0:00
Sweetly singing o'er the plains and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous rains. Shepherds, this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong the gladness of the night,
2:51
Amen. Nothing like a lung exercise when you've had pneumonia for a month. Thank you, Bob for coming up and helping. Y'all can have a seat. I have a few announcements.
5:26
And here they are. Merry Christmas. First of all, it's the week before. We have one week. So, next Sunday will be Christmas day.
5:35
Merry Christmas though. The season, the advent, we are in the fourth Sunday of Advent which is the Sunday of love, 12/18/2016 and it's hard to believe how fast this year has gone by to me. We had a discovery class this morning. It's the third Sunday of the month. Each month, the third Sunday of the month at 10:00 between services.
5:56
I have a people bringing me water. They're bringing gifts. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So, that happens every third Sunday of the month.
6:04
Gary Geek usually covers that class. If you're thinking about joining the church in membership, there is but one bar. The only bar is that you'd be a believer in Jesus, a regenerate Christian and so, we have the baptistry up here is full today because we did a baptism this morning. The tradition that I grew up in, if you had not been fully immersed in baptism, you could not be a member of the church. That's not the way that we do things right here today but if you wanna know more about being a member, the third Sunday of each month, Gary usually does a discovery class.
6:33
Awana Club is happening tomorrow night and tomorrow night is store night and that is happening at 06:00 tomorrow evening at the same time as a merry merry edition of Monday nights, first B, which starts at 06:00, meal music, and a message. We have the angel tree, if you've noticed, has less and less tags on it. Y'all, I I can't believe 31 families have been on that tree out there and y'all have done a great job of bringing in so many. We we have I can't tell you how many people have been blessed by that. How many families?
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But there are couple more tags that I can see from here. If you wanna grab those, feel free. You don't have to and I'm gonna invite up Kevin and Dave Kaufman this morning. Bob, would you hand him that mic? And.
7:22
Yeah. It's it's on. Fellowship and faith.
7:25
Hi everybody. We have been giving you little updates from time to time. And today Dave's going to join us. And after Dave gives us a little flavor for what happens in the kitchen when he's in there, I will give you guys a quick progress report on where we're at.
7:42
Mayhem and madness. That's what happened in the kitchen. Good morning, everyone. And we just like to speak a little this morning on the kitchen remodel coming up and just how how much that facility is used and just what an incredible blessing it is to this body and the community as a whole. My part in it, basically, once a year, I get together with the gentleman here in the church, and we serve a Christmas or an Easter morning sunrise breakfast with seal lambs, authentic Johnny Count's flats, homesteaded sourdough pancake batter, and and we carry on in the tradition, Norris Brown with gathering the men up and just reaching out to serve not only the ladies here in the church because they're the gals who are always stuck with cooking all the holiday meals, it seems like.
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And so that's why Norris wanted to give them a break. But reaching out to everyone in the community just to offer them a place to come Easter morning and share with them some food and fellowship and if they stay for the service and listen to the message, that's all the extra bonus. So, we just encourage if you haven't made a decision or to want to contribute yet to please prayerfully consider that because the kitchen is an incredible facility for us to just reach out within the body here with the men, the young men, and within the community as a whole. Thank you.
9:26
Thank you, Dave, and I'll take this. So we are on the final approach. We set out nine weeks ago to try and raise $250,000 for the complete remodel of the kitchen and the fellowship hall. And to Dave's great delight, the commercial grade range that is planned has six gas burners and a pancake griddle. So last week, Renzi provided a bit of an update on where we're at with our giving and the number of contributors.
9:58
And I'm happy to report as of Friday, we now have $126,500 that's been contributed through 61 of us attendees and members, which is phenomenal. And as we sketched out our game plan, we wanted to try and wrap up this campaign so that you didn't hear us drone on week after week by the end of this year. So just another, what, week and a half? We would like to wrap it up. And so we do have a little bit more ground to go to raise our money and as fate, well, not fate and as God would have it, we've had a donor step forward with a $10 zero match request so that if we through the next week and a half, two weeks by the end of the year can raise $10,000 that'll be matched by 10,000.
10:48
So we would then be at close to 155, hopefully $160,000 so that we can 100% with confidence move forward with the complete remodel of the kitchen and then we would continue to seek God's favor for the second phase which would be the fellowship hall. So, as you consider your end of the year giving, on the way out today, if you haven't had a chance, grab one of the pledge forms. You can hand this to any frontline team member. If you want to contribute with a check, you can just simply write building fund on the memo line of the check and we can assure you those pledges and contributions are going to go great lengths to help the ministries that we serve at this church. So, with that, thank you very much for your consideration and I will turn this over to Ray.
11:35
Very much. Thank you, Kevin. And Christmas Eve. So, Christmas Eve is next Saturday night and there will be two worship services. They should be pretty close to the same.
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Mostly music, some sermonette. We'll call it a sermonette. It'll be a brief sermon time but two worship services, 04:30 and six, they'll look very much alike. It will not be like contemporary and traditional. They'll look pretty much the same.
12:03
The band will lead but we'll have some traditional hymns played on piano too. So, 04:30 and six, I have a bug to put in your ear too. If you plan on being here for both or could be here for both and you would not mind doing childcare for the sixth, that would be great. If you would like to do childcare for the sixth, that would be fantastic because I announced this morning that they were exactly alike. There was no difference.
12:27
And the 04:30 was supposed to have childcare and six wasn't but if you are willing, we can provide that childcare. Anyway, 04:30 and six, services are gonna look the same and then next Christmas morning, we're just having one which for y'all is the normal time. At 11:00 next week, we'll all gather together in one big Christmas morning worship service. So, there we have the fourth Sunday of Advent. I'm going to invite forward Samantha and Midge.
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And I think we had a couple others that couldn't get out of the driveway this morning but you are welcome. Would you come on up and do our advent reading for us and light that fourth candle?
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Loud?
13:08
You can just be louder. You can use this thing.
13:14
Today, we light the fourth candle in our advent wreath, the candle of love. God's unexpressible love was demonstrated in the sending of his son. His love has led to our salvation. Mhmm. We respond by loving and living for him.
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Everybody knows. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but save the world through him.
13:49
Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And just this morning, we had a baptism right after we had the advent and I was thinking the advent season of Christ coming and it's this anticipation and for that guy, Aaron Simmons, was baptized this morning. Two weeks ago, he had said, Yeah, right? So, he he said, I believe that God's drawn me.
14:20
I believe he's bringing me into this family and I believe that I wanna follow that with just a simple act of obedience. So, we had that this morning and I just wanted y'all to know that. Would you stand with me? Y'all can greet one another. This is when we usually do that, right?
14:33
Why don't you stand with me and greet one another and then, Florine and I will bring you back together. We have a little town of Bethlehem, hymn number two fifty. If you'd like to see the part. Come have a seat. Wanna invite the frontline team to come forward.
19:09
Would y'all pray with me? Lord, thank you for this, beautiful, beautiful day. As we have experienced 50 degrees of weather swing this morning, this week, and we've seen some pretty amazing displays of your power, Lord. I'm amazed. I stand amazed.
19:31
And God, I just thank you. Every good and perfect gift is from above, from the refreshing rain, spring, and the summer, Lord, to this snowpack. God, you are amazing. And seeing that blanket of white snow, thinking that our sins, though they'd be as scarlet, they can be just like that, white as snow. God, I thank you that you are the giver and that we are the receivers, Lord.
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But right now, we want to show our trust in you and acknowledge that all that we have comes from you. We want to give it back, Lord, so that others may know. I pray, Lord, that you would use the offering for this just general fund, the way this church does, what this church does. Lord, I pray that you'd use it to advance your gospel in this community, in the hearts of people that live here, and in those who come and go from here to other places, Lord, that you would extend your kingdom to the absolute ends of the earth, that you would multiply these gifts to do your work of building up your church. Jesus name, amen.
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Forward. And she's going to sing a special piece. Christie, you're to play? Alright. Fantastic.
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Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me is the current of your love Leading onward, leading homeward To your glorious rest of Jesus. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus. Spread his praise from shore to shore. How he came to pay our ransom through the saving cross he bore.
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Throne. Oh, the deep, deep love, All I need and trust is the deep, deep love of Jesus. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus for surpassing all the rest. It's an ocean full of blessing in the midst of every test. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, mighty savior, precious friend, You will bring us home to glory Where your love will never end Oh, the deep, deep love All I need and trust Is the deep, deep love of Jesus.
26:35
Thank you, Eileen. Thank you, Steve and Christy too. Amen. That was church for me. Let everything that has breath.
26:51
Praise the Lord. I've been thinking about that a lot lately because I've had pneumonia for a month and I haven't had a lot of breath and I've been just amazed by different things but thank you Eileen for that. This Matthew one, I I had put in the bulletin that from Matthew one all the way up to Matthew two twenty three. So, it's a first whole two chapters of Matthew. So, a fourth, you know, one fourteenth of the book of Matthew for a Sunday morning is probably a little much.
27:24
I decided to shorten that to just the first chapter after it hit me so hard. This week, I was just kind of overtaken by it. Typically, we start at the eighteenth verse where it says, now, this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came to pass but we skip over the genealogies and we skip over that because we're Americans, I think. We don't, how many of y'all know your great grandparents, both sets of your great grandparents names? There are more of you in this service than there were in the last.
27:56
But there are not a whole lot of us that remember back 14 generations or 42 generations as we're about to go through in the first 17 verses here. I wanna just kinda point this out. Matthew one one, it's the first book. It's the first verse of our New Testament and Matthew starts off like this, the book of the Genesis. What's the first in the Old Testament?
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The book of Genesis. Talking about beginnings but he starts his great gospel with this. The book of the Genesis or the genealogy of the Christ, Jesus. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ and that's where he starts. And as a pastor and coming upon Christmas, you've got this message that all of us have heard.
28:47
We start preaching the Christmas message two or three weeks before Christmas every year. Most of us who've grown up in the church have heard this every year of our lives. Nobody usually skips Christmas. We just talk about it and I think about how many Christmas sermons have been preached. How many times has this message of the incarnation of almighty God coming into time and space been preached and I started thinking, this is an image of a papyrus.
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It's a papyrus manuscript from about two fifty AD. So, just two fifty years after the birth of Christ. It's it's from Egypt which if you read into the second chapter of Matthew, you'll see the flight of the family down into Egypt and this is the first nine verses of the book of Matthew in this papyrus and 12 is actually a little snippet from 12 down there too but I think, by that time, in two fifty AD, there have been a lot of of passages already preached or this passage had been preached a lot. When he starts off one one and says, this is the book of the Genesis or the genealogy, the beginning. This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
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The son of David, David, mighty king of his throne, there will be no end, right? Government, power, military, even and then also the son of Abraham. Matthew presents Jesus as the culmination of all of Israel's history, what everything was pointing towards. From God's promise to Abraham, I mentioned the word proto Euangelion, the proto gospel, the pre gospel to Abraham. God said to Abraham, you get up and go.
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Leave the place that you know and go to the place that I will show you and I will bless you and I will make you a blessing. I will bless you and I will bless those who bless you and I'll curse those who curse you and then later in chapter 22, he says, it is by your seed, the line of the Messiah would come, that all the nations would be blessed. So, he, Matthew, presents Christ as directly related to David and to Abraham, son of David, son of Abraham and then he starts by listing the genealogy all the way back to Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac, the father of Jacob. Now, Abraham other had other kids, right?
31:13
He had another one, Ishmael. But it doesn't say Abraham was the father of Ishmael and Isaac. It says, Abraham was the father of Isaac. There's a line of God's promise Abraham was the father of Isaac, the child of promise and Isaac was the father of Jacob. Now, did Jacob have a brother?
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He actually had an older brother, right? Esau, doesn't say, Isaac was the father of Esau and Jacob. It says, Isaac was the father of Jacob. A deceiver, kind of a squarely little one, right? He was always tricking people and his brother.
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Wrestling with God even. And Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. Now, he mentions the brothers. The line of the promise of God goes from Abraham into Isaac, Isaac, and to Jacob. Jacob into Judah and his brothers.
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Did you get that? I like that. Those are the 12 tribes of Israel Israel. Now, we know Jesus is the lion of Judah. So, this is his line through Judah.
32:15
This is a sketch of Michelangelo's. It's a destroyed work. Actually, it's one of the lunettes over the windows in the Sistine Chapel and this one has been destroyed. So, all we have left to show what it used to look like is this intaglio print and it says, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jude or Judah, Judas. That was destroyed and I'll get to that at the end.
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If I don't get to it at the end, please tell me to get to it at the end, okay? I skipped it in the first service. The culmination of Israel's history, the Christ, directly related to David and Abraham but he's careful to include the Gentiles in this lineage too. Matthew is starting off in this gospel. He's a Jewish guy.
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He was one of the followers of Jesus. He's writing to a Jewish audience primarily but he's writing to them about a shift in their thinking from their ancestry and their favorite status to their favorite status for what? Their favorite status to share the light of the world. To be a hope to the Gentiles, to all people, blessing for all. So, when they say to David and to Abraham, he mentions in this lineage, the Gentiles in Jesus line too and we're going to get to that in this verse.
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Verse three says, and Judah, the father of Perez and Zira by Tamar, they were twins. I don't know if you remember that story but there were twins where one reached out of the womb first and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around the wrist of that one and then he pulled it back in. That was Zira and Perez came first. Interesting stories. If you read this, actually, if you read Genesis 38, that is a rough, rough, rough story about Judah and Tamar.
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Do you remember the story? I'm not going to go into it. There are kids present. It's rough. 38, it's not a glorified version where nothing is hard or difficult.
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When he mentions Tamar, Tamar, first of all, was not Jewish. The Gentile brought into the family Judah. Is the father of Perez and Zira by Tamar and Perez, the father of Hezron and Hezron, the father of Ram. Now, there, again, is another sketch of this destroyed freeze or destroyed lunette window of Perez, Hezron, and Ram. Michelangelo did this fresco and it was in the Sistine Chapel.
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So, in the Sistine Chapel, over their windows like we have these beautiful decorations and shelves over these windows, they, this was the decoration, the ancestors of Christ but that one also was destroyed. Just these two were destroyed. Next verse says, and Ram was the father of Amminadab and Amminadab, the father of Nashan. Nashan, the father of Salmon, and we see Michelangelo didn't include him like he did in the verses, just three at a time. He does Amanadab and then Nashon right there.
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And Salmon was the father of Boaz. Boaz by Rahab. Now, wait a second. Rahab was a Gentile, right? And she was, what else?
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A harlot who protected the spies. It was not an untarnished history that Matthew has given. He was given the truth but it's not it's not without its difficulties. And Boaz then the father of Obed by Ruth. Now, Ruth was a Moabite, right?
35:44
Yeah. So, this is interesting that Christ's line is not just this pure Jewish line and especially at this time when you're discussing somebody's ancestry, they typically tended to gild the lily and it was all male. So, it's all this dominant, dominant, dominant, dominant, dominant male. They wouldn't mention anything or they'd skip generations that they that they thought were unsavory or unfavorable. But he seems to be going out of his way to include Gentiles and because they typically wouldn't include women at all.
36:16
The four ladies that he includes all were Gentiles. The four the four Gentiles. He mentions Mary later on but she's not. She's Jewish. So, Boazba, the father of Obed, by Ruth, and Obed, the father of Jesse.
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Oh, and now we get to Jesse. Salmon, Boaz, Obed, and Jesse, the father of David, the king. Now, this is an illuminated manuscript of the first verses of the book of Matthew. Same thing that Papyrus was except for about little less than a thousand years later. 1180, this is French.
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It's kind of French from if you're art history buff, you can kind of see that. It's written in Latin over here but that's around eleven eighty AD and this is Jesse and then out of the root of Jesse comes King David and then all of the rest of the genealogy that we're going to see from Jesse forward is included up to Christ right there at the very top. So, this is the genealogy of Jesus. This is also the the opening page of the gospel of Matthew from the Bible of the monks. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.
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Now, this is Bathsheba, an adulteress, a Gentile, presumably a Hittite. David having called out and asked for forgiveness of sin was forgiven, so was the wife of Uriah. God forgives. It's a primary feature of the gospel of Matthew that Jesus came for the forgiveness of sins. We'll see that.
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Jesse, David, Solomon, Michelangelo's, lunette window, and the sistine ceiling. Now, when you're looking up, you don't see em. They're they're over the shelves right here, you know? But there are bunch of em. We keep on getting more names.
38:07
Reboam, the father of Abijah, Abijah, the father of Asaph. There they are. Nasaph, the father of Jehoshaphat and Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, and Joram was the father of Uzziah. Now there are a lot of these. I'm only about halfway through.
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And I started to skip them, but I didn't wanna be guilty of jumping Jehoshaphat. So sorry. Not really. I said it in the first service too. Joram, the father of Uzziah, Uzziah, the father of Jotham, Jotham, the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah.
38:41
Have you noticed that not all these are good guys? If you know much about the Old Testament, you'll see that there's a good guy and then there are about two or three pretty bad guys. And then there might be another shining light. And then there's more bad guys. There they are and Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh and Manasseh, the father of Amos.
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Amos, the father of Josiah. Oh, Josiah, great great kid, right? King at eight years old. Fantastic guy. Pulls out the book and says, we ought to go by this.
39:10
Fantastic. Then, how many generations? Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation of Babylon. Yeah. He's marking these things and he tells us in verse 17 that he's marking em like it goes from Abraham to David basically and then David goes to the deportation and then he picks back up and after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shiltiel and Shiltiel, the father of Zerubbabel.
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There they are. And Zerubbabel, the father of Abiud, and Abiud, the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim, the father of Azor. There they are. And Azor, the father of Zadok and Zadok, the father of Akam. You remember, we're seeing less and less people we know a whole lot about right here.
39:58
Well, there was that intertestamental silence that we don't have a whole lot of information because after the book kind of Malachi right in there, things just kind of go quiet for a while. Still the same law continues, still the same age is continuing. Same rules apply but they have not heard the voice of God in a while. In Achim, the father of Eliud, here they are. Here they are.
40:28
And Elijah, the father of Mathan or Mathan, and Mathan, the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. It doesn't make any distinction whatsoever. I mean, it makes the distinction right there that he was the father of Joseph. So, this is Joseph's line that we've gone through and that is the legal line which would have been very very important for all Jews. They kept up with their ancestry very very well.
40:58
They kept records in the temple in in modern day. The only people that I know of that keep up with that like that are the Mormons. They keep up with genealogy very very fastidiously. Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. There's no doubt about it that Mary is the one of whom?
41:21
Jesus was born which goes all the way back to that proto Uangelion. I was talking about a minute ago, the pre evangel, the seed of woman will conquer Satan. And the curse. So, of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ, Messiah, anointed one. There's Jacob, Joseph.
41:43
Then, he sums up right here in verse 17. It's kind of a mnemonic device when you're telling the history to your kids about an aunt so and so and so and so, you know what I mean? You're going through it. You can remember that. My my grandmother would always say, you can remember that because, you know, so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations and from David to the deportation of Babylon, there were 14 generations and from the deportation of Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations.
42:11
Alright. Thank you, Matthew. So, that's our ancestry and our history lesson illustrated by Michelangelo who painted the Sistine Ceiling first time. 1508 to 1512. So, 1508 to fifteen twelve, Michelangelo is on his back painting on the ceiling.
42:28
He's painted these frescoes over the lunettes. He was commissioned to do so by a warrior pope, Julius the second. If you haven't seen the movie, The Agony and the Ecstasy, it's one of my favorites. It is Rex Harrison playing Pope Julius the second and Michelangelo is played by Charlton Heston and both of them are overacting ridiculously and it's wonderful. It's wonderful.
42:51
But he's painting this and he paints it for four straight years. When will you make an end of it? When it is finished? When it is finished, he says. Well, in 1512, he pretty much wraps it up and that is all of the sealants from the Old Testament, all the sealants from the life of Christ.
43:05
These lunette windows of the ancestry of Christ, all of that has been done by about 1512 right before the reformation, 1516. Are you with me? Doing a little bit of art history and history and this together. The focus sometimes can be backwards but the focus can also be forwards, right? I think that we're seeing this birth of Christ as the center point of all of history, human or otherwise.
43:33
It is the center point of all history and he has now brought us up to that point and in '18, he says, now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place this way. Everything else either builds up to this or relies on this for its foundation. The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother, Mary, he says it again. It's the mother Mary doesn't say when his parents or when Joseph, when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, which is a legally binding contract, it is more than our engagement.
44:04
Y'all heard that your whole life, I'm sure. Betrothal, if it were to be ended, had to be ended by divorce. It was just like the marriage but typically, the lady stayed in her father's home until that time when he would take his wife into his own house. This is the time we find when his mother, Mary, had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together. She was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
44:30
Matthew makes it clear that this is the Christ, the anointed one, the Holy Spirit is the father of this child. He makes it clear several different times but if you are Joseph, you don't know this and you're betrothed and she is found to be with child. That's a difficult situation to find yourself in. Her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame because he is just and merciful, sought after God. Being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
45:09
It says that you could divorce by certificate in front of two or three witnesses. So, he was probably going to try to keep it as quiet as he could, not to shame her, although it would be a shame and a scorn for the rest of her life. If he were to marry her, it would be a shame and a scorn on him for the rest of his life and so, considering that but being a just man, he just wanted to make it as quiet as possible. He resolved to divorce her quietly but 120 continues and said, but as he considered these things, in the process where he was going through in his humanity, in his logic, in his heart, in his mind, he's considering these things. Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David.
46:00
Now, Joseph is a carpenter, builder, right? He's not royalty. He's in a little backwater town, two fifty, maybe 300 people. Joseph, son of David, you are of royal line. God has promised and God will fulfill his promise.
46:21
Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife. He'd already resolved and as he's considering it, it comes up but he had resolved, it says, to put her away quietly. Do not fear, the angel says, to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Like I said, forgiveness of sin is a big feature of the book of Matthew along with the kingdom of heaven, along with the divinity of Christ, the anointed one.
46:59
He will save his people from their sins. It's actually a pun. I use the jump in Jehoshaphat. Matthew is actually using or the angel I should say, the messenger is using this. You know, Joshua and Jesus are the same Hebrew, Joshua, and Jesus are the same.
47:16
Since it's Greek, we say Jesus instead. Yeshua, some of us say Yeshua. For Jesus, most of the time, that is because that is like Joshua. Now, Moses took the people right up to the edge of the promised land but he didn't enter in. Who did enter in?
47:34
Joshua. He saved the people from their sins. That's that's a prefigure. It's a figure of Christ, a type. This is a play on words.
47:43
It actually means that he will save. He is a savior. Jesus, he will save his people from their sins and Joseph heard this. This is Gaetano Gandalfi's Joseph's dreams from 1790. So, as we come forward, I'm thinking, how many times has this message been preached?
48:00
Lots and lots and lots of times. What I've been struck by this week especially because when I started reading Matthew one and I couldn't stop, I read through two, couldn't stop, read through three, and I just kept reading and I saw the feature of obedience coming up over and over and over and over again throughout Matthew and the simple obedience where it says, well, let's get into this. That something happens, they got a message from God, an impression from God, they got something from God and then immediately, they acted upon it. Chapter two, when the flight to Egypt, they had to get up and go, right? There are a lot of simple acts of obedience but I want to get to one today.
48:46
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet and right here starts a series in Matthew of just about everything he says, he follows it with. This was prophecy that has shown to be fulfilled. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet Isaiah in this case. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel which means God with us. Now, Joseph, being a good guy, just man.
49:13
He probably knew this verse. Might have been confusing to him. But as he's considering and he's already resolved, he's going to divorce her quietly. But as he's considering these things and he goes to sleep, and this angel says, the virgin is going to bear a son. She's don't be afraid to take her as your wife.
49:33
Mary is going to bear a son and you are going to call his name Jesus. Which means and this one is Emmanuel which means God with us and when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus. That was for me this whole week's kind of study. I love looking back at the ancestry and looking at individually at each one of those folks as checkered as the past was in some of those cases.
50:07
Just going name by name were the ones you could find information on and going, wow, there was no gilding of the lily here and Jesus's line shows that the blessing of almighty God as it has gone through has still been taking in Gentiles along the way. It's been taking in people from different tribes, tongue, nations. But looking forward, Joseph, a human being, just man, cared what God thought, cared about Mary. He cared about how she would be perceived. He cared.
50:50
And I think about the vulnerability of the plan of God, of the redemptive plan of God. God communicated to him in a dream but he still had the choice. If he woke up and said, oh, I made up my mind. Must have been that pizza. What a weird dream.
51:09
And he just did what he was going to do. That's that seems so tender and then, to have this boy that's actually born and he's in the care of two human parents. Wow. The vulnerability of almighty God and a babe and he's right there and they are raising him and they're taking care of it. How the vulnerability of that is baffling to me.
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When Joseph woke from from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. Although, he'd already resolved what he was going to do. As soon as he got the message from God, it says, he woke up and there's a sense of immediacy there. I looked for the word. I wanted it to be there.
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It's not there but there is a sense of it in the grammar. He did immediately as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took Mary for his wife but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus because that's what the angel said to do. He did exactly what God wanted for him to do. Now, we can argue the sovereignty of God of putting it in the hands of Joseph but Joseph still had to comply.
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The responsibility of man. Those two are balanced throughout scripture and right here, I just think about, wow, the plan, the redemptive plan of God is so important and he's given that plan to us to transmit and it is no less important that you do what God is asking you to do than it was for Joseph to do what he was asking for him to do. Do you have that? That's what hit me this week. Simple obedience.
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No matter your ancestry, we all have black sheep in our families. Some of us will admit it. Jesus admitted it. Apparently, Matthew certainly did for him. No matter your human decision, there may be some of you who have come up with a plan.
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It makes sense. I'm comfortable with it. I am going to do this whether it is something major or minor and I am going to do this. I have resolved it. I would say, open yourself to the movement of almighty God and see what he would have you do and then act on that.
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Simply, in obedience, even if it is considered and set. Because God can use you in his plan to redeem if you'll just believe the gospel and respond in simple obedience. Aaron Simmons is a military guy. He's been, he was in the in the army for a while and he has been coming to these Monday nights for a while now and a couple weeks ago, we did the on time and on purpose. You know, I don't go topical often but he came in that morning and talked to Carl before the service started and said, I feel God drawing me into his family.
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I don't know exactly what that means but I see what's going on here. I see what's going on. His spirit seems to be doing something. I don't even have the words for it but I'm acting on it. What do I do?
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Repent, believe the gospel, and so Carl went through that, prayed with him, and then this morning, he was baptized. It's a simple act of obedience when Christ has called and you respond Amen. So, if God is acting right now, if you're feeling like, I ought to be baptized, the baptistry is full. If you feel like and I've got another set of clothes, I'll let you use em if you want em. If you're feeling like, I need to be a member of this church.
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That's one. I need to forgive my mother. That's one. Whatever it is that God has laid on your heart, respond in simple obedience. That's where we see the greatest moves of God.
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Now, I want to say, I've gave you a little art history lesson for a reason. Who recognizes this? So, this is the final judgment by Michelangelo. Y'all have been to the Sistine Chapel recently. So, this is the final judgment.
54:58
It was painted actually like 1536 to 1540, I think, something like that. So, from 1508 to 1512, he's painting Ancestry of Jesus all around here, all these scenes and then, after the reformation and into the Catholic Counter Reformation where things had been kind of upset and we had to start looking at scripture anew and started everybody was looking and they were digging back into the actual Greek and the Hebrew and they were thinking about the different traditions of the church and a pope, different pope, not Julius the second, long gone by then, commissioned Michelangelo to come back and so those two first destroyed frescoes of the first two sets of the ancestry of Jesus were destroyed. They used to be right there and right there. And this is the final judgment with Christ right here. Those who are on his right hand side, our left, are rising into heaven.
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These are descending into death, hell, and the grave. That's a different focus. That's that past focus and future focus and I just think of the final judgment, all of scripture we need to look at with this in mind and consider that for those who do not know, they have a destiny. For those who do know, we have a destiny. We also have a purpose and that is to tell those who do not know what we know, who we know.
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Are you with me? Alright. I missed that last slide in the first service this morning. But the simple obedience one, It's amazing to me when you say yes to what God wants, where he takes you, and what he does with you. So, would you stand with me and we're going to sing the closing song which is what?
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That's what I was hoping it would be. So, go tell it on the mountain, okay? Literally, here, you can do this. Go tell it on the mountain. Tell what God has done for you on that mountain.
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Thank you,
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Bob. Bob.
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Tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere
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Thank you. Now, I have a benediction for you. It's actually two different passages from Romans 15. This is my prayer for us and for y'all this week. Now, may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus.
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So that with one accord, you may, with one voice, glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ and now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus name, amen. Amen.
