Jesus, Son of David: Confident in a Faithful God

Sermon Transcript

Well, in our verse-by-verse study through the Gospel of Luke, we have here in chapter three reached a list of names—the dreaded genealogies of the Bible. And there are a variety of them both in the Old and New Testament—these long lists of names connecting people to people. We see these and, for most Bible readers, it’s a chance for us to practice our speed reading. And for a lot of preachers, it’s a chance to kind of get ahead in the book and just skip right over it.

But for all the neglect that seems to be given to these genealogies, it struck me this week how interesting it is that when it comes to our own genealogies, we seem to get pretty excited. Ancestry.com, for instance, last year raked in $400 million from people who were willing to pay to create their own list of names. That, to myself, is amazing. People have this insatiable desire to learn about their family tree. You can even—by the way, at Ancestry.com—now send in your spit, and they will analyze your DNA for a small fee. (Not through the computer, by the way—don’t try that.) You have to send it in; they’ll send you a little kit, and you can pay to figure out where your list of names goes because they’ll analyze your… Now that’s amazing to me that some people are into that. They have 10 million paying subscribers on that website.

But yet when we get down to it, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, what difference does it make, you know, who your great-great-grandfather was? For us, it matters little. And when it comes to our spiritual lives, it matters none at all. The Bible says from every tongue, tribe, and nation the people of God will gather together at the end of time. So it doesn’t matter, really, your ancestry. But when it comes to Christ, see, it matters a lot. It matters a great deal. And there’s a lot of care and attention given to the ancestry—the family tree—of Christ.

As a matter of fact, if you rightly understand the ancestry of Christ, it can change your view of Christ Himself. You’ll think of Him differently. You’ll even, I hope, think differently about yourself. And in the end—as most Scripture does—it can lead you to live in a different way if you rightly understand what’s going on in the ancestry of Christ. So we want to jump into it with that perspective.

Now, usually I make you turn to the passage—and we’ll turn to several this morning—but today it will be very important for you to look at the worksheet where I printed it, and I printed it in a way I formatted it so we can see all these names in a list. Now what you won’t see is the entire genealogy here. All we have is the first leg of it. There are three legs, basically, of the genealogy—three connections of Christ. The first leg is Christ to David, that Old Testament figure. And then the next leg is Christ to Abraham—all the way back to Abraham. That first one spans about 1,000 years; the second one spans another thousand years. And then you have the last one that takes it all the way back to Adam.

And when Matthew does his—and I printed that one for you in a column next to the one from Luke—he takes the leg from Jesus to David and then from David, and ultimately Jesus, to Abraham. He doesn’t take it all the way back to Adam. Now you can remember this from Sunday school, I hope: Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience; the Jewish disciple Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. And what’s very important for him is to make sure that his audience knows that He is connected to Abraham and He’s connected to King David. Those are important connections that we have. Now Luke’s writing to a much broader audience of Greeks and Romans—and, of course, to us; they’re both written to us—but the idea is he goes all the way back to the beginning.

The first leg, though, is important, and I printed both of those for you on the worksheet, and the grayed-out one that you can see there is because that’s not our passage for the morning. You’ll see that they both get from Jesus to David. Now, if you notice—if you look at the Matthew one—then the numerical verse order is inverted. That’s because, unlike Luke who goes actually in order from Jesus to David, Matthew inverts and he actually starts with Abraham and goes all the way to Jesus. So you have to read this one backwards. As a matter of fact, if you start at the bottom of Matthew’s list, you need to get to verse number six. Here’s how we read this—you read it backwards. That’s why the arrow’s there: “David the father of Solomon.” Have you been to church at all? I hope you know that connection. He has a son named Solomon by Bathsheba—you know the story. So “David the father of Solomon, the father of Rehoboam, the father of Abijah, the father of Asa, the father of Jehoshaphat.” Now all those familiar Old Testament names—if you’ve been paying attention—that goes right on up, and it finds its way ultimately to Jesus.

Now in our text, it doesn’t go through Solomon. It starts with David there (if we’re going to read it backwards), and then it goes to Nathan. And then a bunch of names we don’t really recognize—most of us—right? “Matthat, Menna, Melea, Eliakim…” I mean, who are those guys? Well, we get that. If you really know your Old Testament, you understand David had a lot of kids, and one of his kids he named after his pastor, if you will—which is fine if you prefer to do that. “Michael”—still a popular name. Not suggesting that, but I’ve liked it. That was totally unnecessary. I’m sorry.

Nathan, you remember, was the prophet that confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba. One of his sons he names Nathan. So this is not—don’t get that confused metaphorically. One of the problems we have with the genealogies is that a lot of people share a lot of names. Is someone talking? Have you seen the church directory? I mean, there’s a million everythings a million times a million—all these different things. So don’t blame the Bible for something that we have the same problem with—a lot of Nathans, a lot of Josephs, a lot of Levis; a lot of names that overlap. In fact, “Michael”—in the Bible I think there are nine Michaels listed in the Old Testament. We only think of the angel, but there are plenty.

So we’ve got these names here, going—one through the child of David named Nathan; that’s the one that Luke follows—and one going from David through Solomon, which is much more familiar to us, because that’s what 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles track: the kings of the southern kingdom that come from David.

Okay, enough said there. But let’s just make the most simple, basic observation about this, and that is that both of these gospel writers—obviously under the direction of the Holy Spirit—want to make the tie to David. Okay, that’s very important. And let me show you why.

Go back to Luke chapter one. In Luke chapter one, you’ll remember this if you’ve been with us through the study: we have the angelic announcement about Mary bearing a child. And here’s how it’s put—just to remind you—in verse number 30, just to get some context here. Luke 1:30: “And the angel said to her”—this is Gabriel to Mary—“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (verse 31). Luke 1:31: “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him”—now note this, underline—“the throne of his father David.”

Now David—if you’re really not literate in all this—you think of him as, I don’t know, the writer of the Psalms or something. But he’s more than a musician. He’s more than a shepherd boy. The most important thing about David was he was the sovereign monarch of Israel. He was the great king of the Old Testament. All of the kings were measured by David because God kept saying, “He’s a man after my own heart.” Not a perfect man, obviously—if you know anything about his life—a sinful man like you and I, but responded rightly to rebuke, responded rightly to conviction. He was a man that God put up on a pedestal before the people and said, “That’s my kind of king—that king right there.”

And then He made him a really big promise in 2 Samuel chapter 7. He said, from you—from your own body—will come one. And He begins then to look at Solomon, his own son, who will build a temple. But then He goes on to talk about the one that would ultimately come from his body, who was the one who would rule everyone. That’s what’s being said next. Take a look at this: “He’ll give him the throne of his father David” (verse 33). “He will reign over the house of Jacob”—but not just the Israelites in the southern kingdom, and not just the whole of the twelve tribes—“but of his kingdom, both breadth and length, there will be no end.” Does that sound like a Christmas card? You’ve heard that before? All right—Isaiah 9—we talked about, you know, “Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor,” all that. And then it says the government will rest on His shoulders, and the extent or the reach of His government—there’ll be no end.

So the Messiah was to be the Son of David. And the Messiah was to have this expansive, universal kingdom. And He would be the political leader—He would be the leader of the whole thing. Not just politically, but religiously and every other way He would lead. Now, that’s important for us to catch. I should add this, I suppose. Turn with me to Luke 20. As long as you’re in Luke, let’s go to Luke chapter 20.

We read the parallel passage in our daily Bible reading—hopefully you’re keeping up with that. If not, just jump on with us and read through the Bible every year with Compass Bible Church. We read the parallel passage. The scribes come in—they’re trying to stump Him. Scribes are in a big debate theologically on a lot of things. But one of the issues that we see surface in the Bible is the debate about the afterlife. And the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection, and the Pharisees did. So they were debating, and so the Sadducees and the scribes were peppering Him with these questions, and He answers—as you would expect—perfectly and stumps them in the process.

Well, they’re done. In verse 39 (Luke 20:39), they said, “Okay, you got the right answers; you’ve spoken well.” And they no longer dared to ask Him any questions. Verse 41: but Christ has a question for them. “Hey, all you teachers and religious leaders and seminary graduates, how can they say that the Christ—the Messiah—is David’s son?” That’s what they’re all looking for: the Son of David; the promise from 2 Samuel 7; the Davidic covenant; there would be a promise of the coming future Messiah.

“For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ Thus,” He says, “David calls him ‘Lord.’ How then is he his son?” In other words, Christ is trying to make it really clear: when David prophetically speaks about the coming Messiah, he says—read it again—he says, “The LORD said to my Lord.” The Lord—Yahweh, the King of the universe—says to my Adonai—my boss, my king—“Sit at my right hand, till I make all the enemies under your feet a footstool for your feet.”

So here’s the deal: David is going to have a son, but he’s not a lesser son; he’s a greater son. He’s going to rule everything and everyone and be the ultimate leader.

Well, for all of that—number one on your outline—let’s just jot this down. And this may seem so simple, I realize, but write this down if you would:

1) Live like Jesus is King.

“I want my offering back. This is just too, you know, too simple. I could have done that.” Listen, I know you’re looking for some deep insight here, but you may find this is more insightful than you think. Because when it comes to the expectation of the coming Christ, the Bible says He will be the king of—not just Judah and Jacob—but the world. He’ll be the King. And that’s a king who sits on a throne with a crown and a scepter—that is actually in a room in a palace in a complex in the middle of a city, which happens to be the capital that’s ruling the whole earth. That’s how they envisioned the coming of Christ: as a real, literal King.

Today, we often think the end of this story is: put your trust in Christ, repent of your sins, then you get this invisible friend called Jesus to walk through life with—as though that’s the end of the story. That’s it—the hope of Christianity is to be reconciled to God and just have this invisible relationship with Jesus. That’s not the goal. Let me show you New Testament evangelism.

Go with me to Acts chapter three. Acts chapter three: Peter is preaching, and look what he does—which is very different than what we often do in just saying, “Isn’t it great to have Jesus by your side invisibly and spiritually?” No, that’s not the goal. The goal is to be in a place where He’s down the street. I can direct someone to the palace—He would be there ruling and reigning as the literal monarch of the kingdom. And on the flat screens—or whatever the equivalent is in the New Jerusalem—we will see His face giving us the briefing every week. That is the picture that we’re all heading toward.

Drop down in this third chapter of Acts, verse 18. We can all identify with these kinds of things. We preach this—this is the gospel—and we get this. We say this: “What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He thus fulfilled.” We talk about the cross. We talk about the propitiation of the cross, the atonement of the cross—Isaiah 53—“It pleased the Lord to crush Him,” put Him to death, that He might forgive us. We get all of that. And what’s the response? We preach this too (verse 19): “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” We get all that and we preach all that—“Hey, you need your sins forgiven; you’ve got a problem with God; here’s the deal: God sent Christ to suffer for you. You can have your sins forgiven.”

And then we usually say, “Welcome to the family,” and we end the story right there—and maybe say things like, “Well, you’ve got to pray, you’ve got to go to church, you’ve got to read your Bible,” and you’ll have this relationship with God and the Spirit will dwell in you—and that’s it. And here’s the mysterious spiritual thing that we’re going to do, and our invisible God will live with us. That’s not where he ends it. See a comma there at the end of verse 19? Look at verse 20: “That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets long ago.”

The point of this is: Christ is gone now for a while, and heaven’s got to have Him now, and it is long-distance now, and it is “Oh, the Spirit in our heart.” I get that—our link to God. But we “see through a glass dimly; then face to face.” Now we “walk by faith, not by sight,” but then our faith will be sight, and then we’ll be able to look on our flat screens on the side of our houses—our family rooms—and say, “There’s the Christ—listen to His voice.” He will speak, and His voice will go out, and little bones in your inner ear will vibrate, and it will send signals to your brain, and the synapses of your glorified brain will function, and you will see Him with your eyes. You’ll see His fingernails and His hands and His face and His eyelashes and His eyes, and He will be physically reigning as the political leader of the world. That’s what we keep talking about.

And it may seem odd, because most people just want their spiritual buddy to walk through life with—as though that’s the end of the game. And yet, I always have to remind you that one day “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord” (the Father) “and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.” He will—as the angelic chorus says in heaven—He will “take His great power and begin to reign.” That’s the hope of the Christian life.

And sometimes we live as though this is the point—to have this invisible relationship with Jesus. It’s not the point. The point is to get through this time, while heaven must receive Him for a while, until He can—(as the text says in verse 20)—send Him, till He can come back, that He may be sent—appointed for us—this Christ (verse 21), and the restoring of all things will take place.

Now, I know if you’re an eschatological snob, you’re going to say, “Well, there’s more to it—you’ve got the millennial kingdom, and you’ve got the time of Jacob’s trouble.” I get all that. I know that. And the millennial kingdom will be this first installment of an earthly kingdom where Christ will reign on the throne. But if you think that’s not in some way parallel to the eternal state, you haven’t read the Bible. I get that we still have an earth that is subject to some of the effects of sin. But after the Great White Throne Judgment and after the millennial kingdom is done, we start the eternal state. And in the eternal state, guess what? We have streets, food, bodies. We have a place where we have the King enthroned in His palace. We are all now subject to His sovereign leadership—the perfect, as some theologians have said, “benevolent dictator” leading the world. There’s no more Senate. There’s no balance of powers. There’s never, on our flat screens in the New Jerusalem, something about the new polling deciding what we’re going to do in the legislature—none of that. We’re not going to put our finger in the air and take polls anymore, because Christ will sit on the throne. He will lead this world.

And that’s what we right now need to live like. We need to recognize that, though He’s not enthroned here, He will be. And He’s given us a book—a 66-volume library of His thoughts on paper—that are the constitution for the citizens of this place. “But aren’t we going to heaven?” Like, we call it that: “You’re going to heaven.” Much like Christ has gone to heaven just for a time, then we’re coming back. He’s going to make a new earth and a new city, and we’re going to live there for eternity in a real place with fingernails and eyelashes, eating real food, digesting our food in our stomach. We’re going to live in that reality. That’s how God designed us. So much so, it’s awkward for us to be in heaven without our bodies that Paul said in 2 Corinthians—when we put aside this earthly tent, we’re going to be naked. Not talking about bodies without clothes—we’re talking about a spirit without a body. We’re not going to live in this body for a time, but it’s only for a time. And then the resurrection takes place, and we get a body that was designed the way it’s supposed to be designed, without any reference to sin. And we live in a place with real homes and real relationships and real friends and real food and real occupations and things to do—with Christ and His face on the banners down the streets of the city capital. That’s the hope of the Christian life.

It’s not far, far away. Let’s dispel the myths of you in some kind of overweight, translucent body sitting on a cotton-ball cloud with some golden harp going “bong.” Right? That’s not the destiny. No wonder you’re not excited about where we’re heading if your idea is being a fat cherub singing songs in Latin on a cotton-ball cloud. It doesn’t make any sense because you weren’t designed for that. What are the things that you love—really love—without reference to sin? That’s where we’re headed. And Christ was sent to earth to be our perfect leader in a human body. He is the Son of David. And when David ascended the throne and Saul was headed out of town, I know it wasn’t perfect, but it was a little foretaste of having the righteous person on the throne—and finally this place is being run the way it ought to be. And that’s where you and I are headed, and you need to start living now like that’s going to happen.

You remember—there was a—I know I over-reference this—but in 1 Samuel 22:1–2, and if this is old to you, I’m sorry, but let me repeat it. There was a little band of people that followed David around between his anointing—let’s call it the coronation of the king—and him ascending the throne in Jerusalem—let’s call that the inauguration. There were several years between the coronation of King David and the inauguration. And they had to live on the fringes of society, and everybody hated them, and Saul himself pursued these people. And according to 1 Samuel 22, there was only a band of 400 people, and society did not like them. But guess where those 400 ended up when David walked up the palace steps? They were the princes of the new kingdom.

We’re in that place now. You know, I understand you put your finger in the air and find out what the culture thinks about any number of issues. It won’t match the 66-volume constitution that the King gave us. I understand that. And we are living out in the cave of Adullam on the fringes of society. I get that too. But one day Christ will take His power and begin to reign. And everything the stinking world wants to mock about what Christians teach—if it’s found in the Bible—they will eat their words with their forehead on the ground, bowing before the King of kings and the Lord of lords. That’s what’s going to happen. And you and I need to live now with the bold confidence—in faith—that Christ is going to reign in Jerusalem. Okay—the New Jerusalem. That’s where we’re headed. That’s the confidence of the Christian life, and it ought to be the way we think—why? Because Jesus is the Son of David, the greater Son of David, the one that David will call his Lord, and the one we call Lord now.

2) Trust in God’s good promises.

Number two on your outline: as we look through this list of all these names, you think, “Okay, let’s start with Luke.” Luke’s list here—we’ve got Luke trying to make a beeline from Jesus to David: 42 generations. If you know anything about your biblical chronology, this is about a 1,000-year period—from David, the middle monarchy of Israel, the united kingdom, to the coming of Christ—about 1,000 years. So we have all these generations here listed. And as I said, if you want to work backwards up the list from verse 31, it’s going through the line of Nathan.

And why is that? Well, because if you think about Christ Jesus being the Son of David, and you really want “the Son of David” the way that 2 Samuel 7 said—which included the phrase “from your own body”—then you expect the genetic material in the baby Jesus in Bethlehem to be connected to David in Israel 1,000 years earlier. There’s this little problem called the virgin birth—ever heard of it? That’s a bit of a problem. Because if you’re going to trace this to Joseph, Joseph had nothing to do with this. That’s the whole point. So we don’t have the genetic material from David if both of these lists are nothing more than the genealogy of Joseph.

Here’s the contention: Luke’s genealogy is not the genealogy of Joseph. Luke’s genealogy is the genealogy of Mary. Now, that makes sense, because Mary’s genetic material ended up in Jesus. The virgin birth—certainly her genetic material was there. I mean, her eye color, her whatever—there was that connection of the physical body of Jesus coming from Mary. Now, if we’re going to fulfill the Davidic covenant, we’d better have genetic material from David in Jesus. We ought to have a line that we can draw.

Now, here’s a bit of the problem. When we look at God fulfilling His promise—which, let’s just put down the point number two and then we’ll talk about it—we need to trust in God’s good promises, because He fulfills them every time. Trust in them. When God makes a promise, He’s going to fulfill it. When He said “from David’s own body” would come the Messiah who would reign all over the planet, we expect that from his own body will come Jesus. That’s exactly what happens. The problem is, if you read the genealogy closely in verse number 23, it does not sound like that’s what we’re talking about. Let’s read it:

Verse 23: “Jesus, when He began His ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai, son of Joseph, son of Mattathias…” and on it goes.

But wait a minute—who’s Joseph’s dad? Well, according to this, it seems to be that Heli is Joseph’s dad. Therefore we do have the genealogy of Joseph. Now look over at the Matthew list. This one says the father of Joseph—you’ve got to read it backwards now—is who? Jacob. Are you following this? Now, you’ve got Jesus born of Mary; Joseph was the husband of Mary; and Jacob was the father of Joseph. Now, I don’t know—how many dads do you have? I mean, we’re thinking to ourselves, we’ve got a problem here. I need to know who Joseph’s dad is. If both of these are the genealogy of Joseph, then I’m thinking I’ve got a discrepancy here.

Now, here’s the problem. The problem is found in the way this is translated. And—no fancy footwork here—but we need to show you the Greek text. So in the bottom right-hand corner of the worksheet, I have what we call an interlinear—I’ve got the Greek text with interspaced or interlined infusions of the English text, the English translation of each of those words—interlinear. You probably have one on your computer.

Now, here’s what I need to point out to you: the way this is done—and some translations will translate it much more literally than we have in the ESV. Well, let’s read it. You find it there: “Jesus beginning about years thirty…” (That’s what you learn in Greek, by the way—it’s like reading Yoda’s memoirs. Some of it’s very turned around.) But anyway, this is literally how it reads: Jesus beginning (the assumption is His ministry), about years thirty—about thirty years old. Now this is the careful phrase—get this now: “being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph…” There’s a phrase now in the ESV—look back up and you’ll see in parentheses the words in English that they translate “as was supposed.” What I’d like for you to do—number one, recognize there are no parentheses in the Greek text. But I would like you to look at this phrase, and I’ll show you as we compare it with the rest of verse 24 and following, that that parentheses should be over the entire phrase. Look at it this way: “being the son (as supposed) of Joseph.”

Now, every time we have a name—glance down on the interlinear there—you see the word “the” in front of it, right? The definite article—“the.” It’s in a form in Greek because it’s highly inflected. That’s a genitive, or possessive, form, and I translated it for you: “of the Heli, of the Matthat, of the Levi, of the Melchi.” Look at Joseph’s name. Do you see a definite article in front of that? Do you see the word “the” in front of that, which looks like a “tō” to you in Greek? You don’t see that there. The pattern is not the same. So we know it’s different than the rest of the list. And the word “son” is not in any of the following. There’s never the word “son.” Some older translations—and the NAS does this too—you can see the word “son” in italics (because it’s not in the Greek text); they supply it to make sense of it.

Some translations will translate it this way: “Jesus, beginning His ministry, about age thirty—being the son, as it was supposed, of Joseph, but of Heli, of Matthat, of Levi, of Melchi…” Why do they add a conjunction—a contrasting conjunction, the word “but”? Only to point out that we’ve talked about Joseph without a definite article, not the possessive of the rest of the list. But we have the word “son”—they thought He was the son of Joseph—but He was of Heli, He was of Matthat, He was of Levi, He was of Melchi. Okay—do you see that? That’s the pattern here. And understanding that pattern helps us recognize Joseph is being treated completely different in this list than everybody else.

Well then, who is Heli? Well, he’s not the father of Joseph—that’s my contention. The father of Joseph, we learn from Matthew, is Jacob. Who’s the offspring of Heli? The person we’ve been talking about for the last two chapters—who’s that? Mary.

Now, you’ll find—unlike Matthew—Luke gives no females in the genealogy. But the female who has been the center-stage focus of the first two chapters is Mary. Her name—not counting personal pronouns, just proper nouns—shows up twelve times by name in the first two chapters. Joseph shows up once by himself (when it speaks of him going to the census) and only twice when he’s connected with Mary in some part of the narrative. Mary is the focus here. Mary is the one who gives birth to the child. Luke is writing to Greeks and Romans, who aren’t all up on the southern kings of Israel from the seventh century BC—they’re not thinking of that. They just want to know: this kid was born of a virgin without the help of a man—what was the background of the baby? Well, we have it here: No—they thought He was the son of Joseph, but He was of Heli, He was of Matthat, He was of Levi, He was of Melchi—and on the list goes.

Now, if you understand what’s happening under our English translation, you start to recognize that that makes sense. And it makes sense, too, if I understand the Davidic covenant. The Davidic covenant was that there would be someone from your own body who would sit on the throne. Therefore, God keeps His promise to a T. And out of the genetic, if you will, material of David comes the child who will sit on the throne—not the lesser son, the greater son, the one who David would call his Lord—and would have that continuation from David’s throne in his body and his genetics all the way to Jesus. And God keeps His promise perfectly—exactly as He promised.

Let’s step out of the genealogy for a second. I made you write down this phrase: trust in God’s good promises. God makes a good promise—that’s number two; we’re there—and He fulfills it. How often does He do that? Every time. God’s batting 1,000 when it comes to fulfilling His promises.

Now there are a lot of promises that haven’t been fulfilled—yet. Here’s a good promise: that all this sinful world is going to be replaced with a righteous world. There’s a promise. It’s the hope of the Christian life. It’s the thing that Jesus taught us to pray for every day. And that is—remember that model prayer? “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” What’s the first request on the list? “Your kingdom come.” That’s the thing we’ve been praying for, and that’s the good promise of God: that the kingdom is coming. For a point in time He’s in heaven, but He’s going to come back and set up the kingdom.

Okay—where in the world is He? 2 Peter chapter 3 says people will come and mock. They’ll say, “Where is the promise of His coming? He hasn’t shown up. You guys are trusting in Christ—God must have forgotten what time it is.” And what—do you remember what Peter’s response was to that? A couple things. He said, “Well, you forget how God has broken into time and space without any trouble—He doesn’t forget anything.” But then he says this: “A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.”

If I make a promise to my kid that we’re going to go somewhere or do something, or I’m going to buy him something, and it was five weeks ago, I’ve all but forgotten it by now. It just takes a little time for the binding nature of my promises to start to fade. But if I made that promise yesterday and they call me on it—oh, I remember that. Yeah.

What’s the deal with God? It’s like every promise He ever made was yesterday. See, time is not a problem. When—in a moment—God speaks to David and says, “From your own body we’re going to have the Messiah come,” 1,000 years later isn’t like, “Oh yeah, I forgot I made that.” Boom—He fulfills that.

Here’s what the Bible says about this world: it’ll be replaced by the perfect leadership of the sovereign King, Jesus Christ. You and I can doubt that; we can start to live like this is our home down here. But the Bible says, don’t live that way. You need to live like the coming King is going to set up this kingdom. You need to be loyal to Him. You—stop calling Him “King, King” or “Lord, Lord,” and not do what He says (as Luke 6:46 says). You need to live in anticipation of the coming kingdom—even if it’s been 2,000 years—keep trusting in that good promise being fulfilled.

Do you really have the faith that the promises of God are going to come true? Let’s give you a couple examples—let me throw some out. Here’s a promise of God for everyone who loves Him and is called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 says what? That God is going to work together all things for good for those that love God and are called according to His purpose. If you love God and are called according to His purpose—is that you? Okay, you’ve got a choice to make. Does God keep His good promises? Is He really going to work out this layoff, this foreclosure, this diagnosis, this relational problem, this financial… Is He really going to work that out for good—in some way that’s going to glorify Him—and from heaven’s perspective we’re going to look back and say, “Wow, that is exactly what should have happened—that’s the good plan that God worked”? Do you believe this promise? Do you really believe His promise? If you believe this promise, it’s going to affect the way you talk about those things—if you complain about those things; how much you nag God in prayer about those. You trust Him. You believe in His promise.

Philippians 4:19 says—(these are Sunday school verses now—I get it; but they’re the good promises of God)—it says, God will meet all your needs according to the riches in Christ Jesus. You’ve got a lot of needs right now, and God’s making you wait. You feel the pangs of deprivation; you don’t have the things you pray for; you don’t have the things you want; you don’t have the things that you think you need. Do you believe the promise of God, that He said, “Hey, I’ll meet your needs—I promise that”? If that’s the case, we’re going to be able to go through these times of deprivation a little differently—because why? We believe in the good promises of God. Look at His batting average—He can make a promise and wait 1,000 years to fulfill it, and He fulfills it exactly as He promised.

One more—and you can spend time in your home fellowship groups going through longer lists than just this—but let me pick one more. In Matthew 10, Jesus said this about our service to the body of Christ: He said even if you were to slide a cup of cold water across the table to someone because they’re a disciple of mine, I tell you, by no means will you lose your reward. This is the God who says there’s not a sparrow that falls out of a tree without His providential oversight. That God says, “I’m paying attention. I’ve got the hairs on your head numbered. And when you do something and sacrifice for the good of My people, I will reward you.”

I mean, is that really what you believe? The next time you see a ministry opportunity and you go, “Oh man…” Do you really think this is worth it? When you’re putting on the Awana vest on Thursday night and that work project sits there and you think, “Man, what am I doing? I’m going to a puppet show at church tonight. Right? I mean, is this really what I should be doing?” Do you really look at the Scripture in Matthew 10 and say, “I believe that God will reward me for every little thing that I do for the good of God’s people”?

Make your own list there. Books—I gave you one, I think, on the back, on the promises of God. Find the good promises of God and then just ask yourself, “Do I live like I believe that?” Because every time God makes a promise in the Bible, He’s bringing it to bear. And the Old Testament is full of them that He brought to fruition in the New Testament. You’ve got to trust in God’s good promises because He’s batting 1,000.

3) Count on God’s just judgments.

Now, I want you to write down number three. I don’t normally do this deductively, but let me do it this way now. Write this down, if you would: You need to count on God’s just judgments. So let me show you why here. And—just for a second—recognize we’re just celebrating for a minute and trying to get you to be encouraged that God keeps His good promises. He also keeps His—quote-unquote—bad promises. The things I wish He didn’t keep.

Matter of fact, you’re reading through the Bible with us in the daily Bible reading. We recently got through the end of Numbers, and think through what you’ve been reading about here. A lot of discussions by Moses—who’s penning the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible—and he keeps talking about how he’s not going to get to go into the Promised Land. Remember that? He keeps saying, “Well, I’m not going to”—he didn’t say it that way, but he said, “I was excluded because I did that I shouldn’t have done—I struck the rock. He told me to talk to the rock. I maligned the glory of God in front of the people. It was a public sin.” And God’s saying, “You can’t go to the Promised Land.” Not to mention the whole generation who—after the spies came back, the ten spies from Kadesh-Barnea that said, “They’re too big,” even though Joshua and Caleb—the other two—were saying, “We can take it; God said we could do it”—they didn’t trust Him. The people of Kadesh-Barnea did not. He said, “Fine—you’re all not going to enter the Promised Land.”

Over and over we see that. And we’re in the early parts of Deuteronomy right now. Today’s reading—I know you had a lot—one less hour. So you’ll read it this afternoon. But do you remember in chapter three we read this week? Moses is there one more time talking about how God is excluding him from the Promised Land. There’s a classic exchange there. He pleaded with the Lord, saying, “Oh God…”—you know all this—after all of that, verse 26 of Deuteronomy 3, it says, “But the Lord was angry with me because of this situation, and He would not listen to me.” Love this: “And the Lord said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me again on this matter.’”

And I’m thinking—I’m reading that—I’m going, “Oh, come on. It’s Moses. Just let him—let him cross the Jordan. Come on. He was Your favorite.” You want to talk about a God who keeps His just judgments? Talk to Moses about that. When God says, “You’re not going,” it didn’t happen. When He says to the generation in the desert, “Done—sorry, you failed the test—you’re not in,” then they’re not going in.

There’s something comforting about Him keeping His good promises, and there’s something very helpful about us recognizing we can count on His just judgments. When He makes a judgment and says things like this: “Hey, there’s salvation found in no one else but Christ—no one.” Therefore, you’ve got time now, but “it is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.” And I know Rob Bell and Love Wins—that whole mentality—we kind of think, “Well, He grounded them for Saturday night, but it’s Monday. By Friday He’ll probably let us go to the prom.” Listen: God makes a just judgment, and when He does it—right there, just like His good promises—they don’t fail.

I don’t know if you caught that whole thing, but some people think God’s just going to kind of lighten up and there’ll be second chances for you. God is a God who means what He says and says what He means.

Why am I bringing that all up? Look at the Matthew list that’s printed on your worksheet there—the genealogy. Drop down to verse number 12. There’s a man there—the second name listed: Jeconiah. You see him? He’s the father of Shealtiel. Jeconiah—verse 12—put a box around him, or an exclamation point, or something—a dagger—do something to let him jump off that page. Jeconiah. Who’s this guy?

Once you box that, turn over with me, if you would, to Jeremiah 22. Jeremiah 22. Now, here’s the thing about names—we all have nicknames, right? You name your kid Matthew and no one calls him that. There’s a guy in Israel called Jehoiachin—that was his given name. But they liked to call him Jeconiah. He even had a third name for his real close buddies that God calls him in this passage: Coniah. Jeconiah, Jehoiachin, Coniah—they’re all the same person.

Now, if you really know—you know, if you lettered in Sunday school—you remember Jehoiachin had a very short reign near the end when Nebuchadnezzar’s forces were amassing in the southern kingdom. So he was a king in Jerusalem, but it was for a very short time. Here’s another thing you might remember: he was eighteen years old when he ascended the throne. We already have a recipe for disaster here, right? Eighteen-year-old king; sovereign power. He, according to the Bible, was an evil king who did evil in the sight of the Lord.

He made God so angry by his wickedness that Jeremiah—you know about Jeremiah—he’s writing his prophecies near the end of the fall of the southern kingdom (we’re approaching 586 BC; think ~600 BC). Here he writes in chapter 22—drop down to verse number 24. He’s the voice, the mouthpiece, for God declaring judgment on Jeconiah—called here, in this case, in this text, Coniah.

Look at verse 24 (Jer. 22:24): “As I live, declares the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off.” I don’t care if you are my valued ring; I would cast it from me. “And I would give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans.” I turn you over because I’m so angry at you.

Verse 26: “I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die.” Verse 27: “But to the land to which they will long to return, there they shall not return.”

Look at this (v. 28): “Is this man Coniah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land that they do not know?” “O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord!” (v. 29). Thus says the Lord (v. 30)—underline this—“Write this man down as childless.” Now, he wasn’t childless; but “mark him down as childless, because I’m not going to recognize any of his kids.” “A man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.” No more. His kids—none of his offspring—done.

Now, the royal line—as we recognize reading through Matthew’s list—David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah—those names we recognize because they’re all kings of the south. There’s the royal line. And Matthew is reciting those to his Jewish audience, reminding them that here comes Jesus in the royal line. But if someone’s a good student of the Bible, they raise their hand and say, “Wait a minute. If this is the offspring of Jeconiah, he has no right to the throne.” Why? Because God issued a just judgment on Jeconiah six centuries before the coming of Christ, and said none of his offspring will ever succeed or sit on the throne ruling in Judah. Not going to happen.

This genealogy in Matthew is tracking the royal line. The one in Luke is tracking the physical line. One is the kingly line; the other one is the flesh-and-blood line. The flesh-and-blood line cannot be through the royal line, because Jeconiah has a barrier put up by God, and any of his offspring cannot inherit the throne of Israel.

So people ask, “Well, why do we have the two genealogies?” That’s why we have the two genealogies. Because God keeps His promises—it’s always good to do that; you can count on it—and He also keeps His just judgments. And even when you would think, “Oh, you know, it’s his great-great-grand… it’s fine,” it’s not fine. God promised: “You’re not going to sit on the throne, and none of your kids will sit on the throne.” Therefore, we have to have this second genealogy in the Bible. If you don’t think God is writing the Bible—working through Matthew and, in this case, Luke—we have God writing these texts for us and showing us, as we read the whole of Scripture, how He gets His work done—even around the barrier, if you will, of His own just judgments.

Some people, though, have read on this text before and they struggle. Look at verse 12 (if you read it backwards). This is Matthew chapter one—it’s on your worksheet there. Who’s above Jeconiah? Shealtiel. Who’s above Shealtiel? Zerubbabel. We’ve got Shealtiel and Zerubbabel back to back. Now look across into Luke’s list in verse 27. We’ve got Joanan, Rhesa… oh, there it is—Zerubbabel and Shealtiel—and then we’ve got Neri and Melchi, and on it goes.

Now, wait a minute—Zerubbabel and Shealtiel… Hmm. We’re back. Now some people see the genealogies as doing this: Nathan and Solomon—oh, back to Shealtiel, Zerubbabel—and then they split. Problem is, if you try to line up the times—and I understand Matthew’s skipping generations; I mean, it’s obvious that he’s doing that; he even admits it by the numbering of it all—but what’s the point? These are not coming back together; the time wouldn’t even match. And people start throwing flags on the play—“Well, it’s just impossible for those names to line up. These have got to be the same people.”

Here’s my answer to that: We have two separate lines. One’s going to Mary; one’s going to Joseph. They are not the same people.

“Wow, that’s hard to believe.” Look back on the list in Luke. Look at verse 24. We read this one: “the son of Matthat, the son of Levi”—well, there’s a combination. Drop down (if you went) to verse 29—the last two people in verse 29—“the son of Matthat, the son of Levi.” Oh, impossible—can’t have two generations with the same… “This has got to be the same people—the genealogy circles back on itself; oh, we’re in some weird time continuum.” What’s happening? Different people have the same names—sometimes even generationally. The dad’s name is one name and the kid’s name is the same name.

I’ll prove it right now. My dad’s name is Jake or Jacob. My name is Mike or Michael. My son’s name—firstborn’s name—is Matthew or Matt. Anybody in the room have—let’s just start with this (interactive church)—just raise your hand if you have, in your family—either your dad, your uncle, you, your brother, your sons—raise your hand if you have a Jake/Jacob, Mike/Michael, or Matt/Matthew. Just raise your hand—you’ve got one of those in your family? Okay. How many have more than one? You’ve got at least two of those? Anybody have all three names in their family? Right—okay. You do too; you’re trying to figure out your family members. Okay, you got it. But you have two. Now, let’s try this: who can say it from generation to generation? You have a dad that is a Jacob that has a son Michael—anybody? Or how about a dad Michael that has a son Matthew? I’ve hit in all the other services, by the way. Anybody in this service? You do, because you’re my mother—so that doesn’t count.

All I’m telling you is a lot of people have the same names. By the way—and we’re always thinking of a singular name, aren’t we? We’re often thinking like we think of a single “Michael.” You know, there are like seven to nine Michaels in the Old Testament. There are—I don’t know, let’s pick on Joseph—there are seven Josephs in the Bible. Let me give you one passage—I think we have time for this. Let’s go to Zechariah chapter 12. That sounds hard, but just go to Matthew and turn back two books. That’s the easy way to find it.

Zechariah chapter 12. I want to show you that I believe that this was looked to in a very interesting passage about the end times. Now, the first verse I’m going to read here in Zechariah 12 is familiar to you, I trust. It’s looking to a time after the crucifixion of Christ. Verse 10—Zechariah 12:10—did you find it? The Bible says, “I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy”—so they’re going to be soft-hearted now; they’re calling out for mercy—“so that, when they look on Me, on Him whom they have pierced”—interesting change of pronouns there, right? This is Christ—“they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over Him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”

“On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo” (v. 11). That’s where all the great battles were—anybody mourn their lost brother or father. Verse 12: “The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; and the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves.”

Now that’s interesting. If you’re going to talk about the royal family after Christ—the royal family after Christ—you wouldn’t expect going from David through Nathan; you would expect David through Solomon. That’s the royal line. Post-Christ crucifixion, the prophetic word—penned at least four centuries before the coming of Christ—is a picture of the royal line coming through Nathan, not through Solomon. That’s interesting. How do I know that? Well, look at the next one. I can see the same pattern in verse 13: “the family of the house of Levi”—now, that’s not the Levi in our genealogy list; that’s the Levi back there where we began the tribes in Genesis—“and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves.” See, Shimei—speaking of a lot of people—there are nineteen people in the Bible named Shimei. And you think of Shimei throwing the rocks—if you really know the story of David coming back after the exile and the Absalom story—Shimei is a bad man throwing rocks from the family of Saul. Shimei here, though, is the grandson of Levi from the book of Genesis. That grandson—which also is interesting—is the priestly line. We have the priests—post-Christ at some point—mourning the death of Christ and convicted by it: the Levites through the line of the Shimeites; and the royal line—not through Solomon’s line but through Nathan’s line—looking back at what they had done to Christ.

That’s interesting. And it’s coming in the time of Jacob’s trouble at the end of the book of Revelation, in the Great Tribulation, as the people turn back to Christ. And who are the lines that matter? The royal line through Nathan; the priestly line through Shimei. Interesting little tidbit you wouldn’t expect—that fits perfectly with what we read in Luke chapter three: that the Christ—the genetic material, if you will—the royal line shifted from Solomon’s line to Nathan’s line.

I know there are a lot of “bad” promises we’d prefer God not to keep, but He will. And that gives us a bit of a circumspect Christian life. I think about a passage—you can write it down, you know it—1 Peter chapter 1, verse 17. It tells us—after a long list of commands for us to be holy in our behavior—it says, “Remember the One you call Father, who impartially judges each man’s work.” You want to talk about impartiality? Talk to Moses about that. Even Moses—when God hands down His righteous judgments, His just judgments—He keeps them.

God says a lot of things about our lives now. He says, “You do things; there will be consequences. You sow to the flesh; you will reap from the flesh corruption.” You recognize this when you’re making decisions this week? Remember, our God that we call out to as Father is not like earthly fathers—who you can violate on Monday and get a penalty on Saturday and wear him down by Friday night and still get the car keys to go on the date. It doesn’t work that way with God. You need to live a kind of life recognizing we have a disciplinarian, according to Hebrews 12—a Father who is very serious about what He says. And He says certain things about all kinds of issues in our lives, and He says, “I’m not going to take that lightly. I can’t turn the other way on that.”

If you want another example—we’re talking about the traveling Israelites in the desert getting shut out—in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says you need to take a lesson from the severity of God toward the Israelites in the desert, and the way He treated them there when there was rebellion, when all they wanted to do was “sit down to eat and stand up to play.” God was so severe with them—and you guys need to recognize that. He says, because if you think you stand just because you’re special and God’s got your picture on His refrigerator and you’re so cute He’s not going to treat you like He did the Israelites in the desert—you’ve got another thing coming, because you’re going to fall. You need to resist temptation—that’s the next verse. “No temptation has overtaken you except that which is common” and God will provide you a way out. And when people don’t take it, God responds with just judgments.

You do know we’re all going to be judged one day. I’m not talking about purgatory, and I’m not talking about being cast into the lake of fire. I’m talking about standing before the bema seat of Christ. According to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, he says, “We all must stand before Christ—the judgment seat of Christ—to give an account for the deeds done in the body.” He says it to the Romans; he says it to the Corinthians. Jesus said it this way: He said you’re going to have to give an account for every careless word you speak. We’re going to be held accountable. Those are the kinds of things I wish God could kind of forget about. But that leads us to live a kind of holy life, I trust, because we realize the One we call on as Father also is our impartial Judge. And the rest of that verse simply says, “So conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.”

We’re exiles now. What does that mean? Christ’s appointed time to return hasn’t arrived. In the meantime, we need to live lives that are pleasing to God. God is a God who keeps His promise—both good and—quote-unquote—bad. And we need to live that way right now—as though He’s a God that doesn’t ever break His promise.

Here’s a line from Psalm 119:160: “The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever.” God is a God who, when He speaks, we can count on it. When you open your Bibles this week, I hope you remember that the sum of His Word is truth. And what He says, He means, and He’ll mean it 1,000 years from now. Don’t forget it.

Let’s pray.

God, help us as we think—just in the beginning of our study through the genealogy of Christ—let’s remember that You’re a God that keeps Your promise. Whether it’s the judgment on Jehoiachin—Jeconiah—or whether it’s the promise that from David’s body would come the Messiah, we know You’re going to keep Your promises. This is no surprise to You. You don’t forget about it. Time in no way mitigates the binding nature of Your promises. So let us live that way, knowing that You’re a great God.

As Paul said to the Romans in chapter 11, verse 22, we need to contemplate both the kindness and severity of God to live the kind of life that we should live. So God, let that be a balance in our thinking even today. Give us a great sense of confidence in Your promises. Let us not live as though they’re not true, or might be true, or “I hope they’re true.” Let us recognize the reliability we should have on the Word of God.

Thanks for our time together this morning. May it change the way we live. In Jesus’ name, Amen.