Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy, presenting to us the family of Jesus Christ from Abraham, through David and the Exile to Joseph and Mary. It is a gallery of the good and the bad of Israel's history. It includes people who did get things for God and trusted in his word, and those who not only disregarded God's truth, but intentionally led others into sin. It is filled with faithful actions of integrity and morally questionable choices, but it is the family line of Christ and is recorded for us, so it must mean something!

This list of names, like any list, tells us information that is important. No one on the list is ever truly good enough; each one needs a saviour. So, beginning with Abraham who first received the covenant promises of salvation through all the generations to Christ, he is presented as the one who fulfils all the Old Testament prophecies and the fulness of God's covenant with his people.

The reality for us today is what Paul teaches us in Romans 3: 23-24,

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

This verse tells us:

• Our problem: “All have sinned.” No one of us is pure and good.
• Our failure: “Fall short of the glory of God.” How we live is not by God's standards. Even our good works are not good enough.
• God's answer: “Justified freely by his grace.” God has the answer and it is given to us without cost.
• The means: “Through… Christ Jesus.” It is only through Jesus we can know salvation and our great need of Saviour.

The Life of Jesus: Good News for Everyone is a teaching series from Annalong Presbyterian Church. To find out more visit www.annalongpc.org/podcasts.

You can watch a video of this sermon on YouTube at https://youtu.be/b7UWUuPTYWE.

So we turn to God's word this morning and we turn to Matthew.

And it's probably one of those passages where a few of you have been very honest with me over these past number of years and said you read that passage and I had absolutely no idea what you were going to do with it.

Well, let's begin by thinking of what Matthew is about.

Matthew is about the life of Jesus, which is good news for everyone.

And so from this word, that good news goes out to the ends of the earth.

That's what we know Matthew to do.

And so to help us understand exactly what this first section is, these first 17 verses, I want you to think about home for a moment.

And I imagine that for every one of us here today or watching, online, lists of are a big part of our lives.

We make them in one way or another.

Our young people.

You make lists, you make lists about your homework, you make lists about your timetable, what you need to pack in your bag.

It may not be a written down list, but it's in your mind.

The rest of us make to do lists or shopping lists.

We know what we want from the shop and we have it down so that we methodically go through not in forgetting anything and also not picking up things that we really didn't go into the shop for.

Now, if it's only two or three, we'll probably have that list in our mind.

But one way or another, we have a list.

And our lists tell us a lot about who we are.

Because a shopping list will tell us what our likes and what our dislikes are.

It'll tell us what we will buy, but it also reveals what we won't buy to do.

Lists give insights into our priorities and they also tell us about our passions as we rank the importance of jobs, the more important ones at the top and possibly the less important ones closer to the bottom.

Well, one list that I remember well in our house growing up was my parents Christmas card list.

Now I'm sure there were well over 150 names listed.

And at that time, of course, postage was affordable, so that was very manageable.

But it communicated to me who our family are, how we're connected.

And there were of course names that were familiar to me because they were my aunties and uncles and there were names of friends that I knew just simply being around the area.

But every so often as I'd go down the list, you'd come across a name that I didn't recognize.

And I know there's a certain generation of people that that's still true for you today.

For us in younger generations speaking to someone on holiday, that's a big no for us, never mind asking them for their address.

So lists do reveal a lot about us.

And as we begin this morning with a new series in Matthew's Gospel, we begin with a list.

Now, we can be quick to skip over this list because like my parents Christmas card list, there's names here that we either do not know or there's ones that we do.

But this list, known as the Genealogy of Jesus, is a fascinating look at not only his family line, but at how God worked in human history and how he used our human history to make ready for the coming of his one true son.

But before we launch into it this morning, we need to get a bit of an overview of this book.

The Gospel of Matthew is technically anonymous.

Matthew doesn't tell us that he wrote it.

It's not like an epistle that Paul or Peter would write.

But yet every Greek copy of Matthew bears the heading according to Matthew.

And so we firmly believe that it was written by Matthew, who is one of the disciples known as the tax collector.

This is an eyewitness account of a man who comes from a particular perspective.

Although he was a Jew, he worked in the civil service of the Roman Empire.

So he has seen both worlds.

He's grown up a Jew, but he benefits from the enemies of the Jews, the Romans.

And in fact, he might have to undertake certain hard orders from the Romans against his own people.

So as Matthew writes, he's an eyewitness who understands the Jews because they are his people, but he also understands the Romans who, who are his employers.

And very much the culture in which he is drawn into very different from Jewish culture.

So he's seen both worlds and he does bring a certain perspective because of that.

Now, Matthew is written for Christians.

It's written for Christian readers who had both Jewish sensibilities or were former Jews or were sensitive to to the Jews, and also an interest in the mission that was ongoing by the time it was written to the Gentile nations.

Now it's believed that it was written for Christians in Syrian Antioch, which had a sizable Jewish population.

And it was also there, at Syrian Antioch that the first missionaries to the Gentiles were commissioned in Acts chapter 13.

So it's a very Jewish book in its approach so that they too can come to understand who Jesus is and the salvation he brings.

But today we read it understanding that in the Jewish mind there were prophecies to be fulfilled from the Old Testament and how Matthew presents them to us, demonstrating that Jesus is the fulfillment of those prophecies.

So Matthew wants to present this to us in a clear but also in a convincing way.

So it's then no accident or simply a paper filler that he begins with the family line of Jesus.

Not only would this have been an important thing in ancient tradition for people to know their lineage, but it helps us understand how God has been sovereign in his work.

So the focus on Jesus is for one purpose, and that is that the church would be always looking beyond itself and to the world around it, knowing God at work, but also knowing that the proclamation of the Gospel would go far and wide based on the names that we have here.

And so as Matthew leads us through the accounts of Jesus, he's actually building the church to a call to action.

Matthew's gospel is about doing something with what we learn.

Not only does he want his readers to understand the gospel message, and not only does he want them to believe it deeply, but he wants them to do something with it.

Because at the end of chapter 28, in the closing words of this gospel, Matthew records the command and the commission of Jesus.

Therefore, go and make disciples, Jesus says, of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

This gospel wasn't supposed to be for a small focus group or for the church to hold onto for itself.

It was the message that was to be brought to the nations, just as the children of Israel.

Abraham's seed had been told to be a blessing to the nations.

And that's where Matthew begins in the lineage of Jesus.

He starts with Great Father Abraham.

Now, we're aware that there were people before Abraham, and we know that he in fact, was a man beyond the borders that Israel would inherit.

But Matthew doesn't start with Adam.

He doesn't start with Noah, but he starts with the one whom God made his covenant of salvation with, because this is what we read in Genesis 12, 2, 3, as the Lord says to Abraham, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and whoever Curses you, I will curse.

And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

And so, if this covenant promise is to be revealed and.

And fulfilled, then Matthew shows us how, beginning with Abraham and taking us through the generations, he comes to the Christ.

And so the ultimate blessing that the children of Israel were to be to the nations around them is so that they would know salvation, which for us today can only come through Jesus showing us that the promises from Genesis 12 still have importance for us today as they point us to their fulfillment in Jesus.

And that's what Matthew's communicating to the people of his time, that all the promises find their fulfillment in Jesus and are relevant for them.

So Matthew begins his journey with the patriarchal family of Abraham and his sons Isaac and Jacob, all through whom the covenant was confirmed.

And, you know, if you glanced through the list, we'd see names that we recognize, great names, all of people who did great things.

We see Boaz, who became the kinsman Redeemer of Ruth.

We see King David, the man after God's own heart.

We see his son Solomon, the wisest man ever to live.

And then there's Joseph, right at the very end, the humble carpenter of Nazareth, who took seriously what the angel said to him and was obedient unto the Lord.

This is what we read of him.

And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ.

He's not left out, he's not insignificant.

He's the humble carpenter because his obedience is marked here for us.

But his obedience can only be displayed because of Mary's faithfulness in the task that she had been given to carry and give birth to the Son of God.

She is here at the end of the list because it is with her that the prophecies of the Old Testaments, of the Old Testament prophets are fulfilled.

She's just a young, humble girl, but she takes seriously the comforting words of the angel and, and does what is unknown to her and to the outside world what is, or what was culturally a taboo.

And she gave birth to the Savior.

Now, I think any of us, Boaz, David, Solomon, Joseph, Mary, we'd be happy to be among this as part of our family list, a list of those who took seriously the law of God and followed his way.

But when we read the list, there are those in the list who are more suspect.

Even with Abraham's grandson Jacob, we're Aware of his deceitfulness and his feelings of how his sin infected his whole family.

And looking at the list, we see names like Rahab, who was a prostitute.

David had a man killed to cover up his sin.

Rehoboam foolishly rejected the advice of the older counselors, and he contributed to the division of the kingdom.

Manasseh promoted idolatry, occult practices, and violence in 2nd Kings 21, although he did later repent.

And Ammon followed Manasseh's wickedness and was assassinated after only two years as king.

Jeconiah or Jehoiakim, who reigned as king, that reign was characterized by evil.

And so these are names that we would perhaps rather weren't in our family line.

And, you know, Matthew could easily have constructed a genealogy that made Jesus ancestry look impressive.

Instead, he gives us a family tree full of sinners, failures, morally compromised people, and people in need of grace.

And the reason for the inclusion of the good and the bad is given to us in verse 21 of chapter 1, where the angel says she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.

Why?

Because he will save his people from their sins.

You see, from the outset of this gospel, from the outset of the Gospel message, we are told that each and every one of us is a person who needs the Savior.

Now, we may consider ourselves to be like Boaz, that we always do the right thing in what is honest, true and good.

Or perhaps we consider ourselves like Tamar, whose situation was morally complicated but was trying to do what was right.

Or we think we're like Joseph, quiet and in the background, doing good and doing what was right.

Because we don't want to think of ourselves as the Manassehs or the Ammons of this world who rejected God and were evil.

We don't want to be thought of as the Rehoboams or even the Jacobs.

Yet from this list of the good and the bad, we see one message.

And that message bookends this section, because in verse one, we're told that this is a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

And this is repeated for us in verses 16 and 17.

So three times in the opening of this Gospel, we are told the vital piece of information that we need.

What is Christ's title?

It's not Pastor.

It's not Rev.

It's not Mr.

It's not sir, but it is Christ.

The word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which means anointed one.

It's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Mashiach, which gives us the word Messiah.

Israel was waiting for a deliverer.

They were waiting for the Mashiach.

They were waiting for the Christos, the one who would truly save them.

And they had waited tirelessly for generations.

And as the generations continued, they became, they began to give this Savior a name, that being Messiah, the one sent from God.

And so as Matthew now gives this to us three times in these opening verses, it's Matthew here who is saying that the Promised One has arrived.

He is here.

Now sit up, wake up and pay attention.

Matthew is the herald of great news, that there is now a way for humanity to be saved.

And it is this salvation that we all need.

We need to be assured of this salvation in the midst of our day to day lives.

You may have trusted in Christ as your Savior.

It might have been months ago, years ago or decades ago, but he still must have a place in, in your daily life.

Being a Christian is not simply giving yourself a name, nor is it simply something that happened way back when, but has no impact on your day today.

Knowing today you have a Savior tells you that all will be okay.

That through the trials and temptations of life, you have one who will keep you to the end.

So you need to look to that salvation daily, to sustain you and to keep you.

Because I don't know how you get through life if you don't.

Jesus is not a badge.

Jesus is not a convenient label that we can brandish and say, oh, I'm a Christian.

If you're not living for him day and daily, if you're not thinking of him day and daily, then the question has to be what kind of faith do you have and who is it in?

We must know this Savior because how can you go through work life?

How can you go through the hassles of work or the stresses of business?

If you don't know Jesus daily, how can you cope with what's going on in home?

You'll be maybe dealing with things in a very quiet way, but they're upsetting, they're concerning.

How are you going to get through that?

You can only do it because of Jesus.

Never, never, never allow the name of Jesus to simply be a label or a badge.

And please don't walk around telling people you're a Christian.

If that day you have not thought once of Jesus and, and his great salvation for you.

But you say, oh, it's too much, it's too much.

No it's not.

How quickly will we talk about our favorite football team or football player?

How Quickly will we talk about what's in the charts or what's played on the radio?

How quickly will we talk about what's in the news that is here today and gone tomorrow?

Yet we refuse to talk about the One who lasts forever.

We're into September.

There's a shift in gear.

We need to be people who are sincere about who Jesus is to us so that we can live for him today.

That's why near to the end of the Bible, we have the Book of Jude, that is just verses, no chapter.

And in verses 24, 25, Jude says to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fail and with great joy to the only God our Savior, be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages now and forevermore.

Amen.

Do you see what Jude says?

He will keep you.

He will keep you from falling, and he will keep you to the end to present you before his glorious presence.

But that's not going to happen if all you're doing is walking around saying, I'm a Christian.

There must be true conversion.

There must be a true life lived for the Savior daily so that we can get through this life, not based on past efforts or our perceived good works, only in and through the salvation that he brings.

Salvation is active every day and we must keep living in it because we are being kept from a multitude of sin.

I wonder, do you realize it?

You see, we're being kept, but it's not of our own doing.

It is of the one whom we have covenanted to in salvation.

So we must daily acknowledge him and the salvation that he gives us, that keeps us.

But you also need salvation if somewhere in your mind you think you're good enough.

Because the reality is that none of us are ever good enough.

If you were good enough, then Jesus needn't have come and gone through the darkness of Calvary, the cross and the grave.

If your goodness could save you, it would.

But it can't.

And so that's why we need a Savior.

And the genealogy of Jesus tells us that each of our lives, that in each of our lives we have something that we can't solve.

There's a problem that we can never satisfy God's righteous anger towards our sin because it is he who has provided a way through Christ.

And so today I can never be good enough to save myself, and neither can you.

This may be a truth that you don't want to hear, but that doesn't make it any less true as we Begin Matthew's Gospel and see Jesus presented to us.

Even in this long list of names, we are assured that he is enough for all our needs and our greatest need of salvation.

This is why Paul writes what he does in Romans 3, verses 23 to 24.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

We're told four things in this verse.

In Romans 3, we're told there's a problem.

We've all sinned, every single one of us, myself included.

We have sinned.

That is the problem.

And our failure then, because of sin, is that we fall far short.

We do not rise to God's glory, the standard that he gives us.

We fall short of it, but we have no answer for it because we can never be good enough.

So it's God's answer that we must obey, which is that we're justified freely by his grace.

God has done something and he gives it to us freely.

And what this means then?

That we trust in Jesus because it is through him and through him alone.

You have the good and you have the bad.

In the list of Christ's family telling us that each of us need the same Saviour that they did and the generations that followed.

I cannot save myself.

I can never be good enough.

I must trust in the Savior, and so must you.

And now that I know that salvation well, I need to keep looking to him every day, because he is the only one who can keep me.

He's the only one who will keep me to the end.

And so each of us today, the good news for everyone is that we are to trust in Jesus and to be assured of his great salvation, because he gave his life so that we could go free.

We need to commit this to heart and memory for each day.

But we need to come in the first instance to Christ for that salvation.

For there is nothing else that will save us and nothing else that will take us home to heaven.

Allow God's word to fill your heart, even in a long list of names that are hard to pronounce because they tell the story of who our Messiah came to save.

He came to save sinners like them.

And like me and like you.

Trust in Him.

Don't walk away from him and know the complete life that he brings.

Let's pray.

Our Father God.

We have a list of names, people that were known to you, people who we have no idea of everything of their lives, but yet they're given to us so that we can learn what it means to why there's a Savior for we're not good enough.

But Lord, it's not shameful to come to Jesus.

It's not weakness to come to Jesus.

In fact, it's great strength and great trust.

So may we not leave this building thinking that we're simply okay because of our own merits and our own works.

Maybe not leave here too afraid or too embarrassed.

For the loving, kind and good Savior gave His life so that indeed we can come to Him.

So whether there's young people here who are not even in their teenage years, or those who are teens, Those in their 20s, right through to their 80s, this is a message for us all.

Maybe wake up and pay attention to what this truth is, for it changes us now forever.

And we ask these things in Jesus name, Amen.