The Gospel of Matthew - Session 1 - Chuck Missler

[Music] now let's do let's let's go ahead and let's start with a word of prayer father we just praise you for this day this evening we thank you that you've brought us here that we know that there's no nothing in your kingdom that's by accident we're all here by your divine appointment so father we would pray that your purpose would be accomplished in each of our lives this night as we open your word to our lives and open our lives to your word we pray father that we might grow therein not by power nor by might but by thy spirit father we just thank you for your word and the evening and the opportunity in jesus name amen okay we are beginning a review and expiration of the first book of the new testament the first of four gospels i hesitate because we sometimes in our reckoning count acts as a fifth gospel and i realize that's the provincialism we use we should probably be careful about that but one of the questions is is the old testament complete they call it the canon we went the that which is part of the inspired word we call the canon or rule or basis and uh is the canon complete the old testament ends with unexplained ceremonies unachieved purposes unappeased longings and unfulfilled prophecies the unexplained ceremonies being the sacrificial rituals were which are specified but we don't fully until later understand why what are they for the feasts of israel are historical and yet they're also prophetic we discover from both whatsoever things are written before time were written for our learning and so on they have unachieved purposes there are covenants that are incomplete some are unconditional and still incomplete it's important to understand that most people today don't and of course unappeased longings nothing more expressive than the book of psalms and the so-called wisdom literature that group of books in the middle and of course unfulfilled prophecies and the key to all of those is a person as a person she said search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and they are they which testify of me and as we go along we're gonna see all kinds of interesting things i'll try to dig out stuff that will hopefully encourage you and excite you about the scripture itself but let's never lose sight of what it's really all about and that's jesus christ the first thing he did after his resurrection ministry wise was to conduct a seven mile bible study on the way to emmaus and what did he do on that bible study it was an old testament bible study beginning at moses and all the prophets he expounded unto them in all the scriptures and things concerning himself every page of the old testament speaks of jesus christ every page we're going to have 60 references in the gospel of ma only matthew bothers making references that doesn't mean there aren't illusions of some kind and the others but the point is matthew has 60 illusions why because he's jewish and his gospel is very jewish we'll get into that but the new testament of course opens with five books just as the old testament does the old testament starts with the torah five by books and the same thing with the new testament we have four gospels in the book of acts and then the bulk of the book is really interpretations explanations your best commentaries consist of 21 epistles 14 ascribed to paul i say it that way because some people bought you know have different views about the book of hebrews i happen to be among those that believe it was also written by paul but that's neither here or there we'll call it pauline in any case and then of course the climactic book in many respects the book of revelation and as most of you all know the answers to most textbooks are in the back and that same thing here that the answers are all in the back okay we are in the middle of the gospels we're picked the first one and let's realize that the old testament was compiled over literally several thousand years the new testament was compiled within one lifetime what many christians don't know and also many seminaries are confused about is that those autographs that is that had written be originals were in place while there were eyewitnesses and the apostles were still alive many people don't realize that we'll get into that a little bit the original the new testament those early days consisted of four gospels luke was in two volumes so there were six you could say think of it as six books the pauline corpus of course that and the other epistles that were as they were written circulated among the churches then collected by the churches the other thing that circulated with them was a copy of the old testament in greek that was translated in greek three centuries before that period and surprisingly most of the quotations in the new testament of the old testament those quotations of the old that are in the new are from the greek translation and that's handy for us because the greek's very precise hebrew is very expressive but it also lends itself to word play and some ambiguities in certain places we had 70 of the experts three centuries before christ's ministry translated into greek we call that the septuagint fancy word for 70. septuagint translation now luke and paul especially rely in fact make allusions to eyewitnesses that were present when their works were published that's important to recognize very important now one of the things you want to be sensitive to as we go through the new testament is things that are omitted in fact they're surprisingly omitted and this is important to understand for example one of the biggest events in christian history was nero's trying to blame them on the burning of roman and he inaugurated these vicious persecutions it's astonishing to realize that with all the comments in the new testament about that kind of thing the illusions at the time were persecutions primarily by the jewish communities the roman persecutions are noticeably not absent from the scripture in fact luke volume 1 and volume 2 volume 2 being a book of acts goes out of its way to make the point that the romans never bothered them nor did they bother the romans that these uprisings that were all through the empire were caused by the jewish communities not by the christians that's basically the underground underlying argument in both the gospel and acts many people believe that luke's gospel were the trial documents that were legally required for an appeal to roam paul's paul's defense anyway that's an omission the execution of james in 62 a.d is a very major event in history it's alluded to in many places including josephus it's not mentioned in the scripture what does that say to you that the new testament documents are written before these events this is a very surprising uh piece of evidence that of early dating the jewish revolt against the romans in 66 a.d that climax in the fall of jerusalem in seven a.d not in the scripture except predictively 38 years before it happened jesus talked about it and of course the destruction of jerusalem in 78 jesus warned them about it so specifically that when there was an opportunity all the christians got out of town over to pella over on the eastern side of the jordan and although over a million people were slaughtered in that siege no christians were according to eusebius but something else we want to touch on is a scrap of matthew's gospel that's gotten a lot of attention among scholars it's called magdalen is one of the uh colleges oxford and the magdalen greek 17 slant p64 is the designation of this segment of greek text of matthew's gospel and it appears to be dated before 66. there's three fragments you see the fragments shown on this slide with both front and back if you will they are papyrus they're a codex and they have that means they're written on front and back which means it is a codex not a scroll scrolls were the old the traditional old testament way that's why we always use the scrolls on our little ideograms here and to remind you it's new testament i always just use a what simulates a piece of element or something the point is codex that's what we would like a notebook it's a book with pages is what's called a codex much more convenient much more they were just coming in during paul's ministry he asked timothy yes timothy reminds timothy to bring him his notebooks he had notebooks as we think of it and so forth we'll talk more about that there's some surprising discoveries about matthew regarding writing but we'll move on these things have about 24 lines they're a segment of matthew 26 verses 23 on the one side and 31 on the other one of the things you want to be aware of is that the text fragment fragmentary as it is is a support of texas receptus it's been very fashionable in recent decades for scholars to poo poo texas receptus and in favor of the alexandrian codices that the westcott and hort documents are what really underlie most of the modern translations but scholars are now beginning to realize that texas receptus is is is emerging as a more reliable basis and this this account is one of the evidences in that direction but there's some advanced technologists this fragment had been found it was stored in in in at oxford but carson thiedi got permission to examine it with some advanced technology a scanning laser microscope which can differentiate between 20 micrometers layers of the papyrus and they can even measure the height and depth of the ink as well as the angle of the stylus used by the scribe and they can even infer whether he was right or left-handed because of this technology but because of this advanced technology what they did he compared this with four other manuscripts and i'll take you through the short course on this and basically he concluded that this is either an original of matthew or a first generation copy and that means it was written while matthew and the disciples were still alive whether it was an original or early generation copy do you follow me that has shattered the views you often hear people you'll find many bible helps argue well they mostly documents generated in the second century a century after the fact no that's not true not not true at all now one of the things that we emphasize in all our studies and i know your regulars are probably tired of me saying this but in case there's newcomers here i want to highlight a basic foundational premise that underlies our entire ministry that you have in your laps 66 separate books we call the bible that were penned by 40 different guys more than 40 different guys in a period spanning virtually 2 000 years get that in your mind and then move on it has an integrated design and i don't mean just thematically concepts and so i'm talking very specifically i'll show you some surprising examples the design anticipates in detail events before they happen which means they not not only is it an integrated design the designer the originator of that design had to be outside the dimensionality of time because he writes history with precision before it happens and so that's the underlying assumption here now our epistemological epistemology is the study of knowledge at scope and limits it's a highly neglected field because most people who get interested in that take it in university in the philosophy department and all they do is spend centuries redefining words rather than getting anywhere epistemology is how do we know anything how do we learn the epistle epistemological approach here is the first step is to establish the integrity of the design one of the things you have to do as we go through any of these books not just matthew any of these books is to gain a respect or an insight into the integrity of the total package not just the gospel of matthew but the full 66 how they all tie together establish the integrity of design every number every place name is there deliberately and once you discover that and you re you realize that the origin or origin of that design had to come from outside time so our first step is to establish the integrity design and then that design establishes the identity of christ christ was not just a great teacher a great influence make your list that the secular world will acknowledge from time to time no he's some he's far more than that and once you discover who he is and he then of course validates the rest that's our epistemologist epistemological approach here because he and then of course authenticates the original if it was one book you'd say that circular reasoning not when it's 66 by 40 different guys over thousands of years you follow on see the difference okay one of the things before we jump into the text itself i want you to acquaint you with some surprising aspects of the text and that is that it has identification also authentication codes and there is in your bible an automatic security monitor it watches over every single letter it never wears out rust has been working faithfully for several thousand years it has the what i would consider the fingerprint signature of the author and uh there is a thing called a signature you and i think of it as a handwriting thing there's also a another kind of signature you can have you can tell certain stars you can sell certain transmitters from a receiver by their signature if you're a radio operator you can you're listening to morse code you often can tell who it is that's sending it to you because you know what they call what the amateur radio guys call his fist he has a stop you can sense the style and so forth that's a signature you can have a signature that's like your pen you can also have a signature like a fingerprint you have a signature that might be a retinal scan there are other ways that are unique to you that can be used for identification there are aspects of this author that is distinctive enough that they can't be can't be counterfeited i'll show you i want to show you those it's non-compromisable it's a design now there are how many have noticed there are sevens in the bible anybody doesn't have his hand up has never read bible right okay they occur in over 600 passages some of them are very overt seven of this and seven of that some of them are structural you have to notice that in in a in a covenant there's seven provisions but you they don't leap out at you any you're looking for them but you always notice they're seven and some are even hidden that you really have to know what you're looking for and i'm going to suggest you that these underlying heptatic signatures heptatic is a fancy word for seven sevenfold signatures now i want you to imagine that you have this assignment you've got a scratch pad in front of you you don't have to literally do this but imagine i was going to give you this assignment i want you to draft up a a family tree and you can do it from fiction for this exercise a family tree father sons okay but what i want you to do when you're through doing filling out this assignment and turning it in when you turn it in i want the number of words that you've used to be divisible by set by divisible by seven exactly in other words the number of words you've got if divided by seven has no remainder seven exactly you understand what i'm saying that means by the way if you're just doing this randomly you've got six chances of losing and one of winning because for every group of numbers only one one group in seven will will be even you follow me okay i want the number of letters you use if i count them all up divide by seven it comes out even how many feel you can do it so far you're giving up already how many how many could do it with how many could do it if just the words were the criteria would with english it's easy you can fudge a word and you count them up and oh i need an extra word you can fudge it in right but now the letters that's a little tricky right you still could do it probably but it takes a little more effort so you're adding constraints in a random sense if i've got two two seven constraints seven each then i have only one chance in 49 of winning you follow me seven squared okay but i want the number of vowels the number of consonants also be divisible by seven getting a little pinched now huh a little tighter okay i'm not through i want the number of words that begin with a vowel divisible by seven and then of course the other if everything else is met then they're the the constants will be follow okay the number of words that occur more than once did anybody still playing those that occur in more than one form divisible by seven only one form divisible by seven the number of nouns shall be divisible by seven well that doesn't sound so hard only seven words will not be nouns whoops start to pinch a little bit number of names shall be divisible by seven and only seven other kinds of nouns be permitted the number of male names shall be seven the number of generations now you've probably guessed what i've done here i want you to appreciate though how difficult it would be for you to do this by hand okay this of course is the genealogy of jesus christ as found in the first 11 verses of matthew that's not all these numbers happen to be taken from that group and by the way we're not talking about english which is flexible we're talking about greek where every verb has to meet five conditions not just past present future that's just one of five different kinds of constraints on each verb in greek it's precise which makes it very expressive very very scientific but it also makes it very difficult to play games it's in greek now it's good it gets worse both hebrew and greek they didn't have numbers we were used to arabic numbers in our culture but both greek and hebrew used the letters for numbers each letter of the each of the 22 letters in hebrew and each of the 24 letters in greek had a numerical value this happens to be those you don't have to memorize and we're not going to have that kind of but that means every word if you take the letters the number the value of those letters each word has a value a numerical value every sentence says the first 11 verses have a vocabulary of 72 words the numerical value of those letters when added up is also a multiple of seven exactly it happens to add up to 42 364. but if you divide that by seven it comes out even that should make you uncomfortable the likelihood of that happening is very small if you take the groups of letters each of those groups as they're used in the vocabulary also are exact multiple of seven think about the planning that had to go into that so the vocabulary using is also starting to be constrained seven each one seven multiplied by multiply by seven now the remainder of chapter one now what i've told you so far you may remember from learning the bible in 24 hours we use it several places just to get a warm up and this sort of thing but if you take the rest of chapter one in matthew there's 161 words left they're also multiple of seven they have 105 different forms that's a multiple of seven exactly the 77 the rest of the the vocabulary 77 words that's also a multiple of seven obviously within this chapter the angel is going to speak if you take the words of the angel he has 28 words in his vocabulary it's a multiple of seven exactly it has a geometrical value of uh that's divisible that's a multiple seven exactly there are 35 different forms he uses that's also a multiple of seven exactly and the the uh geometrical value of those words are also multiple seven okay always a multiple seven it's more complicated this i'm sparing you the fact that the angel speaks in rings and there's in encircling rings of seven if you analyze the structure but let's move on in chapter 2 the childhood of christ the vocabulary is again 161 uh different words multiple of seven the number of letters in that chapter is this is all in the greek of course multiple seven exactly and there's the different forms are multiple seven exactly and the values again geometrical values are multiple seven that astounds me it's one thing to play around with the number of words even the letters but to get the values to add up it's analogous to my fi adding up the ages of everybody in this audience and summing it and coming out to a multiple of seven exactly how do you engineer that the likelihood is obviously you know rare so and by the way if you take the four different divisions of this chapter and there's three different speakers between angel joseph and so forth they all have similar package structures always a multiple of seven if you have two constraints it's it's one chance at 49 of winning 48 losing right if you have three constraints simultaneously operating it's seven cubed four it's you have one chance in 2407 of getting it correct yeah just by accident by you know by by randomness if you have nine rules and that's what i gave you in the first little bit that's one chance in 40 million of it coming out by chance okay would you like to try doing that if you played my little game well you've got uh if you work eight hours a day 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year that seems reasonable eight hours a day you know 40 hours a week that is give you a couple give your weekends off 50 weeks a year that means there's 2 000 man hours per excuse me person hours girls sorry um per year and uh or 120 000 minutes per year you to get seven to nine chances your chance of getting any specific sequence in that would be one chance in 40 but more than 40 million so at if you can do if it takes you 10 minutes per draft you do one of these and try it and turn it in if you can do one every 10 minutes you can do it knock this off in about 3 362 years which is a crude way of pointing out that it's not likely to happen except by design you follow me okay it gets worse gang there are examples that we're going to talk about where we're not talking about nine rules we're going to talk about 34 rules when you get to especially the gospel of mark there's a lot of debate about the last 12 verses of mark and one of the astonishing discoveries is that it has heptatic structures that comply over in fact over 70 constraints we're just taking half of those here and they turn out to be a very big number for 34 constraints you're talking about 5 times 10 to the 28th tries there are about 3 times 10 to the 7th seconds per year let's assume you could try 400 million per second by using a super computer you program a computer to generate these drafts if you had if you've got four times 1080 tries per second it would still take over four million computer years so if you had a million super computers that uh you take about another four million years using them again just to get i want you get the used to recognize that's what we call design in contrast to randomness someone designed this did it deliberately and we're obviously studying the discoveries of dr ivan panen his books are well distributed you can get your hands on if you're interested he's born in russia in 1855 he got exiled in an early age got involved with a plot against the czar so he emigrated to germany and then to the united states he graduated from harvard in 1882 and discovered jesus christ now every one of us this room that has discovered christ is the result of a miracle but if you've got a phd in mathematics from harvard that's even a bigger miracle right but he discovered after he became a christian he discovered what's now known as the heptatic structures that underlie the biblical text he discovered that in 1890 he committed the next 50 years of his life generating over 43 000 pages of discoveries very tedious reading this stuff is tough to go through because it's tedious tough work he didn't have a computer to help me he's doing this manually but his discoveries are astonishing and that what that's obviously what we're sharing here and you can check them out and they do check out by the way and he went to the lord in 1942 and i do suspect that the lord said well done good and faithful servant now the comprehensive i want to carry this is this step further the new testament consists of 27 books so there's a word that opens the book and there's a word that closes the book right so if you've got 27 books with the front and end you have 54 words right if you take the total new testament the vocabulary of the that's that of all the first and last words put together they're 28 different words it's a multiple of seven exactly oh the ones in the gospels it's also seven different words open and close the gospels again the multiple seven exactly if you take the geometrical value of that it also is a multiple of seven exactly the shortest word is a single letter it has it happens to have a value of 70 that's multiple of 7 obviously the value of the longest word has a value of 1512 which happens seven times six times six times six the word is apocalypses i think that's kind of interesting now this is the one of all of these that blows me away but you got to think it through the vocabulary of matthew as as evidenced by his gospel take all the words there and make make a list of the different words you'll discover that the vocabulary that is unique to matthew these are words that only you'll only find in matthew you don't find anywhere else in the new testament the vocabulary is unique that matthew occurs 42 times that's a multiple seven exactly and there are 126 letters represented by this vocabulary that's unique to him it's mobile of seven now let's stop and think for a second the only thing that this vocabulary i'm talking about has inc that's distinctive is that none of the other writers there's seven other writers there's eight all together seven other writers don't use those words if you want to assume this happened accidentally that's mathematically disputable if you say well no it was somebody has just been very very clever here great no problem how did he do this there's only two ways he had to get the other eight seven guys all eight guys sat down and they agreed not to use those 42 words the other seven how many think that happened i don't think so or you can use this feature as an argument that matthew had to have written his last how else could he organize this the only way he could make this happen if it's deliberate on his part is to have all the other writings in front of him how many think that happened but see you could use this as an argument that matthew wrote his book last except the problem is he said either he had prior agreement with everybody or his gospel written last unique to matthew well the gospel of matthew has this characteristic so does the gospel of mark if you take the vocabulary that mark or peter if you will have for mark's gospel it's a number of words number of letters that are a multiple of seven exactly so that proves that mark must have written last except the same thing's true of luke the vocabulary in the gospel of luke and acts put together is unique the the the the vocabulary unique is a multiple of seven exactly so is john it was each one of these was written last whoops so is peter james jude and paul each one must have been written last because each one has a vocabulary that's distinctive to it that's a mold of seven exactly what's what's the when you start to think about this you begin to realize there's no way that this could have been cleverly engineered because these guys are writing at different times under different circumstances you follow me doesn't compute some of these clusters of seven bridge the old new testament the term hallelujah occurs 24 times in the old testament four times in the book of revelation or the new testament 24 plus four is 28 a multiple of seven exactly hosanna shepherd there's a whole list of these i just put some of them on here that jehovah's abioth is uh 285 times in the old testament twice in the new testament but whatever the numbers are it's always a multiple of seven if you take the old and the new testament it's one book one book wow is right when you begin to when you begin to embrace this we don't understand what this is really saying it gives you an awe and a respect for the bible that is shared by no other book on the planet earth it is supernatural in its origin always multiples of seven well we're going to get into a number of things in matthew that are unique to matthew besides vocabulary there are four events in the next chapter the visit of the magi the massacre of bethlehem the flight to egypt the return of nazareth that is only in the book of matthew there are ten parables that are unique to matthew there are many parables that are common to several but these ten you'll only find in the gospel of matthew there are two miracles you won't find anywhere else the two blind men that are healed in chapter 20 and the coin and the fish's mouth thing with peter and all that in chapter 17. there are nine special discourses they're very extensive in matthew now we'll explain how we know this when we get to chapter nine but do you know why these discourses are so thorough in the book of matthew because matthew took shorthand it's a little item for your weekly bible study group how do we know that matthew took shorthand he was a customs official it was required and we'll explain how we know that in the more background when we get to chapter nine and we'll go through it twice but he we we do have good reason to believe see because there was a requirement for the job they didn't have copiers or carbon paper they be able to write all commercial transactions had to be written so there was a there was a form of shorthand skill it's alluded to uh in proverbs 20 45 verse 1 and elsewhere um and we'll get into that when the time comes but anyway if you take the discourses out of matthew it's shorter than any of the gospels the reason it's longer than most of it's got all this extensive uh stuff because he apparently just he took it down which is kind of interesting and there's a number of events even in the final week of christ there's a number of things that are distinctive or unique to the gospel of matthew we'll get through that of course as we get there so let's jump in chapter one good place to start and of course where what better place to start in the birth of jesus christ matthew chapter one verses one two and three the book of the generation of jesus christ the son of david the son of abraham then he starts his family tree from as any jew would he starts with abraham abraham he got isaac isaac we got jacob jacob he got uh judas and his brethren and judas begat faris and azara of pamar and phara has begot estrom and estrang begot abram and he's on we're on our way one of the things that you want to understand is the design of the four gospels the four gospels why do we have four gospels well we got it in quadraphonic if you will we have matthew mark and luke the first thing is matthew is jewish his mission statement is to present jesus christ as the lion of the tribe of judah the meshich nageed the messiah the king he's jewish he's he's the consummation of the jewish hope of a messiah mark's a different has a different emphasis he presents jesus christ as god's special suffering servant luke is a doctor and a gentile he's not that focusing on the jewish history here he's interested in the humanity this is god become man and so he's the son of man is the astonishing thing to luke and he focuses on his humanity and john is yet different than the first three his emphasis is jesus christ as the son of god people say jesus never said he the son of god have never read the gospel of john among other things now because these are the primary mission statements the genealogies in them reflect that mark is is presenting him as a servant so he's not interested in pedigree you're not concerned about a pedigree of a servant so it's the one of the four that has no genealogy matthew is presenting him as the jewish messiah so he naturally starts with abraham and demonstrate that he's the the the jesus the son of david that's the main thing for him if you will the legal the legal claim to the throne luke's a different kind of guy he's interested in the fact that he's human and he starts with adam and will we'll explore some fascinating differences between those two genealogies there is a genealogy in john most people don't recognize it the first three verses of john are the genealogy of the pre-existent one and you can you can technically call it genealogy the pre-existing one but let's take a look at these genealogies luke starts with adam and most of you may be familiar with this but i thought at least remind you again that the the the problem with those first ten names is they're not translated and uh in our materials and in the genesis commentary and also in our learn the bible 24 hour package and so forth we go through what the tr what those word what the what those hebrew words mean that make up those names and we discover that there's a hidden message in that genealogy that adam of course means man seth turns out to mean appointed enosh is mortal kinan means sorrow mahalalel means the blessed god mahal el the blessed god of the praised god yahred is a verb meaning shall come down enoch is a text is a teaching is a academic term meaning teaching or commencement methuselah comes from two roots his uh mooth which is his death occurs 125 times the old testament and shellac shall shall bring his death shall bring it's a prophecy that as long as he that was given to enoch who named him as long as he's alive the judgment of the flood would be withheld and of course the year that methuselah dies is the year the flood comes and then lamech means despairing and noah means comfort or rest but when you put these together let's read it in english in in hebrew it'd be adam seth enosh kenan mahalalel methuselah noah in english man's appointed mortal sorrow the blessed god shall come down teaching that his death whose death god's death his death shall bring the despairing comfort of rest astonishing astonishing um little message tucked away in the first ten names a lot of implications of this not the least of which is there's no way you'll ever convince me that a group of jewish rabbis can try to hide a summary of the christian gospel in a genealogy in the torah no way but let's move on as we go through the continuing verse from verse three on iran beget a minidab a minidab gotten us on nasa and we got solomon solomon begot buys boaz as we would say and we got obed of ruth and oh but begot jesse jesse begot david the king and david the king begot solomon of her that had been the wife of uriah i want to call your attention to this part of the genealogy salmon begotten boaz of rehab now here's one of the places where a woman's name occurs in a genealogy there's five names in the genealogy women's names and this of course is ambush begat obed of ruth and obed begot jesse there's two women there rekhab and ruth oh but we got jesse and by the way they both are probably gentile i say probably because rehab may be a descendant from zaren and that's a whole she was a moabitus but she may have had lineage from one of the two one of the twins from according to the mishnah is not from the bible but there's there's some belief of that anyway and of course jesse begot david the king i want to talk a little bit about ruth the end of ruth there's a genealogy a pen to the book of ruth this is the days of the judges in fact there's a genealogy tucked away in genesis 38 that may surprise you now matthew matthew takes his gospel a little differently he takes it abram to david abram isaac jacob judah perez hezron and so on right down to david now luke of course fills and when you get to luke chapter 3 he doesn't end with noah he continues and goes through sham right on to uh through terra when he when luke gets to abraham obviously luke and matthew are identical between abram and david with me so far okay now and of course david's the point that's this the whole point that matthew's making is that it is to prove that the messiah would be the son of david but i want you to remember these last four names boaz obed jessie and david david and we're going to be looking at that here just briefly the book of ruth was written in the days in the days of judges it's the ultimate love story little four chapter book that you must read if you're going to understand revelation chapter 5. it's very venerated even in secular colleges as a piece of literature it's often taught in literature as an elegant love story but it's also profound at both a personal and also a prophetic level very worth your studies one of the most significant books in the bible for the church that may shock you that because the church is not in the old testament they tell us and yet you'll discover it's very important because it among other things exemplifies the role of what we call the kinsmen redeemer the goal it's essential prerequisite to revelation 5 of course but something that's interesting as you get into all of this you'll discover that in these genealogies the tenth man is always relevant noah abraham and boaz are each the tenth in the line kind of interesting but there's a very strange prophecy that occurs at the last of the book of ruth the plot ruth has been redeemed uh by boaz and uh he's the hero of the peace by his act of redemption naomi has gotten back to the land and ruth a gentile gentile is taken as boaz to as as his wife and uh now it's interesting at the celebration scene the last few verses of the book they're celebrating the wedding of boaz and ruth ruth being a gentile boaz being the kinsman redeemer you get to begin to see how this is modeling something but there's someone proposes what sounds like a toast he said let thy house be like ferez whom tamar bear unto judah of the seed which the lord shall give thee of this woman young woman now it sounds elegant unless you know what it's talking about if if someone say that at your wedding and say same to you fella because uh faires was an illegitimate son that tamar tricked judah as if she was a prostitute he was the father unknowingly and it's a very sordid tale stuck in genesis between 37 and 39 34 on you have joseph his incredible story of joseph and you all know the story of joseph it's incredible story but right in the middle of this you've got this chapter stuck in with this sordid tale of judith judah and tamar and how she contrives to have a child and so forth and the the key to this is that a bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the lord even to his tenth generation from that's in the torah and so if you take a look at perez's genealogy the 10th generation after paris is david so this little toast is actually a prophecy it's a prophecy of the messianic line climactic climacting of course in david and uh these four names are also encrypted in the book of genesis chapter 38 the same chapter that we're talking about chapter 38 due to sin with tamar came to pass that time judah went down from his brethren and turned into a certain dolomite whose name was hyrah and judah saw there a daughter of a certain canaanite whose name was shua and he took her and went into her and she conceived and bear a son and he called his name er or you don't want to have a name like that for a lot of reason and she conceived again bear's son called his name onan she can see again conceived and bear a son called his name shayla and he was at kisab where she buried him and judah took a wife for ur his firstborn whose name was tamar where judah's firstborn was wicked in the sight of the lord and the lord slew him so ur is out of the picture so judah said unto onan go in unto thy brother's wife and marry her and raise up seed to thy brother that was required that was an uh not a hard obligation but it is it was uh what they call a level right marriage the brother's obligation was to do that he didn't have to if he didn't want to but that was what he was expected to do online knew that the seed would not be his it came to pass when he went unto his brother's wife he spilled it on this ground lest he should give seed to his brother and the thing which he did displeased the lord wherefore he slew him also the lord seemed to be taking these guys out when he was displeased but there's two two guys now that are wiped out uh for to be uh husbands to temar this is called the levirite marriage the from levier the husband's brother is what it comes from it's codified the torah in deuteronomy 25 it's the role of the the uh the goal is also in in the uh um in the picture to understand the book of ruth and the ultimate redemption is thus modeled and that occurs in revelation chapter five but let's move on with the story then then judah said to tamar's daughter-in-law remain a widow at their father's house he has a third son that he could give him but he's just lost two sons and this thing you know somehow it isn't working so he just uh uh declines to give tamar uh one of the sons remain a widow of the father's house till shalom thy son be grown for he said lest per adventure he died also and his brethren did and tamar went and dwelt in her father's house and in the process of time the daughter of shua judah's wife died and judah was comforted he went up into a sheepshears to timnath he and his friend hira the delamine so he's on the prowl okay i was told tamar saying behold thy father-in-law go with up to tim and have to share sheep so she put on she put her widow's garments for off her covered her with a veil which apparently was the style for prostitutes in those days by the way and wrapped herself and sat in an open place which is by the way to tim nathan for she saw that sheila was grown and she was not given unto him to wife and it's going to turn out that that abuse by judah is more serious than hers as you'll see in a minute it's hard for us to get that picture at first when judah saw her he thought her to be a harlot because she had covered her face he turned into her by the way and said go i pray thee and let me come in unto thee for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law in others and she said what will thou give me that thou mayest come in unto me he said i will send thee a kid from the flock she said what will thou give me for a pledge till i'll send it this gal wasn't born yesterday they said what pledge shall i give thee and she said thy signet thy bracelets and thy staff at his nine hand and he gave it to her and came in unto her and she conceived by him she arose and went away and laid by her veil from her and put on the garments of her widowhood judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend of dolomite to receive his pledge from the woman's hand but found her not he asked the men of the place saying where's the heart that was opening by the wayside and they said there was no heart in this place you turned to judah and said i cannot find her and also the man in the place said there was no harlot in this place judah said let her let her take it to her lest we be shamed behold i sent this kid from but and thou has not found her it came to pass about three months after that it was told judah is saying tamar thy daughter-in-law have played the harlot and also behold she is with child by whoredom jesus said bring her forth and let her be burnt yeah right when she was brought forth she sent to her father-in-law saying by the man whose these are am i with child and she said to sir i pray that whose are these the cygnet and bracelets and staff can you see the scene and judah acknowledged them and said she hath been more righteous than i because that i gave her not to sheila my son and he knew her again no more in other words not saying that what she did was all right but it was essential to continue the messianic line strangely enough they didn't know that but that's what's going to turn out that's why she's in the genealogy it came past the time of her travail that the whole twins were in her womb came to pass when she traveled that one put out his hand and the midwife took and bound upon his head a scarlet thread saying this came out first it came to pass as he drew back his hand that behold his brother came out and she said how hast thou broken forth this breach be upon me therefore his name is called perez which means breach and afterward came out his brother that had the scar to put up on his hand and his name was called zara and zara sort of disappears from history but there there are there in the mishnah they suspect that his descendants may in fact lead to rehab that rehab while she was a moabitess or a amorite may have had lineage from zero but that's incidental now i want to show you something the reason i got into this was for two reasons to explain something that's impo has more importance than it sounds like at first but secondly in the text of genesis 38 recognize this is the book of moses first book of the torah you discover letters that are separated by 49 spaces seven squared that happen to spell boaz okay no big deal that could be just a statistical oddity but then you find another three letters 49 letter intervals that spell ruth then you find again three letters separated by 49 letters that spell obed and then you find again three letters separated 49 letters apart yeshe which we call jessie and then you find another 40 another three letters 49 letters apart that spell david now any one of these you could say well that's just statistics but wait a minute you now have four names and the separation is always 49 7 squared you're with me so far and they are in chronological order how did moses let's assume he was clever enough to tuck this in there somehow how would moses have known this we're talking the days of moses afterwards comes joshua then the book of judges and it's in the book of ruth then samuel long before david interesting anyway jesse we got david the king and david the king begot solomon of her that had been the wife of uriah now here's an interesting thing who is alluded to here bathsheba but she's not mentioned by name they're no secret but it's as if the holy spirit is pinning the rose on david it was david's sin that doesn't mean she's innocent don't misunderstand me but clearly the ascription here is to uh it was really david's sin and you get a hint of this in the last chapter of the book of proverbs which is basically bathsheba's advice to her son who recognizes in him some of the same traits that she saw in david and you'll get a lot more of proverbs 31 if you really understand who's doing the speaking there solomon we got robuon and robo begotte we got assa and asabi got joseph hat and joshua begot joram except he didn't there are three guys missing here and we'll talk about those three guys that are not here um shortly jeremy got usaiah and azaya begot jotham and joffman begat echas begot josiah now the three guys that are missing there's a guy named a heziah and joash and amaziah these three guys since they'd gotten into idolatry were slaughtered as i was slain by jehu in second kings nine joash was slain by a servant on that mission second kings 12 and amaziah was slain by the people of jerusalem all in cases for their idolatry and leading the nation in idolatry and what does the torah say about idolatry the lord will not spare him but then the anger of the lord his jealousy shall smoke against that man this in deuteronomy 29 and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him and the lord shall what blot out his name from under heaven so the record is in there is what they did but they're not they're blotted out of the genealogy and if you've if you ever read matthew carefully he says that generations from the sky to that guy are 14 generations no they're 17 there's three that don't show up because they've been blotted out josiah begat zechanias and his brethren he gets it gets more complicated here josiah begat jeremiah's and his brethren and about the time that they were carried into babylon and after they were brought to babylon jeremiah begot salafiel and salthill begot zerebel so jaconiah did not begot in the sense of give birth to selefiel you'll understand the complication here that astonishes me why most most people haven't done their homework bear with me it's important because you'll find many bible helps that say gee there must be a copyist error they they haven't done their homework it turns out basically there is a very key verse you will want to write down in jeremiah chapter 22 verse 30 the last verse of that chapter by the time you get to jaconiah who's also called jihad chin by the time you get there things have really gotten bad the northern kingdom went from bad to worse it's gone history the southern kingdom does a little better here and there but it also is downhill by the the only reason they don't get wept out is because of god's commitment to david but in any case by time you get jeconiah god is so fed up with jehoniah he pronounces a blood curse on him jeremiah 22 30 thus saith the lord write ye this man childless a man that shall not prosper in his days for no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of david and ruling anymore in judah and every time i consider this i always visualize in the councils of satan that they must have had a party because certainly from their point of view god shot himself in the foot here because god is committed to having a messiah from the line of david but now the line of david has a blood curse on the royal line as you ponder that i always visualize god so attorney of the angels saying watch this one okay and we'll see that we're going to come to that jaconiah sometimes canaan sometimes called jihad chins let's talk about the house of david matthew of course when he gets to david takes his genealogy down through the first surviving son of bathsheba by the name of solomon down through rehoboam right on through these guys down to josiah and then he goes down to jahayakim and jihya chin and eventually down to joseph who is the legal father but not the blood father of jesus christ right and by the way jeremiah 22 30 is your verse if you're ever talking to a serious rabbi ask him how are you going to get a messiah now there's a blood curse on the royal line and the only conclusion he can come to if he's intellectually honest is it requires a virgin birth you have a hammerlock on any competent old testament scholar with jeremiah 22 30. let's move on luke when he gets to david he does a strange thing he doesn't go through solomon he goes through another son of david he had many sons they're listed in the scripture not all of them but there's plenty of enlisted he comes to nathan not the prophet nathan the son named nathan and he you come down through this and he comes down to heli who who is the father-in-law of jake of joseph it's mary's father and i'll show you that in a minute but there's more problems here before we're all through azerbaij we we go through all of these names there will be about abide by we've got el akim and la qiyama ezra and azer we got sadaq and sadiq we got akam and how can we got ellywood eliot we got eliezer and elias we got nathan and nathan we got jacob and jacob he got joseph the husband of mary of whom was born jesus who is called christ you following that carefully okay one of the things you need to understand if you're serious about on any of this is to understand a very peculiar exception that's noted in the torah to a guy by the name of zella fahad zelifah had no sons and only daughters five daughters and when moses is dealing with inheritance he comes to moses and says i've got a problem i've got five daughters how can they inherit anything it's because it always goes through the mail moses doesn't jump to conclusions he prayed about it went to the lord the lord said make an exception so he does when you get to the book of joshua we get the land these daughters come to joshua and say when they get ready after they conquer this you know the seven year war they got rid of they they divide the land these daughters come to joshua and say look check check the record you'll discover we have an exception if they marry within the tribe they're allowed to inherit great there's a footnote most people don't understand what happened how did you administer that the father of the bride adopted the husband as his son that's the way they handled the inheritance and that's in the scripture by the way the torah it's an exception of the rules of inheritance it was requested of moses in numbers 27 it's granted by joshua in fact then in joshua 17. the husband is adopted as the father of a bride you have to dig to find that out in ezra 2 and nehemiah 7 and a number of other places i think it was ci scofield not in his bible and some other writings he was the first that i can find that first recognized that the claims of jesus christ hang on this exception this anticipates the lineage of jesus christ because it's by it's by this that jesus christ claims has acclaimed to the throne of david both through joseph and also through the bloodline but without the blood curse and by the way in luke 3 23 joseph is the son-in-law of eli the word in the greek is nomizo which means reckoned as by law he's a son reckoned as by law now this comes up in another place there's another place that people seem to miss that anyway the virgin birth let's this let's make it make a couple of comments about this it was first hinted at in the garden of eden when god speaks of the redemption will come by the seed of the woman that's a contradiction in biology let alone grammar the seed of the woman it was prophesied by isaiah a virgin shall conceive and bring forth the son and and of course it's required by the blood curse on the royal line uh that was jeremiah 22 30. but let's continue here so so all the generations from abraham to david are 14 generations from david until they're carrying away into babylon they're 14 generations and the carrying away the babylon to christ to fourteen generations that sounds pretty good but it ain't quite clear clearly from abraham to david are fourteen that's not a problem you can count them the real problem comes on the other line because you've got this is the the whole rendering if you will um from post david that is from solomon to the to the captivity was 14 generations the problem is there's 17 names there and the other one is 14 that's okay but we have a heziah joash amaziah that was killed because of idolatry so they are literally blotted out of matthew's account you won't find them in matthew's record you have to go back to chronicles and to chase that down on the other side of the line here we've got joha kim and jai chin now the jihadic chin that is jaconiah same name there's a curse the blood the the house of david can't continue from him it sort of doesn't matter they're in babylon captivity what happens when they come back from captivity well apparently in the line here is salafiel and zerubbabel well these two guys are not blood descendants of jahayakim i assume that saladil married a daughter of jehaya chin okay and was adopted by him he was an adopted son in what i'm suggesting we do find him in luke's line and that causes a lot of confusion because these two genealogies are different one it happens that you've got two people linked here because they're not bloodline they're they're son-in-law type relationships you follow me once you understand that when they come back from babylon who's how does the line of david continue through solitude zarbol and so forth but that line continues in the mail line down to joseph but that's scaring the the blood curse the the son-in-law line comes down to mary and jake and joseph was mary's was a heli son-in-law you're with me anyway should help clear up that confusion but i want you to notice the precision with which god deals with these these problems get resolved because of this he's always ahead of him let's move on now the birth of jesus christ was on this wise when as his mother mary was espoused at joseph before they came together she was found with the child of the holy ghost and joseph her husband being a just man and not going to make her a public example was mine to put her away privately you know the story and while he thought on these things behold an angel of the lord appeared unto him in a dream saying joseph thou son of david fear not to take unto thee mary thy wife for that which is conceived in here is of the holy ghost that she shall bring forth the son and shall call his name jesus for he shall save his people from his sins oh yeshua in the hebrew jesus is the the greco adjustment now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which is spoken about of the lord by the prophet saying behold a virgin shall shall be with child and shall bring forth his son and shall call his name emmanuel which is being interpreted it's god with us this is matthew's style again and again and again he'll actually quote the verse that's being fulfilled from the old testament he's the only one that does it the four gospels moreover the lord spake again unto as saying this is a quote from isaiah 7 and i want to get you get to the context here ask thee a sign of the lord thy god ask it either the depth or the height above but he has said i will not ask neither will i tempt the lord in other words he he won't presume that he said hear me now house of david and that's in the plural by the way it's to the house of david is it a small thing for you to wear a man but will he will ye weary my god also in other words god is asking him to put him to the task and he declines therefore the lord himself shall give you a sign behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name emmanuel you all know this from the from from uh it's often repeated but i want you to answer the word a lot of people make there's a lot of confusion about the word alma in the hebrew but the best jewish translators three centuries before christ's ministry translated this into greek with with the the greek term which is not ambiguous it is a virgin we won't spend time with that's what joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel lord has bitten them and took him took unto him his wife and were not until she had brought forth her first born son and called his name yeshua or jesus the pre-existent one the word tabernacled among us and we beheld his glory the glories of the only begotten father full of grace and truth in revelation 19 i saw heaven open and behold a white horse and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true and in righteousness be both death judge and make war there's clothes with the vesture dipped in blood and his name is called the word of god this is who we're talking about absolutely god and absolutely man in one in one being astonishing the coming one sometimes called the second adam a prophet like moses a priest like melchizedek a champion like joshua an offering like isaac a king like david a wise counselor like solomon and was beloved rejected an exalted son like joseph the coming one that's who we're having to deal with an integrated sign we have 66 books by pen by four different guys over several thousand years in which the design every detail even the letters and the structures hidden underneath the text demonstrate premeditation planning that goes far beyond any lifetime why do we accept the bible because of the authentication of christ through it over 300 detail specifications the crucifixion was not a tragedy it was an achievement that fulfilled hundreds of specific specifications the the precise time of it was predicted five centuries in advance now once you understand who christ is he then authenticates the torah and the various elements daniel and the rest integrated design that transcends the time dimension as i say we establish the integrity of the design that establishes the identity of jesus christ who then of course authenticates the beginning he would be born of a virgin isaiah said and he was matthew 1. he would be born in bethlehem micah says and he was he was taken out of egypt and he was we'll come to that next chapter he would heal the sick and make people whole is what isaiah said and he did the scripture says he would be crucified in fact it sounds like it was written first person singular as he hung on the cross psalm 22 and he was he would die for our sins and he did and be raised from the dead and he was each one of these things laid out in advance now chapter two has the visit of the magi the massacre there's a lot of surprises in chapter two despite how familiar you may think you are with the story so for next time read matthew chapter two and be thinking about these questions who were the magi three guys on camels carrying gifts no something far that may surprise you if you don't know the background why was all the city troubled when they arrived this wasn't just some dignitary see herod this shook up the whole city of jerusalem when they arrived why and what do we know about jesus sojourn in egypt they go down to egypt for a while the hair does it is there any evidence of that do you know anything about it we'll show you some souvenirs why did the priests march through the streets of jerusalem and sackcloth in 7 a.d in 780 it's a matter of record in the talmud that the priests put on sackcloth much around the city because the word of god they believed was broken what's going on what's all that about check next time let's stand for a closing word of prayer let's borrow our hearts father we just we celebrate and thank you for the gift of your son on our behalf as we begin to understand what you've done we're stunned we're awed we it's hard to take it all in how your planning on our behalf started before the foundation of the world how you had each of us on your heart as paul reminds us in ephesians 1. we thank you father that you have gone to such extremes simply that we might have access to you that we might have life not just here and now but throughout eternity oh father we just thank you for this gift we ask you father through your holy spirit to help us understand more of it help us to more fully appreciate what you've done for us and what you would have in response in return we we just come before you father thanking you for your word and this time together we would pray that you would indeed increase in each of us a new passion a new hunger a new appetite for your word that we might grow in grace and the knowledge of the coming one oh we thank you for him we thank you for your word and we thank you for the opportunities you put before us we pray father you would make us more effective stewards of those opportunities as we commit ourselves right now before you without any reservation in the name of yeshua our lord and savior jesus christ amen [Music] you

Channel: Awaken Humanity

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Keywords: Gospel of Matthew, Matthew, Chuck Missler, New Testament

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Length: 74min 24sec (4464 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020