Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Matthew

  • The Words of the Prophets

    The Words of the Prophets

    About this sermon

    Zechariah began his ministry among the returned exiles, whose first zeal had faded, with a warning: “Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you,” for the word of the Lord outlasts the prophets and the fathers who ignored it. Jesus pronounced the same sober word over Jerusalem, which killed the prophets sent to it. Yet the prophets also brought immense promise, and God’s restoration of Jerusalem was the first footprint of his plan to redeem people from every nation, so believers trust his mercy with a hope that does not tire.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    We come now to the reading of the sacred scriptures. As we turn our attention there, let me bring you, in imagination at least, to a certain island. Strange little known Pacific Island on the equator part of a remote chain of 15 islands about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador Heaps of rock pushed up from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean by volcanic force mountain peaks nearly a mile above the sea level and where ship captains sometimes marooned wayward sailors They called them for a while the Enchanted Islands.

    The British gave the name to one of them, Indefatigable Island. The Spanish called it Santa Cruz, Holy Cross. Turtles in Spanish are Galapagos. What islands? The Galapagos Islands. Charles Darwin went there in the 1830s and as a young naturalist in his 20s on a world-round expedition like going to the planet Mars or going to the moon back in those days. A land so hostile that even the iguanas figured out how to eat in the seawater. The only lizards, I think, that do so worldwide. There is almost no fresh water on this island.

    What did the Brits call it? Indefatigable Island. Is that a familiar name? Indefatigable. Is that a familiar word? It was on my sixth grade vocabulary lists. I remember still because I thought it was such a cool word. Indefatigable means unable to get tired.

    There’s no fatigue in indefatigable and such an island cannot be defeated. You try to civilize the place, you lose. It’s unable to be defeated because it never tires of its opposition against you. Indefatigable island. The island that never gives up. Well, today’s scripture is a word something like that island. It is an indefatigable word, a word of power that cannot be defeated because it never tires.

    It’s like that line proclaimed by Isaiah, by the word of the Lord, my word that goes out of my mouth. Maybe you know the rest. It will not return to be empty, but will certainly accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I said. Or as Jeremiah preached in words marvelously set to music in Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, maybe, you know, these lines, maybe, you know, the music too is not my word like a fire declares the Lord and like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces.

    The word never gets tired. It is indefatigable. It cannot be defeated. And that is true of the sinners that oppose it. They cannot win. It is also true for the saints who adore it. They cannot lose! And it is by the power of this word inhabited by the Holy Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, it is by this word that we are born again, says Saint Peter. to the Christians reading that first letter, you’ve been born again, not of something perishable, but of an imperishable seed, the living and enduring word of God. God speaks that word into the elect. And faith and repentance are awakened and enabled. That which had been impossible, namely the love of God, now comes to the fore. and becomes the most powerful force in such a life. All right, all that introduction, that prepares us, I hope, to hear these words, words that are indefatigable. In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, son of Barakiah, son of Edo, the prophet.

    The Lord was furious with your fathers. So say to them, this is what the Lord of the heavenly armies declares. Return to me, declares the Lord of the heavenly armies, and I will return to you, declares the Lord of the heavenly armies. Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets preach saying, this is what the Lord of the heavenly army says.

    Turn from your evil ways and from your evil deeds. But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord of the heavenly armies. But your fathers, where are they now? And the prophets, do they live forever? But my words and my decrees, indeed, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?

    And then they repented and said, just as the Lord of the heavenly armies has planned to do to us as our ways and our evil deeds deserved. So has he done with us. So far the reading from the Old Testament, and then we turn to one of the sterner words from our Lord, Matthew 23. This might be Jesus’s angriest speech. A speech to the Pharisees, the scribes, the religious leaders of that time who did not love God. They said they loved the law of God. They said they loved God.

    But Jesus, in this speech in Matthew 23, this is the famous speech of the seven woes. In biblical numerology, seven is the number of completeness. Seven blessings spoken upon Abraham, right? Seven woes upon the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the experts in the mosaic ordinances. Let’s hear a portion of that. Matthew 23 verse 27 and following.

    Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You were like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and witnesses. Woe to you, teachers of the law, Pharisees, you hypocrites.

    You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, if we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the sin of your forefathers.

    You snakes! You prudent vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I’m sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of you, some of them you will kill and crucify. Others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth. From the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those sent to you.

    How often I would have longed, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

    So far, the reading of God’s own Holy Word. Thanks be to God. I’m focusing today upon the text from Zechariah 1. You’ve heard me preach that text once, and I return to it. We have heard in the meantime five sermons, I think on Zechariah’s older contemporary Haggai, and I’ve concluded my words on Haggai. So now we continue with his colleague. The two prophets overlapped in Jerusalem. They both preached in the year 520 BC.

    Jerusalem was no major city in those days. Now it’s more than 900,000 people. You could have two prophets, I guess, in Jerusalem today, and they would never meet each other. But back in those days, we’re talking maybe 1,000 people, 2,000, 3,000, something like that. The Book of Ezra mentions eventually 50,000 who return. But in the year 520, that’s probably not yet. 50,000 would be a large city in those days indeed. And so in the Jerusalem of 520 BC, probably these two men knew each other, Haggai and Zechariah. I suspect they knew each other well. And I suspect that Haggai may have been the spiritual mentor to this much younger man, Zechariah.

    And so in this text, we have the power of the prophetic word. We have an indefatigable word, a word that never gets tired, a word that can never be defeated because it is the word of the living God, a word that endures even after the death of its speakers. In the ancient world and still in some places today, the word of the king is law. You know, your wish is my command. In the Roman world, the decree of the emperor A decree that had not been confirmed by Senate perished with the emperor.

    So Claudius gives a decree in 49 AD expelling all the Jews from Rome. Alright, the Jews had to leave. There was apparently a riot among Jews in Rome. One Roman historian tells us it was instigated by someone named Crestus. Probably a misunderstanding of the Greek name Christos. Christ. And so we presume, we reconstruct Jewish Christians being opposed by non-Jewish Christians. And Claudius says, OK, all of you out. But in 54 AD, Claudius died. And his decree died with him. And so the Jews moved back to Rome, including Jews like Prisca and Aquila. All right, so in our text today, This Word does not die. It’s the living and enduring Word of God, a Word that never tires out, a Word that cannot be defeated, a Word that never gives up.

    And so in the book of Haggai, we heard of five oracles from the prophet, oracles that begin with rebuke, like this prophetic book does, Zechariah. It begins with rebuke to this return community of exiles. They’re rebuilding the city after three generations of Babylonian domination and Babylonian destruction. They’re rebuilding a temple. And Haggai has said that the latter glory of that temple would surpass even the glory of Solomon’s. Wow. A message not merely about architecture, but about the spiritual power of God’s kingdom upon the world. But this prophet Haggai, as we now know, did not work alone.

    In the weeks after his third recorded oracle, the oracle of Haggai 2, verses 1 through 9, some two months after his work of prophecy begins, he’s joined by a young man whose grandfather is one of the chief priests in Jerusalem at that time, and that’s how we know he’s young.

    Grandfather alive and well and active as one of the 12 chief priests named in the book of Nehemiah chapter 12, among the 12 chief priests, the grandfather, Edo, the father, Barakaya, the grandson of Edo, Zechariah, the prophet. Matthew 23 suggests that Zechariah was martyred. We have no such story, but such things were perhaps unrecorded but known, or not recorded in text that we receive, but known. We do have Zechariah’s name in another list of chief priests. In Nehemiah 12, There is a generational list of 12 chief priests of the generation that came to rebuild Jerusalem in the 530s, 520s BC. Edo’s name is on that list, the grandfather. Half a page later in Nehemiah 12, there is the next generation of the chief priests. And in the slot where Edo’s name had been for the previous generation, there we see the name, Zechariah.

    He survived at least long enough to become one of the chief priests. But Zechariah, as we now know from the latter half of his book, though first believed, was soon opposed. And in chapter 11 of that book, he says, the flock hated me. And I refused to be their shepherd any longer.

    We have no martyrdom story, but Jesus seems to allude to a martyrdom for this Zechariah. This prophet like Haggai will begin with a call to repentance. And this is one of the weirder stories in the Bible, because these are the very people who seem to be the repentant ones who returned from exile, having believed the good news of the prophets, having believed the word of Isaiah, that God would bring them back to rebuild their, their homeland and their city and their institutions and their temple. These are the people who seem to be the repentant, the rendent, the pure. And it seems very odd indeed that they should be addressed with such a stern word of rebuke. in the opening page of the Book of Zechariah. Haggai likewise begins with rebuke. And what we here see is that when the people first return in 536 or so, they are zealous.

    You know, most Jews never returned. There are a couple hundred thousand Jews probably in that Persian world of the Persian Empire that had conquered Babylon and taken that territory, probably at least 200,000, maybe 300,000 Jews in that world, most never returned. And many did not want to. They had houses and land and businesses and families in the lands of their exile. But some did.

    Ezra chapter 2 mentions some 50,000 that eventually return. Out of the two or three hundred thousand, whatever the number is, that’s not a big percentage, is it? And in Haggai and Zechariah’s own time, probably only a couple of thousand have come. Aren’t these God’s marines? The few, the proud? It seems to be so. And yet, what happened?

    In the 530s, after founding the temple and restoring the altar and beginning sacrifice upon it, Moses style, they stopped building. And Haggai will rebuke them for paying attention to their own houses, paneled houses, he says, while this house, namely the house of the Lord, remains in ruins. What had happened, as I preached some months ago here, very likely that opposition from Samaria, made building difficult because the Samaritans were jealous of the restoration of Jerusalem.

    They’d lose their toll booth on the road, the main trunk road of trade through central Palestine. Jerusalem and Samaria are on the same road about 25 to 30 miles apart. If you rebuild the toll booth at Jerusalem, Samaria’s toll gets cut in half at least. And so Samaria had the political connections.

    They had the local allies. Jerusalem was a newborn city out of nothing, out of ashes and broken stone and burnt timber. There had been no Jerusalem for three generations. Samaria had flourished in its absence. So Samaria, with its local allies, gang up upon this little kid of a city, and they stopped the building. Should the returned Jews have stopped, No! But they did. And for 16 years or so, no further construction of the temple happens. They had come with zeal, but they now languished in despair. And they had lost their first love. They had lost their priorities.

    And so what’s the word of the prophet? We heard this my last message on Zechariah. The Lord was furious with your forefathers. Return to me, declares the Lord of the heavenly armies. And I will return to you and do not be like your forefathers. Return to me and I will return to you. They were His. They still were His. But they were wandering, and their faith was faltering.

    So Zechariah, this new upstart prophet, probably 20-ish or so, son of a priestly family, newly returned from Babylon, a man who was born in Babylon and whose name means Yahweh has remembered, perhaps a name about the restoration promise for the people of God, probably so. A man who bears that name comes back with his grandfather as a teenage boy, maybe, and arrives in a city that is still ashes and broken stone, and soon is called to be a prophet. First, a prophet of warning, and then a prophet of immense promise and hope. Some of the most extraordinary promises in all the Bible are found in his book. Some of the most glorious sentences in all the Bible are found in his book.

    Shall I quote one? Not by might. Maybe you can quote it with me now. And not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. How many know that sentence? Well, not many. Okay, some hands going up. Not by might. Not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. How does God’s kingdom come? Well, not by political power, not by economic might, not by treaties and armies and in human wisdom. How does it come? It comes by my spirit. says the Lord of Hosts.

    The King James Version uses that familiar phrase, the Lord of Hosts. I’ve translated it differently. Did you notice? The Lord of the Heavenly Armies? Why do I translate it differently? Because we’re so accustomed to this phrase, the Lord of Hosts, but in the prophets of this time, The phrase now peppers the pages of the Bible from the 520s, 510s, 500s BC, the post-exilic time, down through the book of Malachi. The phrase becomes at least twice as frequently attested in those books. Why?

    Precisely because Jerusalem has no army of its own. The Persians rule the day. There is no kingdom. There is only a province called Yehud, the Aramaic name for Judah. And there’s a broken city that for most of the time has no defensive wall. Anyone can ride in with their little gang of criminals, the mafia, whatever it may be, coming in from Sicily, who knows, and take over the town for a while, ravage everything right away with whatever wealth they can gather, which wouldn’t be much. All right, hardly a city at all.

    And it’s in that very time that the prophets emphasized that this Lord is the Lord of hosts. Well, what are the hosts? The word there, Zivahot. Maybe you sing that line in Luther’s In the Mighty Fortress, Lord, Sabaoth his name. Sabaoth is the transliteration into English of Zivahot. Zivah is army. Zivahot, armies. The Lord of armies is the one who gives this word. Judah has no army.

    But is there any lack of divine power to fulfill this word? And to bring these people to repentance? And to restore the institutions commanded by Moses by the word of the Lord? There is no lack of power. And even that David dynasty apparently ruined. Even that David dynasty would be reclaimed by divine power. And so Zechariah prophesized the restoration of the branch, the tzemach.

    The word branch actually is misleading. Take the cut down trunk of a tree still rooted to the ground. And the tzemach is not a horizontal shoot going out that way, a branch. A tzemach is the vertical growth out of the living flow. of the tree. The root lives. The trunk grows again. The tzemach is the trunk of David’s tree growing again. And the tzemach, the branch, the shoot, the shoot of David will come and he will branch out from his place and re-establish the house of the Lord, says Zechariah 6.

    It’s the Messiah. And there is no lack of divine power to bring him into that world. He would arrive at that temple that they’re building. So under such difficulty back in the five twenties, he would arrive at that very temple on the eighth day of his life to be circumcised there. Six miles north from Bethlehem. Luke tells that story. of the dedication of Jesus on the eighth day of his life in the temple that had been reestablished in those days.

    And so Zechariah’s point then is that the church and the world must pay heed to the power of this prophetic word because it cannot be defeated. It will be fulfilled. And among the things that must be fulfilled is the words of all the previous prophets. They had declared that Jerusalem will be destroyed. Micah probably said it first. Back in the 700s BC, Isaiah also said such things.

    Jeremiah a hundred years repeated them and was charged with heresy until he could demonstrate that he had good precedent in the book of Micah. That’s how he got off the charge of heresy. He proclaimed the destruction of the temple. Heresy! Nope, Micah said it. Canonical scriptures. But not only would it be the disaster that would be fulfilled, also the words of restoration must be fulfilled.

    So there is Ezekiel Carried in the spirit somehow maybe by the hair of his head Says one of those texts and carried to a great vast valley, which is covered with the dry bones bleached white of some vast army probably the Jezreel Valley and Probably for him a remembrance of the disaster that happened there in 609 BC when Pharaoh Nico the second massacred the troops of Judah and killed the great King Josiah in the Jezreel Valley by the fortress Megiddo. Ezekiel the prophet was alive and well and a young man when that disaster happened. He probably had friends and family members killed on the battlefield. He mourned the death of Josiah. And there he is in Babylon called as a prophet in the 590s. Jerusalem still stands, but he’s been in exile for five years. And there, the Lord speaks to him. Son of man, can these bones live?

    You know the story, perhaps. Only you know, Lord. Only you know. What happens next? Prophesy to the bones! And what happens? Bone joins to bone, like in that old black spiritual, based upon that text. And dem bones gonna rise again. And head bone connected to neck bone, neck bone connected to the backbone. Okay, all that is based upon that text, that old song. And they stand with breath and flesh and muscle all together, because God’s Spirit has breathed into their corpses, and they stand as a vast army. The word of the Lord can never be defeated.

    It brings life to the dead. It restores a destroyed people. It rebuilds their holy city. It reestablishes temple. More important, it reestablishes Davidic dynasty and in the person of great David’s greatest descendant, who is nothing less than the son of God. I’m sorry.

    Your fathers, where are they now? And the prophets, do they live forever? The prophets do not live forever. But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, overtake your forefathers? The word never gets tired. The word can never be defeated. And that word is not merely a word of judgment.

    It is that against our sin, against the sins of the world. And a judgment enacted for us on the cross of Jesus. When this branch of David, this shoot out of dry ground, gives us life for the sins of all the elect. And so in the great judgment of our sin upon Christ, the great words of restoration must be fulfilled and far beyond that mere little piece of geography called Jerusalem. a tiny swatch of land or the land of Israel, which is only 160 miles from north to south.

    It fits all in between Morgantown, West Virginia and Presque Isle. That’s all it is. It’s tiny. God’s words of restoration are not just about a piece of geography, but rather that piece of geography is the first footprint of God as he intends to put his footprints over all the planet and to redeem people from every tribe and tongue and language and people.

    Because the words of the prophets are not just Israelite. They belong to the world. And so, as Isaiah preached, the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. And the nations will stream to Jerusalem, seeking the word of the Lord. In Jesus’ words, that order is reversed. And so from Jerusalem you go, carrying the gospel to all the nations.

    The prophets are not principally predictors. They are principally speakers of divine will. But there is prediction in them. I mentioned in the Sunday School lesson the actual statistical count of prediction versus other types of statements by the prophets. Does anyone recall the number? What’s the percentage of prediction in the words of all the prophets in the Bible? 20%. Okay. 80% then is not prediction, and prophets are principally speakers of the divine will. That’s very important to know.

    But often the speeches of the prophets will climax with prediction. And the predictions are sometimes, yes, judgment. But they are also, more importantly, statements of divine redemption. And the Bible is clear that God delights in redeeming what was lost more than He desires the judgment on the wicked. And so that proverb from the letter of Peter is true, that mercy triumphs over judgment. Judgment is true. Matthew 23 is Jesus at His angriest, denouncing the religious leaders, the theologians of His own day. Who got it wrong? But beyond Matthew 23 comes a story of a cross and a resurrection.

    And then this final word in Matthew, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. And indeed, I’m with you always, even to the close of the age. That’s one of the greatest sentences in all of human history.

    And it shows us that the goal of God is not to express His wrath, but to save the world. God’s goal is to save, and His resolution to save is massive. And the election of grace is massive. How that is true remains mysterious. That it is true is not. And so this prophet who begins with words of rebuke and of difficulty and of judgments that overtake the ancestors becomes, by the end of that book, a glorious expectation. Do you know how Zechariah ends? It really is quite beautiful. There is Jerusalem, chapter 14 of the book. I won’t turn there, but I’ll paraphrase. Chapter 14, Jerusalem is now exalted as the highest of all Himalayas. Everything else is flat.

    The nations stream up to it, a very long uphill ascent. And there the nations celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the kosher feasts announced by Moses. And from Jerusalem, Two streams of living water flow forth east and west. Fresh water rivers. One enters the Dead Sea and renders the salt water fresh. The other enters the Mediterranean and renders the salt water fresh. And a vast oasis, oh no, much more than that, a vast fruitfulness erupts where the streams of living water flow. And that dead sea, which is 34% saline, so salty you don’t swim in it, you float on it. That water, where nothing lives, becomes a garden of God.

    And there’s no longer night and day, cold and heat, says Zechariah. And on that day the Lord shall be one, O Enni, and His name shall be one, O Enni. That is no idolatry anymore, no unfaithfulness. And even on the cooking pots and the horse harness bells will be inscribed these words, Gadosh ladonai, holy to the Lord. That is the inscription on the high priest’s crown. The gold plate upon that turban that Aaron wore by the command of Moses.

    What will bear the same inscription? Horse harness bells and cooking pots. So there you are frying your eggs for breakfast in a skillet. And how is the skillet marked? Holy to the Lord. There you go to harness your horse to take your carriage into town or maybe it’s drive your Chevy to the levee. And how is it inscribed on the side? Holy to the Lord. And you wake up and open your closet and how are their clothes inscribed? Holy to the Lord! And you put on your leather shoes and what’s on the bottom of them? Holy to the Lord! Because all of life has been redeemed and is sacred. And God has won everywhere and life is happy and blessed. That’s how Zechariah ends.

    So I preached to you the beginning and the end of the book. Do I need to do the middle? All right, I’ll do some in the middle too, but not today. So some of man, can these bones live? You alone know, Lord. But what will Ezekiel learn by the end of that story? The bones will live. And the gospel cannot be defeated. It is an indefatigable word that will save massively. If we didn’t know better, we might even think that St. Paul was a universalist. Can I quote him? Yeah, I think he’s richer.

    For God has consigned all people over to disobedience. so that he might have compassion upon them all. Now, if that were the only sentence from St. Paul that we ever had, we would think maybe universalism. That’s Romans 11, the last sentence of the prose there. After a long discussion of Israel and the Gentiles and the problem, the perplexity of the apparent unbelief of Israel in the face of God’s election. The gifts and calling of God cannot be revoked. Says St. Paul a few lines before.

    Yes, even Israel somehow. I’m not quite sure what all that means, but even Israel somehow. All right. So we have this wonderful statement from Paul that God has consigned all people over to sin. All right. That’s us. But the sentence isn’t done. so that he might have compassion upon them. And here is the last word of Paul’s sentence, of Paul’s paragraph. Oh, it’s astonishing. How shall it be true? I do not know. That it shall be true, I believe.

    And the very next lines in that chapter are words in poetical form of praise. Oh, how surpassing is the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How is ways beyond tracing out? For from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever. That’s how Paul ends his meditation upon human salvation. Can God lose? No. Will some be lost? Yes. Yes. And so, as Zechariah’s hearers must do, return to me. And I will return to you, says the Lord of the heavenly armies. Shall we pray?

    Lord, this gospel These words of scripture, they are astonishing. We ask you, Lord, in your mercy, that you grant us hearts to truly believe and to believe in your mercy. It is perhaps easy to believe in judgment because we deserve it so richly. And it’s easy to believe in judgment upon the world because the world seems to deserve it so richly. Lord, let us believe all the more ardently in your mercy, your mercy upon us and your mercy upon the world. Thank you, Lord, that your declaration of mercy is true.

    May we live in that glorious and blessed hope, a hope that becomes like the word indefatigable unable to get tired, unable to be defeated, a hope that perseveres and is not disappointed because it is poured out into our heart by the Holy Spirit who has been given us. We pray these things most gratefully and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Only Rule of Life

    The Only Rule of Life

    About this sermon

    The Pharisees asked why Jesus’ disciples broke the tradition of the elders, and Jesus answered that they broke God’s commandment for the sake of their tradition. Adding rules to God’s law tells God he forgot something, and treating his commands as suggestions takes away from it. Scripture is sufficient as the only rule of life, and believers repent of every way they have added to it or set it aside.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Or is it lacking? Is it defective? Is it in need of editing or improvement or addition by somebody in order for it to be able to instruct us as a rule of life? Do you believe the Word of God is sufficient as a guide and rule of life? That is the question in our mind as we prepare to read Matthew chapter 15 verses 1 through 9.

    But first, let’s go to Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we confess that this is your word. This is your word written. It has been inspired as the Holy Spirit carried along men to record these words. And so, since the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of scripture, we ask that the spirit would be present to illumine these pages, these words, Lord, reveal them to our hearts and our minds. Lord, cause us to love the words of life that you have contained here. Lord, help us to understand your word as powerful. as perfect and as sufficient. And so this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Matthew chapter 15. We’ll be looking at verses one through nine here. Now the word of the Lord.

    Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat. He answered them. And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother, what you have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. For the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. The grass withers and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever.

    Have you ever noticed that the popular time for checking the instructions is usually after we’ve already assembled them improperly? That seems to be the time that we think that maybe the manufacturer has something to say about how something should be put together. And how often do we, in our lives, fall into error? And that’s the time that we want to consult the instruction of the manufacturer’s instructions.

    That’s a time that we become, in a sense, like the Pharisees. The Pharisees are often a misunderstood group within Scripture, and our view of their faults may be a little bit off. You see, the description I’ve heard over and over again, because sometimes I would I would ask, especially when I was teaching youth, what was the error of the Pharisees? What did they have wrong? And usually I would hear some response within that time that was, you know, the Pharisees took the law too seriously.

    That was definitely not the error of the Pharisees. It was not that they took the law too seriously. In fact, Jesus shows us the exact opposite. The Pharisees didn’t take the law of God seriously enough. Just as we can’t be said to take the directions very seriously if we don’t consult them in building or we think that we can subtract or add to them. Now that’s an irony because of the Pharisees and legalism. We tend to think that they had earned the reputation for being really concerned about the law, but in fact they weren’t.

    They had a low view. This is a first description, a main feature that you’re going to see here as we explore this text. And one of the main features of the Pharisees and the lawyers of the law is that they think that God’s law is such a low bar that they themselves can accomplish it of their own. power. That’s the first fault that you’re going to see here. It’s such a low bar that they can accomplish it of their own volition.

    That, in fact, was an error, we remember, of the rich young ruler when asked about, have you kept the commandments of God? And as he’s listing off all the commandments of God, he thinks, yeah, I’ve got those down. And he perhaps has forgotten about the other 600 plus editions of the Torah that have explained exactly how you keep all these laws. But, but one of their main features of their error was, was thinking that they have their own power could keep the law and that could give them a right standing before God.

    But we were reminded that Paul has told us why, in fact, would Jesus have died. Galatians 2, 21 is the death of Christ, then in vain, if we can fulfill the law for our righteousness. But that’s not the only error that they make. They make this second main error, and that is that they missed that the law was something that was supposed to be their pattern of life.

    The Word of God was to be their only rule of life. Now, the Pharisees would agree at first when you said, is the Bible the rule of life? And they would say, yes, it is my rule of life. But they would disagree if you asked, is it your only? Of life. Is it the only rule of your life? Because the Pharisees had a habit of adding to and subtracting from God’s word.

    And we should be reminded of the fact that they didn’t read their Bibles very well when they were doing this, because Deuteronomy 4.2 warns, what you shall not add to the word that I commanded you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, that I command you.

    But both of those are in view. In this passage in Matthew 15, the Pharisees commit both of these errors of adding to and taking away from God’s law. How have they added to it? Look with me first at verse 2. In verse 2, they ask, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

    For they do not wash their hands when they eat. Now, perhaps the first time you ever encountered this passage, you may have had a question here of what’s going on. Is there some sort of wrong thing in washing your hands before you eat? No. In fact, what’s going on here is the disciples are not unhygienic. It is not the problem of, I saw a news story once that said up to a third of men do not wash their hands after going to the washroom. This is not a warrant for you to have that as an excuse when somebody says you should wash your hands and say you’re just being a Pharisee. No, it’s not talking about hygiene here. It’s talking about a particular religious ritual that the Pharisees would engage in. In fact, we have from Mark 7, it tells us that there’s more washing rituals involved with the Pharisees.

    They would like to wash their copper pots in this certain ritual and even their couches that they sat on using this ritual. And there’s some other sources that suggest to us it may have been a washing ritual in which you took water, and then you poured it twice over your right hand and made sure that the water dripped down to your fingertips and then took the water and washed your left hand twice, pouring it over, making sure that the water dripped down to your fingertips. If you didn’t do it in the right order or if the water dripped back onto your arm, you had to repeat the washing ritual again. You’d have to redo it or else you were considered unclean in order to eat.

    This ritual is nowhere in the Bible. It is something the Pharisees made up. They had an additional rule that you can see these other Pharisees were saying. if your disciples don’t do this. In Luke, there’s a parallel passage in which Jesus purposely doesn’t do this when he goes into a Pharisee’s home in another town. This apparently was something that he loved to use as an illustration and a teaching element. But what they said is if you did not do that, you are unclean. In a sense, you are not holy. So what were the Pharisees doing? They had added something extra to God’s law that said that you must do this or you’re not holy. They thought that they could define what holiness was.

    Now, last I checked, there’s only one who is referred to as holy, holy, holy within scripture, and that is God himself. He defines by his character and by his revealed will what holiness is, not us and not the Pharisees. And Jesus, you can tell, is upset in this setting, in this exchange, because this is actually serious blasphemy masquerading as being holier than thou. Because God’s law is holy. Romans 7, 12 tells us that. And it’s holy because God is holy. And it’s a reflection of his character when he reveals it to us. And when you make your own law and you say, no, this is the measurement of holiness, that in fact is perverse.

    It tries to be holier than God. It’s saying that I can come up with a holier law than what God has done. And do we see that at the root of it, to add to God’s law, to add to the principles there is to tell God that he forgot something. he left something out. There was something important that he missed. And it’s a good thing that God has me to perfect his holy law. The blasphemy there is odious to Christ. Let me ask you though, is the Word of God enough? Is it sufficient as a rule of your life? Or do you have to add to it? Do you have to help it along?

    Because if you do, then you are setting up yourself as a standard of holiness, not God. In fact, you are saying that you could be holier than God. And this is what is happening when we add to the Word of God. And in fact, Jesus is going to reveal that the tradition holding of the Pharisees isn’t about greater holiness really at its heart. At its heart, it’s about something much more sinister. If you look at verses 3 through 6, he has this description here that perhaps requires a little bit of aid.

    He says, he answered to them, why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, If anyone tells his father or his mother, what you have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God. What is Jesus talking about here? Well, starting in verse three to six, he’s actually talking about a certain tradition that the Pharisees had, a certain tradition that they made up. Mark gives us the word for this tradition. It’s called Corban. What is, what is Corbin? This is a tradition. He actually says it in Mark 7 a little differently.

    If a, if a man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corbin, that is given to God. What is this? This is an odd little tradition that the Pharisees came up with that means that if your parents ask you for help in their old age, they can’t support themselves, or they need extra help, and then it wouldn’t really be paying for their house, but it would be paying for their food, or something of that nature, that you should help them unless something is korban, that is designated as given to God. In other words, you can say, I know you need this food, but this is given to God. Or I know you need this money, but it’s, it’s given to God.

    Now, part of the evil here was there was another way in which you can go back on your Corbin if a need came up. And so a parent could ask for help. You could say, oh, Corbin. In other words, not it. I don’t have to help. And then later, you can say, oh, but this need came up. I really need a new leather-bound copy of the tour or whatever it was that they wanted to spend their money on. They could go back on it because they had a need that came up. What was Corbin then?

    It was an additional tradition that the Pharisees came up with, which seemed to be an addition, but actually ended up being a subtraction from God’s word. It took out honor your father and mother in exchange and instead honored this man-made tradition that allowed them a technicality to get out of honoring their father and their mother. You know, the Pharisees became famous for doing this a lot.

    They had little technicalities that got them away from honoring the Sabbath. They got away with not fasting or with tithing because there were technicalities in their man-made traditions that got them out of God’s law from doing that. You see, it didn’t really help them to make these fences around the law. It didn’t really help them to have these additions because their heart was in the wrong place. Their heart was hard and selfish and proud. And these traditions actually became ways of having a rebellion against God all the while looking as if they were holy, looking as if they were very religious and pious when inside they were not.

    That’s why in other places Jesus will talk about the washing of the outside of the bowl while the inside is filthy, or whitewashed tombs. A whitewashed tomb looks really great on the outside, but what is inside but death? Jesus knew it was a heart problem. He knew that was what the problem with the Pharisees was. There really wasn’t a problem with this hand-washing tradition that they came up with. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was their heart. And Jesus wasn’t going to submit to their version of holiness because Jesus himself was the Word of God made flesh. He knew what God needed for and required for holiness.

    Not the Pharisees. Now, as you look at this passage, as we try to make application for our lives, it seems really easy to condemn the Pharisees, doesn’t it? The minute you say the word Pharisee, you say they’re the bad guys in the text, right? They have the black hats. They’re the villains. Sometimes it’s harder when we see the Pharisees in the text to wonder if sometimes we act like the Pharisees. And that’s what we have to ask ourselves. Is there ways in which we have, we have acted like the Pharisees?

    Do you believe that the word of God is sufficient and the only rule of life or is it insufficient? Does it require some additions? Is it perhaps too strict in certain matters and it needs an editor? And I would come along and make those edits. How do we do that? How do we add to and take away, become like the Pharisees where we don’t take God’s law seriously, but we make up our own and we take that very seriously. How does that happen to us? How do we first take away from the law? I think that becomes a little bit more obvious of how we take away from the law. We just ignore certain parts that we don’t like.

    I remember once I was driving to the church to teach some youth in my assistant pastor days, and I nearly drove off the road listening to a sermon on the radio because I thought I should be, you know, it’s the Lord’s Day, I should be listening to a sermon as I was driving, but the pastor read the text and he says, and God has three suggestions from this text for you in your life. I thought, when has God ever had a suggestion for us in our life? God has commands. And when we take God’s law, when we take his commands and suggestions, we have begun to take away from God’s law. We have not recognized it as our rule of life.

    And that could be in many different areas. For perhaps a lot of young people, the temptation could be to take that command and not be unequally yoked. We can take that as a suggestion rather than a command when we enter into marriage. Perhaps when we enter into new jobs, we can take the command for God’s tithes and offerings as a suggestion and not necessarily a command. I actually, when I first entered into a marriage, my wife was the one who had to convince me that in fact I was treating God’s word in terms of tithes and offerings as a suggestion rather than a command. And it’s good that we are not unequally yoked so we can have our spouses convict us on some of those things. Perhaps it’s for many of us in this culture, the command to not neglect meeting together. Many of these we see as suggestions. I can be a Christian without doing these things. I don’t need to honor God’s law here or there because it’s merely a suggestion. That’s how we take away from God’s law. But how do we add to God’s law?

    You know, a few years ago I did a search. I just thought it would be interesting to type into Google something along the lines of, if you’re a Christian, you will not dot, dot, dot, and just see what came up. And it was interesting to see how many web pages that people had devoted to these topics. There were people saying that you cannot be a Christian and watch any movies whatsoever.

    Eat any meat. Practice counseling. Watch Star Wars. Dance. My kids are in trouble there. They’re six and under. Whenever they hear music, they start dancing. Play cards of any sort. Drink caffeine. I’m in trouble there. I had caffeine on the way over. Watch any cartoons.

    You cannot be a Christian and celebrate Christmas, one page said, and one said, you cannot be a Christian and not celebrate Christmas. So it’s very confusing here. Now, any one of these may be wise or unwise for somebody in any circumstance. Good for your health or not. Good for temptation, bad in terms of there’s a temptation there you want to avoid. But to lay it down as a rule for all people in all times without scriptural warrant is to add to God’s law, to have our own particular preferences. become our law of what is holy and righteous.

    And we should hear Paul’s question in Colossians 2.20 when that is happening, when he asks, why do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they’re used according to human precepts and teaching. We’re not talking about God’s law. They’re human rules. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

    And that was the problem. The Pharisees actually were some of the biggest indulgers of their flesh, of their pride, of their sin. But they looked on the outside like a clean bowl with filth inside. That was the problem there. There was a taking away from God’s law, even sometimes by addition. Now, to conclude this matter.

    To conclude in looking at this text and what this has for us, we have to ask again, is the Bible our only rule for life? Is it sufficient? Because when you’re asking, is the word of God sufficient for me written? We’re also really asking the question, is Christ sufficient? He is the Word of God made flesh, and we have the Word of God written here. If the Word of God is insufficient, are we saying that about Christ?

    Are we unsure if His holiness is really enough for us or it needs adding to? If we are adding to God’s law or taking away in any way trying to correct it, then we need to be humble. Taking issue with God’s law as not complete enough or in need of editing is a sin of pride and needs to be confessed before God.

    Because we need to come to a place in which we can say with a psalmist what sometimes feels hard to say in Psalm 119, I love your law. How do we, why do we love God’s law? Because it reveals his commandment of love. And what is God but love? He is revealing his nature in his law. And for us to say that is insufficient is to say God’s nature is insufficient. Now we need to say, I love your law because we love our Lord.

    We love our savior. We love his salvation and we love his word and we can neither improve it by adding to it nor improve it by taking away from it. We can never be holier than him. We can never be more loving than him, more merciful or even more enjoyable. because the law summarizes loving God and loving our neighbor. And we can’t love the law until we believe the gospel that Jesus fulfilled that law for us. He loved us. He pitied us. He carried a cross, a payment for us. And so we say Christ is sufficient. His word is sufficient. It needs neither addition nor an editor.

    Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, help us to confess that you are sufficient in your word. Lord, we confess that Christ was sufficient, that he is a better measure of holiness than we could ever be. Lord, if there is wisdom or kindness that we must have in our life as a guide, Lord, help us to do that, but not to use it as our measure of holiness for others. Lord, I pray that you would convict us of sin. The ways in which we may have taken your word as suggestion, or ways in which we thought it was insufficient and thought it needed us to add to it. Lord, forgive us of these sins, cause us to turn from them and repent by the work of your Holy Spirit.

    And so we pray these things in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. We will sing as our hymn, our final hymn, number 80. you take your hymnals and turn to number 80. It’s how firm a foundation you Saints of the Lord. Would you stand as we sing this as our final hymn.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Whose Kingdom are You Building?

    Whose Kingdom are You Building?

    About this sermon

    Seventeen years after the exiles returned, the Lord’s house still lay in ruins while the people built paneled houses for themselves, and Haggai called them to consider their ways. Jesus calls his people to lay up treasures in heaven and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The Lord who stirred up the remnant to build his house is with his people in Christ, and he supplies all they need as they serve him first.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    The scriptures come to us from two passages, Old and New Testament alike. The first reading is from Haggai chapter 1, the entire chapter, which is not long. And then from the New Testament, from the words of Jesus, Matthew chapter 6, from the Sermon on the Mount, verses 19 through 34. First then, the book of Haggai. My Bible more or less automatically turns toward that general address within the Bible because I have written and published on this particular book and on its companion book, the book of Zechariah. So that Hebrew text is exceedingly well known to me and I’m grateful for what the Lord has done in my life through the study of this particular text.

    Let’s then pay close attention to the word of God as it’s found in Haggai chapter one, verses one through 15. In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehoshadak, the high priest, thus says the Lord of the heavenly armies.

    These people say the time has not yet come. for rebuilding the house of the Lord. The word of the Lord through the prophet Haggai continued, is it a time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now those says the Lord of the heavenly armies, consider how you have fared. You’ve sown much and brought in little. You eat without being satisfied. You drink without getting your fill. “‘You clothe yourselves, but no one gets warm. “‘And he who earns anything earns it for a leaky purse.’

    “‘Thus says the Lord of the heavenly armies, “‘Consider how you have fared. “‘Go up to the hills and get timber and rebuild the house. “‘Then I will look on it with favor “‘and I will be glorified,’ says, The Lord, you have been expecting much and getting little. And when you brought it home, I would blow on it. Why? Asks the Lord of the heavenly armies. Because of my house, which lies in ruins while you all hurry to your own houses.

    That is why the skies above you have withheld their moisture in the earth as we held its yield. And I have summoned fierce heat. upon the land, upon the hills, upon the new grain and wine and oil, upon all that the ground produces, upon man and beast, and upon all the fruits of your labor.

    Then Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the high priest, son of Jehozadak, and all the rest of the people gave heed to the summons of the Lord their God, and to the words of the prophet Haggai, since the Lord their God had sent him. The people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, fulfilling the Lord’s mission, spoke to the people, I am with you, declares the Lord. Then the Lord roused the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of Sheol, told the governor of Judah, the spirit of the high priest Joshua, son of Jehozadak, and the spirit of all the rest of the people. They came and set to work on the house of the Lord of the heavenly armies, their God, on the 24th day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.

    So far, the reading of God’s own word from the Old Testament, and now from the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew chapter six, verses 19 through 34. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness indeed.

    No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or to be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, about what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?

    Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes?

    Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow was thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothed you, O you of little faith?

    So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. So far the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God.

    Well, my title today is whose kingdom are you building? And we see two passages that both address issues of food and clothing and wealth and poverty. And in our Haggai reading, we see two particular divine addresses. The first might be described as law, commandments. The second might be described as gospel. A gift. What’s the law? Well, okay, go up to the mountains and bring back wood and build the house. What’s the house?

    Temple. It’s 520 BC. Jerusalem is being rebuilt after three generations of devastation. The burnt stones and the charred timbers of Solomon’s temple still inhabit the building site. An altar has been restored as the book of Ezra tells us. And a little bit of work was done, but that was 17 years before. And the people laid off building. They pay attention to their own houses. They built their own places. And 17 years after the first returnees to rebuild Jerusalem, the temple of the Lord still lies in desolation. and ruin. Burnt timbers, charred stone. All right, so go to the mountains and bring back wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it. Okay, so far a command. And often in scripture we forget that commands are always for the people of God. What’s the right word? graced by promises. And what is the promise in this text? It is already a reality for those who experienced this text back in 520 BC.

    It’s found at the end of verse 13. Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, fulfilling the Lord’s mission, spoke to the people, I am with you. And that line is gospel. That line happens even before a single new day of labor happens in the building site called the temple. The next paragraph talks about how the Lord then roused their spirits and work began. But notice how the gospel comes before. Before the work, because this is the way of God. God takes us where we are. God grants us his gospel promises. God lifts us from our spiritual death, or for these people, since they were believers already, lifts them from their spiritual depression and assures them, I am with you.

    That particular line is the shortest oracle in all the Bible. By oracle, we mean a divine speech spoken by someone other than the deity. Angels occasionally speak oracles. Judges chapter two has one of those. Sages and priests sometimes speak them. The book of Job has one. The Psalms have a few. Most oracles are spoken by prophets.

    And so the book of Amos, the book of Hosea, the book of Isaiah, filled with pages and pages and pages of divine speech, but speech spoken by the prophet. And the I, the me, the my, is not Isaiah or Amos or Hosea. The I, the me, and the my is God himself. Yahweh, the God of Israel.

    The one, the King James version says, the Lord of hosts. And in this text, I translated hosts differently. We forget that host means armies. Lord of hosts is the Lord of the heavenly armies. Is the Lord of hosts able to bless his people with strength and grace? Absolutely. The Lord of the heavenly armies has all the power.

    Judah in that time has none. For let’s consider who these people are, and where they are, and when they are. It’s 520 BC, and the text is dated to the second year of Darius. We start with a date form, chapter one, verse one, second year of Darius, first day of the sixth month. That is something like August 29th. 15, I’m sorry, yeah, 15, listen to me, I’m still thinking Luther, okay.

    520 BC, the Persians have been on the throne over places like Jerusalem since 539 BC, when Babylon, by what must have seemed miraculous to that world at that time, when Babylon fell on a single night to the armies of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire.

    They had dammed up the Euphrates River 20 miles north of the city of Babylon. A party was happening in the city. It was a great festival. The river flowed through the double ring of walls, 60 foot high walls, the greatest defended city in the world, the richest city in the world. They thought they would never fall.

    But the Euphrates River flowed through the outer wall, then the inner wall, and then beside the palace, and then out the inner wall again, then out the outer wall again. And on a single night, Cyrus the Persian’s great engineers, brilliant engineers, diverted the water flow to an extinct riverbed. And now the Euphrates did not flow through the water gates. Cyrus’s army did in the dead of night.

    And on a single night, the greatest city in the world with the best defenses of any city in the world fell to the Persian Empire. It was brilliant. It stunned the world. And now we have a changing of the guard over the entire Near East. It is no longer the Babylonians who rule with their methods of terror. It’s now the Persians who rule and reversing the methods of terror.

    They send 20 exiled peoples home to rebuild cities and temples and to restore their deities and to restore their local customs. And for the city of Jerusalem, yes, to restore the temple of Yahweh by Persian decree. And to restore the Torah of Moses as the law of the land inside Judah by Persian decree. and eventually to re-fortify that city by Persian decree. It’s astonishing that pagan kings could be the sponsors of the restoration of the people of God, but such was foreseen by the prophets.

    Isaiah 44 and 45 even names Cyrus as the Lord’s anointed who will do all my will, says the Oracle of the Lord through that prophet. And so in 538, The first full year of Cyrus upon those now Mesopotamian thrones. That first full year, Cyrus issues a decree of mercy, of clemency.

    Exiled peoples, 20 some peoples who the Babylonians had ravaged, go home, rebuild your cities, rebuild your temples, reestablish your ancient religions. And in those temples, pray for the life of Cyrus the king. and for the life of Cyrus’s sons. We have the decree on at least six different clay barrels about yea high and good Acadian that had been found scattered through the near East so that people in all these wide different places can read the decree that sent them home. And we see the decree in Aramaic and in Hebrew within the Hebrew Bible. The end of Ezra has, I’m sorry, the end of second Chronicles has part of it. The beginning of Ezra has all of the Jewish version of the decree. And we find it elsewhere in the Bible too. What? Go home. The Lord of the heavens has made me king of all the kingdoms of the world. And he’s appointed me to build a house for him in Jerusalem.

    So says Cyrus, an Iranian, a Persian, a person from more than a thousand miles away. and the people begin to come home. In 537, maybe 536, the first trickles of returnees arrive. Ezra chapter one and two tell that story. And in 537 or 536, they restore the altar. But no success in building a temple. One reason for this not discussed by the Bible, but clear to historians is this.

    That when Jerusalem was absent from the trade route, as it was for three generations of time in its destruction, Samaria got rich because it had set up the toll booth on the international trade route. Jerusalem had been the best toll booth. Now Samaria is. 30 miles north on the same road. Build a toll booth at Samaria and Samaritans get rich. Now restore a toll booth at Jerusalem, a better site. And Samaria opposes it. And Samaria got its local allies together. We see this, especially in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

    And with those local allies somehow prevent and conspire the continuation of building God’s temple. They accuse it of being a fortress to inspire revolt against Persia. A massive building. Must be a fort. They’re rebels. And with that kind of insinuation and others, perhaps building comes to an end. 17 years go by, maybe 16, and still no progress on the house of God.

    But God had mandated that his temple be rebuilt. Isaiah the prophet himself said it, and Cyrus’s decree had said it. In Isaiah the prophet, he is the one who says of Jerusalem, it shall be rebuilt. And of God’s temple, its foundation shall be laid. Isaiah 44 and 45, remarkable text.

    And now, 16 to 17 years later, still no temple. And so the prophet speaks with review by the word of the Lord. Verse four, is it time for you to dwell in your paneled houses while this house, namely temple, lies in ruins? Consider how you fared. That is, they thought they ought to be under the blessing of the Lord. They thought they ought to be enriched. They were, after all, God’s marines, right?

    Most Jews never returned to rebuild. Most Jews remain behind at Babylonia and Persia, the other places to which they’ve been scattered. We have immense Jewish communities in Egypt as well. And most Jews never returned. Books of the Bible speak about that circumstance. The book of Esther is about the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Persian territories, in Persia itself, who did not return. And Esther and Mordecai are among them in the 470s BC. Most Jews did not return. The book of Ezra will eventually count 50,000 Jews that return. But hundreds of thousands of Jews live in that world.

    Jerusalem itself in the days of Nehemiah, a little bit later. Yeah, Nehemiah comes in 444 BC. He’s got a draft one family in 10 to compel them to live inside Jerusalem. It’s such a terrible place to live. Broken stone, blackened beams, ruin and destruction still in 444 BC. The failure to restore the city with diligence. Yeah, there’s a functioning temple by Nehemiah’s time, but not much else. So these are God’s Marines. Yes, they are. They are the repentant remnant that returned. Yes, they are. but consider their experience. They might register what sound like good excuses.

    After all, it’s an 800 mile walk from Babylon to Jerusalem. It’s 600 miles as the crow flies, but you follow the crows and you die of thirst about 200 miles in because the oases no longer happen. 400 miles of no oasis. All right, maybe the crows perish too as they fly across that desert sand on the due west trek. Babylon’s almost the same latitude as Jerusalem. Okay, follow that latitude line drawn on your maps in ancient. Map making. No, they don’t have those lines. Okay. But follow due west and you die of thirst. Okay.

    Follow the rivers 800 miles and you live. But the 800 mile journey will take four months on foot. Some might make it faster, they have something to ride on, like a camel or something. Horseback is scant, and of course horses take a lot of water and grass, and you’re not gonna have that much. All right, so foot travel, ox carts, donkeys pulling carts, but most on foot. In the old days of American wagon trains heading out from Independence, Missouri to the Oregon Trail, 10 miles a day was a good day. That’s a good day. So we’re gonna be on the road for four months, maybe longer.

    And if you were middle-class when you left Babylonia, what happens after four months of restaurant bills and hotel bills and tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, what happens to you and your wallet when you finally arrive in Jerusalem and Judah probably you have nothing left. Those who’d reach middle-class in Babylon would arrive impoverished. Those who were impoverished in Babylon would arrive still impoverished. And the few who were rich might maybe, maybe, maybe arrive middle-class. So those who succeed in actually reaching Jerusalem will do so amid great poverty.

    What are the resources of this community? Not much. Sounds like a fine excuse not to build God’s temple, eh? You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone, right? All right. That might be how a lot of them feel. They tried, it didn’t work. All right, so let’s now pay attention to our own houses. And maybe after 17 years, we might get some nice ivory paneling for that particular bedroom wall, you know? So the text refers to paneled houses. Each of you is paying attention to his own paneled house, while this house lies in ruins, says the Lord.

    And so in 520 BC, late in August of that year, a new prophet arises, the first prophet in rebuilt Jerusalem that we know anything about, Haggai. We don’t even know his father’s name. He’s just Haggai the prophet. A whole lot of biblical folks, we know the name of their father, sometimes the name of their grandfather, sometimes even seven generations, sometimes more. All we know for this fellow is Haggai, Haggai the prophet. Who is he?

    No news about anything further. We have five messages from him, five oracles spoken by the word of the Lord, spoken over about three months of time, and then he’s gone. We have no birth story, no death story, no story of his deeds. All we have is the story of his messages. And then he disappears. So the man is not especially important.

    We might call him a minor prophet, And that doesn’t mean that he was only 18 years old or only four feet high. That means the books are short. Minor is from Latin, minore, which means small. So the minor prophets are smaller books. But you know, the persistent joke from people like me is that, you know, major messages from minor prophets. And I’m quoted often at Geneva on campus with this particular sentence, was I stay in my lectures with sternness, far be it from me to call any of the Lord’s prophets minor. Have you heard that quoted? Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, okay. I’m famous for that sentence. I’m famous for nothing else, but I’m famous for that sentence.

    Major message from minor prophet. And what is the message? It’s the same as the message of Jesus that we heard in Matthew 6. Seek first. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these other things will be added to you as well. And so these people heed the rebuke of Haggai the prophet. They respond with faith because they are after all persons of faith. They arrived there by faith. They left Babylon because they believed. They’re God’s Marines. You know, the few, the proud. Okay, God’s Marines, maybe not proud, but certainly few.

    And at this time in Jerusalem’s day, Maybe a couple of thousand people live in that city. The enclosure of that city, or I should say the boundary of that city is tiny indeed. Geneva’s campus is about 55 acres, I read somewhere online. Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah is smaller. Smaller than Geneva’s campus. You surprised? Okay. It’s smaller than Geneva’s campus.

    This is not a rich or powerful or large place. And yet they have the task of building the temple of God, which is of course the centerpiece of the world in redemptive history. Consider their resources again for a moment. Go to the hills and bring back wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord of the heavenly armies. But let’s think about those hills around Jerusalem for a moment.

    And remember that Jerusalem was besieged three times by the Babylonians. 605 BC, that’s the time when Daniel was taken captive. And that’s when Jerusalem first came under Babylonian rule when Jehoiakim, that nasty fellow who hated Jeremiah, is king. Then Jehoiakim will rebel, and his son becomes king, Jehoiachin.

    He’ll continue the rebellion only three more months. And in 597, March of that year, that 18-year-old boy king will march out of Jerusalem with his mama and his advisors and his royal court and surrender after a failed rebellion. And Nebuchadnezzar in mercy does not destroy the city. He takes 10,000 exiles to Babylon. Ezekiel is in that list.

    Now consider each time there’s a siege by Babylon at Jerusalem, what happens to the wood? It gets cut for firewood for the troops at night. It gets cut to build the siege machinery of the Babylonian encirclement of the city because you build a wooden fence all around the city you besiege and you guard the fence so no one can get out or in and you starve the city. Even if you can’t break its wall, you starve it into submission. And then you build wooden machines on wheels with bronze battering points to bring down the walls and the towers.

    And most of that is wood too. And so by the time there’s a third siege in 588, 587, maybe 586, those hilltops are denuded of all their standing timber. And how long does it take to restore a forest? If I started now in my backyard, my great-grandson might enjoy the shade pretty well. Go to the hills and bring back wood means that the best trees are going to be maybe 40 years old. And the wood is not much. This is not the cedars of Lebanon that Solomon used. This is paltry, paltry material.

    So when the new temple was at last dedicated as it is in 516, do you remember how the old people greeted the dedication? They wept because they remembered Solomon’s temple. The youngsters cheered and rejoice. The oldsters wept because they remembered the glory of Solomon and they had nothing like it. And so in our exhortations from the prophet, they are to build God’s Old Testament version of the kingdom.

    Okay, Jerusalem with a temple. Bear in mind, of course, that church buildings are not temples, right? And we’re not really talking about this building here in all this. Two days ago, I saw one of my students wearing a t-shirt. It said, the church has left the building. I think the sentence is based upon the old thing from the 60s. Elvis has left the building, okay. The church has left the building. Buildings are not, properly speaking, okay, but by way of extension, all right, we can call a building a church, all right, yeah, all right. But the church is the people, right?

    Inhabited by the Holy Spirit, blessed by God. Haggai’s hearers have to build the kingdom of God in their midst. In that time that did require a physical temple. because the altars, the sacrifices, the priesthood, these were the institutions of Moses that prepared the way for the Christ. Without the institutions of Moses, Christ cannot come to fulfill the law of Moses. And so there is the necessity then of physical architectural work. But before even another stone is taken to the site, before even a single log is hewn on the hillsides. What does the Lord say? I am with you.

    The shortest oracle in all the Bible. It’s four syllables in Hebrew. Ani itkem. Recognize it? Okay, my Hebrew student here. Ani, I, itkem, with you. I am with you. And the you there is plural. I’m with y’all. If we were in Alabama, it might be how it was said. I am with you. And in this, we have a promise from God, not dependent upon their work, but dependent upon God’s kindness. So let me wade through a thousand alligators if I know that God is with me. God had declared that he was with them.

    And so in our story, what are the applications then? The application is of course, to build the church. To build, not necessarily building such things, which, you know, buildings come and go. Buildings are something like engines by which certain things can be done well and not other things. All right, build a building and certain things can happen there for a very long time. And that’s a very good thing.

    When was this building built? I have no idea. I first darkened the door here, when? Okay, I think I first darkened the door at about 1976 in this building when I was a senior at the college. All right, the building was here. All right, so buildings do contain the possibility of decades and generations of something happening. Okay, a church building does that and that is good. But churches exist with and without them. And we noticed then in verse 14, that yes, they came and they began to work on the house of the Lord. And they did so on a certain date given there in the text. And the date is the 24th day of the sixth month, the second year of Darius. Some time had gone by and their obedience began. But notice the crucial point that Andi itken, that I am with you, that gospel promise comes before a single stone is carried and before a single tree is healed.

    Because God’s blessing does not depend upon our work. God’s blessing does not depend upon our work. And the work they would do would be poor indeed. In chapter two, verse nine, we have this amazing promise, quote, the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former temple, declares the Lord. How is that going to be so? Because architecture is not the glory. Something far deeper than architecture is the true glory. Jesus himself would arrive at that temple. 512 years later or so. Jesus himself.

    And so if we pretend that we have nothing to give to God, if we spend all that we have on ourselves, we demonstrate that we do not have God’s kingdom firmly in view. It’s easy to put God off, especially when things are poor and difficult. It’s easy to put God off. We’re more apt to love ourselves than to love God.

    Oh, that’s true. And if we have time or money or resources, it’s easy to spend them upon ourselves, especially if things are scant. These people had it scant. But God is ever more willing to bless than we are willing to obey. And God’s blessing does not depend upon our obedience. Obedience does not produce everlasting life. That life is a gift to those who believe. But disobedience to God, even by Christians, all right, Christians disobey. Disobedience to God will often in this life issue in disappointment and even disaster. Go the wrong way and what happens? What happens? You know. And in the books of Proverbs and the wisdom books of the Old Testament, you bring early death upon yourself by going really, really, really the wrong way. And you bring honor and happiness upon yourself by obeying the Lord.

    But even that might be other than God’s providence for your life. Sometimes God withholds his material blessing to those who are most ardent for him. And sometimes God grants prosperity even to those who despise him. as we heard of in Psalm 73 earlier today. But God is ever waiting to show himself gracious.

    One of the most lovely things in this whole story is what happens in verse 14. Did you notice it? God roused the spirit of the governor, Zerubbabel. He’s the grandson of the last surviving Judean King, Jehoiachin, which means he’s the descendant of David, which means also that he’s the ancestor of the Christ. God stirs him up, says verse 14. And God stirs up the spirit of the high priest, Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, two who had come from Babylonian exile in faith and repentance. And after years of spiritual depression, God stirred them up to acts of concerted obedience that brought them joy.

    And one more God stirred up. God stirred the spirit of all the rest of the people. Imagine the spiritual depression of Jerusalem in 521 or 522 BC, when no temple is among them, and oppression by all their would-be neighbors all around, and resources scant, scant, scant, scant, scant. Even help the Persians had promised never came. But now what happens? God stirred up the spirit of all the rest of the people.

    And they came and worked on the house of the Lord on the 24th day of the sixth month, the second year of Darius the king. And in their work, they found joy. It is a joyful thing to serve the kingdom of God. It is a joyful thing to have our priorities right, to put God first, to love God above all.

    And so we find the blessing of the Lord at last for these people after 17 years of, dare I say, spiritual depression. But we must not forget that the blessedness is announced not because of the work. The blessedness is not announced only after the work has begun. The blessedness is announced before. when they worship the Lord with reverence. And so in the book of Zechariah, we have this wonderful saying from chapter four, verse six. How is this restoration going to be done?

    Okay, there’s no great army. There’s no great wealth. There’s no great arsenal. There’s no great treasury. There’s no great population. How will this thing be done? Here’s the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, that governor, quote, not by might. Do you know the sentence? and not by power, but by my spirit. Says the Lord to the heavenly armies. How does God restore his people in the world? Not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit.

    May we then join then in blessing the Lord. Shall we pray? Father, you were good and you were great and you love us with an everlasting love and a love that will never let us go. So bless us then with your encouraging word to us today that you are indeed with us and with us in your son, who is the Emmanuel, who is indeed God with us. And in knowing him, Lord, grant us great joy and peace. Joy and peace in the midst of this life, serving you first and best. and receiving them from your hand, all else that we might need for life and godliness.

    Hear our prayer, Lord, we depend upon you for it. And we ask it through the bounties of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived and died and rose again, that we should be blessed in the faith of the gospel. Amen. The hymn is I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord, number 280. Let us stand and sing these stanzas to the glory of God.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Jeremiah 29:1-14

    Jeremiah 29:1-14

    About this sermon

    Jeremiah writes to the exiles in Babylon, telling them to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the welfare of the city where God has sent them. False prophets promised a quick return home, but the Lord declares that the exile will last seventy years, and only then will he bring his people back. ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ he says, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.’ God’s people must speak hard truths with tears, and they can trust his good purposes through long seasons of suffering as they look to the risen Christ.

    More sermons from 1 Peter · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    It’s an honor to be with you once again and to open the Word of God for you. Let’s do turn our hearts to the Word of God once again. We’ll focus on perhaps a familiar passage, Jeremiah 29, 11, but in order to stir our hearts and to get our thinking aiming in that direction in light of the fullness of God’s Word, let’s turn to two passages prior, both of them in the New Testament. Please open first to 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2. be working our way backward in God’s word and also backward in time to see these themes in their development and then in God’s faithfulness and bringing them about in the past. 1 Peter chapter two. And I’ll be reading verses one through 12. This is on page 180 of the Pew Bible, if you’re using that.

    First Peter chapter two, starting in verse one, this is the word of the Lord. Therefore putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies long for the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, And coming to him as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God. You also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes in him will not be disappointed.

    This precious value, then, is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve. The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word and to this doom they were also appointed. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

    And now please back to the gospels, specifically to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16. We see our Lord’s words to his beloved disciple, Peter. Peter, who goes from a wonderful affirmation of faith to needing to be rebuked in what seems like just a few moments. Matthew chapter 16. And I’ll begin our reading in verse 13. Again, Matthew 16, starting in verse 13. Again, the word of the Lord. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he was asking his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist and others Elijah, but others still Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

    And Jesus said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Then he warned the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day.

    Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And now please to Jeremiah chapter 29, our primary passage for this evening. Jeremiah chapter 29. echoes of which we hear in the passages we just read in the language of the Lord Jesus building his church, building a holy priesthood and people as a temple.

    Jeremiah chapter 29. And I’ll begin our reading in verse one. Again, God’s holy word. Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. This letter was sent by the hand of Elasa the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them and plant gardens and eat their produce.

    Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands that they may bear sons and daughters and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare, you will have welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them, declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place.

    For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. and will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile. And we’ll end our reading of the word of God at that point. Let’s pray, brothers and sisters, and ask for God’s blessing in both the preaching and the hearing of the word that we’ve just read.

    Let’s pray together. Father in heaven, we have read and even sung this evening much of your word in a short time, and we pray for your Holy Spirit’s power and activity among us that you would, by him and through the word that he has given to us, order our thoughts and bring them to an intensified focus upon the one in whom all of these words are fulfilled, your Son and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, O God, that your word would now be proclaimed in truth and that it would be received by your people with faith and love and an eagerness to put into practice that which the Good Shepherd would say to us this evening as we continue to worship you through him. We pray, O God, that this very same word would call to faith and salvation and repentance any in this assembly who do not know Christ as Lord and Savior.

    And we pray that for all who do, that this would be a time of true strengthening and grace, that we would together grow in the grace and knowledge of our blessed savior and your only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose matchless and majestic name we pray, amen. Well, following the sermon this evening, as you know, we’ll have opportunity to participate in the blessing that the Lord Jesus gave to the church that we refer to as the Lord’s Supper. It’s a means of grace which is designed to advance us, which is designed to confirm and to continue us in the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I wanna begin the sermon this evening with a quotation from someone who did not continue along in his life of professed faith. Someone who now as a professional writes and speaks the very stuff which encourages others like him in their own exodus from the church. which gives them reason to disbelieve and a reason to abandon the faith in which many of them grew up, or at least to which they were exposed.

    This is from a scholar named Bart Ehrman. And Ehrman writes in a book called God’s Problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. Ehrman writes of his own personal journey away from the God of the Bible. And he writes this, the God I once believed in was a God who was active in the world. He saved Israelites from slavery. He sent Jesus for the salvation of the world. He answered prayer. He intervened on behalf of the people when they were in desperate need. He was actively involved in my life. But I can’t believe in that God anymore. Because from what I now see around the world, He doesn’t intervene.” End quote. Now, Ehrman might be considered an apostle to the apostate. His material gives encouragement to those, and very many of them are young adults, again, who have grown up within the church, who begin to take a very adult look at life and to recognize the profound suffering that exists, not necessarily in their circumstances, although certainly sometimes, but especially beyond them and around them.

    And they begin to think of the Bible as utterly inadequate to deal with the real hardships of life. And the stories within scripture as little more than morality tales, if not fairy tales, which if believed actually serve to mock the pain that people go through by constantly calling them to faith in the very God who is putting them through it. A God who in Airman’s mind, in reality, just does not intervene and does not save in the way that we’re told to believe he does in the pages of scripture. And what does all that have to do with our passage this evening? Well, it’s very common and it’s necessary for those of us who are in reformed theological circles to speak against the abuses of our primary passage this evening, Jeremiah 29, 11, in which God promises that the plans that he has for us are for our well-being and for our peace and prosperity.

    Jeremiah 29 11 is a very popular verse among Christians. And the thinking among some professing believers goes that if we have not found peace and prosperity in terms of material wealth and good health, then we must not be seeking God with our whole heart. If our lives are filled with illness and pain and deprivation, then that can only be because our hearts are not filled with true faith. And so, as we ought, we critique that terrible abuse of this particular passage and those like it. But this evening, we need to dig deeper and to explore the ways in which we who might openly and loudly criticize the health and wealth gospel might set ourselves up not only for devastating disappointment within the faith, but if we are not careful, and if the word of God is not truly rooted within us, for a departure from the faith that we once claimed to believe, similar to so many others, and as exemplified by Mr.

    Ehrman, from whose work I read earlier. Jeremiah 29 is a passage that is full of the very realism which Mr. Ehrman denies. It is full of the demonstration of who God is and what he does in this a fallen world. And it proclaims to us the grace and the patience and the perseverance of this God in bringing people to himself. And as such, it is a wonderful passage for us to look to, to strengthen our hearts in that which we claim to believe, especially as we do come in more contact with the deep and pervasive suffering in this world. We’ll have a very simple outline for any of you taking notes tonight. We’ll spend most of our time on the first point. Point number one is God’s prerogative. God’s prerogative, and then secondly, God’s plans.

    So God’s prerogative, and then secondly, God’s plans. Look with me please again at verse 11 of Jeremiah 29. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Once again, we so often, at least it’s popular in Christian circles to interpret this passage as promising us a this worldly wealth and prosperity. God’s plans for us are indeed glorious and for our peace and for our welfare, but not always according to the terms by which we would like to see those promises fulfilled. There were prophets in the days of Jeremiah. This is the time of the Babylonian captivity who were rising up among the people and who really foreshadowed the health and wealth preachers of our day. And who said to the people, it’s time to go, pack your bags.

    God has our deliverance right in front of us. If you just trust and believe, we are going home. Notice verses eight and nine, God’s commentary on these prophets. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you. And do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them, declares the Lord. These prophets were speaking exactly what the people of God in Jeremiah’s day and in Babylon would have loved to have heard, would have loved to be true, that they were going to go home, but they were lying. And the Lord reveals that through this letter from Jeremiah. He tells the people through Jeremiah the very hard truth that yes, they would go home, but not yet. not for a very long time.

    Verse 10, for thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place. Think of it, that’s good news, but it also contains some very bad news for many who were hearing it. Imagine being one of the exiles and hearing that news. 70 years would come and go before the people would go home. Seven decades. Now when you and I read history, 70 years can pass in the turn of a page or even a paragraph. But as we live history, 70 years may in fact be the full expanse of our lives or far longer for some of us. Now think therefore of the elderly people hearing this news. They were essentially hearing that they were not going home.

    They would die in exile. Now young people, imagine yourselves among the exiles and hearing this news at your age. How old will you be in 70 years or even 50 or even 40? I don’t know your ages, but I do know that the answer is much older. And so the old and likely many of the young would not see their homeland again. And this is all beside issues of illness, which may arise as they were in Babylon and take them. Yes, the people of God as a whole would return, but some among them would not have the joy of that journey. They would die in exile. Imagine hearing those words. What would you think of God? And how could you then think in terms of the very next words of this promise in verse 11, that God’s plans for you were actually good and not evil, when such evil had already been unleashed upon you through Babylon and its psychotic king, Nebuchadnezzar? and especially if you are not among those whose rebellion against God brought about the Babylonian captivity.

    Imagine yourself as a God-fearing Hebrew person seeking the Lord in great sorrow in Babylon, not having been someone who had contributed so far as you know to the significant sin, and yet having that judgment sweep up you and everybody else around you, those who truly loved the Lord and those who did not. What would you think of God then? Let’s switch it to present tense and present times. What do you think of the Lord as you find yourself or even worse, loved ones swept up into the essential pains of our day and of life in a fallen world? Again, there are some people who claim to know Christ and who will say, well, the bad stuff can’t be from God. And this is one of the passages that proves it. God’s plans are for peace and prosperity, not war and devastation.

    God isn’t the one bringing about terrorist attacks. God isn’t the one who ordains the bad news X-ray, the natural disasters we see and we sometimes experience. But twice in verses four through 14, God makes it very clear to the people that he was the one who did this. Yes, it was Babylon. And yes, it was Nebuchadnezzar, these kinds of secondary causes. But look again to verse four. God refers to the people as the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem into Babylon. God did this. God decreed this disaster in light of his people’s refusal to repent. Their sin was, and our sin is, that serious. We must truly take to heart the fact that God is truly holy, and that we are truly sinful, and that whatever we may have in this world, it is more than we deserve. and that God freely and rightly ordains whatsoever comes to pass.

    From Isaiah 45, the Lord speaking, I form light and create darkness. I make wellbeing and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. If you hold this view of God, a view clearly expressed in our confessional standards, even as we read this evening, you must hold it forth to others through trembling hands, as it were, as we see disaster in our day. Because holding this view makes you relatively rare in our contemporary American Christian culture. And therefore you have the rare opportunity to tell people that while God’s plans for his people are not plans for evil, he does in fact employ evil. These plans do make use of catastrophe and calamity and captivity of all kinds. We may tell the truth, the hard truth with a soft voice and perhaps a voice choked up by tears.

    We must never be brash and harsh in our declaration of the truth, but we must declare it, especially in a day when professing believers in Christ are disposed to despise such truth. And when we feel the weight of this, we might ask, Well, how can I possibly do that? Or even beneath that question, why would I want to do that? Why would I want to say those things when I know what kind of reception I’m going to get? Well, welcome to Jeremiah’s world. This is part of why he is called the weeping prophet. No one wanted to hear what he had to say, true as it was. We feel this personally in our own lives. Sometimes those who refuse these kinds of truths from scripture, they’ll be so well-intentioned in the counsel they bring to us when we’re in pain.

    They’ll say, I’ve prayed for you and I just know you’re going to be healed. I have faith for it. I just know the next time the x-ray comes back, it’s gonna be clear. I just know and I claim it in the name of Jesus that you will get this job. They don’t realize. how closely their words match those of the prosperity preachers in Jeremiah’s day. We’re going home. God has told us we’re going home soon. We so often interpret Jeremiah 29 11 in terms of what you might call individualized earthly prosperity. Personal peace and happiness with regard to the circumstances in this world. Individualized earthly prosperity. Prosperity having to do with marriage and family and work and health and weather and whatever. Something we so often miss, which is a clear strike from the Holy Spirit against that kind of individualizing and distorting of the truth revealed here.

    Something we often miss when interpreting and applying this passage happens especially in verse 11. I know the plans that I have for you. If we look at that in the original language, the you is plural. The you is plural. God is addressing the church. Yes, certainly the individuals who comprise the corporate body, but fundamentally and most essentially, this passage is directed to the church as a whole. In verse 11, dear brothers and sisters, God is not promising us as individuals money, marriage, a job, healing for a loved one, political freedom, all of which we tend to feel entitled to in this culture. And if this passage does in fact promise us individualized earthly prosperity, well, that sets us up for shipwreck in our faith. Because if we don’t have it, despite our having prayed for it, then we must either conclude that God broke his promise, or that somehow this promise depends upon our faithfulness to bring to fruition, and that we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain, and that the reason the healing didn’t come is because there wasn’t enough faith in here.

    Otherwise, God would have done it. The word of God tells us though, brothers and sisters, The things of this life come and go, jobs come and go, wealth comes and goes, political freedom comes and goes, as the Israelites were experiencing here. And most painfully, people come and go from our lives, in and then out of our lives, all according to the will of our sovereign Lord. and all according to God’s big picture plans for all of his people. Again, the plural you is significant. Or as we might translate it around here, yins, or y’all, or whatever colloquialism applies to you and your background, it’s plural. It’s what Peter is referring to in the passage we read earlier. We are spiritual stones, individual stones, each of which matters, but being built together and fitted together for the sake of the whole, the holy priesthood, the holy place of God.

    The details of God’s providence differ in our lives from one to another, but his providence serves his promise to build his people. Every providence serves that promise. Now when we read the promise of Jeremiah 29 and others like it through the lens of individualized earthly prosperity, we begin to wonder what pains in our lives are the direct result of our personal sin. It’s an ironic and sick twist on the fact that the Israelites were here at Babylon because of their sin. And whatever your background theologically, When hardship comes, do you find yourself asking questions like this? Did I do it? Did I cause this? Is this punishment? Certainly there are sometimes very easy to see cause and effect relationships between our sin and certain consequences, but not always. There is not always a perceivable direct relationship or even one at all between our personal sin and the pain that we find in our lives.

    God does not play manipulative mind games with us, making us guess and worry about what’s our fault and what is not. He gives us clear guidance in his holy word. We do not have what Jeremiah’s people had, a direct word from God that their captivity as a whole was a direct result of the nation’s sin. Times of hardship in our lives do indeed occasion a hard look at our hearts. We ought to take opportunity during those times to ask the Lord through his word to search us and to see if there are false ways within us. but without a direct word from scripture as to the situation in our lives. Brothers and sisters, we need not look for a sin behind every sneeze. At the same time, and in a very real sense, we all caused every instance of misery in this world.

    Sin and death and suffering are in this world. because of what we did in our first parents through Adam. In our first father, Adam, we fell into that estate of sin and misery. And that statement, that confession of part of our faith is no mere theory and each of us knows that. Life in this world is at times so hard and so hurtful and so miserable. And it’s precisely when our hearts are awoken to the severity of life in a fallen world that we must be so careful to know and to trust the word that God has given us. So again, let’s drive this home for any of us here this evening, and certainly as a congregation and as a denomination steeped in the Reformed faith. Now, perhaps unlike believers who refuse to believe that God is in these things, you know very well that he is.

    You know the statements from our confessional standards. But for those of us who can quickly agree that God has the prerogative to bring about such terrible things in such a sinful world and that he does so sinlessly, please consider this question. Do our doctrinal affirmations, do they serve as an anchor in life or as an anesthetic which keeps us from feeling life’s pain? Here’s what I mean by that. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of affirming the truth but putting it to false use. All our doctrinal statements about God’s sovereignty, rightly rooted in God’s holy word, can become an anesthetic by which we numb ourselves to the pain that sin has brought into this world. They can become cliche, they can become quick gut reaction, knee jerk, easy answers, by which we don’t let the pain in, or by which we encourage someone else or think we’re encouraging them. while not really understanding the weight of what they’re trying to communicate to us.

    If we’re not careful, our false use of good truth can prevent us from really taking into our souls the severity of our fallenness as a people. We can keep the pain at bay until it hits us like a shockwave, just how bad things really are and can be. until that pain comes calling personally. And we’re tempted to think, like Mr. Ehrman, I don’t think God’s word actually is equipped to deal with this. This is just too much. How can God not stop this? Mr. Ehrman fails to account, among many things, he fails to account for the crucial fact that this often deeply difficult state of things is exactly how our Lord said it would be in His holy word. And so we move now from God’s prerogative to think secondly and more briefly about God’s plans.

    Once again, verse 11. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. When we’re doubting the truthfulness or at least the realism of God’s holy word, what we’re doing is we’re treating people like Jeremiah in situations like the Babylonian captivity as if they were mere myth. Again, a morality tale or a fairy tale and not real flesh and blood human beings in the midst of truly traumatic devastations. Jeremiah understood how bad things could be in life. The other prophets of the Old and the New Testament really and viscerally and personally understood these things. And of course, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet who can not only sympathize, but empathize with our pain. His tears foreshadow those of the Lord Jesus himself, who is our sympathetic high priest, who has carried our sorrows.

    See, all of them, the Lord Jesus and those prophets who served him in the old and the new covenant eras, they understood a basic cause and effect relationship to these things. If we as humanity have willingly walked away from the one who is life, what do we have reason to expect but death? The reason life in a fallen world can be so hard and so severe is because God is so good. These are not, if honestly understood, reasons to deny God’s goodness, they are reasons to affirm it, to recognize that to walk in the way of the Lord is to walk in life, but that we, in Adam, have chosen the opposite. While we need not look for a sin behind every sneeze, it is at the same time true that every bitter tear, every bad news x-ray, every betrayal, every broken heart, every famine, and every violently active fault line is ultimately a result of original and at times actual human sin. of our collective fall into sin and our first father, Adam, and our continually singing against God daily in word and thought and deed.

    We must see ourselves as the word of God teaches us to see ourselves as exiles, suffering the effects of our sin and Adam. And Jeremiah’s letter then gives us a sketch of the church’s condition in this world. It is no mere coincidence, it is purposeful under the leading of the Holy Spirit that Peter refers to his Christian readers in the New Covenant era some 600 years later as elect exiles, sons and daughters of God who live in a sin-filled world as strangers. And so we must admit our fall in Adam. but praise the living God. That is not all we have to confess. As God’s people, we must also affirm our forgiveness and our life through the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is precisely that salvation through that savior to which God points his people in this passage.

    Notice with me again, please, verses 12 through 14. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile. God brings the reprimand. And he also brings the restoration. He brings that pain and he produces from it peace. You will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

    We hear echoes of that. in Jesus and what he says in Matthew 6. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Everything that we need to serve the kingdom. Seeking God for the sake of God and his kingdom. Not just what God can give us in terms of temporal comforts in this life. Seeking with our whole hearts. But notice brothers and sisters, It is God himself who supplies the seeking. God doesn’t stand back and wait for us to gin up enough strength in our hearts to really go after him. Again, he’s not an endorser of that health and wealth kind of approach to life. If I just have enough faith, God is bound to do this and that for me. No, God is a God of grace.

    And he tells us in our passage, when we seek him with our whole heart, we’ll find him. and that he will supply that seeking. Just a few chapters over in this prophecy, we have that promise that God will supply us with a new heart, one that is alive and responsive to him and which seeks him through faith. Here again, these words as emphasized from the standpoint of God’s sovereignty, You will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. This is what God was doing in Jeremiah’s day. He was purifying for himself a people and he’s doing the very same thing today in and through every last detail of life for you, plural. and all of you living stones who comprise that plural.

    In order to beat back despair whenever we feel like the world is crashing down around us, and in some cases where that seems to be literally true, as we hear of natural disasters around the world, whenever we’re crushed because we know our Lord has brought this about, We must get our hearts and minds off of and above ourselves and realize that whatever situation is vexing us is not ultimately about us. It involves us deeply, but it’s bigger. The assurance that this passage brings to God’s people of all time is that God will use the circumstances of our lives and the circumstances of history in order to build his church. He knows the plans he has for you and they are glorious. There is always something much bigger happening, something gargantuan in scope and glorious in content.

    The big picture which the circumstances in our lives ultimately help to paint. Think of it. Even for the people of Jeremiah’s day, this letter, And this prophecy, in particular, was not ultimately fulfilled when God did, in fact, bring them back to Jerusalem after those 70 years. After their return, foreign power after foreign power played out their respective times on the world stage, each exercising political and geographical dominion over the promised land. The people of Israel were rebellious again and again, and in AD 70, The temple, which God sent them back to build, was destroyed, utterly shattering the dreams of a united Israel, worshiping God in the promised land in that blessed building. And yet, what did that destruction do? It declared to the world that the temple building was no longer the focal point for God’s people. and that in reality there had always been a bigger and more essential focal point.

    It declared to the world that the church was coming to maturity and that she included, as she always had and yet all the more explicitly in the New Covenant era, people from every tongue and tribe who would worship God from all kinds of places on the planet, not just a building in Jerusalem. And as we read about in the book of Acts, it was precisely the persecution of Christianity which brought the gospel beyond the bounds of Israel. Right into the new covenant era, we see God not only allowing but ordaining catastrophe. and using it to serve his ultimate purpose in this world. The building of the church, and of course, nowhere is that principle more fully realized than in God’s ordaining the crucifixion of his sinless son, out of which he brings victory over sin and death and hell for all whom the Lord gave himself to redeem and rose again to justify.

    Think of it. In God’s providence, here this evening, a little town in Pennsylvania, we’re singing to and about, hearing about, talking about a risen Christ. How did that happen? Our faith is the product, humanly speaking, and yet God working through those means, Our faith is the product of persecution. Our faith is the product of evil men driving Christians from their homes. The gospel spreading beyond those homes into empires and across seas and oceans till it finds its place here among us and so many other places around the world, all various corners of Christ’s kingdom. Should we not also therefore be willing to endure whatever hardship the Lord sends us for the sake of the gospel? So that the great shepherd’s other sheep will be gathered into the fold. And so that we, the church, can exert by his grace, his redemptive influence here in this fallen world.

    That’s what was happening in the days of Jeremiah. And that’s the promise that Jesus picks up and makes all the clearer in Matthew 16 when he says, I will build my church. The exiles in Jeremiah’s day knew that 70 years must be accomplished before they could go home. We are not given the number of years before our own personal home goings. But we do know that as the psalmist says, our times are in God’s hands. And that at the appointed time, a time known only to him, he will bring the full number of sheep into the fold. And we will fully and finally, as the plural you and every single individual you that comprises it, be home. We don’t know when, but we do know that it will happen. As part of the glory of believing that God really is in that much control over life, he can do it and he will do it.

    Christ is building his church and he is with you as you endure the trials he sends in order to perfect you in his grace. Know the love of God the Father which sent Christ to redeem you. Know the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit whose ministry is to comfort and counsel you along your journey home. Know and trust that God knows the plans he has for his people, the thoughts he thinks toward us. Those which are confirmed in the sacrament we’ll observe here in just a few moments. And when in the process of your journey, the reality and the severity of life in a fallen world really does settle in on your hearts. And when you need to cry, cry along with the weeping prophet. Don’t look away from the word of God as inadequate.

    Look to our own understanding as inadequate and to what he has given us. You can cry along with the weeping prophet who says this in Lamentations 3. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Let’s pray. Thank you, our God and heavenly Father, that you have not left us lightless or lifeless here in this fallen world.

    You’ve given us your word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. You’ve given us the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, giving us something tangible, something that is seen to strengthen us in our trust in that which is unseen. You have been so good to provide so many mercies every single day of our lives, and in particular on this day, as we gather morning and evening as the plural people of God to worship our Savior, who is risen and reigning at your right hand. We pray for the comfort and the wisdom and the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Oh God, that he would guide us ever deeper into the word that he has provided for us. that we would all the more fully, at times through tears, focus the eyes of our faith upon our risen Savior, in whose blessed name we pray, amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Matthew 16:13-23

    Matthew 16:13-23

    About this sermon

    At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ and Peter confesses, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus says he will build his church on this rock, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Peter plays a foundational role as a leader among the apostles, preaching at Pentecost and taking the gospel to the Samaritans and Gentiles, and the church stands on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the cornerstone. Christ builds his church through his death and resurrection, so even death cannot stop it.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Turn with me, not to John 13, as in the bulletin, but to Matthew 16, which is entirely a change by me, and it happened after I sent this text. because I got a sinking feeling that I had preached this here before, and I try to keep a record of what I preach in different churches, and I couldn’t find a record of it, so I decided to err on the side of caution. Somebody can enlighten me later as to whether I preached on foot washing here from John 13 later on. But we want to open up Matthew 16, especially verse 8. We’ll begin reading from verse 13 in Matthew 16. Before we read, let’s look to the Lord in prayer in hopes of gaining His help as we come to His Word. Our Heavenly Father, we are all the poor, the poor in spirit, and we have received a blessing from You, in You, Lord Jesus, as we look to You and as we trust in You and find a way in this fallen world, the way of salvation, A way of life.

    And this is all because of your finished work, of your life, of your death, of your glorious resurrection. That we’re able to triumph over the wages of sin. and to have eternal life, which we enjoy to some respect now and we look forward to in the coming glory of the resurrection life we have in Jesus Christ. Something we enjoy not simply as individuals, but as the Church of Christ. So we rejoice on this Lord’s Day that we can come together to worship You with one heart and mind, and to know the sweetness of being together as those who need each other in the body of Christ. Be with us now as we open Your Word. We pray, Holy Spirit, that You would illumine our hearts We pray that we will be directed in the way of truth, and that even in some small way, You will change us.

    As we, part of the Bride of Christ, are being prepared, being sanctified by You, Lord Jesus, as You would present to Yourself a glorious Church full of splendor. without spot or wrinkle washed in your blood. We pray all of this in your name, Amen. Matthew 16, beginning in verse 13. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He began asking His disciples, saying, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, some say John the Baptist and others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon, or Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

    And I also say to you that you are Peter, And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And He warned His disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. From that time, Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to you! But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan!

    You are a stumbling block to me. For you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s. This is the Word of God. Suppose I were to ask you earlier this week, this past week, will I see you? in church this coming Lord’s Day.” It was my understanding the Yonches weren’t going to be here, which I always enjoy seeing them. And if I had asked them earlier in the week, will I see you in church this coming Lord’s Day? No, you will not, would have been the reply. And of course, we know when we say, yes, I’ll be there. No, I won’t. that we recognize as Reformed believers that God is sovereign over everything that we plan, and we ought to have the idea, well, whether we say it verbally or not, if the Lord is willing, I’ll be there.

    And we often say that, and that’s fine. Sometimes it can be used in a very trite way, but it’s fine to keep that idea in our head and to say, Lord willing, I will be there. Because we know that we have no control over what is going to happen in that day. Remember, as James said to those merchants, he said, we’re going to go to this town or that town, and we’re going to stay there for a year, and we’re going to buy and sell, and we’re going to make a profit. And he tries to reason with them, and he says, look, you have no idea what is going to happen even in the coming day. What is your life? It’s a vapor. It appears for a little while, and then it’s gone. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall do this or that.

    And we recognize that. But we know when we come to God’s Word and He says, I will do this or I will do that, He is the Lord willing it. And it will take place. It will happen. It will come to pass. His promises are certain. And so when we come to Matthew 16, 18, and Jesus says, I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it, we know it will happen. We know nothing can stop it. That’s what I want us to focus on today, this promise, the certainty of it, to encourage us as the people of God, to encourage this church as part of the body of Christ. Let’s take hope in the certainty of the promise that Jesus will build His church to its completion. Let’s look at this passage as we do that.

    As we take hope in the promise that Jesus will build His church to its completion. Jesus asks. We know the background of this. I’m sure a familiar passage to all of you. asking about who the people say that He is. And there were these various answers. You know, some people say, you’re John the Baptist, and others, Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. Well, what about you? He says to His immediate group of disciples. Who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter, and this is going to come into play as we discuss this text in just a little bit, verse 18. He steps forward as he often does. Quick to speak, Peter was. Sometimes getting things right, sometimes getting them wrong, sometimes making commitments without really thinking them through. And we see twice in this passage.

    One time he gets it right, and one time he gets it wrong. And he says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. You are, as Matthew in a very strong way writes to a Jewish audience to verify that Jesus was the promised Messiah to deliver his people, even though they had quite a bit of misunderstanding about that, which Peter obviously does. Jesus, you are the Messiah. You’re not just a prophet. like John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah. You are the Messiah, the sent one of God. He gets it right. And Jesus pronounces a blessing upon him. Simon, you’re blessed. This confession of yours didn’t come from you. It’s been revealed by my Father, but even so, as it’s your confession, you are blessed, as the Father has revealed this to you.” He spoke the truth.

    He gets it messed up later, and we’ll talk about that. As he discusses the fact that this confession has been revealed by the Heavenly Father, he goes on to say, and I also say to you, you are Peter. And upon this rock, I will build my church. Now, you pull a bunch of commentaries off the shelf on the Gospel of Matthew, you will see there are different ways of understanding this development. Here you are, Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Who or what is the rock? And of course, the Roman Catholic Church makes it very clear in their understanding of the passage. Well, Jesus is clearly saying as he uses a play on words for Peter that Peter is the rock, and Jesus is going to build His church on Peter, and this is a manifestation that Peter is the first pope.

    Without getting into all the supposed evidence they present for that, that’s their understanding. Could this passage hold up this idea of Peter being the first pope historically? It hasn’t. The evidence just simply isn’t there. And the reformers as they come along, Martin Luther as an example, respond to this. idea of Peter being the first pope as taught in this passage and clearly rejected. And very prevalent is the idea that when he says, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, there are two different Greek words used. Petros and Petra. Peter, Petros, rock, Petra. They’re different words and they mean different things. Petra is a stone or a ledge, a piece of rock. And Petra is a massive rock. And as a result, this massive rock of which Jesus speaks here must refer to Christ.

    Well, is that idea present in Scripture? Yes. You go through the Psalms, you’ll see several instances of God being called a rock. Just as David, for example, in Psalm 19 says, May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, as he speaks about the Israelites in the wilderness, says that the people in the wilderness, in the Exodus, drank from the rock, and he says that spiritual rock, the rock was Christ. So that’s the idea. And others will say, another major interpretation of this passage, well, the rock speaks of Peter’s confession. As the pronouncement is made that this confession of Peter’s brings about a blessing because it’s revealed by the Heavenly Father, it must refer to his confession.

    And in both of those ideas, there’s something greater than Peter himself. How are we to understand this? Well, we understand this first in having some sympathy for what happened during the time of the Reformation when the legitimacy of the papal office was being rejected because it just didn’t hold weight with the Scripture and how they would react to this text. But we say, and I’ll talk about it just a little bit, without saying we’re getting this from the Roman Catholic Church, we say that the simplest way to understand this passage is that Jesus is using a play on words. And when He says, You are Peter, which signifies rock, and on this rock I will build my church, he’s speaking about Peter. But that doesn’t mean we have to give way to the idea of the papacy.

    And we’re helped to understand this, not just from the context itself, but the easiest way to understand this is Jesus is using a play on words. But it’s also possible, as it is behind this, the language of Aramaic, which Jesus may have been speaking at this point, that the word for rock in Aramaic, which we get, and you know Peter at times called Cephas, there is an Aramaic word, kepha, which is used, it would have been used twice in this sentence, the same exact word would have been used. Clearly, Jesus is referring to Peter. Does this play out as we see the New Testament unfold? Yes, just very quickly, a couple of evidences for this. After Jesus rises from the dead, in John 21, He pulls Peter apart from all the other disciples. Remember, Peter denied Jesus three times in John 21.

    He’s restored. Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Peter eventually gets frustrated, but he’s restored in a formal way. And Jesus says, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. Peter is pulled aside apart from all the other disciples in a lead way. When the list of the disciples occurs in Matthew 10, We, or the apostles, we read first Matthew 10 to Peter, and then the other ones are listed. It’s as though Peter is given a lead role. When the church receives its formal birth, not that its roots didn’t extend all the way back into the Old Testament, but when the church receives its formal birth in the Book of Acts, when the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost in fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel in Joel chapter 2, And Peter is the one who had already stood up as the spokesman for the apostles, who preaches, and thousands are converted, and the church is formally established.

    It’s Peter who first takes the gospel to the Samaritans, the mixed Jews. It’s Peter that we see in the book of Acts, who first expresses this great openness to the Gentiles, and how the gospel comes to them. Clearly, Peter plays a foundational lead role, not above the other apostles, but a leader among them. So when we come to Ephesians 2.20 and we read about the church being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, The foundation is the apostles and New Testament prophets. Peter’s not above them. The cornerstone is Jesus Christ, we see in that passage, as Peter makes it very clear in 1 Peter 2 that Jesus is the stone of stumbling, and Christians are like living stones. Peter is one among many who has a lead role. So when Jesus says, you are Peter, which signifies rock, and on this rock I will build my church, he’s not somehow establishing the papacy where the Peter has authority over all the other apostles.

    But the Peter has a lead role. That’s the simplest way to understand this. And then he says, I will, in the future, build my church. Jesus dies. Well, he predicts it later on. In verse 21, he shows us this. I’m going to die, I’m going to suffer, I’m going to die, and I’m going to rise again from the dead. And, of course, we know that he ascends up into heaven. Pentecost in Acts 2 occurs after Jesus has ascended up into heaven. How can Jesus fulfill the promise to build His Church if He’s not there bodily? Through the Holy Spirit, of course. And that’s what we see in the book of Acts, as the Spirit is poured out and the Church of Jesus Christ is established. The Spirit, not the Pope. The Holy Spirit is the Vicar of Christ.

    The Puritans were famous for saying that, like John Owen. The Holy Spirit is the Vicar of Christ. If you’ve never heard that word, V-I-C-A-R, it’s one who comes in the place of someone else. The Pope does not have that role, but the Holy Spirit does. How in the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, which is really the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles, how is the church built? Through the work of the Spirit in God’s people. Jesus fulfills His promise. And so it’s no wonder that we see in 1 Corinthians 15 as Jesus is referred to as the last Adam. He’s called a life-giving spirit. Or in 2 Corinthians 3, we read the Lord, speaking of Jesus, is that spirit. Not that somehow Jesus turns into the spirit, but that their work is so closely related that the mention of one is the mention of the other.

    And so the Holy Spirit comes in the place of Christ to fulfill His work. And as we see in the Gospel of John, He promises that He will not leave His disciples comfortless. He will come again. And in that context, He’s speaking of coming through the Holy Spirit to do His work. That Comforter who would come. That One who would guide the disciples in the way of truth. He will build His church. There’s only one other place in the New Testament that Jesus uses the word church. It’s in the context of discipline. Two chapters from now in Matthew 18. And some people will say, well, Jesus clearly could not be speaking about the church the way Paul would later in his letters. He’s just speaking about the assembly of the people. My answer to that is, why couldn’t he?

    Clearly, Jesus knew about the church of which Paul spoke. For example, in Ephesians 5, the greater body of Christ throughout the entire world is bride that he would prepare and sanctify to present to himself in all of its glorious splendor. Why couldn’t he know? As he looks ahead to what would take place in the rest of the New Testament times. Of course he knew. And He promises now, before He dies, He will build it. I mention that because it helps us to understand what He says next. And I like the way the New American Standard words it because it captures the idea. I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. Many translations say, the gates of hell, which has led people to understand this as hell. Jesus is going to overcome hell, and hell cannot stop Him from building its church, the state of torment and eternal damnation.

    Is that true? Yes, of course it is. Is that taught here? No, more than likely not. And the idea of the gates of Hades, which refers to the realm of the dead, is what Jesus is speaking of, as if to say, the very powers of death will not keep me from building my church. And why do I say that? Well, because Hades is more than usually in its context, referring simply to the realm of the dead or death. Second, after Jesus shares these things, in verse 21, he starts to tell his disciples, by the way, I’m going to suffer and I’m going to die. And then I’m going to rise again from the dead on the third day.” Well, Peter had made his confession. You’re the Christ! The Son of the living God. Now he gets upset.

    Because this is not the type of Messiah that the disciples were looking for in their understanding. They’re looking for the Messiah Jesus would become at His second coming riding in on a white horse to conquer all of His enemies. failing to understand that the way to conquer for Jesus was through suffering and dying. And Peter says, No, Lord! This will not happen to you! You’re not going to die! You’re the Messiah! And of course, Jesus rebukes him, Get behind me, Satan! Whether he was speaking directly to Satan or Peter, you know, there’s this debate. It doesn’t matter. Jesus makes it very clear. This idea that he would not die is of men, not of God. He knew very well. Jesus had to die for sinners to conquer the power of death. and death could not hold him because he never sinned.

    He had to rise from the dead. And once he did, he won the victory over death. And so the death itself cannot keep him from building his church. That’s what he’s referring to. Now, you think of this image of gates. And we often don’t think about it. When I go through this passage, even with seminary students, they’re not thinking of this idea. We just don’t really think about it. We have this idea in our head of gates moving towards the church and Jesus, trying to keep it from doing something. But how do we understand gates? Gates are stationary. They either keep something out or they hold something in, right? They don’t move. Well, that’s the idea here. And the best way to understand this, and speaking of the realm of the dead, it refers to the gates that are holding the dead.

    Keeping them in. Keeping them from life. So how are we to understand this image? And once you do, it’s glorious. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Those gates of death. cannot hold back the building of the church because Jesus rose from the dead and the church tramples those gates. Because Jesus has given life, resurrection life, eternal life, and nothing Great hope there is in that. Nothing will keep Jesus from building His church. He will do it. And of course, He’s speaking of the greater body of Christ. Nothing can stop Him. Paul. It makes it clear as it refers to individual Christians within the context of the church in Romans 8. Such a powerful passage. As he runs through a list of heights and depths and anything, nothing, he says in Romans 8.39, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

    Nothing can keep Him from what He is going to do. He will build His church. What a great blessing there is to know that. I know there have been struggles here in this church, Grace OPC. This promise is not a promise for Grace OPC directly, as if to say, this church will always be here. That’s not what the promise applies to. I know there’s uncertainty in your future here. There are concerns with what’s going to happen to this congregation. And they’re legitimate. What encouragement can you draw from this that nothing can stop Jesus from building His greater church? To recognize this, what I told Westminster, OPC, and Wember when we were dissolving, and it broke my heart to do it. There is something greater beyond this congregation. As I said to the families on our last Lord’s Day, we’re all going our separate ways now.

    But we’re a part of something much greater than this congregation. We are a part of the greater church of Jesus Christ, his body, which is manifested here locally. But we’re a part of that. And if it should be like Westminster, that that would ever happen here, And I don’t know that and I don’t want that. I want this church to always be here. For it to flourish and for people to be added and for a reformed witness to go forward into this community and through Pittsburgh and beyond. But if that should take place, if the dissolve should occur. Take heart. There’s something greater going on as families who have been under the ministry of God’s Word are here and have been blessed and have been a part of Jesus preparing and sanctifying His church in its glorious splendor. you can go forth to be used of Him.

    A part of that great building. And here’s the blessing. He is the one building the church. But He uses us. He uses a Peter who denies Him three times to the point of saying, I never knew the man. He uses us as His means. As we see in the book of Acts, to take forth His Word, to perform through the work of the Spirit, to perform this building. What a blessing that we would be considered a part of this. How wonderful is that? We can rejoice in that. We can take hope in that. Remembering. An encouragement. First of all, it does not depend on us. And as the case here for Grace OPC. Do you know what? Whether this congregation continues and is sustained and flourished, which I hope by God’s grace it will be, it doesn’t depend on you.

    It depends on Christ. But then the moment I say that’s an encouragement, I also say, be warned! It does not depend on you. In other words, should you be sustained and flourished, that’s no reason to pat yourself on the back like a Nebuchadnezzar and say, look at all the great things we have done. It is by His grace alone that it has occurred. So we’re to be encouraged and warned at the same time in that recognition. It depends on the one who builds the church through His Holy Spirit. But we can rejoice. We’re a part of that mass of people. You ever hear the term, gate crashers, like you got hundreds of people at a concert or a sporting event and they crash the gate. You got this mass of people coming in and the fence gets toppled over.

    They say about when that happens about 40 percent of the people get in and 60 percent get kicked out or arrested. Sometimes people lose their lives with that. We are a part of the most glorious gate crashing that has ever occurred. The gates of death will be crashed. We’re not trying to get in. We’re getting out to life. And none of us will be lost. Because of the promise of Jesus, I will build my church. Let us take up in that. Let’s pray. Our Father, we thank You. We thank you for this glorious truth that Jesus will build his church. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that through your death and resurrection, this has been made certain that we’re a part of it and you use us. Holy Spirit, you work in our hearts. You work in us to bring this about.

    We pray for this flock here. as a part of something greater, that You will sustain them. You will cause them to prosper. That You will bring Your man to this pulpit to lead these people alongside Pastor Knox. You will do a great work here. Your Word will go forth into this community. beyond in the greater Pittsburgh area and beyond that. You will do a great work by Your grace. And we will take great hope in the certainty of this promise that You will build Your church. Even death itself cannot keep it from happening. And we can rejoice in it. We pray it all in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah

    Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah

    About this sermon

    Matthew’s genealogy continues with Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Jotham did right but left the high places; Ahaz was one of Judah’s worst kings; Hezekiah one of its best. A quiet, faithful life like Jotham’s is no failure. Faith is not inherited: faithful parents can have faithless children and the reverse, and covenant children must believe for themselves. Through this mixed line came Christ, descended from David according to the flesh and declared Son of God in power by his resurrection, humiliation leading to exaltation.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Please turn with me in your Bible to Matthew chapter 1 and to a parallel passage, 2 Kings 15. We’ll read just a few verses from Matthew chapter 1, continuing to read through the genealogy. And we will also read 2 Kings 15, 32 on through 16-4. Today we read the New Testament first. Please give careful attention. This is the Word of our God.

    The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham, Uzziah was the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. Turning to 2 Kings. 1532. In the second year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, became king. He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok.

    He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He did according to all that his father Uzziah had done. Only the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of the Lord. Now the rest of the acts of Jotham and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

    In those days, the Lord began to send Rezin, the king of Aram, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, against Judah. And Jotham slept with his fathers, and he was buried with his fathers in the city of David, his father. And Ahaz, his son, became king in his place. In the 17th year of Pekah, the son of Remeliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, became king. Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before the sons of Israel. He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

    That ends the reading of God’s holy, inspired, inerrant word. May it be a blessing to us, both in its read and in its preached form. Let us ask for grace that that might be the case. Heavenly Father, We thank you for this opportunity to sit under the ministry of your word, and we ask that you would cause us to be rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ, the faithful, obedient son. We ask, oh Lord, that you would cause us to rejoice because of the forgiveness of sins. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. In God’s providence, I have not had many opportunities of late to preach in the mornings, and so we have taken a little bit of a break from Matthew’s genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. But here we are, back at it again.

    Today, as God’s providence would have it, the next name on the list is Jotham. Jotham, who was a righteous king of Judah. He ruled over the southern tribe of the Hebrews. He ruled over Judah. We have had opportunity to study many of the other kings in this list, and I hope that as a result of that, the names of these kings are a little bit more familiar to you.

    And I hope that you recognize them a little bit better than you did previously. Each one of these kings has a story to tell, each one of these people. And many of them, the story that they have to tell, or the story that’s told about them, has to do with something that points to the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the people that we’ve done in the past, in the past weeks, have led very, very interesting lives, significant enough for their lives to be shared with us. But if you were listening carefully to the reading that we did of 2 Kings and the life of Jotham, you may have been struck by nothing at all. Because Jotham, his life seems to be somewhat simple and somewhat basic.

    We read about him coming to his kingship at the age of 25. We read that he reigned for 16 years. That’s common things that we read in the other kings. We read that his mother is Jerusha, who is in a holy priestly line. the line of Zadok, and we read that he lived a life that was right according to God. Now, when we read this, we don’t understand that to say that he was perfect at all, but this was a believer. This is one who trusted and had faith in God like Abraham did, but he was not perfect.

    We read that he was very much like his father Uzziah. We read in Chronicles a similar passage that tells us about Jotham as well. We read that he was just like his father Uzziah, being faithful to the Lord. But he did not do. that deed that Uzziah did. And you may remember what Uzziah did. Uzziah lived for 52 years as a faithful king and the Lord blessed him. But in the latter years, he became arrogant. And what he did was to go into the temple and try to burn incense there. He tried to do the thing that only the priest is allowed to do. And in doing that, he was struck with leprosy. Just one red mark against that King Uzziah.

    52 years of faithfulness, but one wrong answer right there. We read about him that Jotham did just as his father did, except for that one little thing where he went in and became leprous because he took upon himself priestly duties. Jotham was not a fully faithful man. He did not execute his office as well as he could be. Faithful, but a failure in some ways. We read that there was still paganism going on in the land. We’re not told the reasons why Jotham didn’t go the extra mile.

    He certainly would have been within his right when he saw all of this idolatry and all of this wrong to speak out against it and put an end to it. He could have done that, and he should have done that. We have to wonder, was it the fear of man that he did not go that extra mile? He would not have been found as popular.

    He might have had some drama in his life if he had gone the extra mile because the false priests would have fought against him. But we see then that this king lives a relatively simple life. drama free with no major stories. Yes, there began to be wars during his lifetime, but they just began to be. And those wars are not worth mentioning in great detail. When we read Jotham, we don’t read about one who has these interesting facts that stick in our minds. He doesn’t have major sins like King David.

    King David, we remember seeing a woman showering upon her, a roof of her house, and him taking her to be his, having the husband of that woman put to death. and a prophet Nathan coming to him, telling him a parable, and David taking the bait, and David saying, this man must die. And Nathan saying, you are that man. You are the person who sinned in the way that I just described. And David realizing that and putting that into a psalm, Psalm 51.

    We don’t have these fascinating things going on with Jotham. We don’t have about the wisdom of Solomon, like we do with the wisdom of Solomon, where Solomon’s wisdom was known throughout the ancient world so that people came to him to hear him and to see his kingdom. We don’t have that. We don’t have the fascinating facts about Jotham like we do about his father, that he was struck down with leprosy. I don’t think you’d be out of line to say it seems as if Jotham lived a bit of a boring life. Well, I would just ask you if that’s so bad.

    Would you prefer a life of drama upon drama? Or The simplicity of a life in faithfulness certainly could have been more faithful, could have been stronger, could have opposed sin in greater ways, but lived a very casual life, a simpler life. Is it so bad to have a boring life? To live your life Going to work, going to school, worshipping God, and then for six more days, going back into work or for school, and then returning to worship again. Is that so bad?

    Some people would look at that and they would think, that’s just, there’s no action there. But it seems to me, What a wonderful way to live life without that much drama. Certainly life always has good things happening in it. The simple things, the things that come to be appreciated. Getting married if God calls you to that and having children if God calls you to that. Certainly events that are not boring, but we wouldn’t call them drama either. Living a simple life of faithfulness to God.

    I put that forward to you as not something that you ought to find discontentment in, but great contentment. Now that’s not to say that if someone lives a life with drama in it, that that person is out of God’s will or anything like that. It certainly is the case that living a life of sin will cause you to live a life of great drama. But that’s not always the case.

    There are many people who try to live a humble and simple, quiet, pious life, and they’re constantly aggravated by those around them because of it. Read the psalmist and the way that the psalmist is just trying to serve God, but his enemies are coming against him. Certainly the case for preachers as well, those who are called to confront people in their sins and to risk the consequences Oftentimes there can be drama in those sorts of circumstances.

    Certainly in the life of Jotham, there would have been more interest if he had gone the extra mile and pushed out all of the paganism and the false religion out of that land. And he should have. All things told, life can be relatively drama-free. And God blesses what may seem to some, though, as a boring life. And God will say to many people who live a life not making history, not seeking to be known, just keeping their nose down, worshiping God and praising Him and working But after reading about this life of Jotham, relatively eventless, we read about Ahaz. Now there’s a man who lives a life that there’s a lot to say about it.

    For Ahaz was a wicked king, and we You can read about all the events of Ahaz’s life. He comes up in a number of places in Scripture. You may remember the prophet Isaiah, when the prophet Isaiah is talking to a king, and the prophet Isaiah gives a prophecy of the Christ, of the Messiah.

    It’s Ahaz that he’s dealing with. We read that Ahaz was a wicked man who introduced paganism back into Judah in a way that it had not known before. Ahaz tries to make the southern kingdom to reflect the northern kingdom with all of its paganism. And we also read about Ahaz, the way that he sacrifices his son. We don’t need to talk about the other details of his life. It is this sacrificing of his son. We read about the way that he caused his son to pass through the fire.

    This is an awful thing for someone to do. To take a child and desire to please a God, something that the God of Abraham and David have not required. To try to appease a God by making a child into a burnt offering. See the difference between these two men, Jotham. Simple, quiet life. and Ahaz, sacrificing his own dear son that was not dear to him. When we speak of Ahaz, we are speaking of a cruel and heartless man. A man who did not share the understanding that the psalmist had.

    That understanding that we read about in Psalm 127, that children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. How glorious it is to see a family of whatever size, but the Old Testament understanding is that the bigger the better. Each child is like an arrow. And each one is in the quiver. And I have so many arrows in my quiver. How glorious and how wonderful. Because children are a blessing. They’re not simply an inconvenience. They’re not simply a pain. They’re a blessing. And this man did a wicked deed. He does not understand the significance of children. For him, a child is just a tool to get the attention of the gods. Ahaz was an awful man. What should be our assessment of this situation then? Of these two kings? How can such a simple, righteous man give birth to such a wicked son? Is there something wrong with the parents? I want to say yes and no to that.

    How can any faithful, believing parent give birth to a demonic child like Ahaz was? When I say that parents, there’s something wrong and that there’s not something wrong, I mean that both ways. There is something wrong with each and every parent because each and every parent bears upon himself the imputation of the sins of the first Adam. Each parent is a sinner. and is not fully faithful to God in every single way. Every parent, when their child leaves the house, will say, there were things I could have done better. There were sins I committed that I have confessed.

    But the answer to the question if there is something wrong with the parents who give birth to a poisonous viper such as Ahaz is no. In many instances, no. There may be nothing wrong with a parent. They may be raising their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord as best as they know how.

    Teaching this child the Bible and the catechism But for some reason, this child grows up and becomes faithless. And it is a great burden to the parent. It certainly is strange the way that a faithful parent can give birth and have a child who becomes faithless later on. But it’s also strange that a faithless parent can have children who grow up to be believers, who serve the Lord with great zeal and love. How are we to assess this?

    Clearly, our faith in God is not passed down to our children genetically. These things are of the Lord. And we call upon him to have mercy upon all of our children and to have mercy upon all of the covenant children in our church. We are like Jotham, sons of Adam, imperfect people who at best would give birth to imperfect children. We are born in sin and so are our children, immediately in need of God’s saving grace. But while on the pages of Holy Writ we see Jotham and Ahaz, an imperfect father begetting an imperfect son, we look with eyes of faith upon the Lord Jesus Christ and upon His Father. For an imperfect father can only bring about an imperfect son, but a perfect father can bring about a perfect son. And on the pages of scripture, we see what the creed summarizes for us as the one who was begotten, not made of one substance with the father.

    God the Father, perfect in every way. God the Son, perfect in every way. And this is a mystery. Our God is a mystery. We know what begetting is. It’s having children. The concept though, of eternal begetting. The concept of eternal begottenness is something that is beyond our comprehension. God the Father eternally bringing forth the Son. What a great mystery this is. But taken from the Creed, which is taken from the words of Scripture, Jesus Christ was a perfect Son. And when I say perfect here, I mean perfect in every sense of His being. Perfect in His essence. Perfect in His ontological status. Perfect in who He was. Perfection was an attribute of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    The Father begat the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, of her substance, yet without sin. Unlike Ahaz, though Christ was an obedient son, Christ was a perfect son. Christ did not have a sin nature as we do, though he came in the likeness of our sinful flesh. Christ was perfect, and when I speak here, I’m not talking about His essence, His being, I’m talking about in terms of His perfect obedience to the Father.

    The law of God is laid out for the Hebrew people. And Jesus Christ is a perfect law keeper. He fully kept the positive aspects of the Old Testament law. There is not one thing that was undone by him. And the negative aspects of the law, the sin aspects, don’t do this. Christ avoided every single one of those.

    No sin was committed by Christ and no good work was omitted Such an obedient son deserves a great reward. The greatest reward that could ever be given. But what is the reward for Christ’s faithfulness in His life? The reward for the faithful life of Christ is three nails and a crown of thorns. His reward is to be made naked in naked shame for the world to see hanging upon a cross. My God! My God!

    Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? Why did God forsake His Son, the eternally begotten, perfect One, perfect in eternity past, and perfect in this life? Was it because of disobedience? No! He receives this because of His perfect obedience.

    In fact, Jesus Christ going to the cross and suffering that He did, and in the way that He did, was only the furtherance of this obedient Son, faithful in all things, faithful even to the cross and to the greatest humiliation and pain that has ever been known or could be known.

    And we have our hope in Him, because without our faith in a crucified Messiah like Him, we have no hope. But with faith in a crucified Savior like that, we have the guarantee of eternal life, for we are His bride. Confess the Lord and the truth shall set you free. Our catechism tells us that Jesus had a state of humiliation and a state of exaltation. And this is such a helpful way to summarize the life of Jesus Christ in redemptive history.

    Christ’s humiliation is His being born of the Virgin Mary and His living the life that He lived, a meager, humble existence. I would say probably boring for about 30 years. living a life of no consequence to many, it seems. But he was being faithful to God through the whole way, but it was a life of humiliation. For one who is worthy of infinite heavenly glory, this is such a low condescension. He stooped so low That his whole life is a humiliation until he goes to the cross. And the humiliation that he received before that did not compare with the cross.

    But Christ was exalted! And so we have our catechism telling us about Christ’s exaltation, which is His resurrection, and His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and His sitting at the right hand of the Father there, and everything that comes after it. Humiliation unto glorious exaltation. That’s the incarnate life of our Savior. The book of Romans opens up telling us about Christ’s humiliation and His exaltation. And you may go there with me if you want in our closing moments.

    Romans chapter 1, 3 and 4. Very briefly, I want you to see the way that Paul just summarizes what our catechism tells us. Because our catechism oftentimes, the concepts, if not the words, come straight out of the Bible. It talks about Jesus Christ in Romans 1, 3 and 4. And it talks about the Father. in the preceding verses. The Father and the Son, and what the prophets told, and it says concerning God’s Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh.

    That is His humiliation. Everything else in Christ’s humiliation can be subsumed under that. But verse 4, His glorification and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord. The life of the incarnate Christ. Humiliation and exaltation. I want to say infinite humiliation and infinite exaltation. because Jesus Christ was infinitely high and he came so low.

    But when Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, his resurrected body and the person that he is, is not less glorious than he was before. He takes upon himself our nature and he is raised from the dead in that and he is raised to an even higher height of glory, a higher pinnacle, a higher acme.

    But isn’t it interesting the way that he serves? How do kings serve? Well, usually they don’t. Usually kings are served. But the Lord Jesus Christ was a king in his humiliation. And isn’t it amazing the way that Jesus washes feet? He cleanses people’s feet in his humiliation. That is to say, this is the creator of the world washing men’s feet. We’re talking about a low humiliation here. You would think though that that’s the end of Christ’s washing and serving in that sort of way. Certainly you would say, Christ’s humiliation, the washing of his disciples’ feet, that is an obedient son, obedient to the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

    But in his exaltation, he washes as well. He just changes the object that he washes. In his exaltation, he does not wash feet. In his exaltation, Christ the Lord cleanses hearts and he washes minds of their filth. In Christ’s exaltation, Christ still serves you. Though it is so counterintuitive. He is exalted, ought we not to serve Him? Yes, but He serves us. And He serves His bride by praying for her. He serves His bride by interceding for her, and Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for your sins even now.

    And Jesus will finish the work that King Jotham left undone. purging all of the idolatry. But the Lord Jesus Christ, when he completes that work, will not just cleanse some land out in the Middle East. He shall be shown to have cleansed heaven and earth, purifying them and making you able to dwell there. because of your cleansed hearts and minds and giving you holiness and righteousness. He shall complete that work. He purges the idols from your mind and from your soul. And he shall finish that work on that day, infinitely exalted yet stooping to cleanse your heart of idols by his broken body and his shed blood.

    What a faithful son, faithful to his Heavenly Father. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, please renew our hearts and minds. Help us to stand against sin, but help us to do so in the light of Jesus Christ, the One who truly stood against sin, and fought against it, and won the victory over it. We thank you, O Lord, that we are the recipients of your mercy and grace, and we shall be the same for eternity, recipients of that mercy and grace. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. I’d ask you to open your hymnal to page, hymn 179. 179, there we shall sing the first tune of awe. Holy Jesus, how hast thou offended that man to judge thee hath in hate pretended. 179, the first tune.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • One King, One Kingdom

    One King, One Kingdom

    About this sermon

    Matthew’s genealogy names Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, who answered the people’s plea for a lighter yoke with harsh words, so that the kingdom split, with ten tribes following Jeroboam. Even a wise father’s son may go astray, and God’s grace, not family, is the source of faithfulness. The prophets longed for the two kingdoms to be reunited under one king. That promise is fulfilled not in a future political kingdom but in Christ, the one King who gathers one people, Jew and Gentile, into one kingdom.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    to know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction and wise behavior, righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the naive, to the youth, knowledge, and discretion. A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. To understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.”

    Just the introduction to Proverbs while you are turning in the Bible. I know I have them backwards. Allow me to read first Kings 12 first, and then we’ll go to our Matthew passage. We’ll read the entirety of 1 Kings chapter 12. Give a careful ear for when someone reads the Word of God. God is speaking to us.

    May we reverence it Then Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. Now when Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, heard of it, he was living in Egypt, for he was yet in Egypt, where he had fled from the presence of King Solomon.

    Then they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam, saying, Your father made our yoke hard. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke, which he put on us, and we will serve you.

    Then he said to them, depart for three days, then return to me. So the people departed. King Rehoboam consulted with the elders who had served his father Solomon while he was still alive saying, how do you counsel me to answer this people? Then they spoke to him saying, if you will be a servant to this people today and we’ll serve them and grant them their petition and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever. But he forsook the counsel of the elders which they had given him and consulted with the young men who grew up with him and served him.

    So he said to them, what counsel do you give that we may answer this people who have spoken to me saying, lighten the yoke which your father put on us. The young men who grew up with him spoke to him saying, thus you shall say to this people who spoke to you saying, your father made our yoke heavy, now you make it lighter for us.

    But you shall speak to them, my little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Whereas my father loaded you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ Then Jeroboam and all the people came to Ravom on the third day, as the king had directed, saying, Return to me on the third day. The king answered the people harshly, for he forsook the advice of the elders which they had given him, and he spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of events from the Lord that he might establish his word, which the Lord spoke through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. When all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, what portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel. Now look after your own house, O David. So Israel departed to their tents.

    But as for the sons of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them. Then King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was over the forced labor, and all Israel stoned him to death. And King Rehoboam made haste to mount his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel was seen in rebellion against the house of David to this day. It came about when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, that they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over Israel.

    None but the tribe of Judah followed the house of David. Now when Rehoboam had come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, 180,000 chosen men who were warriors to fight against the house of Israel to restore the kingdom to Rehoboam the son of Solomon. But the word of God came to Shemiah the son of God, saying, Speak to Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah, and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, saying, Thus says the Lord. You must not go up and fight against your relatives, the sons of Israel. return every man to his house for this thing has come from me.

    So they listened to the word of God and returned and went their way according to the word of the Lord. Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there and he went out from there and built Penuel. Jeroboam said in his heart, now the king will return to the house of David. Now the kingdom will return to the house of David.

    And this people, if this people go up to offer sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their Lord, even to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah. So the king consulted and made two golden calves.

    And he said to them, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold your God, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt. He set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Now this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan, and he made houses on high places, and made priests from among all the people who were not of the sons of Levi.

    Jeroboam instituted a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which is in Judah. And he went up to the altar, thus he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made. And he stationed, he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. Then he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. even on the month which he had devised in his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the sons of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.” Now let us turn briefly, very briefly, to first Kings, excuse me, to first chapter of Matthew. We continue reading portions of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.

    Verse 5, Salomon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam the father of Abijah. and to Abijac, the father of Asah, signs the reading of God’s holy, inspired, inerrant word.

    Let us go to the Lord briefly in prayer. Heavenly Father, we are grateful, as we often say, for every word that comes out of the mouth of you, our God. Be with us and this time. Be with us by your spirit. Strengthen us by your word. Help us to know our dependency upon you. We are sinners in need of grace, needing to see the glories of Christ, our Savior. May we see that in the preached gospel this day, even by its hearing. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

    I would ask you this morning, Have you benefited from the book of Proverbs? Can you say that you have taken the book of Proverbs to heart and say, as you have read it, I have become wiser. I have begun to understand many things that I would not have known if this portion of God’s word had not been given to me.

    I would think that most every Christian who’s been a Christian for just a little bit of time has come to appreciate the Proverbs in great ways. It’s really one of the most beloved portions of God’s Word, certainly of the Old Testament when we think of those portions that are especially useful to the New Testament Christian. We love the Psalms and we love the Proverbs. of people who read one chapter of Proverbs every day. because there are 31 days in most months, and there are 31 chapters in Proverbs. And so they read them, and they work through the book of Proverbs about 12 times a year.

    I must confess to you, I don’t do that, but I certainly can understand people’s appreciation for doing that. The Solomons are the The proverbs are proverbs, little pithy sayings inspired by God’s word given by Solomon. Now, while you may have benefited from that book by reading it, don’t you think that if you could sit under Solomon’s teaching that you would be in the catbird seat. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to be right there and getting it first hand? Well, we come this day as we’re working our way through the genealogy of Matthew to our fifth sermon.

    We’ve talked about what it means to be, for Jesus to be son of David and son of Abraham, son of Jesse, but to be of the lineage of Rehoboam. Rehoboam is not as well known as some of the major figures in our Bible. It’s not as well known as Moses, David and Solomon and some others. So who is Rehoboam? Rehoboam is the son of Solomon, the grandson of Jesse, excuse me, great, the great grandson of Jesse, the grandson of David. We here, we have Rehoboam, the one who was able to sit under his father’s teaching. He knew the Proverbs surely better than anyone else would have known. There are 3,000 Proverbs that Solomon gave. Not all of them are given to us in God’s Word. Not all of them are preserved. So we come to Rehoboam.

    Will he continue the wisdom with which his father, for the most part, had? You see, God has promised to David that there will be a son to sit on the throne. That is especially fulfilled in Solomon, but it’s going to continue. What we have here in this passage is the next chapter of God’s promise to David. It’s an exciting day when we come to the beginning of First Kings chapter 12. It is a day that has a lot of pomp and circumstance and all kinds of excitement because a new king is going to be inaugurated and anointed.

    This is the son of Solomon, Rehoboam, But in that crowd that day, there was a man with a name that’s somewhat similar, and his name is Jeroboam. And Jeroboam had made himself to be an enemy of King Solomon. So because of that, he has to go to Egypt. He has to flee from Solomon because he was in trouble with him. Now Solomon is dead. Jeroboam comes back from Egypt because he does not want to miss Rehoboam’s inauguration ceremony. So he causes all the people to ask a question.

    Your father was a bit harsh to us. Won’t you show grace and kindness? Won’t you lighten the load for us? You can imagine what it would be. The work may have been too hard. Taxes may have been a bit high. They want some sort of relief And he says Go away for three days and come back to me and then we will talk about it.

    I Now Jeroboam, excuse me, Rehoboam, son of Solomon, being the son of Solomon, what do you think that he would do in that time? Wouldn’t it be best to go before the Lord himself and say, just as my father was, so am I. I am unworthy to guide these people, and I need not riches, I need not fame, I need not victory over my enemies, I need wisdom from on high.

    He sends them away. He’s not like his father, is he? He’s not like his father who, when two prostitutes come before him, before Solomon and they say, this is my son. No, this is my son. He listens to the story. One of their sons has died and one is left and they’re both claiming him. And Solomon says, well, split the child in half and give one half to both. And that was what allowed Solomon to understand that’s the mother and that’s not. There’s nothing like that with Rehoboam, isn’t there? He goes to the elders.

    And he says, what should I do? What ought I to do? And they tell him, if you would be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever. If he had only stopped right there and gone to God and said, is this what you would have me do, Lord? Would you have me come before them and lighten the load and be of service to them and a help to them?

    But you see, the wheels are already in motion for the dividing of the kingdom. Or shall I say, the wheels are already beginning to come off. Sin divides, and the sin of Rehoboam is going to divide God’s kingdom and David’s kingdom if you would be a servant to this people today. I don’t think that thought had even entered into his mind, the idea of being a servant to these people.

    After all, I’m the king. I’m the leader. They are my servants. Isn’t that right? So he goes to his friends. That was common in that time for a young man to grow up with many friends who, while he is being groomed to be the king, they are his council and they are being groomed to be a part of his kingdom, to have high ranks in that kingdom.

    He says, my friends, you’ve known me for all my life. What do you say that I do? They say, you ought to say to them that my little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. What is he saying? Some people would read into this. There’s a certain innuendo about certain body parts not little fingers. I don’t think that is what’s going on here. I maybe could be convinced of that. What he’s saying is, basically, if you thought my father was bad, just wait till you get a load of me. No way to serve a people.

    Well, we can make comments about the way that youth makes great mistakes, can’t we? Some people would say, why is youth wasted on the young? Others would say, elect a teenager while they still know everything. You may have seen bumper stickers and t-shirts that would say things like this.

    But youth is no excuse for the foolish ways of Rehoboam. For we need only read just a few chapters later. And his age is given to us, the age in which he begins to reign. 41 years old. His foolishness, we can’t dismiss as the foolishness of youth, seems to be the foolishness of unbelief. Again, so different than his father. His father was so young when he began to reign. There is a change going on from one to the other. How can a man who sits under the proverbs of Solomon like this, like surely no one else has ever sat under them, how can he be so foolish? It certainly ought to give us pause, should it not?

    There are some who grow up under the greatest parents they could have ever imagined. And they turn out to be terrible, terrible people. Others would grow up under terrible parents. And God gives them wisdom. from on high. He gives them the Spirit. He gives them Christ that saves.

    Certainly ought to cause us to understand that here’s one who surely was not spared the rod. Does not the Proverbs say, spare the rod, spoil the child? Surely it must not have been spared upon him. But what does it happen? He grows up to be a tyrant.

    Certainly, certainly that’s the way we ought to raise our kids. We gain wisdom from the way the Proverbs speak to us. But there will always be exceptions. We do not put too much stock in our parents, in the good ways that they led us, though it is good. We ought not to blame our parents for our horrible childhood. We ought to praise God for his grace to us, to draw us out of a wonderful family or to draw us out of a broken family. To God be the glory in all things having to do with our parents. and our upbringing.

    So the kingdom is divided. The people say, we have no portion with David. But if they have no portion with David, how can they have the blessings of David? They don’t realize. Rehoboam sends his taskmaster out. He sends out Adoram and he says, He tries to bring order to these people. This is Rehoboam throwing Hail Marys to use football language. He’s trying to keep the kingdom together that he has just torn apart. He sends adorem and they don’t adore him. They stone him. What a tragedy that is. So, another Hail Mary.

    He gets together 180,000 men. These 180,000 men are going to bring war upon the northern tribes. What’s going on here is Rehoboam is going to be king of the southern tribes and Jeroboam is going to be anointed king of the northern tribes. The Lord had told him he was going to have 10 tribes. Told Jeroboam that is. So they’re ready for war. Brothers against brothers. A divided kingdom. A civil war.

    But a prophet comes and his name is Shemaiah. Which means, the Lord hears. And Shemaiah speaks. But here, it’s not the Lord who hears. It’s the Lord who speaks. And it is the people who hear. They hear the word of Shemaiah. What does he say? There’s no blood shed today. This splitting of the kingdom is of me. It is of the Lord. God has planned to use the sinful and foolish ways of Rehoboam to split this kingdom. And so, the story goes on to tell us of how Jeroboam realizes that he has these 10 kingdoms on his hands.

    But worship is what unites people, is it not? And worship would possibly reunite all of Israel, that is, the southern and the northern tribes. So he says, what we must do is not allow the people to go down into Judah to worship there for the feasts. He sets up rival worship places.

    He goes to Dan, which incidentally is the tribe by which idolatry is originally entered into the camp of Israel during the time of Moses. And Bethel, which Interestingly is the house of God. So you take those northern tribes and he has one place in the north and one place in the south. He sets up golden calves and he says, Israel, these are the gods that brought you up out of Egypt, the land of bondage.

    Certainly very significant. What else does he do? He sets up feast days. Feast days to rival the feast days of the Southern Kingdom. He doesn’t have any Levites. He takes care of that. He just makes some people into priests. You see the way that sin divides and divides and divides. Think about what he’s doing. He points to these golden calves and he says, these are the gods that brought you out of Egypt. It’s one thing to worship a false god. That is sin. But it is equally sin to worship the true God in a false way.

    Dr. Gidley mentioned briefly in our morning instruction time why we worship the way that we do at Grace Church. We have other churches around, maybe by some accounts more entertaining, rock bands and things like that. We understand that we want to be very careful in the way that we worship our God. We want to worship Him according to what we believe He has told us, not according to our preferences. It’s very easy to slip into worshiping the true God in a way that is false.

    We must be very careful. We must check what we do, our practices against Scripture. Very tragic. Sin divides. So, what do we have? We have two kingdoms, rival kingdoms, with rival worship now. It’s very sad. It begins to set the stage for the rest of, almost the rest of how your Old Testament is going to read. You see, this kingdom is like a plane. that comes apart in the air. And one part begins to fall, and the other part comes up a little bit high, pieces of a plane, before it begins to descend as well.

    The Northern tribes continue in the wicked ways of Jeroboam, worshiping false gods. And in the 8th century BC, The Lord brings the dreaded Assyrians against them from the east, and I take them away. The other piece of the broken plain, which is descending as well, enters into much sin. Southern kingdoms last about two centuries longer and then the dreaded Babylonians, who by that time are the major kingdom of the earth, they come and take away the southern kingdoms. It’s very sad. All from the sin of one man tragedy of tragedies. I don’t need to give you examples of the way that sin divides. It can divide churches, divides marriages and families and schools, divides everything. It’s destructive.

    The Old Testament prophets were looking for a day when this kingdom would be brought back together. I think of Ezekiel 37. When you think of Ezekiel 37, The portion of that that gets most of the air time is the idea of bones, a valley of bones spread out, Ezekiel prophesying to them and them being raised. A picture of our salvation, a picture of our resurrection. But if you read the other half, it’s very interesting.

    The Lord tells Ezekiel, you take a stick And that stick, it represents Judah. You take another stick, and that represents Israel, and you bring these together to a point they become one stick once again. You see, what God is promising Ezekiel, that the kingdom is going to be reunited again. We read just two weeks ago from Isaiah chapter 11, where God is going to gather his people once again. Indeed, there are many places in the prophets where it’s very clear that the prophets are longing for the day when God’s promises will be fulfilled and he will bring those two kingdoms back together. Are you longing for that day? I am not. Neither should you. That day has already come. For the prophecies of the Old Testament are not fulfilled in a future Israel that is still future for us. The prophecies of the Old Testament are fulfilled for us in Christ’s church.

    I would read to you the word from Ephesians chapter 2, where the Apostle writes to Gentiles, and he is speaking of the reuniting of Christ’s kingdom, Christ the son of David. Ephesians 2, 12. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

    For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” In the Old Testament, there is a wall of hostility between North and South. But as it is so often with God’s fulfilling of His prophecies, the fulfillment is greater than the promise. For the Old Testament prophets were looking for a day when simply this one nation would come together. But in Christ, God gathers from the whole world all types of people and he makes them to be under the one king. He makes them to be a holy nation and a royal priesthood. He causes them to have one land, be one people, and have one King.

    Indeed, in Christ, we can say that the Passover is not a past event. For Christ, His blood has been put over our doorposts. We can say that salvation has come upon this house. Those who know Him And it is not simply the gathering of ethnic peoples from one nation that share for the most part a religion and a same heritage.

    We read in Revelation chapter 7 that God is gathering people from every tribe and people and nation and language. Do you see the way that the fulfillment is so much greater? because Christ is gathering by His blood. That’s the thing that unites us all. He is gathering black people and white people, Asian people and Arab people, island people, making all of them one holy nation that shall enter into the new Canaan. and the new Jerusalem.

    In eternity past, the Father and the Son covenanted together. They decided how they would rescue mankind, humankind. We do not know the language that was used, for God’s thoughts and His ways are higher than ours. But can you see the father saying to the son, if you would be servant to this people and you would serve them, you would die for them and give your precious blood to save them for all eternity. And if you would be a servant to this people, you would wash their feet. you would lower yourself and humble yourself that you might be exalted and that they might be exalted to sit at your right hand. Brothers and sisters, I give you Rehoboam, son of Solomon, grandson of David, uniter excuse me, divider of the kingdom. And I give you the Lord Jesus Christ, the uniter or reuniter of the people and of the kingdom once again.

    We, brothers and sisters, are as a pilgrim people, wandering in the wilderness, but we will, just as the people of old, pass through the River Jordan on dry land and enter into Christ’s covenant land, namely the New Jerusalem, which will come down from heaven, the place where it is. Do you understand that David has not crossed into that yet? Moses has not, Joshua has not. Many of them, they went through that land in the Old Testament, but they have not entered into that new Canaan, that new Jerusalem, which is a heavenly land.

    They’re waiting. They’re waiting for their resurrection. They’re waiting for the reunion with all of God’s people They are waiting for Christ the Lord to bring that last day. They are waiting for you. They are waiting for all the rest of God’s elect people.

    For when the last elect person is saved, sometime after that, Christ will bring the last day, and He will cause us to be in a great way, that one king, that one kingdom entering into that land. And it will be forever one land, not two lands. Forever one people, not two people. And there will forever be one king, not two kings. And we will live in that land, which will be indivisible. with holiness and righteousness for all. Amen. Let us pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: Son of Abraham

    The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: Son of Abraham

    About this sermon

    Matthew calls Jesus the son of Abraham. God promised Abraham a great name and offspring as numerous as the stars, a gift of grace, not a reward. Then he told Abraham to offer Isaac, his only son, on Mount Moriah, and provided a ram in his place. Isaac carrying the wood is a type of Christ, but God did not spare his own Son. As Galatians 3 explains, Christ is the true offspring of Abraham, and all who believe in him are Abraham’s children and heirs of the promise.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    At this time, let us open in God’s Word to Genesis 22. Genesis 22 is found on page 14 of your Old Testament. And then our other reading will be from Matthew chapter 1. That is found on page 1 of your New Testament, remembering, again, that the pagination begins again when we go to the New Testament of the Bible, which is in our pews. Here we read of the offering of Isaac. Let us give close attention, for this is the Word of God. Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham.

    And he said, here I am. He said, take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son. Then he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose, and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and I and the lad will go over there and we will worship and return to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

    So the two of them walked on together. Isaac spoke to Abraham, his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

    So the two of them walked on together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

    But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. And he said, do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns.

    And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day. In the mount of the Lord it will be provided. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven.

    And said, by myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you. And I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your seed shall possess the gates of their enemies. in your seat all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and went together to Beersheba and Abraham lived at Beersheba.

    Let’s open to Matthew chapter 1, just reading a few verses there. 1, 1, and 2, and then 17. Hear the Word of God once again. The record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. and then down to 17. So all the generation from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations.

    So in the reading of God’s Holy Word, let us briefly pray. Our Heavenly Father, We are without Christ if we do not believe in Him. Help us to believe in Jesus Christ. Help us to know Him. Cause us, O Lord, to rejoice in our Savior and to not lose heart and to not lose faith. Strengthen our faith. Give us assurance of even our own salvation. Do this by giving us assurance of all that your Son has done. For we understand, we believe, we know that He has died and He rose again for us. Empower us this day, O Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen. Well, we continue our study of the genealogy of Jesus, which is in the first chapter of Matthew.

    Last week, we looked at what it means to be son of David. This week, we look at what it means to be son of Abraham. That is supposed to mean a lot to us. Jesus Christ is son of Abraham. But what does it truly mean that Jesus is the son of Abraham? Is it even that significant to be called a son of Abraham?

    At church camp, many young people sing a song that goes something like this. Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let’s all praise the Lord. Maybe many of you sang that. It’s been around for a long, long time.

    Well, if we’re gonna say that Jesus is son of Abraham, we’re gonna think, that’s really significant. But if everyone at church camp is son of Abraham, Maybe it’s not so significant at all. John the Baptist seemed to speak about being a son of Abraham as somewhat common as well. You see, the time that John the Baptist went about preaching and preparing the day of Jesus’ coming and his ministry There were people who said, we are the sons of Abraham, so we’re blessed. Basically, people who are used to being coddled their whole life say, they’re there.

    You’re a son of Abraham. And John says, son of Abraham means nothing. God can take these stones and make them into sons of Abraham. So Jesus is son of Abraham. That’s supposed to be significant, but everybody at church camp is, and God can just raise these stones to be sons of Abraham. Maybe it’s not that significant at all. Or maybe it is very significant that Jesus Christ is the son of Abraham.

    We’re gonna look into that, we’re gonna delve into the significance of what that means. But first, we must just do a study of Abraham’s life. I might just go through some of the high points that are revealed to us in God’s Word about this one. In order to understand what a son of Abraham is, we have to understand who Abraham is.

    This might be a little bit of review for some of you, but for some of you, you may be hearing this for the first time. Abraham was born Abram. God is going to change his name later on. It’s in the early chapters of the book of Genesis we read about Abram, who’s later Abraham.

    And he lived in one of the most fabled cities of the ancient world, named Ur. And that city was famous for being a rich suburban community with high culture, with fabulous architecture, with vast wealth, with comfortable homes, with music and art. Sounds like Swickly a bit.

    This was 4,000 years ago this man lived But we are told in the book of Joshua that Abraham worshiped other gods. He did not worship the God who created all things. God calls him to leave civilization as he knew it, to travel to Canaan. And there he lived almost 100 years.

    So the Lord comes to Abram and he says, I will bless you and make your name great. In you, Abram, all the families of the earth will be blessed. How about that? God comes and says, I’m going to make your name great. There are a lot of people who are working very hard to make their name great. And who wouldn’t want their name to be great? We certainly would love for people to speak well of us in every household in the land. There are many people who are working very hard at that.

    But God bestows this upon Abraham by grace. It’s not anything that Abraham did. God shows his grace and kindness and says, your name is going to be great in all of the land. It is God’s prerogative to raise up some of his servants and bless them beyond their own understanding, anything that they could even fathom. And that is what he does. to Abram. He blesses him. But at that time, Abram had no children. And that was a perplexing problem for him, as it would be for anyone who has an estate the size of Abram’s. So he complains to the Lord. Because who’s going to take over the estate when he passes it on?

    In chapter 15 of Genesis, we have one of the high points in redemptive history. The Lord comes to Abram and he says, I am your shield and I am your great reward. God says he’s going to bless him, but he protests there. He says, you haven’t blessed me. You said I’m going to have a son. You said I’m going to have seed, but you haven’t given me that.

    And if I were to die, there would be a man named Eliezer of Damascus who would just take over my estate. Apparently Eliezer of Damascus is one who was high up, maybe the highest ranking member in Abram’s household. And that’s the person who’s going to take over. He has no one to give all of these things to that comes from him.

    So the Lord takes him outside of his tent And he points him to the stars. And he says, look toward heaven, Abram. Number the stars if you are able to number them. Then God said to Abram, so shall your offspring be. Can anyone count the stars? It would be a very difficult thing to do for those of us who have tried it. It doesn’t end well.

    It’s at that point Abram believes God and it is accounted to him as righteous. One of the highest points of the Old Testament, as I said. He believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. What this means is that he was reckoned as righteous before God. By simply believing what God said, by trusting in God’s word, he has a right standing before God. It’s very important that we understand this passage, Genesis 15, where we read about this.

    We understand that we are sinners as Abraham was, as Abram at the time was. How are we going to be right by God? How are we going to be right before him? Is there an amount of things that we can do that will eventually reach a point where God will say, now I accept you.

    You have done enough good works. Not at all. Salvation is of the Lord. God gives His servants, whom He wants to bestow upon them, He bestows upon them faith as a gift. And that faith is the instrument that makes us right with God. For we throw ourselves upon God fully, acknowledging that He is right and that He is just, that we are unholy, and He saves us by faith, and by faith alone. He saves us by faith plus nothing. Abram is the model of that. He is the picture of one who has faith, and we are all to have faith in God and trust Him, for He is worthy to be trusted and praised.

    It’s just a couple chapters later, Genesis 17, where we have, again, another high watermark of God’s redemptive history. In Genesis 17, we have circumcision. The whole household of Abram is to be circumcised. Circumcision is to be a sign and a seal of the faith that Abram By that time, this is chapter 17, I can quit calling him Abram. Abraham had.

    It is an external ceremony. that is a picture of what God does within the person. It is, we could say, a cutting away of that which is excess. And if we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, guess what? We have had a circumcision of our hearts. God has cut away that which is vile. God has done heart surgery upon us. very significant that the whole household of God was to be circumcised in the Old Testament. All of the seed, or all of the offspring, were to be circumcised. All of the men, all of the boys at that time.

    Have you ever contemplated what is the the common what brings chapter 15 and 17 of Abram’s life together what brings the stars looking at the stars in the sky and circumcision what I mean is this when we look at the stars there aren’t too many we have what is called light pollution City lights drown out, they choke out the lights that we would see.

    So only the brightest stars shine for us to see, unless we go to the country, we go out of town. But even then, I’ve read of Alaskan religions that they’re losing their religion. Because they’re based on the stars, and city life is getting rid of that because they can’t see the stars anymore. Well, obviously, the right option is to become Christians. That’s what we’d hope, right?

    Abram lived outside of town. He moves away from Ur, and he was a wilderness wanderer. he would have had a lot of stars in the sky. There was no light pollution. It was very dark. Now the thing that brings the stars of the sky and looking at them and circumcision, what I’m about to say, I don’t want you to think that I’m simply being provocative or crass. What I want you to understand is these are real people in our Bible. real historical people who struggled with all kinds of things. Real things.

    Abram was an older man. And as an older man, some may testify to this, when you reach the point of middle age or so, things begin to change. The male bladder and the male prostate so that he’s not as young as he used to be, he begins to have to go to the bathroom multiple times in the night. And so every time Abram would wake up to go to the bathroom, leaving the tent, there he was, the most simple, the most basic of human activities.

    The sand, must have reflected the stars. And there he looks up, reminded of God’s promise with circumcision, reminded of God’s promise with the stars, sometimes multiple times in the night. But also, in his intimacy with his wife, circumcision once again.

    You see, the most basic and drab of human activity to one of the highest heights of his relationship with his wife, God is testifying to Abraham that you’re going to have seed, that you’re going to have seed that is going to be innumerable. You won’t be able to count them all. And that is exactly what God does. God in his kindness promises this.

    But as we read the testimony of Abram, who becomes Abraham, and believe me, we’re just gonna really, we only read chapter 22. We could have read the whole thing, but I spared you that. Let me just read you some of the promises that God gives. Genesis chapter 12, seven.

    Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring will I give this land. Look at this land, it’s going to go to your offspring, to your seed. Genesis 13, 15, all the people that you see, I will give to you. And all the land that you see, I will give to you and your offspring forever.

    And then Genesis 17, 7, once again, talking about offspring or seed. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

    If we read Genesis, who is the seed of Abraham? very clearly the seed of Abraham is Isaac, the child of the promise. He is the seed. But it goes beyond that, because God brings out of Isaac, Jacob, out of Jacob, the 12 tribes, ultimately with some distinction, and those 12 tribes They end up being so numerous that they cannot be counted. Isaac is son of Abraham. But all of those innumerable people are sons of Abraham as well. And some of the rival nations, when they went into battle with them, saw that they covered the face of the earth. They were an innumerable number to people. God knew the number.

    But before all those things happened, Abraham had to be tested. And that’s why we read Genesis chapter 22. Surely a heart-wrenching thing for Abraham to endure. The Lord says, you must take your son, your only son, and you must sacrifice him Many of you, being parents, you just think, I could not imagine slitting my son or my daughter’s throat. But as anomalous as it may seem, God told him, you must do that.

    Now we are told later that this seed Abraham had had confidence in what God could do for this seed. Hebrews 11, 19 tells us that Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. That is what Abraham was counting on. He was hopeful in that.

    He says, the Lord has promised me great things. and how can he allow me, how can he make me snuff my son’s life from existence? Surely God is going to raise him from the dead, and out of this, my only seed, God is going to bless all of the nations. But just in the nick of time, Just as he is going to put his son to death, we hear those words that are so comforting. Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.

    We see that Isaac, in one sense, is a type of Christ. But ultimately, the type of Christ is not Isaac there. For Isaac is moved off of the place where the burnt offering is going to happen. Because as Abraham said would happen, it does happen. The Lord will provide the sacrifice. And it was not a lamb at that point, it was a ram. And that became the sacrifice. Really that ram ends up being, as I said, the type or the picture of Christ.

    But when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and the father smiting the son, there is no one who held back his hand. There was no one who could call to God the Father and say, God the Father, hold back your hand from this, your only begotten Son. We read of the power of our God. Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel chapter four, learns of God’s great power. And he specifically says there, in four, I believe, 35, I believe it is, that no one can hold back God’s hand. No one can say to him, what have you done? No one will be able to say that. Nebuchadnezzar the king, he felt God’s wrath, at least mildly. He understood that no one can hold back God’s hand. No one holds back God’s hand from smiting His Son so that we might be found in Him, so that we might have the forgiveness of sins, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and in Christ alone. Paul the Apostle writes about all the things that Abraham endured.

    But if you would, open to Galatians chapter 3 if you’d like, or I’m going to read Galatians chapter 3 to you. Specifically just verse 16 I’m going to read, not the whole chapter. Listen to what Abraham, what Paul says about Abram, Abraham. Now the promises were made to Abram, Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one. And to your offspring, who is Christ. many times in genesis the lord says i’m going to bless your seed i could count i read some of them for you and as you read it you it really appears to be the case that god is talking about the multitude of his seed the many many people who eventually become the ethnic people of Israel.

    That’s the way you’d think about it as you’re reading it. But Paul understands differently, and Paul understands better even, that embedded within those promises of seed, there is a promise of seed. What I mean is, collective singular. Paul is using the collective singular. He says seed. Even Greek and Hebrew you can do this. Both languages.

    You can speak of seed and you can mean many or you can mean one. It’s like us when we think of deer. You have one deer or you have many deer. You don’t have Lots of deers, right? Equally so, you can have seed or you can have many seed. It’s all the same. What I talked to you about last week was, I use the language again, the total eclipse of the sun.

    God promises David a son to sit on his throne and God gives the Lord Jesus Christ so that there’s Solomon, but Christ comes and he takes the place so that ultimately we see that the long-term fulfillment is what it was really about. The same goes on here.

    When God promises that there is going to be seed, it’s Isaac. But it’s also all of the many Israelites, all of the Hebrew people, but Jesus Christ, son of Abraham, Matthew 1, 1. He is, in a special and in a significant way, the one that it was really about.

    So that you have Isaac, but Jesus comes along and replaces him, and he eclipses that son so that Jesus is truly Abraham’s son, the one that was looked for, the one who was promised. And Abraham looked forward to Jesus’s day. Jesus said so in John chapter 5, John chapter 8, 56, Father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. When Abraham heard that, He somehow was looking forward to Jesus Christ, the Messiah who was going to come. So we have Jesus eclipsing Isaac.

    But it is certainly the case that that song is right. If we are trusting in Christ, if we are trusting in God alone, then we are sons of Abraham. Not in the same way that Jesus is, but by faith, for Paul tells us as much. He says, know then, Galatians chapter three, that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham. and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, i.e. us. God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. If we have faith like Abraham, then we are blessed.

    But if we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are Abraham’s sons. So we can say in a very real way, Father Abraham had one son. One son had Father Abraham. And that’s true, Jesus Christ is the son of Abraham, par excellence. But by faith in Christ, we are sons of Abraham as well. And we inherit an eternal and heavenly New Canaan land. It is ours by God’s gift if we have faith in Christ. Let us pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: Son of David

    The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: Son of David

    About this sermon

    Matthew calls Jesus the son of David. In 2 Samuel 7 the Lord promised David a son on his throne whose kingdom would never be taken away, as Saul’s was; Solomon was an immediate fulfillment. When David’s line seemed to fail, Psalm 89 asked where the Lord’s steadfast love to David had gone. Hebrews applies the promise “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” to Jesus. The near fulfillment is eclipsed by the greater one: Christ, raised from the dead, reigns forever on David’s throne.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Reading from Matthew chapter 1, the genealogy. The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Now verse 6, Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah. And then lastly, verse 17, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations.

    So ends the reading of God’s holy, inspired, inerrant word. May it be a blessing to us all here today. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the beauty of this day. This day will not be beautiful unless you make good upon your promises to be with us by your Spirit and by your truth. And this, this practice, this activity, which is foolishness before the world, but which is mighty and powerful and glorious in heaven and glorious to your saints, to those who are believers in Christ.

    We might even say to those who are knowers of Christ. For we know the Lord Jesus Christ. For to know Jesus Christ and to know you is to have eternal life. Bless us, O Father, in this, the preached word. In Jesus name we now pray. Amen. I would like to remind us of what we talked about last week because it is pertinent to what we’re going to talk about this week. But also it is the case that many people were gone last week and weren’t unable to be with us. Last week we read the entirety of Matthew’s genealogy and we looked very broadly at that. I pointed out to you last week the way that Matthew breaks this down.

    He breaks down redemptive history or God’s story of redemption into 14 generations and then 14 generations and then 14 generations with each in between those 14 generations major portions or major eras of church history of the Old Testament, of redemptive history of the Old Testament. And what I put forward to you is that what Matthew is doing is proclaiming Jesus Christ to be the Sabbath and he is putting forward a literary week What he’s doing is taking 14-14-14, which comes to 7-7, 7-7, and 7-7. Six sevens. Six literary days, in a sense, before the Lord Jesus comes.

    Well, while we looked at that last week and the way that Jesus is our Messiah and He’s the dawning of a new Sabbath day because Jesus in this literary week, He is the sinless one. We want to look not so broadly this week. We want to just focus in on what Matthew has to say. Some of the specifics of what he talks about.

    You might look at the first verse where it says, the genealogy of Jesus, son of David, son of Abraham. Now last week, we wanted to look at this in the way that a first century Hebrew, a first century Jew would have read this gospel. equally so we want to do that today we want to see what it would mean for a first century jew to see jesus this messiah this christ this anointed one is son of david and so we look at that today David was a man who was in a covenant relationship with God.

    Certainly all of us are in covenant relationship with God. We’re all either covenant breakers in Adam or we are covenant keepers in the Lord Jesus Christ. But within Old Testament redemptive history, certain people, God lays down covenants. Now a covenant is normally just an agreement between two people. They might shake hands or they might sign a paper to say that they are in covenant with one another. A married couple is in covenant with one another. They both agree to be so. But that’s not the way that biblical covenants work, at least in redemptive history. There’s no bartering or discussion. David’s not going to talk to God and talk about the stipulations and bargain. God comes and He lays down a covenant.

    He says, this is the way it is going to be. Sometimes those covenants have burdens laid down upon the person, but there are rewards for obedience. And David must obey the Lord. But in this situation in which we find ourselves, 2 Samuel chapter 7, David has a little bit of peace. Understand, he is a man of blood. He is a man who has endured much war in his lifetime, but God gives him rest on all sides.

    And he has some downtime, some free time. David is one who made good use of his free time, usually. When he was making good use of his free time, he’s praying and he’s writing Psalms to be used in the Old Covenant. So he’s thinking, what can I do? How can I serve the Lord? What can I do for him? He says, I’ve got a great idea. I want to build a house for the Lord. How can I live in a house or in a palace myself when the Lord lives in a tent? Now, how does the Lord live in a tent in the Old Covenant? The Lord lives in a tent in this way.

    We must understand the Lord fills heaven and earth. Nothing can contain him. But the furniture of the Old Testament, particularly the Ark of the Covenant, that major piece of furniture that the Hebrew people took around with them for 40 years in the wilderness, It lives in a tent. That is a sign of God. God is with his people when that particular piece of furniture, the Ark of the Covenant, is with the people. God is with them, and they are with God. So Nathan, he says, sure. Sounds like a great idea.

    Do whatever is in your heart. But it’s not long after that, it’s just later that night, that the Lord reveals himself to Nathan the prophet and he says, you need to tell my servant David a few things. First of all, you tell him he does not need to build a house for me. Have I asked for this? It certainly is an important lesson to learn that we do what God commands and not do what he has not commanded. God said, have I asked for that? Have I asked for you to build a house for me? No, I have not. And really God pours it on a bit saying, have I lacked anything while I have been living in a tent? Obviously the Lord, he lacks nothing. So I didn’t ask for it, and I have not lacked. And so the Lord kindly turns down David’s offer, doing it through Nathan the prophet. But never fear, David.

    It is not as if the house of the Lord is never going to be built. The Lord will have a house built for him. And the Lord is going to build up David’s house as well. You see the grace of God here. Here’s this one who maybe somewhat misled, but had the right motive, says, I want to serve God in this way. I want to build him a house. David’s not asking for a house for himself, But the Lord in his grace and kindness says, you don’t need to do it, but I’m going to build up your house. That is what I am going to do. God’s grace, God’s kindness. But how is the Lord going to build the house of David?

    It is in verse 12 where it begins to explain this and ultimately it’s going to be a family and a kingdom and a person, though it does come with a literal house at first. But God says to David, I’m going to give you a son. and he is going to sit on your throne. You’ll always have a son that’s going to sit on the throne. And I will not take away the kingdom from this son.

    Now this is very important language for David to hear. He says, if this son of mine sins, it won’t be the case that God takes away the kingdom from him like he did to Saul. It’s important as we read God’s word, we read it in context. What happens to Saul? He sins and then the kingdom is taken away from him. He’s no longer the king of Israel because of the sins that he committed. Now, four chapters later, four chapters after 2 Samuel 7, David is going to sin. And we have that psalm of repentance, Psalm 51, where he says there, after having sinned, do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

    It’s very important that he asks this, David. Some people would look at that, where David says, do not take your Holy Spirit from me, and they read it as if David is saying, do not take salvation from me. Do not take eternal life from me. There are people who say, who think that you can lose your salvation, and that’s a proof of it. Now there are others that would say, he’s praying that, but he’s just praying it in a hypothetical sense. He knows that once he is saved, he cannot be unsaved. See, to read it either one of those ways is to read that amiss.

    That passage where he says, do not take your Holy Spirit from me, He’s saying, do not take your Holy Spirit from me as you did to Saul. You took the kingdom away from him. You took the spirit away from him. And he was molested by many types of spirits after that. And so David is saying, yes, I have sinned.

    Please don’t let me lose the kingdom. That is the importance of what God is promising to David, that when David has a son and that son sins, God is not going to take the kingdom away from that one either. God is going to be merciful and gracious to that son. Undeserving mercy and grace is going to be his. David’s house, David’s throne, and David’s kingdom is going to be built up. That is the promise. that God gives.

    Now we must understand that in a very real sense the Lord does fulfill this prophecy in Solomon. For Solomon does all the things that are promised here in a very real sense. You might go look at first Kings 5 through 8 where we have very careful descriptions of what Solomon does. Solomon builds the house of the Lord, and he also builds a palace for himself. He makes a deal with Hiram, one of the fellow kings, to get some of the wood and he builds it, and it is glorious.

    You can read about it. There must have been nothing like it in all of the ancient Near Eastern world. I can’t imagine anything comparing to it. Sure, the pyramids must have been grand, many other temples to other gods, but this must have been something to see. The Lord fulfills it. God has been kind. setting a son to sit on his throne, giving him peace, building up David’s house.

    But it’s not long after that that the kingdom is going to be divided. After Solomon passes, his son Rehoboam takes over, and he makes some very terrible youthful mistakes that end up splitting the whole kingdom. So we might explain just in broad strokes what goes on in our Bible. All of the Israelite nation, it is split up with Rehoboam, the literal son of Solomon. He’s in the south, and he rules in the southern kingdom. But above him is Jeroboam, Jeroboam was a wicked man who brought idolatry and worshiping false gods into the community.

    And it is a split kingdom after that. All of the northern tribes, all of the kings are wicked. None of them is commended. but some, but not all, of the southern kings are commended for their righteousness and for their works and for their trust in the God of heaven and of earth. But what happens after that? The sinfulness of the northern kingdom spiraling out of control, the Assyrians come and take them away. The southern kingdom lasts a good while longer, but the righteousness of its kings, the righteousness of its sons of David, are not righteous enough. And eventually, generations later, the Babylonians come and take the southern kingdom away.

    And so, what does that do to the prophecy? The prophecy is that a son is going to sit on the throne, fulfilled in Solomon, but there seems to be a continuation of it, or there should be a continuation of it forever, that always and forever God is going to have a son of David, maybe generation after generation after generation, but the sons have been unfaithful. God never took the kingdom away from Solomon, but he does take it away many generations from those who come after him. So what are we to do with this sort of conundrum? God says a son’s going to sit forever, and a son is not sitting on that throne during the time of the exporting the exile to Babylon.

    It was right in the Old Testament for the covenant people to complain to the Lord, not against Him, but to complain to Him on the basis of things that He has promised but has not yet fulfilled. To pray and to pour yourself out and say, Lord, You promised this, this, and this, and You have not brought it about. If you were to look and meditate upon Psalm 89, you see just such a one. The psalmist there, his name is Ethan the Ezraite.

    And he complains to the Lord, he says, Lord, don’t you remember what you said? Don’t you remember what you promised? Psalm 89, 49 says, Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. You think, don’t you remember? Aren’t you going to be faithful to what you said?

    He is reminding the Lord even before that, before verse 49 of Psalm 89 in 89 29 he recites the words back to God he recites the the promises that God gave he says I will establish his offspring that is David’s offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens God promised it and the psalmist says please Lord I I’m being mocked. Your people are being made fun of because you won’t make good upon your covenant promises.

    Now the Psalm 89 has a heading, as I said, Ethan the Ezraite. Who is Ethan the Ezraite? You might think with the way that this psalm reads, Psalm 89, you might think that this is a psalm that was composed during the time of the Babylonian exile. But what are we to do with the headline that says, Ethan the Ezraite? Ethan the Ezraite is named one time in our Bible.

    He’s named in 1 Kings chapter 4, right at the end. I believe it’s 31. You might be thinking, I know what happens in the early parts of 1 Kings. That does not sound like a Babylonian exile. Ethan the Ezraite is compared with Solomon because Solomon’s wisdom is being spoken of. And the writer of 1 Kings is saying Solomon was wise. He was even wiser than Ethan the Ezraite. What are we to do with that? Exile’s not coming until generations later when they’re taken off to Babylon.

    Is it possible that Ethan the Ezraite is not a Babylonian exile? Is it possible that the writer of Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezraite, is the same Ethan the Ezraite who is compared with Solomon? That is to say, Ethan the Ezraite is a wise man, but oh Solomon, that is a wise man. Is it possible that Ethan the Ezraite was there compared to Solomon, continued to live, saw Solomon’s death, saw the rising of Rehoboam, his son, and then saw the splitting of the kingdom And then from that he writes this psalm.

    As if the people are already in exile. Already in exile because the kingdom is split. It does not look like the promises that God gave to Solomon. It’s very possible. In fact, I believe it to be so. That this one, Ethan the Ezraite, lived that long so that he was able to see the splitting of the kingdom and the torments that must have come upon him when he saw this. God was under no covenant obligation to answer Ethan the Ezraite’s prayer right away. But God promises, therefore, it is going to happen. And so, it does happen.

    We could say that Matthew answers Ethan the Ezraite’s prayer. He answers it in Matthew chapter one. Jesus, the genealogy of Jesus, son of David, son of Abraham. What are we to make of this? How are we to understand our Bible? The way that we ought to understand any prophecy is that God gives an immediate fulfillment And then he gives a long-term fulfillment. This is not all of his prophecies, but especially the covenantal ones. So what is the immediate fulfillment of 2 Samuel chapter 7?

    It is Solomon in a very, very real way. But there is also that long-term fulfillment. We could say the eschatological fulfillment. Fancy word just means the end of days. And when Jesus comes, that is the beginning of the end of days. It is the dawning of the end, the eschaton, which is what that means.

    We see this as we’ll see it next week with Abraham. Abraham has a promise that a son’s going to come. Immediate fulfillment, Isaac. Long-term fulfillment, the Lord Jesus Christ. Immediate fulfillment here, Solomon and his glorious kingdom and building up the house of David in that way. But the long-term fulfillment is that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to be that king Listen to what the writer to the Hebrews says. To prove that Jesus is great, to prove that Jesus is divine, that he’s superior to angels and eventually to the Old Testament law.

    Hebrews 1.5. Just listen very carefully. You’ve heard this recently. For to which of the angels did God ever say, I will to be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” Where have we read that? We read that in 2 Samuel chapter 7. The apostle who wrote Hebrews understands that ultimately the prophecies that are made in 2 Samuel chapter 7 are about the Lord Jesus Christ. What we have when we have Old Testament covenant prophecies with our immediate and long-term fulfillment, something I like to call the total eclipse of the sun.

    But it’s different than a solar eclipse. You think of a solar eclipse, you see, the sun gets covered up by something else. The sun is there, but you can’t see it anymore. But what I want to say about Old Testament prophecies and the way that they’re fulfilled in Christ is it is a total eclipse of the sun in the sense that Solomon is there as the legitimate and true fulfillment until the Lord Jesus comes and he eclipses Solomon in all of his glory. The apostles understand that the glory of Solomon has been surpassed. The Lord Jesus Christ has come so that they wouldn’t even talk of Solomon. In Acts chapter 2 verse 30, Peter’s preaching, he says, David, being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ.

    Isn’t that significant? In Peter’s mind, in the Hebrew, the writer to the Hebrews mind, all of the Old Testament prophecies are about Jesus. They don’t even speak of the things that come before. It is about Christ. So what is the burden that is laid down upon the first century Jew who reads this, reads this genealogy of Matthew, which as I said last week, would be very offensive in many ways to a first century Jew.

    Son of David. They know what that means. This one, Jesus the Christ, is God’s Son, the Messiah. If you read through the book of Matthew, it talks about the Son of David a lot. Many people call Jesus, Son of David. In closing, I’ll just mention a few of them to you. In Matthew chapter 12, a demon possessed man is healed by Jesus and the crowd wonders, is this the son of David? In Matthew chapter 15, a Canaanite woman says, son of David.

    In Matthew chapter 20, two blind men call Jesus son of David. It doesn’t mean as much to us, but it meant a lot to a first century Jew. So if any first century Jew who is reading Matthew’s gospel from beginning to end, sees, son of David, son of David. It’s almost like these would be in bold and in 18 point font, son of David, every time he would read it. The crowds on the way to Jesus’ crucifixion before they knew he was going to be crucified, called him son of David. Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. So who calls him son of David?

    A blind woman, a dirty pig and lobster eating Gentile. Crowds of people. Matthew is an evangelist. hoping that people would come to believe that Jesus is the Christ. A Gentile woman knows Jesus is Son of David. A blind man knows. If a Gentile woman knows, and if a blind man or two blind men are able to see that this is the Son of David, Why do you not see that this is the son of David and David’s greater son?

    That would be the implication of Matthew’s gospel. You have no excuse. Clearly this is the son that God has exalted. This clearly is the son who died for his people and was raised from the dead, as the Old Testament scriptures clearly foretold and clearly proclaimed. First century Hebrew would have no excuse And neither do we. May He be exalted in our hearts, because He is exalted outside of them. He is exalted in heaven, and His name is praised upon the earth. Let us pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: A New Beginning

    The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: A New Beginning

    About this sermon

    Matthew opens his gospel with “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” echoing the generations of Genesis. Written for Jewish readers, the genealogy announces a new beginning, a new creation. A first-century Jew might be offended by the sinners it names, yet all are sinners and none can look down on others. As God rested on the seventh day after creation, Christ was enthroned at God’s right hand as Lord of the Sabbath, and believers find rest in him.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Genesis chapter 2 is our first reading. We will read four verses from there. That is on page 1 in the Old Testament and most of the Bibles that are in the pews. And then let us also turn to the New Testament, where we will read Matthew chapter 1, 1 through 17. That is also on page 1 in most of the Bibles that are in the pews. Let us give careful, close attention for when someone reads the Bible God is speaking to us. May we revere him. Hear the word of God.

    Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh day, God completed his work, which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord made earth and heaven.

    Now let us turn to Matthew chapter 1. I would encourage you not to lose heart as we are reading through these verses in Matthew chapter 1. It is a long list of names. Hopefully you will see the significance of it afterwards. Matthew chapter 1, the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah. the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac 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 Aminadab. Aminadab the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah.

    Solomon was the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa. Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah. Uzziah was the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Ammon, and Ammon the father of Josiah. Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. After the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah became the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the father of Abihuth, and Abihuth the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor.

    Azor was the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud. Eliud was the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matan, and Matan the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. So, all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations.

    Thank you for your endurance through that. May the Lord bless the reading, but also and especially the preaching of his holy inspired word. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, help us to see the beauty and the glory and the significance of Your Word. May there not be one word in Your Word which we despise or think ill of. May we rejoice in everything that You have given and every single name that You have included in Your Word. Help us, O Lord, to ultimately see the name that all names and all words in Your Word Point to namely Jesus our Lord the one who loved us with that Everlasting love it is in his name that we pray Amen Our first reading was from Genesis chapter 2.

    In Genesis chapter 2, we read about the seventh day. whole bunch of things precede that, that is all of Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1 tells us what happens the first six days. God created the world in the space of six days and all things very good. You might wonder, well what did he What did he create on each day? I point you to that. Go back and look at what he created on each of those six days. Each day is very significant.

    But there’s something even more significant about the seventh day, which we read about in Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2, we see that God rested from the works of creation. Now, why did God rest? Some people might say, well, because He was tired, because it’s difficult to create the world.

    Well, I don’t even want to say that’s a good guess. That’s not a good guess because the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps. He is not tired on day seven. He did not have trouble getting up. He does not go to sleep. He is not like us who would push the snooze on our alarm. He never sleeps. So why? Why is it that he sits? Why is it that he rests on that day?

    The seventh day is our God’s Sabbath enthronement. After doing work for six days, he sits as the king of creation, ruling over it. and admiring the glory and the beauty of the work that he has done. A king who sits on a throne does not sit on a throne because he is tired, necessarily. He sits because when you see a king sitting on a throne and he has the garb that he’s wearing and he holds a scepter, you know that he is in charge. Equally so, when we see the Lord taking the day off, He is proclaiming His rule and His reign. So I would say that, again, hyphenated, the seventh day is our God’s Sabbath enthronement.

    He is King. Then we come to Matthew chapter 1, page 1 in most of our New Testaments here. It begins somewhat like we would expect if we know just a little bit about our Bible. Jesus is the Christ. He is the Anointed One. He is the son of Abraham and he is the son of David, as it tells us. We might know a little bit about Abraham, father of the faith, in a sense, father of the faithful. We know a bit about David, King David, conquering king, ruled in ancient Israel.

    And he also had some missteps along the way. Those are famous as well. So we think of Jesus Christ, and we have a genealogy, David, Abraham, and then in verse two, it gets a little interesting. Or does it get interesting? Verse two, does it get a little boring? You can be honest if it got a little bit boring. I hope you won’t think so at the end. We have a list of names, genealogical names.

    It says so-and-so was the son of or was fathered by. in the Old Testament, or excuse me, in the King James language, we would say, the begats, so-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so. We might be of a mind to read through the whole entire Bible, and I think it’s certainly worthwhile for Christians to read through the whole entire Bible at least once in their life. For some who really want to benefit from the ministry of the Word, it’s worthwhile to do once a year, if you like, or once every two years. Sometimes you might have a system of reading through the Bible, and you’re working your way through, and you find interesting stories, interesting narratives.

    Then you come to a portion like this, and you wonder, Should I just skim this? Can I count that as reading if I just skim this? It’s just a list of names. I think it’s something to say about the time and place that we live. A list of names like this does not mean a lot to us. But what would a list of names like this mean? to a first century person. What would a list of names like this mean to a first century Jew? He would not see it as boring in the least. He would want to go through each name with a fine tooth comb and see who is in this genealogy. Genealogies are very, very important.

    Matthew is an evangelist. He desires to proclaim the gospel with a hope that people might come in and come in and believe the gospel and enter into the kingdom of Christ. as an evangelist, he has a particular interest. His interest is the Jewish people. I’m fully convinced that his target audience is the Jewish people. Matthew’s gospel has a distinctly Jewish flair to it. It has more quotations from the Old Testament than all the rest of the gospels, the other three gospels. Matthew seeks to reach Hebrew people with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    And so, a first century Jew would look at that first verse and say, son of Abraham, very good, very good. Son of David, very good as well. Now we understand that the Messiah has to come out of David’s line. Very, very important. First century Jew, though.

    I think he might be quite offended by this list. Very offended. Let me explain to you what I mean. I was a teenager during the time of the 90s and during the 90s there was a terrible terrible thing on tv ruled the tv it seemed they were they were talk shows and they were at their worst during the 90s it was entertainment in the 1990s to see love triangles and all these terrible things going on in people’s lives, and people would get in fights on stage, right? And chairs would be thrown at people. It was absolutely terrible.

    It’s gotten better, believe it or not. As I understand, I really don’t, I have utter disdain for TV. If you watch TV, that’s fine, but I just don’t like it anymore. Probably much because of what I watched in the 90s. There are people, there were people who were living horrible lives. We have in this genealogy people who notoriously lived horrible lives. Let me just give a couple of examples for you. Look at verse 5. Verse 5, we see.

    Rahab. Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab. Who is Rahab? Rahab in Joshua chapter 2 is a prostitute. She becomes a believer in the Messiah but she is a prostitute. Not only that, she’s not Jewish. Rahab is a Canaanite whore. Are you telling me that Messiah is born of a sinner like that? You have got to be kidding me. I think that’s how many a first century Jew would read that. Though she becomes a believer, assembled into the community, that’s the mother, the distant grandmother of Christ, in a sense. Look at verse three, if we just might move up a bit.

    Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Judah has Perez and Terah by Tamar. Judah and Tamar. Who are these people? Judah was one of the sons of Jacob, and he is ultimately one of the fathers of the 12 tribes. And he had sons, and the sons were disobedient. They had wives, but the son would not give, that is Judah’s son, would not give his wife a child. His wife’s name was Tamar.

    You can read about it in Genesis chapter 38. So at a time when Judah is going to shear his sheep, he sees a prostitute by the road and unbeknownst to him, he picks her up and he has relations with her. But this is his daughter-in-law. The line of Christ contains such a relationship Are you telling me that Messiah, the Christ, has this in his line? Surely you cannot be serious. Look at verse 6.

    David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah. In the Greek, it does not even say Bathsheba. It just leaves it out. Who is Bathsheba? Who is David? As I mentioned before, some things went on between Bathsheba and David. You see, David is guilty because he takes another man’s wife. David is guilty because He has that man, that wife’s man killed.

    But Bathsheba is guilty as well. You may remember what she does. Showering on the roof of her house in plain view of the king. She seems to have been up to something. Now, David is restored. We all know that. He is restored. God is kind and gracious to him. But he had many wives, not as many as his son, Tecumseh. He had many wives, though.

    Could not the Messiah have come of David out of one of those other wives? Now, out of that line, you’re telling me that the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One comes? Maybe you begin to see how someone who’s thoroughly versed in the Old Testament and in Jewish traditions would see these things. But the thing is, All of these people on this list are sinners, are they not? We’ve just talked about David. He’s one of the headliners. David and Abraham. Abraham is one of the headliners, too, on the first verse.

    The man who trusted God, believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. But he was a man with feet of clay, and he was a sinner as well. distrusting God’s provision, he follows his wife’s advice and takes his wife’s handmaiden, seeking to fulfill God’s promises on his own, rather than waiting on God and trusting God. We’re talking about a man who would go through hostile territory and says to his wife, lie to them and say you’re my sister. brother and sister have a little bit more opportunity to go through safely, or at least so he thought. If they’re married, they might take her hostage and kill him. That was at least his fear. He did not believe that God is going to take care of him.

    And so this whole list is a list of sinners, of weak people, I dare say that a first century Hebrew who would look at this list, if he looked at it with a pharisaical disdain, if he looks at this list with disdain of the people on it, he has bigger problems. Bigger problems because this list generations functions as a mirror that would be shining back at that first century Hebrew and showing and demonstrating that we are all sinners, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

    And none of us really are able to look with disdain at other sinners, for we are all worthy of God’s condemnation. We must be very, very careful to pile on the condemnation that comes to someone else when they are found out to be sinners. We must be very careful. I hope we were careful Friday night when we heard news of terrible things. It is God’s grace that withholds us from our sin as well. We have all fallen short of God’s glory. You are sinners and so is this whole entire list. All are sinners. But did you notice the structure of what we read? Isn’t it interesting? The structure is summarized for us in verse 17. I’m going to read it because it begins with so. Anytime it starts with so or hence or therefore, it’s summarizing what has gone on before, right?

    So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. 14 generations list of sinners. 14 generations list of sinners 14 generations list of sinners and then Jesus Christ comes Those 14 generations are very significant First we have Abraham the man of faith to David a lot goes on during that time during that time are not the people of God enslaved to Egypt and Pharaoh and then freed from it and enter into the promised land and then Eventually, they have kings.

    So the high point of that kingship is David a Lot of things go on in that time, but then a lot of things go on after that after that David dies passes away and The theocracy, the national religious nation of Israel begins to plummet into darkness because they begin to sin by worshiping other gods, worshiping statues that God said, do not worship statues, do not adore statues as I’ve told you.

    I said, well, these are the gods that we worship. No, they are not. There’s one God and he says, you will not make pictures of me and you will not make statues of me. They go, they are eventually kicked out of their nation for their sin. There are many, many sins, idolatry, just being one of them. So then they spend 70 years in captivity. And that’s where the third one begins. Then we have the time basically from the end of our Old Testament to the time when Jesus comes. What Matthew’s doing is he’s summarizing redemptive history for us by way of these names. But here’s what’s interesting. 14, 14, 14. There are gaps in this genealogy.

    Okay? There are some people who are left out. Liberal scholars will say that, but conservative scholars will say that as well. This is no creeping liberalism in here. It’s universally understood. Sometimes there are gaps and they just leave those out. It’s not because Matthew’s being deceitful, and it’s not because Matthew is deceived. Neither of those are the case. It was common in that time to leave out some names. It’s possible that all of biblical genealogies have some names left out because sometimes some person does not live so significant of a life that someone who’s going to be putting a genealogy together will find it helpful or needful or useful.

    So he’s left out. So then, if there are gaps in it, and they’re not errors, they’re not deception, and they’re not the author being deceived, then what are we to make of 141414? What are we to think of that? Matthew is not making a statistical point. Matthew is making a theological point. If I might hyphenate, he is making a literary theological point for us. What is half of 14? So if you have 14, 14, 14, then what do you have? You have 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7. Seven is the number of completeness in God’s word. You really seem to have a complete unit, a complete unit, a complete unit, really six complete units.

    It’s almost as if he’s saying that there are six days. Six, in a sense, literary and theological days leading up to what Matthew wants to get to, what Matthew wants to reach. What he’s looking for is Messiah’s coming. After six days, What comes? After six days, the Sabbath comes.

    In a literary and theological way, Matthew is making the point that Jesus is your Sabbath. Jesus is, if you trust in him, your eternal rest. Matthew is looking for the dawning of the new day. For when Jesus comes, when Jesus arrives on the scene, it is the fullness of time. And that is the day that Matthew wants to proclaim. The dawning of the new day. When the Lord of the Sabbath is being enthroned. That’s what Matthew wants us to see.

    For it is, if we might take Matthew’s literary week, it is on the seventh day that Jesus Christ is born and lives the life that he lives, which is free from sin, unlike all of us, unlike all those in the previous six days. and He dies on a cross to die, to be raised from the dead, to save sinners. We only have life in Christ. We only have life in His death and His resurrection.

    After Jesus comes back from the dead, He spent some time upon earth, but then He enters into heaven, He ascends to heaven, and He sits at the right hand of His Father in heaven. both in creation and we can say in recreation, we have days and then the Sabbath day.

    In creation and redemption, we have the exaltation of the Lord, but it comes on his Sabbath enthronement. For when Jesus arrives on the scene, he is a king. But when he ascends to be with his father in Acts chapter 1, he is proclaimed and enthroned as Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of creation and Lord of salvation, redemption, Lord of our lives as well. He is enthroned to be Lord of the universe.

    Those six days filled with sinful people, the seventh day filled with the glory of the sinless one. The only one who could be a mediator between us and God. And there He sits. There He is enthroned and He offers and He guarantees eternal life only to those who trust in Him. Who do not try to do good works so that they can be saved. We cannot do good works to be saved. It is God’s gift that saves us. and as the enthroned king he offers and he gives eternal life to his people.

    The people of the old testament in exodus wandered around for 40 years and they did not enter into the new land because of their unbelief. the Bible commenting on this later on makes use of that literary, the issues going on literarily back then, and the idea of entering into the land, of our entering into heaven if we’re believing in Christ. The author of Hebrews chapter 3 says, therefore, As the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness. The people did not enter into that literal land because of their unbelief. That land is considered to be a Sabbath rest land.

    It might make even more sense to you now when we think of Matthew’s literary week, when we read what I’m about to read to you. Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says about the day. He’s talking about non-literal days. He’s talking about this day that we live in as the day. Hebrews chapter 4. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way. And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

    We read that. Genesis chapter 2. And again this passage, in this passage he said, they shall not enter my rest. Therefore, it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience. Again, he appoints a certain day. Today, saying through David so long ago, and the words already quoted, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Let me explain what that is saying.

    Today is the day of salvation. Today, the day of the sinless Sabbath-keeping man. Today is the day in which we enter into eternal life, not by what we have done, but what He has done. And it is pictured in our Old Testament by them entering into the land. Joshua brings the people into the land, and it was a Sabbath-resting land. But, the writer says, if that had been sufficient, that certainly was not sufficient. It certainly was not. If it had been sufficient, there would not have been need for another day. But there was need for another day.

    So we, by faith in Christ, are partakers in His Sabbath rest. The glorious brightness of Messiah’s day has dawned. The sun has risen. As Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. That is the one in whom we rest, the one who is resting from his creation and from his salvation work. Our hearts are as restless as those in the first six days, as sinners defiling ourselves. But when The new day dawns and when the new day dawns, as Peter says, in our hearts, the brightness of his glory shines down upon us. Then we find a Sabbath rest for our eternal soul. May you find the Sabbath rest of your eternal soul this day as long as it is called today. Let us pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.