Women of the Seed // The Promise

The Power of the Seed & the Lineage of Jesus

Pastor Jonathan began a new series focused on the women in the lineage of Jesus, explaining that genealogies in Scripture are far more than lists of names—they reveal God’s redemptive plan throughout history.

• He shared a humorous story about taking an ancestry DNA test and contrasted human ancestry with the spiritual family believers are adopted into through Christ.
• The central theme was that believers are grafted into a new lineage and heritage through Jesus, regardless of their earthly background.

The Promise in Genesis

Pastor Jonathan explained that the promise of redemption begins in Genesis with Eve and the promise that her “seed” would one day defeat evil.

• He walked through how Satan repeatedly tried to corrupt or destroy that promised line throughout Scripture.
• Stories involving Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Tamar, and others all pointed to God preserving the promised seed despite human failure and brokenness.

Broken People in God’s Story

A major emphasis of the sermon was that nearly every person in the lineage of Jesus carried deep flaws, failures, or painful stories.

• Sarah struggled with doubt and tried to fulfill God’s promise her own way.
• Rebekah manipulated circumstances instead of trusting God.
• Leah lived feeling unloved before eventually learning to praise God.
• Tamar’s complicated story showed how God can still work through broken situations.

Pastor Jonathan repeatedly highlighted that God’s plan continued forward not because people were perfect, but because God was faithful.

Rahab, Redemption, and Adoption

Pastor Jonathan connected the story of Rahab to the larger theme of redemption.

• Rahab, a prostitute from Jericho, believed in God and protected Israel’s spies.
• Her life was redeemed, and she became part of the lineage of Jesus.
• He emphasized that God continually brings outsiders, broken people, and unlikely individuals into His family.

Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Promise

The sermon culminated in Jesus as the fulfillment of the promised seed.

• Pastor Jonathan explained that from Genesis onward, God was preserving the line that would lead to Christ.
• Through Jesus, heaven and earth are united and humanity is redeemed.
• No matter someone’s family history, failures, or past, they can be adopted into God’s family through Christ.

Final Encouragement

Pastor Jonathan closed by encouraging the church that their identity is no longer defined by their past, but by Jesus.

• Believers are now part of a much greater story—the story of God’s faithfulness through generations.
• He ended by pointing forward to next week’s message on Ruth, calling it one of the clearest pictures of God’s mercy and redemption in the Old Testament.

Let's pray this morning. Father God, we thank you for today. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, I pray that you will just illuminate this idea and this story that's woven throughout the Bible of this seed that you've promised, Father.

 The redemption and the revelation that you have for us this morning is in Jesus' holy name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, you may be seated.

 I want to start with this. You know, I had this idea and I was thinking about May and I was like, I kind of want to do this little mini. I had this idea, I want to do this mini series I was praying. And I was like, I want to do this mini series and looking at some of these women that are mentioned and are key roles in the lineage of Jesus for this month of May. And I wanted to go through and study them and I was like, yeah, I can do that in three weeks.

 And that was a terrible mistake because three weeks is just the tip of the iceberg.

 But I've got three weeks and so we're going to get into it. And I've got this. I mean, I'm telling you, I'm so excited. There's so much good stuff and we'll have more stuff to come as the months go. But I'm looking forward to it. But I want to start with this idea. Anybody here, is anyone interested in like genealogies or your ancestry? Like you're into that, right? Don't be ashamed. You can raise your hand. There's dozens of us in here. Okay. I'm kind of into it. Has anyone ever taken, and I know some of you conspiracy theorists out there are like, they're never getting my DNA. But have any of you ever taken like one of those like ancestry.com, you know, spit test or like , you know, whatever, right?

 Yeah, I have to. I like those. And you know, they could be selling me total fakeness, but I think it's real. Like I think this is a real thing that's happening and I think it's cool. And I remember when I took it, when I took that test, Vivi and I took it together. It was actually our Christmas presents to each other one year. And I was like, this is going to be neat. I hope I had this secret hope. Like I wanted to find something in my DNA that was surprising.

 Did anyone else like hope they found something surprising in their DNA? Maybe you're like, not that surprising. Like I wanted to find something surprising, like a like a cultural background that I didn't know existed.

 You know, like something cool. And so I took the test and I waited the however many weeks to get it back. And I was so excited. Vivi and I did at the same time and my DNA came back and you know, over the years that they keep making it a little bit more finite and everything. And it comes back and the results, they were a little disappointing.

 Because I'll read them to you right now and maybe you'll catch the theme. I'm not going to give you the percentages because it really doesn't matter. But central Scotland and Northern Ireland, Northern Wales and Northern West England, North East Scotland, Ireland, Southwest England and Northwest Europe, Denmark and Iceland.

 It was very, it was very white.

 It was very white and very just exactly where I was hoping like that I would find some branch off of something else.

 And I was like, well, it's okay. It's who I am. I can't change that. And so then Vivi comes back and I thought I'll be curious about hers. I bet it's also boring.

 I'll just read a couple for you. I'll read them all. So first is indigenous Americans from Colombia and Venezuela, which, you know, ding, ding, ding. That's where she's from. Also a very small percentage from Bolivia and Peru.

 Spain, no surprise there. Northern Spain, Portugal, Basque, Canary Islands, Madeira, Southern England, Northern England, Sardinia. And this is when I got just like what is happening.

 Senegal, Benigna Togo, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, North Africa, France, Germans in Russia, Jews in Northern Africa, the Aegean Islands, and Quebec.

 And she's like, I'm so diverse. And I'm like, I would have taken any one of those. Just one, like a one percenter in there somewhere so I could hold my head high. Like don't worry. I got one percent of, you know, Ivory Coast. That would have been neat.

 But apparently, as you can tell, dude, my absolute whiteness through and through, that was not the case.

 She has this deep history of like all the stuff. She's like, I can actually feel all that in me. And I'm like, get out of here. Get out of here. You didn't even know.

 And she's like, oh, I knew.

 And I was a little jealous. And maybe to this day, I'm still a little jealous.

 And you know, ancestry is like they are what they are. They're neat to see where you come from and the science is kind of cool.

 But at the end of the day, like it's just this genealogy. And you know, maybe sometimes when you read through the Bible, if you're like me, you get to the most boring parts of all of Scripture, which is the genealogies. You know what I'm talking about? Like you're going through the stories are good. Like it's a good story. And then all of a sudden, it's like two chapters of so and so begets so and so who begets so and so. And you're just like, oh, no way.

 And then you think, you know what? Don't worry. I'm going to start in the New Testament because it's alive and well and powerful and inspired by the Holy Spirit. And you're like, I'm going to start right at the beginning. Matthew. And how's Matthew start?

 Genealogy. You're like, this is a joke. Like I'm here for the stories. I'm not here for the names. I actually don't care because it doesn't matter.

 But here's the thing.

 It is actually this little hidden, one of the most powerful, profound truths that we see of God's plan, of God's incredible scope of the work of the cross of Jesus Christ, of the authoritative nature and the divine inspiration of Scripture. This is one of the most powerful things.

 And they are all kind of like not even hidden because they're not hidden. They're right there for you to read. It's just you probably skimmed over them and you maybe missed the time. I did for years and years and years and I still don't know all these connections. But there's something so profound and understanding the power of the lineage of the ancestry that you and I carry as those who are found in Christ.

 Because when Paul tells you that when you accept Jesus, that you are adopted into a new family, that you are grafted into a new heritage, that you are part of a new line and that your older brother is Jesus himself. That is not just like for good feels and just to like kind of have like something to fill up the paper.

 It is one of the most profound truths to understand that no matter if your ancestry DNA report is as varied as my wife's or as singular as mine, you are adopted into a family that has a cultural lineage in history far beyond what you can imagine. And that has far greater and more profound strength and power and identity than you would ever believe.

 And so whether you're extremely proud of your lineage and your history or maybe you look back at your family and you think, "Whew, we had to make a hard turn from the rest of my family."

 You and I are in the same family.

 We get a new lineage, new heritage, and it all starts from the very beginning.

 We read that passage in chapter three of Genesis, and that's the fall. That's pretty common. You've probably heard that if you've grown up in church, this whole scene in which Satan or the Satan, the deceiver is cursed.

 And then at this place, men and women are given these consequences of their decisions. But at the very beginning of this place, after he curses the serpent, he gives the hope of salvation. And it's interesting because both Adam and Eve both failed. They both sinned, and they both had to deal with the consequences of sin. And those are highlighted in that chapter.

 But the hope of salvation, the hope of the restoration, the hope of the coming Messiah who would bring the fulfillment of God's plan was coming through Eve and her seed.

 Eve and her seed.

 And there's something so powerful and so profound to look at the lineage that goes from Eve all the way to the birth of Jesus and to see something just incredible and the God at work and is redeeming and is restoring and is renewing. And so Eve has a promise made.

 And Eve ends up having children and sons. And you can read this in the story. We don't have time for today's story, but she has kids. We all know the famous story of Cain and Abel where a brother kills a brother.

 And there's this break and the ground cries out.

 And there's this constant process of the moment that they leave the garden, that death and violence and destruction and sin is all around. And if you continue reading in Genesis, you get to chapter six.

 And chapter six is one of the weirdest passages that you will read in the Bible. And for some of you, it's like, like, I know the ones right here. As soon as I heard Genesis six, you immediately stop scrolling on Facebook. You just, you're like, I'm here because I know what you're about to read. Okay. So we're going to read this. And I just want to tell you, this is weird. It's uncomfortable. We'll unpack it a little bit. But this is important. Remember, God told Eve, you Eve, the creation that was made from the dirt, or actually from Adam, who's made from the dirt, this creature of earth said, through you, a seed will come that will deal the death blow to the Satan. But listen to this in chapter six. It says, now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the land and the daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

 Now, we don't have time to get into all the rabbit holes here. Okay. Lots of people call these different things, like some people will call these sons of God, sons of Elohim. Some people will call them fallen angels. Some people will call these demons. Some people say this is the angels that fell with Lucifer whenever he rebelled with God. Right. There's a lot of different theories of what these are called and what the right name is. But ultimately, we are talking about these are heavenly created beings that Genesis talks about, that in the beginning when God created everything, he created the heavenly realm and he created the heavenly beings. And then he created the earthly realm and he created the earthly beings. Right. For those of you who've grown up in church, you're like, okay, maybe I've heard some of this. For those of you who maybe you haven't or this is the first time, like this is all laid out in Scripture, that there's this heavenly realm and this earthly realm and that the Garden of Eden was this place where those two things intercepted, where God and man could dwell together. And then through the sin and the fall that was broken, they were cast out of that place. But now these heavenly beings are rebelling against God's commands and against God's will and are invading this earthly realm. And it says that they are taking human women as wives.

 And then in verse three, it says, the Lord says, "My spirit shall not strive with man forever because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his day shall be  years." Verse four says, "And then the Nephilim," which I know that's that was the word that some of you guys are like, I'm just waiting for him to talk about the Nephilim. That's where I get excited.

 "We're on earth in those days and also afterwards. And when the sons of God came to the daughters of men, they bore children to them, and they were mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent and thoughts of their heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and the birds of the sky for I am sorry that I ever made them." And then again, this is one of those key words. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

 So what is happening?

 And I know, listen, this is crazy. You're like, I don't know if I can believe all this, but I just want to go ahead and preface this. If you believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he was born to the Virgin Mary, then this is just one more thing that we get to look at and say, I don't fully understand, but this is what happened.

 This is a faith thing, a thing of spiritual nature that is like, I don't see this every day, but these are things that are happening in heavenly places and spiritual things that you just have to sometimes get a little uncomfortable and are more comfortable with the discomfort of like, I don't fully understand this. But these fallen sons of God, these fallen beings were spreading wickedness throughout all of humanity. And it says that all of humanity was being, the lines of humanity were being completely perverted by what these fallen angels had done and through this lineage. And it says that, but Noah, his wife, and his three sons and their wives found favor with God. And it says, and later in the story says that they were the only one who were seen to be righteous in God's word. But the word for righteous there is interesting. It doesn't just mean righteous like as in doing the right thing, but it means that have maintained the purity of the line.

 So what's going on? God told the snake and woman through your seed, through unity with God, will become the hope that redeems all of mankind.

 So what the enemy tries to do is he tries to taint and preferred and block out that line. If I can pervert and taint all of that line, then the seed can never come through woman because the enemy can go through and pervert the seed.

 But God maintained one group and one set, this elect of Noah and his family. And then you guys know the story of Noah, the flood and everything comes. But this doesn't wipe out this issue. This issue is something that plagues all the people. We see this popping up later in the land of Canaan. That's why when Joshua and Caleb went with the other  spies, they are saying there's giants in the north. The Nephilim are in this land. They're walking around ruling in this place, this land of Canaan, this area of Canaan that we're supposed to go into.

 There's this idea that God has a plan for the seed and the enemy wants to break the plan of the seed before it ever happens.

 And he tries all sorts of different things.

 And I know this is like, what are we talking about? Follow the angels and how do they sleep? Lots of questions. And maybe one day we'll have a Bible study and the dozen of you who really want to get into it will just really nerd out. And I say a dozen of you and then a hundred of you show up and I'll have to buy hot dogs and there'll be a whole thing. But listen, this is like a crazy story and I can't answer all the questions right now. Like it's a lot. But just know the enemy wanted to pervert the line and all of these things happened.

 But then God saves humanity. And then after Noah, we know that there's this place where he's like, he offers his offering to God. And it looks like, oh my gosh, they're going to make it. And then he plants a garden. It's like, he's on a high place. Worshiping God in a garden. It's Eden. But then he accidentally got drunk because the ground was still cursed.

 And then we have another really weird story that it says that he got drunk and he got naked in his tent. And Noah had three sons, Ham, Sham, and Japheth. And Ham, it says that he discovered his father's nakedness and then revealed it to his brothers. And his brothers were appalled. And listen, when you just read the story, you're like, I don't know what's going on. He's naked. I don't know. I mean, it's not ideal. No one wants to find their dad naked ideally. But it's like, I mean, it says they went back and they covered him. But there's actually a far greater act of shame that is happening. And people debate what happened. Like there's all sorts of theories. But something very evil. Ham performed something very evil towards his father in this moment.

 What it is, I'm not going to sit out here and venture. There's a lot of theories.

 But he sinned against his father.

 But the other two, Chim and Japheth, says they went through and they walked backwards and they covered the honor of their father.

 This may be literal, this may be figurative.

 And as a result, Noah ends up cursing Ham and blessing Chim and Japheth. And what the Bible tells us is Ham becomes the father of the Canaanites. And the Canaanites are basically a large group of people who would consist of what we consider in the biblical narrative, the Egyptians and people who would later settle in the Promised Land.

 And Chim is the line that the nation of Israel comes from. Because we follow the line of Chim and he goes down. All of a sudden the next thing is like generation after generation after generation. And he'll end up at a person that you and I know, which is Abraham.

 Good old father Abraham.

 He had many sons, right?

 But not really.

 He had two.

 But father Abraham.

 But here's what's interesting.

 God promises Abraham. This is not about Abraham.

 But during this promise, you know he gives this promise to Abraham. And Abraham seems like he's believing okay. But there's a character that really struggles with this whole, I'm going to make you a mighty nation. You're going to have a land and a place of possession. And you have many descendants. And through you all the nations will be blessed. Because Abraham's like I can get behind that. But then his wife, her name was Sarah at the beginning of the story. By the end of the story her name is Sarah.

 She had this one little problem.

 When this all started she was old.

 And I don't mean like how we say like oh, like my kids call me old, you know I'm . I don't mean like oh you're , you're old.

 I mean she was  plus when the promise was made.

 I was old.

 And then they still had to wait over a decade before anything happened.

 And in this story, and many of you guys know this story, she began to get restless and she thought I just want this thing to happen. God promised descendants and I can't get pregnant. I've never been able to get pregnant. And in an ancient cultural context that was like such a hard thing for a woman to walk through. It's really hard for women to walk through today as well. And it was really hard back then. And it was the struggle and identity and like all these different things. And she's like I can't do it. So she decided I'm going to take this into my own hands. And God's made me this promise. And he said through you I'm going to carry this line of the seed.

 The seed's going to come through you.

 So what does she do? She says I got an idea if I give my Egyptian maidservant to Abraham and he can have a son through her and it'll be like a son through me. And then like everything will be okay. And of course Abraham he loved his wife really a lot and he's like I can't do that. That would be really bad.

 Oh wait.

 She's like I need you to sleep with my maidservant. He's like if you say so.

 I am a submissive husband you know.

 I guess I'll do it.

 Didn't put up a fight. Didn't say no. That's not what God said.

 And you and I just sit here and think oh yeah she was a servant from Egypt. Remember Egypt is from Ham.

 It's like it's no go. They knew.

 Abraham knew.

 And I'll tell you how he knew here in a minute. But he knew that that's not the way that God wanted to do it. But he did it anyways. And he had a son Ishmael and he was brave and strong but God's like this isn't it.

 And it's a really tragic story because then like once she has the baby then Sarah becomes really jealous and she becomes abusive of the woman and of the son. Like it's like this is such a harsh thing.

 But ultimately she does get pregnant and she has this miraculous pregnancy at her very old age.

 A real geriatric pregnancy. Not like when you're  and they tell you like oh this is a geriatric pregnancy and you're like I had a geriatric wisdom tooth taken out. Nothing makes you feel older when they're like this is a geriatric wisdom tooth procedure and I'm like I'm . Like it's geriatric for wisdom teeth. You're like she has Isaac the son of the promise and God makes it clear Ishmael will be a great nation.

 He's not the seed. He's not the promise.

 Isaac has.

 And this is how I know Abraham Sarah dies.

 Abraham actually remarries. Some people don't know that he remarries and he has other kids. And every time he has kids he sends them away because they're with Canaanite women. He sends them away. He sends them away. He sends them away because Isaac he knows is the son of the promise. And before when he's almost dying he takes this unknown servant that never tells his name and he brings to him. He says you need to swear to me. You need to swear to me that you go and you find a wife for my son Isaac who's not from these Canaanite women because he's the son of the promise.

 You need to go back to my home country the descendants of Shem and you need to follow that place and you need to find him a wife there. He can't marry someone here. Swear to me this oath. They say yeah so he swears the oath and this servant this unknown servant who has this incredible relationship with God who's praising God everywhere he goes and saying God just lead me and guide me and show me this thing. He goes up and he finds this woman Rebekah.

 And wouldn't you know it Rebekah is actually related directly to Abraham.

 Directly and he goes through and he puts gold on her and he says these things. He says would you be willing to marry my master's son Isaac.

 And after this whole conversation they say yes. And we're introduced to a character his name's Laban. Laban is really important in the next story. And Laban is like a real crooked swindler and he even tries to be crooked and swindle in this particular situation. But Rebekah and his servant won't allow it. And so she comes with them and immediately sees Isaac and they fall in love at first sight.

 And I mean a true and beautiful passionate love between two people.

 And they loved each other their whole lives.

 But even in this story there's a problem because she also struggled with infertility.

 But Isaac different than Abraham probably because he maybe learned from the story of his father as opposed to trying to figure out something on his own or figure out how he could earn this. The Bible says in Genesis that he turned to God and prayed over her that God would open up her womb and that God did a miracle in her body and she was pregnant with twins.

 And then out of these twins we have Esau and Jacob. Esau's the first born, Jacob's the second born. And they're like it's polar opposite. Esau's like covered in hair. When they describe it, it sounds really gross.

 And then Jacob who's not.

 And Esau becomes this mighty warrior, this mighty huntsman, this outdoors, this man's man. And Jacob was kind of like a inside cat.

 He liked to stay home and inside.

 But when Rebecca was pregnant God told her in a vision, he spoke to her and said that you have two nations in your belly and the younger will be over the older and the seed of the promise will go to the second born not the first born which is totally culturally different.

 But by the way this whole story is culturally different because the fact that I'm telling you these women's name is completely unique to our holy text in Scripture. Guess what if you go and study Babylonian lineages or Mesopotamian lineages or Egyptian lineages there will be no women.

 They will not be named. The very few exceptions will be there was a few Egyptian queens and they were named but their mothers were not named and their descendants weren't named like only if they got thrust into an unusual extreme place of authority or power. But in this story we have women that are not made of power just average everyday women who are being listed because their stories matter.

 And because God has constantly begun walking through the promise of the sea. And so Rebecca knows this vision and as they grow up Isaac preferred Esau and she of course Rebecca preferred Jacob because she knew it was another promise.

 And there's all the stories the selling his birthright for Lindos but the end Isaac is about to bless Esau with a blessing.

 He's going to go and cook some food for his dad and do this whole thing and Rebecca decides that she's going to help Jacob deceive Isaac to get the blessing.

 And they sow some goat for which again imagine a guy that you got a goat for God.

 Like he's like I don't know if you're my son and then he grabs goat for and he's like oh yeah that's my Esau.

 Like what in the world.

 I can't even fathom that because Isaac was blind my.

 And they trick him and he gets the blessing. And here's what's that it immediately creates a problem with Esau and Rebecca has to tell Isaac to Jacob to leave to flee.

 And she never sees him again and all the way by the way we never hear from Rebecca again.

 The Bible never records her death. The Bible never mentions her again.

 And we can extrapolate that from what we want.

 A lot of people look at that and say she like many others chose to try to take God's will into her own hands and said like God's not able to to overcome if Esau gets the blessing. And so I've got to do it on my own because I know that God said that this is going to be where the seed comes from and she did it on her own and that created enmity between Jacob and Esau between her, Isaac.

 And we never hear from her again.

 She was a profound fear. She left her father's house on faith and came and became this incredible woman. And yet then she decided to try to take things on her own and became the deceiver and partnered with this fallen nature of evil within our hearts to try to get what we want in our own way, not in God's way.

 And she deceived and then Jacob goes and leaves and he goes and he runs away and he has all sorts of experiences and he goes to his father, his actually the people of his grandfather to the place where his mother came from and he meets his uncle Laban.

 And he falls in love with this relative, which I know for us is like weird but you know their ancestor DNA was a little differently by that. But Rachel and Rachel was beautiful. Says there was a sparkle in her eye. She was beautiful. And he negotiated with his uncle Laban that he wanted to be able to marry Rachel. And he said, okay, there's this whole story. If you work for me for so long, then you can marry Rachel. And he's like, great. And he does this. He works for seven years. He works to be able to marry her. And he comes there and they say, okay, we're going to have this wedding. And they do this whole thing and they get him drunk and then they take him to the marriage tent. And then he wakes up the next morning and he turns over.

 And it's not Rachel. It's her older sister.

 It's her older sister Leah, who the Bible says, and there was no sparkle in her eye,

 which feels so mean.

 Like it feels so mean. Like it doesn't just come out as like plain as being like, she was ugly. But it literally lets you know like, there was a reason she still wasn't married.

 And he was like, well, what can I do? I got two daughters. This is the older one. I had to marry her first.

 And he's like, I didn't want that one.

 I wanted the other one.

 And he said, I'll make you a deal. Work another seven years and I'll let you have this one too. Two for one or two for . I'll even make you a deal. I'll either go ahead and let you marry this one now and then you just owe me seven years. So he does it. So now he's got two wives.

 First time we have this recorded in the line of God. And sometimes I hear people say like, you know, there's a lot of people in the Bible who have more than one wife.

 And I say, that is true. This is the first one. And I ask this other question. Go ahead and read the stories and you tell me how well that went for them.

 And without exception, the answer is very, very poorly. This one being the first one. It went terrible. You know how long it took for it to go terrible? Exactly one verse. That's how long it took to be terrible.

 Because he has two wives.

 One he wanted to marry. He was in love with and he finds beautiful.

 And the other one.

 And that's rough if you're the other one.

 But here's this crazy thing.

 The one that he loved that was beautiful. Yet again, we have this theme.

 Could not get pregnant.

 And it says that God saw. This is really like this. Like these things are hard. This is real life. God saw that Leah was unloved.

 He saw that she was unloved. It says and he opened up her womb and she had children.

 Which brings up another really interesting point.

 This is just a commentary.

 He did not find her attractive and he found the other one attractive. And yet he still seemed to manage to have sex with both of them.

 Just doing his duty. This apparently seems to be a theme.

 Whatever it takes. But listen to this.

 I wish I had time to go through all the Rachel and Leah. Because Rachel eventually gets pregnant. She eventually has kids. In fact she has kids that leads to Joseph. And Benjamin is really profound. And we'll probably talk about it later. But she has four sons. Leah has four sons. And it gets really messy. They start fighting each other. They don't like each other. They start taking their maid servants and having them marry. Jacob says they can have more kids under their name. This whole total. Even they're passive aggressively naming their kids. It's really messy. But listen to this.

 Reuben which was the first born says the Lord has seen my misery. That's what Reuben means.

 Welcome son. I'm miserable.

 But God's seen it. So it makes me feel better. The second one was Simeon. The Lord heard I am unloved.

 Whoo.

 That's rough.

 Levi. Now my husband will become attached to me.

 Guys that's rough.

 Like now I've given him three sons.

 He'll be like yes to like me.

 But listen to this. The fourth one.

 This time, and this is Judah by the way. Which is really significant.

 This time I will praise the Lord.

 She went from bitter and broken to praising God.

 And by the way I wish I had time but Rachel actually went the opposite.

 She started being boastful and her last son that she gave birth to and actually died. Before she died she tried to name him this really miserable thing. And Jacob had to change his name.

 And here's what's crazy. You fast forward.

 Jacob ends up being buried in the family burial plot in the Promised Land with Leah, not Rachel.

 Now we got two more. Yeah we got time.

 Not really but we're going to do it anyways.

 We got two more. And those you probably have heard of and those you're really good with. And those are actually women that we know there are these matriarchs within this whole thing because Jacob has those  sons between all those wives and they go through and the whole thing. We have the story of Joseph which by the way I think in the summer I'm going to do a series on Joseph. It's going to be great.

 That's just a teaser for you. But there's one story.

 There's five people I should say. Five women that are named directly specifically in the lineage of Christ and Matthew.

 Five women. And the five women that are named and we're going to cover all of these. Right. And the first one is Tamar Rahab Ruth Bathsheba and Mary.

 Those are the five women. The first one that's named as Tamar. And for you Bible nerds out there you know who Tamar is for the rest of you don't. Tamar is a very uncomfortable and hard story.

 And this is in the middle of the Joseph story. And it feels like it has nothing to do with the story of Joseph. Joseph is in Egypt at this point. He's been sold to slavery. He's doing his whole thing. And Judah all of a sudden in the middle of this story it says that Judah's wife died because Judah was married. He had taken this Canaanite woman and his wife died. And then he mourned her for a little while and then he went to this sheep shearing like harvest festival thing. And but before this happened you have to know with the other wife he had three sons. And the oldest of those sons went through and he got married to a local woman and her name was Tamar. And Judah's first son was named Ur. But Ur died and all the Bible tells us that Ur died because he was considered extremely wicked before God and God killed him.

 I don't know what you have to do to do that. But it's got to be pretty bad. And he died. And so what Judah told his next son which his name was Onan. He said hey your brother died. You need to go to his spouse and you need to and this sounds so weird to us today but this was like the cultural thing. You need to lay with her and you need to give her a son so that your brother's name can carry on. That was like a culture. It wasn't just Jewish culture like ancient Near Eastern culture that was very common. He said you need to go and do that. But the Bible says that Onan didn't want to do that. So every time that he was with her he assured through some method that he was not going to impregnate her.

 And the Bible says that that was despicable to God. So God killed him.

 That's two for two. So he had a third son but the third son was young. And so what Judah told Tamar was he said when my son's old enough I'll have him come and be with you and we'll continue this thing. But until then let him stay with me and she says OK. But time passes and she knows that he becomes of age and she knows that Judah is not going to be true to his word because the Bible says Judah was afraid that he was also going to die. So he moved on. So then his wife dies. He goes to this festival. He seems to have mourned her for approximately . days or something like that. And he goes around and Tamar hears that her fatherinlaw is coming to this festival. And because she feels like she's been slighted because now she is this widow with no power with no control with no lineage with no birthright. Everything apart from her and she's just sitting there. She dresses up and hides her face and pretends to be a prostitute. And Judah because he's just you know finished mourning his wife decides I'm going to go sleep with a prostitute.

 Like we think there's new brokenness in the world today. It's not.

 This stuff has been around forever.

 So he goes and he literally has the story is very uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable to read. It's like just right away. How much will it cost me to sleep with you?

 And she's like a goat. He's like great. I'll pay you a goat but I don't have a goat with me.

 They didn't have a cash app and you know that kind of stuff.

 And she says OK. Well I need something is collateral. And she convinces this guy. It says it gives him his ring his cord and his staff. That would be like literally you going into negotiation and you giving him like your Social Security card your credit card and your power attorney for your whole life. That's how much he wanted to have sex with a prostitute that day.

 That's mind blowing.

 And he says I'll give you this is collateral and then I'll bring the goat back. And she says OK. So they do the deed. He leaves.

 She gets pregnant.

 He sends a friend to take the goat because he's too ashamed. He's like get the go and get my stuff. She has all my stuff.

 He shows up and they can't find it and they're like where's that prostitute that hangs out here. They're like we're not a prostitute that hangs out here. What are you talking about. And he's like oh so now all of a sudden. Judah is just walking around no credit card no ID no nothing. He's like trying to pretend like yeah yeah yeah things are cool.

 And then someone comes to him and says hey your daughterinlaw is pregnant.

 And he says I can't believe she would do that. Imagine that this is a guy. He says bring her to me so we can kill her.

 So they bring her to him. She shows up. She says you're going to he's I'm going to die and she's like I know.

 But the guy who impregnated me is the one who owns these things.

 And homegirl has all the stuff in the bag.

 And he goes he says something profound.

 He says your righteousness is far greater than mine.

 This will wreck your theology.

 Your righteousness and lying and deceiving because I want you to know what Judah almost did.

 Judah through his fear and his unwillingness to trust God and he's been living terrible up to this moment in his life. Selling his brother into slavery wanting all sorts of things. He was going to let the lion die.

 And Tamar who what we consider to be deception. She deceived the deceiver into righteousness and the light and yet in a horrible situation and a brokenness and a fall in a complex thing in which it's like this is messed up. He says is you've been more righteous and I want you to understand something.

 Judah's life is transformed from this moment on.

 Judah is not the same human being after this. By the way she gets pregnant surprised with twins because it's always twins. And guess what? It's another weird story. She's having the baby and it says that they're like kind of warring inside of her and it says that one sticks its hand out which this again is very graphic is that the hand comes out and the maidservant ties a scarlet thing on it. Like this one's first got him.

 And then the hand goes back in. This is a rough birth ladies.

 This is a rough birth. You think you had it bad. This was happening. The scarlet letter robe thing is now inside. So all of a sudden she keeps going and then another one. The one comes out and they realize it's not the one whose hand came out first.

 It's actually the second born. The first born got passed by the second born.

 And then another one comes out with a thing like I had the ribbon and this guy cut me.

 His name was Perez.

 Guess what.

 Perez becomes the son of Judah who the line continues to move forward.

 Not that son that didn't do anything. That one's just who it should have gone to. It went to the fourth born.

 Oh and if I only had time to tell you about three plus one.

 Three plus one. If only I had time to tell you about three plus one. Like when there's three days of creation but on the third day there was the bonus day. That after he created all that stuff then he created fruit trees that bear fruit. And then after three more days of stuff he created all the animals but on the bonus creation he created man and woman. Because on the fourth thing there's three plus one that's all through scripture. Three then one and Judah was the fourth one. And wouldn't you know it Perez was his fourth son. That there's this bonus that always happens when three plus one comes into this moment. When the father, the son and the Holy Spirit gets combined with this plus one. All of a sudden he can do something incredibly powerful and new. And all of a sudden in this moment Perez becomes this leader within the nation of Judah. Even though his upbringing where he came from was from a nonJewish not Israel person. That they come in and they marry into it and it was sinful and it was wrong. And yet here he is the sign of the promise. And we see this fully because guess what Eve sins and guess what Noah's kids sinned. And guess what Sarah never had faith and she tried to do it on her own. And Rebecca was a liar and all of a sudden Leah was broken and she had so many things that she tried to do. And now we've got Tamar this person who tricked her fatherinlaw into sleeping with her. And you think boy that can't get any worse. But that line keeps going through the line of Judah which Abraham or with Jacob promised would be the line that the chosen king would come from. And we move forward and it keeps going and it keeps going. And next thing you know Joshua and Caleb are in the land after they've walked through the wilderness for  years. And they come to the place of Jericho and they realize that they've got to scout it out. So they send some spies. The spies almost get caught. They go and hide in the house of a prostitute named Rahab and Rahab is there. And she already believes in God because she heard about his fame through the works of what happened in the wilderness. And she said if I will hide you if you'll save me and my family and they agree. And then the walls of Jericho come down every section of the wall except for where the scarlet letter or the scarlet rope was hanging.

 And Rahab and her whole family was saved.

 Rahab the Jericho prostitute.

 But guess what happened to Rahab?

 Rahab ends up getting married.

 And it'd be amazing if she just got married to someone. She got married to the leader of the tribe of Judah.

 And her whole story is redeemed.

 Now I really want to keep going in the story.

 But I'm not going to because that's what I'm talking about next week. Because this Rahab the prostitute becomes a very important character for where we're going and protecting the seed.

 And protecting the seed. Can I tell you one other cool thing? Can I do one more thing? One more thing.

 And they were done. I promise. Two minutes, plenty of time.

 So you know how Joseph got sold into slavery, right?

 He was there. He married an Egyptian woman. I can't pronounce her name but it's something like Ashanti but more Egyptian. And he has two kids, right? Manasseh and Ephraim.

 And once he gets reunited with his father after the whole thing he goes to Jacob and Jacob says, "Bring me your two children, your two sons, and bring them to me." And he tells Joseph, "These two boys, remember, they're half Egyptian.

 So remember, they came from him."

 He said, "These two boys are now my boys. They're not yours anymore."

 And at first if you're a dad in the room, you're like, "Wait a minute. You can't do that." But he's saying, "They are now part of my family. They are part of the blessing." And he says, "And the younger will rule over the older." Again, the younger, this is like a common thing. Holy cow, we could just go on.

 And he blesses Ephraim.

 Right? He blesses Ephraim and the tribe of Ephraim.

 Fast forward to the wilderness.

 Twelve spies were sent into the land.

 One from each tribe.

 Two came back and said it was good. One was Caleb. You know what tribe he was from? Yes.

 Judah.

 The other one who came back with a good report was Joshua. You know what tribe he was from?

 Ephraim.

 And they said the land's good. We can take it. Judah and Ephraim. These two different people. There's one that represents the promise and the line and the royal priesthood. There's other one that represents adoption from brokenness and from the fall and from the curse and from everything. They get brought back together. And it goes even further because all of a sudden it tells you later that when Caleb was  and he was giving his old speech like, "Let me take this hill to get my promise land back because I'm as strong today at  as I was when I was ." And this is Caleb from the tribe of Judah. He was now the head of the tribe of Judah. And it says that he was also called the Kinzanite.

 And he said, "What's a Kinzanite?"

 Kinzanite means he actually wasn't born into the tribe of Judah at all.

 He was a nonIsrael. He actually came from Esau.

 And yet he was adopted into the nation of Israel and rose in status and became this great leader. And he ended up being the one who was elected to be one of the  spies and the one who ended up leading the tribe of Judah and the one who went and took that thing down. And Judah and Ephraim are who rule in this place. And if you fast forward into the prophets where it says Ezekiel, and there's this weird story right after we just sang about it, the whole Valley of Dry Bones. People love that chapter of Ezekiel. But if you keep going, you get into a weirder story where he says, "Take two sticks, write the word, write the tribe of Judah on one, write the tribe of Ephraim on the other." And guess what? Those two things will come together. And the one who comes from the royal priesthood and the one who brings the adoption of the nations comes together and they become one tribe. And that person will be the hope of all humanity. And now you fast forward to the place where the seed, where we know we're going to end, comes to Mary. And for the first time, although the enemy has tried it multiple times, heaven and earth are united through the person of Mary and they are birthed through the seed of her into the person of Jesus Christ, who are the first time heaven and earth are now and God's plan walking in the purpose. And the one who can bring the lineage of man and the brokenness of those who are outside in the curse come together with the very spirit of God. And we are now redeemed by something that is far greater than one happenstance motion that happened, but something that was set in time and in place and was ordained by the very spirit of God and was protected from moment and generation and generation so that when we cry out through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are not just accessing the one moment in time that he shed his blood, but we are partnering with the fact that all of humanity was redeemed and saved and restored through the work of what Jesus Christ did on that cross. And the story of what happens, no matter what your background is, you could have come from the prostitute, you could have come from the curse, you could have come from the broken, you could have come from the evil, you could have come from the thing that was good or the thing that was bad. It doesn't matter where your past comes from. Jesus Christ is your future, and you get to be redeemed by that power of the seed today.

 I don't care how horrible your family background is, you are grafted into the greatest story that has ever been told.

 I don't care how boring your ancestry.com is.

 You are part of something far greater.

 And so when you call on the blood and the power of Jesus Christ, you are joining, just like it says in Hebrews, we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who are saying, "Let me testify of the faithfulness of God, the one who was God from generation to generation to generation." And you may be sitting here saying, "I'm actually the first person in all the family that I know to ever get saved." Well, guess what? That's really great, but you have now been grafted into thousands of years of history of God's faithfulness, and He did it for them, and He will keep doing it for you.

 And He's like, "I got a lot of brokenness." So did Tamar. So did Sarah. So did Rebecca. So did Leah. So did Rachel.

 So did Rahab.

 But then Jesus came, and He fixed it. And He fixed it.

 He fixed it.

 The one who brings completeness and fullness of mercy and grace. All right, I got to shut up. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm too excited.

 Spoiler alert, next week we're talking about Ruth, and it's going to blow your mind. It's my literal favorite story in the Old Testament. I will not get through it without crying because God's mercy and God's goodness and God's grace and the picture of Jesus is overwhelming and overflowing, and it is going to be a powerful time. So stand with me. Let me pray for you. I've kept you late. The kids are crying, but don't worry. Vivi's teaching in D.K. I'm sure she has them under control.

 Or she's mad at me. Either way.

 Father, you're good.

 We are not here by chance.

 We are not here by accident.

 We are here because you, God, the creator of the universe, love us.

 And sent Jesus as the most generous seed.

 The seed that you protected. Until now, in this moment, we can invite Jesus into our hearts, and that seed is buried in the soil of our heart, and it produces something brand new.

 Come Holy Spirit.

 Come Holy Spirit.

 Water the seed of truth in our hearts so that we can become more like you.

 You are the powerful and redeeming one.

 We lay at your feet this morning.

 It's in Jesus' holy name I pray.

 Real quick, church, if you need prayer for anything, our prayer team's down here. If you've got questions about salvation, if you say, "Hey, I don't know what it means to accept Jesus," they would love to pray for you, or for anything. They would love to be with you. We love you so much. You guys are dismissed. We'll see you next week for Mother's Day. Have a great rest of your Sunday.