0:00
Flowing ad bunted on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend.
0:05
And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.
0:09
I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow.
0:15
Yeah, it wasn't.
0:17
Cut the bullspend.
0:18
LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more.
0:21
Advertise on LinkedIn.
0:23
Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit go to linkedin.com/campaign
0:27
terms and conditions apply.
0:50
This is Undaunted Life Man's Podcast, I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
0:56
Welcome back to the Forging Table, the mission of Undaunted Life is equipping men to push
1:00
back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:05
At the Forging Table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual resilience
1:08
by digging into God's Word and we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey
1:12
with us.
1:13
That's Matt, that's Eric.
1:14
That's Caleb.
1:15
Guys, we've made it.
1:16
We are finally here.
1:17
We are digging into a gospel and if you guys didn't hear the announcement last week because
1:20
you skipped out on the end of the episode because you just couldn't wait to get to the next
1:24
thing in your life.
1:25
We were talking about how we're finally going to dig into a gospel.
1:28
We're digging into Matthew and I mean, we're going to be in Matthew until next, until the
1:32
Easter of next year guys and so on Easter of 2024, that's when we're going to end with
1:37
talking about the resurrection on Resurrection Day, so we're going to spend a lot of time
1:41
in this and so for all of you guys, as we go along through these, we're going to talk
1:46
about the different resources we're using to study Matthew, the different concordances
1:51
or different study Bibles and things like that, but we're going to be digging in.
1:55
We're digging in deep.
1:56
We're going to be talking about the gospel.
1:57
We're going to spend a lot of time talking about Jesus to set up Matthew from the beginning.
2:02
The audience is for Jews and Gentiles, but what most people consider is this is mainly
2:08
written for Jews and the reason why people say that is because the Book of Matthew has
2:12
a bunch of references to the Old Testament and they think that Matthew wrote it for a largely
2:17
Jewish audience to help them in their conversion to Christianity.
2:22
This is written 400 years after the last book of the Old Testament, which would be Malachi,
2:27
so just think about how Malachi ends and just think about being a people group that waits
2:31
400 years before they hear from God again.
2:34
This is one of the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke and synoptic is basically
2:39
just sharing or presenting with a common view.
2:42
That's why those are considered together and John's considered a different category.
2:47
Most people assume that much of this gospel is coming from Mark where a lot of the stuff
2:52
you see in Luke and in Matthew comes from Mark.
2:55
There are some different reasons for that and different theories for why that is.
3:01
One thing that I won't really get into is the dating of this book because if you do any
3:05
pre-research on the Book of Matthew, if you go to different study Bibles or different,
3:11
there are so many different arguments for an AD 70 is kind of the dividing point whenever
3:17
the Romans destroyed the temple.
3:19
A lot of people think that this happened before AD 70.
3:22
A lot of people think that this happened after AD 70.
3:24
They all have their reasons for that.
3:26
We don't exactly know when this was written down.
3:30
But one thing, and then I want to get any other details from you guys that you found
3:34
in your pre-research, there was something I didn't really realize.
3:38
There was a North South divide in the Kingdom of Israel that isn't really talked about a
3:44
lot.
3:45
A lot of churches don't really cover this.
3:46
But Jesus was in Galilee for much of his ministry, which is in the North and people from the
3:52
South part of the Empire, where Jerusalem was, they did not have a high opinion of Northerners.
4:00
You might think of it today as maybe somebody that's grown up in Boston and went to private
4:07
school and comes from this opulent family full of money.
4:11
They look at people from rural Mississippi.
4:14
They just look at them and like, "Oh, those red nicks, those simple tins," like that type
4:17
of thing.
4:18
It's similar to what was happening then.
4:21
That has kind of a corollary that drives certainly through Matthew 1, but through the rest of
4:25
Matthew as well.
4:27
Before we dig into the first chunk of Matthew, was there anything else in terms of set up
4:30
that you think would be important to discuss?
4:32
I think just talking about the intertestimonial or the time between the last book of the Old
4:40
Testament and the New Testament, there are lots of world events happening.
4:45
Alexander the Great's Kingdom rises and falls in those 400 years.
4:51
What's interesting and we don't really get to see a lot of it.
4:54
We have to go find it or look for it is Daniel, when he's giving the prophecies of the kingdoms
5:00
that will come, the panther with four horns is speaking specifically about Alexander the
5:07
Great.
5:10
It's interesting to see how that played out in real life and God used that and set that
5:15
up.
5:17
The point I'm making about Alexander is when we're looking at the Bible, we have these
5:22
written, you can debate on the exact year that they are written, but certainly within
5:26
the first century of Jesus' birth, not too long after Christ dies, these are written
5:35
and are there.
5:38
You look at a guy like Alexander the Great, the earliest writing that we have of Alexander
5:43
the Great is like 300, 400 years after his death, nobody disputes Alexander the Great
5:48
existed and did what he did.
5:50
But there's this, well, those were written so far after Jesus died, it's like, man, it
5:56
was in historical context, these were written pretty early.
6:00
If you look at those two side by side, it's very, it's very easy to see and it's written
6:07
really, really quickly compared to way more transcripts and yeah, Vodie Bockham did a
6:13
breakdown of when people talk about air within the transcripts or people that weren't airing,
6:18
but people that were trying to change the transcripts, to change the scripture so that
6:22
they could control people, you know, these people that could be easily controlled.
6:25
It's like, you know what that would have had to have taken, they would have had to have
6:28
been able to steal every transcript that was written in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, to take
6:36
them all, change them somehow as if they just had like white out, you know, 2,000 years
6:40
ago and then put them back without anybody noticing, it's just like guys calling.
6:45
All of history bends to God's will and a perfect example of that is the nation of Islam and
6:51
the Muslim religion for a long, long time.
6:55
There were Muslims that would mock, you know, our new testament and these writings saying,
7:00
see, these are, these are dated way after Muhammad's writing.
7:05
These are, these are, these are our writings vastly predate and God will not be mocked.
7:12
And then we have the dead, the Dead Sea Scrolls definitively put that to bed.
7:17
These are a thousand years older than your earliest works.
7:20
What do you mean you were before Christianity?
7:22
No, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how this goes and all of history bends to the will
7:28
of God.
7:29
It's, it's very, very cool to look at.
7:31
Any other setup stuff that you guys came across?
7:33
Nope.
7:34
You said exactly what I was going to add.
7:35
Thanks a lot.
7:36
I just love when someone else at the table is smart and not just me, gosh, that's just
7:40
so refreshing.
7:41
Oh, so I wanted to get right into this first part because versus one through 17 is the
7:48
genealogy of Jesus Christ.
7:51
And what this reminds me of is when we were going through Nehemiah and you have like Nehemiah
7:54
three, where it's just a bunch of names and other places in Nehemiah, where it's just
7:58
a bunch of lists and a bunch of numbers and a bunch of blah, blah, blah.
8:01
And what people normally do is that shorthand for skippable, like this is skippable.
8:07
But when I got to the genealogy, I was just like, this is incredible.
8:13
Like, like we know this because people in modern day, they don't really understand how meticulously
8:20
people from that era took their genealogy.
8:23
The reason why things like 23 and me and ancestry.com is so important and popular nowadays is because
8:29
we don't give a crap about our genealogy so much so that for generations, no one thought
8:34
to write these things down to pass them on so that the great, great, great grandchildren
8:39
knew something about great, great, great grandma and grandpa.
8:43
And we're trying to rekindle that.
8:45
But unless you have a person in your family, like I have one person in my family, that's
8:48
like her goal in life is to like connect the family tree and to know exactly how far we
8:53
go back and when we came over here and all that, but it's like that person's retired.
8:58
And that's all they do at their time.
9:00
But to see 14 different generations defined here, it's just such, such a big deal.
9:06
So so for me, right out of the gate, I think that everyone needs to pause and have some
9:11
reverence for what you're seeing in those first 17 verses.
9:14
When he starts with this for a reason, obviously, I mean, it's like, you know, he, like you said,
9:19
it's mainly geared towards the Jews, right?
9:22
So he knows that this is the proof.
9:24
I mean, this is the proof that it's worth being listened to, that Jesus' heredity comes
9:29
from Abraham all the way down, right?
9:33
So I mean, there's a reason he starts with it, you know, and all of Jewish history had
9:38
prepared the way for Jesus' birth.
9:40
So I mean, I think in a couple of things that stand out, just are the, I mean, there's some
9:44
female names in there.
9:45
There's three named specifically and then her who have been right and then Mary again at
9:51
the end.
9:52
So yes, technically five, but yeah, I mean, it's that was something that stood out.
9:58
I'll let you guys take it.
9:59
Yeah.
10:00
And I mean, I was, I liked how Abraham puts Jesus in the family and how David puts Jesus
10:08
on the throne.
10:09
That's a, that's a, that's a tweetable moment right there.
10:12
That'll preach that.
10:13
Yeah, that'll definitely.
10:14
Yeah.
10:15
Matthew, can you say that again?
10:16
Actually, because it kind of made me tingle, not tingles, I didn't pee myself tingle.
10:21
That was good.
10:22
Yeah.
10:23
Yeah.
10:24
No, no, it's just, I mean, just amazing how Jesus is put it all in the family by Abraham
10:29
put on the throne by David.
10:31
And, and awesome.
10:32
Matthew gets right to the point.
10:33
This is, this is literally to the Jewish people, Hey, this is the announcement of the King of
10:38
glory.
10:39
And here is why and here is where he comes from.
10:44
And this is why he has a right to God's throne.
10:49
And man, that, that is literally a tweet right there.
10:52
I love it.
10:53
Well, back to your point, Caleb.
10:56
It wasn't completely uncommon or completely unheard of rather for women to be in genealogies,
11:01
but it was uncommon, but it's not just that women were named here.
11:06
That's what type of women were named here, because you have Tamar, Rahab and Bathsheba.
11:12
They're all women of questionable character.
11:15
So Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba were all Gentiles.
11:18
Mary had the stigma of sex outside of wedlock because just because they said, Oh no, I didn't,
11:23
we didn't have sex.
11:24
I got pregnant from the Holy Spirit.
11:25
People didn't just go, Oh yeah, it makes sense.
11:27
Like, you know, she had kind of the stigma that Tamar poses a prostitute to seduce Judah.
11:33
Rahab was a Gentile and a prostitute, Ruth was a Moabite worshiper of idols.
11:38
Bathsheba is not even named.
11:39
She just called the, you know, the wife of Uriah, you know, she committed adultery with
11:43
David.
11:44
And I know in modernity, we have this debate about, well, was, you know, did she commit
11:48
adultery or was she raped?
11:49
And I know I've even said on the show before, it's like, I don't think she could have said
11:53
no to David and survived.
11:56
So to say that it's rape, I'm not offended by that.
11:58
There's a lot of conservative kind of theological people that are very offended by that language
12:02
because they think it's the same as kind of the modern progressive, like a power struggle
12:06
argument about women that sleep with their bosses, that's, that's really not what I'm
12:10
talking about.
12:11
And so I don't technically want to go there.
12:12
But the reason why that's so important that they talk about all these women, and maybe
12:17
Mary not not was standing is think about what came from this line.
12:22
It is mind blowing to just think about Bathsheba and David and how the Messiah came from directly
12:29
that line, whether you think David raped Bathsheba or whether Bathsheba was a willing participant
12:35
and all of that, Jesus was a descendant of an adulterous relationship that ended in murder.
12:42
Like remember, because Uriah was such an upstanding man that he wouldn't lay with his
12:47
wife while his men were in battle fighting and potentially dying.
12:50
And David did all he could to, you know, get her to get him to lie with his wife so that
12:54
he could hide the pregnancy and all those things.
12:57
And then eventually he puts him on the front lines, pulls the truth, troops back, leaves
13:00
him out there by himself to get him killed.
13:02
It's how a general murders somebody, right?
13:04
Jesus came from that line that is so significant.
13:08
All of history bends to God's will, and he slept with with his wife.
13:13
That would have been his son, that wouldn't have been of the line of David, that would
13:16
have been of the line of Uriah.
13:19
And one thing goes out of place and you're looking at a completely different story, but
13:24
God bends it all to his will.
13:27
Man, it's so cool to just see that play out.
13:30
I know there's been said probably many times, but like who in the right mind would write
13:34
a book and put these characters in the book, you know, if it wasn't real, you know, that
13:39
you wouldn't want something that's so racy and embarrassing in your historical document
13:48
that's supposed to say that, you know, God is the, you know, Jesus is the Savior's.
13:52
So not just racy, at this time in history, women were considered subhuman by the dominant
13:57
culture of the time, which was the Roman Empire.
13:59
The head of the households and the Roman Empire had the power of life and death over their
14:02
entire family.
14:04
They could kill their spouse and kill their children and not even go to court to defend
14:07
themselves just because they say, look, they needed to die because of this particular infraction.
14:13
And so, which again, we see later the significance of women being the first witnesses to Jesus'
14:19
resurrection.
14:20
It's very significant, but here, five women are named in the genealogy and all of them
14:24
have something that's kind of rough.
14:26
Sorry, Catholics, but yes, like we don't see Mary as this divine figure.
14:30
She's woman all the same.
14:31
She just happened to be the woman who gave birth to the King of glory.
14:35
And so, but it's just such a significant thing.
14:38
And to your point, Matt, like, you know, history bends towards God and all that, like do we
14:42
kind of, I can't remember off top of my head.
14:44
How far removed David is from Jesus time wise, do we have an idea of that timeline?
14:48
Is that in your timeline right there?
14:50
He says, I mean, it's 14 generations from David to Babylon and then 14 generations from Babylon
14:55
to Christ.
14:56
So I mean, I'm sure there's something in here on that, but it's we're talking about hundreds
14:59
of years, but the point being, like the people in David's time that knew about David's sin
15:06
probably thought to themselves, this is irredeemable, like this, this can't, like this can't stand.
15:11
And I think about in modern day, when a tragedy occurs and an atheist pounces on it and says,
15:17
Oh, yeah, you've got a good God.
15:19
Well, this three year old girl was raped and decapitated by a sex offender.
15:24
Like, what are you talking about?
15:26
But what if a person that goes to her funeral, here's the gospel for the first time or someone
15:34
200 years from now is looking up old, however they would look up things 200 years from now,
15:38
old tweets or old, whatever about this story, then it takes them down some sort of redemptive
15:42
path, like to assume that we know there's nothing good that can come of a situation
15:47
is to assume the judgment seat and the knowledge seat of God and it's like, bro, you have fun
15:51
doing that.
15:52
I'm not going there.
15:53
Yeah.
15:54
I would 100 years ago.
15:55
It's also like you mentioned just how, why would anyone write it this way?
15:59
You know, I mean, it's unbelievable, right?
16:01
Is that yet yet it's so in line with Jesus's ministry?
16:04
You know what I mean is that it's like it, it's not putting all these people on a different
16:09
level.
16:10
I mean, it's that, Hey, this is all just part of God's divine story to Jesus's birth.
16:13
It really has nothing to do with, you know, if this person's in this position or this
16:17
is a woman or this was a prostitute or whatever, I mean, it's just in line with his ministry
16:21
completely.
16:22
But we also have, we also have the ability to look backwards and we can look at this
16:27
and go, Oh yeah.
16:28
Yeah.
16:29
Yeah.
16:30
That's definitely Jesus came from the line of David.
16:31
Like very specifically, Matthew lays out for the Jewish people, Hey, you guys wanted
16:38
to messiah here is, this is why he is God incarnate.
16:43
He is Emmanuel.
16:44
He is the Christ.
16:45
Here's, here's how that shakes out because this is, this is what the Old Testament is
16:51
preaching to.
16:52
This is what it's moving towards.
16:53
Here it is laid out fully and I've given you the genealogy of why he is the king.
16:59
And am I, am I right to, to think that there were actually more than 14 generations?
17:04
Yes.
17:05
That's a way to order it to some people's names are skipped over.
17:08
Yeah.
17:09
I think, I think speaking to that, Matthew was written and this is just in some of the research
17:14
that I did.
17:15
Matthew is written in a way that was again, easily, memorable or easily remembered.
17:20
You could recite this because you had, they had to have a way to keep this.
17:26
You never knew one is hard, hard and expensive to write books or write things like things
17:31
like this down.
17:32
You wrote it in a way that was very easy to remember.
17:36
And so that's part of that is that it's not the full genealogy, but it is a way that's
17:41
easy to remember.
17:42
That's how the whole book is written.
17:44
And some people have said in the commentaries I read that there's a significance to the number
17:48
14 when it's talking about the 14 generations and they look at the word or the name David.
17:55
David has three Hebrew consonants in the word D W D and the numerical values of those are
18:02
four, six, four, which adds up to 14.
18:05
And 14 is the symbolic number of David.
18:09
And so it probably was some sort of mnemonic device.
18:11
I don't know if that exactly applies, but it was a device to where this could be easily
18:15
transferred because you're right.
18:17
There were not fan, there was no ubiquity of scrolls within personal households and things
18:22
like that.
18:23
That was something for the wealthy, for the different synagogues and stuff like that at
18:26
the time.
18:27
So it was a way that it would be easier to recognize and understand.
18:31
It was a set of three as well.
18:32
Yeah, three sets of 14, 14, 14, 14, easy to remember.
18:36
One thing I want to bring to the listeners attention is in verse 16, it says, and Jacob,
18:42
the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
18:48
So you know, named Christ from the very beginning of Matthew, you know, Messiah almost immediately
18:53
in the gospel.
18:54
You will have people, Muslims, atheists, agnostics that will argue that, hey, not only did Jesus
19:02
not claim to be God, his disciples didn't claim that he was God.
19:06
That was that was something that was invented after the Council of Nicaea or hundreds of
19:10
years later.
19:11
And they'll just say these stupid things because they heard it on the Joe Rogan experience.
19:14
And the reality is is like the only plausible explanation for Christianity making it out
19:20
of first century Rome is because Jesus actually died and he actually rose again and people
19:24
attested to that with their blood.
19:26
Like, we have no extra biblical or biblical definition of somebody recanting on seeing
19:34
a risen Jesus Christ during this time period and that would have been that would have been
19:38
put out on Twitter everywhere, right, like you just, you know, to blown up.
19:42
Yeah, Josephus, Kelsus, other extra biblical writers of that time in historians, they, they
19:49
would have loved to have said, yeah, you know, the apostles, the ones that were sold out
19:54
to this lie, they were, yeah, they went to their desk and didn't say anything.
19:58
But hey, I have a dozen attestations from people that said, yeah, you know, we said
20:02
we saw him risen, but that wasn't actually him.
20:05
We were just kind of like incentivized to say that.
20:07
It's just not real.
20:08
It's just not there.
20:09
It was attested to from the beginning that this is the genealogy of the Christ, not the
20:14
genealogy of a guy named Jesus.
20:16
And so I think that that's, that's really important.
20:19
Matt, if you can do me a solid and read Matthew 1 18 through 23.
20:24
Sure.
20:25
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betrothed
20:30
to Joseph before they came together.
20:32
She was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
20:35
Pause.
20:36
Pause real quick.
20:37
So on verse 18, we need to talk about betrothal a little bit, a little bit because that's not
20:40
something that we understand in modernity.
20:43
But betrothal was basically like you were already married.
20:47
Okay, this is more, this isn't like engagement.
20:49
Like that's not a corollary to anything modern is engagement, betrothal is like you have done
20:54
everything except for consummate the wedding bed as a binding contract.
20:59
Yeah.
21:00
Yeah.
21:01
So get out of a betrothal.
21:02
You would have to go through a divorce process.
21:03
Like that's how significant this whole process is.
21:06
So go ahead with verse 19, please.
21:07
19, what?
21:08
Go.
21:09
23, and her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved
21:15
to divorce her quietly, but has he considered these things behold an angel of the Lord appeared
21:20
to him in a dream saying, Joseph son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife or that
21:27
which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21:29
She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from
21:34
their sins.
21:35
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet behold, the virgin
21:40
shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
21:45
So that is a reference to Isaiah 7, 14.
21:48
So a lot of things point to the Old Testament throughout Matthew, the Lord that appeared
21:52
to Joseph in the dream that's Gabriel, the thing that's interesting about this, going
21:57
back to verse 19, whenever Joseph, you know, basically said he went to divorce her quietly.
22:03
This is quite a tremendous thing, because if you're a woman that is betrothed to a man
22:10
and you have sex outside of that betrothal, that was punishable by death.
22:16
Now, at this time period, the Romans had basically taken away the Jews ability to do capital
22:24
punishment, which is obviously significant as you get to the end of Jesus's ministry,
22:30
but they took that away from them, but the wages of sin to the Jewish people was stoning
22:34
to death like Mary could have been stoned to death.
22:37
So Joseph was willing out of, we don't know motivation wise, if I had to guess just a
22:42
tremendous love for Mary to, I can't believe she did this to me, but she doesn't deserve
22:49
to die for this or I don't, I'm going to do what I can to keep her from being killed.
22:52
I mean, that's a, it's an interesting move by Joseph from the beginning.
22:56
Well, and it says he's righteous, you know, so, I mean, that's just one, one testimony
23:02
of his character is that he was not, he didn't overreact, you know, he took his time, he
23:08
thought it through.
23:11
And though he had a plan, you know, he was not trying to, you know, exercise vengeance
23:17
on her for what he thought, you know, and it had been interesting to be a part of that
23:23
initial conversation, where she finds out she's pregnant and with child, putting yourself
23:29
in Joseph shoes, like that would be position, man, I've got this wife, we're to be married.
23:39
I am a Jew trying my best to follow the law rightly.
23:45
And then she tells me this story, the Holy Spirit came upon me and I am pregnant.
23:55
What?
23:56
Like, I can't imagine being in his shoes.
24:00
And he's a character in the Bible that just, it kind of gets overlooked.
24:06
And right there, that is, his wanting to obey the law and be just and do the right thing,
24:14
like leads to, okay, all right, let's go.
24:19
When it almost makes you wonder, like, you know, Joseph had to be thinking, like, why
24:24
can't you've sent that dream just before I got this news?
24:27
You know what I mean?
24:28
Then I'd be like, I know.
24:29
You already told me.
24:30
Right?
24:31
Almost like it was a test, you know, just to say like, okay, what are you going to do
24:35
with that information?
24:36
Right?
24:37
Are you going to say, yeah, I'll send her away secretly or no, let's stoner.
24:40
Well, let's, let's talk about the significance of that because you can just buzz through
24:47
these five or six verses.
24:49
And that's a lot of stuff that happened over a period of time.
24:52
Again, Matt, you bring up, imagine the shock on his face when she comes in, because she,
24:56
I doubt she very comfortably came to him and said, Hey, I'm pregnant and guess what?
25:02
It's gods.
25:03
Like, you know, that's not like something that probably happened, but there was, there was
25:06
a lot of emotion around this, all of this, but wouldn't it take a supernatural, you know,
25:14
communication from God via the Archangel Gabriel in a dream for you to be like, okay, I'll
25:20
go along with this, because yeah, obviously we see Joseph as a righteous man.
25:25
But I mean, I literally wrote down seeing and hearing an angel would likely be the only
25:29
thing that would cause me to change my divorce plans.
25:31
Yeah, I think that's a good point, but to his like, like quest to seek justice and to
25:40
be righteous, like he could have just blown up, he could have taken her to that town square.
25:45
He could have told all the, all the priests, everybody, everybody in the village like,
25:48
Hey, this is my wife's an adult or she she's pregnant.
25:50
It's not mine.
25:52
But he was patient and he didn't do anything out of anger or irrationally.
26:00
He waited and he, he had made a plan, but he made a careful plan that he thought was
26:05
right.
26:06
I wonder how the story would have been different.
26:09
Had he been haughty and had he just said, Stoner, everybody is what happened.
26:15
My wife's, my wife is a, is an adult or I didn't use patient.
26:19
Yeah.
26:20
I mean, even just thinking like the living quarters, those, those days, if I, if I recall correctly,
26:25
a lot of the homes were like almost like community homes and yet a central courtyard and I'm just
26:30
imagining like conversations I've had in my house and you know, but yeah, sometimes we
26:35
get upset and we can yell and scream and why not nobody's going to hear us per se, let's
26:39
go outside.
26:40
But like they were, had to have been extra restraint, you know, they almost whispering
26:44
about this and just how righteous he had to have been in that moment to just keep his
26:49
cool, you know, you can tell he was wrestling with it too.
26:53
I mean, in, in 19, it says he had, he had planned to send her away secretly, but then
26:58
again, in 20, when he had thought this over, like he's still thinking about it.
27:03
Right.
27:04
I mean, it wasn't just, okay, planned to send her away and then boom, she's gone, no, go.
27:08
I mean, he was obviously still thinking about it.
27:10
Well, and think about the resilience that had to be shown here, because again, we read
27:14
a paragraph and we go from, Hey, Joseph, I'm pregnant.
27:18
It's not yours.
27:19
It's God's and him dealing with what the world that looks like, him going through the
27:23
emotions and making the plans to divorce her quietly, making the decision to do that and
27:27
then putting the plans together, then he has fall sleep, then a dream comes in Gabriel communicates
27:32
to him.
27:33
And then he basically goes to Mary and says, Hey, I'm in.
27:35
I believe you.
27:36
This is from God.
27:37
But there are only two people in this story, they're, they're the only two people that
27:42
are the main people.
27:43
But then there's everybody else who's watching a betrothed unmarried woman's belly grow and
27:50
thinking to themselves, like, because it doesn't say that here, but do we assume that Mary
27:55
and Joseph were telling the community, Hey, by the way, this isn't our baby, like I'm
28:00
pregnant with not Joseph's baby, but it's God's like, like, I don't, I don't know the
28:04
answer to that.
28:05
Did you all hear like, because if, because either way, if, if they did tell everybody,
28:11
they still have to deal with all the people that are like, that have no scaffolding for
28:15
that being possible, and what they would have to say and treat them like the entire time
28:20
she's pregnant.
28:21
And if they didn't share that, they know they're not married.
28:25
And so they see, and so they just assume that Joseph has fathered a child during the
28:30
patrol the period, which was sinful and punishable, like, or, or she has had an extramarital
28:38
affair.
28:39
And it's not his, he's going to marry her anyway.
28:43
Either one of would have been like a no, no, like, but yeah, they, this story doesn't exist
28:49
inside of a vacuum.
28:50
So yeah, I guess you can only speculate as to what would happen.
28:53
But like, think about that playing out in our society.
28:56
Yeah.
28:57
People are going to talk.
28:58
We're going to start to say there's whispers.
28:59
There's maybe even people saying it to your face like, you are not a godly man.
29:04
You're not a Christian, whatever, whatever the insult that might be hurled.
29:07
Yeah.
29:08
I imagine there's probably some of that.
29:09
Well, that's why I think it's important to not read the gospel so quickly, which I'm
29:13
saying that to myself as I'm saying it to all of you, because, and that's another reason
29:17
why I like things like the chosen because while not every line in the script is coming
29:23
directly from scripture, which bothers people to the point where they think that, you know,
29:27
the show in of itself is heresy.
29:30
The show does a tremendous job of slowing down some of these stories for you to understand
29:36
that if there were, there were side conversations, they may have sounded a little something like
29:41
this.
29:42
And I think that was done the most beautifully in the series so far up to this point in season
29:45
three where you had Jairus's daughter and you had the woman with the problem of bleeding.
29:51
And it's like, that's not a long description of a story in the gospels, but they strung
29:57
that out in that storyline over several episodes to kind of get you set up for that moment
30:02
where this girl who is the same age as the length of time this woman has been bleeding
30:09
and one is saved from death and the other is saved from her medical issue, all at the
30:15
same, basically the same time period.
30:18
But if you read it too fast, it just you're going to miss some of that, some of that nuance,
30:23
some of that depth to what you're seeing in the text.
30:25
Yeah, these things played out in real life for real people.
30:29
Right.
30:30
Yeah.
30:31
And just an observation, you know, in verse 23 says, behold, the virgin shall conceive
30:35
and bear a son and they shall call his name a manual that word a manual.
30:39
I mean, I think it's pretty, it's again, like you said earlier, this is not a man named
30:44
Jesus.
30:45
This is God with us, you know, a manual.
30:47
So, you know, people that claim that Jesus didn't claim to be God and all that.
30:53
I mean, it's right here.
30:54
It's like God is going to be with you.
30:57
Well, he very he I think Matthew uses Isaiah more than more than most.
31:02
I don't have like specific statistics on there, but he very quickly votes Isaiah and he's
31:06
going to quote Isaiah again and Matthew continuously goes back to the Old Testament, which will
31:12
forever be hitched to the New Testament because that's how we get there.
31:18
But if you're looking at Jewish people are waiting for this, they have been told this
31:24
through their own the book of Moses, the book of the law, like all of these things are pointing
31:30
towards a Messiah, a deliverer, someone who is going to save them, someone who is going
31:34
to reign forever.
31:36
So they were expecting this.
31:38
The fact that it was Jesus didn't really jive with a lot of people.
31:42
So Matthew saying, Hey, this literally happened.
31:45
This this happened.
31:47
He is the one and here is why.
31:50
And so harkening back to prophecy in the Old Testament is is how he kind of brings it
31:54
together and brings it back to a Jesus is the guy that you guys have been waiting for.
31:59
I'm reminded of when you're talking through that when John MacArthur went on Ben Shapiro's
32:04
Sunday conversation and he basically I think Shapiro asks him about Jews and how they respond
32:14
to the New Testament and you know, Christians and all that and MacArthur just basically says
32:17
straight up the reason why I'm a Christian is because of the Old Testament, whereas a
32:22
modern day Christian you took a not so shuttle, subtle shot at Andy Stanley there.
32:26
They want to unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament because the Old Testament
32:30
has some icky passages that we don't really fully understand how it applies to Jesus of
32:35
Nazareth.
32:36
And so they'll just say, Oh yeah, we'll just start with Jesus of Nazareth and but it's
32:39
like you're losing the thread here.
32:41
Like how did they know what to look for without knowing what was coming from the prophets.
32:48
Now there were people at the time that missed it.
32:50
And as people point out all the time, when Jesus ascended after his resurrection, people
32:55
still doubted him.
32:57
After the ascension, it's just like what else do you need like literally what else do you
33:01
need to see?
33:02
And he goes back to the categories we talked about in Proverbs.
33:05
You have simple people, you have scoffers and you have fools and the simple people literally
33:11
just they for whatever reason they can't get it they they're they're so easily swayed.
33:17
But even seeing somebody just kind of whoop, you know, get sucked up into the heavens is
33:21
just like, Oh yeah, they kind of missed the point and they're right there getting to experience
33:25
it, much less reading it Browning hit the the last two verses, please 24 and 25.
33:31
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as angel of the Lord commanded him.
33:36
He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son.
33:41
And he called his name Jesus.
33:43
So knew her not means that Joseph did not have sex with Mary until after they gave birth
33:49
to a son.
33:51
Called him Jesus.
33:52
That's Joshua in Hebrew, it means Yahweh saves or Savior.
33:57
Why did I say that's a weird Savior?
33:59
Just save.
34:00
Savior is normal.
34:03
Yeah.
34:04
So here's the thing, no one here has a Catholic background.
34:07
I don't think I don't understand why Catholics think that Mary was a virgin.
34:10
I also don't understand how Catholics think that Mary didn't have any other children.
34:14
That's so strange to me when you see so clearly in the gospels that Mary and Joseph had other
34:19
children James being the most prominent.
34:21
Are you speaking to her perpetual virginity?
34:27
Yes.
34:28
Not her.
34:29
Okay.
34:30
I just want people to not hear what Kyle's not saying.
34:31
You're not saying she was not a virgin who received, who had a child by the Holy Spirit.
34:38
She was not a perpetual virgin.
34:40
She wasn't a virgin for the rest of her life because she was married and bore other children.
34:44
Right.
34:45
Yeah.
34:46
I just don't want that to get missed there.
34:47
Yeah.
34:48
It's just it's a strange thing to me, which I guess we don't need to dig too far into because
34:50
none of us really have the background with that theology, but perhaps we can transition
34:54
into a discussion about something you said, Matt earlier, which is like, is there any
35:00
more unsung hero from the gospel story than Joseph?
35:04
Because we don't hear a lot about Joseph.
35:06
We don't know a lot about Joseph.
35:08
Like we're kind of left guessing.
35:10
We know that Joseph had to have died at some point during Jesus's childhood because there's
35:13
no mention of him during his earthly ministry from the ages of 30 to 33.
35:18
But man, he is the unsung hero of the Christmas story just because he was so righteous and
35:24
so patient and outwardly loving of the situation that literally guys, you have to think about
35:30
it.
35:31
Your wife or your, I guess you would say you're the week you're supposed to get married, right?
35:36
You've done all the things you need to do legally and you haven't gotten married and
35:39
you haven't consummated the wedding bed yet.
35:41
And then your girl comes to you and says, Hey, I'm pregnant with God's baby.
35:46
Again, you don't have any type of scaffolding for what that looks like.
35:53
Like, I think that Joseph, just because he's not mentioned enough, we don't give him enough
35:57
attention.
35:58
Yeah.
35:59
I was thinking like, this is kind of silly, but you know, he raised Jesus first.
36:06
You got to think like, what?
36:08
This guy had like a perspective on parenting that we don't, we don't have in that he was
36:12
probably like kind of taken back by later because it's like, Hey, Jesus, go take out
36:17
the trash.
36:18
Yes, father.
36:19
And then, Hey, hey, Jesus, can you go help your mom with a yes father?
36:24
And then they had James and then James was like raising heck, you know, and like what
36:28
I thought parenting was supposed to be super easy.
36:30
Yeah.
36:31
But yeah, but yeah, God is a God of details and I think you can gloss over this.
36:36
We are adopted into God's family.
36:39
Stay with me here.
36:41
Joseph essentially adopted Jesus as his son, as he is not his biological earthly father.
36:49
So there is a, there is a respectability and just a like all that I look at him and think,
37:01
man, this isn't even your earthly son yet.
37:05
He adopted him in and raised him like his own son, just as God adopts us all into his
37:14
family under the headship of Christ, who was an earthly adoption.
37:21
That's, that is such a powerful thing to think about.
37:25
And you're right.
37:27
We don't talk about Joseph enough.
37:28
When you think about all the potential scenarios that like the people around him must have thought
37:33
happened in the amount of pressure and ridicule that he probably received from them and just
37:38
scorn, you know, just thinking like this guy is something else, you know, not in a good
37:43
way, right?
37:44
I mean, I can't imagine that pressure and also like how the heck do you, how the heck
37:48
do you raise Jesus?
37:49
I mean, I'm just curious, you know, well, because I mean, I'm kind of mind-blowing.
37:55
Super simple.
37:56
Tell them what's the first time obedience, assuming he even had to tell him Jesus already
38:03
knew.
38:04
He just did it.
38:05
Right.
38:06
He didn't have to be told to wash the dishes.
38:08
They were already.
38:09
He made the dishes.
38:10
I think another point that should be made here, just as we're talking about raising Jesus,
38:15
Jesus was the begotten son from, from the beginning of time and John gets there pretty
38:19
quickly.
38:20
John kind of, kind of lays that out for us.
38:22
But he was not begotten when he was born of Mary.
38:26
He was begotten from the beginning of time.
38:28
So he sat with God and then decided he would, he would condescend, which is a very negative
38:37
word in our, in our culture, condescending is not something that you want to be known
38:42
as.
38:43
He condescended to our level and put on our skin so he could be like us and know what
38:53
it is to be human and so like, yes, he was God in flesh, but he also was flesh.
39:02
And I think that's something you can also miss here too is like he was a man who, I
39:08
mean, did not, did not count his, you know, standing with God.
39:14
I don't remember how, how Paul puts it, but he didn't take that lightly.
39:17
He didn't, he didn't view that as something that could be grasped.
39:20
He willingly condescended to our level so that he could be like us.
39:25
And that man, that's another thing to just, man, how cool is that that God works that
39:30
way and that God loves us so much that he would say, all right, we'll go be a dude.
39:36
Sure.
39:37
That's how he said it too.
39:38
More than the lecture.
39:39
Clearly it's how he said it.
39:40
But again, this, this just starts down this journey.
39:44
And again, as, as you guys are studying through Matthew with us, you're going to be reminded
39:49
of stories that you forgot and you're going to come across details because I know when
39:53
we get into Matthew two next week, there's a lot of details that you just flat out miss
39:57
because some of it is the fault of cultural Christianity.
40:01
Some of it is the fault that you're not paying attention when you're reading your Bible or
40:05
more likely you're just not reading your Bible at all.
40:08
But that's just a good place for us to set up a foundation for Matthew.
40:11
And we're going to go ahead and leave Matthew one there because there's a little bit more
40:14
in Matthew two that we'll want to get to.
40:16
So guys, when you come back here next week, make sure you've read through the end of Matthew
40:19
two so you can be prepared for next week.
40:21
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life.
40:25
Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual
40:29
mental and physical resilience that way we're able to pull that off is because we have donors.
40:33
We get a little bit of money from advertisement, but the majority of how we're able to keep
40:36
operations going with undaunted life is because men are hopping on board on a monthly basis
40:41
to help us with our operations.
40:42
10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month, whatever people can do, they're doing
40:47
because they know that this is the content that needs to get to other dads and other men
40:51
who have sons, all that type of stuff.
40:53
We're working on all that type of content, but we can't do it without you guys.
40:57
So go to the link that we have there in the show notes.
41:00
It's a link to undaunted life backslash donate.
41:02
Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.
41:04
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
41:08
star review.
41:09
If you want to come speak alive at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email to info
41:12
at undaunted life.
41:14
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
41:20
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
41:23
Just go to www dot undaunted life.
41:26
And also we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our
41:30
content.
41:31
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self titled debut album
41:35
on Face Down Records.
41:36
The links are in the description.
41:38
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
41:40
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
41:46
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.