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[0:00] Good morning, everyone. Please turn with me to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. For those of you who are new, who are visiting for this long weekend, welcome. My name is BK.

[0:14] I have the pleasure of serving as one of the pastors here at SBC. So a warm welcome to you. If you're just kind of checking us out, we have a welcome desk in the back. We have some information and our wonderful people that are working the welcome desk after this service. We'll be more than glad to connect with you and answer some of the questions that you may have before you.

[0:37] So before we begin, to my shame, I have lost my poppy. We need a better invention on the pins, right? But it seems like a lot of us have lost our poppies. I think if Don Cherry showed up, he wouldn't be too happy with us. So we celebrate Remembrance Day for a reason.

[1:08] My father was in the Airborne, and his father before him and my uncles were actually POWs in Germany. If you're familiar with the story, they made the movie A Bridge Too Far, Operation Marketplace.

[1:22] Well, two of my uncles got caught behind lines not making, so they were prisoners of wars. And it was kind of interesting because my father was named after them because his family thought they were dead.

[1:38] So after the war, they found out that they were indeed alive. And my dad would say, because my dad was born in 45, the sad thing is I got stuck with their names, Cecil and Pearlie. Those were his uncles. So that's why my dad went by CP his whole life. But I just thought we'd open up some prayer and just give thanks to both governments that understood what was righteous and what was worth fighting for.

[2:05] We just did an intensive on 1 Peter, and we were talking about what are those things that we fight our government on, and what are those things that we fight our government against our government on? When are biblical ways that we can resist? And one of the things is when our governments do good and they promote justice and righteousness, you get behind that government. And one of the ways they do that is by punishing evil. Even though we kind of live in a day that we don't always identify evil for what it is, it does still exist. And a lot of families were deeply affected by these events that happened, even though they were so long ago. They were obviously heroes for doing what they did, both men and women who gave up the lives to fight for freedom. So I think it's appropriate for us to pray for that.

[3:02] Dear Holy Heavenly Father, just as we come before you, you are the God over all things. We just give you thanks on this day, which is Remembrance Day, when we think of those veterans who gave their lives for us. Not all died physically, but I know more than a few of the men who've come back who were dead on the inside. Having seen the worst of worst that men could do to one another, all for desiring their ways over your ways, O God. Father, I pray for grace and mercy to all the men and women that were a part of that conflict that affected our world for those six, seven years, O God, and the scars that they carried beyond that. Father, I pray that we would not forget, that we would continue to remember the sacrifice that was made in the name of freedom. As all across the land, young boys answered the call to fight evil, which was seen at that time as the greatest evil that man had ever come against. Father, in a lot of ways, I think we've grown soft. Even spiritually, we forgot that there is indeed an enemy. There are indeed worldly powers, influenced by the evil one, who make decisions that take lives every day. We give you thanks for those nations that rise against the men and women that fight against such tyranny. Father, I do not know what our future brings, except to know that you will indeed be the grand conqueror of all, and every knee shall bow to you and declare that you are God.

[5:05] Father, there's days where I think we pray more for that than anything else. Let our hearts not become so soft of the things here on earth that we no longer desire your future and your future kingdom, O God. Always leave in us a source of unsettledness as we live in this land, which is not our own.

[5:29] So, Father, we ask these things in your great mercy, and we thank you for those that you call to serve in the way that we did to guarantee our freedom.

[5:42] And God's people said, Amen. So, this morning, if you are new or visiting, and you've never been to a church, and you don't know the story of the Bible, well, today is one of the days for you, because we're doing a series on the story of the Bible. And my desire for you is to have an understanding of the flow of the Bible through the history, the people, and the events that God used to shape his kingdom, and to obviously bring about the birth of Jesus Christ.

[6:20] Most people are familiar that their Bible is essentially made up of two parts. There is an Old Testament and a New Testament. The Old Testament, which really should be called the First Testament, was the first word that God gave to his people.

[6:39] It is the story of God before Jesus Christ. The dividing line is the birth of Jesus Christ. The New Testament begins with the four Gospels, which outline the new birth and what happened with the effects of Jesus Christ.

[6:58] Now, it's interesting. We don't know, we don't tend to know our Old Testament as much, and sometimes we don't think of it as being as relevant, which I am hoping to prove to you through our study that it is indeed as relevant today, and probably speaks more poignantly into the human condition than we would care to admit.

[7:20] But, you know, even non-Christians know some of the stories, right? Non-Christians know the story of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Joseph and the Code of Many Colors, Moses and the Ten Commandments, perhaps David and Goliath, or Daniel in the Lion's Den.

[7:36] There's many stories that were familiar. The fact of the matter is, you can even turn on Netflix, and there's cartoons. There's real-life stories based on, or movies based on these stories.

[7:49] Mind you, they do embellish a lot of things. But we know it's there, but we also know that the Bible is big. It's hard to understand.

[8:00] There's 66 books in the Bible, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New, which contain over 600,000 words. It was originally written in Hebrew and Greek, and there's just a few little sentences in Aramaic, but it was put together by 40 different authors over a period of 1,500 years.

[8:24] Now, what makes this book so incredible is that it's not just made up of random religious texts. It's not like the people decided to start a religion, and they took the best religious books out there and put them together.

[8:46] The Bible tells us that this book was penned by the Holy Spirit, that it empowered the men to write these books. And it's not full of holy sayings, and it's not like this is a new religious book.

[9:03] It's actually a book written about a central theme that flows from beginning to end, and that theme is redemption. It is redemption.

[9:17] Last week, I introduced you, or the idea that the book is essentially a drama made up of five specific acts. There's five specific acts.

[9:30] And like in any other story, there's a prologue. The prologue, which sets the tone for this story, is found in Genesis 1 to Genesis 11.

[9:41] We read about how God created the world. We even read about how God formed the world in the flood. We read about how languages were created, how nations.

[9:53] It doesn't give a great amount of detail, but it sets this story about all the things that happen. But the most important story begins that God created you and I, men and women with a purpose.

[10:09] That man and woman were created in the image of God. And we were to reflect God's glory to all the ends of the earth.

[10:21] But something happened. We wanted more. We wanted to be like God. So Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit. And on that day, they died spiritually.

[10:36] They were shamed. They knew that that relationship that they enjoyed with God, It talks about in Genesis that they walked with God in the cool of the day.

[10:46] It was this relationship without shame. It was beautiful. Was now marred and broken. In fact, they hid from God. For they knew that shame and brokenness had happened.

[11:01] They had sinned. God did indeed judge them, but he also informed them that I'm going to rescue you. I am going to redeem you.

[11:15] I know you made a mistake, but don't worry. Since the beginning of time, there's been a rescue plan that has been ready for this.

[11:26] And we begin to read about God's rescue plan in Genesis 12. So last week, I introduced you to the five acts.

[11:40] Do we have those up there? Can we get that slide? So this is essentially the five acts that involve in the Bible. Now, look in your Bibles. I think we're going to put it.

[11:50] I think I'm going to take you back to Genesis 1. I'm throwing the slides around for you. But I want you to pay attention. Some people want me asking, Are you just coming up with those acts, BK?

[12:01] Well, let's look at Matthew 1.17. Pay attention to what this says. This is in the first gospel. This is in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And Matthew is explaining the history of Jesus.

[12:15] So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. That's act 1 that we're talking about from Genesis 12 to 1 Kings.

[12:27] Act 2. And from David to the deportation to Babylon were 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, we have another 14 generations.

[12:46] Now, a generation, in case you don't know, is essentially 40 years. So each of those time frames, there is about approximately 560 years between Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3.

[13:01] So what we're going to be looking at is there's the rise that God is calling a group of people to him. But there's going to be great failure.

[13:12] And there's 560 years of man struggle and failure to the period where they hit rock bottom, meaning they will lose their country. They will lose their temple.

[13:24] They will find themselves in a foreign land. And then there's another 560-year period from that time of exile where God begins to redeem his people until that moment when Jesus Christ finally comes.

[13:40] Now, the most important thing that I need for you to understand about this story or this drama that I am speaking about is these stories are not myths.

[13:57] These stories are not these made-up stories to encourage us about moral lessons or ways that we can better ourselves before God.

[14:09] These aren't those type of stories. These are stories about real people. These are people who lived in a real time, in a real culture.

[14:23] They're people that had heart concerns, life concerns. We're going to read about love. We're going to read about petty jealousies.

[14:33] Just different things that are in effect our human condition. The story in the first act one centers around three specific families.

[14:46] And we get to know these families. Abraham, who which we were introduced yesterday to, we get to know who he is and his family.

[14:57] And today we're going to dig in a little bit more into his family. But he will eventually become the father of the Abrahamic covenant. That is one of the key promises that God gave his people.

[15:08] The second family, or person that we're going to get to know, is Moses. We're going to get to know about his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam. And it's even going to discuss his people and the people that he lived day to day with and the influence and bad.

[15:23] When I say influence, there's both good and bad within that story. And Moses will become the covenant, the Mosaic covenant. And then finally we're going to read about King David and his family.

[15:39] And how he will form the basis of the Davidic covenant. Now here's the thing. If you're sitting to read a story, or write a story about these people that are going to be great for God, what's our first instinct, right?

[15:54] They came from a royal line of great and wonderful kings. The wives they all married were beautiful princesses, which were the most beautiful women in the kingdom.

[16:07] And their kids were angels. And they all became great heroes and accomplished great things. And that is why God chose them and used them to bring about the nation upon which Jesus would be born from.

[16:23] That's not what we read. We read how God uses people despite their failings, despite their disbelief, despite their troubles, that no matter what, man can still turn to God and still be blessed by God.

[16:46] We read a lot about their lives, not just about their successes, but there's one section, it's called The Greatest Failures as well, which I will present to you today.

[16:58] Through these men and women and their families, through these details, there's a reason for it. It allows us to connect with the story. It allows us to identify with who these people are.

[17:11] Even though we're going to read these stories are 3,000 to 5,000 years old, we're going to see ourselves in those stories. Because it's easy to sit back and judge Abraham.

[17:23] Boy, were you ever stupid? God gave you a promise that your wife, Sarah, will bear a son. It's easy for us to say, why in the world did you take her handmaiden Hagar and decide to have a son with him?

[17:39] But when you look at it, he had waited 10 years. Like I said last week, how many of us can wait 10 minutes for anything? Right?

[17:50] He waited, God, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? You made a promise. God began his promise or gave his promise to Abraham when he was 75 years old.

[18:03] How can you say a great nation's going to come through me when my wife is barren? In fact, one of the most amazing stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that all of their wives were barren.

[18:18] All of their wives were not able to naturally have children unless God intervened. I believe that through these people and these stories, we will see our own spiritual condition.

[18:39] So my goal is to take a bird's eye view or since we're in Squamish, an eagle eye view of the story of the Bible. We're going to dive in at certain places.

[18:49] We're not going to look at all of them, but I believe we're going to look in at some that I think truly help us understand God's heart for redeeming mankind.

[19:01] You okay with that? All right? All right. Good. All right. So last week, if you were with us, let me give you a quick update. We introduced you in Genesis 12 to what is known as the Abrahamic covenant.

[19:15] Dave, or Abraham living in a foreign land. God calls him, come over to this land, which is now present day Israel, and I'm going to build a great nation. This is a promise that he gives. And through that nation, the whole world will be blessed.

[19:28] What he's referring to, and we read it in Galatians 3.14, is that eventual blessing will be through Jesus Christ. But I want to define for you what a nation is.

[19:39] There's three elements that are important for us to understand. One, that a nation needs to have a people. A common people, a common language, a common culture.

[19:50] That is the story of Abraham developing that, right? That's Abraham's part of the story. The second part, or definition of a nation, is it must have a leader and a governing structure.

[20:04] That means a nation has to have laws. That's where we're going to look at the rise of Moses. Moses is going to become a leader, and he's going to have these laws, and they're going to start to develop those laws, and they're going to have a real structure to the nation.

[20:20] And three, the third element, and probably one of the most important elements, is a nation has to have a land. Has to have a land. That's where King David comes in. Even though they had the land, he's the one who spreads the wealth and conquers the land, and that was seen as the pinnacle.

[20:37] Even to this day in Israel, David is the hero for what he did. Now what is important that I want you to understand is God did not call Abraham to build God a nation for God.

[20:51] He just said, Abraham, you're going to build a nation for me. What God says, I am going to bear, I'm going to build a nation through you. Yes, you, 75 years old, with a barren wife.

[21:05] Why? Because I want you to see how great I am. I want you to believe in God and what I can do. it's going to be an undeniable work of God.

[21:19] Why? Because it's God who gets the glory for building the nation of Israel. So this morning, I want to look at three key events in the building of God's nation.

[21:31] And my main goal for you this morning is I want you to see God's faithfulness and God's incredible sovereignty and how he brings about his redemptive plan even in the midst of incredible flaws and challenges.

[21:48] So the first one is God's faithfulness amidst waiting. Amidst waiting. And I have this text that I want you to read here. I'm going to put it up on the overhead.

[21:58] It's Genesis 25, 19 through to 21. It says, these are the generations of Isaac. Now remember, this is Isaac born to Abraham when he was 99 years old.

[22:11] Abraham had waited 25 years for his first child to show up on the scene. Abraham's son.

[22:22] Now Abraham fathered Isaac. Now you'd think Isaac, knowing the promise, would have gotten busy with marriage and he almost, well, he didn't wait as long as I did to get married.

[22:33] Good for him. But Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban, the Aramean, to be his wife.

[22:48] And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer and Rebecca, his wife, conceived.

[23:01] Now here we read that, here's Isaac, married at 42 years old. Isaac and Rebecca will have their sons, Esau and Jacob, when they are 60 years old.

[23:16] We see that Abraham waits 26 years, Isaac waits 18 years. The question that gets asked, and I'm sure everyone who's honest, who's a believer in Jesus Christ here is, why does God always take so long?

[23:38] Why does God take so long? Anybody here ask that question? You've had a desire, you believe it's of the Lord, and you start asking that question, why is God not answering my prayers?

[23:50] Does he hear me? And you know, there's this place in your heart that you know that this prayer is honorable, it's desirable, is what you believe God's will is for you.

[24:04] But what's interesting, as many can attest, when God works slowly, it deepens our reliance on him. But it still doesn't stop us from asking the question, why don't you do things right away?

[24:21] Here's the answer, and I'm paraphrasing what God would be saying in this moment. Well, I could, but you wouldn't be the person that you're meant to be to do the things that you want to do.

[24:34] Do you understand what I'm saying? Often things, you might have good ideas, good things that you want to do for God, but you are still not yet prepared to do the works that God has for you because you're not ready.

[24:46] You're not mature. We looked at that with Abraham, we saw seven tests that he went through. The final test that Dave read for us this morning, who's going to give up their son?

[24:59] But when you saw the test that Abraham went before it, you knew God was building into him a greater and greater and greater maturity for him to handle that challenge of being able to offer his son up to God.

[25:18] See, oftentimes our faith needs to be tested, not to prove its authenticity, but to prove its strength. can you handle the responsibility that you might have desire?

[25:32] It could be to start a ministry, be a part of a ministry, maybe you want to reach someone at work, it does not matter. Maybe God wants you to strengthen that point because he has those same desires that you have, but he wants you to deepen your relationship with God, to lean in, depend on him.

[25:54] all too often we think God is the problem, but it's us who is the problem. By the time Esau and Jacob show up in the scene, it's now been 85 years since the promise was given to Abraham.

[26:12] Why? What's interesting is the Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about Isaac, but he does tell us about one of the most incredible stories which is the story that Dave read to us.

[26:28] So this is the second story that I want to deem out. So the first one I want to talk about is God's faithfulness amidst waiting and I want you to see that this is going to be a common thread throughout all of these stories that we're going to talk about.

[26:41] That often God has a plan but he's willing and he's waiting to build his people to the point where they're ready to handle that work that he'd given to them. So the second point I will have for you is here, the offering Isaac, a lesson for Abraham but it's a wonderful shadowing or I call it a message to us.

[27:01] So in the Bible, theologians use this word, it's called a type. What that means is, and I'm going to read from a definition here, a type refers to a person, an event or an institution in the Old Testament that foreshadows or prefigures something greater in the New Testament, often fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

[27:28] What that means is, the work of the Holy Spirit is working in this text that when we read it, it's not just a story, God is giving us a hint, a clue, a foreshadowing of what is to come.

[27:42] And what's even encouraging for us at this stage, I'm going to go through three, there's more, but I'm going to give you three examples of how this reflects, how the story of Isaac reflects the person and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

[27:57] It's meant to strengthen our faith to know that when we go back and we're reading this story, God's already thinking about this. He's already thinking about this.

[28:07] Here's an example. Dave read to us in Genesis 22.2, it says, the term beloved son is used. His only son is used in both instances here, and if you remember on the baptism when Jesus Christ was baptized and he was presented to the people, God spoke.

[28:31] And he said, this is my beloved son. All right, we're seeing this image here. It's the same kind of wording. There's a foreshadowing going out here.

[28:42] Number two, both Isaac and Jesus were obedient sacrifices. Notice, Isaac willingly carried the wood for the sacrifice. What is the wood that Jesus Christ died on?

[28:54] The cross. And the third one is both stories involve a substitute provision. Just as the ram was provided by God as a substitute for Isaac, Jesus is provided as the ultimate sacrificial lamb of God.

[29:20] You see, there's patterns and there's more. Like I said, allows us as the reader to see God's redemptive foreshadowing thousands of years before the time it actually has.

[29:34] So when we read our Bibles and say, how do you know that the Bible is real? This is one of those prophecies we see it's working out. But I'm going to share with you one and I think it's an incredible strong connection.

[29:46] In Genesis 22 where Abraham is instructed to sacrifice Isaac, it is in the land of Moriah. It's one of the mountains there.

[29:57] Do you know that the temple upon which Solomon built, do you know what mount it's on? Mount Moriah. It's on the same mountain, 2 Chronicles 3.1, that this is where Solomon would eventually build the temple, where was Jesus Christ sacrificed.

[30:18] We know it's called the place of the skull, but it's still on that same peak where the temple was. So the foreshadowing where Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac is the same mount where Jesus Christ was actually sacrificed.

[30:39] These connections aren't coincidence. You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see these things.

[30:50] It's just that when you know the truth and you go back, let's be honest, we've read some of these stories hundreds and hundreds of times or dozens of dozens of times. We still don't make those connections, but they are true when we're paying attention.

[31:05] One writer writes, he says, this connection is a profound typological link underscoring how the Old Testament story of Isaac points forward to the New Testament fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

[31:18] Christ. So that's the second point. The third point, which is a bit longer, and guess what, out of all the points, I didn't give a slide for Shane to do this, but I'm going to tell it to you a couple of times, so those that are paying attention, and this is the point.

[31:36] God uses imperfect people to fulfill his purposes. God uses imperfect people to fulfill his purposes. Just in case you didn't get that, God uses imperfect people to fulfill his purposes.

[31:55] So this nation of Israel that God is building from whom Jesus will come from begins by God calling Abraham, who begets Isaac, and now has a two sons.

[32:12] Now, if you have not grown up in the church and you do not know the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jacob is actually not the firstborn.

[32:25] The firstborn is supposed to get the blessing. He was a twin, but his brother Esau came out first. And just to give you a quick background on the difference between Esau and Jacob.

[32:38] All right? Esau is like, if you had a son who always does the chores, you know, the kind of son that you don't have to tell him to take out the garbage, he already does it, right?

[32:49] The son who recognizes that the land needs, the lawn needs to be mowed, he's already doing it. When his mom says, hey, we need more potatoes for tonight's dinner, can you go get them?

[33:03] Yeah, I'm all over it, mom. I'll be there. Jacob is the one who is downstairs playing video games during this whole event. He's like, when mom asked him, hey, Jacob, would you go get the potatoes?

[33:18] No response. Jacob, would you go get the potatoes? No response. Like, you got to go to the breaker downstairs and shut it off just to finally get his attention.

[33:32] That's the difference between Esau and Esau and Jacob. Esau wants to go in, do the hunt for the elk.

[34:06] The other one's happy to make it. I don't know. I'm just not calling you guys out. Don't worry about that. Right? It's just this, kids are different. So you would think when you look at face value, who's the one that God's going to call?

[34:20] Now, here's the thing. Esau didn't care for the blessing. He didn't care about honoring his parents. He did what was right. But in his heart of hearts, he rejected God.

[34:30] Now, the problem is, Jacob had to use deceit. He had to manipulate Esau, and he sought his own self-interest in getting the blessing.

[34:42] So he waited for a time when his brother was hungry, and he said, hey, I'll feed you some of my cookies that I've been making with mom here, and you know what? I'll give them to you if you give me your birthright.

[34:54] It's actually pottage that he gave him. But he makes that transition because Esau couldn't have cared less. for the blessing. So when his father Isaac announces that now is the time to give the blessing, Jacob dresses like, puts fur on his arms because Esau was a hairy man, and he went in pretending to be Esau in order to get the blessing.

[35:22] Now, Jacob didn't do this because I love God, and I want to serve God, and I want to be a part of Abraham's promise.

[35:33] No, he wanted the riches. He wanted the favor even though his life did not demonstrate any of the favor. So what happens? Did he honorably say, I earned that blessing?

[35:47] I gave you the cookies. You traded. It was fair and square. You know what he does? He runs away. He runs away. If he thought he had done right before God, he could have said, you know what, I'm going to stay here and take it.

[35:59] But he doesn't. But despite all of this, God still uses Jacob. In fact, Jacob later becomes the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

[36:17] And each of those twelve is named after his twelve sons. Now, it's kind of interesting even how this all happens. Right? So he runs away, steals the blessing that was meant from him, and he runs to his mom's brother's place.

[36:34] His name's Laban. Falls in love with one of her daughters named Rachel. So he goes to Rachel and he goes to Laban and he goes, I want to marry Rachel. I will work for you seven years if you allow me to marry her.

[36:48] Laban says, fine. Now, this is the thing. Why did he have to work for her? Because, and we've talked about this in the Jewish culture, it's not, I don't even know if it's Jewish at that time, but in that culture, if you had a daughter, your daughter doesn't really enrich your family.

[37:02] Right? She marries a guy, leaves, and then brings children in for her husband's family. You with me on this? This is an important thing to learn. So the daughter leaves that family and the sons she produces go on to enrich the husband's family.

[37:21] So what they do is they provide a dowry. We're going to give you X amount of money. It would have been donkeys and sheep and all these things because we're essentially trading, right?

[37:32] I know you're losing a daughter and we're going to benefit from this, but you're not going to be empty handed. We want you to have all these riches. Now, if Jacob had been in the good, or yeah, if Jacob had been in good graces of his father, what could he have done?

[37:49] Isaac, who was wealthy, would have paid that dowry. But instead, he's got nothing to offer. Instead, he says, I will come work for you. So he does so for seven years, and as some of you may know, on the wedding day, the wife takes off her veil, and it's not Rachel, it's Leah, her older sister, who he had no interest in.

[38:11] So he's got to go back, and there's another negotiation. He's got to work another seven years, then he finally gets his loved one. But guess what? Rachel's barren.

[38:24] She can't have any children. So what happens? Well, he still has family relations with Leah, and she ends up bearing him four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.

[38:43] Judah's going to play a part in the story in a little bit. And then Genesis 30 says that Rachel is quite upset that her sister's having the kids, so she goes to Jacob, hey, take Belilah, my maidservant, and have kids with her, so they will be my kids.

[39:02] So Jacob ends up having relations with her, and they have two children named Dan and Naphtali. And now it says, it actually says that Leah was beyond having kids, so getting a little bit jealous of her sister Rachel, she gives Jacob her maidservant, say, have children with her so I can have more kids.

[39:22] So then we have this woman bears Jacob, Gad, and Asher. So in this story, you got these competitive petty sisters. Any sisters have any pettiness between the two of them?

[39:35] No? Not a lot of honesty here. We know what happens, right? Brothers and sisters, just boom, boom, boom. Anyway, then one day, this is how petty sisters can be, Rachel sees Reuben, the oldest of Leah's kids, carrying these flowers, and she wants these flowers.

[39:55] She says, can I have some flowers? So Leah says, you can only have those flowers if you allow Jacob to come spend some nights with me in my tent, because he was obviously living in Rachel's tent.

[40:06] So Rachel exchanges Jacob for a couple of bouquet of flowers, right? Just to make men feel special. But in that time, God decides to open up Leah's womb, and she has two sons named Issachar and Zebulon.

[40:25] So now we're at ten kids. Genesis 30, 22. Just think of how desperate Rachel is feeling, and it says, then God remembered Rachel.

[40:37] And God listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph, saying, may the Lord add to me another son.

[40:51] And then we read that Benjamin will be eventually born to Jacob. So now we've got 12 kids. Let's be honest. We're writing this story. Anybody come from a blended family like that?

[41:04] That's not how you think God's going to do it, is it, right? If he's going to build these 12 tribes, you'd think they'd be all the same mother and father, but they don't. They come from all over.

[41:16] Broken, messy families. I know that is a rare thing today. But this is how God works. His ways are not our ways.

[41:27] You see, this is part of the God's story of redemption. Now, where does King David's and Jesus' line come from?

[41:40] Out of the 12 brothers, some of you guys know it comes from Judah. It comes from the fourth child of Leah, the woman he did not love or even wanted to marry.

[41:56] Now, Judah must have been a really upstanding guy, right? Like, out of all those 12 brothers, he had to have been the best of the 12 brothers, right?

[42:06] Of course, King David and Jesus Christ came from his line. Well, let me tell you about Judah. Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis 38. I'll tell you the story.

[42:19] You don't have to read it with me, but this is where the story is. And many people ask, why on earth is this story there? Where I believe when we begin to understand the Bible as a story of redemption, you know perfectly well why Genesis 38 exists.

[42:39] So Judah, you'd think, I'm going to follow after my dad. I'm going to marry a woman of the tribe. He doesn't. He goes and marries a Canaanite woman. And he has three children, three boys named Ur, Onan, and Shelah.

[42:55] And Ur takes a Canaanite woman named Tamar as his wife. Genesis tells us that his first son was so wicked in the sight of God, God kills him.

[43:09] All right? Wicked man. Now, according to the custom, they have no kids. Tamar, because her husband hasn't given her a kid, she has no real family.

[43:20] She's like a nobody. She will be cast aside. So the way they worked it that way is the next born son would come into the tent and impregnate her with a son.

[43:34] So in this time, it's Onan is supposed to go in and he's supposed to impregnate Tamar so she will have a son and it'll be a part of that family.

[43:45] You with me on that? That's how. And it's not Onan's son. Okay? That's how it works. That would be considered Ur's son and the inheritance that Ur would receive would go to Tamar's son.

[43:58] Well, Onan goes into the tent a couple of times. He has relations with her, but he purposely doesn't impregnate her.

[44:09] So he's really just going in to have fun. He's not willing to do what God's called him to. What does God do? Kills him. That was considered evil in the sight of God.

[44:19] So now we flip back to Judah. Judah's a little bit worried, right? Ur is married to this woman. He's dead. Onan went in, slept with her. Oh no, that's two sons dead. And he's got a younger son named Shelah.

[44:31] I don't want to risk this son being with this woman. So what he says to Tamar is, hey, he's not, he's still too young. Let him grow up a few years and then he'll come in and do the duty that will keep you a part of the lineage.

[44:50] Now we know that the text tells us that he never intended to do this. In fact, Tamar will see him in a crowd and recognize he's now a man, but he hasn't come to visit her.

[45:04] So I want you to think for a second. People judge Tamar. What do you think she's feeling like? She was brought in to be a part of a tribe because she couldn't have this kid.

[45:18] She's now on the outside. They know this is a part of the duties. This is the way the custom and their culture work. She's supposed to be, one of the brothers is supposed to give her an opportunity to have a child so she can be a woman and find her place in the greater family.

[45:34] In fact, at this time, she's living in Canaan. Now Judah's wife dies. So what a lot of people would do, sadly, is they would go into Canaan where there were temples and there'd be temple prostitutes.

[45:49] So if they didn't have a wife, they could go down to the temple, fool around the temple prostitutes, come back and say, hey, we're back in our land and everything's okay. So Judah's wife dies.

[46:00] He decides I'm going to go have some fun at the temple. And Tamar knows this. So she waits outside on the road, dressed as a prostitute, takes her into the bed, gets pregnant by him and she says, hey, I would like your ring and your staff as well.

[46:15] And he gives them freely to her. Three months later, Judah hears that his daughter-in-law is now pregnant and accuses her of immorality and says, let's burn her.

[46:27] Let's burn her. And Tamar shows the ring and the staff. Well, guess who had immorality with me? Right?

[46:38] It was my father-in-law who should have rightly given me a son through his son. Now I'm going to show you how God works.

[46:53] Please turn back if you still have Matthew 1 open. 1, 1. I think I have it here. I think we'll have it up here. Notice how Matthew begins in the gospel.

[47:06] The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, 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.

[47:21] And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah. By Tamar. He ends up having twin boys. What we're reading in Matthew is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

[47:35] These are the people that God specifically used to bring about his son into history. And a woman is named there who pretended to be a prostitute literally so she could be someone in her brokenness and loneliness and gets pregnant by her own father-in-law.

[48:02] And through this family, Jesus Christ comes from. Let's be honest, that's crazy. Nobody's writing that story.

[48:13] Nobody's making up that story. So here's the thing. If you're ever spending some time with Dave or counselor and you're talking about family issues.

[48:25] And you start to talk about how on earth could Jesus Christ ever possibly identify with my dysfunction and what I've experienced in my life.

[48:41] Expect this to be one of the stories that Dave's going to share with you. Dave will tell you that this story is told to us to demonstrate just how fully Jesus, yes, that Jesus, the son of God, identifies with us as sinners.

[48:59] That's why he's the perfect mediator. By mediator, if you're not familiar with that word, it means he's the one who represents us before God.

[49:12] See, God is holy. He's perfect. And there's a mediator between us and God. And that person is Jesus Christ. It's like a lawyer who's representing us.

[49:24] God isn't so foreign in the form of his son Jesus that has no idea who we are. Well, I created them. I don't know them. Oh, no.

[49:35] He knows us. He walked the earth as one of us. He talked with us. Shared with us. He wept with us. He bled for us. Yet he was without sin.

[49:49] He humbled himself to the point that he was willingly associated with people like me and you.

[50:04] See, the fact of the matter is there's no shortage of messed up families in the bloodline of Jesus Christ. Now, what is incredible, even within this messed up family, God continues to build a nation.

[50:19] A nation that will eventually bring forth the Messiah who saves us. The question you need to ask for yourself is, if God can work through such a messed up situation like these or the ones we've read about today, do you think that maybe, possibly maybe, God can work in your brokenness?

[50:47] That God can work through you and your messy family, your brokenness. The rejection and pain that you might have felt in your family, can God still work with you?

[51:03] Can God still bring great things through you? What's the answer? Yes. You see, that's what God is in the business of doing.

[51:17] God might give you a plan and you say, well, my life's not perfect. My family doesn't measure up. I don't measure up. And God simply says, so what? Grow up.

[51:34] God says, I manifest my glory through your brokenness. God manifests his glory through your loneliness, through your despair, through feeling you were never good enough, through the feelings that I was never accepted.

[51:59] through our shame, God is glorified when we place our dependence on him and trust him to bring the work that he desires to bring in us.

[52:20] Amen? That's a clap, guys. To think that somehow God is too weak to bring about forgiveness, the peace and hope that he promises because you were too broken or your family was too broken is a lie from the pit of hell.

[52:39] Even Tamar, a very desperate, hurtful woman, desperate for a life, desperate for love, desperate to be cared for, does this incredible foolish thing.

[52:52] But here is God, uses her story. And here's the thing. She wasn't even Jewish. But through her sin, through this event, she becomes part of the covenant people of God who have the honor of being mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

[53:15] As one author says, within the brilliance tapestry of life, Tamar is woven in. Somehow.

[53:29] Tamar becomes part of the lineage leading to King David and later to Jesus Christ. See, the reality is, no matter how flawed, how broken we may think our lives to be, but in the hands of the Creator, we are a wonderful tool that can do great things to fulfill the purposes of God.

[53:49] Why? Because we're not the great, God is the great. Amen? You see, this is the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm going to break down the gospel to you out of an Old Testament text that I'm going to ask Shane to put up there.

[54:09] This is a text found in Isaiah, and this is a dream that Isaiah has. And he appears between the great throne room of God.

[54:21] And when he gets there, there's these angels that are crying out to one another, and they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The earth is full of his glory.

[54:34] And these angels are just shouting it out as he's in this presence of God. And notice in verse 4, and the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

[54:49] And what we're seeing here is the presence of God. It's this throne room, and Isaiah is entering in it, and there's these shouting, holy, holy, I've got to keep my voice.

[55:02] And his immediate response is because he's in a holy place. He says, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

[55:23] Every single person who walks this earth fears this scene. Do you know that? Ask anybody, would you willing, as you are, to face the Lord himself?

[55:36] Would you be willing to walk into the throne room? And we know people, oh, arrogantly thinking so. But just think, right? They're coming up, they see the castle, then just the steps, and the majesty, and you could hear the shouts of the angels that are in high.

[55:52] You all of a sudden become quite aware of your immortality, your sin, how petty you were to your sister.

[56:03] Even if you thought you lived a good life, you recognize in that instance that you are truly no one. So when he finally says, are you going to go in, are you going to go in?

[56:19] Doesn't matter who it is. Every single person gets to that person. Now this is the difference between Christianity and other religions.

[56:32] What the other religions are going to tell you is you can be good enough to climb those steps. If you're a Mormon, they're going to tell you to avoid coffee. Right? That's what they're going to tell you.

[56:42] That's one of the things they're going to tell you. All the cults are going to tell you to do something different. Do it in your own flesh. The difference is Christianity says you can't do it.

[56:53] You will never, ever, ever, ever be able to make yourself clean enough for God. You're never going to be great enough to climb those steps to go face God.

[57:04] Doesn't matter how, I'm going to go, I'm going to become a hero, I'm going to slay all these dragons, you're still going to realize that the king and this castle is too majestic, that you're still too small.

[57:17] Something needs to happen. Verse 6. It reads, Then one of the seraphim, this is an angel, flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

[57:36] The altar is the sacrificial place where all the sacrifices were made before God. What was the ultimate sacrifice that was on the altar? Jesus Christ.

[57:47] So this altar is actually another foreshadowing event of the cross of Jesus Christ. And he says, And he had taken with tongs from that altar and he touched my lips and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

[58:11] The only way you can feel comfortable walking in to see the king is if you're one of his children. And the only way you become one of his children if that angel comes over with that tong and says, You're never going to be worthy but I can make you worthy.

[58:32] Are you willing to do so? That is the gift that Jesus Christ himself offers you. It says, Do you want to be right with me? Do you want to be right with God? You accept the free gift.

[58:43] Notice, it didn't say that Isaiah had to run around three times or that he had to go and prophesy 50 great prophecies in order to make himself great enough to come into the temple.

[58:54] No. You just have to be willing to accept this coal that was taken from the tongs from the altar that burned red hot with the death of Jesus Christ and allow him to touch your mouth and let him to cleanse the guilt and sin away from you.

[59:20] This is the only way to be accepted by God. The message that SBC, I always want to say Southern Baptist Convention if I say it too quick and we are definitely not that, Squamish Baptist churches, we believe that forgiveness is only found in Jesus Christ and it's only found if you're willing to accept the free gift of grace that Jesus Christ offers you.

[59:52] If you are here and you're struggling with your sin and you're thinking I wasn't good enough, you weren't hearing the message today. Did you see how messed up these people were? Did you hear these stories?

[60:07] I guarantee you you guys can't compare, we could get into some of these stories. I guarantee you no one's living these stories. So if God forgave them and take a woman like Tamar and insert her into this wonderful story of God building a nation that he promised to Abraham from which the Messiah would come, I think God can forgive you too.

[60:32] In fact, not only that, I think God can use you for incredible eternal works. That God can use your story to bring others to belief in him. And all you have to do is accept that free grace and then later on when someone asks them, let me tell you about the tongue that touched my love.

[60:50] let me tell you that I did not deserve that coal. But Jesus Christ died for me and he died for you too.

[61:03] And in order to accept that pure gift, you have to believe within your heart and confess with your lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and your Savior and you will be saved.

[61:16] Let's pray. Dear gracious Heavenly Father, we just thank you for these stories that we read in this Old Testament. I know there's some of the stuff we don't connect with, especially Tamar, but I'm sure we've experienced the lowness of life of not being even to have a child.

[61:42] We know the lowness of life of not being used in the way that we want to be used. We know the lowness of life of feeling lonely, broken, of knowing our sin and wondering if we ever could be forgiven.

[61:58] We've asked the question, where are you, God? Even Rachel, when she cried out, it says that God remembered her. How many of us echo those words, even spoken in the Psalm, God, do you hear me?

[62:10] God, do you hear me? You see, all these stories are our stories. These brokenness is our brokenness. Our foolishness is their foolishness and their foolishness is our foolishness.

[62:27] God, there's something great in these stories and they're even great in when we're honest enough to accept that that's our story too. But the greatest story of all is that you died for us.

[62:48] You paid the penalty for our sins. That you saved us from the wrath of a holy God. That at that moment you welcome us in as a child where there is no shame to come and sing behold the throne of God.

[63:10] To know that we can be as young children and skip into the king and say hi to our dad. To know that we are accepted and loved and treasured.

[63:22] That is the Christian faith. It has nothing to do with us and the greatest news is we can't lose it either because we did nothing to earn it.

[63:34] God himself uses the Holy Spirit to seal us until that day where we are one with him.

[63:48] Father we give you thanks for this mighty great gospel this foreshadowing that we see even in the lamb and Isaac and all these events that happen just in my head I think it's close to 6,000 years ago.

[64:08] Great and mighty things do you do oh Father and we give you great and mighty thanks for them. There's anyone here who doubts Father I pray that you'd give them the gift of faith you'd give them the power to believe that you would give them an understanding to know that you are here for them that no matter their family no matter their brokenness no matter the decisions that they've made to mess up their lives you still use them.

[64:39]  You still redeem them for you are redeeming God and God's people said Amen.