Josh Benner

Category: Gospel

  • People missed the significance of the first Christmas – but how do you respond to Jesus this Christmas?

    People missed the significance of the first Christmas – but how do you respond to Jesus this Christmas?

    There are the important days that we know are important at the time. And there are the important days when we only know of their significance with hindsight. 

    A couple weeks ago, we had the anniversary of an important day in American history when we remembered the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7, 1941. 

    Other important days in American history. 

    November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy died. 

    September 11, 2001.

    You knew those were historic days at the time. 

    And that’s also true in our personal lives. 

    There are some days that you know are monumental days at the time. 

    The day you get married. The day kids are born. 

    But as we begin in our passage this morning, I want to talk for a moment about the days that matter but that we don’t know matter until after the fact. 

    On June 28, 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was killed. It was a story at the time, but to observers, it seemed like a regional matter that wouldn’t extend much past Eastern Europe. In reality that event was the spark that led to the outbreak of World War I, the most destructive war the world had ever seen at that time.

    The days that matter that you don’t know matter. 

    The first time you ever heard of Covid-19 in China, you probably never imagined that it was going to turn our world upside down. 

    Think about the day the lightbulb was invented. The world was going to change but most people had no idea.

    It’s always a fascinating thought to me. That such significant days can be days when you don’t know it at the time. 

    I think of one of the most significant days in my life. February 20, 2017. It was on that day that I talked to a girl on eharmony.com who I thought looked cute. I had no idea at the time, but that was the first day I ever talked to my wife. 

    Think about the day a famous person was born. No one knows it at the time. A future president, or leading actor, or star athlete could be in the process of being born this very morning and we wouldn’t know it. 

    And I think of that with the events surrounding the first Christmas Eve. 

    Human history was about to forever change. 

    For people who lived in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve, their little town was about to be center stage to events that we’d be talking about 2,000 years later, events that were so significant that time itself is calculated by its proximity to them. 

    And for the average person living in Bethlehem on that first Christmas Eve, they would have had no idea. 

    Think about that. 

    SONG – WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

    One of my favorite newer Christmas songs of the last several years comes from the Christian band Casting Crowns. The song is titled “While you were sleeping.” 

    And the song considers this world-changing event. Christ coming into the world, and how it happened on – for many people – just any other ordinary night. 

    The song says: 

    O Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping

    For God became a man

    And stepped into your world today

    O Bethlehem, you will go down in history

    As a city with no room for its King

    While you were sleeping

    While you were sleeping

    The world kept turning. On that first Christmas and over the coming weeks and months, people continued to live their lives. 

    For the average person living at the time, that seems to be the most likely response at the advent of Christ. Unawareness. Obliviousness. 

    But there were some who had heard about the birth of Jesus. You have wise men who sought this newborn baby out. You have King Herod who heard the news but who was not overjoyed at the prospect of another king living in his territory. And you have Herod’s priests and scribes, those who were most learned in the Old Testament, yet who would miss the significance of the moment.  

    The first Christmas, many didn’t realize what had happened. But since that first Christmas, the rest of history has been turned upside down. 

    It was easy to be blissfully unaware of Jesus as a baby. But what do you do with him as a man? What do you do with him as a teacher? What do you do with him as a prophet? What do you do with him as a savior? What do you do with him as Lod? 

    Some will continue to ignore him, some will continue to miss the significance of who he is, some will continue to actively oppose him. 

    But will you come to him and worship him?

    It might have been easy to dismiss a baby, but that baby grew and became the savior of the world. That baby went to the cross. That tomb was empty on the third day. 

    What do you do with all of that? 

    Will you continue to overlook the significance of Jesus and who he is? 

    Or will you come to him and worship him as Lord? 

    People ignored and overlooked the significance on the first Christmas but what are you doing with Jesus this Christmas? 

    He invites you to come to him, to know him. 

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  • Why do Matthew and Luke give two different genealogies for Jesus

    Why do Matthew and Luke give two different genealogies for Jesus

    The gospels of Matthew and Luke both give genealogies for Jesus. 

    But they’re different. 

    Not just a little different. 

    From David to Joseph, they’re almost entirely different. Only two names are found in both genealogies in that time period. The genealogies are much more similar from Abraham to David. Matthew has an extra name. That’s not so unusual. Ancient genealogies are not always exhaustive. So person A can be referred to as the father of person B but it might actually be his grandfather or great grandfather, etc. 

    When you get to David, the genealogies diverge in two different directions. 

    Matthew’s genealogy goes from David to Solomon and through Solomon’s line. 

    Luke’s genealogy goes from David to another of his sons, Nathan, and Nathan’s line. 

    Both list Zerubbabel and both list Shealtiel and that is where the commonalities begin and end. 

    But why? 

    There are all sorts of theories. 

    And I’ll be honest. Any solution to this problem is purely speculative. 

    THEORY 1 – JOSEPH’S LINE AND MARY’S LINE

    One of the oldest theories which goes back to the early church is the suggestion that they’re giving genealogies for both Joseph and for Mary. 

    Simple. 

    That’s possible but it shouldn’t be assumed, most importantly because the text never tells us that. 

    It would be highly unusual to give a woman’s genealogy in ancient times. Although as one scholar pointed out, a virgin birth is also highly unusual. 

    THEORY 2 – A ROYAL LINE AND A LEGAL LINE

    Perhaps one of the genealogies is royal and one is legal. 

    This is ultimately where I land and what I believe is the most like scenario. 

    What’s that mean? 

    So Matthew’s genealogy goes from David to Solomon to Rehoboam to Abidjan, etc. 

    That is the Israelite monarchy of the Old Testament. They’re the kings.

    Those people can be found in Old Testament genealogies. 

    Matthew gives the kings. Luke does not. 

    But both go through David. 

    So one suggestion is that Jesus is in the line of David, but while the royal line goes from David through Solomon, Jesus isn’t part of the Solomonic line. 

    Is that to say that Jesus is not a legitimate royal?

    It’s not saying that. 

    Perhaps the direct royal line had died off and Joseph was next in line. 

    So in that, Matthew could be giving the line of the monarchy which ends up at Joseph. 

    Even if not, Jesus is the divinely appointed Davidic King. We see several instances in the Old Testament where God makes a choice which goes against birth order. Judah was not the oldest of the 12 tribes. Jacob was younger than Esau. Abel was favored over Cain. 

    Certainly we should not think that either of the gospel writers were just arbitrarily listing names. Luke’s genealogy is interesting because it goes another route off of the Davidic line. Luke is very meticulous and detail oriented in his gospel. He knew the Old Testament. Why did he do that? 

    I think he did it because it was true. That was the line. 

    That does not mean Matthew’s genealogy is wrong. 

    Again, the theory that I think makes the most sense is that Matthew is giving the kings. Keep in mind that the monarchy ends long before Jesus. There are people living in the world today who are descendants of monarchies that are no longer in power. 

    And from the line of the kings, Matthew is pointing to Jesus as the final and ultimate king. That also goes with the kingship theme in this gospel. 

    There are other theories. 

    OTHER THEORIES

    Maybe it’s as simple as Matthew and Luke showing that Joseph himself was related to David from both sides of his family. 

    Maybe Joseph’s parents died and he was adopted and it’s giving the lines of his blood family and his adoptive family. 

    Jesus was adopted by Joseph. Maybe Joseph too had been adopted. 

    And there are other theories. 

    Maybe Joseph’s mom was a widow and his dad had a half brother who married the mother to give Joseph’s father a legal heir and the gospels are giving that genealogy and the genealogy of his biological father. 

    Again, it’s not a new thing that Matthew and Luke have different genealogies. Theologians and scholars have been wrestling with this throughout church history. We have church theologians commenting on this in the third century, but I think it’s safe to say that the question goes back further than that. 

    AN IMPORTANT LESSON ABOUT THE BIBLE

    But here are a couple things to keep in mind. 

    Because sometimes skeptics will point to these different genealogies as a known on the historicity of the Bible. 

    People like to sometimes make it seem like way back in the early history of the church, like they edited the Bible. But the Bible gives us two different genealogies for Jesus and throughout the history of the church, both were left in the gospels because they were original to the books. 

    And that should mean something. 

    It’s a powerful reminder of the efforts throughout the history of the church to preserve the Biblical text and not be editors. But letting the text speak for itself. 

    The Bible is the word of God. 

    All scripture is God breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). 

    Hebrews 4:12 says: 

    the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword

    The Word of God does not need to be explained away. 

    Thomas Jefferson was famous for producing his own “bible” where he cut out the parts he disagreed with. That’s not how you treat the Word of God. 

    Matthew and Luke gave those two genealogies, as we have them. 

    And they’re both God’s word. 

    For the skeptics and those who want to use this against the historicity of the Bible or even for the Christian who’s uncomfortable with the discrepancy, that needn’t be so. Just because we don’t know exactly why the genealogies are different does not imply that a solution doesn’t exist. 

    Again, there are no shortage of plausible theories. 

    We just don’t know exactly which one it is. 

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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