Transcription

Chris
So, Jeff, my my dad’s name is Albert. My grandfather’s name was Samuel. And beyond that, his father. I don’t even know what his name is. Do you know your. How far can you go up?

Jeff
No. Well, I was adopted, so I don’t know very many people.

Chris
Well, what about you?

Jeff
Well, my mom was adopted too. Okay. Yeah, I don’t know. Hardly any of my people.

Chris
Wow. Well, so you don’t know beyond a couple a generation? Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Beyond two generations. Right. Well, today we’re looking at the genealogies in the Bible that goes for just dozens and dozens and dozens.

Jeff
Seven, I think 47 generations back. Wow. Jesus. Back. Wow. Yeah.

Chris
Amazing.

Jeff
It’s pretty cool. So he’s Chris and I’m Jeff, and we’re the Bible guys.

Chris
Well, hey, uh, we’re going to do a very quick segment today. Okay? This is Mailbags Mailbags Mailbags. And it is written from Patrick. Oh. And Patrick O writes in and says this. If you ever went into ministry, if you never went into ministry and became pastors, what other job would you want to do for the rest of your life?

Jeff
Oh, wow.

Chris
Wow, that’s a hard one.

Jeff
Wow. I think we went into ministry because we didn’t want jobs.

Chris
You know, my father, my father worked at Lordstown General Motors. Yeah. And he made good money. And he was like the ninth guy hired at Lordstown. Oh, wow. Uh, from the railroads, by the way. Yeah. And I remember thinking, growing up, like, as I was like 13, 14 years old, they said, you know, what do you want to do with your with your life? And I said, I just want to work with my dad works. I just thought it was super cool. Yeah. And, uh, and little, little did I know then that’s not the business to flock to.

Jeff
Yeah, yeah.

Chris
Poor Lordstown is barely survived.

Jeff
Yeah. Wow. So that was it. That’s what you wanted to do? Was working, uh, when I was little. Automotive.

Chris
But the question wasn’t then. It was now. Yeah, now. And so my answer, I think, would be marketing. Yeah. Uh, I think it’s anything with creativity. I love marketing, I love advertising, I think I have a good eye for that and I enjoy it. And so I think I’d be interested enough. Uh, probably high pressure, you know, to come up with accounts and satisfy customers. Yeah, but I think I’d like that.

Jeff
Uh, I like that, too. I like it’s a problem solving thing. It’s figuring out you always have a problem. You have to crack that nut, figure out how to get people’s attention. That’s a fun one. So, uh, making the joke about. We went in. The ministry did not work. The one thing about ministry is you never get to turn it off, right? There’s never, ever a time that you’re not a pastor at Heritage Church, right?

Chris
And you get to clock. You don’t get to clock out.

Jeff
You never get the clock out. Right? So it never ends. So I was just making a joke on that. So, um, uh, for me, my very favorite job that I ever had was besides Heritage Church was, um, uh, working for Marriott, Marriott hotels. And so, uh, I was, uh, like a night supervisor for housekeeping, um, for the Michigan Avenue, uh, Magnificent Mile in Chicago, uh, hotel. That was we had 49 stories. It was 1280 rooms. Uh, it was just it was massive. And I loved it. I had, like, I was 20 something years old. I had all these employees working under me, and it was just a ton of fun. I really enjoyed it. I like customer service. I like taking an irate person and deflecting it, and then fixing their problem and then making them a massive fan of the organization by the time they leave and all that stuff. Wow. Yeah, it was great.

Chris
Yeah. And I think, I think another, another, uh, dream, it’s not as tangible as just a regular marketing job would be a talk show host. That was Graham Norton. I would love to be Graham Norton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Geez. He is just the best.

Jeff
Yeah. Uh, for me, I, I think early on I would have been thinking, uh, job, uh, get a job somewhere and work for somebody. But I think it probably about 15 years ago, I realized I wouldn’t want that. I think I would want to start a business of some sort. Yeah. Um, but I’m not a super detailed person, so I’d have to start a business in the context of, uh, uh, a team. But if I could put together a team, I’d love to help run a business. And, uh, I don’t know. I don’t even know what business that would be, but being in business would be a lot of fun.

Chris
I agree, and I think I think you’d make a lot of money.

Jeff
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Chris
Yeah, it doesn’t matter what it is. You’d make a lot of money.

Jeff
Something I think you would too.

Chris
But instead I think you’d instead you’re in ministry.

Jeff
So. So that takes care of us.

Chris
Dream equals dream equals gone.

Jeff
Yeah, exactly. Um, I can’t remember what it was. We were talking over the weekend, and, uh, one of my kids was like, why are you so poor? And we’re not poor? But, you know, comparatively speaking, it was funny. So, yeah, I’m like, shut up, kid, go to work.

Chris
I think, I think my first job in ministry, that I was there for ten years, uh, I was paid $28,600 with no insurance. Yeah. Wow. I had no insurance. Yeah, I was there for ten years. I stayed at that church ten years with no insurance coverage. Wow. So.

Jeff
So, yeah, I was the last place I was at. I had insurance, but I paid for it out of my. Out of my paycheck and I think I made like 32,000. Yeah, yeah.

Chris
So I think I think we’ve paid our dues.

Jeff
I sure have. Yep. That’s okay. Yeah. That’s okay. I’ll go into ministry for that. And at least it’s not our version of it. Right? Right. Okay. Well, hey, uh, we are in if you’re just now joining us, by the way. Thank you. Who was it that said question? Uh, Patrick. Oh, Patrick. Oh, what a good question. That’s fun to think about a little bit. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Um, so we are in the a new series if you were tracking with us through, uh, prophecy and all that kind of stuff. That was fun. Last week we shifted into the there’s 250 events or things mentioned about the life of Jesus in the four Gospels. And so the Gospels tell many of the same stories and many different stories. And so what we’re doing is we’re taking a chronological order of them, and it’s called the Harmony of the Gospels, where you try to pull all those together. So we’re going to kind of hop around passage to passage, but tie the gospels together. Yeah.

Chris
They told many of the same stories, many different stories, and sometimes they tell the same stories in a slightly different way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the different authors have different takes, different observations. And uh, so yeah, it’s very helpful to cross-reference all the time.

Jeff
Yeah. So it’s interesting to think about the fact that Jesus life or Jesus ministry lasted about a thousand days. Yeah, right. About a thousand days. And there’s 250 events mentioned. Um, and so it’s kind of a fun way to look at it. So today we’re going to look at we’ve already looked at how the angel came to Mary, the angel came to Elizabeth and to Zechariah. And now the angel is going to come to Joseph, and then we’re going to flip and get into some of the genealogy. So. Right, let’s just jump into it. So this one’s going to start in Matthew chapter one verse 18, because they’re connecting this story back to uh, Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah. So it says this is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiance, was a good man, did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly. As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Joseph, son of David, the angel said, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All of this occurred to fulfill the message, the Lord’s message through his prophet look, the virgin will conceive a child. She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God is with us. When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. Jeff
But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus. So this is the encounter that Joseph has with an angel. We’ll come back and talk about that. But then Matthew starts off with the genealogy.

Chris
We don’t get to talk about this now.

Jeff
Do you want to do you want to talk about this now and then read these? Yeah.

Chris
I think that if we get into the genealogies, my my brain will go a different way.

Jeff
Yeah. Your brain, your brain will go. Yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Just a lot. A lot of hard names to to right, right. To quote. So let’s just.

Chris
Let’s just make a few observations about.

Jeff
This real quick. Yeah.

Chris
That’s good because because they really are sort of two different things. Yeah. Right.

Jeff
No I want to make you happy. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever makes Chris happy this week. Hopefully by the end of this, this week then it’ll be with me Chris happy. And Chris will say Jeff, let me have my way.

Chris
The the first thing is, is that we notice that Joseph was a good man. The Bible says, yeah, I like that. And he decided to break the engagement quietly. So that’s important to know because, uh, you know, not a lot is said about Joseph. Yeah. Right. So we we know that, Mary. I mean, actually, to be honest with you, not a whole lot is said about Mary in terms of events, right? Right. Like they describe her character a few times. Sure. They talk about her pondering things and everything else, but, um, but Joseph is a person who, if you think about it, he’s the man. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. So immediately, uh, you know, so they’re probably teenagers at this point. They’re considered old enough to be adults because, uh, Mary, contrary to, uh, you know, statues, uh, Mary was probably 13 or 14 years old, uh, because traditionally.

Jeff
Marriageable age was, um, uh, conceivable. Yeah, at a conceivable, uh, age. So that was considered usually 13 for a woman. Yeah. Uh, men often would have been 15 or 20 years older because they were supposed to have, um, have been able to build a home for their wife and be able to provide. Right. Because of the dowry, you had to be able to give a dowry to be able to get your, your bride. So the men were usually older, and that’s why there there’s so many widows in the Bible. That’s because the men were were typically a little older. Wow.

Chris
Yeah. Well, so either way, Joseph is a man who, uh, you know, he gets approached by. His fiance and says, I’m pregnant, but I swear to you, I’ve never been with a guy. And so, Joseph, of course, you know, he realizes because of the strict religious culture, the he could have, you know, in some cases, you know, had her put to death or, you know, the severe punishment. Uh, certainly, if he wanted to, he could shame her and drag her name through the mud and everything else. And he would have had a right to in that culture.

Jeff
And, hey, I’ll be honest with you, every once in a while I see people who claim to be Christians on Facebook, driving, driving, dragging their ex through the mud. Yeah. Or, you know, trying to ruin the reputation of somebody who disappoints them or offends them or whatever. And you see, Joseph is not that kind of guy.

Chris
Hey, so I have to say this, um, my brother Jim was married, uh, uh, a couple times, actually, and his first wife left him for, uh, a guy she met on the internet. And he was a pastor at the time. So, uh, one of the worst, uh, stories that I tell is that when Jim and Tammy had one son, Joshua, and when Joshua was 7 or 8 years old, uh, they were at the airport in Texas, and, uh, Tammy knelt down and looked at Josh and said, okay, mommy, be right back and get on the plane. And never came home until years later when it didn’t work out and things like that. Wow. And so, uh, and she was just going to visit a friend in Chicago. Anyway, the point is, is that, uh, it was just horrible. Right. And I went through that with my brother very closely. I flew down immediately, blah, blah, blah. Uh, Skip, fast forward. And Joshua turns like, I think like maybe 19. And my brother Jim had not said a single negative word about Josh’s mom in front of him. And Josh eventually found out what had happened, and Josh came to his dad and said, is it true that this is what happened? And Jim said, yeah. And so think about that. Think about how unbelievably disciplined and honoring that my brother was to his ex-wife when he had every right to slander her. Yeah. So talk about a good man, right? Right.

Jeff
Well, this is one of those moments where. So, remember, Joseph was a good man and decided not to disgrace her publicly before the angel shows up, right? Right. So what? A man of integrity to decide. You know what? So I don’t know what happened. I know I wasn’t with her. Mhm. Uh, I don’t know what happened, but hey, people make mistakes and I’m not going to shame her. I’m just going to, you know, choose not to marry her. And he was going to, he was going to break the engagement quietly. And then the angel of the Lord shows up.

Chris
And by the way, I would need an angel. Yeah.

Jeff
Well, well so. Chris
No matter how much convincing and how convincing Liz is. Yeah. And how much I loved her, I would. I would have a hard time swallowing that truth.

Jeff
How many times does the Bible say, wait on the Lord? Right. Wait. Wait on the Lord. If he had gone on Facebook and said, let me tell you about this horrible woman I was engaged to.

Jeff
Type it all in caps and just smearing her name all over the world. And then the angel shows up. Boy, that would have been a problem, right?

Chris
Right right. And they didn’t have Facebook back then.

Jeff
Yeah.

Chris
So that would have been a major problem.

Jeff
Yeah, but but can you imagine sometimes maybe we get out ahead of what God wants to do. So you know, people do dumb things. People offend us. People do. But we are a hair trigger society today. Will we go out and just go on these smear campaigns? Sometimes. And it was after he decided to not shame her that God shows up and does a miracle. And I wonder what would have happened if it had been the other way around, if he had shamed her. Because, I mean, hey, let’s be honest, Nazareth was a pretty small town, and I don’t know that they were from Nazareth, you know, at that time. Uh, but, uh, you know, you’ve been to Israel. These towns weren’t big towns. Even Jerusalem wasn’t that big of a town, right? Right. So it would have been easy to ruin her, but it was after he decided to do the right thing that God shows up and does a miracle. Sends an angel to confirm that it’s okay. I think sometimes we get out ahead of God on on these things and do things we shouldn’t do and do irreparable damage. So yeah, that’s good, I like that.

Chris
Yeah.

Jeff
I’m glad we paused there Chris.

Chris
Yeah, yeah I think I think that we could just Jeff
Let me blast through this next piece and we can move on.

Jeff
So so Matthew chapter one, verses one through 17 and Luke chapter 323 through 38 give the two genealogies of Jesus, right? Right. So, uh, Matthew goes from Abraham to Joseph and um, uh, all the way to Mary, and then Luke goes from Jesus all the way back to Adam. Right? So, so one goes forward, one goes backwards. But it’s kind of interesting. Let me just read the Matthew one. I think everybody will get the idea. But there’s some really interesting things that Matthew covers here.

Chris
By the way, I’m super glad that we voted that you’re the reader.

Jeff
Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.

Chris
It’s especially days like today.

Jeff
You told me. You told me, uh, uh, the way to do it is just that guy, right?

Chris
That’s right. Yeah. Yep. Yep. That’s right. Jeff
So here’s what it says. This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah was the father of Perez. And Zera, whose mother was Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram. Ram was the father of Aminedab. Aminedab was the father of Nahshon. Nahshon was the father of salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, and Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah. Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the father of Abijah. Abijah was the father of Asa. Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was the father of Jehoram. Jehoram was the father of Uzziah. Uzziah was the father of Jotham. Jotham was the father of Ahaz. Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the father of Aman. Aman was the father of Josiah. Josiah was the father of Jehoiakim and his brothers, born at the time of the exile to Babylon after the Babylonian exile. Jehoiakim was the father of Shealtiel. Shillito was the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the father of Abyad. Abyad was the father of Eliakim. Eliakim was the father of Azor. Azor was the father of Zadok. Zadok was the father of Achim. Achim was the father of Eliud. Eliud was the father of Eleazar. Eleazar was the father of Matthan. Matthan was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Jeff
And Mary gave birth to Jesus, who was called the Messiah. All those listed above include 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian exile, and 14 from the Babylonian exile to Messiah. There you go. There you go. Hey, we can read Luke if you want to, but I think they get the idea.

Jeff
Do you think they get the.

Chris
I think I think everybody gets the idea.

Chris
Yeah.

Jeff
So this would have been quite honestly, it’s odd to us. Yeah, but this would have been fascinating to the Jewish readers. Right. So you gotta remember, Matthew, each of the four gospel writers wrote for a different purpose and a different audience. And Matthew was writing to Jewish people. And so Jewish readers would have found this very interesting, um, to know that Jesus was directly related to David the King, which was incredibly important, uh, and all the way back to Abraham. Right. So this would have been very interesting to them.

Chris
Yeah. And more importantly, it fulfills the prophecies. So the prophecy, the prophecies that connect that the Messiah is going to come from King David, right? It’s through the seed of King David. Yeah. And, uh, and so there had to be proof there. So, I mean, you know, Matthew goes through painstaking detail to say there is no doubt in anybody’s mind, you know, and at that time, all those things that he wrote could be proven. Yeah. Right. Right. They could be looked up, researched. They could have been proven. And so he wrote down everything saying like, there is no doubt that Jesus fulfills the prophecy because he is within the bloodline.

Jeff
That’s right.

Chris
And what’s really interesting about, uh, Luke is that, uh, it’s actually Joseph’s genealogy. Yes. Right. Right, right. This one, this one’s Mary’s genealogy.

Jeff
Right.

Chris
And, uh, and both of them are connected to King David. Yes. So, so which is kind of neat because, again, there’s no doubt in anybody’s mind. You have Mary, you have Joseph. And even though that Joseph isn’t the earthly father, he is the one, you know, charged with raising Jesus, he’s married to Mary. And both of them are are of the ancestry. Yeah.

Jeff
And if this didn’t line up, then none of the rest of what’s being written about Jesus matters, right? Right. So if the because the prophecies were so clear that Jesus would be a son of Abraham, he’d be the Son of David, he’d be heir to the throne. So if this one didn’t line up, nothing else matters. All the other claims that are mentioned, he’s not really the Messiah. Yeah. So this is why. And especially with Matthew, Matthew is building an argument that Jesus is the Messiah that the Jews were looking for from beginning to end. The focus of his writings, the stories he chose to tell, the order that he tells them in uh, isn’t always in precise order, but he’s building. He’s clumping big ideas together as proofs that Jesus is the Messiah. So to start off this way made a lot of sense. And to a Jewish reader at the time would have been extremely interesting to me. I’m just glad we get through the names, right?

Chris
Right. What? You did a good job. Now there’s a few. There’s a few surprising people in this yes lineup, right?

Jeff
Yeah, yeah. These are people that you and I wouldn’t choose. If we were making up a fake religion, we wouldn’t have included a couple of these, right? Yeah.

Chris
And the reason why is because they, by society would be shamed. Yeah. Right. So so you have like, uh, Bathsheba, for instance. Like, why did why did, uh, God allow, uh, you know, for, for it to be, uh, uh, going through Bathsheba. Why not King David and Michael or somebody else, right? Yeah. Uh, why Rahab?

Jeff
So Bathsheba. David had an affair with Bathsheba. Yes. And that’s where Solomon came from, right?

Chris
Yeah yeah. What about Rahab?.

Jeff
Rahab was a harlot.

Chris
Yeah, a harlot, which is a prostitute. Right. Um, so, you know, here we have, uh, you know, people in line here we have we have Tamar.

Jeff
She was raped.

Chris
Yep. She was raped by her brother Amnon. Right? Yep. And so we have we have Ruth.

Jeff
Ruth was not a Jew.

Chris
Yeah. That’s right, that’s right.

Jeff
Yeah so neither was Rahab. So Rahab, Rahab and Ruth were not Jews, which to the Jewish people, that would have been really, really important. Right. Um, so while while Rahab and Ruth were famous, they, they weren’t, you know, so that would have been a really amazing one. Well, Ruth was a Jew. Rahab was not. Ruth was. Rahab was not.

Chris
Well, here’s here’s what’s important about that is that God always has been and always will be in the business of redeeming people and using broken people for great things. Right? And so when our life seems like it is upside down, I mean, think about the absolute, uh, upheaval that happened when when David, when David Sin was found out. Well, actually, it wasn’t found out. It was pointed out, you know, when when Nathan the prophet stood in the courtyard, pointed his bony finger at David and said, you’re the man. You’ve disgraced God, you’ve sinned against God. And you know, he murdered Uriah. He committed all these sins. And David said, uh, my sin is ever before me. The whole kingdom knows, right? David had to repent and turn back and and things like this. And so think about that. Think about of all the things in David’s life, what was the most tragic? What was the most, uh, upsetting? What what was the biggest black mark on his entire life? Uh, undoubtedly it was that. Yeah. Right. And so think about that. So God can still use really bad things and turn and bring some good out of it. So, um, let me let me just tell you this. Uh, there have been. My wife worked for the oncology floor for like 13 years. And, uh, and, you know, when somebody dies, uh, we all want to know why. Right, right. And I remember one family member, uh, said that he got a chance to talk to a nurse and lead her to Christ after his wife passed away. And then he actually made the conclusion and said, I think that’s why my wife had to pass away so I could lead this nurse to Christ. Chris
And I said, I’m pretty certain that is not how God works based on everything that we know about God. Here’s what I would say. I would say God used something really bad, something very sad, and he brought good out of it like he always does. Right? Right, right, right. So God brought good from that so that nurse can come to know him. And yeah.

Jeff
He was finding purpose in it.

Chris
Right, right right, right. But but he was trying he was trying.

Chris
He was trying to connect the dots. Yeah. Yeah. And say this is why. Yeah. And I would just say listen, let’s let’s be careful to try to guess those things.

Jeff
Well, as you go through this whole list, there’s a ton of people who aren’t good people, right? There’s a bunch of kings mentioned here that aren’t good kings. Rahab, before she became a follower of God, was a prostitute. Um, you had, uh, Bathsheba had had an affair with the king. You have all these things. And one. It’s rare that women would be mentioned in a genealogy like this, right? Very rare that women would be mentioned. So to mention four is significant. But then to just be open and blunt about the fact that there are a bunch of bad guys and a bunch of naughty women that are in this list, and it highlights what we just read a minute ago which said, uh, one Jesus name was supposed to be Emmanuel, which means God is with us and his name Jesus, because he’s going to save his people from their sins. Yeah, right. And so God is saying, even in this situation, he had to save the people that were part of his lineage. He came. He came to save sinners. So God’s not ashamed of you as a sinner. He loves you just the way you are, but he loves you enough to not leave you that way. And that’s why he sent Jesus.

Chris
That’s great. Well, that’s a great place to end and we will pick up next time on The Bible Guys.