The Lineage of a King - Part 1

Bryan Chapell: Son of David, son of Abraham, what do you see? He is, yes, the son of privilege and, yes, the son of promise, but he is also the son of adulterers and murderers and our Savior. What do you make of that? But we are learning that God is saying, "I know the mess. I know where you're from, because I have been from a greater mess perhaps than you yourself ever thought."
Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In this ongoing series by Grace to Glory, Pastor Bryan has taken us all the way through the Old Testament and now shares a message from the New Testament as we look at the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew 1. We see how God can redeem the mess of our lives even as Jesus' own lineage is full of people with great messes. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Bryan's book, *Unlimited Grace*. Dr. Chapell reminds us of the power and mercy of God's grace that motivates and inspires us to serve our Heavenly Father. Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the lesson, "The Lineage of a King."
Bryan Chapell: In this age of blockbuster movies about superheroes, we are accustomed to hearing the origin stories of those superheroes to tell us a bit of their nature, who they are, how they come by their superpowers. Wonder Woman, who was built out of clay by her mother Hippolyta, given life by Greek gods and raised by Amazons on an island called Paradise. Through the Amazons, she learned how to fight and what love and peace were at the same time. Superman, as you should all know, was born on the planet Krypton, put in a rocket capsule, sent to Earth by his parents before the fated planet exploded. There are other kinds of superheroes. In the book *The Good Neighbor*, we learn about the dangerous Mr. Rogers, whose gentle smile concealed a boiling anger at a culture that did not know how to take care of its children. Speaking out of his own past where he had been bullied as a youth with the nickname "Fatty Freddy," when he said to children, "You are special just the way you are," it was not mere sentiment; it was a sword of his crusade to rescue children from a culture that would not always protect them. Similarly, we have a recent biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that describes the civil rights leader's attempts to get into a seminary. Virtually all Bible-believing seminaries at that time turned him down or would not have accepted him anyway. So he went to a seminary that was not Bible-believing, that was predominantly white. Even there, though he was praised for his oratory early, he was criticized at the same time for more flourish than substance, which caused him to press harder so that the marks of that education later became great oratory and a history of plagiarism. The marks on the education of a man who ultimately did not dodge a bullet but took a bullet to help express to a nation a dream from a mountaintop of what it would be when one day children would be judged for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. What do all the heroes teach us? Comic book and real heroes. The comic book heroes all come from a reality of paradise, of power, of unreality. But real heroes that can touch us and that transform our world are out of our mess. Their ability to transform our mess in some measure is because of their background in the mess. Never is that more obvious than when you look at the one true hero of the Scriptures, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we begin earlier in the passage, before the Christmas portion, we see something called a genealogy, the history of the Lord Jesus. What we discern over and over again is he is the one who knows our reality because he comes from the mess of it. We don't just sing the sweet songs when we look at the genealogy. As we look at the births and the burials, we begin to recognize he can help those in the mess because he comes from it. Why do we look at a genealogy? You do not want to read it at dinner time in your devotions. But there are messages. A few years ago, Kathy and I went to Germany to look at the history of her family. We went to a church where the records were 800 years old. In order to look at the record books of the births and the burials and the baptisms, you had to put on white cotton gloves to handle the pages. The script at times was so small or faded that you had to take out your magnifying glass to look at who was being identified. You had to look at the details to perceive actually what the history was. You don't have white cotton gloves, but just imagine you do. I've got the magnifying glass that you need to see the gospel in the genealogies of Jesus. What do you see if you go to Matthew 1:1? First, you just see the promises of Jesus: the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. You need to stop right there. Do you know that Christ is not his last name? It is his title. He is the Christ. He is the anointed one, the long-planned Messiah. When we see this is the genealogy, the history, the development of the Christ, you're expecting something. What is the glory? What is the goodness? What has God been up to all of these centuries? He gives us a bit of it by telling us the privileges of this Jesus. He is the son of David. What do you remember about David? He was the king over Israel who established its boundaries, its security, and protection so that the nation could be built and become great. God made a promise to David: "I will from your line, from your lineage, bring a son who will have an eternal and universal kingdom." Now Matthew is saying, "This is the son. This is the Jesus so privileged to come from the line of David." That's not the end. The first verse says he's not just the son of David, he's the son of Abraham. Abraham was the patriarch of the Jewish nation, the one who believed God, though he was approaching 100 years old, that he could have a son. That son would be the beginning of a lineage by which Abraham would become a father of many nations. Against all odds, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. We learn not only that this Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the privileges given to David, but he is also the fulfillment of the promises given to Abraham. What you had faith in, that there would be one who would come to bless the nations, has come. That's on the front of the page. But if you take out your gospel magnifier, you see a bit more in verse one. Son of David? Yes, he received a great promise. What else do you remember about David? When his men had gone off to war, he stood on his rooftop one night and saw a woman bathing. He had his men bring her to him and slept with her. He enjoyed her so much that he had her husband killed so that he could have her. He then raised bad children. At the end of his life, in pride, he numbered his troops as though he were responsible for the glory of his kingdom rather than the grace and the blessings of God. Abraham is no less complex. He left the land he did not know to obey the call of God. On that journey, he gave away his wife twice to other men to save his hide. While he did believe God would provide an heir, because he did not have patience for the Lord's promise, he slept with his wife's maid. When that began to destroy his family, he put his mistress and his biological son in the desert to die of exposure. Son of David, son of Abraham, what do you see? He is, yes, the son of privilege and, yes, the son of promise, but he is also the son of adulterers and murderers and our Savior. What do you make of that? We are learning that God is saying, "I know the mess. I know where you're from, because I have been from a greater mess perhaps than you yourself ever thought." God is saying, "I have understanding because what you need, I will provide." If you actually take the stories as they have developed to this point, you recognize that David and Abraham become men of faith because they had nothing else. I can't stand before God either as David or Abraham to say, "I merit your care. I merit your favor." All they can do is say, "I have nothing but faith in what you provide." It is that message that the God who is providing Jesus is going to bless his people on the basis of their faith in what he provides rather than their goodness. That is the message through the genealogy, whose volume just gets turned up more and more.
Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. Would you say that you're burdened by some chains of addiction, some patterns of sin, or habits of apathy? Would you like to be set free from that and enjoy joy, peace, and true satisfaction? Well, the good news is it's possible. Pastor Bryan says so in his powerful book titled *Unlimited Grace*. Based on Pastor Bryan's decades of teaching the good news of Christ and his amazing grace, this book will take you on a personal journey to discover how grace not only frees you from the guilt and shame of a sinful life but also provides the daily fuel you need for joy, which is your strength as a Christian. Request your copy of *Unlimited Grace* when you go online to unlimitedgrace.com. The web address again is unlimitedgrace.com. Now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.
Bryan Chapell: We are learning that God is saying, "I know the mess. I know where you're from, because I have been from a greater mess perhaps than you yourself ever thought." God is saying, "I have understanding because what you need, I will provide." If you actually take the stories as they have developed to this point, you recognize that David and Abraham become men of faith because they got nothing else. I can't stand before God either as David or Abraham to say, "I merit your care. I merit your favor." All they can do is say, "I got nothing but faith in what you provide." It is that message that the God who is providing Jesus is going to bless his people on the basis of their faith in what he provides rather than their goodness. It is the message through the genealogy whose volume just gets turned up more and more. You don't just have to look at the promises of the Messiah. What about the parents of this Jesus? You can start just looking at the mothers. Verse 3: "Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar." By Tamar. You have to stop right there. What do you remember about Tamar? She was early in the lineage of Jesus, hundreds of years before. She was the wife of a son of Judah. Judah was the one to whom God had promised the scepter shall not depart, your influence shall not depart from the line of the Messiah. But one of Judah's sons married Tamar, and he was an incorrigible man who died at the hand of God. Judah, who should have taken care of his daughter-in-law, instead neglected her in such a way that she became desperate for funds just to be able to survive and live. What she did is she turned herself into the likeness of a pagan temple prostitute. One day as Judah is going down the road—he apparently has a habit of being with prostitutes—he decides to sleep with a prostitute who happens to be his daughter-in-law, Tamar. She produces a child of that union. Because he does not know that he is the father, he declares that she is to be burned until she reveals that he, in fact, is the father because she has his clothes in her possession. What do you learn about Tamar? Abused, neglected, shameful. She is the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother of Jesus. Where do you go from there? What other mothers are here? You read just a little bit further in verse 5: "And Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab." And we stop. Rahab? That was the streetwalker who saved the spies who were going into the Promised Land to prepare for Israel to come in. Apparently, even as she was betraying her people by putting a red cloth—the scarlet mark of her profession—outside the window to save her family when the walls fall down, to mark for the Israeli army coming in that they were the ones who helped, afterward somebody said, "I'll take you for my wife." The original lady in red becomes a mother of Jesus who would shed his blood for you and for me. Verse 5 mentions another: "Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth." Ruth. We've lost the history. Ruth married Boaz. We like at wedding ceremonies to quote the famous saying of Ruth. It's so dear and gentle and sweet that when her husband had died, she said to her mother-in-law, who was Jewish, "Where you go I will go, and your God will be my God," as she put her faith in the God of Israel. She, like her mother-in-law, was destitute then. Ultimately, she was taken in by Boaz, who married her and became part of the line of Jesus. What you will not remember is that Ruth was from the nation of Moab. Moab was the nation when Israel came out of Egypt trying to get into the Promised Land that would not give the nation passage, that forced them into the desert deprivation. Moab was a hated nation. Boaz is not actually supposed to marry a pagan foreigner. But he marries her, a refugee from the most hated of nations that Israel could have. She is a refugee from a hated nation marrying into Israel for the production of a Savior. Still, we are not done. Verse 6: "Jesse was the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah." So much shame she is not even named: "By the wife of Uriah." We know who that is. That is Bathsheba, whom David took. We don't know for sure; was she seducing him or did he force her to be his plaything? Whatever was happening, he murdered her husband. For the rest of her life, she is shackled to the man who murdered her husband. She produces an heir, yes, Solomon. But what we understand is what God has done is said, "Here is this abused woman, this adulterous relationship resulting in the murder of her husband that she now has to marry the murderer." Christ will come from her. Of course, it's not the end of the scandal. Verse 18 we read at Christmas time with such joy: "The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way, when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child." A teenager in a little village of Nazareth, probably under 100 people, where everybody doesn't just know your name, they know your business. In just a few months she'll show and everybody will know, and it will be a scandal. The teenager in the scandal becomes the mother of God. Amazing grace, as God is really scanning history for the situations of women long before the Me Too movement, long before the movements where women are seeking not just equality but recognition and significance. God in this awful beauty thrusts to the surface women's pain and shame and isolation and loneliness and hurt and pain and sin to make something very clear: not only does he know the mess, but he has the ability to purify it. It's the gospel where he is saying, "I know the worst about these people, what has been done to them, what they have done, but I am willing by my grace to wash that away." Not just to purify the person, but to use them to construct a whole new reality. From this line of women, as God is drawing the lineage through the mud of the mothers' lives, he is in fact leading to the wonder that they will be used for the lineage of the Savior of the world. What's the message? That God is not just purifying sin, he's making a new creation. He's constructing out of lives that have faced difficulty and hurt and pain and shame. He's not just saying that's gone; he's saying I can still use and build and make something new out of what you yourself may have hated. I think of the beauty of the women of this church who have recognized what the gospel is, not just washing away the shame but constructing wondrous new beauty out of the mission of God in their lives. I think of the young woman, now mother, whose abortion in the past so pressed upon her heart that she wanted other women to know there was a God who could deal with the shame and he could also build new lives. She authors and runs a ministry now, not just for the women but for the men who have been complicit in abortion, to say God can forgive and you can build again a life in his care and in his power. I think of the young woman whose husband was caught in an addictive sexual pattern with pornography and places and other people, and so was affected by it when the confession came. She struggled to say how the grace of God applies here. Ultimately, she not only knew the grace to take the shame away, but she began a ministry to help other women whose husbands are sexual addicts to deal with the shame but also to say, "How do you forgive, how do you move forward, and how do you build together in the lives that God is planning and wanting?" I think of a young woman in this congregation who is a single mom, impoverished in so much of her life, but has begun to take young women adopted into her home to help them know the beauty and the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ who forgives and builds and helps people start anew. Ruthie, I know you're in the hospital, but if you're listening to this, I am talking about you. God says there is hope. I am showing you I know the mess, but I can clean the mess and construct something beautiful again.
Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. If you've missed anything that you'd like to hear once again, just visit unlimitedgrace.com. While you're there, also be sure to request a copy of the book from Dr. Bryan Chapell called *Unlimited Grace*. We'll send you a copy right away as our way of saying thank you for your most generous financial support. Once again, go to unlimitedgrace.com or you can give by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.