The Way Prepared

Introduction

Invite you to make your way to the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew. I’m going to read just the first verse of that in just a moment and kind of launch things to where I want to be going here in the next, I guess, coming weeks and months with where I want the focus to be most Sundays and won’t necessarily be every Sunday. But I think we’ll spend a lot of time looking at the way of Jesus. I can’t think of anything that is more needed right now in our lives and in the lives of our culture and our country than more Jesus. Understanding more about him, learning more about him, trying to be more like him. This is the sort of thing that will change my world, your world, and the worlds of people around us.

That’s the idea of where we want to go with this study of the life of Jesus and the way that he lived. And the way to do that is to immerse ourselves in Jesus’ life. Forty-six percent, so almost half of the New Testament is the story of Jesus. That’s all four Gospels. The life of Jesus is so important that we’re given four different records about it to read through. It makes up most of our New Testament. It’s pretty amazing. And of course, the rest of the New Testament is just referencing back to the life of Jesus and who he was as he walked the earth and what he wants from us now. And so the important thing as a disciple, as a follower of Jesus, is to really know him, to understand him, to see him for who he was as he walked this earth and who he is now as he’s ascended to the right hand of God, and he’s reigning on his throne in his kingdom as the head of his people.

And so all of those concepts and ideas, not only will we cover this morning to some extent, but they will be present as we work through the Gospel of Matthew and talking about the life and the ministry of Jesus. So I’ve broken this down into really some a couple different a few different sections. These are not sermon titles, but it so shows how we’re gonna work through the Gospel of Matthew, understanding the way Jesus lived, the things he taught, the people that he worked with, all of that is going to work into these sections, and we may cover a lot of different things within those. But this morning, I want us to spend some time talking about the preparation of Jesus’ work. And understanding in all of that the goal of this is that we live like Jesus with Jesus’ people, and that is the way.

That’s the way of life. I think that is an easy way to bring all of this to a head, to summate what happens within Scripture is our goal is to see Jesus for who he is, live like him, and live with his people. This is not something you do alone. That was never Jesus’ intention. The goal was that on him and on his reality, on his truths, his church, his people would be built. He would form a community of people who would follow him, and they would do this together. And of course, that’s part of what we will see within the gospel of Matthew as well and other places as we work through scripture. Jesus didn’t just teach rules to follow.

And that is he was teaching a way of life. He was saying, This is the way you should live life. And so wherever the references come from, and whoever was speaking them, they understood this. The intention of this, and some of what we’re going to talk about this morning, is that John came to prepare the way of the Lord, the path that he would take, and the path he would invite me and you to follow. This is a way, often spoken of as a walk by people like the Apostle Paul. How are you going to walk? Are you going to walk in love as he walked in love? Right? So it’s not just rules and rituals. This is the way we walk through life. It’s the way we journey through life from beginning to end.

Jesus in his own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount talked about the way is hard. This way of life is not always easy. Sometimes it comes with difficulties. There is a way that’s easy, but it leads to destruction. But he wanted his people to understand sometimes the way of life, the way he was promoting and what he was teaching, sometimes is difficult and it is not easy to follow, but it is the path to life. Following Jesus is the answer, and that’s what he said about himself. And then even those who kind of rose up against him as opponents, as they referenced him, they said, We know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully. That was what he was after. I don’t know if there’s a bit of irony in this, if they were trying to oppose him, but they recognize what he’s at least bearing witness to.

This is what he was trying to do, and they recognized that as his goal. His goal, whether they agreed with him or not, was that he was going to teach the way of God. It’s a way of life, and that’s what threatened them so much, is that he was teaching people to turn from what they were teaching and to follow him, to follow the way of Jesus Christ. And so that’s what I want us to think about as we’re working through this gospel over the coming weeks and months. When we look at the story of Jesus, there’s so many interesting things, even in just the opening line. And I honestly, the points I want to look at this morning could come from the first few verses, which is genealogy, and you probably don’t think of genealogy as being super exciting, but I hope I change your view of that just a little bit this morning.

So I want to read, beginning in Matthew 1 and verse 1, and as I read this and explain it, I hope maybe it’ll open your eyes to some of what Matthew is doing and how amazing and how powerful his words are as he begins and why disciples may have placed this at the very beginning of the collected books of the New Testament. My Bible reads the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. I just want to recognize from the very beginning that the opening words of Matthew 1 and 2 tell you that if you want to understand what’s about to happen, you need to know the Old Testament.

You need to understand some things about what God told people before in the Old Law. Everything that was just said there, and I’m going to show you even deeper below the English rendering, how even more continuity is happening here with the Old Testament. But just the reference of David and Abraham and Isaac, you need to know who those people are to begin to understand what’s happening here with Jesus and why he is so important. There’s a lot of interesting things happening in this genealogy. I’m not going to read the whole thing. I’m just going to kind of show you a framework that has a couple important aspects to it.

So it’s following exactly the genealogy and chronicles of the order of people. The next two are purposely shaped to be fourteen generations each. Now there’s a couple interesting things about that. We’ll maybe come back to this later. But Jews were very used to using numbers to calculate names. We’ve talked about this even with Revelation, studying that. And so the number 14 is the number for the name David. And so three times we have the number 14, which is a clear reference to the name David, who is a central figure in what’s going on in this genealogy from the beginning all the way to the end. Christ is the Messiah.

But there’s also this interesting thing that happens here in 42 generations. If you divide that by seven, that is six full periods of time, and Jesus is the new seventh period beginning.

And these are themes and concepts that are found within the Old Testament as well. And so genealogies, and there’s more, but even just these two little references here show the interesting sorts of things that these writers would do with even something as simple as a list of names. There’s a purpose behind what they’re doing here. And it’s saying there’s these six periods of time, but Jesus, he’s the one who has come in the last days to start this last period of time.

1. Jesus Is a New Beginning

He’s a righteous ruler, he is the one to follow, and he is the one who has come in connection with everything that God had said would happen in the Old Testament. But I want to go back to the point here, and that is that Jesus, as preparing the idea of Jesus and who he is, Jesus is a new beginning. He is a new beginning. In the sense of this is actually the book of Genesis in the New Testament. The word there, genealogy, at least in my ESV and probably many of your other translations, in Greek is the word Genesis. It’s in the genitive form. So if you look it up and you actually know how to read some of that, it’ll be Genesios. So it’s not going to be, but the lexical form, if you were to look this up in like a Greek dictionary, it would the root word or the lima is Genesis.

And so what it’s saying here is this is the book of Genesis. This is a book of origin. It is the origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David. This rendering is only found three times in all of Scripture. If you look at the Greek Old Testament, it’s found twice in the book of Genesis and nowhere else. And those renderings are the book or the record of Genesis of the heavens and the earth and the book of Genesis of Adam, which is a word that just means man. And so what’s happening here, and one thing that we’re going to see that’s really neat about what Matthew does is he’s actually doing a lot of interesting things with the Old Testament. So, like in the very beginning, which we’re looking through right here in the first four chapters, you actually find references to the Torah.

So right here is a clear reference to Genesis. This is the book of Genesis. This is the book of origin. He is a new beginning. This is new creation. All throughout the prophets, judgment is talked about in terms of kind of torching the earth.

God brings destruction. It’s a little bit like the Noah story where God judges the earth and destroys it. It’s uncreation and then he recreates it. That is an image that’s used all throughout the prophets. And what he promises is there’ll be a time that comes when the water pours forth in the dry land, and new life comes out of this over and over again throughout the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah and other prophets. This is promised. And what’s happening now is this is creation. Jesus is recreating the world. He is the new creation. He is the new Adam. There’s a humanity that’s talked about in Genesis that is created by God in the six days of creation, with the seventh day being the day of rest.

And now Jesus is redoing that. He’s recreating the world.

The world is being reshaped by him into something very different. And all of this was promised out throughout the Old Testament. As you continue through the book, for example, in chapter 2 in verse 15, it says, Out of Egypt I call my son. That’s the Exodus. In chapter 4, he’s led into the wilderness by the Spirit. Also the wilderness wandering. And then he defeats Satan. And then he is giving the Sermon on the Mount, which is like Moses at Mount Sinai in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. It’s tracing the Torah, the five books of the Pentateuch are all right here in the opening chapters of the book of Matthew. It’s interesting, but the main point here is that this is a new beginning. Jesus is kind of hitting the reset button.

Right? It’s that heart reset on your phone. It’s frozen, it’s not working. So you do the hard reset, and boom, now it has new life and it’s working again. This is the idea. Jesus is bringing new life, he’s bringing new creation, a new humanity. Paul makes this same point actually in Romans chapter 5. He talks about Adam bringing sin into the world, the first man, Adam, and Christ is this the second Adam. Through his one righteous action, he’s bringing grace and salvation and deliverance to all. So, why does this matter? What difference does any of this make? I want you to know that Jesus is about fresh starts. And he can work new creation in my life and in your life too. That’s the whole point.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17, if anyone is in Christ, if you’ve given your life to Christ, if you follow him, he is a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. In the story of the Old Testament, places like Isaiah 35 and others, it is this idea of people who are broken, people who are suffering, whether it’s suffering in sin and their own poor decisions or suffering from the sin and the poor decisions and the evil of others. There’s people burdened with regret and brokenness, damaged homes, emptiness. All of this is part of the Adam humanity, the fall of man, and we have violated the will of God, and so even our own sins compounding upon ourselves or the sins of others bringing havoc in our life.

All of that was brought to a culmination in the fullness of time and the coming of Jesus, that he is a new beginning. He offers a fresh start. And so wherever you find yourself this morning, if you see yourself in that way, that you are broken, in whatever way, you’ve got a messy past, things have been bad in your life. The message of Jesus is that he is the answer to that. This is the way God works in the world. And again, actually, in the genealogy itself, you see this. Rahab, mentioned in verse 5. She was a pagan harlot. Remember the story of Jericho? The spies come in. Harlots typically worked in inns. She seems to have owned this one. They come here, that’s where they find a place to hide.

And they have discussion with her. She realizes what’s happening here, who Yahweh is. She’s heard the stories about his power, how he’s destroyed those who get in the way of his people. And she says, Hey, remember me. I want to be on your side. And they do. And this pagan harlot, that probably even within her own culture would have been looked down on, but particularly within Jewish culture would have been looked down on. She ends up here in the genealogy of Matthew as the great-grandmother of probably the most prominent figure of the entire Old Testament, King David. You think God can’t take your messy life and create it anew? Or maybe the next person in her lineage, Ruth, also mentioned in the genealogy. A Moabitus who married a Jewish man, who he and his father seem to have been wicked.

Her father-in-law’s name is Elimelech, my God is king, but he deserts his God who is king and goes to a foreign land because of famine in the house of bread. Bethlehem. And yet, through her loyalty to her mother-in-law and coming back to the land of Israel, you know the story, she ends up with Boaz, Rahab’s son.

And so this impoverished, destitute woman, who seemed to have no future whatsoever, somehow works into the plan of God. Again, her great grandson ends up ruling the entire nation through the will of God. God can take messy situations. Whether it’s through our own sin, our own defilement in a situation like Rahab, as she’s going against the things of God, even built into creation, or things that may have nothing to do with what we’ve done ourselves, like the story of Ruth. Things happen to her, and it’s messy and difficult, but Jesus is the answer to all of that. He is the hope in the midst of chaos. And even the imagery of baptism itself is about newness of life. We go into the water, this old person, the Adam, humanity, and we come out a new person, now a follower of Christ.

We’ve been cleansed of our sins. And don’t forget, in the message of Matthew, it says, you will name him Jesus, which means Yahweh saves, and he will save his people from their sins.

This morning, as you’re sitting there thinking about your life, and you’re conflicted about the kind of person maybe you think you are, you feel guilty because you know you haven’t done things the right way. You need to know that Jesus is about new beginnings. He can take my sin, he can take your sin, he can take the mess of all of that, and he can transform it and change it and make us a completely different person. And as we work further into the book of Matthew, and we’ll come back to this, maybe the key verse, one of my favorite verses it’s becoming, is Matthew chapter 11, 28 through 30, when he invites us, not because we’re perfect, not because we’ve done everything right, not because our life is already easy and not messy.

No, it’s just the opposite. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me, upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. That’s the gospel message in just a couple verses. Whatever mess or burden or regrets you’re living with, you take all of that to Jesus. He invites you to bring that to him, and he will give you rest. You become a new person, you get rid of the old person, and you come out of the water refreshed and new and cleansed and ready for a new life. He is also the fulfillment of Old Testament promises.

2. The Fulfillment of Old Testament Promises

So he is about what’s new. He’s about a new beginning and about new creation. But he is also connected to that which is old and ancient. He comes from a lineage that is deep, that is deeply connected to the things of God. And so he is the son of David, the son of Abraham. This isn’t really actually the official genealogy in verse 1. It’s telling you conceptually how important this moment is and who Jesus is. He’s so significant. This book of beginnings, this book of Genesis of Jesus, is so important that he is connected to David and to Abraham, two key figures in the Old Testament. Probably the two most key figures in the Old Testament. Abraham gets the initial promise, and through Abraham’s seed, all nations of the earth will be blessed.

Jesus is about to fulfill that. In 2 Samuel 7, the promise of Abraham kind of becomes enveloped in the promise to David. The same kinds of promises that David will be the God of his son and his kingdom will reign forever. And so even in that way, the promise to Jesus and the promise coming through Jesus is in continuity with both David and Abraham in the Old Testament. And so, verse 1, again, it’s the book of origin of Jesus, but it’s connected to him being the son of David. Christ is not his last name, it’s a title.

He’s the Messiah. It speaks to the fact that he is king. He reigns on the throne. The whole message here is that God is now restoring the kingdom. The things he’s promised all through the Old Testament, that eventually one day his kingdom would be restored, and there would be a ruler, a shepherd who would reign and would reign forever, is now all being fulfilled. So places like Ezekiel 36 and Ezekiel 37 and Jeremiah 31, all of these places in the Old Testament, this is all finding fulfillment in what’s happening here through Jesus Christ. So the Old Testament tells us frequently there is a king who’s going to rule in righteousness and justice.

Places like Daniel 2 and Isaiah 2 talk about this. So again, I think I say, so what? Why does this matter? Let me ask you this morning are any of you exhausted by the failure of human leaders by their failed promises, their corruptedness. How they make promise after promise and then they don’t deliver. How they’re all in it for themselves. Does that bother you? And I don’t just mean political. This can be your bosses at work. It can even be church leaders. We hope not, but I mean that does happen. It can be parents. Right? Because the reality is we all fail. We’re not perfect. But what I want us to understand when we talk about this idea of fulfilled promise through Jesus Christ, that he is reigning on the throne of David, is that he is a perfect ruler.

Unlike me, who I have my failures, unlike shepherds in churches across the country, all of which are sinful people who are simply trying to do the will of God. Unlike all of our political leaders who, whether they have good intentions or not, are still not perfect people. You can have hope and trust in Jesus Christ because he is perfect. And he will rule with righteousness and justice. This is a theme all throughout the prophet Isaiah. Really from beginning to end. You can look at places like chapter 9 and chapter 11. He begins with chapter 7, which is actually a reference here in the book of Matthew. And chapter 1 and verse 22, it says, all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

And then he quotes Isaiah 7 Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. By the way, God was with us as humanity in the Garden of Eden. And he comes again and he walks the earth. There’s a message being sent here. All throughout this book of Matthew, we’re going to see the connections between the Old Testament and what’s happening anew through Jesus Christ. And so again, he’s re-establishing this relationship with this people. But the connection here is made back to Isaiah 7, where children are used as a sign. And in chapter 7 and chapter 9, and in chapter 11, chapter 9 is quoted later in Matthew 4, I believe. The idea is there’s going to be this one.

A child is going to be born, and the government’s going to rest on his shoulders, and he’s going to rule in righteousness and justice. The things that we don’t see from humanity. Even the very best rulers don’t do everything right. Even the very best parents make mistakes. Even the very best shepherds within a church don’t do it all right. But we can hope in Jesus Christ. And if we rely on him and we look to him, we are much more likely to do things as right as we can do them. And so whether you are a parent or a shepherd or some kind of civic or social leader in the world, if you’re looking to Jesus Christ and He is the anchor in your life, you are much more likely to do things the right way.

Setting a pattern for what all of us should be doing in the lives of others as we live amongst others. We should be the type of people who love sacrificially, as our leader, Jesus did. The way of Jesus. This is the way he lived. This is the way he loved. And so again, whether you’re a parent or a civic leader or a church leader, this is the nature of what true leadership looks like. It is sacrificial, it is not self-focused. And we are called to live like Jesus in that way and be a light to the world. And then there’s this last theme. So these are concurrent themes that run through Matthew, at least three of them that we’re looking at this morning. He is new creation, he’s a new David.

3. He Is Also a New Israel

But he’s also a new Israel. And as we work through the book of Matthew, this may be the most prominent, actually, kind of below the surface, is that he is reliving the story of Israel, but he’s doing it right. And so just the simple graphic up there shows you kind of the basic element of that as you work through the initial stages of the story. The story of Israel as they come out of Egypt as they cross the water in the Exodus, and they’re in the wilderness. They also get the law there, but they fail along the way. They’re in the wilderness for 40 years because of their failure, and there’s consequences that come from that. And just notice, just as we started the book with Genesis, this is the book of Genesis of Jesus Christ.

Then we move on to his baptism to fulfill all righteousness. This connects him to Israel in a variety of ways. But he comes through the water, and as he comes through the water, it tells us he is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Now remember, Israel, when they are led in the wilderness, they have the pillar of fire at night and the cloud by day. They’re being led by the Spirit. This is no mistake in how this is being said. Jesus is led into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, where he is tempted the entire time. We learn in the other gospels. But we get this small glimpse of at least three temptations that he’s given here in this story in Matthew 4.

And he comes through all of them. And as he’s answering the devil’s temptations, I want you to notice the source of his thought. First of all, he says it is written. Probably you’ve recognized that before. As he’s facing temptation, he’s looking to Scripture. But even more, I want us to realize where he’s looking to Scripture. These are not just random thoughts that Jesus has. Clearly, he sees himself in connection to Israel. Because when he answers the devil, he begins in Deuteronomy 8. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Deuteronomy 6, verse 16. Verse 10, then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and in him only shall you serve or worship. Deuteronomy 6, verse 13. Every reference that Jesus gives, Satan is connected to the wilderness wandering of Israel. As they’ve come through the water and they’re being led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, and while they fail, Jesus lives this life with success, with victory. And this is the sort of thing we’re going to see throughout the whole story of Matthew. So what does this matter to us? Like Israel, we fail. We talked about this earlier. We’re broken. We need healing. We need help. We need deliverance, which is why Jesus comes.

He is the Savior. And as we walk, we fail. We don’t always do things right. But we follow one who didn’t fail. He is a just king. He brings new life. He is new creation. We’re told in chapter 4 and verse 23, and he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel, which is the good news. Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. He’s ruling that kingdom and justice and righteousness. In healing every disease and every affliction among the people. Those physical healings. The blind people, the lame, the lepers, even those who had died, that he resurrects to new life. The significance of those, of course, is Jesus’ compassion and his love, that he has the power over the physical. But the greater purpose here is to demonstrate that the God who has power over the physical also has power over the spiritual.

And that’s why when he heals the paralytic, he says, I could just say your sins are forgiven you, and you can just rise from the dead or rise from being paralytic. But I want you to understand there’s something more important than the physical.

That is what matters most. And so that’s what he starts with. Your sins are forgiven you. And then when the leaders, the religious leaders, they start murmuring amongst themselves, he said, That’s no problem. I’ll just raise this body too.

The physical is an indication of God’s power over the spiritual. He demonstrates his authority to forgive sins through physical healing. And ultimately by overcoming death himself.

My words are not that significant. Your words as individuals are not that significant. I did not overcome death, and neither did you.

In a general way, we often will avoid problematic things in life, and Proverbs and other books of wisdom do convey that concept. But even very good people suffer, as Job demonstrates, as Ecclesiastes demonstrates. And so it’s not really about here and now. But following Jesus does give us our best life now because we have a hope of what is to come for eternity. We realize this is not what is most vital. And that is the best way to live right now, is realizing what I have here is not the answer. That’s not where true joy and fulfillment comes from. But as we’ve been looking at in the book of Ecclesiastes, over seven sermons we just did with that, the answer is through finding joy and satisfaction through Jesus Christ, and that God has given us the gift of life, and we live every day rejoicing in what he has given us.

Conclusion

Understanding this is all coming from his hand. And what we’re beginning to see in the book of Matthew is that Jesus is the ultimate answer. He fulfills everything, he is the new king in the new kingdom, he brings new life and new creation. And so if you want an answer to your life this morning, to the emptiness, to the meaninglessness of life, to the struggles that maybe you feel here, it’s not going to be found in the world. It’s not going to be found through some self-help book unless it’s actually giving you good scriptural advice, which often many of them do. But the answer in all of that is actually Jesus Himself and what he promises and what he offers. And that’s what I’m calling you to this morning.

And it’s what we’ll be looking at in the coming weeks as we work through the Gospel of Matthew. Can we help you this morning? You need to turn your life around. I can tell you right now, you’re not going to turn your life around by yourself. If we could do that, we would have already done it. The only way to turn our lives around is through Jesus Christ. But he invites us to do that, he tells us to come to Him and He will give us rest. You want rest this morning? Why don’t you come now?