Moabitess.
In listing these, Matthew reveals that despite human sinfulness, God was bringing about His plan for salvation of humanity.
Through humanity fell in the Garden of Eden, God had a sovereign plan to restore humanity through His Son.
Matthew does not stop at Abraham.
He continues to list King David.
God had made a covenant with David as well.
God made a covenant to establish David’s kingdom forever through his offspring.
We all know that David was king over Israel.
Now, Matthew is emphasizing Jesus as the offspring of David that came to establish an eternal kingdom.
This Jesus that Matthew is pointing to is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant to bless the world and the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant to establish His kingdom for ever.
Isaiah prophesied about this Son, this Messiah.
The Son will be on the throne of David and His kingdom will know no end.
Likewise,
Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant as the shoot off the stump of Jesse.
As the earthly Davidic line ended, Jesus would be the new shoot off the stump of Jesse.
He is the fulfillment of God’s Covenant.
He is the Son of Promise to set His people free from captivity to sin.
He is the Son to crush the head of the serpent.
And as though Matthew had not made it plain enough, he includes verse 17.
David Platt points out an important reality for us.
“Matthew has arranged his genealogy this way for a reason that goes all the way back to the Hebrew name for King David.
The Hebrews recognized something called gematria, a system of assigning numerical values to certain words based on the corresponding letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
When you add up the numerical values of the Hebrew consonants in David’s name, you get a total of 14.
In addition, David’s name is the fourteenth in Matthew’s list.”
Matthew has pointed to the important fact that Jesus is the Messiah.
He is the Promised Son from Genesis 3. When man sinned against God, God made a way for the salvation of sinners through the sending of His Son Jesus Christ.
God did not simply bring this about by happenstance.
God is sovereignly working to carryout His purposes.
Though man sins, God is still active and working.
Abraham would fail and lie in the book of Genesis.
David was an adulterer.
Kings such as Ahaz would have unrighteous reigns.
Despite all of that, God was still sovereignly working for Jesus to come to earth to accomplish the salvation of God’s people.
Illustration: I have seen this in my own life.
Whenever I think things are not going as they should be, I look back on my life and see that God has always been sovereignly working to draw me to Himself.
In high school, I was wrestling with a desire to become a military officer which instilled discipline within me.
I desired to move away to seminary thinking that was best for my life.
Yet, God would send me to a local church to learn ministry and the absolute messiness of ministry.
God would lead me to that place to learn dependence upon Him as He provided for Jesse and myself in every moment.
Application: In your life, I do not know what you are walking through.
However, I do know some situations in this room.
Though right now, times are hard, good, or uncertain, God is at work.
We do not know His plans, but He does.
This morning, many of you are visitors.
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