Our scripture reading tonight is from Matthew chapter 1, everyone's favorite part of the Christmas story, the first 17 verses of Matthew chapter 1. That's a little bit of humor, if you haven't turned there yet. A very little bit. Matthew begins his gospel in a way that may seem slightly surprising to us, but it's very intentional on his part, and therefore is meant for our blessing. So let me read those first 17 verses of chapter 1 of the gospel according to Matthew. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Mathan, and Mathan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. So far the reading of God's word. Often the main interest of reading these genealogies is to see how many names the preacher stumbles over. And I personally prefer people like Azor. I know absolutely nothing about Azor, but his name is relatively easy to pronounce. So there we are. This is a curious way to start a gospel, isn't it? clearly for the Jews, because we find this in the Old Testament as well as in the New, generations, genealogies, connections were important. That's a point at which maybe Jewish people and Dutch people are a bit alike. Some of you may have heard of the game known as Dutch bingo. This is a game played by Dutch people when they get together to find out if they're related to one another or at least how many friends they have in common. Not being Dutch myself, I often feel left out when Dutch bingo starts. But I recently found, to my delight, that I am related to Gerhardus Vos. Now, I don't know how many of you have heard of Gerhardus Vos, but he was a great Reformed American Dutch theologian, died in the 1940s. And I'm related to him. My son's wife's cousin's wife's aunt's husband, there'll be a test later, was the great nephew of Gerhardus Voss. So he and I are just like this. Now, we can laugh a bit about Dutch bingo, and we find here what we might call Jewish bingo in Matthew chapter 1. But it says some important things to us. It says that individuals are important. Connections among individuals are important. And that God, in every generation, remembers all those who are his own. He remembers them name by name, person by person. That's why I think it's always one of the nice customs of our old year service. To remember by name those who've had special events in the course of the previous year. We'll think about that next Sunday night. But God is a God who remembers his people. God is a God who remembers his people from generation to generation. But the genealogy given here in Matthew chapter 1 is more than that. It is that. It is an assurance to all of us that God remembers us individually. But it's also a record that God has had a purpose through history. A purpose that he was accomplishing. And a purpose that he pursued, according to this genealogy, for some 2,000 years. That's amazing when we think about it. Abraham lived about 2,000 years before the coming of Jesus. And for some 2,000 years, the people of God waited for the promises made to Abraham to be fulfilled. That's a patient people. Not all of them all the time. But what remarkable patience it is to wait 2,000 years. I think of that myself when I think about how impatient I've been through 10 months. And how badly abused I feel that I've had to wait this long for some relief from this virus. But God here in this genealogy is reminding us that he has a purpose in mind that far transcends one, two, or three generations. But beyond that, this genealogy reminds us that God has particular purposes in mind as well through the years. And so this genealogy, you notice, is divided into four key moments. Abraham, David, the exile, and then the coming of Jesus. Now, we would all agree that those are significant moments in the history of Israel, but we might, if we step back, say, but aren't there some important things left out? Adam's left out? Jacob's left out? Moses is left out? Isaiah is left out? There are any number of important figures in the Old Testament that we could think of, And perhaps scratch our heads and say, why are they left out? What is God's point in highlighting these particular episodes? These particular moments in the history of Israel, Abraham, David, exile, Jesus. How are they connected? How is Matthew connecting them? Why are they important for us? And I think what we can say is that from Matthew's point of view, these four in particular are related to the promise of God. The promise of God that the Christ would come. Do you see how that is the conclusion of the genealogy? Verse 16, Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Awaited One, the Coming One who has now come. This is Matthew's great point. This genealogy is focused on the point Christ was promised and Christ has come. The promise was to Abraham in the first place, the foundational promise for the people of God to Abraham. Abraham, Abraham the pagan, Abraham who lived far from the land of promise, Abraham who was called to leave his family and his home and to travel to a place that God would give to his descendants. And God made covenant with Abraham, and that Abraham covenant was a promise, a promise that God would be with Abraham, A promise that God would make of Abraham and his descendants a great people. A promise that that great people would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. And that that blessing would be fulfilled in the coming of Abraham's offspring. And while there were many offspring of Abraham, Paul, in Galatians chapter 3, says there's one offspring that fulfills the promise above all others, and that's Jesus, the Christ, the one who was promised to come. And so this foundational promise to Abraham is highlighted by Matthew. 2,000 years ago, Matthew is saying to those who read this gospel originally, God made a promise to Abraham. And God, through the generations, was working for the fulfillment of that promise. And now at last, he's brought it to fulfillment. We sang last week, I think, come thou long-expected Jesus. That sort of captures what this genealogy is meant to say to us. Long-expected. Long-expected. But God does not forget. God does not fail to keep his promises. And so Jesus came. So it's fairly easy to see why you might begin with Abraham, that father of the faithful, that one who is a model of faith to us, who accepted the promise of God and believed it. But then why move next to David? Well, I think Matthew moves next to David because the promise seemed almost fulfilled in David. David certainly foreshadows much of what the Christ would do and be. And God throughout the whole Old Testament is preparing his people to understand his coming Christ. And so we might say we move from the foundational promise to the almost fulfilled promise in David. And how is it almost fulfilled in David? What's true of David? Well, David is the one close to God, isn't he? David is the man after God's own heart. What a wonderful thing to have said of us, to have said of anyone. There's the man of God's own heart. Don't we hope that Jesus will one day say that to us? There's a man, there's a woman of my own heart. My love rests on that person. My care rests on that person. There's a person I have chosen and kept as my own. And then we're told David was a man of upright heart and shepherded Israel with that upright heart. We read that at the end of Psalm 78. So here's a man loved from God's heart and returning that love from his own heart. And out of that love, out of that fellowship, out of that faith, David was a great poet. David was the sweet singer of Israel. David wrote many, many psalms speaking about that relationship between God and the believing heart, between God and his people. And David opened himself up to talk about the blessings that he had found in his God. And David was a mighty king and a mighty warrior. We read that David was able to give Israel rest from all its enemies. And so we see in David great success in what he accomplished. And that's why it may have been tempting for some at that time to think, maybe the promise is fulfilled now in David. Surely here is one who seems so close to God, so blessed by God, so successful in the service of God. But those of us who studied the life of David know that's not all that can be said and must be said about David. David was also a sinner. David was not perfect in his service of God. And perhaps even more significantly, David died. David died. This morning I was meditating on Psalm 146. And there we read, Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, whose plans will fail when he returns to the dust. Princes may seem significant, may seem powerful, may seem successful during their own lifetime. and they may attract loyal followings. But the Word of God reminds us none of them last. None of them last. It's sad that the good don't last. It's a relief that the bad don't last. But none of them last. And David didn't last. And Psalm 146 interestingly ends by saying, but the Lord God will reign forever, O Zion. What's the characteristic of our God? He doesn't die. His plans don't come to nothing. They don't collapse with him in the dust. And so while David anticipated something of what the fulfillment of the promise would look like, he was not the fulfillment of the promise. There was yet one to come. Still, the words spoken of David are remarkable and powerful. As we find them recorded in Psalm 89. Listen to some of these words for David. Psalm 89, beginning at verse 20. I have found David my servant. With my holy oil I have anointed him. And the verb there in Hebrew is Messiahed him. So that my hand shall be established with him. My arm also shall strengthen him. I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him. My faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with him. And in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. He shall cry to me, you are my Father, my God, the rock of my salvation, and I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. There's wonderful words of praise to David. Wonderful words that we can apply to our Savior Jesus when we think about him. But David, loved as he was, blessed as he was by God, died. And the promise was not yet fulfilled. So there was a promise given, a foundational promise. There was a promise somewhat fulfilled in David. And then came the dark days when the promise seemed to fail. That's what the deportation or the exile is all about when it comes to Babylon. God had blessed David. God had blessed David's house. There had been success. There had been kings who had been faithful. But the trajectory of Israel as a whole was towards disobedience and towards unbelief. To following the devices of its own heart and not to following the Lord. And the Lord sent his prophets, and they warned, and they warned, and they warned, and God's people, by and large, did not listen. And so came the calamity of the exile. When the people of God, who had been brought out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, out of the land of slavery, had been brought to the land of promise, were now driven out of the land of promise. And the calamity that this was is captured for us again in Psalm 89. Psalm 89 that remembers the promises to David now remembers the current suffering of Israel. And the psalmist writes, But now you have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls. You have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him. He has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes. You have made all his enemies rejoice. How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Here's the failure of the people, and apparently the failure of the promise. Will God ever show mercy? You see how Matthew is marshalling all the history of Israel to help people in Jesus' generation and to help us see what God is doing in history? He makes a promise. He fulfills it in part. That promise seems to fail, but it will not fail. After the exile, the people of Israel had to wait over 550 years for the coming of the Christ. Oh, the temptation to believe that God had forgotten. Oh, the temptation to believe that God would not remember, would not restore, would not fulfill the promise. You could almost say, who could blame a people for losing heart? And in all of those generations, the word had to be, Will you trust your God? Will you trust his word? Will you rest on the promise? Will you have confidence that God is always a promise keeper? And Matthew says, for those who trusted the word, who trusted the promise, who had confidence in God, there came this glorious fulfillment that Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, the son otherwise of people unknown for generations, Jesus came after 2,000 years to fulfill the promise. And Matthew wants to say, when God promises a Christ, when God promises a Messiah, when God promises one anointed to come for his people, he will keep that promise. Now that's important for us on a number of points. One is that we have another promise. That Jesus will come again. That he'll come again in glory to make all things new. And some have said, where is the promise of his coming? Oh, that's not a promise he's ever going to keep. That's not a promise you can rely on. And Matthew wants to say to us, if he could rise up and preach here, God kept a 2,000-year-old promise to Abraham. He'll keep a 2,000-year-old promise to the church. Don't lose heart. Don't lose faith. Don't lose confidence in your God and in His purpose and in His accomplishment. What He promises He'll do. He'll do it in His time as He sees history. as he sees the need for the people of God to go through a wide range of experiences. And out of that, he'll bring life and he'll bring hope. Now, we see in the gospel stories, we've seen it over and over again, that the people often wanted a different kind of Christ than the one they got. They didn't really want a humble Christ. They didn't really want a loving and merciful Christ. They wanted a Christ who would immediately make them great and strong and successful. Instead, they got a Christ who would only forgive their sins and only reconcile them to God, who would only come and speak peace to them, who would only come and promise eternal life to them. A Christ who would come and know what we really need, not what we think we need. And that's the beauty of what we see in this passage. God always knows best. He always accomplishes good for his people. He sent his Christ at the right time. He sent his Christ to do the right thing so that we might know that through the cross our sins are forgiven. That through the resurrection, life will surely be ours. And although we may have to wait a long time, he will come again in glory to make all things new. This is our hope. This is our confidence. This is our assurance. And this is why it is good that our services focus on Christ. He's the one promised by God. He's the one given by God. And he's the one who has done what God wants done for us. Praise God for such a great gift. Amen. Let us pray. Oh, Lord, we are thankful that you are wise where we are foolish and that you are good where we are so often evil, that you are forgiving even where we are proud and difficult. And we pray that the true joy of the coming Christ might fill our hearts. That we might learn in him patience. That we might learn in him hope. That we might learn in him confidence. That the God we serve is indeed Lord of Lords and King of Kings. And that you are doing all things well. And that you will glorify yourself and glorify your Christ. Thank you for him. For it's in his name that we pray. Amen.