#4 Grace, Faith, and Poems

series: Love Incorruptible

title: Grace, Faith, and Poems

teacher: Jacob Bender

date: May 14, 2017 (Mother’s Day)

scriptures: Ephesians 2:1-10, Exodus 25:8

#2 In Christ (part two)

series: Love Incorruptible

title: In Christ (part two)

date: April 30, 2017

teacher: Jacob Bender

scriptures: Ephesians 1:3-13, Acts 19, Acts 20:29

a Thanksgiving meal, on a normal day

title: a Thanksgiving meal, on a normal day

date: November 27, 2016

teacher: Jacob Bender

scriptures: Acts 16:20-34

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#1 Yom Kippur

series: Jonah

title: Yom Kippur

teacher: Jacob Bender

date: October 16, 2016

scriptures: Jonah (entire book), Leviticus 16, Leviticus 16:22, Hebrews 10:8-14

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This last week, those who practice Jewish culture celebrated Yom Kippur. This year it was Tuesday, October 11th at sundown, and ended Wednesday October 12th at the same time. And there is a Jewish tradition… that in their afternoon services on Yom Kippur every year, they read, in its entirety, the book on Jonah. And its a tradition that dates back thousands of years… where families would all gather around together on Yom Kippur, and they would read it together. 

Which for someone who is not Jewish, the first question that I have, is why?

Because to most people, the book of Jonah is the story of a guy who got eaten by a whale. Who was in his belly for three days, and then he got spit out. Thats the gist of what most of us know about the book. 

So, today we are going to start our series on the book of Jonah, exploring some of those questions…

questions like: Why is this book so significant?

Why is it considered to be one of the books known as “the prophets” when Jonah doesn't give a single prophecy the entire time… Why do the Jews, on their holiest day of the year, take the time to sit down and read the book in its entirety? 

#5 Culminating at Grace

Series: The Narrative of Grace

Title: Culminating at Grace

Teacher: Jacob Bender

Date: December 13, 2015

scriptures: Matthew 1:16-15, Matthew 1:1, 1 Corinthians 1:27, Matthew 18:20, Leviticus 25:1-7, Leviticus 25:5, 2 Chronicles 36:18-21, 1 Peter 2:5, Galatians 6:2.

Q: is everyone’s sabbath year the same? So if I start working in 2003, and you start in 2005, is my sabbath year 2010, yours 2012 or both in 2010?

A: You can read about it in Leviticus 25, but essentially what Happened was God said to the Israelites “when you come into the land I have given you… The land shall keep a sabbath.” So the way I have always understood it (I am not 100 percent though) is that from the time they all arrived, together, the cycle began.

How that applies to you today may vary… For me the primary takeaway from the sabbath year is, “do you trust God, truly? With everything?”

Simple, but in the new covenant, that is how I personally apply it.

Q: Do you think that Luke’s genealogy pertains to Mary & not Joseph? It would resolve some apparent contradictions between Matthew and Luke’s genealogies, but wouldn’t that also mean that Jesus was physically of the line of David through Mary?

That’s a great question, one that I wish I had mentioned in the sermon, and one that we don’t know for certain the answer to. It would make sense that the genealogy would belong to Mary because they are the same until we get to King David, and then the genealogy in Matthew continues through David’s son Solomon (the King) and Luke’s genealogy continues through David’s son Nathan. However, it is hard to say for sure because even Luke’s genealogy begins by saying (Luke 3:23) Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son the Heli… Luke’s genealogy is listed in the more traditional way, only listing the Father and son, and actually takes it all the way back to Adam.

The other question that arises in Luke comes from Luke 2:4-5, when it says that Joseph goes to Galilee to register, because HE was of the house and lineage of David. It said that he went to be registered with Mary, who he was engaged to, who was pregnant, and it was during that trip that she gave birth to Jesus. The way this is written seems to emphasis that he needed to be registered, not her, and that she was marrying into the family.

Matthew in general follows the story of the birth of Jesus from the perspective of Joseph, while Luke takes it more from Mary’s perspective, also adding more weight to the possibility that the genealogy in Luke belongs to Mary. (ie – in Luke, we read about Mary’s encounter with her cousin, Elizabeth, about John the baptist leaping in Elizabeths womb when he is in the presence of the Christ living in a pregnant Mary. It also records Mary’s song the magnificat, and the angel of the Lord visits Mary in Lukes account, where Matthew records when the angel visited Joseph, and the battle that Joseph had internally to keep Mary as his wife after everything that had happened. Romans 1:3 also says that Jesus descended from David “according to the flesh” which many also use as evidence that Mary was also a descendant.

In this message, I should have made this more clear, because it is very possible that Mary was also of the line of David, but we know without a doubt that Joseph was, and because this study is on the genealogy in Matthew, we tried to look at it from the perspective of whom Matthew was writing to. Matthew was written to the Jews, to win the Jews to Jesus, and he knew that in that culture, if the Father, adopted or not, was not of the family line, they would never have accepted him as the savior.

So at the end of the day, Mary needed Joseph to not leave her alone on Christmas, and the Jews needed Joseph to accept Mary if they were going to accept Jesus. It can be said with certainty that Joseph was of the family line of David, and in the case that the genealogy in Luke does belong to Mary, it would reconcile some complicated issues between the two genealogies and would have fulfilled the prophecies with or without Joseph but it would not change the fact that to the Jewish culture whom Matthew was writing to win to Christ, Joseph was a key to this story.

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