Genealogies of Jesus Christ

Good to see all of you here on this somewhat, well, not snowy at the moment, but it was certainly coming down a while earlier, but good to see all of you here. It's interesting, coming down from Denver this afternoon, we had spots of snow coming down from Denver, and then spots of sunshine, and then snow and so on, but it looks like this has moved in on us today. I hope you all brought your harmony of the Gospels. We will start actually going through it today. If any of you don't have a copy of it, you can see my wife Connie back there in the back corner, or Beth Bradford by the post right there, and get a copy of that. Hopefully you had time to take a look at it, go through it, and today we'll start going through it page by page, which is our intention. Occasionally, we'll have background sermonettes or sermons to cover particular parts of it that we might not be able to cover during a regular class time. There will be times when we'll take more time than on other days with particular aspects, so I hope if you have questions, you will raise your hand and ask those. If I don't know the answer, I'll make some... No, I won't make it up. I'll research it and come back and hopefully get the answer for you. Perhaps some of the other people attending here will know the answers as well, as happened in Denver this morning with certain questions here. Also, I might mention I send out questions ahead of time for you. I apologize for not getting those out until last night. If you want to be on the email list to get those, and I don't have your email address if you're not already getting that, please send me your email if you want to be on the list to receive that. I'll add you to the list. The purpose of the questions is... Well, a couple of purposes for it. One is, obviously, to get you reading the material there. I'll try to give you which pages we'll be covering ahead of time.

And also, to make you think about the material. That's the purpose of the questions, to get you thinking about these things as we go through them.

These classes will be interactive to some extent, although that will vary depending on the type of material we're covering.

For instance, most of what we'll be covering today is fairly technical, and there won't necessarily be a lot of interactivity, although, as noted, I did send you out some questions about that that we will get to at some point.

So, as we get into more passages of the Gospels, where there is a lot of practical application, for instance, a lesson to be learned, we will get into a lot more of an interactive format at that point.

So, let's begin then with page two of your harmony. Here, we'll start going through this. I'll mention up front, too, that I'm going to skip over the first chapter of John and cover that in a sermon later, just because there's more material there than we can hope to cover in a 45-minute class. So, we'll cover that in a sermon, possibly next Sabbath at Combined Services.

Also, I might mention, too, with the harmony, as I wrote last night, I did include fairly large margins for you to write in, to put notes in.

However, in most classes, I think, we'll probably have more material than you'll have space for notes there, so I'd recommend you keep a separate notebook and then transfer over those notes that you feel are most relevant, most important to you there.

This is designed to be a workbook for you on the Gospels, not designed to be stuck on your shelf and not used. The purpose of it is to use, to help you get to learn and understand better the story that's revealed to us in the Gospels.

So, getting started here now, then, in Luke. Luke 1 and verse 1, we'll go ahead and get right into the story here.

Some of this I already covered last class here, about the background of the Gospels, but we do need to review this to keep it in mind. So, just highlight a few things here.

Luke tells us in verse 1, "...and as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us..." So, a couple of important points, a lot of information packed into this one's sentence here.

Luke does tell us there are others who have taken in hand to narrate these events, to give us information about the life of Jesus Christ.

So, Luke was not the only one. Obviously, Matthew, Mark, and John also wrote their versions of the Gospels. There were perhaps others as well that have not been preserved for us.

Notice also what Luke says that he's going to write about, those things which have been fulfilled among us.

He doesn't say not those things that happened among us, but those things that were fulfilled among us. But what's that telling us? It's telling us that he's going to be talking a lot about Bible prophecy, about the prophecies of the Messiah and how those things were fulfilled.

That's actually one thing that all of the Gospel writers talk about, is prophecy and how Jesus Christ fulfilled those. We'll go through a fair amount of that today in today's class.

So, again, he's not just writing a biography about Jesus of Nazareth, but about how Jesus was the prophesied Messiah.

Verse 2, he says, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses. From the beginning of what? Well, obviously, from the beginning of Jesus Christ's ministry there. Although, actually, Luke takes it considerably further than that. He goes back all the way before that to the circumstances of the birth of John the Baptist, the one who had come preparing the way for the Messiah, and also talks quite a bit about the circumstances of the birth of Jesus Christ as well. So, he does go back really to the beginning even before Jesus Christ's ministry.

Now, last time we also talked about the importance of eyewitnesses and establishing a legal matter or legal fact.

And this is, notice the term that he uses here, about those who were eyewitnesses. We talked about the principle of God requiring, and who was the God. It was Jesus Christ then before he was born as a human being. He's the one who established the law that said you have to have two or three witnesses to establish a fact.

And we talked about the importance of that, and how the Gospels themselves are eyewitness accounts in the case of Matthew and John.

And then Mark is an account, is viewed from the standpoint of the Apostle Peter.

And then Luke is one who went out and interviewed a number of eyewitnesses, which we see him talking about right here.

So, again, you have to have a minimum of two or three witnesses to establish a fact. And we do have more than that in the Gospels and the other witnesses of the accounts of the life of Jesus the Messiah.

I'd like to take a look at a few verses that back up this claim by Luke that there are and were eyewitnesses to that.

You may want to write these down. 2 Peter 1 and verse 16.

And Peter, of course, is one of the eyewitnesses, and he says, "...for we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses..." Here's this term again, "...of His majesty." And what is Peter talking about here? When was he an eyewitness of Jesus' majesty? What he's referring to specifically is the transfiguration on the Mount. When Peter and James and John accompany Jesus, and Jesus was glorified there before them. We won't have time to cover the whole story, but this is what he's saying he was an eyewitness of. Another verse for us from the Apostle John, 1 John 1 and verses 1 and 2. "...that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled the word of life..." We also talked about this in some of the background of John, that John's gospel is apparently written later than the others to combat Gnosticism.

A tenet of Gnosticism was that Jesus did not come in the flesh, but was some kind of spirit or apparition or phantom is a word that's used in the early writings about it. In other words, he wasn't physical. He wasn't real. And John's gospel knocks that in the head. In John 1, he talks about, yes, how in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And this is John's carrying on the same exact theme here. "...that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and which we have physically handled and touched..." Again, combat Gnosticism there. He goes on and says, "...that life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness..." Again, the concept of witnesses. "...and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father in the beginning before he became human, and was manifested to us..." It was made obvious there in the flesh here. And like Peter, John uses the plural pronoun, we, there multiple times. He's not the only one.

There are multiple witnesses to these facts there who can verify what is being said. One other confirmation of this about eyewitnesses, Acts 1, verses 1-3, again written by Luke. "...the former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until that day in which he was taken up, after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles, whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive, after his suffering, by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." So Luke here again emphasizes there were eyewitnesses, multiple eyewitnesses, who saw Jesus over this forty-day period, after he was resurrected from the tomb, given life again.

And they were able to see this, and were witnesses of this. Again, infallible proofs through these eyewitnesses that he was raised from the dead as the Messiah. So let's go back to Luke 1, pick it up in verse 2 again, where we were.

And Luke says, "...just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses..." So who were these eyewitnesses? Then he tells us some of them, at least. "...and ministers of the Word delivered them to us." So Luke tells us that some of these eyewitnesses were the apostles, the ministers there whom Jesus Christ chose. So this tells us that Luke talked to at least several of the twelve apostles, other than Matthew and John, in preparing his gospel here.

Others as well. I ask a question, who were some of the other eyewitnesses? Well, you read through his account. Obviously, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke goes into a great deal of detail about Mary's experience, about the angel appearing to her and her visit with Elizabeth and all of this. Obviously, Mary was one of the eyewitnesses. He wouldn't have gotten the information any other way than personally interviewing her as well.

So continuing on, verse 3, "...it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus." And I mentioned last time that a lot of Bible critics want to redate the gospels. We talked about how by process of elimination and the internal clues there, and the timeline, the gospels would have been written 58, 59 AD to maybe AD 63, 65, somewhere along in there, by the internal evidences that we see there.

We also talked about how a lot of Bible critics like to redate the portions of the Bible they don't like or don't agree with. We talked about it with Daniel. There's Mr. Hale who was talking about in the sermon there. People say, no, Daniel didn't live in the 500s BC.

He couldn't have, because he couldn't have foreseen the rise of the Persian Empire, and Alexander's Empire, the Roman Empire. Therefore, he actually wrote about 100 to 200 BC and pretended he was writing that much earlier. People do the same thing with the gospels. Why do they do that? Because they can't accept that Jesus was a prophet and foretold the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD decades before it happened.

That's why you read some sources, some commentaries, study Bibles, this sort of thing. They'll say, the gospels were written somewhere between 70 AD and maybe as late as 150 AD. What they're really telling you is that those authors don't believe the Bible. They don't believe Jesus really was the Son of God and a prophet. So it's actually an easy way to eliminate a lot of source material, because if you come across nonsense like that, just throw it out.

To use an analogy, let's say that the critics were right. Let's say that Luke and Matthew and Mark and John invented these stories about 100 years after the fact. So let's put yourself in their shoes. Let's say you're going to write a story about somebody who lived 100 years ago. But you've got a problem because you don't have any documentation of that period to draw on. But you're going to talk about an individual, you're going to talk about names, you're going to talk about places, towns, roads, rivers, lakes, even specific buildings in some cases.

You're going to talk about government officials and all of that. But you don't have any source material to go on because there isn't any. There isn't any historical material for all of that. Now, are you going to sit down and make up a story of something that happened a century earlier and get every last detail of it right? Every government official that you mention, every town, every road, every building, every individual, the common names that were in use of these times.

That just shows you really how, obviously, it would be impossible to do humanly and get it right every single detail. And that is exactly what we have in the Gospels there. So it just shows these critics are desperate to avoid confronting the actual truth that this is, indeed, God's Word and an accurate historical record that was written at the time. And that is indeed what we see in the Gospels. And we'll point out a fair amount of that as we go through these classes here today.

So, let's see. Again, we see here that Theophilus was the individual mentioned down here that both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written to. Theophilus, again, means lover of God or God-lover. It can also be flipped around. I just found this out just in the last few days.

It can also mean one that God loves there. The Greek can actually be interpreted either way there. We don't know, unfortunately, anything about him other than his name appearing in the introduction to Luke and in the introduction to Acts. He's not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. We don't have any other record. Obviously, he was known by people like Luke, probably by Paul, since Luke and Paul traveled together quite a bit. But apart from that, we just don't know anything about that.

We can draw some conclusions. I'd like to show you a few scriptures I referred to but didn't discuss last time. Again, his title is Most Excellent Theophilus, is what Luke uses. Here are three different passages in the Book of Acts written by Luke, where we see that exact same title used of two different Roman governors. Like Pontius Pilate was a Roman governor. These two, Felix, infested us with some of the successors to Pilate. Acts 23.6, Claudius Lysius, this is quoted from a letter, to the Most Excellent Governor Felix. Greetings. And then goes on with the message.

Acts 24.3, we accept it always and in all places, Most Noble Felix. Actually, the same word is translated excellent and noble here. It's the exact same word there. I'm not sure why it's translated different, but it is. In Acts 26.25, this is quoting Paul, I am not mad, Most Noble Festus.

Again, Most Excellent is an exact word there. But speak the words of truth and reason. What can we conclude from this? When Luke is addressing his writings to Most Excellent Theophilus, we can conclude that at the very least, Theophilus was probably a fairly wealthy man, perhaps a noble man of some sort, quite influential. Perhaps he was a Roman official of some sort. Perhaps over a city, perhaps in someone in Rome since Luke's Gospel appears to have been written from Rome. We just don't know. We can draw some conclusions, though, that Theophilus was quite an influential individual there and a person of quite high social status. Continuing on, pick it up, the last verse of the introduction, Luke 1 and verse 4. We see again the purpose of Luke's Gospel, which is that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. So Theophilus has heard the Gospel. He has learned of the Gospel, no doubt through Luke, Luke's Gospel and others. But this is written so that he may know the certainty of these things. It is backed up. It is eyewitness testimony of these things. But they were true and that they did indeed happen.

Continuing on in our harmony, again, we'll skip the section on John and cover that later. But we'll take a look here at the two genealogies. For lack of time, I presume you'll have read through this yourself already. We'll skip through Luke's genealogy because I want to emphasize some things in Matthew's here. I will just note, though, a couple of things. Notice this first verse here. Jesus himself began his ministry at about 30 years of age. He might write down Numbers 4 in verses 46 and 47. And that tells us that Levites began their service in the temple at age 30. So again, Jesus was the God of the Old Testament. He is the one who laid down the laws, the rules, the regulations there. And he's consistent. He said the Levites began their service at age 30. And that's when he begins his public ministry as well. And let's see, I might mention also... Here, let's see... Let me not get ahead of my notes here. Yes, Jesus being... I wanted to point out the phrase, as was supposed, the Son of Joseph. What he's referring to there is obviously the fact that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was actually the step-son of Joseph, as we would word it today. Conceived through the Holy Spirit rather than through Joseph being his physical father, that Joseph was his step-father. So, let's see, we'll skip on down... Let me just, in the sake of time...

Oh, yes, one other point I wanted to make. At the end of this, he refers to Seth, the Son of Adam, the Son of God. What that is stating is the obvious, that Adam was created by God and being created directly by God, again, by the One who became Jesus Christ. He is therefore called the Son of God because he's directly created by Him there. Any questions about this? As I mentioned earlier, feel free to raise your hand as we go through this. If you think of questions later, feel free to ask me about that. One of the questions, study question that was sent out last night, why do we have these genealogies? What's the point? Why do we have them? Well, one, as we talked about earlier, where Luke says he's writing about the things which were fulfilled among us. We have these genealogies to show that, yes, Jesus the Messiah did indeed fulfill these prophecies of who he would be descended from. I want to emphasize that as we go through Matthew's Gospel there, because it's a lot more obvious in Matthew than it is in Luke. Let's begin reading here in Matthew's genealogy.

There are several interesting things here that are easy to gloss over if we're not really paying attention there. Matthew, well, both of these authors, Luke and Matthew, are both very detail-oriented in what they write for us. So, notice how Matthew starts his Gospel. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ gave a sermon several months ago on the meaning of the word Jesus Christ. That Jesus means God saves, and Christ is the equivalent of the Hebrew messiah, or Messiah, the anointed one. And we talked about the different ways that anointing was used and what it symbolized, what it represented, and how Jesus is a fulfillment. How all of those things apply to him in his life and ministry as well.

So, Matthew, let's see, getting ahead of myself here. Yes, so Matthew, as we talked about in the background material earlier, is writing primarily to a Jewish or Hebrew audience there in that day. And he's doing that to prove, again, that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah.

He gives an awful lot of fulfilled prophecy in the Gospel of Matthew there. And he states up front, notice how he begins his genealogy here. The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. We know that the Messiah was prophesied to come from David and from Abraham.

So Matthew hits that right up front. First phrase is, that's how he identifies Jesus as the Messiah. And I might mention, too, that a question came up this morning. Well, where did this information come from? And Josephus records, I actually don't remember which of his books it is, but he talks about the detailed genealogical records that were kept in Jerusalem.

There were both public records, which you could go and look at, and there were private records. There are no doubt held by individuals. Of course, all of this is destroyed when the destruction of Jerusalem is 70 AD, so we don't have it anymore. But Matthew and Luke, perhaps they copied those public records, genealogical records. Why were those records important?

Well, for the Levites and the priesthood, they're very important. The Jews to this day in Israel are trying to reconstruct genealogies of the Israelis there to know who is qualified to be a hulanim, a priest, or a Levite. So they can have, once they establish a temple, so they can have Levites, descendants of Levi, descendants of Aaron to serve there as Levites and priests for the temple. It's been a very strong emphasis for them over the years, so they kept these records there. And also, who was Mary? We have the two genealogies of Mary and Joseph. Mary's relative Elizabeth, we know, who is the mother of John the Baptist, was from a descendant of Aaron. So obviously, she could trace her family lineage all the way back to Aaron, and then from there all the way back to Adam.

So that was probably a series of private records that were kept there. And Mary, being a relative of Elizabeth, would have had access to that same genealogical information as well. So we don't know. Perhaps Matthew and Luke copied this from family records that were extant at that time, or perhaps they copied them from other records that would have been kept there in Jerusalem.

So, Anne, if you lived in that day, if you wanted to prove it, you could go and verify these genealogies. Right there, they wouldn't have put this information out had it not been verifiable. Otherwise, some critic could look at it and say, hey, they've obviously falsified those records there. But they didn't, so these do stand on their evidence. So, let's go through and read the genealogy then. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers.

We see a lot of names in here that we recognize from the Old Testament. Judah begot Perez and Zera by Tamar. Perez begot Hezron, whoops, excuse me, Pris. Got two trigger fingers here. Hezron begot Ram, Ram begot Amenadab, Amenadab begot Nation, and Nation begot Solomon. Solomon begot Boaz by Rahab. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Obed begot Jesse. And Jesse begot David the King. Excuse me, excuse me here.

Excuse me, hearing a few keyboard problems here. Jesse begot David the King, David the King begot Solomon by her, who had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon begot Rehoboam, Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa. Asa begot Jehoshaphat, and here we're just reading through the list of the kings. Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah. Uzziah begot Jotham, Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah. Hezekiah begot Manasseh, Manasseh begot Ammon, and Ammon begot Josiah. Josiah begot Jekoniah and his brothers.

About the time they were carried away to Babylon, referring to the captivity. And after they were brought to Babylon, Jekoniah begot Sheltiel, and Sheltiel begot Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel begot Abuid, Abuid begot Elisham, and Elisham begot Azor. Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Elohid.

Elohid begot Eleazar begot Mothin, and Mathan begot Jacob. And Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. And notice how the terminology changes right here from so-and-so begot so-and-so to Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary. He doesn't say Joseph begot Jesus, because again, he's acknowledging that Jesus was born by the Holy Spirit there. And Joseph wasn't his real father. But he did begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Yes, Arthur, you had a comment or question?

Well, as long as Arthur's nation is actually going through and through, Arthur's evil name asks down a favor that is set back by what we've produced in Russia, like the Roman salvation. So, my observation and question is, why is it trained you to read at that point and not for the question? Good questions. Several of the other kings' names are Greek-sized, for lack of a better word. Well, even Mary. Mary here. What was her Hebrew name?

Mariam, yes. Named after the sister of Moses and Aaron, which they're Greek-sized. It would have been Moshe instead of Moses. But, I think that a lot of you are hearing that controversy between the genealogy in Matthew and Anna John that there's supposed to be a room in the cross- but that doesn't have time. It generally is called, or which name, the genealogy in the sense. Interesting, but I have another explanation of that or commentary on that.

I'll get to toward the end about some of the differences in the genealogy. It's quite interesting. It has to do with some of the questions that I sent out last night. We'll get to that in just a minute here. There are some other things I want to point out about the genealogy of Matthew here first. Let me think. Where was I here? I actually got ahead of my notes since I was reading off here.

Good point. Let me finish up this portion. We conclude, so all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations here. Ask a question in the notes that I sent out last night, and that is, considering the culture of that time, do you notice anything unusual about this list? There's an unusual feature of Matthew's list that you don't see in Luke's list. What I'm referring to is how were women viewed at that time? They were viewed pretty badly, pretty much as property.

You might think about the Islamic world today, and the way women are treated and oppressed. It's not to say that's what God endorsed or the system he set up. He didn't. But the reality is, women were quite harshly treated during that time. They were supposed to essentially be seen and not heard, and a lot of times not even seen there. They weren't viewed as having legitimate opinions or ideas or anything like that. They were always pushed to the background.

And yet we see in Jesus Christ's ministry who were some of his most devoted followers, some of the women who were following him there. So an obvious point is Matthew includes five different women in here, which is just pretty much unheard of for that culture and that time to give women that kind of prominence. So that's one thing that's very unusual about Matthew's list. What's another unusual thing about the women? Who are the women? I'll give you the five names here.

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary, or Mariam, Jesus' mother. What's the lineage of these women? Four of them are Gentiles. Four are Gentiles. They're not even Jewish, not even Hebrew. And yet they're included in the lineage of the Messiah. What's another unusual thing about these women? Some of them are sexually immoral. Yes, some of them are not women of good and repute. What's Rahab's occupation? It was Rahab. She was the one who let the spies in at Jericho. She was a harlot. What about Tamar and Bathsheba? What do they have in common? Committed adultery. Committed adultery. So there's some pretty shady characters in here.

Think about it. You've got a prostitute. You've got two women who committed adultery. And they're in the lineage of the Messiah. What's the point? Why is that included in there? Galatians 3, 28.

Yes.

You're absolutely right. Even Abraham before that. Yes, he was the father of Ishmael, the father of the Arabs through Hagar. If you get into genealogy, you may not want to dig all that deep here. The point, as Paul brings out, in Galatians 3, 28, when it comes to God, there is neither Jew nor Greek, Gentile. Four of those ladies were Gentiles that we referred to. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. We have both males and females listed there in the genealogy. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. So the point here is that, yes, God can and does accept all who repent and turn to Him and seek His will. There is no difference. There is no difference in the Kingdom to which God has called us to as part of His family there. Be careful how you treat your spouse. There is enough said about that. We won't go there. We don't have time. I'm not going to let Connie up here at the microphone. Anyway, this shows that God could make exceptions here and use both Gentiles and women in carrying out His plan here to bring the Messiah to earth. Even a figure, as is mentioned here, the great figure King David there was the grandson of a Gentile woman of Ruth there, the Moabites. We know the story of Ruth. The point again is that God is willing to accept and use anyone and everyone so we are not to turn away others or discount them or ignore them, because God doesn't. God is wanting everyone to have the opportunity for salvation there. He will ultimately be the Savior of people from all backgrounds.

Let's see. I already covered that point. One other very important point. We talked. We're all familiar with how the Messiah was to be the son of David and son of Abraham. Son being Hebrew Ben, B-E-N, son of son. Can mean literal son, firstborn's own offspring. It also has a more general sense of offspring or descendants, male descendants there as well, grandson, great-grandson. As near as I can tell, Hebrew does not have specific terms for grandson or great-grandson as we have today. They would just talk about somebody being the son of, meaning could mean, yes, a physical son or in a more broad sense a descendant, or in some cases actually one who has the characteristics of, as in son of David, son of Abraham. We'll talk about it a little bit later here. However, did you realize that in this list there are actually a number of other individuals that Jesus was prophesied to be a descendant of? Not just David, not just Abraham, but others. Let's go through and take a look at a few of these. The Messiah was also foretold to be a descendant of Abraham. We touched on the prophecy of that, Genesis 22.18. In your seed, referring to Abraham, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Seed being singular, referring to the Messiah.

The Messiah was to be a descendant of Jacob. Numbers 24 verse 17, this is a prophecy of Balaam. A star shall come out of Jacob. A scepter shall arise out of Israel. Messianic prophecies, referring to him being a descendant of Jacob or Israel. He was to be a descendant of Judah. Another prophecy we're familiar with, Genesis 49 verse 10. The scepter, the symbol of authority and rulership, shall not depart from Judah. And of course, Jesus was a Jew from the tribe of Judah. No lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

Several others. He was to be a descendant of Jesse. Isaiah 11.1. There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse. And a branch shall grow out of his roots. We'll talk about branch quite a bit later, some of the prophetic implications of that. He was also, as we know, to be a descendant of David. 2 Samuel 7 verse 13.

I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. This is a prophecy of Nathan to King David. Somewhat of a surprising one, he was to be a descendant of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel, as we see in Haggai 2 verses 22 and 23. Where God is speaking here through Haggai and says, I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I will destroy the strength of the Gentile kingdoms. I will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them. The horses and their riders shall come down, everyone by the sword of his brother. In that day, says the Eternal of Hosts, I will take you, Zerubbabel, my servant. The son of Shaltiel, says the Eternal, and I will make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, says the Eternal of Hosts. Now this was not fulfilled in Zerubbabel. But sometimes in prophecy, we see the prophecy expanded to include attributes that would apply to the descendants or the offspring of him, like we saw with Abraham. In your seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He wouldn't be blessed directly through Abraham, but through his offspring. Similar principle here, regarding a descendant of Zerubbabel, who would fulfill these prophecies here. And we do see in Matthew's genealogy all of these names listed here. Abraham and Jacob and Judah in verse 2, Jesse in verse 5 and 6, David in verse 6, and Zerubbabel in verses 12 and 13. There, Matthew 1. So the point being, the Messiah was not to be just a son of or a descendant of David and Abraham, but to be a descendant of multiple individuals, as cross-side there in the Old Testament Scriptures there. And of course, that really whittles down who could have possibly fulfilled those prophecies there. Obviously, for one person to be a descendant of all six of these different individuals that are mentioned there. Okay, one final point and question. And Jerry brought this up a minute ago. Glad you did. So let me back up a little bit to where we were. Matthew 1 and verse 17. And this is how Matthew ends his genealogy. We'll end the study talking about this particular point. Matthew says, he goes through all of these names and then wraps it up by saying, So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations.

If you go through and add up those names, the math doesn't work out.

And I mentioned last time, or maybe the time before in one of our background classes, that sometimes the Gospel writers either add information or leave out information depending on a particular point that they want to make. And that's what's happening here. You might notice in here, why does Matthew kind of... Well, first of all, why does he include this? It's kind of interesting, but not directly related to what he's talking about. So why does he include this? Why does he wrap up his genealogy this way? Why does he, for instance, put a quite arbitrary point in here for dividing the fourteen, fourteen, and fourteen generations, that arbitrary point being the captivity in Babylon? Why doesn't he talk about the restoration from Babylon? Why doesn't he use that as his point? Well, because he's constructing something here with a deeper meaning. And if you don't understand what he's doing, it just goes right over your head, as it did to me until a couple of months ago when I started researching this. How many of you have heard of a word, gametria? Gametria. Okay, a handful. Not sure. Okay. Yeah, it's a word we use every day, of course. Yeah, gametria. And gametria, to give you a short definition, it is basically using numerical values of a word to create a deeper or coded, you might say, meaning there. And it's actually in the Bible, we're actually familiar with it, because we think of things like the number seven in the Bible. What does seven symbolize? Completeness, completion. See it throughout the Bible. First creation week there, six days of creation, God rested the seventh day, completing this creation. The book of Revelation, filled with seven, seven churches, seven trumpets, seven seals, seven plagues, all of this. Another number he'd be familiar with is twelve, twelve tribes of Israel, and so on, symbolizing perfection, and so on. It's another number. So this symbolic meaning of numbers is embedded in a lot of places in Scripture there. Another one comes to mind, six, the number six. Symbolic of man, and sometimes symbolic of Satan as well. So it's a concept we're familiar with. What we're not necessarily familiar with is how it applies in a case like this.

So in our writing system, we have letters and numbers, or letters and numerals in our alphabet. We have A, B, C, D, and so on, and then numbers, one, two, three, four, five, etc. In the ancient world, they did not have that. They did not have numbers separately in the languages in use in this part of the world. So they used letters of the alphabet for numbers also. And we all know this. We all learned them in grammar school. Roman numerals. What do they use? I for one, B for five, X for ten, L for fifty, C for one hundred, D for five hundred, M for one thousand. And that's really practical when you're trying to figure out which Super Bowl it is as it's coming up. They use Roman numbers for that, so it has practical application.

No more commentary on that. But Hebrews had a similar system there. They numbered there starting with the first letter of their alphabet. A left would correspond to our letter A. We had a numerical value of one. B, or our B, second letter of the alphabet had a numerical value of two. Third letter had a value of three. Fourth letter, which was their equivalent of our D, had the value of four. Fifth letter, don't remember what it was, sixth letter was vav, our V as in victor sound, had a numerical value of six. And so on, and through that. So when the Hebrews wanted to write a number, they had to use, they didn't have numbers to write with, so they would use letters of the Hebrew alphabet for numbers there instead. And again, Matthew is using this numerical system to put a deeper message here. In this passage that we're talking about here. And this isn't the only place that it happens. You may say, well, this sounds crazy, but actually there are at least four different places in the Gospels that I've come across where this happens. Where there's a symbolic number that is planted in the story to give us a deeper meaning and a deeper understanding of the story. We'll talk about the others in future lessons as we get to those. I know John uses at least one. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three, use elements of them as well there. It's also interesting, too, there's some early writings from the 100s A.D. that state that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.

And it was translated into Greek. And I think there's probably a pretty good case that can be made for that. And this is part of it because in Hebrew this message makes sense. In Greek it doesn't because you've got different letters with different numerical values.

It only works in Hebrew here. So now a good Jewish reader who's reading Matthew's Gospel would have recognized this. Because he knows that Hebrew letters have numerical values assigned to them. And it's not just from us because we don't know Hebrew. It goes right over our head. And we miss the message there, not just here, but at least three other places in the Gospel as well. So let me ask you a series of questions here as we try to figure out what's going on here.

Who is Israel's most famous king? David. David. David is there George Washington, he's there George Patton, he's there Abe Lincoln. He's the ultimate king, the ultimate ruler, the idealized ruler of the Kingdom of Israel. He was the one everybody would have recognized there. How do you spell... let me just... Sorry, I got behind myself on my notes here. Here's the way the Hebrew numerals worked. And, yeah, David. So notice here, Matthew 1.17 mentions David twice here in this concluding verse. Hebrew did not use vowels. A-E-I-O-U. They just used consonants. And they used what is called vowel points to indicate the pronunciation of that subject itself. So, if you're not using vowels, how would the word David have been written?

It would have been written DVD. DVD. Not the DVD issue sticking to your machine, but DVD in Hebrew. If you found a Hebrew inscription, that's the way it would have been written here. And indeed, they found several that do refer to David there, and that's the way it's spelled. One is the numerical value of DVD. 14. Who said that? Somebody did their homework. Great. Yeah, D is the fourth letter. Value of 4. V-vov is the sixth letter.

Value of 6. So, what you have is D equals 4, V equals 6, D equals 4. Total enough? But you get 14. What's the symbolic significance of 14? Well, 2 times 7 would be an obvious one, but here's a deeper meaning here. So, what message is David embedding in here when he talks about it?

And again, this is an artificial construct in the way he has structured and divided the generations in an arbitrary point here. What he is saying is, again, emphasizing 14 three different times, what he is saying is David, David, David as an embedded message here. Sort of in code, you might say. And again, this might sound crazy, but it happens at least three other times in the Gospels.

At least three, yeah. Three that I'll talk about. More if I find more. But we'll talk about that there. So, what is the point here? Why does Matthew do this? Well, going back to Matthew 1 there, in your first verse, in your book there, what did he say? How does he start his description of the Messiah? He starts this section, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. That is the first point that he makes. Look at verse 6, where David's name is mentioned in here. What does he say?

Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon. So, Matthew is just emphasizing in here, David, David, David. Why is he doing that? Because David was, again, their hero. George Washington, their Abe Lincoln, all of this. Yes, Marcia? So, the Messiah is the king of kings. Right. The Messiah is the king of kings. He was not the king of kings.

He was the king of kings. Exactly, yes. Perhaps it all up. Yes. What's the Messiah going to do? We saw the prophecy earlier. He's going to inherit the throne of his father, David. There. So, this is just tying up the loose ends. And, yes, Jesus is the Messiah.

He's the son of Abraham, but he's the son of David. David the king. And David is their idealized king. And Jesus is going to be, I mentioned earlier, some of the meanings of Ben, or son. Can be a physical son. Can be a descendant. Can be someone who carries the characteristics of that individual. And that's a meaning that we see wrapped up here. Jesus is going to be the ultimate David, the ultimate great king, if you will hear.

And this is kind of a deeper symbolic meaning that Matthew has invented here in his Gospel for us. And, again, there's some other things that we'll go to as we get to classes later on. So, yes, Brian. We thought we didn't bend up some length of message. Right. Right. Yep, some little messages there. And, again, if you don't... That's one reason why what I'm going to do in this class is emphasize a lot of cultural things like this, the way people thought, because they thought quite differently.

This is clear evidence. You know, they're embedding things in there that just go right over our heads because we don't understand the culture. The aspect about the women being listed there and the genealogies. That goes right over our head there. But you put it back in that culture and that day, and those were stunning messages there.

You might say a hidden message there as well, because, again, God is showing that, yes, God can use women. He can use women of ill repute. He can use people who've made terrible mistakes in their lives. And, yet, from them, the Messiah, the promised Messiah, would come.

Any other questions as we wrap up here? Questions, thoughts, comments on this? We'll pick it up next time, incidentally, starting with the story of the birth of John the Baptist. A lot of, again, very deep information there if we don't understand it. So, yes, Arthur? Well, I'm sorry, I'm a little bit less used to it, because in America, you use the classroom. You use the classroom to know the stories. And that may be simply e-noughts, and you're free to present the basis of any result of the last break. So, I'm going to do it. Right. Are you saying this makes you want to go out and drink, Arthur? Yes. I want to. Yes. Let's see, Brian, you had your hand up. Yes. So, that's the rest of it. Maybe we'll go on the Captivity, 14 generations. Captivity, across 14 different groups, the rest of the day. Well, the whole point is just the emphasis on the number 14, and that being, any Jewish reader of the day would have... You mentioned the number 14. They're going to think of David immediately. Just like you mentioned the number 10. They're going to think of 10 commandments. You mentioned the number 12. They're going to think of the 12 tribes. You mentioned the number 7. They're going to think of Sabbath. You mentioned the number 14. They're going to think of David because he was Israel's greatest king. They're going to say, yes, that's... Yes, he's just emphasizing both overtly and below the surface there that, yes, David is... Jesus is the fulfillment of all that David was to be.

These were all less subliminal to the Jews at the time. They knew the Old Testament, especially the Torah. So, all you had to do was say a word, and in the Jew of the time, people are a whole story. Yes. It's not just a word, it's been a whole story. Right. And so, somewhere in the New Testament, you'll see a mention of something pretty large. What's that all about?

Right.

Yeah, good point. I appreciate you bringing that up there. You're talking about... I assume you're talking about a Hebrew concept called Rimes. R-E-M-E-Z. And I'm actually working on a whole sermon on this because... Rimes is a Hebrew word that means essentially hint. And this is kind of what we have here. There's a deeper meaning to it, and you'll see odd things in the Gospels that don't make sense.

A classic example of this is Jesus... I'll have to have a long discussion with Arthur about this. Jesus writing in the dust when the woman is brought to Him, taken in adultery. We look at that and we say, what was He writing? That's not the point. The point that He was writing in the dust, the point was the action that He was doing because there's a scriptural reference there that if we're not familiar with the Bible, it just goes right over our head.

And Jesus uses this technique of Rimes again and again and again. There's a classic example where Jesus is... John the Baptist is imprisoned and He sends His disciples to Jesus. Basically, when the disciples come to Jesus, John the Baptist disciples come and ask, is John going to be released from prison? What they ask Jesus is, are you the coming one? Are you the coming one? And if you don't understand the background here, not familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures, it goes right over your head.

Why did they ask Him that? Why don't they come out and ask, am I going to get out of prison or am I going to die there? And Jesus gives a response that's four, five, six different Rimes, and Rimes is hints that give John an answer that John would have understood, John's disciples have understood, but we totally missed the point today. So that'll be a coming attraction sometime in a sermon there. You could literally talk about it for hours here.

There's dozens of examples of that in the Scriptures here. And this is kind of one. And again, it's a cultural thing. It was a common method of teaching at that day, and the Jews would have understood it. Those who understood Hebrew would have known about this. But two thousand years later, in our culture, our background, no, we totally missed the point. Let's see, Mary, you had your hand up. How long has it been if you were talking about the meaning of the most excellent Theophany? And the real meaning of the Thephany? Right.

To us today, the ones who wrote God's New Testament. Exactly, yes. And it's writing for us to look at the person. So why do you think that means? Right. God, God's lover, and one whom God loves is Mel, which is us. Yes, we're the ones who love God, the ones that God loves. And we're a person. Yes, true, true. That's another deeper layer of meaning there. Well, as a matter of fact, a lot of people think that... A lot of commentaries I read said, no, Theophilus is not a real person.

That's referring to the church, to God's people today. Well, no, not really. You don't use that title, that specific Greek title there, to a general group like this. No, it's talking about a real person from the first century. And yet, as you mentioned, there's that deeper meaning there. Yes, it's addressed to us so that we may know the truth of the things we have been instructed in. So there's just layers and layers of depth and meaning in the Gospels there that I'm hopefully going to... ...I'm going to try to bring out to you as we go through these classes.

Let's see, I think... Arthur, did you have your hand up also again? I think when you bear in mind the problems with translations, the might of the great except the one. And then, so there, in life, except that, as I told you on a very simple, how the Old Testament became separate from the New Testament. Right. And all that, in the modern people, you know, he's got to understand you more, really, with the fact that it has to open people's minds.

Not particularly to this detail, but there's one that's transfected in, and he's got to know that, except he is. Right. There is an ambient environment on the same, and it's trying to be not spirit. That's not just trying to stay more formative as a word. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and let me mention one final point in closing, too. A lot of the material I'm going to be giving you is new stuff that you haven't seen or heard before, like the concept of remas I talked about, like this. What's happening, where this is coming from, and this has to do with your comment about the Old Testament being separated from the New Testament, and Christianity, modern Christianity, trashing the Old Testament, ignoring all of that.

What's happened here in the last few decades is, and it's coming primarily from Jewish scholars, and they are studying the writings of the Talmud, the Midrash, these Jewish writings from about 200 to 300 AD, roughly. This is a couple of centuries after Jesus and after the fall of Jerusalem, and all of that.

What they are finding is all kinds of, as they compare those with the New Testament, they are finding common phrases, common concepts, common paragraphs, and so on in there. That Christianity is just simply ignored. Well, not ignored, because it was totally unaware of, because they didn't understand, because they joked all of that years ago.

Now scholars are looking at it with an open mind, and with things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was a big influence in this. That generated a lot of enthusiasm for going back and studying what documents were available from that time. Basically, I should mention, too, yes, why study the documents written a couple of centuries later? Well, because there are no documents from the time of Christ. You have Josephus, which we are familiar with. You have Philo, who is writing, who is a Jew writing in Alexandria, Egypt, during roughly the same time period there. You have their writings, but that's it. There are no more Jewish writings until a couple of hundred years later.

Why is that? Well, it's because Judea and Jerusalem got destroyed by the Roman invasion of 70 AD, got destroyed again, and the Bar Kokhba Rebellion of 132 to 135 AD. So that just wiped out totally dispersed and destroyed Jewish culture there.

It wasn't until after the Jews started regathering some of them, the scholars in the Holy Land, and Tiberius, right on the Sea of Galilee, who was one of the centers of the learning where a lot of this information was gathered, and compiled then into the Talmud. Excuse me, not the Talmud. You said that word earlier.

The Mish knows what I meant to say. There, and now scholars are sitting there and finding all kinds of things that shed a lot of light on the New Testament, because Jewish culture did not change. It didn't change. So the same writings pretty much still apply. Now, a lot of it is weird off-the-wall kind of stuff.

Jewish mysticism in there that came out of Babylon, and so on. So I'm not saying sit down and study and memorize all of this. I'm not. What I am saying is there are nuggets of truth in there that give us a much deeper understanding of some things that are really puzzling, frankly, when we come across it in the Gospel. Yes? All that old form that we're talking about existed in the oral form. Yes, yes.

...the date with the Pharisees for oral or oral Torah. Yes. ...the translation is used so much to try to debunk Christianity. There's only one word in brief for oral... For law, right. ...and he used the whole key group for oral and written Torah. Yeah. ...and the rules of the novel traffic laws.

Right. Right, yeah. So, you know, it's like a foreign existence. The world is empty now, even now. Right. The good form is in Torah, and it says, you know, he obeyed from the dead, and it must have been there. They put him down, but they were there. All oral and oral were Jesus, which just wasn't written down. Right. Yeah, good point. And you see reference to that in the Gospels. Now, you have heard it said, and so on, Jesus says, but I say to you, and yeah, that's a debate over the oral and the oral Torah.

But it wasn't, yeah, as you said, it wasn't written down until a couple of centuries later, after the Jewish Revolts and so on. Then they came together and said, okay, we can't allow all of this to be lost. We've got to write it all down, and thus we have the Mishnah. In this world, they don't study the Torah. They know it says, but they don't study the Torah. They study today in the Torah. Yeah. The Mishnah, the Torah, and the Talmud, and all of those, and what we look at as part of the oral Torah.

Right. The oral Torah. Yeah, they study essentially what those are, those terms, Mishnah, Talmud, and so on. Essentially, those are commentaries on the written word that God gave us. Oh, yeah, they added. Exactly. Right. So, those that look at Israel today and say, God gave even with them because they weren't following them, aren't following them through the law. Well, there's a certain kind of truth to that, because they don't study the Torah.

Right. Yeah, Jesus said you bind heavy burdens on people and so on. That's part of what He was talking about, is they added so much stuff onto the law that they really made it a burden. I'd like to keep discussing this, but actually... Oh, Connie?

Yeah, we have... Okay. I'm just about to... Thank you. Yes, Connie says we have to wrap up. We did need to be out by 6, so choir practice, I know, is starting immediately. So, thank you very much.