Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 3:23-38
I hope you have your Bible with you. If you don't, there's one in front of you in the pew or in the chair in front of you. Take it out, find the Gospel of Luke. Chapter 3, we're going to be looking this morning at verse 23 to 38, so you can find that in your Bible. There is an outline in the bulletin if you like to follow along there. It's good to be back with you this morning. Emma and I were gone last week. We went to a wedding in Kingfisher and had some friends who got married, and it's a funny story. I knew that they were going to ask me to do the wedding when we knew that we were coming here, but they didn't know we were coming here. And I knew that this was coming and my plan and my mind was, they're going to say, "Could you marry us on such and such day?" And I will say, "Oh, that's the one weekend I won't be able to do it in the fall. I'm sorry, and I would have sort of a graceful exit there." And instead they came and they said, "I want you to marry us. We'll get married any weekend in August or September. We'll work around your schedule." And so my wheels are turning and I thought, "Don't lie, just say, "Okay, I'll do the wedding." And so there's something that we had committed to. It was good to be back with our friends at First Baptist Church in Kingfisher. It was good to see the church is doing well. And that was a relieving thing and a humbling thing, relieving because when you leave a church you worry about the folks that you are leaving behind, and humbling because it reminds you that God is big enough to take care of things with or without you. Whether you're here or not here, he's going to do what he wants to do and he can take care of his people just fine, which is also, ironically, another relieving thing to know that God is in control and God cares about his people. So I would ask you to pray for First Baptist Church. They're still looking for a pastor. They have a search team in place and they've started interviewing a few folks and talking to people. So ask that you pray for them. They have an interim pastor and it was actually the pastor before me who left to run Falls Creek, which is a camp in Oklahoma. So he left First Baptist Kingfisher to go to Falls Creek and then we came and we actually overlapped for about six months. He was a member of the church while we were just settling in there, and now he's come back just to be their interim, and so it's been good for them to have a familiar face. But pray for them as they search for a pastor. All that aside, it's good to be home, it's good to be in Odessa, it's good to be at a manual this morning with you, and I'm excited to jump back into the Gospel of Luke. As we have studied the Gospel of Luke, we've centered on the theme verse of Luke 1910, and there it is up on the screen. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And this morning, we're looking at a passage that is a long list of funny names that tells us who the Son of Man is and exactly where he came from. As you look at Luke 3, beginning in verse 23, you see it's a genealogy. It's a long list of names, and you're looking ahead and you're saying, well, maybe we'll just read the genealogy and then we'll jump ahead to the temptation because that's a pretty good story. We could talk about that. No, we're going to talk about the genealogy. And that's one of the benefits of preaching chapter by chapter verse by verse through the Bible is that you don't get to skip anything. You don't get to leave anything out when you say, I don't really know what I'm going to say about this passage. Preaching right through a book makes you say something about the passage. And so hopefully this morning, what we talk about will be beneficial to you. But let's just admit it, set aside your super spirituality for a minute. And just admit that when you see that we're about to have a talk about a genealogy, some of you just start settling in right now. You slide back a little bit, you sort of get your head and you say, oh, this is going to be a great nap time. I've got about 30 minutes, and then we get to go eat lunch, and then I get to take another nap. Lunch book ended with naps. We think of genealogies, again, don't throw anything at me, don't pretend like you're some sort of super Christian. Just be honest and admit, when I say we're going to talk about Jesus' family tree, you think snoozefest, boring, bunch of names. I don't know how to pronounce them. I don't know who they are. It's not interesting to me. There's no storyline here. There's no big plot development. Most of us hear genealogy, and immediately a switch goes off and we say, oh, that's like the worst parts of the Bible. In fact, let me ask you this. How many of you ever in your life, ever, have set out maybe a New Year's resolution? You said, you know, I need to read the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, so I'm going to start in the book of Genesis. Raise your hand if you've ever done that. I'm not saying, did you finish? I'm saying, did you start in Genesis? Okay? Now, put your hands down. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands on the rest of this, but let me just tell you what usually happens to folks. You say, okay, January 1, Genesis 1-1, all through the Bible. I'm coming. I'm a New Year's resolution. You start going through Genesis and you say, this isn't too bad. Pretty good stories, pretty interesting. Some things are kind of hard to make sense of, but Genesis is pretty good. You get into Exodus and the ball really starts rolling. You say, this is a phenomenal story. You just can't quit turning the pages. Exodus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, need to get up to the middle of Exodus. They're out of Egypt. They're in the desert. And God starts telling them how to build a tent. And some of you checked out right there, said, I'm done. I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me. Some of you made it through that. You kept going through Exodus and then you got to Leviticus. And some of you checked out at Leviticus and you said, do this, don't do this, don't do this, do this. Make sure you do this. Don't forget about it. You said it. Forget it. I don't understand this. Law is about mildew. Seriously? We're talking about mildew in the Bible. I'm out. I don't understand it. It doesn't make sense to you. You persevered through the second part of Exodus, which is good stuff. You persevered through the book of Leviticus, which is good stuff. And then you came to numbers. Name after name, after name, after name, after name, after name, after name, after name. And you checked out. We have family, not family friends, but almost like family. They were sort of step-grandparents to us in Kentucky. And they, as a couple, this older couple, they would read the Bible through, from beginning to end, every year, out loud. And they would take turns. One year, Betty would read. And Betty and Jerry would sit down. And Betty would read. Beginning all the way through the year. They'd read it all. Then next year, Jerry would read. Jerry would read all the way through the Bible, out loud, for Betty to hear. And they told me, several times, numbers was tough. You're just reading name after name. And if you think it's tough to read, you ought to try listening to somebody read it. It's challenging. And while we're just confessing our spiritual depravity here, let's admit that as Americans, genealogies are especially tough for us. I know you turn on the TV or maybe you are on the computer and you see ads for ancestry.com and you see all these people who are tracing their family tree. Maybe some of you do that or you've been involved in that. But just admit with me that genealogy does not play a very important role in the United States of America. Part of that is because we're all transplants. Unless you're Native American, your family came here from somewhere else and when you cross the ocean, you just sort of lose ties and records and connectedness. And we just don't have a sense of genealogy and family history like some people do around the world. You know, you can go to the continent of Africa. You can find people who cannot read or write, who could tell you their family tree for over a hundred generations. They could just rattle it off. This was my dad. This was my granddad. This is my great-granddad. This is my great-great-granddad. This is my great-great-great-granddad and they could just go all the way back. It's important to them. It gives them a sense of connectedness to their people and to their family. It's common in many Asian cultures for people to know their family tree back dozens of generations. We had friends in college, some were Koreans, some were Taiwanese and they could just rattle off, great-great-great-great-great-grandparents all the way back and they just looked at us like we were from the moon because the furthest I could go back is my great-great-grandmom. And beyond that, I might have a picture or I might have a name, but I certainly don't know anything about them. The Jewish people understood the importance of genealogy. When you read through the Bible, there's genealogies from the first book of the Bible all the way through the story of Jesus. There's lists of names and there's a reason for that. The Jewish people in the Old Covenant and the Old Testament, they had a unique relationship with God as a people and they wanted to know who was their people. And even more importantly, they knew that God had promised to send somebody special, a Savior, a deliverer, a messiah from their family and they tracked it and they wanted to pay attention and they wanted to know who was your dad and who was your dad and who was your dad because they were waiting for this Savior to come from their people. These are important. In the Bible, genealogies are especially important. And so even though we think they're boring, even though the names are sometimes hard to pronounce and I'll just admit, no one knows how to pronounce the names, you just say it with confidence and everybody thinks you're brilliant. So if you're in a Sunday school class and you're going through numbers and somebody says, read this list of names, you just start firing them off. Like you know what you're talking about, everyone will say, you are brilliant. You must have been studying numbers all week long. You just say it with confidence. Here's the deal. Instead of me giving you one big idea about a long list of names, I usually try to do that in a sermon. Here's the big idea. Let me give you four reasons that you ought to love genealogies in the Bible. Not just suffer through them, but love them. Reason number one, Bible genealogies remind us that God interacts with people. This is not the God of deism who's up there somewhere doing his own thing, disinterested in our lives. This is a God who has always and will always interact with the creatures that he created in his own image. Genealogies remind you of that. It's not just something new today. It's not something that just happened then. Throughout history, God is a God who interacts with people. Number two, why should you love Bible genealogies? You remind us that God saves and uses nobodies. We've talked about that already so many times in the Gospel of Luke, only in the third chapter, and you see it again in this genealogy. There are a bunch of nobodies. There are a bunch of insignificant people. At times, there are a bunch of pagans and a bunch of sinners, and God saves these people, and he brings them into his family, and he says, "Now you're part of my family and you're part of my people," and he uses these nobodies in remarkable, remarkable ways. Number three, why should you love genealogies? They remind us that God cares about families, about families. This is not just a list of popes in consecutive order. This is not just a list of presidents of a country in consecutive order. This is a family that God is tracing generation after generation, after generation, after generation. We had a new member class this morning, and one of the folks in our new member class said, "We're looking for a place where not only can our children come to know Jesus, but our grandchildren who aren't here yet can come to know about Jesus." I've got good news for you. The God of the Bible is that kind of God. He's the kind of God who cares about families, generation after generation after generation who pass down the faith. Number four, why should you love genealogies? They remind us that God keeps His promises, even though it may be slow in coming, even though hundreds of years may pass, even though millennia may pass, God always keeps His promises. And he told this group of people, Abraham's family, "Someone special will come from you," and a generation went by, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and a hundred years and a thousand years, decades after centuries piled up and eventually God kept His promise. God always keeps His promises. Now all that aside, let's read the genealogy. So if you have your Bible, Luke chapter 3, beginning in verse 23, and we're going to read all the way to the end of the chapter. This is the Word of God about Jesus. Because this Jesus, when He began His ministry, was about 30 years of age, being the son as was supposed of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Mathet, the son of Levi, the son of Melchae, the son of Janai, the son of Joseph, the son of Matathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Nagai, the son of Math, the son of Matathias, the son of Samin, the son of Josek, the son of Jodah, the son of Jonon, the son of Wresha, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shialtyel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchae, the son of Adai, the son of Cosum, the son of El Madam, the son of Ur, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Mathet, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Malia, the son of Mina, the son of Matatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salah, the son of Nashon, the son of Amenadab, the son of Edmin, the son of Arnie, the son of Hezrin, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Tara, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Ryu, the son of Pileg, the son of Iber, the son of Shalah, the son of Canaan, the son of Arfaxid, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamek, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalil, the son of Canaan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your word. Forgive us when we treat parts of the Bible as if they're insignificant or not important. Father, we come to a long list of names that are hard to say, of names of people that we don't know, that we've never met, that we don't have a connection to. But Father, we believe that Luke is trying to teach us about Jesus, and we believe that Your Holy Spirit inspired these words and put them in the gospel of Luke to teach us something about Jesus. So we pray this morning that You would open our eyes, give us faith to believe, give us minds to understand, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Here's the big elephant in the room. It is not the idea that genealogies may be boring to us. It's not the idea that genealogies are hard to understand, the names are hard to pronounce. Here's the big elephant in the room. Luke puts this list of names in his gospel about Jesus, the son of man who came to seek and save the lost, and he lists all these names out. You can go to the gospel of Matthew, and you can find another list of names. Matthew begins his gospel with a list of names about Jesus. And when you look at Matthew's list, and you look at Luke's list, they're different. It's not the same names, it's not the same number of names. There's a lot of differences between the two, and there are a lot of quote-unquote Bible scholars who look at that and say, you see, it's all just made up. It's all just goofy. It's all just man-made fairy tales about some guy named Jesus. They can't even get their story straight in figuring out who his family was. And there's a lot of people, you can find them on TV, you can find them on the radio, you can find them in pulpits in towns like Odessa, Texas, who would say to you, look, Luke or Matthew, one of them's wrong, or maybe they're both wrong, and they don't have it quite figured out about who Jesus is. I step back from those two lists, and before I want to make any conclusion about who's wrong or right, think about this. Think about the fact that these two lists being different proves that this is not an invented story. I mean, if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John put their four heads together and said, okay, we're going to come up with this stuff about Jesus, and I'm going to write this story, and I'm going to put this in. Don't forget to include something like this, and we need a story about miracles, and we need this and that and all the other. Don't you think they would have at least got their list right? If they're colluding together to fabricate a lie, this is a very simple thing to make sure you're on the same page. Matthew, how many names you got? I got 42. Luke. Oh, I got 77. Well you're going to have to either add some or take some out. We've got to get on the same page. It's proof that they didn't put their heads together to collude on a lie. And what you see in Matthew's list and what you see in Luke's list is two men inspired by the same spirit writing down the family tree of Jesus, and instead of those two different lists of names being contradictions, they're complementary to each other. They're not wrong, one or both of them. They're both true, and they both present a different angle on the truth. And so I want to be honest with you this morning, I want you to understand the differences between Matthew and Luke and why you don't need to be afraid that the Bible is chocked full of mistakes, and here's just another obvious example. So these are on your outline, and we're going to move through these pretty quickly. Differences between Matthew and Luke and their genealogies. Number one, different trajectories. Different trajectories. Matthew goes past to present Abraham up to Jesus. Luke goes present to pass Jesus back to Adam, so they're different in their trajectory. Number two, different in location. In location. Matthew begins his gospel with the genealogy. That comes right at the beginning. Luke tells us about the Christmas story and Zechariah and Elizabeth and John the Baptist and all these things. Jesus has even been baptized. He's about to be tempted in the wilderness, and then Luke squeezes in the genealogy right here. There's a reason. Another difference. There's a different purpose. Different purpose. Matthew writes his gospel and his genealogy to prove that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Everything in the gospel of Matthew drives to that. If we're preaching a series on the gospel of Matthew, it wouldn't be called the Son of Man comes to seek and save the lost. It would be called Jesus is the Messiah, neon lights, flashing bulbs. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. That's not why Luke wrote. Matthew wrote to Jewish people to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Luke wrote to Gentile people, non-Jewish people, to prove that Jesus was the Son of Man who had come to seek and to save the lost, and so they have different purposes. Number four, they have different scopes. Different scopes. And what I mean is Matthew goes all the way back to Abraham, Luke goes all the way back to Adam, and then even one step further back than that to God. So they have different scopes. Number five, they have different audiences, and I just mentioned this, Matthew is writing for Jewish people, and so the center pieces in Matthew's genealogy for Jewish people, no surprise, David and Abraham. King David and the patriarch Abraham. Luke writes for Gentile people who don't appreciate the significance of David and Abraham, and so they're in there, but what Luke is really saying is, "Look, I'm piling up all these names, and I'm landing on Adam, the first man, the father of all." Number six, this one's interesting, different generations, different generations. Matthew includes 42 generations, and he divides them into three sets of 14. Luke has 77 generations. Matthew has 42, Luke has 77, and you look at that and you say, "Well, which one is it? How many people were in there?" And you are all intelligent smart people, and you're saying, "Preacher, don't be foolish." There's different scopes, right? Luke goes back further. That's why he has more names. He goes all the way back to the beginning, Matthew doesn't do that, but look at this. In the Gospel of Matthew, when Matthew is writing from Abraham to Jesus, there's 41 generations. In the Gospel of Luke, the same period, Abraham to Jesus, there's 57, they don't match. And some people look at this and they say, "Aha, proof, it's a mistake." And respectable Bible scholars look at that and say, "You fool. We know that the Jews, when they wrote genealogy, sometimes skipped generations. Maybe they would leave out grandpa. Maybe grandpa didn't love God, so we cut him out of the genealogy. Maybe Matthew's writing, and he says, "I want to have three groups that match, and they have the same number." And so Matthew says, "Well, I'm going to leave this guy out, and I'm going to leave this guy out, but I'm going to include." And the Jewish people could say, "The son of," without meaning the direct biological son, they could mean, for instance, the grandson of, the great grandson of. And we know in Matthew's Gospel that he did that, that he cut out some of the generations. So that's not a problem. Here's the big one that you need to think about, and that we need to think about this morning. There's different lines. In Luke and in Matthew, there are different genealogical lines. You can read in Matthew, Matthew says that after David came Solomon, David to Solomon according to Matthew, Luke, we just read, says, "David to Nathan." They split. Matthew traces this direction, Luke traces this direction. As you look in these two genealogies, Matthew and Luke, here's one difference. Between David and Jesus as we split from Solomon and Nathan, between David and Jesus, there are only two names in common, Zerubbabel and Shealtiel, the only two names in common. And Luke in his genealogy has 60 names that aren't in Matthew anywhere, 60 generations, Matthew doesn't mention. Here's the biggest one to think about. In the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew tells us that Joseph's father was Jacob. Joseph to Jacob. Luke says Joseph's father was Healy. Difference. Say, well, maybe it could be like Healy was the grandad and they skipped Jacob and went straight to Healy maybe, but when you compare these two sections of the genealogies, David down to Jesus, you've got to admit, one goes through Nathan, one goes through Solomon, one goes through Jacob, one goes through Healy. You're looking at two different lines. So there's all sorts of explanations. You don't have to just throw your hands in the air and say it's a mistake. Here's the two most common explanations about these two lines. The first one is this, that Joseph's mother was married twice. Maybe Joseph's mom was married twice and here's how the explanation goes. Joseph's mom married a man. Say his name was Healy. Healy dies. He's now a widow in Jewish life, she is free to remarry and she remarrys a man named, let's just say Jacob. Legally in Jewish culture, if Jacob was the father of Joseph, he would say, I am your biological father, but this is your legal father. This is your biological line, but this is your legal line. And the first husband who had passed away would legally be considered the father. So some people say, in fact, the earliest Christian said this is the case. She was married twice. The first line traces through his legal father and the second line traces back through his biological father and they both come back and they converge at King David. Both of the lines sort of make this big loop back to King David. That's one explanation. Here's another explanation. This is probably more common today. Maybe Matthew is giving us Joseph's line and Luke is giving us Mary's line. Matthew says this is the line back to King David through Joseph. Luke says this is the line back to Mary or back to King David through Mary and they're tracing it back one through his father, one through his mother. That makes sense because Matthew talks a lot about Joseph. In Joseph's Christmas story, the angels come to Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew. In the Gospel of Luke, the angels come to Mary and so maybe this is their focus. They're each focusing on one particular person. Now, listen, I know this is kind of confusing and I know you're getting in the weeds here and I know you're starting to roll back your eyes in your head and you're saying, is this Arkansas? Is he talking about my cousin's cousin who was married to this guy and that guy? And wait a minute, did you say two husbands and an illegal line and I am so confused, I have no idea what you're talking about. Listen, there's two genealogies. And neither of them is wrong. You can pick the explanation you want to pick. There's good explanations out there. There's dozens of explanations I haven't bored you with this morning. You can thank me for that later. Here's my point. When you're flipping through TV and you come to the History Channel and they say Bible mysteries revealed, secrets of the Bible. And they start giving you this nonsense about, oh look, they just made these stories about Jesus up. They can't even get their contradictions. It doesn't line up. It doesn't match. You just turn the channel. You don't need to freak out. You don't need to get out, start worrying and start googling and getting on the internet and Wikipedia and trying to figure out what's out. You just say, look, they are different. They are complementary, but they are not contradictory. Think about what we know of Luke. Luke says in the first part of his gospel that he conducted careful historical research. Luke lived before the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. That meant careful research for Luke meant going to the temple and looking at the massive public genealogies that would have been available. Matthew, no less than Luke was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God to write his gospel. Neither of them made a mistake. They are obviously doing different things in their genealogies, but neither of them is wrong. There is no contradiction here. God's word is true and it all holds together. So when you look at these genealogies and you say the big elephant in the room is that they don't match, understand that that doesn't matter. They're both true and they both paint one side of the picture. Luke was a careful historian. He did do his research. He did get his facts right. In addition to being a historian, Luke was a theologian, and he's not just trying to write down secular history or who Jesus' family was for the sake of preserving records. He's trying to teach us about Jesus. What does he want us to learn about Jesus? Four ideas and we'll wrap up. First thing that Luke wants to teach us is this, Jesus is the son of David. He's the son of David and that matters. You may hear that this morning. I don't know what your church background is, what your Bible knowledge is. That may be right over your head. You may not have a clue what you're talking about. You may be able to turn exactly to 2 Samuel 7 with me and see the promise that God made to David, but the promise to David goes like this, "David, one of your descendants will sit on the throne forever." That's a promise. One of your descendants will sit on the throne forever. What do you read in the book of Revelation when Jesus finally comes back for his church? John tells us in the book of Revelation that written on his thigh is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Luke is tying all that together. Second Samuel 7 to the book of Revelation, all of it together and he's saying, "Do not miss this important fact. Jesus is the King." Luke also wants us to see this. Jesus is the son of Abraham. So we're moving backwards, backwards in Jewish history. He's the son of Abraham, Luke 3, 34. You can go back to the book of Genesis. You can look at chapter 12, chapter 15, chapter 17. You pick the chapter, even in chapter 18, God makes some amazing promises to Abraham. Abraham was a pagan who used to worship idols and God came to him and he said, "Now you and I have a relationship. You have done nothing for me, but here's what I'm going to do for you. All of grace. First, you get to know me. Lots of these people around here don't. You get to know me. Second Abraham, I'm going to give you kids. I know you're old. I know you're wife's old, but you're going to have kids. Abraham, I'm going to give you some land. I'm going to give you some real estate. It's going to be yours and it's going to belong to your family forever. Abraham, I'm going to pour blessing out on you, so much blessing that your family will be a blessing. And on and on these promises go. In today, people argue and they say, "Well, who gets those promises? Is it the geopolitical state of Israel that gets those promises today? Is it the church that gets those promises today? What does the Bible say? Galatians 3, you can read this yourself, Paul says very clearly, Jesus is the offspring of Abraham. He gets all of it. He gets the promises. He gets the blessing. He gets the offspring in His people. He gets all of the promises. He gets the land. He gets the throne. Jesus gets all of it. Here's the coolest thing about Jesus being the son of Abraham. You and I who are not Jews can get in on all of that through Jesus. All of those promises that God made to Abraham become ours through a relationship with Jesus where we are united to Him in faith. In Luke's holding all this together, Galatians, all the way back to Genesis and he's saying, "Jesus is the Son, the offspring of Abraham." Number three, Jesus is the son of Adam. This is a big one. He's the son of Adam. You can go to Genesis chapter three and you can read about Adam and Eve who rebel against God in the garden. You can flip forward to Romans chapter five and you can listen to Paul's explanation. And here's what Paul says. When Adam blew it, we blew it. He was our representative. He stood for us. And when he sinned, we sinned. His sin was credited to us. And Paul says, "We know that that's the case because death came into the world through sin and death has now spread to all." And it's proof that through Adam, we all sinned. Some people hear that and they say, "Well, that's not fair. I wasn't there in Eden. I didn't make the decision to listen to the snake. I didn't eat the fruit. Why should that count for me? Here's the flip side of it. Jesus is the second Adam. And just like those who are born biologically, physically are born in Adam, those who are born spiritually, those who are born again are in Jesus. And just like Adam's sin counted for you, Jesus' obedience can count for you. And so if you think it's not fair, then you don't get to have either of them. And you can just do your best to bow up before God and say, "I'm just going to stand here before you on my own merits. It's not going to work. You are an Adam. You are a sinner, but you can be in Jesus. You can be clothed in his righteousness. You can be covered by his blood." And Luke is saying, "Don't miss it. Jesus is the second Adam. He's the one who came to stand for us and to fix what we messed up with Adam in the garden." Last idea is this. Jesus is the Son of God, capital S, capital G, Jesus is the Son of God, Luke 338. You may be interested to know that this is the only. Luke's genealogy is the only Jewish genealogy ever discovered and thousands have been discovered. It's the only one that goes all the way back to God, the only one. There's a lot of them that try to go back to David. There's a lot of them that try to go back to Levi in a priestly line. There's a lot of them that try to go back to Abraham. There's some that go back to Noah. There's some that go all the way back to Adam. This is the only one that goes all the way back to God. And Luke is saying something very, very important here. He's saying, "Yes, he is born as a man on this earth, but he is not just a man. He is God in human flesh." And the Jews understood that. They understood that to call somebody the Son of God was to equate them with God himself. Muslims around the world understand this. Muslims will preach with their dying breath that Jesus is not the Son of Allah. If he was, he would be equal. He would be just as much God as a lie as, and they say, "He is not God's Son. God does not have a Son." And Luke is saying, "He most certainly does have a Son. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. This is his human line. But make no mistake about it, he is no mere mortal. He is God in human flesh. He is the Son of God, the Son of man, come to seek and to save the lost. He is God come to do for you which you would never be able to do for yourself." That's the genealogy. My prayer for you is this. My prayer for you is that you are not just a bump on a pew who knows the name Jesus. Everyone in this room knows the name Jesus. Everyone in this room would like to think, "I believe in Jesus." Of course I believe in Jesus. Everyone believes in Jesus. What Luke is calling you to is a different kind of faith. Luke wants you to believe that Jesus is the king. The king to rule all kings. The king whose reign supersedes any earthly power or authority. Luke wants you to understand that Jesus is the one who gives you access into all of the promises of God. Promises of blessing, promises of life, promises of a home, promises of a people. All of those promises come through Abraham and through his offspring, his son, Jesus. Luke wants you to understand that Jesus is your representative. That when you put your faith in Jesus, you are no longer a son of Adam, but now you are a son of God through a relationship with Jesus and you're clothed in his righteousness and you're covered in his blood. And Luke wants you to understand that Jesus is no mere man and he is God in human flesh. He is your creator, he is your sustainer, he is your Redeemer. I want you to bow this morning and I want you to take just a minute to think about Jesus and who he is. I want you to think about this picture of Jesus that Luke paints for us, a picture of Jesus that is so much more than a nice guy walking around telling nice stories, doing nice things for people, a picture of Jesus who is the king of kings, who receives all of the promises and blessings of God, who represents us and stands for us in his obedience and in his death and who is God himself in human flesh. Luke wants you to understand that this is the one who came to seek you and to save you. Some of you this morning need to respond in worship and gratefulness for who Jesus is and what he's done in your life and for you. You need to respond by putting your faith in Jesus for the very first time, truly believing the picture of Jesus painted in God's Word. Father, we're grateful for truth, truth that we don't have to question, we don't have to doubt, we don't have to second guess, truth that is a foundation underneath our feet and a foundation for our faith. Father, we want this morning to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and scorned its shame. Father, we want to lay aside anything that holds us back from following Jesus, any sin, any relationship, any hobby, anything that keeps us from knowing Jesus, we want to leave it aside. Father, we're going to sing and we're going to sing to you, we're going to lift up the name of Jesus and we pray that your spirit would work in our hearts. Father, we love you and we're grateful for what you've done in sending Jesus to seek us and to save us. Father, be honored as we sing, be honored as we worship. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.