Levi's Genes
Rene Huard
2022 Advent • Sermon • Submitted
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· 11 viewsJesus Christ came to show us the mercy of God, the judgment of God, and the faithfulness of God.
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This Advent season, we’ll be looking at Christmas the way most children do—with the eyes of wonder and amazement. The whole theme of this year’s series is the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth. There are so many things to amazed by, with our Savior’s birth.
Today, we’re looking at a little play on words. Though I personally prefer Wrangler Jeans, there is also the ever-popular Levi Jeans. Yes, you’ve already understood the pun in the title. Many of the thoughts for this sermon come from reading some of the work of another pastor, who occasionally writes for Leadership Journal, Vic Pentz. I want to thank him for many of his thoughts which I will be sharing amidst my own for this sermon.
Most of us struggle with staying alert and awake reading genealogies. "Rehoboam begat Abijah, and Abijah begat Ralph, etc." What I find myself often doing is speed reading those sections, so I don’t fall asleep in the middle of all those challenging names.
Yet, at the same time, we believe 2 Timothy 3:16, which says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching and reproof." If that's true, that includes the begats. And so this morning, join with me as we look at the genealogy of Jesus.
What is unique is that this Who’s Who of Names and ancestors, which we may find boring, is actually what starts Matthew’s gospel. Though it may be boring to us, it was of great importance to the original audience. Genealogies become important to us at certain times of year, like this time of year. Some time ago, when people still read newspapers, the Wall Street Journal said there is a good chance many of us are direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims. Historians say that 26 of the 102 people who traveled in the Mayflower across the Atlantic in 1620 and celebrated the first Thanksgiving had children who had children who had children. Today, many generations later, the Mayflower passengers may well have had 25 million descendants, which means there's a chance that you are a direct descendant of those who came over on the Mayflower. I know that our family has ancestry on my Grandma Reiss’ side that made that journey. One of those was the first pastor of the Plymouth Colony.
Regardless of our thoughts on this, in Jesus' day a person’s family tree was a source of tremendous pride and importance. In order to own land in Israel, you had to show the public documents proving your genealogy that gave you the right to a piece of the Holy Land. Privileges were reserved for certain tribes. For example, to be a priest you had to be of the tribe of Levi and have Levi's genes.
Most of all, they expected the Messiah to come from a certain family of the house and lineage of David. And what's interesting is that in the Gospels, even Jesus' most vocal critics never once quarreled with him about his descent from David. It must have been a matter of public record that Jesus was the heir to David and Abraham, and that as such, he was the inheritor of the promises of Israel.
And yet, more than telling us simply who was Jesus, these verses really are telling us who is God the Father. What Matthew is doing between the lines here is preaching a wonderful message on the nature of God. It's typical of a Jewish author that he would glorify God without even mentioning the name of God.
You get the sense that there's more than meets the eye when you come to verse 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 Christ fourteen generations." So here are three paragraphs with fourteen generations, three different sections.
Think of these three paragraphs as a kind of line graph, sort of like a stock market report charting the fortunes of Israel in the Old Testament: up, down, up. It's in the shape of an N. It begins with verse 2, in that first paragraph of names, with Abraham, and it rises up to King David. That line represents the mercy of God. But then from King David, it plummets downward and bottoms out into the Babylonian captivity we find described in the second paragraph. That shows the judgment of God. And then Matthew ends by showing us the faithfulness of God by rising up out of the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Jesus Christ in the third paragraph.
Jesus Christ came to show us the mercy of God, the judgment of God, and the faithfulness of God.
The Mercy of God.
The Mercy of God.
Let's begin with Abraham to David. The most striking thing about that first paragraph is the mention of the names of four women. It was very unusual to mention women in a Jewish genealogy; and if one did mention women, it would mention women for the purpose of enhancing the purity and the nobility of a lineage.
For example, with Matthew mentioning women, we'd expect him to mention some of the more memorable and impressive names of the Old Testament; for example Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel, the wives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. After all, their husbands are mentioned here, and they would lend a certain prestige to the lineage of Jesus, much as the Mayflower descendants would be to our family tree. And yet, instead of mentioning those three great women, look at the women who are mentioned in that first paragraph. There we see mentioned Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, two of whom aren't Jewish at all. Rahab was a Gentile prostitute, and Ruth was a Moabite woman. Matthew chooses women who do not in any way enhance or bring credibility to the untarnished Jewishness of Jesus, but quite the reverse. He chooses women who show how contaminated Jesus' bloodline was.
And yet, that's the very first point of the sermon Matthew is presenting. He wants us to know that God's love is bigger than the Jewish race, that Jesus is the Savior of all people, that Jesus is the light to the Gentiles, that he is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham: "Through you shall all the nations of the world be blessed." God is not a sexist. God is not a racist. Red, brown, yellow, black, and all are precious in his sight. Matthew wants us to know that the blood of two Gentile mothers coursed through the blood of the Savior of the world.
Yet that does not begin to compare with the audacity that Matthew shows as he continues on in this paragraph. Not only were two of these women Gentiles, three of these women were notorious sinners. With the exception of Ruth, none of these women had morals that were anything to write home about. We do not in our youth group hold up Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba as role models for our young women today. Tamar tricked Judah into having a child by her. Yet the child from that incestuous relationship became a grandfather of the Messiah. Rahab the harlot had her prostitution business on the walls of the city of Jericho.
The fourth woman mentioned is so scandalous that Matthew did not even mention her by name. If you look at verse 6, all we read there is simply "And David, the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah." A thousand years later, and still Bathsheba isn't known as David's wife! She's the wife of Uriah. And yet Bathsheba was a distant grandmother of our Lord.
It's as though Matthew had scoured the lineage of Jesus in order to find the seediest women he could find. Why? Because he wants us to know that not only is God's love bigger than the Jewish race. My friend, God's love is bigger than your sin and my sin. God's love embraces us even within our sinfulness. God uses stained and soiled, but repentant, sinners in order to bring the Messiah. Even the begats of the Bible drip with the grace and love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. We find that he's a friend of sinners. He is the light to the Gentiles.
Suppose you could pick your family tree the way you pick a Christmas tree. What kind of family tree would you pick for yourself? Would you have a lot of shady characters and unwed mothers? One baby did pick his own pedigree, and look what he chose: an ordinary human family with scoundrels and saints mixed together! He had holy men like Abraham, wicked kings like Ahab, sweet saintly Ruth, and the adulterous Bathsheba. Jesus didn't fall out of heaven like a meteor. He was born in a usual way into the very real world of a human family.
My friends, all of us are in the midst of human families right now, and some may wonder, Does God understand the pain I feel for my family? Does God feel the hurt that I hurt for my family members and loved ones? The answer is yes, because he has been there in his Son, Jesus Christ.
The Judgment of God.
The Judgment of God.
Now hang on tight to the mercy of God as we descend into the judgment of God. At the beginning, Israel was riding high on the reign of David. They thought they were on the brink of paradise in B.C. 1000, when David was at the height of his reign. But suddenly it all crumbled, and everything went downhill from there.
Why did Israel fall apart and get carried off in captivity? Amos the prophet spoke: "Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, that buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals ... the Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob, 'Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.'" Israel fell because they divorced religious practice from practical application.
It wasn't that Israel didn't go to church often enough. Religion was the favorite indoor sport in Israel. Listen again to Amos 4.4: "Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days ... for so you love to do, O people of Israel." No, the problem was they forgot to live for God. He soaked his robe with the tears he cried for the poor, the orphan, the widow. Nothing is more abhorrent to God than religion divorced from life application.
The Faithfulness of God.
The Faithfulness of God.
But then Matthew celebrates finally the faithfulness of our God. There was one thing that all of the people in these three paragraphs had in common: they were all waiting. The promise first came to Abram: "Through you shall all the nations of the world be blessed." And then it came to David: "Your seed will I establish forever and build up thy throne for all generations." Meanwhile the people waited, like a child waiting in anticipation for Christmas morning. Generation came, and generation went. Still no Messiah.
And so they waited some more and kept the genealogy straight to keep track of who might come and sit on the throne. They even rushed off and asked John the Baptist, "Are you the one, the Christ is to come?"
Some of us are waiting this morning, waiting for God to move in power in situations of misery and pain and sorrow and heartache. We're tired of waiting, and we wonder, How long, O Lord? Is God really faithful to his promises?
Well, my friends, He is, but in His own time. We have to trust that God will move in His own way and His own time in His own will; because, sure enough, we read in Galatians 4:4 and 5: "When the time had fully come ..." (not when we thought it was time; not when we got sick and tired of waiting, but when the time had fully come) "... God sent forth his Son to be born of woman, born under the Law to redeem those who are under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters."
In Matthew 1, we see the faithfulness of our God, because when that One came, he was a descendent of King David, which meant that Jesus Christ has a literal right to sit on the throne of Israel. Herod was perfectly correct in his terror of this baby, because Jesus was truly the heir to the throne.
Not only was he a Son of David; he was also the Son of God. We read through those verses, and everything says, "So and so was the father, and So and so, etc." But then we come to verse 16, and we find the startling phrase: "And Jacob, the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who was the Christ." No, he's not Joseph's son; he's Mary's son. His nature came from God. What a startling way to end a genealogy: he's not Joseph's boy; he's God's Son!
What does that mean for you and me today? It means that Christ's coming canceled the importance of that bloodline connecting the Jewish people to Abraham. No longer do people now simply assume they can grandfather their way into the kingdom of God on the coattails of their ancestors. They say, "Oh, Abraham was our father! Abraham was our father!" It didn't matter anymore, after Jesus came, that Abraham was their father. All that mattered now was faith in Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Conclusion
My friend, I'm here to tell you this morning, it doesn't matter a bit to God whether your parents attended this church or that church, or are elders or whatever other office or title they may have. What matters to God is you. Can you say, "The Lord is my Shepherd; the Lord is my light and my salvation; thou hast searched me and known me; I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in and through me?
This royal bloodline before you continues down through the ages and extends to this very day. God's genealogy can now be our genealogy, but blood has been replaced by faith. By faith in Jesus Christ, we can become God's own children: "For as many as receive him, to them he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood but of God." Oh, what a difference that makes in our lives!
We all have earthly genealogies, and yet after a few generations we forget those genealogies. You may remember your grandfather and your grandmother, but how many of you remember your great-great-great grandfather ? We're all going to be there some day. Some day all of us are simply going to be a memory in the minds of our grandchildren. Then we're going to be a name in a faded family Bible. Finally we'll be forgotten altogether by this world, and all that will matter then is: Are we remembered in the mind of God?
Our descendants are going to forget us; you can count on it. But we can be members of God's family and never ever be forgotten, because Matthew's genealogy teaches us two things: First, here was a life like other lives, but, second, this life also was the revelation of a new life, a life that has the power to bring us out of darkness into light, out of death into eternal life with God in heaven.
Jesus Christ came to show us the mercy of God, the judgment of God, and the faithfulness of God.
This Advent season would be a great opportunity to receive the greatest of all gifts, the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Then, you can experience the mercy of God and the faithfulness of God, since you will have experienced that your sins have already been judged and forgiven.