Transcript: My King's Family | Rocky Cross Baptist Church

A Story We Didn't Write

Good morning, church. I'll just get right into it.

When I was 18 years old, I was headed to a concert in Charlotte. It was summertime, June, headed down 95. Of course, there was road construction. It was about 90 degrees, no AC in the car. I was headed to Ozzfest. Yes, Ozzfest. Really. Yeah, for real.

Someone I was riding with had been told something I didn't know: a family secret. It was said something like this: "I didn't know such-and-such was such-and-such." And I was thinking, "Well, I didn't either." I don't want to get too much into details, because this is live-streamed and people in the story would still be living, mostly. Nevertheless, it was a devastating blow to hear something about someone I loved. It put a dampening on the mood for a concert I had wanted to go to. I had a lot of questions. I remember immediately picking up the phone and calling my grandmother. She said, "Yeah, who told you that? How'd you find that out?" People before I came around knew this family secret, except me and maybe some others. And it bothered me.

I remember the weeks afterward. I was 18, working odd jobs here and there, and one day I was sitting on the couch watching TV, going into little panic attacks over and over, thinking, "Gosh, this is terrible." I was feeling so bad for the person the secret was about. I don't think it's appropriate to share the way I sometimes motivationally speak to myself, but basically I said, "Man up and get over it. It's not your problem, not your fault. Sucks for this person, but it doesn't affect you." That's how I dealt with it.

But I want to ask you something, because we're going to talk about my King's family today. What do you do with your family secrets? What do you do with the things that happened before you ever got here? What do you do with the past in your family that you had no choice in, that is hurtful, that spirals you down into depression, makes you sick, makes you spiteful, makes you irritable, and puts a cloud over your joy and your life?

Because the reality is that we are all born into a story we didn't write, and it could be a very bad story. Whether it's a last name or things that happened before you were born, we are born into it. My grandmother will start bringing up what was happening a few years before I was born, and I'm like, "I don't want to hear it. It's sad, it's depressing, it's messed up. I know you should be talking to somebody, but I'm not the one to talk to." What do you do with that?

What's interesting is that if all we have is ourselves, then all we are going to do is try to figure it out ourselves. We will carry the family secret. We will either tuck it down deeper and bottle it up, which is unhealthy, or we will run our mouths to the people in our family and be mad about it, which is unhealthy and not Christian. We'll gossip and have a pity party. That's okay for a very short season. It's not a way to live.

The Big Idea

Here's where some encouragement is. We're continuing through the Book of Matthew. Last week we established that Jesus is a king, of a royal bloodline and a royal promise that goes all the way back to the beginning of the Book. Now we're going to look at my King's, and every Christian's King's, family. Last week was verse 1. This week we're doing verses 2 through 17.

Here's the big idea: Jesus has a very messed-up family line. The people who came before him did some messed-up things. But he owns them, he's not ashamed of them, and they are part of who he is. And I want you to know today that he's not ashamed of you. Jesus is not ashamed of your past, your family line, or your family secrets.

Here's what happened to me. When I came to Christ, it was almost like the chains to my family and everything that had happened were torn off, and I was my own man now. I was free from the past. I was free from the line of drug addicts, alcoholics, promiscuous women, absent men. It finally started making sense that my King owns me. He loves me, he cares for me, he has dealt with some messed-up people, and now he's going to deal with me. Before Christ, I dealt with that secret through grief and pain and probably some drugs.

Not even Jesus has a history that is perfect. He relates to us, he understands, and he's not ashamed. So whatever secrets you're hiding, whatever secrets you're dealing with, whatever past you were born into, you can be completely set free and completely forgiven. You can be your own man. You can be your own woman. Just you and Christ.

You're not your last name.
You're not your legacy.
You're not your parents' legacy.
You're not anything as a Christian except a child of God.

Whose Family Is He From?

Last week the question was, who is the real Jesus? There are so many fake Jesuses. Let's get to reading about the real one. Today we ask whose family he is from. The genealogy proves that Jesus is the rightful King, the promised child who was always supposed to come, the Savior God promised to David, with the credentials to back up the extraordinary claim to be King of all the world. As I read, notice how verse 16 changes everything.

Matthew 1:1-17

"The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab was the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon. And Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. And Jesse was the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah."

Verse 7: "Solomon was the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa. Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat was the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah. And Uzziah was the father of Jotham, and Jotham was the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. And Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, and Amon the father of Josiah. And Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah became the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. And Zerubbabel was the father of Abihud, and Abihud was the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim was the father of Azor. Azor was the father of Zadok, Zadok was the father of Akim, and Akim was the father of Eliud. And Eliud was the father of Eleazar, the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob. Now Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen, and from David to the deportation are fourteen, and from the deportation to the Messiah are fourteen."

Let me pray. Father, thank you for this wonderful list of names. I pray we understand it, and how deep it is, how meaningful, how royal, and how hopeful it is. I pray you would set people free today, should the shoe fit. And God, if this message isn't directly applied to somebody here, I pray they would lean in, that they might be a light and a help to a brother or sister who is in these shoes. Thank you for your patience and faithfulness throughout all the generations and decades, that you kept your faithful promise through faithful men and women. Bless us today. I pray in your holy name. Amen.

A Biblical Literacy Problem

Lifeway Research this year put out a report on biblical literacy. Two thousand faithful church attenders took a 25-question Bible literacy quiz, and two-thirds failed. The average respondent scored a 51.

Around 2 in 3 earned an F, below 60.
Almost 1 in 10 (9%) got a D, between 60 and 69.
Another 9% got a C, between 70 and 79.
Just 8% scored a B, 80 to 89.
Just 9% reached an A, 90 and higher.

Lifeway is a Southern Baptist entity, so, according to this research, two-thirds of Southern Baptists would fail a simple test. Now, I took the test, but I'm not going to tell you what I made. No, I made 100. I'd better, right?

We've got to fix this. I thought about slowing down and preaching each story here, but that's not what Matthew is doing. Matthew did not have to explain these names. A reader in the Jewish community he was trying to reach, showing that Jesus was the Messiah, would already know these stories. They might even be related to these people. So this genealogy is heavy. It's not a big pile of names. Each name establishes so much backstory. The only way I can think of it is like a file on a computer: you click one file, and inside it there's another file, and it goes back and back. Read the names Tamar and Judah, and that is a loaded story. Read about King Manasseh in verse 10, out of 2 Kings, and that is a heavy story. To the extent that we are ignorant of this list, we will underappreciate what Matthew is doing and what God has promised in his Word.

As much as you love Jesus, if you're biblically illiterate, there is that much more Jesus for you to know and love. For my first Christmas as a born-again person, I was given a MacArthur Study Bible. I was reading Matthew 1 one day at my grandpa's table while Two and a Half Men was on in the background, and I thought, "I really need to know what these names are about." I went and Googled it. "Oh, these are all people in the Old Testament. I guess I need to read the Old Testament if I want to know what Matthew's talking about." That was in 2009 or 2010, and it set my life on a trajectory of wanting to know the Old Testament, because that's what he's talking about. The weight of Jesus is anchored in the Old Testament. It blends right in; it's just the next part of the story. Your biblical literacy matters, and we have a biblical literacy problem in the Southern Baptist denomination. It's not as if Presbyterians or Methodists were getting one out of three, so we could brag about two out of three. That's still terrible. But God is good, and we can fix this.

Matthew doesn't explain why Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah are here. I'm going to try to walk through some high points and tell you why they matter. I'll show you that there are some messed-up people in Jesus' family line, and by the end you'll know that you can be free. And I'll give you some homework: a list of Scriptures to go read. It would take hours to read everything Matthew assumes we already know.

Point 1: Family Sequence

This list isn't just chronological. From all my study, there are names left out and gaps in the generations. Matthew deliberately put people in the order they came, but not as an exhaustive list. It's written in three sets of fourteen. (Some count 13, 14, 13, depending on how you count.) Some think he did it so you could memorize it. Some think it's because the numerical value of David's name in Hebrew adds up to 14. People have all kinds of theories, and nobody really concludes anything; it's all speculation. If you want to go off the deep end, you get into Bible numerology, gematria, and there's not a lot of oxygen down there. What we have is what's in front of us.

The generations show one promise at a time, through one family, one generation after another, all toward one purpose. The first frame, which we talked about last week, is Christ, David, and Abraham. Go to verse 17. Matthew wraps up his genealogy by listing those names backward: Abraham, David, Jesus the Messiah. It's a bookend, a sandwich. Matthew has an artistic, literary hand. The whole list goes from the blessing of Abraham, to the promise to King David, to the exile of Israel, to the Christ. But the list doesn't end where it starts. It starts with Jesus and the past, and ends with Jesus in the present.

Abraham: the blessing

Genesis 12:3. God came to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." The word blessing is intentionally contrasted with the word curse. A few weeks ago, when we looked at the Garden, we saw how sin was anti-creation, and how it went from God blessing everything in Genesis 1 to everything being cursed in Genesis 3: "Cursed be the ground. Cursed be your toil, your labor, childbirth." When we read that all the families of the earth will be blessed, it is a promise to revert the anti-creation nature of sin back to the created order.

David: the throne

Then David, who is going to be on a throne forever. That's 2 Samuel 7. Let me call you back to the Garden. In Genesis 3, the man and the woman were supposed to rule and subdue the earth, a king and a queen over the whole world. The serpent contradicts God, the woman falls, the man falls, and there is no more rightful king in Eden. The promise to David reverses that anti-creation and brings a new Adam, a new King over a new earth.

2 Samuel 7: "Now it came about when the king lived in the house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all of his enemies, that the king said to Nathan the prophet, 'See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within a tent of curtains.' And Nathan said to the king, 'Go, do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you.' But in the same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, 'Go and say to My servant David, "Thus says the Lord: Are you the one who should build Me a house to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought you out of the land of Egypt, and the sons of Israel even to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent, even in a tabernacle. Wherever I have gone with all the sons of Israel, did I speak a word with one of the tribes of Israel which I commanded to shepherd My people Israel, saying, 'Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?'"'

"Now here's the big deal. God says, 'Therefore thus you shall say to My servant David, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be a ruler over My people Israel. I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and I will make you a great name."'" That echoes Abraham. David and Abraham are linked.

"'I will also appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant them, that they may live in their own place and not be disturbed again; nor will the wicked afflict them anymore, as formerly, even from that day that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who will come forth; and I will establish his kingdom.'" Listen to this: "'He shall build a house for My name.'" The church is called a household of the living God. "'And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me. When he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men." That connects to Isaiah 53. "And the strokes of men. But My lovingkindness shall not depart from him.'"

Let me stop there. There's a promise given to David that when he dies, he will have a son, and that son will build a house and a throne that endures forever, and forever means forever. So when we get from Abraham to David, we're getting a king back. Where the king was overthrown by Satan in the first Garden, this genealogy is telling us, "The next King is here. He's coming." And how interesting that one of the first things we read about Jesus is that he is in the wilderness with the devil, being tempted. It's the same thing happening. Genesis is being retold, with a better Adam, a better King, coming to establish his throne and his kingdom.

The exile

The third section is the exile. I feel like the exile is the most underappreciated part of the Old Testament story. It is the key to understanding why Jesus, why the Gentiles, and why we are not bound by the Old Testament law. Understanding the exile is one of the biggest blessings I've ever stumbled upon. We don't talk about it a lot as preachers, and it's not mentioned much in Bible studies. If you want to believe me, go to 2 Kings 17 and finish the book out. It's crazy.

Think back to the anti-creation sermon, where God nestled Adam and Eve in a garden and gave them their roles. Do you remember how it ended for them? They were exiled. What you may not know is that the whole story of Israel is the story of Adam and Eve played out on a national scale. The exile that happened in creation is being reversed. All the things that went wrong and were lost in the Garden: the promise to Abraham to reverse the curse, the promise to David to fill the throne, the promise, when we see Babylon, of someone back in the Garden. That is Christ. Christ is coming to reverse everything that sin has infected, touched, ruined, and trashed. That is the big deal with this genealogy. The order matters, who's in it matters, the story matters, and the big picture matters. Jesus is coming to redeem everything.

The three sets in one breath

Let me try to do this in one breath.

Abraham to David (vv. 2-6). Genesis 3 begins with a seed that will come to redeem humanity, a seed born of a woman, and this woman's line traces to a man named Abraham. The problem is that Abraham is a childless old man and his wife is barren. How is he going to have a child? Then comes Jacob, who cheats people and is renamed Israel. His fourth son gets the scepter in Genesis 49. Then a shepherd boy named David, the youngest, becomes David the king, and only David gets that title here.
David to the exile (vv. 6-11). The kingdom splits under Rehoboam. There's a good king with a bad son and a bad king with a good son, back and forth for several generations. Some kings are skipped in Matthew's list. Then Josiah in 2 Kings 22 finds a lost Bible, then Babylon, and Jeconiah is carried away. By the end of 2 Kings the throne of Israel is empty. There is no king in Israel.
The exile to Christ (vv. 12-16). Zerubbabel leads them home, in Ezra 3 and Haggai 2:23. Then there are nine names in this section that are never mentioned in the Bible. Nobody in the Bible says anything about Abihud through Jacob. The promise rode on people who aren't mentioned for 500 years. Five hundred years of strangers, and God kept his faithful promise.

These are big promises: Judah with the throne, David with the throne, Abraham with the global blessing, Isaac and not Ishmael as the child of promise. The list could go on and on. It goes through blessing, a fall, an exile, and hopelessness. Through all those ups and downs, God remained faithful, even when it seemed absolutely silent.

And here's what I find great: for 500 years we have people you can't find in the Bible. We know nothing about them. There is a bunch of nobodies in Jesus' family line. A lot of us feel like nobodies. A lot of us are legends in our own minds. I am, obviously. But we're really nobodies, and Jesus came from nobodies. God kept his faithful promises going through nobodies we can't find anything about, just a name, and God keeps his promise through those names.

Point 2: Family Secrets

I want to get a little more pastoral here. It's probably going to get a little heavy. Matthew prints the family secrets in plain sight. He doesn't just report the highlights. There are women in this genealogy with colored pasts. He could have named the heroines and said Sarah, Rebekah, Leah. He skips them, and names Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah instead. Why would you pick these names? I don't think it's fair to say Matthew is communicating only one thing. Let me tell you these stories, and then we'll talk about it.

Tamar (Genesis 38). Judah's sons die. Judah keeps her waiting and withholds his third son. She disguises herself as a prostitute and conceives by Judah. When it's found out that he impregnated his daughter-in-law, Judah repents and says, "She is more righteous than I am." Perez, as we see in the genealogy, comes from that line.

Rahab (Joshua 2 and 6). Rahab is a prostitute, a harlot, in the fallen city of Jericho, a city under judgment. Israel sends spies into the promised land, and Rahab gives them somewhere to stay. She is a hero of Scripture, not only here in the genealogy but also in the hall of faith in Hebrews. She hides the spies because she fears Israel's God, and people are spared because of her. What is not in Scripture is that Matthew 1:5 says Boaz was her son. That's not in the Bible anywhere else. It doesn't mean it isn't true; it's just something we can't track down. So far: a woman who disguised herself and was impregnated by her father-in-law, and a prostitute, a Gentile prostitute, by the way, which I think is very relevant.

Ruth. The Moabite woman. She has a whole book named after her, right after Judges. Ruth was a Gentile, a Moabite widow. The Moabites came from Lot's daughters in Genesis 19, a line that began with daughters who seduced their father so they could have children. That's who she comes from. Then Boaz redeems her, and her son turns out to be King David's grandfather. This destitute Moabite woman is David's great-grandmother.

The wife of Uriah (2 Samuel 11 and 12). The Bible I'm reading from says "Bathsheba" in parentheses, but that's supplied by the translators; I guess they assume you're biblically illiterate and wouldn't know who that is. Matthew doesn't even mention her name. He says Uriah's name, Uriah the Hittite, which is interesting because that's a Gentile name. David takes this woman, has her husband killed, keeps the woman, and impregnates her. God judges him. He loses that first child, but ultimately he has a son named Solomon through Bathsheba. And just like Judah, David is called out when his sin is found out, and he repents and confesses.

There are a couple of things going on through these women and these stories. First, Judah and David commit grave sins, but their repentance matches the depth of their sin. There are repentant souls down in the bloodline of the Messiah. Second, Rahab is a Gentile woman out in the promised land, not part of the commonwealth of Israel, who is hospitable to the Israelites and a savior to them. And the wife of Uriah: why is Uriah mentioned, and not just Bathsheba? Because Uriah is a Gentile soldier.

Why are we talking about these sinners, these women, these Gentiles, rather than Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah? There are a lot of reasons. One, Jesus came to save his people from their sins, and he has a bigger picture in mind than saving Israel alone. There is a Gentile scope from the very beginning of the book: Gentiles have not been excluded from God's promise, all the way back. God has a people, and he is coming to pull them in. And another reason is that these are the people who really did beget Jesus.

Then there are some strange people. Manasseh, from my research, is the worst king on the list. He worshiped idols, he burned his own son, and he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. But ultimately, in chains, he humbles himself before God. Again, the great sinner with the great repentance. These are shady people with bad secrets. One reason I opened the sermon with "let me tell you about my best friend's family secrets" is that the list is a lot: seducing family members, killing your neighbor's husband to take his wife.

To sum up the rest of the men: there is sexual sin in Judah, David, and Solomon, who had 700 wives. There are violent men. Judah helped sell his brother Joseph into slavery. David kills Uriah. Joram kills his brothers. Ahaz burns his sons. There are liars like Abraham, who, afraid, said, "That's not my wife, that's my sister." There is pride and idolatry in Solomon, Uzziah, Ahaz, and Amon. There are no good guys in Jesus' family line. This is my family tree. I have nobody good I'm coming from. My sons, if they ever hear certain things, are going to realize their dad isn't all that good either. There is only one good one, and that's Jesus. That's where all of this comes to a head.

Six realities from the genealogy

The good, the bad, and the ugly are all in. They all matter. They are not censored or written off. They are used for God's great purpose.
Righteousness is not hereditary. There's a pattern where the righteous king has a wicked son, and the wicked king has a righteous son. Your godliness does not guarantee your children's godliness, and your parents' ungodliness does not guarantee your ungodliness. That is a breath of fresh air. If you come from a bad line and family secrets of some bad sinners, there is still hope for you. It doesn't matter what they did. It matters what you are going to do with this King and who you are going to follow.
Some of the men listed here aren't even firstborns. When a king dies, the firstborn gets the throne and the blessing. Isaac wasn't the firstborn; Ishmael was. Jacob wasn't; Esau was. Judah wasn't; he was the fourth of twelve. David wasn't the firstborn. Solomon wasn't. Isn't it interesting that God overlooks merit when it comes to his saving grace? Amen. By his grace he saves the least likely, the unlikely. That is the hope of the story. When we get to Jesus, we get the one we would never pick. We have these questionable women and situations in the genealogy, and eventually we get to a woman who is pregnant before her marriage, whose husband faces a choice to keep her or leave her. She is right in line with the lineage we are reading about.
Righteousness earns nothing. I shared that already.
The Savior is numbered among sinners. Charles Spurgeon calls him the poor man's king. I call him the sinner's king. He's my King. He is the King of sinners. He loves sinners. He came from them, but he's not one of them, and he welcomes them in. He becomes their best friend, the Bible says. Jesus becomes your brother, and you become a co-inheritor with him of God's kingdom. You will be a co-ruler with him in heaven. Because Christ was numbered among the sinners, sinners can be numbered with the Christ.
Your family past is not your responsibility. Your secrets are your responsibility. Your shame is your responsibility. What happened then, and with whom, before you ever came along, is not your responsibility. Jesus isn't ashamed of his family tree. It wasn't edited or blocked out. He's not ashamed of you, and he's not ashamed of yours.

Two types of secrets

It's going to get a little heavy here. There are two types of secrets.

The first type is what happened before you ever came along. When I hear about some of the painful things that happened in my family before I came along, it is mind-boggling for many reasons. When I hear about some of the failures of the adults around me when I was a child, that's not on me. If you carry guilt from what other people did in your family, I want to give you a passage: Ezekiel 18:20. It's not going to be on the screen, but it's a hopeful passage: you repent, you turn to Christ, you turn away from sin, you're saved. You're clean. You are not held accountable for what your father did, what your mother did, or what your relatives did.

Matthew names every scandal, but Jesus doesn't carry it. It doesn't weigh him down. Where other people try to define him by his family scandals, he doesn't let them. He says, "I'm My Father's. I only do My Father's will." The Pharisees say, "At least we know who our daddy is," in the Book of John. They hold his mother and his history against him to define him. The problem is that we do that too. And I want to tell you today: if your family history, where you came from, your roots, the secrets other people kept, is not yours to carry, church. It doesn't define who you are. That is God's job, his will, his purpose, and his delight. He delights in separating you into a new family with a new purpose and a new future. You can start a new family line.

The second type of secret is the one you are living in. The shameful secrets, the sexual sins, the violent sins. What people did before you came is not your responsibility. But what you are covering up now, what you are hiding now, is your responsibility. And guess what? Jesus is not ashamed if you come to him. He will save you. He will redeem you. If we list the types of sins in the genealogy, we have violence, sexual sin, greed, murder. It couldn't get much worse. And this demonstrates God's patience with sinners: you don't have to be confined in the prison of a secret.

In fact, Jesus' first word in his preaching is repent. His first word is a word of freedom. The word repent is so abused. We think it means confess it to God and never do it again. But repent means get out of this, change your mind, make a U-turn. Quit living like this. Quit loving other things besides God with your heart. The way I like to think about this call to repent, which I give you today on the authority of Jesus, is: be free from the secrets you keep. It doesn't mean you have to parade them around to everybody. God already knows. Can you imagine how patient God is with you, to wait so patiently through your sin and your secrets and your darkness, so that you could sit here with the opportunity to be called out of that darkness and saved? This is what God delights in. He loves sinners. He loves, loves, loves sinners. He came from them.

Look back. Judah says to Tamar, "You are more righteous than I." David says, "I have sinned against the Lord." Manasseh humbled himself and was restored. Repentant sinners are in Jesus' family. Unrepentant sinners, not so. If you humble yourself before the Lord, repent, and confess your sins, you will be saved. You'll be free from your secrets. Your secrets won't drive your decisions, your friendships, your family, or your attitudes. Your secret addictions can be broken, whether it's pills, alcohol, loving to be inebriated, pornography, an affair, whatever it is. The secrets you keep are your responsibility before God, and you must repent of them. And the encouragement is that when your secret is brought to the light, it is forgiven. 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful to cleanse us of all unrighteousness and to forgive us of our sins." The book of James tells us, in chapter 5, verse 19, to "confess your sins to one another so that you can be free."

So I want to call you today. If you have secrets in the past that you couldn't help, that's not on you. Your identity is in Christ. And if you have secrets you're keeping that are not godly, he is not ashamed that you want to leave them behind. Jesus is not ashamed to call you his. You haven't sinned too badly for Jesus to say, "I love that man. I love that woman." You haven't gone too far astray. Christ is not ashamed of any of you.

Point 3: Finally See Him

Finally, in verse 16, we see him. Thirty-nine times the list says "begat, begat, begat," or "fathered, fathered, fathered." This is the deepest verse, and I hate to leave on this note, but notice that verse 16 says something different. No begats. "Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." Until now it's been a man fathering a man. Now Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. Where's the father? The father is not a man. Joseph is called the husband, not the father. The father is absent, and something very special is happening. Isaiah 7:14: "He will be born of a virgin."

The good news is that while these readers had to wait for this promise, we have the promise fulfilled. We can look back and see that Jesus is available to every sinner, that he died for sinners on the cross, that for 2,000 years we have seen him throughout history, and in our own lives, change people, forgive people, free people from the bondage of sin, and give people hope. Whether it's a child who grows up and lives godly and never rebels, or a deathbed confession from the worst rebel, this is what we have been blessed to see for over 2,000 years, and that promise is still available. Verse 21 says that he will come to save his people from their sins. This is the real Jesus: a Savior who came from this line of people who for centuries, for millennia, had been waiting on him. He's here, he's come, and he's doing the work.

I wonder if there's work he needs to do in your heart today, where you need to be forgiven of your secrets and your sin. You may need to confess it to me or to some other brother or sister in the church. You may need to come to the altar and lay it down before God. You may have some hard conversations to have. How is God calling you to deal with this? He's here, he's available, and he is changing lives, and he always has. If you don't know him already, you can come to him, and he will own you. Repent. Be free. Come out of that cage that sin is and that secrets are. He wants you. He owns you. If you're perpetuating and carrying a family secret, you can repent. Otherwise it will only bring pain to your own life and to others'.

Next week we'll pick up in verses 18 through 25 and see how this birth happened. But I wanted to show you that this pile of names is so meaningful. It's beautiful. It's hopeful. It shows God's faithfulness. It's a relieving, freeing genealogy. It's huge, guys. It's not just a joke about begat, begat, begat. This is the genealogy of life.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you were numbered among the sinners. Lord, that is a fulfillment of Scripture. Whether it was the people in your past or the disciples around you, whether it was the prostitutes or the tax collectors, where we see you, we see sinners. We thank you so much for coming down and associating so humbly with people like us, with liars and fornicators and so on, not to condemn, but to redeem and set free. I pray that we would see how far you came down to be as low as we are. We thank you for your faithfulness in keeping this promise we learned about in this genealogy for thousands of years. May it increase our faith in your faithfulness, that the lives we live now are going to end just like you tell us: we will see you face to face. We will be with you one day. Thank you for your faithfulness, and thank you for Jesus. Thank you for fulfilling the promise through the most unlikely of nobodies, and through a virgin who gave birth. I pray today that you would help us live in the freedom that can only be found in you. Minister to our hearts and our souls. God, I ask that you would help us take your name and leave ours at the cross. I ask these blessings, and this freedom, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Corrections and clarifications

Survey wording. The Lifeway study quizzed American churchgoers generally. It did not test Southern Baptists only, so "two-thirds of Southern Baptists" goes beyond what the research reports.
Scripture reference. The call to "confess your sins to one another" is James 5:16. The sermon said chapter 5, verse 19, and the text above is left as spoken.
Names in verses 13 to 15. "Abiu" in the sermon is Abihud (Abiud) in the text.
"The beginning of the Bible." In the opening, the sermon speaks of a list of names at the start of the Bible. Matthew is the beginning of the New Testament, the seam between the testaments, while Genesis is the beginning of the Old Testament.
Verse range. The "exile to Christ" section is verses 12 through 16, not "12 through 6."
Isaiah 53. The sermon linked the "rod of men" line in 2 Samuel 7 to Isaiah 53. The connection is loose.
Family details. At the pastor's direction, a few personal details about living relatives were softened for the public page.
The six realities, listed. The six realities went by quickly in the sermon and the third was not numbered aloud. Here they are in order, from the pastor's sermon outline:

Good, bad, and ugly are all in. Nothing edited out.
Righteousness is not hereditary. Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram. Hezekiah, Manasseh. Amon, Josiah.
No firstborn rights. Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Perez, David, Solomon. Never the one you'd pick.
Righteousness earns nothing. Sovereign grace. Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Romans 9:11-16; Ephesians 2:8-9.
The Savior is numbered among sinners and comes from sinners. Isaiah 53:12; Matthew 9:13; Hebrews 2:11.
Your family past is not your responsibility. The secrets are not your shame. Ezekiel 18:14-20; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 2 Corinthians 5:17.