Read the Boring Parts – 12/10/23

Good morning, friends. If you don’t know me, my name is Ryan Ferguson. I’m one of the pastors here. I’m excited to continue with our study in the book of Matthew. We began last week. We have no idea how long we’re going to be in Matthew, but this Christmas we are focusing on the stories of Jesus and his birth.

Because I thought about child dedication this Sunday and family and everything going on, I had this thought about children. There’s this brief season in children’s lives where unfun work can become fun, and what you have to do is you have to fill unfun work with fun purpose. It’s a brief season when they’re young. This is actually me and my kids many years ago now. Cleaning the house is unfun work. Can I get amen on that? Amen. It is not the funnest thing, but even cleaning the house can become fun because we cleaned as the Avengers. We cleaned as a team. And I’m sure with the Ferguson household, there was a donut bribe involved in there somewhere. But we documented this moment of fun teamwork cleaning. You’ve got me — I’ve got a pretend vacuum Bazooka. Max has a Swiffer rifle. Petra’s down front with her Windex laser, and Kezziah has her clothes basket adamantium shield. The Avengers assembled, and we were an unstoppable cleaning force and took care of our house and actually enjoyed cleaning. Unfun work filled with purpose and meaning can become fun.

Reading genealogies in the Bible is like doing housework. Now, I’m not trying to be sacrilegious, but I’m trying to take one for the team, a little bit of honesty because I think many, if not most of us, think that way. If we come across a genealogy in the Bible, we skip it, we skim it to try to make ourselves feel better, or we endure reading it laboriously rather than enjoying reading it. Genealogies in reading are often more chore than joy. I think the main reason that could be true is because we lack that meaning-filled purpose behind them, the broader, bigger, beautiful purpose of this list of names that we find in the scriptures. Without infused purpose and meaning, genealogies become unfun. But when filled with purpose and meaning, they’re a joy.

So, I want to give a shout out to an old friend of mine, a former pastor from New York … from North Hills, Ben Arnold. He now lives out in Washington state. Ben did a sermon on genealogies on May 11th, 2014. And I’m adapting here, stealing a lot of his content and kind of doing it in my own way because genealogies are reminders. I want you to think of a genealogy as God’s sticky note that he puts up. Genealogies are God’s reminders to his people. They’re God’s reminders, and they remind us of several things. First, genealogies remind us that God recognizes individuals. So, if we believe (and we do) that the Spirit of God himself breathed into human authors to write down a supernatural book of God’s words, then every word in that book has divine significance. So, God places divine significance on names of people, of knowing who they are, how they relate to other people, and sometimes even very specific details about people that are never mentioned again in the Bible.

So, in 1 Chronicles, there’s a genealogy. It mattered to God to record that Seled died childless. In Nehemiah 3, we have a long list of names, not a genealogy, but a list of people who built the wall of Jerusalem, and God wanted us to know that Hananiah was a perfumer who did construction work. God wanted us to know that. God knows and pays particular attention to individuals. So, if it’s true that a genealogy reminds me that the infinite God of the universe knows individuals, then what we can conclude from that is this — Do we dare believe, do we take the risk of believing that God knows and cares about me? Do we dare believe that God knows my name and how I relate to people and what I do and where I’m at? My answer to that would be “Read a genealogy. God really cares about individual people. God knows you.”

Second, genealogies remind us of our identity and inheritance. Genealogies remind people of their identity and inheritance. Who are you, and what do you get? Our culture right now focuses on family origin/family tree as a hobby. In this day, you were listed in a genealogy so you knew what family you were from and what you got out of that family moving forward. Tribal inheritance in Israel was determined by what family you were part of. Genealogies define your identity and your inheritance.

And third, genealogies remind us that God kept/keeps his promises, that God kept and keeps his promises. This is the biggie. This is the one we’re going to focus all the rest of our time on together. God kept/keeps his promises. That’s what genealogies do. That’s the sticky note. Genealogies, you discover are conspicuous in the Bible. They stand out. A genealogy in the Bible is me in the Nutcracker Suite doing ballet. I’m going to stand out. You’re going to notice me. Genealogies do that as we read our way through scripture. Genealogies, rather than being boring additions to take up biblical space, are reminders that God keeps his promises. See, genealogies keep showing up after crisis. They show up in these moments where God’s people would have every reason to question the validity of God’s promise. So, I want to take you on a whirlwind tour of promise, crisis, and genealogies, and I want you to see this pattern that they’re God’s sticky notes that he’s going to keep his promise.

So, the first crisis we discover in the entire Bible is the fall. It’s what we refer to it as in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve existed in perfect harmony with God, but they listened to the deceiver, the devil, they sinned, and the result was a catastrophe of epic proportions. Sin broke everything — man’s relationship to God, man’s relationship with each other. Even creation itself felt the ripple effects of the entrance of sin into creation. In response, God curses the serpent. And God says this —

“I will put entity [think hostility, division; I’m going to put division] between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”

So, the entire story of the Bible begins with this great big promise from God right after gigantic human failure. God says “Eve, from your offspring, I’m going to raise up a singular he who will be capable of bruising the head of the deceiver who can crush the serpent.” So, at the beginning of Genesis, the serpent’s existence is on a timer. It’s going to come to an end. Now, it’s not going to be without cost. Destroying the deceiver will bruise the heel of that singular he that God will raise up from Eve. But in the end the head of the deceiver is crushed. That is God’s big promise — “I’m going to rescue you and destroy evil.” Immediately after that, we have the shortest genealogy in the Bible — Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel. Adam and Eve have kids. The promise is on his way — offspring. It’s here. The promise is coming.

But then we hit another crisis immediately — Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. Abel is murdered by his brother Cain. Cain is cursed by God in response, and Cain flees away to the east. So, if we believe God made the big promise, where is the big promise going to come from if Abel’s dead and Cain is cursed and gone? Genealogy. Genesis chapter 5 … Another offspring is introduced. His name is Seth. Seth arrives, and then we have a long list of his descendants. God’s still keeping track of that singular he.

We then meet a guy named Noah and go right into yet another crisis, the flood. See, during Noah’s day, evil was the constant theme in everybody’s heart. God’s radical solution to the depth of that evil is through a flood. God’s going to recreate and begin anew. But if the world is destroyed through a flood, how are we going to have the rescuer? How are we going to have the serpent crusher? Where’s he going to come from? Well, once the waters recede and Noah gets out of the ark, God gives a genealogy. Genesis chapter 10 — the genealogy of Noah’s descendants, including a son named Shem.

Right into another crisis, the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Babel, which we just sang about in the song “It Came upon a Midnight Clear,” is this prototypical city that is anti-God. The earth at this point had one language, and everybody was coming together to exalt themselves to the heavens to be greater than God. So, God steps in and introduces new languages to people, and they spread out across the earth. And we have to have a question. But what about the promise? How are we going to keep track of where the promise is coming from if the people are scattered? Genesis 11 — Genealogy of Shem’s descendants.

And we’re introduced to a very important guy named Abraham. God promises Abraham that his offspring will bless every nation on earth. So, God expands his big promise that he made to Eve and brings it to Abraham and says, “Not only will that singular he crush the head of the serpent, he will also be a blessing to all nations.” God then continues that promise to his kids Isaac and Jacob. Jacob has a son. His name is Judah. And God expands the promise even further and tells Judah, “The scepter will never leave your family. You’re going to have a king forever come after you.”

Well, time passes, and God’s people find themselves in the middle of famine. God raises up this kid named Joseph, who becomes second in charge in the country of Egypt, and God uses Joseph to save Israel. And Israel moves as a nation to Egypt to stay alive. But a couple of generations later, Israel finds themselves slaves rather than guests in Egypt, and we have another crisis — the exodus and the wilderness. See, God raises up Moses to deliver Israel. They leave Egypt, but then they land out in the wilderness, and God takes them on this circuitous journey to this promised land that he’s talked about before. Israel finally enters that promised land, and what does God give them? A genealogy. It’s called the book of Numbers. Genealogies in the book of Numbers are the twelve sons of Jacob. God is still keeping track so we know where that singular he will come from.

Israel possesses the land. Years pass, and God gives Israel kings. David and Solomon are two of those kings. They just happen to be descendants of Judah, who was promised there will be a forever-King. That promise gets passed to David and Solomon, that expanding promise, a singular he who will destroy the serpent, a blessing to all nations, a forever-King. But that’s a wild promise. How can you have a forever-King when all of the kings of Israel keep dying? Well, time passes again, and due to sin among God’s people and terrible kingship, Israel finds themselves defeated in war and carried away as captives to Assyria and Babylon, yet another crisis. It’s called the exile. It’s found in 2 Kings. Imagine being kidnapped from Greenville and force-marched somewhere else to begin in a brand-new culture, and you may or may not be with anybody you know. How in the world are we going to keep track and know if God will keep his promise? Genealogy. The Book of 1 Chronicles.

After exile, Israel’s allowed to go home by a new regime of leadership in these countries. They come home, and we have the book of 1 Chronicles. It’s written after the exile and lays out a long genealogy all the way back to Adam, to David, and David’s offspring. Promise, crisis, genealogy. Promise, crisis, genealogy. Promise, crisis, genealogy. God’s still keeping track. Promise, crisis, genealogy. God’s going to keep his Word.

But then we hit another crisis and it’s a biggie — four hundred years of silence. After rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, after being freed from exile, Israel goes into silent mode. No profit, no judges, no scripture, no new Word from the Lord, only silence. Will God keep his promise?

Brothers and sisters, for us to understand the impact of the beginning of the book of Matthew, we must imagine this silent crisis. You’ve got to step into the sandals of Israelites and feel what it would be like to have their history, their promises over and over and over, their crises over and over and over, genealogy over and over and over that a deliverer will come. Imagine the passing of years, the centuries, millennia of promises, and then four hundred years of silence? Can you imagine what that would be like — multiple generations wondering and wailing, “Is God going to keep his promise? Did God forget us?” Imagine yourself a Jewish parent, and you’re trying to pass on your faith in the big promise of God to your children in the middle of four hundred years of silence. How would you do it when we all know as parents, we would be up in our bedrooms that evening thinking, “Did God really say he’s going to do it?” and then try to deliver it to our kids.

Not only that, but after four hundred years of silence, you’re going to feel an additional burden of foreign occupation in our promised land by Rome. God’s people were treated harshly and disdainfully while still trying to believe in the deliverer/blessing-to-all-nations/forever-King. Now you have to choose to be Jewish hearers and readers when Matthew steps in. You’ve got to bear in mind that entire history of waiting on the promises of God, waiting during four hundred years of silence, when God breaks his silence with these words — “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Do you see what Matthew’s doing? Do you feel it? Matthew was saying “Jesus is the Christ. Christ isn’t his last name. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the deliverer. Jesus is the anointed one. Jesus is the one who will stomp the serpent. Jesus Christ is the son of David.” That means Jesus is the forever-King. Jesus Christ is the son of Abraham. That means he can be the blessing to all nations. Matthew, through a boring genealogy, boldly declares “God remembered his promise!” He kept it. He’s going to do it. He remembers his children. He remembers his people. God kept his promise. The Messiah is here, and his name is Jesus the Christ!

Congregation sings “Joy to the World.”

Matthew 1:1 is this big, bold claim. In modern language, Matthew 1:1 is a mic drop. I thought about asking Tyler if I could have an old mic and do this whole part handheld so I could literally drop it and you could hear that sound. Thump! “The Book of the Genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” Mic drop! Because every Jewish ear would be like, “What?! He’s here?!” And Matthew is saying, “Yes, he’s here. Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the son of Abraham, Jesus is the son of David, and Jesus is divine.” That’s all of Matthew’s bold claim, and he proves it with a genealogy, and he does it in a couple of ways.

Matthew highlights Jesus’s great, great, great, great, great, great grandfathers. He walks through them, that Jesus is the son of Abraham and son of David. So, what I want us to do is I actually want us to listen in real time to all of these names that Matthew lists because we believe they all have divine significance. So, let’s listen together to the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

“Matthew, chapter 1, ‘the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah. This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus, the Messiah, a descendant of David and Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Amminadab. Amminadab was the father of a Nahshon. Nahshon was the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of king David.

“David was the father of Solomon, whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asaph. Asaph was the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was the father of Joram. Joram was the father of Uzziah. Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of Ahaz. Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Aman. Aman was the father of Josiah. Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, born at the time of the exile to Babylon.

“After the Babylonian exile, Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud. Abiud was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor. Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Achim. Achim was the father of Eliud. Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah….’”

Did you hear some familiar names in there? Everybody who needs to be there for Jesus to fulfill God’s promise are there. You have Abraham, who we know is a descendant, all the way back to Adam and Eve. So, by mentioning that Jesus is son of Abraham, that qualifies Jesus to be the serpent crusher and the blessing to all nations. You then have Isaac and Jacob and Judah thrown in there who’s promised to be a forever-King, the beginning of the forever-King. David is actually referenced in the genealogy as the king on purpose to remind the reader this is now a royal line. Solomon, David’s son, who received the promise of forever-King, is in there. So, Jesus has the pedigree to be the forever-King. Matthew proves his claim of who Jesus is — son of Abraham and son of David — and Matthew, interestingly, does it in a really creative way.

Matthew utilizes brevity and memory. What I mean by brevity is this genealogy is not exhaustive. It doesn’t include every name. If you want that information, you can read Luke’s genealogy in Luke 3 and compare it with 1 Chronicles. He’s using brevity, and he’s also using memory. He wants us to remember it. The genealogy itself is a memory aid. See, it appears that he wants people to remember Jesus as history. So, he breaks it down into three groups of fourteen, three spans of fourteen generations — Abraham to David, David to exile, exile to Jesus’s birth. So, if you don’t know who Matthew is, Matthew is a numbers guy. He’s a tax collector. And he actually loves sets of numbers throughout his book. He uses numbers to help people remember. We can feel the tax collector background of him coming through his writing. And he says, “Remember. Here’s a way to remember three generations of fourteen that prove Jesus is who he is.” So, he highlights the great, great, great grandfathers.

Matthew also highlights the great, great, great, great grandmothers, which is not a typical practice for a genealogy in this day. So, including the moms stands out. He introduces us to some people. Tamar is the first, a Jewish widow who’s accused of being a prostitute, whose father-in-law Judah did not keep his word to take care of her. You have Rahab, who is a Canaanite prostitute. After the exodus and wilderness, that crisis we talked about, Israel sent spies into the promised land. They were discovered and were going to be killed. Rahab hid those spies because she believed in who God was, and she made a really wise deal to save herself and her family in the future. God mentions Rahab not only here, but also in the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, in chapter 11, as an example of what it means to have faith. There’s Ruth. We have a whole book about Ruth in the Old Testament. She’s a Moabite woman who married an Israelite. Her husband dies. She becomes a widow, travels with her Israeli mother-in-law back to the promised land, becomes a migrant worker, and ends up marrying a man named Boaz. There’s the wife of Uriah. Her name is Bathsheba. Bathsheba is most likely a Hittite woman since her husband is Uriah the Hittite. Bathsheba was actually a victim of abuse of power by King David.

So, why does Matthew include the great, great, great grandmothers? This is the best way, I think, to explain the inclusion, one of the best reasons for the inclusion, and this is the best way that I can explain it; so, bear with me. In the world of Harry Potter, there are groups of families who prize being what they call pure bloods. That means the mom and dad can both practice magic and so can the kid. There are other families where only one parent or no parents know how to practice magic, but the kid can practice magic. If that kid is seen by a pure blood, he’s referred to as a mud blood. It is a very coarse, unkind slur. In the language of Harry Potter, Jesus is a mud blood rather than a pure blood. If Matthew’s desire is to present Jesus to his Jewish audience at Jesus’s Jewish best, then there’s no way he includes any of the women in the genealogy. Why? Number one because typically you don’t include women in the genealogy at all; two, there are women in that genealogy with questionable moral character; three, Jesus’s great, great, great, great, great, great grandmothers are Moabite, Hittite, and Canaanite. Moabites, you might not know … There’s a story of them in the Old Testament where they did not help God’s people at a certain point of crisis, and they actually paid off a prophet to curse Israel. And in response God said, “Don’t let them into the tabernacle for about ten generations.”

So, again, if Matthew is trying to present Jesus and market Jesus the best way he can, he’s definitely not going to say anything about a Moabite past. So, I think Matthew is sending a real clear message — Messiah is from many peoples and for all peoples. It’s on purpose. Jesus is Abraham’s offspring. Remember the promise to Abraham? You’re going to be a blessing to all nations, Moabite, Canaanite, Hittite included. Jesus Christ is one who bridges the gap between God’s people, Israel, and everybody else who isn’t from that nation.

That narrative of God’s people being all people is not new to the New Testament. The invitation to the stranger, the foreigner outside of God’s people is clear and constant throughout the Old Testament. In the arrival of Jesus Christ, that invitation, even on the interior of a genealogy, continues to be given because Jesus is Moabite, Hittite, Canaanite. That’s his lineage. And that invitation to all people to be God’s peoples is continued throughout the New Testament. So, you remember, one of the things genealogy does — it defines who you are and your inheritance. Do you want to know who Jesus says his family is? His family are those people who do what God says. It’s fascinating that Jesus says he unites all peoples into one body. Jesus actually says he creates one new nation. Jesus transforms everyone who believes in him into priests, whether they have the lineage back to Levi or not. Jesus connects all God’s people to one heavenly Father. And I think the inclusion of Jesus’s GGG grandmothers reinforces this message for all peoples to receive the Christ.

Matthew’s genealogy also highlights Jesus’s divinity, his divinity. So, in studying this, I had a weird thought that I never had before. Did you ever have this thought? Did you ever think that Jesus’s half-brothers had the pedigree to be Messiah? If you think about it, they could trace that whole same line, son of David, son of Abraham. They had it all. So, what is it about Jesus that makes him the Messiah and not his brothers? And I think it’s included in Matthew 1:16. It’s kind of this world-rocking, simple detail. Matthew 1:16 — so, we’ve had this whole list of people, right? This guy the father of this guy, this guy the father of this guy, this guy the father of this guy in Matthew 1:16, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband … Oh, that’s a new word … The husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. After fifty-one names in a row, the rhythm changes.

So, when that scripture was being read, I was actually watching you on purpose because the way the genealogy is read, it starts falling into this kind of a rhythm — “and this person was the father of this person was the father of this person” — and many of you don’t know that your body was doing this. You started counting time. You started jiving with it. You were in this rhythm right up until this point. Brand new rhythm. It’s like this verse, Matthew 1:16, is like imagine walking down fifty-one steps that all have an eight-inch tread, and the fifty-second step has a three-inch tread. You’re going to come full stop, or you’re going to fall and trip. This moment reveals Jesus is not from Joseph, and that’s what qualifies Jesus to be God’s supernatural deliverer and forever-King, that little detail. This is what sets Jesus apart from his brothers. Jesus has a different fatherly origin.

Now, this is really important. That doesn’t diminish at all Jesus’s claim to be the son of Abraham and the son of David. In the scriptures, people who knew Jesus, both those who liked Jesus and disliked Jesus, assumed he was Joseph’s son. Matthew, Luke, and John, all who wrote gospels, all attest to the same fact — son of Joseph. It’s his title — firstborn. Luke 4:22,

“Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Matthew 13:55,

“Is not this the carpenter’s son?”

John 1:45,

“We have found him … Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

John 6:42,

“Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”

It was assumed that Jesus had the first-born right, descent, and inheritance of Joseph. Six times in Matthew people approaching Jesus are going to declare him to be son of David, forever-King. So, whether it’s through Jewish custom or Roman law, Jesus was the adopted, legitimate son of Joseph and therefore the legitimate son of David and Abraham, and Matthew is simultaneously clear, but it’s not biological descent. Jesus was born from Mary. Jesus was really born. He was a real human. But Jesus is really unique because there was not a dad involved. And Matthew bookends his bold claim. The first verse, he’s Jesus the Christ, and then he’s born of Mary, he’s born of Mary, “[of whom Jesus was born], who is called the Christ,” the Messiah. So, Jesus was from Mary, but not from Joseph.

And in that one moment, Matthew is declaring the divinity of Jesus. And since Jesus didn’t come from Joseph, Jesus exists outside of sin’s curse. Jesus inherited a gene pool through Mary. He inherited it, but he did not inherit sin through his dad and his dad and his dad and his dad all the way back to Adam. Jesus needed everything a human needed — food, light, clothing, shelter, water, sleep. Jesus laughed and cried. But Jesus never sinned. Never! He never broke down and sinned. He had a different dad. So, Jesus is uniquely positioned as the son of Abraham and the son of David to be the divine Messiah, the serpent crusher, the blessing to all nations and the forever-King. Matthew, with this list of names, this genealogy, he makes this bold claim — Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus from Nowheresville is the Christ. And we can link that all the way back to Abraham, all the way back to Adam. He’s divine. He did not have a normal birth. Genealogies remind us that God kept and keeps his promises. And that’s what Matthew 1:1 is. God kept it. It’s a sticky note. God kept his promises.

See, genealogies don’t have to be like housework. There’s something behind them all in the scriptures that anchors us to who God is, what God’s doing, and that he’s going to keep his Word. Every time we choose to read through a genealogy, a list of names, we get to imagine that the infinite God of the universe intimately knows each person. He knows your name. And we get to remember that genealogies identify who we are and what we inherit.

So, if you believe Jesus is the Christ, your family tree is radically altered. No matter who you are, if you believe Jesus is the Christ, if you believe Matthew’s bold claim, your family tree is immediately altered. Paul puts it this way in Galatians 3:26-29.

“For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, by faith.”

So, if I believe Jesus is the Christ, I have a brand-new Father. I’m a brand-new kid. Paul continues,

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek.”

Another mic drop during the day. If you believe Jesus is the Christ, you have a new Father. So, what nation you’re from … It’s not that it’s unimportant. It’s just it’s not what defines you anymore. You’re defined back to this one Father that you’re given by believing that Jesus is the Christ.

“There’s neither slave nor free, there’s not male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring.”

What?! Every Gentile in the world, when you read this, you need to know the entire story we talked about at the beginning. I get to inherit all of those promises that God gave to his people all the way back to the gigantic promise at the beginning that the deceiver is going to be crushed, that there’s a blessing to all nations, and I’m going to have a forever-King, and I’m going to have a new dad and be part of a new family? Abraham’s my dad, too, and the Fergusons are not a Jewish people? He’s my dad? Yes. By faith through Jesus Christ.

“Then you’re Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

God made some big promises about inheritance. Paul talks about it this way in Romans 8:16-17. God

“the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we’re children of God.”

The Spirit of God keeps reminding you of your family tree. If you believe in Jesus, the Spirit is saying, “New family tree … goes back to Father. There’s one family.” And if we’re children, well, then we’re heirs.

Remember, genealogies tell you who you are and what you inherit.

“If you’re children, then you’re heirs.”

Well, who are we heirs of? We’re

“heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”

So, Jesus is the firstborn of God, which gives Jesus the right to possess all the inheritance that God the Father would give. If I believe in Jesus Christ, I’m placed into a new family directly with God the Father, I’m Abraham’s offspring, I have access to all the promises of Abraham, I’m also a joint heir with Jesus Christ and everything the Father gives him. So, basically, by believing in Jesus, Jesus kind of throws out the whole model of firstborn inheritance and says, “No, in me, we all get it.” Whatever inheritance God gives to Jesus we all inherit. Our faith in Christ changes our genealogy. We get a brand new one. God keeps his promises. He keeps them. And we get all of that from a list of names. Amen? Amen.