Christmas is Hope

0:00 I love how obedient you all are that you will not sit down until you're absolutely told to under any circumstances. Brilliant so far, isn't it? Been great. The choir piece was amazing. The soloists have been superb. And it's great even that Heather's prepared to come and sing to us while she's on maternity leave. I think that's absolutely brilliant. The only thing I'm disappointed is that I invited people to dance at the front and none of it.

0:29 haven't seen a pirouette. I haven't seen anything at all, unfortunately, but maybe the second half. Who knows? Now, how many of you here in your capacity as a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or a teacher or a classroom assistant has experienced the school nativity this week or might be going to? Let me have a show of hands. Just a little bit of audience participation. It's not asking a lot. Okay, so a few of you.

0:54 So you've experienced all of the main protagonists of the story. You've experienced the baby, the Mary and Joseph and the angels and the shepherds and the wise men and the innkeeper and the star and the sheep and the cows and the camels. And even in the case of my niece's nativity this week, this is what she was, the aliens. Now, I know there's all sorts of artistic license with the nativity, but it's definitely for me getting a little far. But for In the next few minutes, I'm going to consider tonight's theme of hope from a very underused passage that I think I'm safe to say has never been used in a school nativity or in a church nativity of any sort. And when I read it, you'll understand why. But here is Matthew's opening to his gospel account of Jesus' life. This, he says, is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

1:56 Abraham was the father of Isaac Isaac the father of Jacob Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers Judah the father of Peres and Zerah whose mother was Tamar Peres the father of Hezron Hezron the father of Ram Ram the father of Amminadab Amminadab the father of Nashon Nashon the father of Solomon Simon the father of Boaz whose mother was Rahab Boaz the father of Obed whose mother was Ruth Obed the father of Jesse and Jesse the father of King David David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, Solomon, the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abihuid, Abihuid the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Achim, Achim the father of Elihood, Elihood the father of of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. Thus, there were 14 generations in all, from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Messiah. Yeah, I think I deserve that. I've no idea whether a few of those pronunciations were right.

3:52 I just said them confidently, to be quite honest with you. In first service, the only word I got wrong was father, which, yeah. But if you struggle, if you do struggle to get to sleep tonight, you might want to lift out your Bible or your Bible app and open Matthew 1 and start reading that to yourself. And I would imagine you would nod off quite quickly. So why the question then is, does Matthew begin his gospel account of Jesus in this way? Surely, Matthew knew that you needed to start with something that grabs people's attention and draws them in. Well, the truth is that Matthew did know that. It's just that this list leaves us cold.

4:32 But to the first century Jewish readers or listeners that we're hearing this list of names, this list is the opposite of dull and boring. It is dramatic. It is shocking. It is genuinely breathtaking because of the names and because of the stories behind the names. And it is also so full of hope. It is abundant with hope. And we might not recognize it. We might not see it straight away.

5:03 But hope is there so much. It is hidden. And we maybe because of our context have to unearth it a bit. And that's what I want to do over the next few minutes. Unearth some of the hidden hope that is in this seemingly boring list of names. And I just want to give you three aspects of that in the time we have. First, these verses tell us that Christmas is hope because it is history. And you might be sitting here saying tonight that all this, yes, is very nice, and it produces a lot of nice Christmassy feelings, and it brings back all sorts of nostalgia for me, but when it boils down to it, at the heart of it, it's just a fairy story.

5:48 It's just a fairy story. And yes, there might be stuff in this for the life of Jesus and all that stuff that I might be able to glean some wisdom for life. But that's all. And there's no hope in a fairy story. But Matthew doesn't start once upon a time, nor does he offer any life advice. Look at how he starts. This is the genealogy. This is the historical record of the real historical person of Jesus.

6:20 he doesn't give us the option to say, isn't this a nice story? Or that there might be good advice for life in here. Either this is the proclamation of the greatest piece of history, of the greatest news in history, or it is the cruelest of lies, of deception. Matthew's claim here is that this is historical fact, But the creator God fulfilled his plan and his promise by breaking through into history to send his son into this world at this particular time, to send the word became flesh into this particular family tree, to be born into Bethlehem in this particular family, to be one of us, to empathize with us in all of our weaknesses, than to die in our place, to defeat death for us, and to invite us into eternal life in him and with him. God came down in this child to rescue us, to bridge the gap between us and him that we could never bridge ourselves by grounding Jesus in history and in this family. Matthew says Christmas is hope because Christmas is real. one of the foremost Christian thinkers of the 20th century J.R.

7:53 Packer and I mentioned this last week in the morning said this about the birth of Jesus nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation and it is the greatest piece of history ever but it is truth not fiction that's what makes it the greatest story ever and does it require faith absolutely it does but not blind faith faith based on evidence and of course if we're being honest if we're truly being honest the reality is that all of us Christian or agnostic or skeptic all of us hold some sort of position of faith In a podcast interview a couple of years ago, the psychologist and very well-known writer Jordan Peterson summed this up. He said this, I've got the choice of believing two impossible things. I can either believe that the world is constituted so that God took on flesh and was crucified and rose three days later. or I can believe that human beings invented this unbelievably preposterous story that had stretched into every atom of culture, that this story has influenced everything about the Western culture. And then he says, it isn't obvious to me that that second hypothesis is any easier to believe than the first because the more you investigate the manifestations of the story of Christ, the more insanely complicated and far-reaching it becomes. Matthew here offers us a truth claim about who Jesus is.

9:49 Christ the Savior has been born. The Messiah, the son of Abraham, the son of David has been born. And he invites his readers and he invites us to investigate, to consider the evidence for that claim for ourselves. And if that's not something you've done, I'd invite you to go away from here this evening and do just that. Because the offer of hope that is given to us in this good news is far too great to turn our backs on because of a closed mind. That's the first reason why Christmas is hope.

10:39 The second is this. Christmas is hope because it is an offer of grace to us all. Now, how do we find that in this list of names? Well, as I said, the first century Jews, having this list read to them, would have been completely shocked by the names they were hearing. You see, in ancient cultures, like the Hebrew one that Jesus was born into, your genealogy was your CV. The names on your genealogy were your credentials. They were how you impressed people. So the strategy that everyone employed was basically family tree fiddling.

11:16 You kept on the ones who were really good and you subtly dropped off any of the names that brought any sort of skeletons or shame. We all know, don't we? the people in our family trees that we would leave off the list if we could. But what Matthew does here, this is what is shocking, is that he basically keeps all, not just keeps all, but he shines the light on every skeleton in the closet in this family tree. He makes a point of including them all. And you heard the list of names. I can't go into all of the names. But let me give you a flavor.

11:57 However, he has five women in there. Not shocking to us, of course, but that simply wasn't done in a Hebrew genealogy. There was no point. It was all about tracing the legal line of descent down through the male offspring. But the reality here is the women he includes weren't simply outsiders in terms of gender. Tamar was the first one that was mentioned. And she disguised herself as a prostitute to seduce her father-in-law Judah so that she could become pregnant. And including Tamar's story shines a massive light on Judah.

12:38 Christ is the lion of Judah and it shines this massive light on Judah's immorality, on his failures. That wouldn't happen. She was a moral outsider. Rahab then, she wasn't even a Jew. She was a Canaanite and a prostitute. She was a gender outsider. She was a moral outsider. She was a racial outsider.

13:01 There was no way that she should be in a Jewish person's family tree. Ruth wasn't a Jew either. She was a Moabite widow, as some of us here heard this morning. And then he mentions Uriah's wife and names her in that way. And of course, that's Bathsheba. If we don't know who became the wife of David after David had planned things in such a way to have her husband killed so that he could have her for himself. Again, shining the light on the failure and the mess up and the evil of one of the greatest names in the family tree of Jesus. You see, this list would have been shocking because it's a list of outsiders, gender, racial, moral.

13:57 And even for the ones considered insiders, the one that you would expect to see there, Matthew shines this major light on how they too were absolute failures and mess-ups and liars and adulterers and even murderers. These are the credentials of Jesus, the Messiah. we don't get to choose our families but Jesus the son of God did get to choose his and this is the family he very purposefully chose and he chose this warts and all family to show the breadth and the depth of his grace I have come he says I have entered humanity through this family tree to identify with and offer my grace to the Tamars and to the Judas. To identify with and offer my forgiveness and mercy to the Davids and the Bathshebas. To identify with and offer my love to the Rahabs and the Ruths. This is who I have chosen to identify with.

15:12 All of the people that you would keep out of your family tree if you had the chance. but what does that say? It says this that no mess up no failure no sin not even that thing that is in your head right now no amount of shame no amount of self-loathing no amount of turning your back on God time and time and time again. None of that places you outside Jesus' invitation to you to be his brother, to be his sister, to be part of his family, to know his love, to know his acceptance, to experience the healing of his grace.

16:09 It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter what your past is. Tonight, again, Jesus says to you, to you a son is given. To you a child is born. And then finally, hidden in this passage, and it is hidden, Christmas is hope because it is an invitation into true rest. How's that in this list? Well, in verse 17, Matthew talks about generations. He says this, thus there were 14 generations in all, from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Messiah.

16:52 Now, many of us will know that the number seven and multiples of seven are very important in the Bible linked to the theme of rest, all based on the fact that God rested on the Sabbath on the seventh day. And basically, without getting into lots of detail, what Matthew is saying in these verses is that the person of Jesus is the seventh seven. That the person of Jesus then is the true rest. It is in the person of Jesus and in the person of Jesus alone that true rest can be found. Matthew is anticipating words of Jesus that he'll record later in the gospel. Words that you might have heard before. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened. and I will give you rest.

17:45 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Sometimes churches have made heavy burdens. but the burden of the person of Jesus is light. Are you weary and burned out striving for significance and acceptance and identity? Jesus, the son of God the hope of the ages invites you into his rest. Trust me, he says. true rest is found in following me the word the one who designed and created you the one who made you ultimately for relationship with me that's your design that's your created purpose

18:57 so true rest is found not in striving to make your own identity but in finding and placing your identity in me and bringing your story inside my story and accepting my invitation to become my brother, to become my sister. A brother and sister, it says in Hebrews, Jesus is not ashamed to call us that. True rest, he says, is found in placing your hope in me, not in yourself and not in anything or anyone else. And he holds out that invitation. Hope has a name and that name is Jesus. So as Phil said in the poem at the beginning, I invite you to do this.

19:53 Don't just remember, respond and surrender for Christ the Savior is born. Let's pray together. Father thank you for the hope that is ours because you in your great love and in your great mercy and in your great grace broke into history to bridge the gap between you and us that we could never bridge going the other way Father thank you for your son thank you for how he humbled himself to be the lowest of the low to become our servant to become one of us to empathize with us in our weakness and our struggles and our suffering but also to rescue us to give us a hope and a future to welcome us and invite us into eternal life through his death and resurrection and may we come face to face with his great humility and may that break through the hardness of our hearts

21:26 and may they be humble enough to accept the invitation of his grace that is in offer to us in Jesus name, amen