Josh Benner

Author: the Josh Benner Blog

  • Jesus, the Son of Abraham. Studying Matthew 1:1

    Jesus, the Son of Abraham. Studying Matthew 1:1

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 

    -Matthew 1:1 

    In the last two posts, we’ve looked at the identity of Jesus in Matthew 1:1. We’ve seen Jesus as the Christ. We’ve seen Jesus as the Son of David, the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. In this post, we see Jesus called the Son of Abraham. 

    Abraham is the major figure of the Old Testament. 

    Abraham warrants mention given his theological significance in light of the Bible. Abraham is the Father of Israel, therefore all ethnic Israelites are related to him. 

    Abraham is the great patriarch of the Old Testament through whom the Lord had made his covenant promises of land, offspring and blessings. 

    ABRAHAM – PROMISE

    In Genesis 22:18, the Lord had promised Abraham that through him, all the nations of the world would be blessed. 

    Jesus is the son of Abraham who brings the ultimate blessing to the nations. God’s blessing is to be found in Christ and advanced throughout the world by the spread of the gospel.  

    That idea will recur in this gospel, but most notably at the end of Matthew’s Gospel where the risen Lord Jesus gives the Great Commission to the disciples and tells them to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). 

    ABRAHAM – PROMISED SON 

    One of the great promises that the Lord made to Abraham was for a son. 

    Abraham and his wife Sarah were old, Sarah was beyond child bearing age. But the Lord promises a Son. 

    Isaac is born in Genesis 21. In Genesis 22, the Lord asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his promised son. 

    Skeptics and atheists always have a field day with that passage. “How could God possibly ask Abraham to sacrifice his son?”

    But the Lord intervenes and stops Abraham and provides a ram for him to sacrifice. The point was to ultimately point to the Lord who would provide the sacrifice. 

    This introduces us to the idea of substitutionary atonement. The ram died in the place of Isaac. And it also gives us a picture of the gospel. Abraham did not have to sacrifice his promised son. But the Lord would not withhold his only begotten son, Jesus. 

    Isaac is the promised son of Abraham. But Jesus is the descendant of Abraham who would be the ultimate and greater sacrifice. 

    The fact that Abraham was willing to make that sacrifice is also meant to be a picture of faith.

    But even before that happened, in Genesis 15, Abraham believed the Lord’s promise that his offspring would one day outnumber the stars. 

    The text tells us that Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. 

    And that too points us to the gospel. 

    That we are not saved by works. We are not saved by what we do. We are saved by faith. Abraham believed. Everything else he did in his life was an outflow of that faith.

    I mentioned in the beginning that Abraham is the father of Israel. But more importantly, because of his faith, Abraham is the Spiritual Father of all who trust and believe. 

    Through Abraham, in the Old Testament, before the law was given to Moses, we see what ultimately mattered and brought salvation. Faith. Believing in the Lord. 

    And it once again points us to why it’s important to begin this gospel by establishing that Jesus is a son both of David but also of Abraham. 

    Because Jesus is the Messiah from the line of David who had been promised. And he’s the one from the line of David through whom God would fulfill his promise. 

    And Matthew begins his gospel by telling us where the family of Jesus came from. 

    What better way is there to start this gospel? 

    We read John, and more systematic. We hear talk of eternal life and being born again. We read Paul’s letters, again, he’s very theological and systematic. Justification, sanctification, adoption, union with Christ. 

    Matthew is pointing us to historical theology and the history of salvation. 

    Jesus doesn’t appear in a vacuum. He doesn’t come from nowhere. 

    He comes in fulfillment of all that God had promised. 

    We see the Lord working throughout time. 

    And to know where Jesus comes from and to know what God had promised, it points us to the glory and the wonder of God’s salvation that he had worked for centuries leading up to Christ. 

    Because we see the plans of God, the power of God in achieving his plans, the faithfulness of God in the fulfillment of his plans.

    Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please like, comment, and subscribe!  

  • Jesus the Son of David. Matthew 1:1

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 

    -Matthew 1:1 

    In my last post, I talked about how Jesus is a prophet and priest. In this post, I will talk about how Jesus is also a king. 

    In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is referred to as the Son of David eight times. 

    The idea is important because the coming Christ was said to be from the line of David, the king who’s dynasty ruled Israel’s southern kingdom from Jerusalem before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. 

    In the Old Testament, we see prophecies of one who would come from David’s line. 

    MESSIANIC PROPHECIES 

    In 2 Samuel 7, it was promised that one of David’s descendants would establish an unending kingdom. 

    2 Samuel 7:12-14: I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. 

    We also see this thinking in Psalm 89:3-4: 

    3 You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: 

    4 ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ 

    One more, and perhaps the most well known comes from Isaiah 9. 

    A popular Christmas time passage, it says: 

    Verse 6: 

    6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

    So it’s describing a child who will be born and it’s giving descriptions of him, and the next verse says: 

    7 Of the increase of his government and of peace 

    there will be no end, 

    on the throne of David and over his kingdom, 

    to establish it and to uphold it 

    with justice and with righteousness 

    from this time forth and forevermore. 

    And so it’s pointing to the Christ as the Son of David and Matthew 1 is saying that  Jesus is the promised one from the Davidic line to establish an everlasting kingdom. 

    KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

    Jesus is the prophesied Messiah who has come from the line of David. But he didn’t quite do things in the way people would have expected. 

    In Jesus’ time, there were various expectations for what the Son of David would be like. Some expected a great military leader or a great king who would liberate Israel from Roman tyranny. 

    Jesus is a great king. He’s the king of kings!

    But the biggest problem with the Messianic expectations of the first century was that their ideas about Jesus were too small. 

    He’s the king of the universe, who sits on the throne, at the right hand of God and rules and reigns in heaven.

    He was the the liberator who would liberate people from the tyranny of sin. 

    He did have a kingdom, but it was not just about a kingdom in Israel. Jesus came to preach the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. His rule and reign in the world would extend beyond Israel to every corner of the earth, to people of every tribe, and tongue, and nation. 

    And the kingdom of heaven idea in Matthew is that Jesus came from heaven to preach the good news of the kingdom of heaven to a fallen world. We will one day be in his presence in the literal kingdom of heaven.

    As people from days of old longed for the day of seeing the coming Messiah in the world, our hope and promise is for the final and ultimate realization and consummation of his kingdom. 

    They waited for a savior to come into the world. Our hope and promise today is for that same savior to come again. To set all things right. To bring forth his kingdom. 

    But while we wait,  as the people of Christ in the fallen world, we have an opportunity to live today for the kingdom.

    ON EARTH AS IT IS HEAVEN 

    To live as kingdom people. 

    Jesus preached “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). 

    Jesus begins and ends the beatitudes by talking about the ethics of the kingdom of heaven. He taught the values of heaven in a sinful world. 

    In the Lord’s prayer, he teaches us to pray to God “your kingdom come, your will be done.” 

    Jesus tells us not to worry, but to instead seek first the kingdom of God. 

    Jesus will compare the Kingdom of Heaven to the pearl of great price, worth everything a man has. This kingdom is compared to a mustard seed that starts small but grows, like a net that’s cast into the sea and catches fish of every kind. 

    And as followers of Jesus, he calls us to live on earth as it is in heaven. 

    To love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love our neighbor as ourself. To make disciples of all nations, to be salt and to live as light in a dark world. Jesus calls us to treat others as we wish to be treated and to store up treasures in heaven. 

    Jesus is the king who ushered in this kingdom. 

    Descendant of the line of David. The Christ had to be. And that is why Matthew’s gospel will immediately go into a genealogy which will link Jesus to David and also to Abrhaam.

    Thanks for reading! For more articles, make sure to subscribe. If you liked, please share or comment! 

    The photo is used courtesy of Wikimedia Creative Commons. For more information on the photo, click here.

  • Christ as a title. Studying Matthew 1:1

    Christ as a title. Studying Matthew 1:1

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 
    -Matthew 1:1 

     At first glance, it might not catch our attention that Matthew says Jesus Christ. After all, those are both very common words we see in the Bible. 

    Jesus is his name. We’ll actually see him given that name at the end of this chapter in connection to his birth. Verse 21, the angel tells Joseph to name the child Jesus. It’s a name that means savior, or the Lord’s salvation. 

    Jesus is his name. 

    CHRIST – A TITLE

    And Christ is his…

    Officially, Christ is a title. 

    Jesus is the Christ. Christ comes from the Greek Christos which means anointed. 

    Now in our day, Jesus and Christ are often said together, almost like a first and last name. 

    But something that’s interesting is the names Jesus and Christ together are actually very rare in the gospels. The gospel writers use Jesus. They use Christ. 

    But Jesus Christ? 

    For his entire gospel, Matthew does it only twice. This first verse and again in 1:18. We see Jesus Christ twice in John. Once in Mark, and never in Luke. 

    But then it becomes common in Acts – written by Luke, and we see it throughout Paul’s letters. Part of this seems to be a simple evolution that happened in the early years of the church where Jesus Christ increasingly became used of as the full name for Jesus. 

    And I point this out because one of the potential consequences of this is to lose sight of the significance of Christ as a title for Jesus. 

    As I said, Christ comes from the Greek word Christos which means anointed. The Latin word for anointed is where we get our word “Messiah.” So Christ and Messiah are saying the same thing. 

    And anointing refers to when people would be anointed with oil in the Old Testament. We would see this treatment for kings and priests, and sometimes prophets. Sometimes objects were even anointed with oil. The anointing was meant to symbolize purity, consecration to God, and the Holy Spirit. 

    So when Jesus is called the Christ, at heart, that’s pointing to his status as the anointed one. 

    And we see times in the gospels where Christ is clearly being used with as a title. 

    EXAMPLES OF JESUS CALLED THE CHRIST

    To briefly give a couple of texts which illustrate this idea. 

    In Luke 2, when Jesus is brought to the temple as a baby and a man name Simeon sees him. He’s an old man who’s waited years for this moment. 

    Luke 2:26: And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

    Matthew 16:16, Peter confesses his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. 

    And the idea of a Christ coming into the world was something that the Israelites were anticipating in the first century. 

    There had been others who had claimed to even be the Christ. 

    Before Jesus came into the world, there were various expectations of an anointed one and what he would be like. There were views of an anointed one, of a Christ who would come from the Davidic line to save the Jews. 

    MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS

    To give a present day illustration. 

    It’s kind of like different views of end times theology today. There are all sorts of differing views for the second coming of Christ and what that will be like, when that will happen. 

    Well in the first century, there were lots of different ideas for what the first coming of the Christ would look like. 

    Some thought that the Christ would be a great king, others thought he would be a great general who would lead Israel in a military victory over Rome. Some thought of the Christ as a great moral figure of keeping and interpreting the law of Moses. 

    There’s some truth to all of those, but perhaps not in the ways people expected. 

    Some thought that there would actually be two anointed ones, that is to say, two Christs. Texts from Qumran, which is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found indicate a belief in a Davidc Christ who would be a king of the Jews and a Priestly Christ from the line of Aaron. 

    And given the long-awaited for, long hoped for, Christ who was to come, Matthew opens his gospel by saying that this man Jesus is the Christ. 

    He’s the Messiah, he’s the anointed one. 

    And we’ll see in his ministry that Jesus will embody all of the offices who were anointed in the Old Testament. Prophet, priest, and king. 

    And so it’s fitting that Matthew begins his gospel by pointing to Jesus as the Christ. He is the long-awaited Messiah for whom Israel had hoped. 

    Jesus is a prophet in that he speaks the word of God. 

    He’s also a priest. Priests in the Old Testament were the ones who performed the sacrifices and served as the intermediaries between man and God. They had extensive moral requirements and religious rituals to be able to do this. 

    But Jesus is the perfect high priest, he’s the greater priest because by the nature of his moral righteousness and divine nature, he is able to serve as the true intermediary between us and God. 

    Jesus is a prophet, a priest, and as we’ll see in another post, he’s also a king.

    Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe

  • Sermon: Exile and return – Genesis 3:22-24

    In this final message from our series: Christmas in Genesis, we see the consequences of the fall. Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden. All of humanity is born as exiles in a fallen world. With the incarnation of Christ, we see a savior who comes into the world as an exile so that he could bring redemption.

    Sermon manuscript

  • Mike Leach, unique sports personality, dies at 61

    Mike Leach, unique sports personality, dies at 61

    Mike Leach, the head football coach at Mississippi State died today at the age of 61. Leach’s passing has sent ripples throughout the college football world.

    It’s obviously always sad when a person passes away. But I’ve tried to reflect today on what it was that made Leach so beloved among football fans. I think it was Leach’s authenticity. In some ways, Leach reminds me of the comedian Norm MacDonald (who also passed away this year).

    Both MacDonald and Leach were famous for not caring to speak their minds. In a society that can be so performative, I think that there’s something refreshing about people who are comfortable in their own skin and who are authentic and genuine.

    Leach was an innovative football mind. He was successful as head coach of three different schools: Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State. That in itself is noteworthy because those are three programs who do not have long histories of winning. But Leach was also legendary for his comments to media.

    Leach was a highly-intelligent Renaissance man who could comment thoughtfully (and humorously) on a range of subjects. Before becoming a football coach, Leach had gone to law school and earned his Juris Doctor. He’d later add a second masters degree in sports science. He enjoyed reading up on subjects such as pirate, vikings, grizzly bears, and Daniel Boone.

    For me, the life lesson I’m trying to remember today is to look to his example as far as being a real and authentic person. It’s a rarity today, but something to be appreciated.

    Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share and subscribe.