Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You a Nobody? | Advent | Matthew 1:1-5

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

What's with all of the genealogies and numbers in the Bible? Do they even matter? Patrick kicks off our Advent series by walking through Matthew 1:1-5 and discussing how seemingly forgettable people reveal a lot about Jesus. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Matthew 1:1-5 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Okay, I know that today is Thanksgiving. So maybe it is officially one day too early to hop into Christmas, but we just can't help ourselves. We're going to be going through some of our favorite Christmas passages on 10-minute Bible talks up through Christmas Day itself. And we're starting exactly how the Gospels start with genealogies. Okay, don't just turn it off. Normal people avoid talking about genealogies. Normal people avoid the symbolic relevance of numbers and genealogies.

Normal people focus their Christmas devotionals on cute stuff like angels and shepherds and the magi. But we aren't normal people here. And neither are you. So let's hop in because I actually think that genealogies are one of the most fascinating parts of the Christmas story. When Matthew wanted to introduce his audience to the Christmas story, to who Jesus was, to the this long-awaited Jewish king, he didn't begin with Mary and the angel. He began with a long list of names. But like everything in Matthew's Gospel, every detail of this list, this genealogy, is important. It's not actually a comprehensive roster of all of Jesus' forebears. There's lots of people who get left out of this list, but instead, it's a highlight reel, telling a profound story.

And to understand that, we need to do some math. Now, I know you're thinking this is getting even worse, but go with. me. The genealogy of Matthew is actually divided into three different sections, and each section corresponds to a different epoch in Israel's history. First, the period of Israel's foundations. Second, the period of Israel's monarchy when kings were ruling. And lastly, the period of Israel's exile. And in each period, Matthew mentions 14 generations for a grand total of 42 generations. There's your math. Now, in the Bible, seven is a number that represents perfection, holiness, in the presence of God. And if you're really good at division,

you'll know that 42 is six sets of seven. Thus, numerically, Jesus' arrival is presented as the beginning of the seventh seven. It's the beginning of the seventh set of seven. Put differently, Jesus is beginning a new age, a new age of God's holy presence on earth, when Israel and humanity would be set free from the power of sin and death.

Jesus isn't just the climactic moment of Israel's history. He's also the climactic moment of world history. So right from the start, this genealogy says something profound. Jesus is the inflection point of all of human existence. He is the hinge. He is when the love and justice of God come to earth. He is perfection. He's everything our hearts long for.

He's everything that history waited for. And that's why Matthew works with numbers. He's trying to tell us something new, something radical is happening. Today I want to focus on what we can learn from some of the names in the first five verses of Matthew's genealogy. Matthew opens it up with a guy maybe you've heard of because we just did the Torah. His name is Abraham. Matthew 1 verse 1.

This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, that's a Jewish word for king, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Why start with Abraham? I mean, shouldn't they start the story with Adam? But it's no mistake. According to the New Testament, Abraham is arguably the most important figure in the entire Old Testament. the authors of the New Testament mentioned Abraham more than King David. And while Adam only gets seven shoutouts in the New Testament, Abraham gets 67 callouts in the New Testament. Why? Well, in the context of Genesis, where we first meet Abraham, Abraham is called out of ancient Babylon by God

to start a family through which, according to Genesis 2218, all nations on earth will be blessed. Put differently, Adam was the one who broke God's creation in Eden. He did that by rebelling against God. But God didn't give up on his creation. He was determined to restore what he lost. But he didn't see that restoration project as a solo project. He had to get some contractors involved. Let's redo this thing. God saw it as a group project and he intended to get to work on this restoration right alongside his human image bears. Abraham's family was given the special vocation by God to be the restoration experts, to be the ones who are hard at work fixing up what Adam had left shattered. So by beginning with Abraham, Matthew signals that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God's

ancient plan to fix the world. Jesus was the family member who came from Abraham's line, who would deal finally with a problem of evil and death by absorbing their worst attacks on the cross. Evil and death would wear themselves out on Jesus, and he would prove himself. stronger than them by coming out of the other side of death in glorious resurrection. What happened to Jesus, the destruction of sin and death followed by new life, was promised not just for humanity, but for all of creation. We all will experience an end of sin. We all will experience the end of death. We all will experience new life. As a follower of Jesus, you're invited into Abraham's family as well. Jesus wants to work through you to

restore God's world. You won't be perfect, but God's spirit empowers you to be a living expression of God's promise to restore everything, just like it was with Abraham. After Matthew gets through the first few names in his genealogy, we get to a series of names that no one will recognize except for the biggest Hebrew history nerd out there. And even if you do recognize some of these names, you'll probably struggle to put a story to them. Let's pick up in verse three. Perez, the father of Hezron, the father of Ram, Ram, the father of Aminadab, Aminadab, the father of Nassan, Nashan, the father of Salmon. My guess is that when you hear Salmon, maybe you think I should say Salmon, but just trust me, it's Salmon. But Salmon was Jesus' great, great, great, great, great, great,

granddad. And here's the point. I think that these guys were kind of forgettable. They were ordinary. They were nobodies. For many people living in modern day America, being a nobody is kind of our worst nightmare. We live in a celebrity culture where Worth is directly attached to notoriety. So again, maybe it's no surprise that a recent study of high school has found that the majority of them aspire to be some sort of celebrity one day. But unless local universities start degree programs for future TikTok influencers, their prospects are probably pretty bleak. Even those of us who are past the hopeful days of high school, back when the future still seemed like an unwritten possibility, we still hold that secret hope that our mundane

life might suddenly become extraordinary. This is the gospel of celebrity. It's the good news that your value corresponds to your fame and your notoriety locally or nationally or wherever you want it to be. It's the gospel news that says your happiness is always in proportion to your renown. It's the gospel that says the good life requires the right people at work to praise you, the neighbors down the street to celebrate you, the right people at school to adore you. The bad news is that this kind of gospel, it only leads to unhappiness. The gospel of celebrity will never make you happy because there's never enough praise to satisfy that longing in your heart. And most of life is, if we're just going to be honest, ordinary, boring, mundane, forgettable, just like the people

who were a part of Jesus' family line. But what if that, the ordinary, the boring, the forgettable, the mundane, what if that is exactly what God loves most? I mean, he makes the same thing. He makes the same sun rise in the same way every single day, day after day, he must love things happening over and over and over again. Perhaps Matthew included these nobodies to make the point that in God's eyes, being a nobody is extraordinary, that in God's eyes, being a faithful parent, a good neighbor, and a hard worker is really glorious. Today, I want you to thank God that he sent Jesus to begin a new age and that he's called you to be a part of this restoration project. He is restoring all of creation and that the way he does that is through your mundane ordinary life.

Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.