Today's day one of summer, Selah. And we're so excited about you joining us for our seven days of prayer and fasting. We're going to be going through the whole book of Matthew in the next seven days. And specifically today we're going to be going through Matthew chapter one. A question I want to help answer is how does the genealogy of Jesus tell us about God himself?
I want to start by reading the first verse of the New Testament. This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of of Abraham. When I read that, I think about those two men, David and Abraham, and I think about the promises that God told them years ago. When we read the whole genealogy of Jesus, I believe it shows us God's faithfulness to broken people. When we see Abraham, I remember God's promise to him saying, you will be a father of many nations, and how his faith was credited to him as righteousness.
When I read David, I remember how God told David, one of your sons will always be on the throne. And now we see that in the genealogy of Jesus, this promise is being fulfilled. Matthew chapter one might just seem like a bunch of names to you, but whenever I read it, I see God's promises fulfilled by the coming Messiah. We also see many names we might recognize from the Old Testament. Some people who were renowned and men of God, some people who were broken and saw redemption.
Here's the point. God uses broken people for his redemption plan, just like God used these people for Jesus to come through. The genealogy shows us redemption and it also shows us the character and the nature of God. You might have always read Matthew chapter one as just a collection of names, but today I encourage you to read it as a collection of God's promises.
