The Mothers of Jesus
Series: THROUGH THEIR EYES
Speaker: Steve Jeffrey
Date: 22nd December 2018
Passage: Matthew 1:1-17
00:00:00 --> 00:00:01 Well, good morning, everyone.
00:00:01 --> 00:00:02 Great to be in church with you this morning.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 If I haven't met you before, my name's Steve.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:10 I'm a senior pastor at St. Paul's, and I chose that Bible reading.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:15 And well done, James, wherever you are.
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 I've got a confession to make.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:29 Right from the very beginning of the show, I have been an avid fan of The Simpsons.
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 So I've been an avid fan for over two decades.
00:00:34 --> 00:00:42 And I think that they are probably the sharpest cultural critics that America has ever produced.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:44 So I watch it for the intellectual content.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:57 But one of my favorite episodes is the episode where Homer Simpson eats the blowfish,
00:00:57 --> 00:00:59 or at least part of the blowfish.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 And they thought that he'd eaten the poisonous part of the blowfish.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 And he had a certain amount of hours before he was going to die.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:12 And so he quickly comes up with a bucket list of everything that he wanted to do in life.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:19 And he spends the day sort of, you know, really racing around, doing all this sort of thing really quickly.
00:01:19 --> 00:01:24 And then he gets to the end of the day, and he's still got some time before he dies.
00:01:24 --> 00:01:28 And so he grabs an old Walkman.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 This is how long ago the episode was.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:36 He puts a recording of the Bible into it and starts listening to the Bible.
00:01:36 --> 00:01:41 That's what you do when you've got nothing else to do, and you're about to die, apparently.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:46 And so he gets to the bits in the Bible where it is the judgment of God.
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 He fast forwards through the judgment of God bits.
00:01:48 --> 00:01:52 And then he gets to the genealogies, and it goes, you know, so-and-so beget so-and-so.
00:01:52 --> 00:01:57 So he fast forwards that bit, and then it comes up, and so-and-so beget so-and-so.
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 And he fast forwards it again, and so-and-so beget so-and-so.
00:01:59 --> 00:02:05 Then he just, and so-and-so beget so-and-so.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:10 So, and you're tempted to do the same.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 I mean, I resonate with that.
00:02:13 --> 00:02:17 When it comes to the book of Numbers, there's this list of names and names.
00:02:18 --> 00:02:23 You just go, okay, I'm just going to fast forward beyond that bit and get to the meaty stuff.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:28 When in actual fact, you know, for most of us, when it comes to the birth of Jesus,
00:02:28 --> 00:02:32 we begin at verse 18 of Matthew chapter 1.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:36 And I wonder, why did Matthew include this list of names?
00:02:37 --> 00:02:44 This year, we are looking at Christmas through the eyes of those who are in the Christmas event for the first time.
00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 And today, our focus is on the mothers of Jesus,
00:02:48 --> 00:02:52 and how the mothers of Jesus reveal the meaning of Christmas.
00:02:52 --> 00:02:53 And so there's three things.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 If you're someone who's writing stuff down, you've got a notepad in front of you.
00:02:56 --> 00:03:00 There are three things from this list of names that I want us to see this morning.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:08 Number one, Christmas is good news, not good advice.
00:03:09 --> 00:03:15 Secondly, Christmas turns our values upside down.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:19 And thirdly, Christmas is the promise of ultimate rest.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:20 They're the three things.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:25 So firstly, Christmas is good news, not good advice.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:29 Notice when Matthew, if you've got your Bibles open, be really good,
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 because you're going to need it this morning, as you will every Sunday.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:36 But Matthew chapter 1, I'd like to have a look at these lists here of the names,
00:03:36 --> 00:03:37 because I think it's really important.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:43 Notice it doesn't begin with once upon a time.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:49 That's how fairy tales and legends and myths begin.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:57 You see, once upon a time sends the signal that this probably didn't happen.
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 That's how I tell stories, you know, all this one time.
00:04:03 --> 00:04:04 It probably didn't happen.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:16 Matthew begins, this is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:25 So Matthew grounds who Jesus is and what he does in history.
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 Jesus is not a metaphor.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:29 He is real.
00:04:30 --> 00:04:35 The biblical accounts of Christmas are about what happened in history.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:42 The birth of the son of God into this world is therefore a gospel.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 It is good news.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:51 It is an announcement of good news that proclaims to the whole kingdom.
00:04:52 --> 00:04:59 And so the birth accounts of Jesus are not telling us what we should do,
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 but what God has done in history for us.
00:05:04 --> 00:05:08 Jesus is described here as the Messiah, the son of Abraham.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:16 You see, centuries earlier than this, God made a promise to a bloke named Abraham
00:05:16 --> 00:05:22 that all the people of the world will be blessed through him.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:34 Through a descendant of Abraham, God would reverse the devastating impact of sin for all time and eternity.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:45 And Matthew declares in the opening words of his gospel that that time has come in Jesus.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:49 That's what makes this news good.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:51 Jesus is the Messiah.
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 Jesus is the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation.
00:05:56 --> 00:06:02 You see, the heart of the Christian gospel is that you do not save yourself.
00:06:02 --> 00:06:03 That's what makes this good news.
00:06:04 --> 00:06:09 God came to save us in the person of Jesus on that very first Christmas.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:18 And so Christmas tells us that Jesus and Christianity are unique.
00:06:20 --> 00:06:25 See, I would suggest that other religions and philosophies of life are good advice.
00:06:26 --> 00:06:33 You see, the founders of the great religions say in one way or another, in various forms,
00:06:33 --> 00:06:38 I am here to show you the way to spiritual reality.
00:06:38 --> 00:06:44 Do all of this, whatever it is that I suggest you do, and you will find it.
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 You see, that's advice.
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 And some of it is helpful advice.
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 But nevertheless, it is still advice.
00:06:54 --> 00:06:58 Christianity is not primarily about self-improvement.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:08 We begin with Jesus, not by adopting an ethic, even adopting the ethic of love your neighbor as yourself.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:15 We don't begin with Jesus by turning over a new leaf or by joining a community.
00:07:15 --> 00:07:20 We begin by believing the report about what has happened in history.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:26 Did God really become a human being?
00:07:27 --> 00:07:32 Did Jesus really live and suffer and die for us?
00:07:32 --> 00:07:37 Did he really rise triumphant over death?
00:07:37 --> 00:07:43 So firstly, Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice.
00:07:44 --> 00:07:45 It is good news.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 It is a pronouncement for all.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:55 Secondly, we see here that Christmas turns all of our values upside down.
00:07:55 --> 00:08:08 We live in this country in an individualistic culture where we commend ourselves through performance and accomplishments.
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 And that's not how it operated in the first century in the Middle East.
00:08:13 --> 00:08:18 In the first century Middle East, a much more of a collective society, a traditional society,
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 a family tree operated like your resume.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:32 It was, that is, your heritage, your clan, your family, your pedigree constituted your resume.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:47 And as we do nowadays, where people adjust their resumes to leave out the parts that they might find a little embarrassing
00:08:47 --> 00:08:53 or a little less impressive, we do it in funerals as well.
00:08:53 --> 00:09:00 We tend to leave out more the bad details of someone's life and focus on the positive stuff.
00:09:00 --> 00:09:04 We tend to always put our best foot forward, whether it be our resume or our eulogies.
00:09:05 --> 00:09:10 We know that they did exactly the same in the first century when it came to their family trees.
00:09:10 --> 00:09:21 We know for a fact in history that King Herod, Herod the Great, eliminated, literally, but also many names from his public genealogy
00:09:21 --> 00:09:28 because he did not want anyone to know that they were connected to him by family.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 He wiped them out.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 Took them out of the public records.
00:09:35 --> 00:10:05 Took them out of the public records.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:07 To the family, he was Uncle George.
00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 Uncle George was a convicted criminal.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:17 He had been executed by electric chair for murder in the United States.
00:10:18 --> 00:10:22 And the biographer assured the children that he would be able to handle the situation
00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 so that there would be no embarrassment to the family.
00:10:25 --> 00:10:32 And so when it came to the bit in the biography about Uncle George, he wrote this.
00:10:32 --> 00:10:38 Uncle George occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution.
00:10:39 --> 00:10:45 He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties and his death came as a real shock to everyone.
00:10:45 --> 00:10:57 You see, we tend to cover up the skeletons that we all have in our closet and put our best foot forward.
00:10:58 --> 00:10:58 We do it.
00:10:59 --> 00:11:08 The reason we do it is because we suspect people will value us less if they know the true us.
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 That's why we do it.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 That's why we put our best on a Sunday, which is so ironic.
00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 This is the place where we should not do it.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:24 We think they will value us less if they knew us warts and all, as we say.
00:11:24 --> 00:11:29 And Matthew does the exact opposite with Jesus.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:31 The exact opposite.
00:11:33 --> 00:11:39 And it helps us to see that God's value system is so different.
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 So first of all, I want you to look at this list of names.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:46 And notice firstly that there are five women listed here.
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 They are all, if you like, the mothers of Jesus.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 They're all in Jesus' family tree.
00:11:51 --> 00:11:58 See, what's unusual about this is that in ancient patriarchal societies,
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 as it was in the Middle East in the first century,
00:12:02 --> 00:12:07 a woman was virtually never named in a list like this,
00:12:07 --> 00:12:11 unless they were literally a sitting queen.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:18 Virtually never named, let alone to put five of them in,
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 is highly unusual.
00:12:21 --> 00:12:27 In first century Palestine, women were gender outsiders.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:29 They had no legal rights.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:31 They couldn't inherit property.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 And they weren't allowed to give testimony in a court.
00:12:35 --> 00:12:40 And yet, they are named here in Jesus' genealogy.
00:12:40 --> 00:12:48 And what's more, three of them are Gentiles.
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:57 And to the ancient Jew, who's the first recipient of this genealogy,
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 they were regarded as unclean.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:06 Why would you mention them at all?
00:13:08 --> 00:13:12 And they were also racial and religious outsiders.
00:13:12 --> 00:13:20 And yet, Matthew deliberately includes them in the family tree of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:33 And by deliberately including them, Matthew recalls some of the most sordid and nasty and immoral occasions in the Bible.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:42 It says in verse 3 that Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah and the mother was Tamar.
00:13:44 --> 00:13:54 Tamar was Judah's daughter-in-law and she tricked him into having a sordid relationship late one night.
00:13:54 --> 00:13:58 It was an act that was against the law of God.
00:13:58 --> 00:14:04 And even though Jesus is a descendant of Perez and not Zerah,
00:14:05 --> 00:14:10 Matthew includes both of them in the family tree.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:14 Why does he include both of them?
00:14:15 --> 00:14:20 Because Matthew wants us to remember the details of the sordid affair.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:21 That's why.
00:14:24 --> 00:14:28 The saviour of the world came into this world,
00:14:29 --> 00:14:32 into a family like all of yours.
00:14:34 --> 00:14:35 Dysfunctional.
00:14:36 --> 00:14:37 And mine too.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:39 Dysfunctional family.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 Remember Rahab?
00:14:44 --> 00:14:45 Mentioned in verse 5.
00:14:45 --> 00:14:49 She wasn't just a Canaanite, a Gentile, she was also a prostitute.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 But the most interesting story is in verse 6.
00:14:54 --> 00:14:55 It mentions King David.
00:14:56 --> 00:14:57 Royalty in the family line.
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 And you go, well, that's got to be good.
00:15:00 --> 00:15:01 That's one up for the resume.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:10 Except in one of the most, I think one of the greatest and ironic understatements of the Bible.
00:15:10 --> 00:15:18 Matthew adds that David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:20 Her name was Bathsheba.
00:15:20 --> 00:15:22 She's not even mentioned by name here.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:23 Such was the details.
00:15:23 --> 00:15:33 And by not naming her and mentioning her first husband Uriah instead by name,
00:15:33 --> 00:15:42 Matthew is calling us to remember this tragic and terrible chapter in Israel's history.
00:15:42 --> 00:15:50 Before he was king, David was a fugitive running for his life from King Saul.
00:15:51 --> 00:16:01 And a group of all the nation of Israel, only a group of 37 loyal men went on the run with David.
00:16:01 --> 00:16:05 They sacrificed their lives for David.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 They were willing to give up everything for David.
00:16:10 --> 00:16:15 And they wanted to protect him as the future king of Israel.
00:16:15 --> 00:16:22 And in 2 Samuel 23, we know that Uriah was one of those 37.
00:16:24 --> 00:16:31 And when David was finally made king years later, he sees Uriah's wife.
00:16:31 --> 00:16:32 He wants her.
00:16:32 --> 00:16:33 He took her.
00:16:34 --> 00:16:34 She got pregnant.
00:16:35 --> 00:16:39 And then he arranged to have Uriah killed in order to marry her.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 Another dysfunctional family.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:53 And it was out of this dysfunctional family and this deeply flawed human being that the saviour of the world came.
00:16:55 --> 00:17:03 This list of names includes moral outsiders and cultural outsiders and racial outsiders and gender outsiders.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:07 And rather than being excluded, rather than being covered up,
00:17:07 --> 00:17:15 rather than coming up with an Uncle George story or doing a King Herod and putting white out on the history,
00:17:16 --> 00:17:18 Matthew unveils it.
00:17:20 --> 00:17:24 Publicly acknowledges this is the ancestry of Jesus.
00:17:28 --> 00:17:30 It's such an unusual genealogy.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:34 Why include it when he didn't have to?
00:17:37 --> 00:17:38 Well, there's one verse in the Bible.
00:17:39 --> 00:17:44 There's many, but there's one verse in the Bible that gives us a really significant clue.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:46 2 Corinthians 5.21.
00:17:46 --> 00:17:57 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
00:17:58 --> 00:18:09 That is, the saviour of the world jumped right into the middle of the sinful, sordid, evil, unjust affairs of human existence
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 in order to rescue us out of it.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:18 He identifies with our weakness and our brokenness and our sinfulness in order to rescue us from it.
00:18:18 --> 00:18:25 And so the Christian message is that if you repent and you believe in Jesus Christ,
00:18:25 --> 00:18:33 his grace covers all of your sin and unites us with him in his saving work.
00:18:33 --> 00:18:41 And so there's not a single great individual who doesn't need his grace.
00:18:42 --> 00:18:49 And there's not a single rotten individual who can fail to receive the grace of the Lord Jesus.
00:18:51 --> 00:18:57 You see, all the gifts that we receive at Christmas are symbols of the greatest gift of all,
00:18:58 --> 00:18:59 God's grace to us in Jesus.
00:18:59 --> 00:19:10 And yet some gifts that we receive in a couple of days will appear to have no point to them whatsoever.
00:19:12 --> 00:19:14 They're generally the Kris Kringle kind of gifts.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:16 You get those ones.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:34 Imagine, you know, you've got a gift from a friend under the tree right now.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 You open it on Christmas Day.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 And it's a book titled, Ten Easy Steps to Lose Weight.
00:19:39 --> 00:19:44 You're offended.
00:19:45 --> 00:19:46 You put it down.
00:19:47 --> 00:19:51 But you're not as offended as the next gift that you get from your spouse.
00:19:52 --> 00:19:56 It's another book called Overcoming Selfishness.
00:19:56 --> 00:20:13 Now, if you say, thank you for those gifts, there's a sense where you're admitting that you are overweight and obnoxious at the same time.
00:20:14 --> 00:20:15 You've got to kind of wrestle with that.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:25 So to receive some gifts is to admit flaws, to admit weaknesses, and that you need help.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:32 And the message of Christmas, the message of Christianity is that there has never been a gift offered,
00:20:32 --> 00:20:46 never a gift offered that makes you swallow your pride to the depths the gift of Jesus Christ requires us to do.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:55 Christmas means that we are so lost, so unable to save ourselves,
00:20:56 --> 00:21:01 that nothing less than the death of the Son of God Himself could save us.
00:21:01 --> 00:21:07 And to accept the true Christmas gift, we have to admit that we are sinners,
00:21:08 --> 00:21:17 that we are unworthy of the gift and in need of being saved by His gracious gift to us.
00:21:20 --> 00:21:28 And that, unfortunately, is a descent that is much lower than any of us, many of us, are willing to go.
00:21:28 --> 00:21:39 You see, Christmas totally humbles us because it proclaims that nothing less than the death of the Son of God can rescue us.
00:21:40 --> 00:21:47 And yet Christmas also affirms us because He was willing to do it for us.
00:21:47 --> 00:21:57 The greatness of Jesus is seen in how far down He came to love us and to lift us up.
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 And so Christmas turns all of our values on their head.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:05 God isn't attracted by our impressive resumes.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:12 He's not attracted by our religious performance or our moralistic performance.
00:22:12 --> 00:22:23 The only way to get God's approval is by acknowledging our brokenness, our sin, our frailty, our flaws,
00:22:23 --> 00:22:29 and our desperate need for the gift of Jesus and His mercy to us.
00:22:31 --> 00:22:40 So thirdly, if we accept that gift, Jesus' grace gives us ultimate rest.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:49 Now, if you've got the list of names in front of you, there is an obscure verse right at the end of the list in verse 17.
00:22:50 --> 00:22:51 It says,
00:22:51 --> 00:23:08 Now, for us, and I'm assuming most of us here, if not all of us, have got no Jewish heritage at all.
00:23:09 --> 00:23:12 So for most of us who don't have a Jewish heritage, that doesn't mean a whole lot.
00:23:12 --> 00:23:22 But for the Jewish person who first received this from Matthew, this is significant news.
00:23:24 --> 00:23:28 See, in the Bible, the number seven is a very significant number.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:32 Right at the very beginning of the Bible, God did the work of creating in six days.
00:23:32 --> 00:23:36 And it says that on the seventh day, He rested from all of His work.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:41 That's not because He was like you and me and tired after six days of work.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:47 Rest simply means that He enjoyed all of His creation.
00:23:48 --> 00:23:51 He enjoyed the perfection of everything that He made.
00:23:52 --> 00:23:53 Everything was perfect and in order.
00:23:54 --> 00:23:57 And the seventh day was never meant to an end.
00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 That is, you don't get to the end of the seventh day.
00:24:00 --> 00:24:02 You don't get to the creation account.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:03 It says, and there was morning and night.
00:24:03 --> 00:24:06 And then the eighth day came and we're back to Monday and we're done to do it all again.
00:24:10 --> 00:24:17 That is, the seventh day is the high point of all of God's creative work.
00:24:17 --> 00:24:19 It's the goal of His creative work.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:21 But then sin entered the picture.
00:24:22 --> 00:24:26 And the first people decided to reject God's loving rule over their life.
00:24:26 --> 00:24:31 They chose for themselves how they thought that life should work and how they're going to live their life.
00:24:31 --> 00:24:32 God, you take a back seat.
00:24:32 --> 00:24:33 I'm going to take it from here.
00:24:34 --> 00:24:38 And this rest was destroyed.
00:24:39 --> 00:24:41 There was no longer harmony and peace.
00:24:41 --> 00:24:44 And the world in which we live is a classic picture of that.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:51 And yet God still graciously provided for His people.
00:24:51 --> 00:24:58 He instituted a seventh day rest as part of their normal weekly cycle.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:06 But He also instituted this thing that was designed to be an ultimate rest.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:11 It was called in the Old Testament the year of Jubilee.
00:25:11 --> 00:25:18 At the end of the last year of the seventh period of seven years.
00:25:18 --> 00:25:21 So take a seven year period and add it by seven times a day.
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 That is the 49th year.
00:25:25 --> 00:25:29 It saw the beginning of the year of Jubilee.
00:25:29 --> 00:25:34 And every Israelite looked forward to the year of Jubilee.
00:25:34 --> 00:25:38 The year began on the day of fresh beginnings.
00:25:39 --> 00:25:43 When the whole nation had just received forgiveness for their sin.
00:25:43 --> 00:25:48 And the year of Jubilee was characterized by freedom and return.
00:25:49 --> 00:25:51 You were set free from burdens.
00:25:52 --> 00:25:59 And labor and debt were to go hand in hand with restoring broken family ties.
00:25:59 --> 00:26:01 And repossession of lost families.
00:26:01 --> 00:26:08 It was a year of all debts being wiped clean and returning.
00:26:09 --> 00:26:10 Clean slate.
00:26:14 --> 00:26:21 And the year of Jubilee meant that the people of Israel just kept looking forward to the 49th year.
00:26:23 --> 00:26:25 They just looked forward to the year of Jubilee.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:28 Every 49 years they knew that no matter what my circumstances,
00:26:29 --> 00:26:31 I was going to be set free.
00:26:31 --> 00:26:38 And verse 17 tells us that there were three lots of 14 generations
00:26:38 --> 00:26:46 or six lots of seven generations with Jesus as the beginning of the seventh seven.
00:26:49 --> 00:26:53 There's no more recording of generations after Jesus.
00:26:57 --> 00:26:59 Verse 17 is saying,
00:26:59 --> 00:27:18 No more counting of generations happened after him.
00:27:18 --> 00:27:21 In him there was rest.
00:27:22 --> 00:27:26 Harmony, peace, hope, security can be found in him.
00:27:26 --> 00:27:32 And if we grasp that Christmas is not a once upon a time story,
00:27:32 --> 00:27:36 but that Jesus has broken into time and space,
00:27:36 --> 00:27:39 and that he has accomplished our salvation,
00:27:40 --> 00:27:44 so that prostitute and king are equal in his eyes,
00:27:44 --> 00:27:46 then you can have rest.
00:27:46 --> 00:27:47 Then you can have rest.
00:27:47 --> 00:27:48 Now.
00:27:50 --> 00:27:56 Total, enduring, final rest is what every one of us needs.
00:27:56 --> 00:28:04 The rest that Jesus secures for us is a rest that we get to both enjoy now and forever with him.
00:28:04 --> 00:28:07 Jesus gives us rest for our souls right now.
00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 In fact, a little bit later on in Matthew chapter 11,
00:28:10 --> 00:28:11 he writes,
00:28:12 --> 00:28:13 Jesus says,
00:28:13 --> 00:28:14 Come to me,
00:28:14 --> 00:28:14 Come to me,
00:28:15 --> 00:28:17 all who are weary and burdened,
00:28:17 --> 00:28:20 and I will give you rest.
00:28:21 --> 00:28:24 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
00:28:24 --> 00:28:26 for I am gentle and humble in heart,
00:28:26 --> 00:28:29 and you will find rest for your souls.
00:28:31 --> 00:28:32 So many people today,
00:28:33 --> 00:28:35 there's books written all about this.
00:28:35 --> 00:28:39 I have this deep hunger in the human heart.
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 People are hungry for love,
00:28:42 --> 00:28:43 and hungry for security,
00:28:43 --> 00:28:45 and hungry for significance and meaning.
00:28:46 --> 00:28:46 And Jesus says,
00:28:47 --> 00:28:49 I am the bread of life.
00:28:49 --> 00:28:50 Feed on me,
00:28:50 --> 00:28:52 and you will never hunger again.
00:28:53 --> 00:28:56 Many in our world are walking in darkness,
00:28:56 --> 00:28:57 and disillusionment,
00:28:58 --> 00:28:58 and despair,
00:28:59 --> 00:28:59 and confusion,
00:29:00 --> 00:29:03 and wondering what is the meaning and purpose of life.
00:29:03 --> 00:29:04 And Jesus says,
00:29:04 --> 00:29:06 I am the light of the world,
00:29:06 --> 00:29:07 and if you follow me,
00:29:07 --> 00:29:09 you will never walk in darkness.
00:29:09 --> 00:29:10 Instead,
00:29:10 --> 00:29:12 you'll have the light of life.
00:29:14 --> 00:29:18 And virtually everyone is fearful of death.
00:29:19 --> 00:29:23 It makes a mockery of everything that we live for.
00:29:25 --> 00:29:25 And Jesus says,
00:29:26 --> 00:29:27 I am the resurrection of the life.
00:29:28 --> 00:29:30 He who believes in me will live,
00:29:30 --> 00:29:31 even though he dies,
00:29:32 --> 00:29:34 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
00:29:34 --> 00:29:42 And so Christmas declares that we can have rest in our souls right now,
00:29:42 --> 00:29:44 if we come to Jesus.
00:29:44 --> 00:29:49 The rest of unspoilt love between you and God.
00:29:50 --> 00:29:53 What a gift to have this Christmas.
00:29:54 --> 00:29:55 You see,
00:29:55 --> 00:29:58 Christmas is not a once upon a time story,
00:29:58 --> 00:30:01 that shows us how we should live better lives.
00:30:02 --> 00:30:04 Christmas is news.
00:30:05 --> 00:30:09 News calls us to acknowledge something.
00:30:10 --> 00:30:12 Something that has already happened,
00:30:13 --> 00:30:15 and to respond to it.
00:30:15 --> 00:30:21 The saviour of the world has broken into time and space to save us.
00:30:21 --> 00:30:21 Christmas.
00:30:21 --> 00:30:25 This event is not so much a birth.
00:30:26 --> 00:30:31 It's not so much a birth that we're celebrating in two days or today.
00:30:32 --> 00:30:37 It's the coming of God into the world that we're celebrating.
00:30:39 --> 00:30:40 And so Christmas is good news,
00:30:41 --> 00:30:41 not good advice.
00:30:42 --> 00:30:45 Christmas turns our values on their head.
00:30:46 --> 00:30:48 And Christmas is the promise of ultimate rest.
00:30:48 --> 00:30:52 And he calls us this Christmas to look to him,
00:30:52 --> 00:30:53 to come to him,
00:30:54 --> 00:30:55 to trust him,
00:30:55 --> 00:30:57 to believe him,
00:30:57 --> 00:30:58 to follow him,
00:30:59 --> 00:31:03 and find the rest that we all so desperately,
00:31:03 --> 00:31:05 desperately need in our hearts.
00:31:06 --> 00:31:06 Amen.