I remember the first job that I ever got was as a counter worker at KFC.
It was an exciting first career step.
But I remember when I was applying for that job,
I got really focused on developing my resume to hand in,
to convince them that they should employ me.
The difficult thing about writing a resume when you're about 14
is that you don't really have a whole lot you can put on it.
I had no previous employment, and so instead,
once I got the first bit with my name and address and date of birth
and all the really official things down,
I set about filling my resume and padding it out as best as I could
with all the mad skills that I had that I could think of,
some of which didn't completely apply to working at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I was sure to notify my future employer that I drank close to a litre of Coke a day
because I thought that was impressive.
I was sure to alert him also that I had a gift for watching movies
and then being able to quote key lines at appropriate moments in conversations
and then laugh at them regardless of if anyone else knew what I was talking about.
I also informed him that I had two brothers and two sisters,
as if that would somehow make me a better employee.
But as if that wasn't the worst,
just to make sure he knew what a valuable asset I would be to the company,
I also told him exactly how many grand finals I'd played in
as a junior footballer playing Australian Rules football.
Now, none of this, in pretty much everything on my resume,
had absolutely nothing to do with working at KFC.
Luckily, not a lot has to do with working at KFC,
so I think you hand in your name and you'd get the tick.
No offence to anyone who works at KFC.
But the point is, resumes are supposed to include information
that is appropriate or pertinent to the job that you're trying to get.
You know, had I maybe liked chicken,
then that might have been a tick on my resume.
I did, but just forgot to mention it.
But the point is, you include things that are going to convince
whoever you're handing this piece of paper to
that you are the right person for the job.
Now, the reason I tell you that is because this exciting bit of Scripture
that I have just worked my way through in the reading here
is actually more like a resume.
It's not a simple genealogy where we just go,
this person's son and their person's son and so on and so on.
In the ancient world, genealogies are more like resumes.
They're designed to tell you a little bit about the credibility of a person.
Now, this one traces all the way back to Abraham,
which is a huge chunk of human history,
and there's actually not enough generations for this to be a full, complete one.
But that's okay, because that's not how genealogies worked.
The point was to give you the highlights or the important people
that showed you that Jesus is qualified for the job that he's applying for, if you like.
This is a resume to give us Jesus' credentials.
Not every detail, not every person is in there, just the ones that matter,
just the ones that are important.
And a little bonus bit of information that I didn't mention this morning,
but someone asked me a question about it.
Why the 14, 14, 14?
Well, this, when it was originally written,
would have been designed like an acrostic poem.
And the 14s, that would have been in really simple language,
in Greek and in Hebrew when it was written,
it would have been designed to be something memorable
so that you could have just spat it out like a memory verse,
because they thought this was so important,
they wanted it to stick in people's minds.
So it's not a complete genealogy,
it's a highlights reel to tell us something about Jesus.
And so straight away we know that even though deep down
we're hoping I'm going to jump to verse 18
and the bit they come after and the bit we can understand really easily,
that we should pay attention to this.
Because of everything that happened from Abraham to Jesus,
Matthew, when he was inspired by God to write this gospel,
thought that this list of names was a good place to start.
With everything that Jesus had done in his life,
all the miracles, all the excitement, all the teaching,
everything that happened,
Matthew thought this would be a good first interaction
for people with Jesus.
And you've got to ask yourself the question,
why would you start with that?
If you were writing the gospel,
if you were going to be informing people
about this incredible person Jesus
that you'd met or heard about,
why would you start with something which, let's be honest,
doesn't come up in anyone's favourite Bible passages?
It is the bit we skip over.
It's the one day in our quiet times
where we're motivated to read more.
So why start with this?
Why is this a good spot?
Well, I was reading this week a story
about a missionary who worked in Papua New Guinea.
He was doing some work with some translators
and they were translating this particular bit of scripture,
all of Matthew's gospel,
but they'd given it to the locals to start reading.
They were just in early stages.
And the locals came back with this page open
with a look of wonder and amazement on their face.
And they showed it to the missionary and the translator.
They're ready to ask questions.
And the translator apparently confessed
that he was ready to flip them over to chapter 2
so that they could get into some good and exciting things.
And they said, no, no, no, no.
This is amazing.
And he's like, maybe we've translated it wrong.
And they're like, no, this is amazing.
They explained that up until that point,
up until they got to Matthew chapter 1,
they'd always thought that Jesus was kind of like a fairy,
imaginary.
Good stories, impressive.
But now they could look at his lineage,
they could look at his ancestry,
and they said, so Jesus is real.
It totally changed the way that they had to re-engage
with every other thing that they'd heard about Jesus.
See, it matters that we start at this particular point
because if we don't,
there's always the possibility
that people hear the story of Christmas, Easter, whatever,
the miraculous birth,
and file it away under stories like Santa
or the tooth fairy.
It's nice.
They're good.
They sound impressive.
But it's just imaginary.
And so it's important that we start here.
The senior minister from a church down the road,
down at Roseville, John Dixon,
who is a fairly esteemed historian,
has a quote, and I could be misquoting him,
so I need to put a disclaimer on this.
But he says something like,
and he does this publicly, online, regularly,
if you can find me a credible historian
who denies the existence of Jesus,
I'll eat a page of my Bible.
And this is a guy who has thousands of Facebook friends,
many of whom are atheists,
and try to argue with him regularly,
and no one has found a credible historian
who will try and say that Jesus didn't exist.
And that might be really comforting for us as Christians,
but the reality is,
every single one of us has had a conversation with somebody,
a work colleague, a neighbour,
someone we care about, a family member,
who does believe that Jesus didn't exist,
who does believe that it's all just a nice myth,
it's just a comfortable thing for us to hold on to,
and so the gospel begins here,
because this is really important.
Before we hear about what he's done,
what he's going to do,
who he is, anything else,
we need to understand,
Jesus is real.
The point of these generations,
the point of this list,
is to say that there's ancestry,
he's human,
he's a person.
It's not just magic,
it's real.
It's like in the end of Luke's gospel,
when Jesus has died and he's risen,
and he appears to his disciples,
he does something really strange.
He asks them for food.
And he does it for their sake,
so that they can realise he's a person.
He's hungry.
He says, touch me.
It's not a vision.
I'm not a ghost.
I'm a human.
And the same goes here.
Before we move into the rest of this gospel,
and we're going to over the next few weeks,
we need to start by understanding,
Jesus is real.
Because if he's not real,
then everything we're going to read
becomes kind of unimpressive and unimportant.
We need to know he's real
when we open up to a passage like Hebrews chapter 2
and verse 14 and read this.
Since the children, that's us,
have flesh and blood,
he too, Jesus,
shared in their humanity
so that by his death,
he might destroy him
who holds the power of death,
that is the devil,
and free those who all their lives
were held in slavery
by their fear of death.
For what Jesus does later in his life
to matter or be powerful or significant,
we need to have as a starting point,
he's real.
He's human.
He's flesh and blood.
He's like us.
He's tempted like us.
He suffers like us.
Why start here?
Because we need to start from a place
where we recognise who is lying in that manger.
It's a human baby.
It's a real person.
The second question we need to ask
as to why this genealogy is,
why would you include these people?
Remembering this doesn't cover every generation
from Abraham to Jesus.
It's a highlights package.
Why choose these names?
And the answer to that
is going to tell us a whole lot
about how God works.
A whole lot about what we should expect
to see from Jesus
as we continue to walk through Matthew
and even now in our lives.
Earlier this week,
Sal and I were having a conversation.
Bailey is a little over three and a half now.
And so we're getting to the point
where we're trying to explain more to him.
You know, Christmas comes up.
We're trying to talk about
how God came as a baby
and stuff like that.
And I don't know if you've ever tried
to do that to a three-year-old,
but suddenly you start doing
these backflips and U-turns
because you realise you're getting
into really convoluted
and complex language.
And look, it is amazing
and complex and beautiful
and majestic,
but it's hard to explain
to a three-year-old.
And Sal and me were chatting
about it afterwards
and she was just kind of sitting there going,
I just can't imagine Jesus
as like a three-year-old,
as Bailey's age.
But he was.
Like, it is actually
a really ridiculous thing
for us to process
that the God who is infinite,
the God who created everything,
the God who sustains everything,
we sung it just a second ago
that while he's lying on the hay,
he's maintaining the stars
and the planets and everything.
It's an illogical story
that an infinite God
could be packed into a little baby,
but that's actually
kind of the point.
This genealogy,
this story of this beginning
of Jesus' life
reminds us that God's plans
and our plans
are often not the same thing.
The way God works
and the way we expect him to work
are often not the same thing.
We just don't think the way he does.
If by some weird twist
we could end up in the driver's seat
and our job was to plan a way
to save people
by using a specific nation in history,
there is no way
that our plan would look
anything like his did.
At any point.
Just time after time
through this list of names,
he does it different.
Let's pick a couple.
Rahab.
She's there in verse 5.
She's the mother of Boaz.
So there's a few women in here
which is strange in itself.
In an ancient genealogy,
women did not get a run.
But Rahab gets a mention.
Rahab is not even an Israelite.
She's not even one of the nation
that God chose.
She's not even technically
one of the pure breeds,
if you like,
from the bloodline
that he chose
out of all creation.
She belonged to the city of Jericho.
The way she comes into the story
is by protecting a few Jewish spies
who were in there
scouting out her city
to conquer it.
Basically,
all we know about Rahab
is she was a prostitute,
she betrayed her city
by protecting the spies,
and she was the mother of Boaz.
That's about all we know.
If you were designing a lineage
for your king
and saviour of the world,
would you give the prostitute a run?
If you had countless generations
to choose from,
this isn't even
everyone's in there
so you've got to include her,
would you pick her out?
And so I want everyone to know
that she was part of the story.
She was part of the journey
to get to Jesus.
There's no way
we would pick this path,
but God does.
Let's pick another name.
Verse 7.
Sorry, verse 6.
Jesse, the father of King David.
David, the father of Solomon,
whose mother
had been Uriah's wife.
This one doesn't even get named.
She's Uriah's wife.
This is Bathsheba.
For those who are familiar
with the story,
David is the king.
He's wandering on his roof.
He spots an attractive woman
taking a bath.
Finds out she's married,
doesn't care,
sleeps with her,
gets her pregnant,
has a baby,
kills her husband,
takes her as his wife.
Not exactly a high moral point
in David's life,
let alone Israel's history.
And yet,
this woman,
this wife of another man,
is not only part of the bloodline,
she's included in the highlights package.
Again,
that's just not how
we would write the story.
Can you imagine
a politician's PR team
including this sort of history
in the election campaign?
We don't think like this.
We don't function like this.
And God is saying,
before we get to Jesus' life,
before we get to the way he acts,
the teaching,
the miracles,
anything else,
we need to be reminded
that God doesn't work
the way we do.
His plans are not our plans.
He has unique ideas
about the ways that things,
the ways things,
the way things should work.
But there's something
really encouraging about that.
Not just these women,
plenty of the men,
are people that we wouldn't choose.
but they are people
that God chose.
It tells us a little bit
about the fact
that God is somebody
who chooses people
who don't belong.
Chooses people
who maybe society doesn't like.
Chooses people
who are broken.
Chooses people
who maybe they're full of shame.
And draws them
not only into the nation,
not only into that group of people
that he's chosen,
but gives them positions
of prominence,
lifts them up,
includes them in the story,
in the bloodline,
in this resume
for his saviour.
One other one
that comes up there.
Verse 11 and 12.
Josiah,
the father of Jeconiah
and his brothers
at the time of the exile
to Babylon.
Now the exile is in there
almost like it's a person.
The exile
is the time
when Israel
was at its lowest.
The exile
was the time
after it had its high peaks
with Solomon as king
and everything was great
and suddenly now
in judgment
they get carted off
in slavery
to the Babylonians.
They lose
their national identity.
They lose the temple
where they used
to worship God.
They lose confidence
in God himself,
confidence in his goodness.
They lose confidence
in his promises.
It really is the point
where for many
God's plans
start to fail.
Many in Israel
gave up
and improvised
their own version
of who God was.
Many began to doubt
that he could actually
deliver
on the things
that he had promised
at that point.
So why would you
include that
in this highlights reel
in this resume
of getting to your saviour?
Isn't that the bit
you'd try and skip over
and try and pretend
never happened?
Well again,
God is saying
I don't work like you.
even in the bits
that we don't understand,
the bits where it feels
hopeless,
he was still
marching towards
Jesus.
Everything that happened
throughout all
of Israel's history
was building up
to Jesus.
Even the bits
that they thought
were failures
or wrong bits,
he was still using them.
And now
at the end
of this
somewhat unique
and colourful
family line,
we meet
the Messiah,
the descendant
of David,
the chosen one,
the promised one.
And so God
is saying to us
before we get
into his life,
before we see
what he does,
be excited
that he's here,
be expectant
for what he's
going to achieve,
but just remember
he might do
things differently
to how you
would have him
do them.
He might have
a plan
that is slightly
unique compared
to your plan.
How he'll work,
what he'll achieve,
all that will come
next,
but before we get
there,
there's this sense
and this reminder
that God
has a unique
wisdom,
a unique perspective
on the world
that we live in.
He works in ways
that we don't expect.
And even this
beautiful,
miraculous birth
that we're going
to get to
over the next
couple of weeks
will end
in a bloody
execution.
And that will
be good.
That will be
part of his plan.
It could be
that right now
in your life,
the challenge
you are feeling,
the wrestle
that you're having
with God
is that he's not
doing what you
want him to do.
He's not answering
that prayer
that you keep
bringing to him.
He's not delivering
on what for you
is just the obvious
good that he should
deliver on.
And the encouragement
and the challenge
of this passage
is
just because he's
not working
the way you want
him to
doesn't mean
that he's not
working.
Even in the
situations that
you might not
choose,
he's still at
work.
even in the
bits that you
might have
been ashamed
of,
like Israel
and its
exile,
God is
still at
work.
And just
because he's
not working
the way you
want,
it's actually
okay.
Even though he
might not be
doing the things
that you wish
he would,
that's actually
okay.
Because God's
plan is always
bigger and better
than your plan.
A couple of
weeks ago,
a week ago
now,
I went away
on holidays
with my family,
with Bailey and
Hudson and Sal's,
the first family
with the four,
first holiday
with the four of
us.
And it was
really fun.
We stayed in a
caravan park,
and caravan parks
have got this
whole holiday
thing sussed.
Keep the kids
happy,
which keeps the
parents happy,
which keeps
people coming
back.
And the
caravan park
we went to
had more kids
equipment and
activities and
stuff than I've
ever seen in
like a theme
park.
This one had a
jumping pillow.
If you don't
know what that
is,
it's like a
jumping castle
that's somehow
been buried into
the ground.
Very entertaining
for kids.
Bailey would have
stayed on it for
hours.
It had play
equipment,
it had putt-putt
golf,
it had trampolines,
it had go-karts.
It also had a
water theme park
in the caravan park.
This is all just
free.
Just wander in
there whenever you
want.
There's slides,
there's a tipping
bucket,
there's a whirlpool,
there's water pistols
to shoot at each
other,
there's waterfalls.
It was amazing.
Bailey thought that
he was in heaven on
earth.
Every morning he
would wake up at
6am and be like,
water park?
I said,
it opens at 9,
mate.
He would ask me
every five seconds
for the rest of
the day.
He loved it.
He had a fantastic
time.
He was pretty
emotional when we
had to come home,
I won't lie.
We really had to
break it to him
easy that we
weren't turning
around at any
point and
returning.
Every day since,
just about,
he said,
can we go to
the water park?
No,
no we can't.
It's a six-hour
drive.
Now that he's
starting to
understand holidays
and understand that
they're good and
they're fun and
that we as a
family get to do
some fun things,
we thought we'd
let him know that
we've got a big
family holiday plan
for next year,
something special,
something unique.
We're actually going
to go overseas.
And we said,
are you excited for
holidays?
And he said,
will there be a
water park?
I said,
no,
but that's okay
because we're
going to Fiji and
they're going to
have afros and
pools and we can
go snorkeling.
And he just looks
at me and says,
water park?
He hasn't quite
got it yet.
He's so obsessed
with his thing,
with how good it
was,
that he doesn't
even comprehend
that there might
be something better,
that Fiji might be
an improvement.
As good as the
caravan park was,
that there might
be something that
is even more fun
and more exciting
than what he's
already experienced.
And often we do
this with God.
We come to him
and say,
God,
please do this.
And we get so
obsessed with
whatever this is,
give me a job,
fix my health,
give me a partner,
whatever it is,
that we can't
possibly imagine
that there's a
better,
that God has a
plan other than
ours that is
still good for us.
And so we start
Matthew's gospel,
we start looking
at Jesus,
we start to meet
our saviour by
being reminded
that God works
different to us
and his plan
is always
better.
We get to
Jesus and we
meet our
saviour.
His name
itself means
saviour.
Jesus means
God who
saves.
Christ means
the chosen
one.
He's the
chosen saviour.
It's his job
description.
It's his name.
It's what he's
here to do.
The challenge
for us is to
trust him to
do it his
way.
This
newborn
king,
this humble
baby,
will identify
with his
subjects,
will bear
their shame,
take their
punishment,
offer them
love instead
of judgment,
and he'll
do it in a
way that none
of us would
have chosen.
We wouldn't
have sent
our king
to the
cross.
God's plan
was always
bigger.
This
genealogy
starts with
Abraham.
The promises
that God made
to Abraham
way back in
Genesis chapter
12, right
near the
beginning of
the Bible,
was that he
would give
him land,
that he
would give
him lots
of descendants,
that they'd
be a
nation,
and that
he would
be a
blessing to
Abraham and
through Abraham.
And pretty
much right up
to Jesus,
the biggest
picture that
anyone had
about that
centred around
a piece of
land that's
now in the
Middle East,
centred around
as many great
grandchildren as
Abraham could
muster,
and centred
around them
being kind
of rich.
And Jesus
turns up and
says, no,
there's always
been a better
plan.
God walks
them through
things like
the exile to
say, no,
I've always
had more in
mind for
you.
The whole
nation thing
is now open
to anyone
who would
follow Jesus,
open to
people like
Rahab.
The whole
land thing
is not just
about some
country somewhere
on the earth,
but it's
heaven.
It's a
perfect creation
for us to
enjoy.
And the
blessing thing,
that's more
than we can
even begin
to comprehend.
One of the
things I love
about Christmas
at the moment
is as a dad
I'm rediscovering
how to talk
about Christmas
in really
basic language.
Like I said,
I struggle
when I'm
trying to do
it, but
thankfully some
gifted people
have written
kids' books
about it.
And one of
the books
that we read
with Bailey
that goes
through the
nativity story,
it's one of
those great
textured books
that's full
of glitter,
so you don't
scratch your
hands over it.
Anyway,
recommend it.
for your
summer reading.
I love the
line in it,
when the
angels appear,
and we're
sitting there
with Bailey,
I've read it
so many times
before I even
paid attention
to what I
was saying.
This textured
angel was
talking to
the shepherds
in the field
and says,
tonight Jesus
has been
born,
a saviour
has been
born,
and he
will bring
all of
God's
blessings
to people
on earth.
All
of God's
blessings,
forgiveness,
mercy,
hope,
comfort,
provision,
everything
found in
Jesus.
These small
plans that we
have for our
life where
God might fix
a circumstance
here or a
difficulty
there.
Before we
see what he
does,
God is
calling us
to lift
our eyes
and understand
that he
can and
will do
more than
we've
begun to
dream of.
This is
not a
message from
God to
come and
fix our
problems.
The baby
in the
manger is
God
himself,
showing
up,
drawing near
to people
like us,
people who
have
ignored
him,
treated
him like
he didn't
matter.
So why
start here?
Why include
these people?
Why this
particular
resume for
Jesus?
Well,
last week I
got to meet
my nephew
for the
first time.
My older
brother had
a little
boy called
Xavier.
He's
tiny.
He was
born,
well,
he's
relatively
tiny compared
to my
boys,
but he
was born
at three
kilos,
he's now
about
3.7
and that's
smaller than
my boys
were even
born.
So when I
was holding
him,
I was really
nervous.
I'm like,
I'm a dad,
I've had two
newborns,
I've held
many of
your newborns
and I was
freaked out
that he was
going to
break.
He had
the tiniest
little arms
and legs
and when
they're
newborn and
they just
have that
squeaky
cry and
you just
sit there
and go
the slightest
thing and
this could
be all
over.
He's so
helpless and
he was really
cute as
well but
there was a
big bit of
just nervousness
whenever I was
holding him
because he's
not even
mine so I
can't even
sort out the
mess later
in life if I
do something
wrong so I
kept giving him
back to my
brother and
saying thanks
for the
short hold.
the reason
that we
start here
the reason
we find
out who
Jesus is
going to
be the
reason we
find out
his credentials
before we
meet that
little baby
in the
manger is
so that we
don't look
and see what
I saw when
I met my
nephew.
We don't
look and see
a helpless
little baby.
When we
come to
Christmas when
we come to
Jesus even
as the baby
in the
manger we
need to look
and see the
one who
brings hope.
We need to
look and
understand that
even in a
baby God
is still in
control.
Even though we
would have sent
a warrior this
baby is the
means by which
God will
bring blessing.
This baby is
the means by
which God will
provide forgiveness
and love to
people like
Rahab,
people like
you,
people like
me.
we start
here because
we need to
know this
Christmas and
every Christmas
the baby is
real.
It's not just
any baby.
This is the
baby that brings
hope.
This is the
baby that
changes everything.
this is the
baby that
brings all
of God's
blessings to
people on
earth.
Let's pray.
Father God,
we want to
just thank and
praise you
for all that
you have done
throughout history,
for the way you
have persevered and
been patient with
your disobedient
people,
for your
commitment to
and your
faithfulness to
your promises.
promises.
We want to
thank you that
even though we
sometimes have
different plans or
different ideas of
what should be,
that your plan is
always better.
That in spite of
our complaining and
whinging sometimes that
you're not doing what
we want, you
continue to give us
better than we
deserve.
Father, please open
our eyes so that
this Christmas and
every day of our
lives we see not a
helpless baby,
but we see a
significant act where
you entered our
world.
We see hope on
offer.
We see the
beginning of your
work to ultimately
take our shame and
our punishment.
Father, this
Christmas we pray for
ourselves and we pray
for those who we
know and care about
who don't know you
yet.
Help them to see
you in the manger.
help them to see
the love that you
offer.
Help them to
recognize that
Christmas is an
invitation.
It's an opportunity
to taste your
blessing, your
goodness, to know
your incredible
love.
Father, may we
taste afresh this
year.
Amen.