SPEAKER_00 0:00

Church, uh as we have kind of heard this morning uh a couple of times, today marks the first Sunday of the Advent season, is where we as a church remembers and celebrate the birth of Jesus and also we are anticipating his second coming as we look forward for uh to his return. And um this morning we're actually looking at Matthew chapter 1, verses 1 to 17. And uh, want to thank Brother Sylvester for reading uh through that, uh reading those names very well. You know, I mean if I were to do it, I think I'll have butchered some of the names at least, right? Um and and and and so I'm sure we can all appreciate that it is really not easy to read through a list of names like that. And I'm just kind of curious, how many of you drifted midway through the reading? Um yeah, yeah it's it's common for us, right, to start listening uh and then halfway through, like, what has it got to do with me? It's just a bunch of names, and then we just kind of tune out, right? Um there's no story to it, there's no parable, there's no teaching at all, right? Why are we listening to a bunch of names? Right? Um so in fact, I would uh dare to presume that most of us would usually skip this portion if we ever encounter uh either this genealogy in Matthew or the genealogy in Luke, right? Um but that is our New Testament reading for today. And uh we had two readings uh today, right? One from the Old Testament and one from the New. If you thought that I was gonna preach from the Old Testament, uh from Isaiah 64, then I'm sorry to disappoint you this morning, right? But today we're looking at the ancestry of Jesus and uh, or as I would like to call it, I'm gonna be preaching from a bunch of names. Um but just a little backstory to to to really the the the beginning of the New Testament era, right? The Old Testament ended with the last prophet of Israel, Malachi, right? And um Malachi was in a time where um, of course it's been a long time coming, right? But Malachi, Malachi was in a time where there was a spiritual decline. And Malachi was calling the people of God to uphold the law and to remember that the Lord is coming. After Malachi, there was 400 years of silence. It's called 400 years of silence, and it's called the in the inter-testament intertestamental period, right? It's is it's called the 400 years of silence because during these 400 years, uh, after uh the prophet Malachi spoke, God did not speak. There was no divine revelation. And the people of God were just waiting in this time. And so finally the promised Messiah came into the form in the form of Jesus, and four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, wrote the gospel, or you know, which is another word for the good news about him. And each wrote from a different perspective. And we're looking at Matthew today, um, looking at the beginning of his gospel, and how he chooses to begin with the ancestry of Jesus. At first blush, it seems like there really isn't much there, right? So that's kind of the reason why we skip it. There's there's just names, there'sn't much there for us to read, much, not much for us to kind of think about. So why bother reading through? Um, but I would like to say that Matthew purposefully wrote this down at the beginning of his gospel. This was not some obligation he had to uh he had to do. Uh it wasn't something that he wrote accidentally, right? Um and from his structure of the genealogy, from his choice of words, uh and even the inclusion of certain names, Matthew was doing a lot with this genealogy. Um in the first place, genealogies were particularly important for the Jews. Um, if we ask us ourselves today, how many generations back can you can remember? Maybe you can remember your parents' name, maybe your grandparents' name, but your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, right? How many of us can remember all the way back? Um I think very few will be able to, right? Um, but genealogies were important for the Jews, and often they have to memorize their own uh ancestry, their own genealogy. Um because often it is used as a proof, right? Especially in legal cases. So, for example, there's this dispute over a piece of land. Who owns this land, right? You have to prove that you actually own the land because your your great-great great great great grandfather owned the land and it was passed down generation until you, right? So they have to remember their genealogy. Or if you want to serve as a priest, you have to prove that your your lineage goes back to Aaron. Right? Um, and so I think it's something like you have to at least remember five generations back. Um and and and so genealogies uh were very important for the Jewish community. Um, and what Matthew was doing here then uh is actually appealing to history and establishing the legitimacy of Jesus as the Christ by tracing his ancestry, ancestry back to the major figures of the faith whom God made everlasting covenants with. Right? Um Matthew was trying to legit uh establish the legitimacy of Jesus as the Christ. And there are many in the past, even today, there are many people who are just going around claiming that they are the Christ. Right? Uh, I'm sure you have heard of some of them uh hearing from uh uh countries um uh elsewhere, not now in Singapore, but but they claim to be the Christ, and the proof is some sort of divine revelation, right? That God gave only to them, and there's nothing else to back them up. Um Matthew is not doing something like this. Matthew is not claiming some sort of divine revelation that only he received or only Jesus received, right? The Christian faith places a lot of importance on history, and Matthew, like many other biblical writers, appeals to history to show the legitimacy of Jesus as the Christ. Of course, this appeal to history is not just for history's sake, yeah, uh, but it has theological overtones and that points us to God's purposes in the world and how they are to be fulfilled in Jesus. The interesting thing about genealogy, in this case especially, is that behind those names that we read are stories of people. Stories of people who were caught up in the history of God's people. Yeah, stories of people who were at one point or another involved in the history of God, forming his people and commissioning his people to be his royal priesthood, his holy nation in this world. And so Matthew wrote this genealogy with theology in mind. He wants to convey something about God, about the purposes of God in this world. So we start with this question then. Who is Jesus? Based on this genealogy, what can we learn about Jesus, the person, right? Um verse one tells us very, very clearly that he is the Christ. Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. And at the end, uh we we we see that that that that order is reversed. Uh it becomes from Abraham to David to Christ. And we have seen this uh kind of formula uh time and time again in in uh in our sermons, right? Where it is like a framing device, right? Um the the technical term is chiasmus, right? But it's basically a framing device so that it helps us see what is the main point here, what is important here, right? It helps people in the past to memorize scripture when they understand what the main points are. So Matthew uses this framing device that Jesus Christ is the son of David, the son of Abraham, he ends with this uh that the whole history goes from Abraham to David to the Christ. And also, what's so important about these two figures, Abraham and David? Uh, if you remember from Genesis 12, verses 1 to 3, um, God gave the Abrahamic covenant, right? Um and and to at the end of it, Genesis 12 verses what uh verses verse 3, he says this in you all families will be blessed. In you, all families of the earth shall be blessed. Matthew is trying to point that to Jesus being the son of Abraham, who will fulfill this covenantal promise of God and bring God's blessing to everyone. Jesus is the one who will come and mend the broken relationship between God and us, so that he may be our God and we may be his people, and enter his kingdom and live under his rule and blessing. So that's why it was important to name Jesus as the son of Abraham, right? That is uh the uh an important covenant that God made. The next important covenant that God made was with David, um, an everlasting covenant, right? Uh, which is why son of David is important here, because um God establishes his covenant with David uh and says that your throne shall be established forever. That is found in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Um, your throne shall be established forever. And it's so important that by the New Testament time, the term son of David is synonymous with the Messiah. If they hear the term son of David, they know you are referring to the Christ. Right? So Jesus is not just some great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of David, right? Some some random person that is in David's line. He is called the son of David because he is the Christ. He is the Messiah. Something else is interesting uh that Matthew does as he talks about you know who this Jesus is and and his his lineage, is that in verse 16 uh he makes a small but very, very important uh change or very important note there. Um if you if you if you read verse 16, I think it's on the screen, and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. Here our attention is shifted from the father to the mother, right? From Joseph to Mary. Uh and Mary's name is mentioned. Joseph is now qualified as the husband of Mary. Right? Before that, it's always the husband fathered a child, and then he became a father of the child. Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, and so on, right? But now Joseph is just kind of mentioned as the husband of Mary. Um and and there is a specific purpose for it, which is that as they as Beth traces the lineage of Jesus, right? Joseph is the legal parent, but Joseph is not the biological parent. Um so so so Matthew traces the lineage actually through Joseph's line, but to say that uh Joseph is the legal parent. But actually, Jesus is born of Mary, his biological parent. Right? Um and and the term was born, of whom was born, right, is a departure from the rest of this genealogy. Uh up until now, the active voice has been used. So meaning to say, like if you read the first one, Abraham was the father of Isaac, right? It literally literally translates as Abraham fathered Isaac or beget Isaac, gave birth to Isaac. It's an active voice. They were actively doing something, right? But with Mary, the term is changed to what we call a divine passive, of whom Jesus was born, right? Meaning Mary was not the one who brought it into action. She was not the one who brought about the action, but God is the active agent. And this is a prelude to what we'll learn later on, I think next week, where we read that Jesus' conception was by divine action. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and is therefore divine in nature. And so the summary we find in verse 17 then becomes uh particularly poignant. Um of Abraham, son of David, of a divine nature. Um, and he covers the span of the history of Israel in a pithy uh uh verse, right? So all the generations from Abraham to David, and all the generations from David to the deportation of uh to Babylon, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ. Um it covers two major covenants, two major characters, and it covers all the major events leading up to Christ, from patriarchy to monarchy, from monarchy to captivity when they were brought into Babylon, and from captivity to nativity to the birth of Jesus. The history of Israel reaches its climax with the birth of Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the Messiah, who has come to bring God's blessing and salvation to the world. And so the first thing we can see Matthew doing with his genealogy is that he establishes the lineage and the legitimacy of Jesus as a Davidic king. And he exhorts Jesus as the Christ, the one whom the whole history of Israel has been leading to, right? Culminating to, the one whom the people of God have been eagerly anticipating. And this Messiah is now here. Um and there's more than Matthew does with his genealogy. So there's this huge overview with this framing device to show who this Jesus is, right? Uh it becomes even more interesting when you kind of go into the the the details of who is who is being mentioned here, uh, actually who is not being mentioned here, uh, and and and why these specific characters. And today I just want to kind of look at uh one specific uh um theme that comes out in Matthew's uh genealogy, which are which is basically the women in the genealogy. Um to begin with, genealogies normally don't have uh women, they don't include women. Uh it usually just records the fathers and the sons, right? Um and I mean some scholars comment that this was a way of elevating women from their marginalized position in society. Yeah, and it could well be the case. Matthew could have been naming uh the women, right? Uh in order to kind of uh be subversive to the culture, raise the the social status of the women, right? Um but I think Matthew goes beyond that. Uh and it's very interesting because Matthew does not name the matriarchs. If you want to name women of the Old Testament, who comes to mind?

unknown 14:42

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SPEAKER_00 14:43

Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, right? The the the matriarchs, right? The the the wives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But Matthew does not name any of them. You have made so much more sense, you know. Because these three uh well, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, uh were recipients of God's blessing when God opened up their wound. Their pregnancy was by divine intervention. You have made quite made quite a bit of sense, right? As we move towards like the Virgin Mary. Um, but Matthew does not name them. Instead, besides Mary at the end, Matthew names four women Tema, Rahab, Ruth, and the the last one is not even named, is the wife of Uriah, uh, whom we know is Bathsheba. Um, and it is a bit difficult to ascertain why Matthew included them in the genealogy. Um, and there is definitely a huge significance for Matthew to include them into his genealogy. There must be a huge there must be a significance. There must be a reason why Matthew did that. Um but it is a little bit difficult to ascertain exactly what that reason is. Um especially especially since I think on one level it would have made no difference to the genealogy if Matthew left them out. If Matthew left these women out, the lineage, the legit legitimacy, and everything will still be it will still be in place, right? So why why did did Matthew put them in? Um there's one popular theory, uh, which is that these women were were uh immoral uh female figures, right? They were they committed sexual sins uh and fast, they were scandalous, right? And and and uh some some scholars decide to say that this was a sign that God can use even sinful women. Um that God will work through even scandalous people to bring about his purpose. And well, I'm not saying that's false, right? But if you wanted to highlight the sinfulness of people in genealogy of Matthew, again, you don't need to mention the women, right? Just look at the men. Just look at your your patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, just look at David, look at Solomon. If you really wanted to highlight the fact that God can work through sinners, Matthew didn't need to mention these women. So why? Why were they mentioned? Um it's not that their scandalous reputations were not uh relevant at all. I think it's relevant to an extent, but I think there are more, there's more to it, right? Um and uh a plausible explanation is that these women, at least most of them, were likely Gentiles, or they displayed faith and uh righteousness when the Jews of their time did not. Um so there's no, unfortunately, there's no one-size fix or kind of explanation, but I think it's a combination of these things, right? And so maybe we can kind of quickly go through who these figures are, um, just to draw your memory. Uh the first we have is Tema. Tema is found in Genesis chapter 38, um, in the story of Judah, right? Um is the daughter-in-law of Judah. And we don't know, we don't know the ethnicity of Tema. We don't know whether she was Israelite or or or not. Um, but it seems more probable that she was a Canaanite. Judah, uh I think against the wishes of his father, right? Judah went to take a Canaanite woman for him, for himself, right? And then we are told in scripture that he took a woman for his son Ur. And it's likely that, I mean, so he took Tema for uh for his son, and it's likely that Tema herself is a Canaanite. So not Jewish, so gentile, right? Um uh we read in in scripture that that the um Judah's first son was wicked, so God struck him dead. So uh by the Leverite marriage, by by by the the the Jewish law, you you the the second son will have to marry the the wife, right? So his brother Onan did, uh but he was wicked, so God struck him dead. So Judah was like, oh man, I have two sons and I'm now dead. I have to protect the third one. So he withheld the third son from Tema, right? When it was his responsibility to marry uh his third son with Tema. Um so Tema was stuck in this lamentable position. No husband, no child, right? He was she was just stuck. And and and Judah was not uh doing what was right. So Tema had to take things into her own hands. Uh she disguised herself as a temple prostitute and uh she slept with Judah, right? Which is where the the sexual scene or the scandal is. Um Judah found out, he he he said if you read Genesis 38, right? He said that Tema was more righteous than him. Right? Uh and in that sense, Tema did the right thing here. And out of that incident, Tema gave birth to Pares and Zera, the ancestors of Jesus. So that's the story of Tema and how it intertwines with the story of Judah. Um the next lady, uh next woman that we have is Rahab. Rahab uh in Joshua chapter 2, it was a Canaanite prostitute. Um but but he she demonstrated faith in the God of Israel when she protected and saved the 12 spies. Yeah, if you remember the story, they the 12 spies needed a place of hiding, uh soldiers were after them, so he she housed them for a while. Yeah, but that was Rahab. I think that I guess I guess the the the the the the the scandalous thing about her is that she was um she was not a Jewish, um so she was a Canaanite and that she she was a prostitute. Um Ruth um whom we normally don't think of as a scandalous in at least in the sexual sense, right? Um she was a Moabitus, right? And the Moabites have a strained relationship with uh Israel. Uh they have uh in history not gotten well, uh not gotten along well. Uh the Moabites, their origin is is itself uh uh uh a bit problematic because it came out of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter, right? Uh so the Moabites and the Amorites, right? Uh and Ruth was from there. The Moabites were the ones that was cursing Israel as they were journeying to Canaan. Right? So God says that no Moabite is allowed to join to join the assembly of Israel for up to 10 generations. They completely barred them from entering uh uh the assembly in Israel, right? I think that was how bad uh Moabite was uh in uh the eyes of the Jews. Uh but Ruth was a Moabitus. Um I think it's unclear that she even committed a sexual sin. But uh I think the interesting thing then is that Ruth was marked by a steadfast faith. Uh then very quickly we go on to the last uh woman, which is the wife of Uriah, uh, whom we know is Bathsheba, and then the story is from 2 Samuel chapter 11. Um we don't know her ethnicity, but actually it's more likely that she is Israelite. Um because uh there is a record of her father in 2 Chronicles chapter 3. Um, although her husband was uh a Hittite, right? Uriah was a Hittite. Um so some scholars like to suggest that she might be a Gentile, but looks like she might be actually Israelite. Um but the the in Matthew's genealogy, he kind of um mentions Uriah more than he mentions um Bathsheba, right? Uh and and Uriah in this case is is marked by Again, his act of righteousness, right? He was righteous compared to David, who took his wife and sent him to his death. Um, and so we have these four women. Um, if you are gonna write a genealogy, if you're gonna write a gospel about your savior, these are the things that you don't want to put in, these are the embarrassing stuff, these are your family's dirty linens that you don't want to air out in public. But Matthew records them for us and for the world to see anyway. So he was clearly doing something important here, right? This is an indication that God can and will work out his mission through even the Gentiles, right? Most of these women were Gentiles. Um, you could say most of these women were scandalous. Um, God will work through them all. And interestingly, then salvation is meant also for the Gentiles, not just the Jews. Jesus' lineage consisted both of Jews and Gentiles, right? And these gentile uh persons in his ancestry would likely have to be female. I mean, you wouldn't have a male gentile being a father of someone and then passing down the the lineage, right? So it will more in in common sense you will have to be a gentile woman. And Matthew purposefully included them to show that there is gentile blood, so to speak, in the in the ancestry of Jesus. His lineage consisted both of Jews and Gentiles, and he came as the Messiah for both the Jews and the Gentiles. He came as a messiah for everyone. And if we recall the Abrahamic covenant, then we see that within the genealogy, God fulfills the covenant and brings the blessing of God to all the families of the earth. Jew or Gentile. He brings the blessing of God to all the families of the earth. And another way of uh of kind of looking at it, um, or part of the reason why Matthew included them is because they prefigure the Virgin Mary, right? Uh even as they demonstrate an element of surprise and scandal in Jesus' ancestry, right? Um in some sense to kind of work up our appetite to what uh to and it to an even bigger surprise in Mary, right? Where Mary uh conceives even before marriage and without any uh uh sexual intimacy, right, shows that God often works out his purposes through very unlikely, sometimes even scandalous people who are nonetheless receptive to God's will. And so, taken as a whole, um, as we kind of wrap up our meditation on genealogy, Jesus' genealogy shows us that despite the weaknesses of humanity, right, despite the weaknesses of this man and this women in his ancestry, God acts sovereignly through the floored men and women to accomplish his purpose.

unknown 25:03

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SPEAKER_00 25:03

Sinful men cannot thwart what God has set up to accomplish, right? And that is God's divine uh promise. And so when as we begin the event season, right, with the ancestry of Jesus, um as he as we you know establish his legitimacy and and and uh look at his role as son of Abraham, son of David, um we also see that that um God is the active agent in bringing about the conception of Jesus, and that God works through unlikely and he works through flawed people, even giving prominence to women who were either outsiders or they were scandalous and he and how he meant for salvation to be for all, including the Gentiles. Right? And I think that the implications from Jesus' ancestry uh are still pertinent for our lives today. And I want to draw out kind of just three points for us this morning. The first that is that Jesus is our blessing and our king, right? Jesus is our blessing and our king. As the son of Abraham and the son of David, Jesus comes as the one who brings God's blessing to the world and also comes as the king of the world. And so we we understand what Christian faith is, right? We become God's people and receive his blessing in Christ by professing that Jesus is Lord and by coming under his roof. And so this actually kind of uh puts across a question for all of us this morning. Are we willing to call Jesus Lord? Are we willing to make him the king over our lives? Because it's easy to want to accept the blessing. It's a lot more difficult to say, I will come under you, I will submit to you. You get to say how I live my life. You get to say what I do with with the things that I have. You get to be my king.

unknown 26:59

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SPEAKER_00 27:00

Many will want the blessing, but we will hesitate to accept his lordship. But the genealogy tells us this that as much as he was a prophesied Messiah, he came in a radically different way. Um he brings blessing and liberation. But as we read later on in the rest of the gospel, right, he he comes as a king to rule, but not in ways that the Jews expected, and I think not in ways that we would expect, right? And there is this sense that to some, to many people in his time, but even to some of us today, Jesus is seen not as a gift, but as disruption and a disappointment. Right? Jesus is seen as someone who comes and disrupt our lives. We have our lives set out before us. This is the path we are going to take, right? If we call Jesus Lord, if he is king over our lives, then he is going to disrupt my way of living. He is gonna disrupt, disrupt my my trajectory in life. Do I want that? Or he might be a disappointment. He surely was a disappointment to the Jews. They thought that he was gonna come in and really just take over uh uh the the country by by force and that he was gonna win by revolution and then he goes and die on the cross as a sinner. Is Christ a disruption for us or a disappointment for us? Or is he really a gift to us all? I think that's what that's one question that the genealogy kind of poses us. This is who Jesus is, right? Will we be willing to accept this Jesus? And if you hear this message and if you hear God speaking to you, would you make Jesus your Lord and your Savior? Right? Would you give your life over to him? Not just momentarily, right? Uh say yes today, but no for the rest of the week. Um, but daily. Will we give our lives to God daily so that we can live under his kingship and his blessing? Under in the covenants of Abraham and David in Christ. And so that's the first point, right? Jesus is our blessing and our king. The second point is this, which is that God is still at work. And he is always at work in our lives. He is sovereignly at work, he was sovereignly at work through the people in Jesus' ancestry. And even during the 400 years of silence, God was neither absent nor inactive. Right? He was still actively at work in and through the lives of his people, leading up to Jesus' birth and beyond. A bunch of the names right at the end of the genealogy are actually not found in scripture, and we really don't know where Matthew got the list from, right? But these were still part of Jesus' lineage. God was still working in the history of man, even when he was silent for that 400 years. And if you are right now going through a struggle, if you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, if you are weeping through the night every day because of something that you are going through. And if you feel that God is just silent in all of this, that you have not heard God speak to you for a long time, be assured that God is actively at work still. Paul tells us in Romans chapter 8, verses 20, verse 28, that we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are caught according to his purpose, God works all things together for good. For those who love him. God is neither absent nor inactive. He has promised not to leave or forsake us. And so, one Sami says, uh puts it this way, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. And God in his opportune time will send help, right? And that is the hope that we have. Um Advent speaks about hope, right? Um, it is not a hope that we normally think of uh when we talk about hope, right? It's not a predicted or an approximated hope uh based on our past, based on our circumstances, based on our abilities, right? Um I'm a terrible swimmer, right? If you throw me out in the sea, if somehow I get shipwrecked or I get over overthrown, right, I will most likely die in the sea. Like I'm just that bad. I can't I can't thread water for nuts, right? And and uh if you look at it that way, I'm completely hopeless, right? Uh because I just don't have the ability, right? If in say I'm a good swimmer, or if you're a good swimmer yourself, you will you'll you'll think, yeah, I mean there's still hope for survival. You can kind of thread the water, you can kind of uh swim around and then hopefully get back to shore, right? But that's based on me, based on what I can do, based on my circumstances, based on my abilities, right? That's what we think about when we say hope. Um in advent, we talk about a savior that comes not from the ground up, right? Not from humanity. Because humanity can't save ourselves. In adventure we talk about hope that comes from on high, that comes from outside, right? And this is the sort of hope that we have. The hope that we have in God is what we call an adventist hope, hope that comes from what you say, without our situation, hope that comes from outside, a transcendent power that breaks into our history and that breaks into our lives. That is the kind of hope that we have from the Lord. Something that we we cannot bring about ourselves, but that we can trust that God will bring about because God is always at work in our lives. And that's the hope that can we always uh cling on to. And the last point that I have for today is that God's purposes will prevail. Like the history of the Israelites, all our lives communication in Christ, right? Uh, Israel's history is in some sense our history. Our lives, our trajectories, actually, everything finds its climax in Christ. We find our meaning and our purpose in Him. Um reading through the ancestry and looking at our own lives, right? Some of us may look at ourselves, may look at our background and think, yeah, God can't possibly have a purpose for me. Right? Our lives, our family may look like Jesus' ancestors, may be filled with brokenness and sin. Um, but uh as a preacher once commented on Jesus' genealogy, what a mess of a family tree. What a triumph of grace. What a mess of a family tree. What a triumph of grace. Church, there's no one God cannot use. If if if there's anything that the genealogy shows us, is that there's no one that God cannot use. Not even scandalous and sinful men or scandalous and outsider, gentile women that would normally have no place in a Jewish world. God can use everyone. And just as the women were receptive to the will of God, right? If we would open ourselves to God and his purpose for us, then he will be our God and he will accomplish his work through us. We may be weak, we may have made mistakes in the past, we may come from, I don't know, a broken family. We may think we are too young, or we may think we are too old, right? None of these things automatically precludes us from serving God, from living out his purpose for us. In God's economy, obedience matters the most. So, brothers and sisters, let Jesus lead you in life so that his purposes in you may come into fruition. And trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. No one else is so um so so wretched, or no one else comes from such a poor background and and history that God will turn away from you. But trust in Jesus who is meek and gentle, and who came precisely for people like us. And will be the one to make up the difference with his grace and his strength. Right? Trust in Jesus. Don't let your past or your weakness dictate who you are and what you can do in Christ. Let Jesus have the final word in your life. And so to conclude uh today's uh sermon, in this advent season, we we as we meditate on the lineage of Jesus this morning, uh as we look at the individual ancestors and their stories within the history of the nation, uh, that culminates in Christ. Let us bow our knees to Jesus our King, so that we may live in his blessings for our lives. And let us continue to keep our eyes on God, trusting that He is always at work in our lives, and that as we follow His will for us, His purposes for us will prevail and come into fruition. Shall we pray?