Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Well, good morning, Christ Church.
[00:00:03] It's good to see you today, this beautiful fall day.
[00:00:07] If you are a guest with us today, we haven't had the chance to meet. My name is Chet, and I would love to meet you. But so thankful that you're here. And as Tina mentioned last week, we had our better together Sunday. And so we had all our groups and ministries out there. So all different ways to get involved, to get connected, to serve, or to grow. So we still have that outside set up. So after service. Check it out. The only difference between this week and last week is you don't get a hot dog today while you do that. Yeah, I know.
[00:00:44] I know you feel very gypped right now, but don't worry, Donuts are coming at the end of the month. All right? So.
[00:00:53] But truly take a moment if you haven't get connected somewhere.
[00:00:57] This is such a vital and special time in our church.
[00:01:05] You will look back at these days and you will remember them and be thankful to God that you are part. I absolutely believe that.
[00:01:15] And this week I was out at our site, and they've been cruising along out there, if you haven't seen. It's been very cool. Yeah.
[00:01:27] With my coach, and they're doing pretty good.
[00:01:31] But there is kind of one. When I was standing out there, there's one really cool deal. It's much farther along than that now.
[00:01:39] But I was kind of standing back a little bit of ways, and I just saw like, basically the outline of the building.
[00:01:47] And as I was looking at that, it just stirred something in my soul. Cause I was like, man, I've been looking at that on the screen for a long time.
[00:01:57] I've been looking at that on paper for a long time. Been thinking about that for a long time. And so as I just kind of stand by there, I just sort of had like a moment where I was like, God, thank you so much.
[00:02:10] What a joy. What an honor. What a privilege to.
[00:02:15] And it was just really moving to me. And maybe some of you might remember in around 2018 or 2019, when we started thinking about this and praying about this, we did what we called the More Than campaign. And it was out of Ephesians 3. And it says, you know, God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine. He will be glorified in the church for generations to come. And we handed out these keychains.
[00:02:41] This one's not mine. I couldn't find mine, but it's pretty faded.
[00:02:47] You can still kind of make it out.
[00:02:50] But I was just thinking about man, God is bringing to reality just things that just seem so impossible and so difficult.
[00:02:59] And it gets me excited for the people that are gonna be reached and the new stories that are gonna come and the families and the kids. Because it is all about people. Church. The building is just a means to an end. And so in this season, as we are in the middle of this, as we are living in God's more than. I wanna encourage you to keep staying engaged and being part.
[00:03:27] And there's just kind of three simple ways to do it. Number one, just be praying for our church every day.
[00:03:33] Pray especially for this project, for our church, all of it.
[00:03:38] Pray that just God would be at work, God would be glorified, God would provide all that. Seeing all those types of things. The second thing is serve. This is the best time to get connected.
[00:03:52] And I believe many of you in this room, man, God has put something in you. You are called and gifted by him to be a service to him. And this is the perfect time to step in and to be engaged. And lastly, I wanna encourage you to keep being generous towards this. I know generosity is a sacrifice, but I believe on the other side of our sacrifice today is life for generations to come. I absolutely believe that with all my heart. And I wanna encourage you, we're gonna do a special just one time offering the first Sunday in November where I'm gonna call it the more than offering. Gonna step back into that. And I wanna encourage you to pray about giving towards that. As you know, diesel prices, everything is just crazy expensive. These projects, they cost a lot. And a lot of things have not been all on our side in that. So I want to make up for some of that. And so I wanna ask you to pray as a church and to think about that and to keep being generous. Cause we're here cause of your generosity and what God has done through. So thank you for that. But there's room to keep going. So be in prayer on that. We'll talk more of that. But the first Sunday in November is when we'll take that. So let me say a prayer and we'll get into the message today. Father, thank you so much for this season that you have blessed us and led us in.
[00:05:28] Father, I pray you would just continue to be at work, Lord, in us as a church, as you build your church. Yes, physically, but even more spiritually.
[00:05:39] Help us, Father, to take those steps of faith, of sacrifice, service, of generosity, all of that, so that your name can be glorified. Father, as we think about the book of Matthew, over these weeks to come, I pray, Lord, that we could experience Christ in a new way, in a fresh way, in a deeper way, and we could be shaped and changed by Him. And I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:06:07] Well, today we're starting a brand new sermon series. And for the next 800 weeks, we're gonna be in the book of Matthew. Matthew is one of the four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
[00:06:24] And we're gonna walk through it. I'm gonna almost. I'm gonna do as much of it as I can without, you know, just kind of running us into the ground here. So we'll be in it. We'll cover almost all of it.
[00:06:38] And it's gonna be a really exciting series because we're gonna just be seeing the ministry of Jesus, hearing his teachings being challenged, the events, all of that. And today we're gonna begin it. So we're gonna start right at the beginning, Matthew, chapter one. And I'm gonna read these verses to you, and then we will dive into this. Now, I'm gonna warn you, Matthew begins with a genealogy. Anyone excited about that?
[00:07:07] Do you ever just read Ancestry.com for fun? You're just like, let me look at this person's family tree. Well, we're gonna do it now. Don't.
[00:07:16] Don't just dismiss us, because believe it or not, there are really helpful things in this today. But let me read it to you and stay with me on it. Here we go. Matthew 1, verse 1. The book of the. Say it with me. Genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, by Tamar and Perez, the father of Hezron. You still with me?
[00:07:50] Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Sam and Sam. And the father of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David, the king. Now jump with me. There's a couple other generations there, but jump with me to verse 17.
[00:08:12] So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. And I'll stop there. Now, in this genealogy is actually, I think, a lot for us to think about. But before we even get to that I just wanna ask three simple questions today as we start Matthew number one, what is a gospel? We're reading the Gospel according to Matthew. So I want to start there. What is the gospel? Second, who is Matthew?
[00:08:50] Who is this guy? And lastly, what the message of the genealogy is. So let's start with this. What is a gospel? Now, like I said, the New Testament has four gospels and they're not soulful music, although that's cool. What a gospel is, is. It is. It's an ancient biography, but it's not a biography like we would read today. Today, if you were to start a biography, it would probably maybe talk about this person's grandparents or it would talk about the historical and social, political and economic culture that they lived in the. But when we read the Gospels, these biographies of Jesus, they get right more to the points that they wanna make.
[00:09:39] In other words, when we read about the life of Jesus, there's probably a lot of things we wonder about that the gospel writers are like. I'm not including that because I have a very focused agenda here. So people are always like, I wonder what Jesus was like as a teenager.
[00:09:56] Well, you're not going to get much from them.
[00:09:59] I wonder where you know Jesus, what his first job was like. Well, they don't care to tell you because they're trying to make not just a biographical point, but a theological point. And so as we read them, they're going to feel biographical, but they're also immensely theological and they also contain a lot of teaching and they also contain some really important history. And all of that is in the Gospels.
[00:10:32] Now, kind of some cool things about the Gospels is that when we read the Gospel of Matthew, we're actually reading an eyewitness account. Matthew lived with Jesus for three years. He walked with Jesus.
[00:10:47] He saw Jesus do things and heard his teachings and organized them and put them to paper.
[00:10:56] Matthew also wrote kind of about like 25 or 30 years after Jesus. And the reason I bring that up to you is because sometimes when people think about reading the Scriptures and they think about reading the Gospel Matthew, you're like, is this really what happened?
[00:11:16] Sometimes people look at the Bible and they're like, is this just like a.
[00:11:19] A game of telephone that now we have like all these exaggerated claims. But the interesting thing is when people study this from a historical and a literary standpoint, the Gospels are eyewitness, written in eyewitness ways, they're historically reliable. There's all kinds of manuscripts that are consistent over time. And so all that is to say that when we're reading about what Matthew writes. We're reading what actually happened.
[00:11:52] We're reading what Jesus said and what Jesus did.
[00:11:58] And so we ought to take it very, very seriously. You with me now? Who is Matthew now? Interesting. Like I said, Matthew was a disciple of Jesus.
[00:12:08] So he was called to follow Jesus, to learn from him, to follow him for three years. But when Jesus found him, Matthew was a tax collector.
[00:12:21] Now, that might not mean much to us, but in the ancient world, it meant that he was basically the scum of the earth.
[00:12:29] You know, this was not like a prestigious role. This was not a credible role to the people of Jesus. Time and place, they would have looked at people like Matthew and they would said, you're what's wrong with the world.
[00:12:45] And mainly for a couple reasons. Number one, they would see Matthew's work as kind of being traitorous to his own people.
[00:12:54] At this time, Matthew and Jesus people, they were occupied by the Romans. And so the Romans said, we're gonna get our money out of you.
[00:13:05] And people like Matthew would help them do that.
[00:13:08] And people like Matthew would also be like, well, here's one for Rome, and here's one for me. Here's one for Rome. And so they had that reputation of taking more than they should have. So their whole work was looked at as shady at best, if not downright criminal.
[00:13:28] And get this. Jesus looked at this guy and he said, I got 12 slots to fill.
[00:13:38] I want you.
[00:13:40] You're like, Jesus, I've been at recess a lot where we're picking teams. That is a bad pick. Amen. You should have left that guy out. Why would you want someone like that? Now, part of that is so helpful for us, because here's the deal.
[00:13:57] Matthew, who starts out as a tax collector, becomes a man who writes a gospel that we are thinking about and talking about today. Two thousand years later, Matthew, who the people of his generation probably thought was a crook, has become a profound apostle.
[00:14:24] And what was the difference?
[00:14:27] It was simply this, his willingness to follow Jesus.
[00:14:32] Because here's the deal, where Jesus meets you does not put any limit on what his purpose for you might be.
[00:14:43] And maybe even some of us have experienced that. Some of us are sitting in church today and years ago, maybe some of our friends and family would be like, I would. If they knew you were in church, they would have laughed in your face and thought, no way. Not a chance.
[00:15:00] Maybe some of us are serving God and living a radically different life than where it started out.
[00:15:09] And the reason we are is the same reason for Matthew that there was a day in our life where Christ said, come, follow me. And we did.
[00:15:19] And it put our life in a totally different direction.
[00:15:23] When I was a kid, there's a book that I read a lot. It was called the Ugly Duckling.
[00:15:31] I don't know why my parents forced that upon me, but I read that one a lot.
[00:15:37] And you know the story, right? You know, there's this ugly duckling, he thinks he's a duckling. He's trying to fit in and he's a little bit uglier than everyone else and things aren't going well. But then at the end, you realize he's not a duck, he's a beautiful swan.
[00:15:54] You're like, oh, man, that all has kind of made up. Oh, look at that. Yeah, there it is.
[00:16:02] That is so awesome.
[00:16:07] That's great. Give that man a round of applause.
[00:16:13] Somebody heard my 9:30 service there and I don't know about you, I'm still waiting for that swan moment in my life.
[00:16:23] Amen. It just.
[00:16:25] I guess I have to keep waiting a little bit longer.
[00:16:29] But really, the story of Matthew is that type of transformation.
[00:16:33] The story of Matthew is here's this tax collector and then he becomes this writer of the gospel. And here's the beautiful thing, church, about your life and my life. If you trust your life to Christ, you never know what he will do through you, where he will take you, and what he will make you into you with me. And that is a beautiful reality of hope for us. So Matthew experienced that he lived that he's a gospel writer. And interestingly enough, many people point out that that Matthew, his tax collecting, being a man that was in that business, probably actually helped him to be the writer of this gospel. Because in the ancient world, most people weren't literate, but Matthew probably would have been. Most people weren't probably fluent in the trade language, at least around his area, which was Koine Greek. And Matthew's work probably required that. Matthew also would have likely wrote things down, organized information, kept tabs on things, which all of those would have been helpful in writing this gospel. And just here's what, again, I think it means for us. God doesn't waste any parts of our life.
[00:17:51] And sometimes the experiences and the seasons that we're in, maybe they feel really hollow and they feel like maybe covered with some fog and they feel confusing.
[00:18:06] But you never know what God might be preparing you for and what God might use. He doesn't waste anything. And so Matthew became this gospel writer. Now, let's talk about this genealogy. Do you want me to read it to you again?
[00:18:21] You got it in your mind? Well, let me just. I think there's a lot of messages that this genealogy gives to us today, but let me just pull out four that I think are really, really helpful. And here's the first thing. If you look at these stories of the people that are named, there is a lot of ups and downs and there is a lot of waiting.
[00:18:47] I don't know if you've experienced this in your life, but God doesn't usually work. According to our timelines, God has his own.
[00:18:57] And I don't know if you've ever experienced this in your life. God doesn't usually always adopt the plans that we have and that we want.
[00:19:07] Like, Lord, I got a really good plan.
[00:19:10] I know what my life should look like.
[00:19:13] I know how these events should unfold. And God, if you could just listen to me, and we were on the same page, it would be good for everyone.
[00:19:23] Well, it doesn't quite work that way. You with me? And when we look at this genealogy, it is twists and turns, it is darkness in so many of these instances and these people's lives and these events, it is waiting, it is confusion, it's all these things. But yet through it all, God's prayer purpose goes forward.
[00:19:49] And through it all, Matthew says, a God has brought into the world Christ, who has come to save us from our sins. Here's what that means for us. God's purpose for your life and my life is not fragile, it's sturdy, it's strong.
[00:20:08] It can weather our stupid moments, sometimes stupid decade.
[00:20:16] It can endure the challenges and mess ups and all of that, and God can still get his purpose done. I was thinking about this. My daughter Abby, she loves gymnastics.
[00:20:30] I think she's back there. Is she? Yeah, she's in the back row. But Abby is. She's a great gymnast, but she likes to practice a lot. And she likes to do these attempted headstands and put her head down and her neck's going all over the place. And parents, that freaks me out. Anybody else? I can't. I'm like, do anything else. Just don't mess with your neck. Amen. And while you're at it, don't mess with your sibling's neck either. No choke slams, no rear naked chokes, right? Just, let's stay away from that. Whatever. You can do other stuff that's acceptable. But the neck, it freaks me out. And I look at that and so many times I'm like, just stop. Just no, don't do that. But I'm also looking at it from my neck.
[00:21:19] And I'm at the stage in my life where if I don't put my socks on right, my back could be messed up for a month. Anyone?
[00:21:29] Yeah, I don't know why that's funny. That's not a joke, y'. All.
[00:21:34] I'm a little more fragile, you know. Her still probably cartilage everywhere, not bones. I don't know how that all works, but they're anti fragile for the most part.
[00:21:46] Me, I'm just fragile.
[00:21:49] And so many times we can think that maybe where our life is at, the purpose of God has stalled out.
[00:21:59] It's not that fragile.
[00:22:01] Maybe we can look at certain seasons and decisions and struggles and think, well, man, I don't know. Has God moved on?
[00:22:12] Is he done with me? Can God still do something in this place, in this situation, in my life? And the genealogy I believe is a beacon of hope to us says, look, God is amazing at bringing light out of darkness.
[00:22:32] God is amazing at taking what others meant for evil and using it for good.
[00:22:39] God is amazing at even working in the midst of our failures and our mess ups and then still doing something good through it that glorifies his name. His purpose is, is not fragile. You with me, Church.
[00:22:57] And if you have breath in your lungs today, God is not done with you, Church.
[00:23:04] If you're coming in here and you're mostly alive, maybe you're zoning out from my sermon, but you're there. God still has purpose for you. You with me, and there is hope for you. Now the other thing about this genealogy, and maybe the main point of it is, is that Matthew is saying Jesus is the fulfillment of history.
[00:23:28] Jesus is the fulfillment of all God has been doing. And Jesus is the centerpiece of the purpose and the promises and the plans of God. Now if you kind of dig into like why there's so much emphasis on the 14 generations, ultimately, to just summarize it, that's what Matthew is trying to say. He's trying to say, look, Jesus is what we've been waiting for. Jesus is the promised one who has to come. All the promises, from Abraham to David to these ancient people of God in Christ, they are fulfilled. And Matthew loves to use that word, fulfilled.
[00:24:11] In fact, you could almost summarize all of Matthew by just saying that Jesus Christ is the story of fulfillment.
[00:24:19] That can almost serve as a thesis statement for this book. That in every way Christ fulfills the righteousness of God, the purpose of God, the history of God, all of these things. And so in the genealogy. Matthew is trying to make that clear. Now, just to make that personal, here's what I think it means for us. If Jesus is the fulfillment of all God's purpose in history, then he also has to be the fulfillment of my life and your life.
[00:24:50] And here's what I think we do is we try to just live life focused on our story.
[00:24:59] But your story and my story is not the story. The story of Jesus Christ is. And when you stop playing the main character and I stop playing the main character, and we say, no, I want my life to be about the story of Christ, then I believe we experience a deeper and more meaningful fulfillment in this world. You with me on this church? And Jesus is a fulfillment. Now, here's the third thing about this genealogy. Maybe one of the things that's most surprising is that there are five women in this genealogy. I read you a couple, but there's five altogether, with Mary being the fifth one. And again, in the ancient world, this is not what would have been expected. It was usually just male names, but there's five women. And these women, by and large, are not from the ancient.
[00:25:50] They're not ancient Israelites, but they are from other nations, which would have been even more surprising. And then on top of that, there's a lot of really, really rough stories.
[00:26:08] Bad things, tragedy, sin, all of this around many of these names.
[00:26:15] And so what Matthew's doing is he's drawing our attention to that.
[00:26:20] Do you have anyone in your family that you're like, I try not to introduce them to anybody.
[00:26:30] And if you're like, I don't think so, you might be that person today.
[00:26:34] I've just outed you, and I'm sorry, but, you know, no family tree is perfect. Amen.
[00:26:42] And if we're in it, and it was perfect, we just ruined it, right?
[00:26:46] We're all messed up. And usually in a genealogy like this, you know, you would think like, oh, this has to be filled with the best and the brightest. This has to be filled with the all Stars, because this is the genealogy of Jesus. But this is filled with the Bad News bears.
[00:27:04] You get me?
[00:27:06] These are not the best of bread. They're messy. It's all messed up. But Matthew is not trying to cover that up.
[00:27:15] He's trying to draw our attention to it.
[00:27:19] And I think here's the simple reason, because the way to be part of God's family is by grace alone, is by God's mercy and kindness to us.
[00:27:36] And as soon as we recognize that that's the way in, it reminds Me, some years ago, I had to get a military ID and I had to go downtown to defast. And it's all just really a pain to do it. And I was waiting in line, and there was a guy in front of me that was doing the same thing. And he kind of erupted with the lady who he had to go to to get the id. And the reason is, is there was some document. I can't remember what it was.
[00:28:03] He didn't have it, and he needed it. And so he got very, you know, very pushy with the lady and was kind of like demanding that she helped him and that he deserved it. And they were both like, powering up. And the lady's like, look, you don't have it. Sorry.
[00:28:21] You know, get out of here. And so he got out of there. But while that was happening, and they were having this conversation because it was in the middle of everybody, it occurred to me that I didn't have that very same thing.
[00:28:35] And I was next in line.
[00:28:37] I was like, oh, boy. And it was like, you know, needed all that. So that went really poorly. He left there, didn't get his id. And so I went up and I said, well, ma', am, I don't have that either.
[00:28:51] And I'm really sorry, but if you'd be willing to help me, I would be so thankful to you.
[00:28:58] That was the summary of my speech. It was probably more elegant than that. But she said, all right, fine. And she helped me. And she goes, I would have helped that guy too, but he was a jerk.
[00:29:09] And I was like, trust me. Point noted. That's why I'm coming to you as a beggar.
[00:29:15] And she did. She did help me. But the difference was he was demanding his rights. I realized I was like, I don't have any.
[00:29:24] I am Mercy alone is what will get me this id. You with me.
[00:29:29] And that is the truth about being part of God's family. It is mercy alone.
[00:29:35] Not, Lord, oh, look at all. Look how great I am. Gosh, Lord, have you seen my neighbor? Like, what a loser. And I'm so. Like anything where we think God loves us cause we're somehow better or smarter or more holy, then we are missing the message of Jesus. It is mercy alone.
[00:29:58] And here's the powerful thing. As you see that and as you receive that, it slowly begins to make you a different type of person.
[00:30:09] As I see how good God is to me, despite how God could be to me, it changes me. You with me.
[00:30:17] It is powerful. It is the grace of God.
[00:30:21] That's why The New Testament. So many times they call the message of Jesus the Gospel of God's grace.
[00:30:27] Because it's grace that you sit at the table and there is a spot for every person willing to receive that grace.
[00:30:36] You don't go up to the table and say, I deserve and demand to be here.
[00:30:41] You say, no, Lord, I don't. But I believe you are a God of mercy.
[00:30:46] And he gives us in his grace a seat. And the genealogy shows. And here's the last thing. The genealogy is in so many ways a message of hope.
[00:31:01] But the hope comes through the scars and the failures and the messes of the people who lived it.
[00:31:12] And as I was thinking about that, it reminded me sometimes the way God will bring hope to people is through our scars.
[00:31:26] See, we want God to be glorified through the high moments of our life. And God will. But sometimes God also will be glorified through the struggles and the failures of our life.
[00:31:41] And those wounds and those scars will be pathways for God to give hope and healing to others.
[00:31:49] See, if we were to dig into this genealogy and just look at all the events, it would feel dark, by and large.
[00:31:59] It would not feel hopeful. It would not feel good.
[00:32:03] But today we read it and it feels good. It feels like a message of hope. It ministers to us.
[00:32:11] But it is God's grace through their scars that minister to us.
[00:32:19] I find that sometimes the most helpful marriage counselors and marriage encouragers are those who had moments of real struggle in their marriage.
[00:32:30] And God worked in that pain, and God led them out. And now, man, they have something to offer others.
[00:32:39] Sometimes the people that are able to bring the most encouragement into your life are people who went through some dark valleys, but they walked through them with God and they came out. And now they have scars. But they're wounded healers. You with me?
[00:32:57] And so all that to say today, church, is that God will use even our pain to glorify his name.
[00:33:06] God will use our struggles. God will use all of that. He doesn't waste any of it. And when we surrender and entrust it to him day after day, he will bring messages of hope and ministry to other people. Let's pray, Father.
[00:33:28] I thank you, Lord, that just like you were at work through all those generations, more than we know and more we can see in the extraordinary and in the very ordinary.
[00:33:44] Your purpose was moving forward.
[00:33:48] And in our lives, the same is true.
[00:33:52] But, Lord, like those guys and like us, we're prone to discouragement.
[00:34:00] We're prone to getting deterred.
[00:34:05] We're prone to losing faith and hope. And I pray for your strength and your goodness and your blessing to meet us and to encourage us and to strengthen us.
[00:34:16] Father, I pray that our lives could be eternally connected to the story of Jesus today.
[00:34:24] I pray, Lord, for those of us who are just been living our own story, I pray we would surrender our lives to your story and your purpose.
[00:34:36] And Father, I pray that we would just give all our life, the good, the bad, the ugly, and we would just ask you to use it.
[00:34:43] Use it to serve others. Use it to glorify your name.
[00:34:48] Use it for your purpose.
[00:34:50] And I pray you'd help us to do that. In Jesus name, amen.
