The Gracious King

Matthew 1:1‑17

Take your Bible and turn with me to the wonderful Gospel according to Matthew. We are going to begin tonight in this tremendous Book. 

We're going to have an adventure folks in the next months and years as we share together in this tremendous, tremendous Book. 

I want to give you just a little bit of background, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time giving an overview of the Book, not going to spend a lot of time telling you all the themes of the Book. The reason is, I've never really studied it, and I don't want to make any conclusions till I've been through it. So after we've been through it together then we'll go back and sum up all the parts, and draw together all the themes and the subjects, and we'll do that with the inductive method rather than the deductive method. So what we're going to do is just to begin by studying the first portion, we'll go right on through this wonderful Book of 28 chapters and see what the Spirit of God has to say to us. 

Let me introduce the subject and the Book a little bit though to start with. At the time when Christ was born, Israel was as you well know under Roman domination, and there were many things about the Roman domination that were oppressive to Israel. One aspect of the oppression of Rome was the crushing taxation system. It was a cruel system, it was relentless, and it was very systematic. Rome had exacted very firm taxation from its conquered nations. Two particular taxes were taken, one was the poll tax, which basically would be comparable today to our income tax, the other what was called the ground tax, which would be kind of like a property or land tax. And it was interesting the way this worked, the ah, Roman senators, who were very wealthy in the city of Rome, along with very wealthy and predominate magistrates in Roman society, would have the opportunity to buy at public auction, the revenues of a certain country at a fixed price and then hold those revenues for five years, in other words some sort of coalition of Roman wealthy senators would buy the right from the Roman government to draw the taxes from the nation Israel for a period of five years. 

So it was up to them to get as much as they could possibly get. They Were called the publicani, and they would hire slaves and countrymen in the nation from which they had received the permission to exact the taxes, they would hire these people to do the actual tax gathering. 

So that what you have then is these individual people working to gather taxes to give to wealthy senators who have purchased from the Roman government the right to all of the money they could exact from those people. Now these people as I said, in the wealthy spots were called the publicani, and the other folks who did the tax gathering are what we know in the New Testament as publicans. Publicans or tax...not republicans, publicans or tax gatherers. And of course the people in the country would look at them as traitors, because here they were gathering taxes from their own countrymen to give to people of a foreign nation, and so they were thought of as traitors who were gouging for the wealthy Roman capitalists, and overtaxing for their own gain. And what you had was you had ah, ah, ah gouging by the Romans who owned the rights and then you had a further gouging by the tax gatherer himself to pad his own pocket, such as in the classic example of the man named Zacchaeus, who had done this. Now tax gatherers or publicans, as the New Testament calls them were ranked with harlots, they were ranked with the heathen, they were ranked with highwaymen, robbers and murderers, so they didn't run in very good company. To make things worse, around the year 33 A.D. there was a great financial crisis in Rome, and because of that great financial crisis Rome exacted even worse taxes from its chattel nations, which created an even more intense problem in Israel at the time. Now one of these publicans who worked for some wealthy coalition of Roman senators who had bought the right to tax Israel was a man by the name of Matthew Levi, Matthew or Levi. If you'll look with me for a moment at chapter 9 of Matthew and verse 9, I'll introduce you to him in terms of his chronology in the history of the life of Jesus.

Matthew 9'9, "And as Jesus passed forth from there, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the tax office: and he saith unto him, Follow me.

And he arose, and followed him." Now here's the first time that we meet Matthew, the tax collector. Now it's an amazing thing in the first place that Jesus would have anything to do with such a man, a man who was known in his society at least by ah, the general designation of his particular job as a gouging criminal. And yet Jesus said to him, follow me, and he arose and followed, right getting up from his table where he was collecting his taxes. Uhm, some have said, and I'm sure it's true that only Jesus Christ could work such a transformation of turning a publican into an apostle, and such was the miracle of Matthew who became then the writer of the first Gospel record. There's only one Gospel, frankly, only one Gospel just four different writers recording it. Only one Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is a singular message. But there are four Gospel's that we call Gospel's historically though they are just four writers writing of one Gospel. And what's interesting to me is that we really don't want to be unfair and you don't want to necessarily condemn the man because he had a rotten profession, you can always find ah, a good man in a bad business from time to time, and maybe that was the case with Matthew. At least Jesus saw in him something that was useful, and when Jesus spoke to him he immediately followed, which leads us to believe that he was perhaps very familiar with Jesus.

Now perhaps on some other occasion had heard or seen Jesus, he may have been a religious man, he may have been a rarer honest man, there doesn't seem to be any necessity for him to exact retribution to people in the way that Zacchaeus had to do, so perhaps he had been very, very fair, he doesn't apparently sense any need to go out and pay back everything he's taken wrongfully. Jesus drew this man into an amazing inner circle of twelve people. In fact there were twelve people in the history of the world, and I think it's important to remember this, there were twelve people in the history of the world who had the kind of relationship with God, that Matthew and the other eleven apostles had, and only twelve.

A marvelous, incredible, unique relationship in which they walked with the very God of the universe in human flesh for a period of three years.

So God, in Christ called this man into the inner circle. And he must have been a man worth calling. I think too the fact that he moved instantly is indicative of where his heart was. Now the man had a lot of wealth, no doubt and a lot of power, and he was willing to walk away from it, which says something for his character. In fact even when, he even went one step further, look at verse 10 it's most interesting. He threw a kind of a party. It says, "It came to pass, as Jesus sat eating in the house," this is no doubt the house of Matthew, "many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples." Now he had a whole crowd of these people, and tax collectors and sinners basically ran around together. "And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with tax collectors and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that are well need not a physician, but they that are sick." Which was a very sarcastic statement, He was saying, you couldn't use Me because you think you're holy. "But go and learn what that means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous," like you, sarcastically, "but sinners to repentance." Now what is the setting here? And that's all we really want to note. Apparently, when Matthew decided to follow Jesus, he decided to throw a big feast, and the idea of the big feast was to illu...was to introduce his old friends to his new Master. And he did that. So I think Matthew must have been a good man, and he made a deep commitment. And he was willing to walk away from a very lucrative life, and he didn't walk away quietly he threw a feast to introduce his old friends to his new Master. I think Matthew was a modest man, I think he was modest because in reciting the many events of tremendous importance that he does throughout his record, he never makes a personal reference to himself, that is in the first person.

He always treats Matthew in a third person, the way he would treat any other individual and he gives no particular credit to himself for anything. He never even claims the authorship of this Gospel, anywhere in the entire Gospel. The reason we know that he wrote it is because all of the early manuscripts have his name attached to the title, and the unanimous affirmation of the early church fathers is that this was written by Matthew, it's just one of the most clear Books in terms of authorship in all the New Testament, everyone knew that Matthew wrote this. Now we don't know when he wrote it, he wrote it sometime between 5O and 7O A.D. sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem, we don't know when. We do know why he wrote it, and I can express that to you in a simple statement, this Gospel is written to rehearse the story of salvation and in that story to demonstrate the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the predicted Messiah, the King of the Jews who was rejected by His own people, who was accepted by the Gentiles and who someday will return to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is the Gospel, it is the story of the King who comes, the King who is rejected and the King who will return. That's the message of Matthew, very simple.

And let me just talk about those three major thrusts and flows of this particular record. First of all Matthew deals with the King revealed.

The first thing you notice in Matthew's Gospel is that Christ is presented as a King. There's just no question about it. The person of Jesus is painted in royal colors. His ancestry is traced from the royal line, and we'll see that tonight. His birth is dreaded by a rival king.

Wise men offer their royal gifts. His herald, John the Baptist declares that His Kingdom is at hand. Even in His temptation, you see the royalty of the person, because the temptation itself reaches a climax when He by Satan is offered the kingdoms of the world, and acknowledgment that He has a right to rule. His great message on the mount was the manifesto of the King setting forth the laws of the Kingdom. His miracles were His re..,were His royal credentials. His parables were called the mysteries of the Kingdom. He was hailed as the son of David. Be claims the freedom to pay tribute to the kings of the earth for He Himself is a child of the King. He makes a royal entry into Jerusalem and claims sovereignty and tells concerning Himself the story of the marriage of a Kings Son. And while facing the cross He predicted His future reign.

He claimed to have dominion over the angels, so that He could have called a legion of them to His defense. His last words are a kingly claim and a royal command as He says, ..All authority hath been given unto me, go ye therefore." And so Matthew presents Him as a King. A King revealed. And then the Book takes on another character, the King rejected. And as we study the Gospel of Matthew we're going to see that the people to whom He came, and for whom He sought submission, never gave it, and He was a King rejected. Matthew was the Gospel of rejection. No other Gospel has so much to say about His Kingliness, and no other Gospel has so much to say about His rejection as King. The shadow of rejection is never lifted from the Gospel of Matthew. Before He was born, his mother was in danger of being rejected by Joseph. At His birth, Jerusalem was troubled and Herod sought His life. On the plains of Bethlehem no angel choir sings but mothers are weeping in anguish as their babies are being slaughtered. He was hurried away for His life to live thirty years in the obscurity of a little no‑account village called Nazareth. His forerunner was put in a dungeon and finally beheaded. He had nowhere to lay His own head, His parables indicate that His Kingdom would not be accepted in this age, and even in His death He said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" No penitent thief is praying, no word of human sympathy is spoken, those who pass by revile and mock, and they hire soldiers to lie even about His resurrection.

In no Gospel is the attack upon Christ as bitter as it is in Matthew, from the beginning to the end. So the King is revealed and the king is rejected. But Matthew also presents the fact, that the King is returning, and no other Gospel lays such emphasis on the second coming as the Gospel of Matthew. And so in a sense it is a Gospel of triumph.

When you get to chapter 24 and 25 and you hear the fact that He will come in the clouds with great glory, you know that He'll ultimately reign. And so it's a Gospel of the revelation of a King, the rejection of the King, and the return of the King.

But to begin with let's look at chapter 1, and Matthew starts by presenting the King. The King is revealed, and it all begins with Jesus family tree. If a King is to be heralded as a King, if Be is to believed to be a King, if He is to have any credibility at all, if anybody is to accept the fact that He in fact is a King then it must start with the proof that He comes from the royal line. There was a royal line in Israel and it came through David. In Second Samuel chapter 7 God said through the prophet Nathan to David, that it would be through the loins of David that the King would come, who would ultimately reign in Israel and set up an eternal Kingdom. That was never fulfilled in Solomon, and so they waited and waited for one born of the seed of David to fulfill the prophecy. And so if Jesus is to be the King it must be established that He has the right to reign because He descends from the genealogy of royalty. Now that is precisely what verses 1 to 17 present, let's read them, look at them. "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac: and Isaac begot Jacob: and Jacob begot Judah and his brethren: And Judah begot Perez and Zerah of Tamar: and Perez begot Hezron: and Hezron begot Ram And Ram begot Amminadab: and Amminadab begot Nahshon: and Nahshon begot Salmon:" and these names will be on the quiz, verse 5, "And Salmon (Salmon) begot Boaz of Rahab: and Boaz begot Obed of Ruth:

and Obed begot Jesse1 And Jesse begot David, the king: and David, the king, begot Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah: And Solomon begot Rehoboam: and Rehoboam begot Abijah: and Abijah begot Asa: And Asa begot Jehoshaphat; and Jehoshaphat begot Joram: and Joram begot Uzziah: And Uzziah begot Jotham: and Jotham begot Ahaz: and Ahaz begot Hezekiah: And Hezekiah begot Manasseh: and Manasseh begot Amon: and Amon begot Josiah: And Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon. And after they were brought to Babylon, Jeconiah begot Shealtiel: and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel: And Zerubbabel begot Abiud, and Abiud begot Eliakim: and Eliakim begot Azor: And Azor begot Sadoc; and Sadoc begot Achim: and Achim begot Eliud: And Eliud begot Eleazar: and Eleazar begot Matthan: and Matthan begot Jacob; And Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations: and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations: and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations." And we'll stop there.

Now I'm not going to let you go now, because you haven't got any practical information yet. You say, why in the world do we have all of this? Well, let me tell you why. First of all, the Jews were tenacious about their pedigrees. And if anybody was going to be presented to them as a King, it was absolutely essential that He have the pedigree to prove it. Always, always was this important to the Jews. For example after the conquest of Canaan, you remember when they went into the land of Canaan and took the land flowing with milk and honey as God had promised them when they came out of Egypt? After the conquering of the land of Canaan it was essential to determine what your tribe was and what your heritage was so that you knew where you were to live, because the line of all the land was divided into tribes. And according to Numbers chapter 26 and chapter 35, you had to know your tribe, you had to know your family and you had to know your fathers house so that you could identify yourself in the right location in the land, so pedigree was very important, tribal identification essential. Under certain circumstances according to the Book of Ruth, chapters 3 and ?, we won't take time to look at it all but according to Ruth chapters 3 and ? under certain circumstances transfer of property required accurate knowledge of the family tree, God wanted to keep tribal land within the tribe, and so there had to be pedigree in order to make some business transactions with land. Another interesting thing is indicated to us in Ezra 2, I think it's verse uhm, I think it's way at the end of Ezra ? you can find it for yourself, but it tells us at the end of Ezra, see if I can spot the verse, verse 62, "These sought their registration among those who were reckoned by genealogy." And what it means is that when after the Babylonian captivity the people started coming back to Israel, you remember at the end of the 7O years, they started flowing back, many of them were claiming to be priests, and they were claiming to be the tribe of Levi, and you know that God was very, very serious about who was a priest, you know that. Anybody who tried to play the role of a priest and wasn't was in great, great danger. And so when these people came back and tried to claim the right to the priesthood, they had to be proven on the basis, it says in Ezra 2:62 of their genealogy. And if it wasn't found they were "put from the priesthood."

So they needed to know their pedigree for the exchange of land, for their tribal location, and for their priestly identification when they returned from captivity. And in fact it's most interesting to remember, and I'm sure you do remember this, that even when the New Testament begins, what is it that Joseph and Mary are doing? They're going down to be registered according to their own ancestry in their own place, because they were still identifying people in that manner. And in Luke chapter 2 in the first 4 verses it tells us simply that, I'll read it to you very quickly, "And it came to pass, in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be registered. And the registration was first made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everybody went to be registered, into his own city. And Joseph also went from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, to Judaea, which is the city o. David, because he was of the house and (what? and)

lineage of David." You see? Those identifications were still in existence at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ. By the way, the writings of Josephus, the ancient historian support the use of ancestral files, as a part of Jewish culture around the time of Jesus Christ. So this was a very common thing. The Jews really were hep on everybody having their pedigree and knowing exactly to whom they belong. Now in the New Testament you have Paul saying something like this, Romans 11:1, "I say, then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid." And then Paul says this, "For I am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." You see, he was still laying out his pedigree. To the Jewish people this was very important. And this is why you see, there are at least fifty genealogies in the Old Testament.

Because it...there were reasons for that, not only the royal line, the priestly line, but in terms of property transfer and so forth. Now all of this has changed today, Jews today don't know this. They have absolutely...now watch this, they have absolutely no record of their tribal ancestry today, none. They can't trace it at all. It is completely vanished, I mean it has totally vanished. No Jew existent in the world today could ever prove himself to be a son of David. Now I want you to know something, if anybody comes along claiming to be the Messiah, they'll never be able to prove it. And there are some orthodox Jews who still believe the Messiah is going to come, but the problem is there will never be any lineal way to prove that, which goes to say this, Jesus Christ is the last verifiable claimant to David's throne, if He is not the Messiah nobody else can ever lay believable claim to it.

That's it.

Now in this genealogy in Matthew, we're looking at it in broad sense we're not going to go through and tell you the story of every name, so you can relax. But in this genealogy we have what we call a descending record, leading through Joseph to Jesus. A descending record, it comes right on down from David and Abraham descending down through Joseph to Jesus. In the New Testament Jesus. genealogy is also recorded in the third chapter of Luke, you don't need to turn to it I'll just allude to it, but the genealogy in Luke is the reverse, it is a ascending genealogy, it starts with Jesus and goes back through Mary. So here you have a genealogy coming down through Joseph, and there you have a genealogy going back through Mary. One begins with Jesus, the other ends with Jesus. It just goes both ways, and it all comes out the same in the end. It's as if the Spirit of God says, anyway you cut it folks this is the one. Now there are some other distinctions between this one and the Luke genealogy. Matthew is showing the legal, now watch this you're going to have to get this, Matthew is showing the legal descent of Jesus as the King of Israel, Luke is showing the lineal descent. In other words, Matthew shows us the royal line whereas Luke shows us the blood line. You say, what's the difference? The difference is this, the royal line, now watch, the royal line always was passed through which parent? The father. Th...always came through the father, but Jesus had no human father, and through Joseph He has the right to reign that belonged to David even though Joseph was not His father in terms of actuality he was His legal father. Now stay with me we'll cover it another way.

Matthew follows the royal line, through David and Solomon, David's son, Matthew follows it all the way down and he gets to David and then the royal line went through Solomon. But David had another son, he had several, but this other one was Nathan, and Mary's line came through Nathan, so what you have is one line coming down through David and then it goes this way through Solomon and this way through Nathan, through Nathan you come to Mary, and through Solomon you come to Joseph. Both of them of the seed of David, both of them passing on royal blood, so lineally blood line He is of David, legally as a heir to the throne He is of David, both by His mother and His father. He is the actual seed of David through Mary, He is the legal heir of David through Joseph.

Look at verse 16, "And Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary." Isn't that interesting? What doesn't it say? The father of Jesus. Joseph was not the father of Jesus, in a human way, he was the husband of Mary.

The Bible never calls Joseph the father of Jesus. By the way, look at verse 16 again, "Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus." Of whom in the Greek is in the feminine gender, He was born not of Joseph, He was born of Mary. He was Joseph's child legally because if you were adopted into a family, you were the legal child with all the rights and privileges. He was Joseph's child legally, He was Mary's child lineally and by blood. And so every way possible, Jesus Christ had the right to rule. The father was the one who granted the royal line, the mother was the one who granted the royal blood to Jesus. It's interesting that in Luke, in his genealogy verse 23 of chapter 3 it says, "Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being the son of Joseph, the son of Heli." And so forth. He was considered by everybody, now watch this, He was considered by everybody, though He was not the real son of Joseph, He was not the physical son of Joseph, He was considered by everybody to be the son of Joseph. Now most people thought, at least at the time that He was birth...of His birth that He was the son of some illicit affair. But they called Him the son of Joseph because Joseph was constituted His legal father.

There was never really any question about that at all, in fact through His life He was known as the son of Joseph, there was never any argument because they accepted what amounts to adoption in the legal sense, with all the rights and privileges. In Luke ?'22, "They bore witness, And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?" So they recognized that.

So, perfect, now listen, perfect fulfillment, perfect fulfillment, Look at verse 11, "And Josiah," I want to just pull out one thought here that's very fascinating, "And Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brethren, about the time (of Babylonian captivity, about the time) they were carried away to Babylon. And after they were brought to Babylon," watch this, "Jeconiah begot Shealtiel: and Shealtiel begot Zerubbabel." Now I want you to notice something very interesting, we read, we read this name Jeconiah, Josiah begot Jeconiah, and Jeconiah begot so and so. Now there's something very interesting, you remember who's line is this in Luke? Er, in, in Matthew? Joseph's, Joseph's, okay. Now I want you to notice something, Jeremiah ?2:3O just listen, write it down Jeremiah 2?:3O, now listen to what it says, "Thus saith the Lord, Write this man down as childless." And the man to whom it refers is Jeconiah, this is the same man. "A man who shall not succeed in his days; none of his offspring shall sit on the throne of David." Did you get that? None of Jeconiah's offspring will ever sit on the throne of David. That was the curse on Jeconiah, of Jeremiah 22'3O. Now listen to me, if Jesus had been the real son of Joseph, He never could have sat on the throne of David. Did you get that? He would be under the curse. And yet, He had to be the legal son of Joseph to have the right, so God had to devise a plan by which He would be the legal heir to the throne but that He would not be in the line of David descending through Jeconiah. And so God did it by the virgin birth. By‑passing the actual blood line of Jeconiah, and yet carrying the royal right to reign and descending the blood through the side of Mary. It's a fantastic thing, isn't it? How God guarded every single detail. And the virgin birth solved it. So you see, the reason for the genealogy is to present the fact that this is the one who has the right to reign. Listen, it may take me along time to unscramble the significance of this but all the Jewish people had to do was read it and they got the message, they knew their Old Testament, they knew the curse on Jeconiah, they knew this line, they knew their pedigrees. And Matthew is establishing that He has the right to be King. Let's go back to verse 1 for a moment. This is all still introduction. "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

The book, biblos, it can mean a book or it could mean a list of names, here it means a list of names, a record. The book of the genesaos, genesis, beginnings, the book of beginnings about Jesus Christ. This is the story of how Jesus Christ came to be, this is the record of His origin, the record of His ancestry, Iesous Chrisros. Iesous is the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament Jeshua or Jehoshua. which simply means Jehovah saves. That was to be His name, Matthew 1:?1 it says, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he will (what?) save his people from their sins." Jeshua, Jehovah saves. And the shortened form emphasizes the verbal action. And then there's Christos. which means the anointed, and He was anointed as a prophet, He was anointed as a priest, and He was also anointed as what? As a King. And so here you have the book about the beginnings of the one who will save, who was anointed as prophet, priest and King. Oh, it was so important to know this. And our dear Lord Jesus pure and spotless, without sin was mocked, maligned, slandered. And always, always the innuendoes and the remarks about His origin. In the 13th of Matthew and the 54th

"And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and they said, From where hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?" Matthew 13'5?, where, where did He get this ability? "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? From where, then, hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him." He doesn't have any right to this kind of stuff, who's He? He's come out of a lowly bunch up in Nazareth. In the 7th chapter of John again the kind of mockery about His origin. John 7:?7, Jesus comes down to the feast of the tabernacles and ah, the Jews get upset at Him because of what He says, and in verse 27, "Nevertheless, we know this man, from where he is, but when Christ comes, no man knows from where he is." Listen, we know this Jesus, I mean this is not the Christ, we know where He came from. He's a hayseed from Nazareth, up the hill, you know? I mean you couldn't believe that the Messiah would come from anyplace other than Jerusalem. Such a thought is intolerable. He's a nobody from a nowhere. And in verse ?O, "Many of the people, therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet." This is the Prophet prophesied by Moses back in the Pentateuch. This is the Prophet, and "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?" You kiddin'? In the 8th chapter and the ?lst verse, "You do the deeds of your father." He says to the Pharisees, Jewish leaders, "You do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We are not born of fornication:" what do you think they meant by that? That's slander. "We're not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God." Verse ?8, "Then answered the Jews, and said to him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon?" You're a demon possessed result of fornication that came from a nowhere town, and a nobody family, don't lay us with any of your Messianic credentials.

So Matthew you see, looks back on all this. And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he writes down, the book of the beginnings of Jesus Christ, so there never needs to be a question about where He came from.

Now, there's an emphasis in this genealogy that I want to speak to for the last time that we have together tonight. There's an emphasis here that just thrills me. It's just...it.s woven into this thing in a way that...as I begin to study it and I was seeking the Lord and I said, Lord, what do You want me to say about this, how do I do it, how do I hang this whole thing together, these names, you know? What am I going to say? And I began to think about the fact that Jesus Christ was a King. But He wasn't a King like any other King, He wasn't a King who ruled by law, He was a King who ruled by what? By grace. And I began to search the genealogy to see if 1 could find grace in this genealogy, and oh man! It just started leaking grace everywhere, everywhere, got all over my desk. Grace everyplace. He is a king of grace, and you know even in this, you know God can't even lay down the royal credentials of Jesus without spilling grace all over everybody who reads it, it's all over the place. He is a King, but most kings rule with an iron fist, most kings rule by the law, most kings don't know anything about grace, this one does, oh, what a gracious King. And I see it in four things, and you have an outline maybe with you, you can see how it unfolds like the budding of a beautiful flower. First of all, I see the King of grace in the choice of one woman, the choice of one woman. The first thing that just hit me was when I was reading verse 16, and it says, "And Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." And I thought to myself, ohu, there's grace, grace to that one lady, that one little lady, Mary, became the mother of the Messiah, the mother of the Son of God, Mary. As Luke records, "the child of Heli," Mary. Nobody knew about Mary before this. I don't want to shake you up too much but I'm gonna, tell you something, Mary was a sinner, Mary was a sinner. You say, well, I'm a Catholic I don't believe that. Well, the Bible tells us that. Mary was a sinner, she was like everybody else, she was like all other men and all other women, 1 don't mean she was worse than anybody else, she was probably better than most, and no doubt a deeply devout and religious