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...week and so please just help us to preach the most important aspects of this chapter and in Jesus' name I pray, amen. Now we're starting a brand new book and I'm excited about starting this book. Matthew, I've wanted to start this but I was trying to get ahead on the memorizing several weeks in advance because some of the chapters in the book of Matthew are pretty long. Longer than the Epistles of Paul and everything that we've been doing. But the book of Matthew is one of my favorite books in the Bible. I'm kind of hitting them in order of my favorites a little bit. We did Hebrews, we did Philippians and now we're doing the book of Matthew, which is probably my favorite of the four Gospels. Now the book of Matthew, much like the book of Hebrews, quotes the Old Testament a great deal. A huge amount. Now you'll notice some key words as you're reading through the book of Matthew and as we're having this Bible study on Wednesday nights. Here are some key words that you'll see in the book of Matthew. Number one is fulfilled. Constantly you'll see the word fulfilled. That's a key word throughout the book of Matthew. It's talking about how Jesus Christ is fulfilling all these different prophecies and how the doctrine that he's teaching of how to live is fulfilling the laws that were given in the Old Testament. He is completing that code of conduct, that code of morality that's laid out in the Old Testament. He's also, of course, fulfilling the prophecies about himself coming and dying on the cross and raising again. So you'll see that word fulfilled a lot. Here's another word you'll see a lot. The kingdom. Constantly in the book of Matthew you'll see him talking about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom. He'll talk about Jesus Christ as the king. Now part of the reason why it starts out with this genealogy at the beginning of the book of Matthew is because it's showing his earthly right to the kingdom, so to speak, because we start out with Abraham and we go down through this line of Abraham through the tribe of Judah, which is the tribe that God prophesied would be the leader, that would be where the king would come from. And then we go down and find David, which is, of course, the king that was the man after God's own heart, where God said to David, If thy seed is going to come, the Messiah is going to come, Jesus Christ. And then it comes down all the way through all the kings of Judah. And if you study the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles especially, you'll see these different kings, all of them listed here. Then it gets to Jeconias, which was the last king of Judah before they went into captivity. And then it goes down through a bunch of men's names who, to be honest with you, I don't think are mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. From about verse number 12 through verse number 15, those men are not really mentioned anywhere. But, nevertheless, they were in that kingly succession. If they would have had a kingdom, if they would have had a nation, those men would have been the kings because that's what was passed down from father to son all the way down to Joseph. Now, Joseph was not a king, of course, but he really was in the lineage to be a king. Nevertheless, he was just a, you know, just a carpenter, according to the Bible. He was a blue-collar type man. Now, let me show you something really interesting about these genealogies. Of course, these genealogies are notorious for being boring. Most people say, Oh, it's so boring reading the Bible, all these so-and-so, big-hat so-and-so. But this is not boring at all. There's a lot of really interesting things that I'd like to point out about this. Number one, notice in this genealogy the mention of a few women are mentioned. Now, predominantly, it's just talking about men. You know, it starts out Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren, and Judas begat Pharaohs in his era of Tamar. You see right there, there's a woman's name mentioned. That's the first button. If you have a pen, I want you to, you know, put a mark there. Underline Tamar if you have a pen. Or if somebody, does somebody want a pen that doesn't have one? There you go, here's your pen. Do you have a pen, Amanda? Okay. But, in verse number three, I want you to underline Tamar. That's the first woman that's mentioned in this chapter. There are five women's names that are mentioned in this chapter. I'm going to show you something interesting. So, first we see Tamar. Then it says, and Pharaohs begat Esdram, and Esdram begat Aram, and Aram begat Amenadab, and Amenadab begat Nahassan, and Nahassan begat Salmon, and Salmon begat Boaz of Rakab. See that? That's the second woman's name. Rakab. And that's found in verse number five. Okay. Then it says, and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth. That's the third woman's name that's mentioned. And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David the King, and David the King begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias. So there her name's not given, but that's the fourth woman that's mentioned. We know that that's Bathsheba. But it says her that had been the wife of Urias. But even the fact that he doesn't give the name, he could have said that he begat Solomon of Bathsheba, but he's almost drawing attention to the wickedness that went on there, because he's referring to the fact that this woman used to be somebody else's wife. You see how he's pointing that out. Everybody else just gives the name, but it's actually saying of her that had been the wife of Urias. Seems kind of odd, doesn't it? I mean, here's a book that's exalting Jesus Christ, a book of Matthew. It's presenting to us Jesus Christ, and yet he's mentioning these women, all of which have a little bit of a questionable background. And here the questionable background is actually highlighted, if anything. And Solomon begat Rehoboam, Rehoboam begat Abia, and it goes down through this list. And no other women are mentioned until we get all the way down to verse number 16, where the Bible says, And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So that's the fifth woman that's mentioned. So let's talk about these five women that are mentioned. The first one is Tamar. Now, Tamar, if you go back to the Old Testament story in the book of Genesis, this is the story where Judah had a son named Ur. In fact, let's turn there. I wasn't going to have you turn there, but I am going to now because I thought about it. Let's turn back to the book of Genesis, and I'm kind of winging it here because I wasn't planning on turning back here, so let me find the story quickly. Let's see here. Should this take me a minute to find this? Or if somebody else wants to find it, then they can get a candy and tell me where it is. All right, here we go. I found it. Then Genesis chapter 37. I'm sorry, Genesis 38, verse 1. Genesis 38, 1. Okay, the Bible says in Genesis 38, 1, And it came to pass at that time that Judah, this is Jesus Christ's ancestor Judah, one of the sons of Jacob, that Judah went down from his brethren and turned in to a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira, and Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shewa, and he took her and went in unto her, and she conceived and bare a son and he called his name Ur. Now we see this man Judah leaving the Promised Land, leaving God's will, leaving his family where he was with his parents, with his brothers, serving the Lord, Judah went away from his brother and he falls away, and he goes down and starts hanging around with this guy named Hira, okay? And this guy Hira was a Canaanite. He was ungodly. He was not saved. He was not anything to do with his family. And this man Hira, while he's there in the land of the Canaanites, he sees a woman named Shewa, and he sees this beautiful woman. Of course, she was a Canaanite. Of course, she was ungodly. Of course, she was not saved. And the Bible says that he married her. Okay, so he got married. That's fine. It says here, and she conceived and bare a son and he called his name Ur, and she conceived again and bare a son and she called his name Onan. So now he has two sons, Ur and Onan. Then the Bible says in verse 5, and she yet again conceived and bare a son and called his name Shela, and he was at Kzib when she bare him. And Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, whose name was Tamar. That's this woman Tamar. So basically, his oldest son, Judah has three sons, Ur, Onan, and Shela. The oldest son Ur marries a woman named Tamar, who is the same Tamar that we saw in Matthew chapter 1. And the Bible says that Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. So God looked down at Ur, this wicked son, because think about it, his dad's a backslidden Christian. His mom is a heathen, and so this kid grows up just wicked and ungodly Ur, and God just looks at this guy and says this guy's wicked. And he actually, God himself personally, took it upon himself to just kill Ur, because he just didn't even want to mess with him. Well, look what happened. And Judah said unto Onan, this is the second oldest boy, Go in unto thy brother's wife and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his. So basically, he's telling Onan, I want you to marry Tamar, since Ur died, God killed him. And so I want you to marry her, and so that you can have a child, and so that this woman's not just going to be desolate and not have any children. You can raise up seed for your brother and so forth. But Onan was, again, an ungodly boy like his brother. And it says it came to pass when he went in unto his brother's wife that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. And so adults know what happened in this story if you're reading this. And the Bible says that God killed him because it made him so upset what he did. He wanted to enjoy the enjoyment, but he didn't want to get the result of what comes from that. And so look what happens. Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter-in-law. So she's already been married to Ur. Ur died. God killed him. Then she was married to Onan. Onan died because God killed him. Now, Judah says to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, till Shelah my son be grown. For he said, Hey, lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father's house. So he said, Listen, Tamar, I want you to go home and live with your dad again, just like you did before you got married, and just wait a little longer. Shelah's a little bit young. When he grows up, you can marry my son Shelah. Well, to make a long story short, Shelah grew up, but lo and behold, he did not marry Tamar, and Judah did not give him to Tamar. So here's what Tamar did. Tamar became upset and angry about this. She felt ripped off. Here she is sitting around waiting for this guy to grow up. He grows up, becomes an adult, and she's not given to Shelah. So she has an idea. She dresses up like a hooker, like a prostitute. And she's waiting by the side of the road, according to the Bible. And Judah coming along, the nice godly Christian life that he's living, sees this woman by the side of the road, and she has a veil over her face. She's covering her face, as women of that occupation did in those days out of shame. They weren't as brazen as the women today, the whores and whoremongers of Hollywood that you see on the front of magazines in the grocery store whose glory is in their shame, and they don't mind flaunting the fact that they live a wicked and ungodly life. But back then it was actually a shameful thing to be a wicked woman and to be sleazy and so forth. And so she has her face covered up, and she's waiting by the side of the road. And Judah says, you know, he basically propositions this, you know what, by the side of the road, and says, let's so-and-so. And he says, I'm going to pay you. And he says, but I don't have any, I don't have it on me. And so she said, well, give me your ID. You know, it'd be like today if I left my driver's license somewhere as a surety for something that I was borrowing or something, and I left my driver's license so that they'd know that I was coming back to return whatever. It's kind of like when you go to the gas station and you want to use the restroom, and they give you the key, and it's got like a spool of wire tied to it. You know, it weighs like 20 pounds so that they know you're going to bring it back. Or I've been places where I've rented stuff and I had to leave my driver's license and get it back. Well, she says, well, here's what you're going to do. You're going to leave your staff and your signet and your ring. And these are identification-type tools. You know, he had a special ring. It was like a family ring with a certain insignia on it. He had a special staff that he had. And so these are very identifying things. These are very important things to him. And so he went in and committed ungodliness with this woman who he thought was just a stranger, but was actually his daughter-in-law. And he leaves the accoutrements with her, and he comes back the next day to pay, and she's gone. And there's no sign of her. He asks around the town, and they say, we never saw anybody like that. We don't know what you're talking about. Well, a couple months down the road, it turns out it's pretty obvious to everyone that she's pregnant. And they were going to give her the death penalty because here she is out whoring around. And so they were going to give her the death penalty, and she said, well, wait a second. And she exposed him to everyone, to Judah. And she showed the ring and the signet and the staff and said, well, whoever these are. And then, of course, he lets her off the hook because he wants to be off the hook for the wickedness that he did. And so that's the story. And I should bring up that Judah's wife was dead at this point. His wife, Shewa, died before any of this happened. He had the three boys with her, and then she died also. So you can see how God was really blessing this man who went into sin and got backslidden, wasn't he? Was God really blessing him? His wife dies, and he ends up committing immorality by accident with his daughter-in-law. So tell me something. Is this the type of person that you'd expect to read about in the line of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ? It's a little bit odd, isn't it, that this woman is mentioned? Of all the women, I mean, we could have mentioned the wife of every one of these men in Matthew chapter 1. But for some reason, God chose to mention this woman, Tamar. Who's the next woman that's mentioned? Turn back to Matthew chapter 1. I'll show you. In Matthew chapter 1, verse number 5, we see in Solomon begat Boaz of Rakab. Now, don't let it confuse you, but in the New Testament, sometimes the CH will be the... What is the H sound in the Old Testament? Kind of like you'll see King Achaz. We know him in the Old Testament as King Ahaz, and so forth. There's a lot of them like that where God, because it's in the Greek language, there's a C added there and a hard sound. But Rakab is Rahab of the Old Testament, Rahab the harlot from the book of Joshua, chapter number 2. And so we have so far Tamar, Rahab, look at the third woman that's mentioned, and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth. Now, the third woman here mentioned Ruth. She was a godly woman, but she was from a family that was a wrong family. She was a Moabitess. A Moabitess. Now, God had some very negative things to say about the Ammonites and the Moabitess. He said that they could not enter into the congregation of the Lord until the ninth and tenth generation. He said the Moabites and the Ammonites are not just going to be assimilated into the children of Israel until several generations have gone by. Now, these were a very wicked, ungodly people who were constantly fighting with the children of Israel, and God swore that he would have war against the Moabites forever. And so the Moabites were very, not a very good background for Ruth to have, let's put it that way. And yet here she is in the lineage of Jesus Christ. Now, where did the Moabites and the Ammonites come from? These are the two sons that Lot had incestuously with his two daughters in the mountains of Zoar after Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed. They, of course, got him drunk and used him to become pregnant their own father. And these two illegitimate children are born Ammon... I'm sorry, his name was actually Ben Ammi. Most people think his name was Ammon. His name was Ben Ammi, and his brother's name was Moab. And from Ben Ammi comes the Ammonites, and from Moab comes the Moabites. And that was her background, and she was in the lineage of Jesus Christ here. And then, of course, the fourth woman that's mentioned is Bathsheba. And God is drawing attention to the fact that she was married to a man, Uriah. She was bathing, perhaps inappropriately, if he was able to look out a window of his rooftop and see her, maybe she should have drawn the curtains or something like that. And so he sees her, commits adultery with her, and then he conspires to have her husband, Uriah, killed, takes her to be his wife. She becomes pregnant with a son who lives to be seven days old and then dies. Then she gets pregnant and has another son, who is Solomon, who is not the firstborn son, because the firstborn son was, I believe, Absalom, and then Amnon, and then Adonijah, and then you've got several other sons that are born, and Solomon's in there. And so Solomon, God chose, the Bible says, God chose Solomon. It wasn't just that that was David's pet son. God chose Solomon to be the king of Israel, to take the throne from his father David. And so here he is, or here she is, rather, in the lineage of Christ, these four women are mentioned with really ungodly backgrounds, I mean, really wicked backgrounds. Now, why is that? Why does God mention these women? And then, of course, the fifth woman that's mentioned is Mary, who the Bible doesn't really say anything negative about Mary. She was a clean, decent girl and didn't have a bad past at all. But four out of the five that God mentions here are ungodly women. Why? Because he doesn't like, he doesn't want us to somehow hide behind our past and say that we can't be used by God. If God could use Tamar to produce godly children, I mean, this was pretty much a godly lineage here. You think Solomon was a godly man? Absolutely. Well, look who his mom was. Do you think that Jesse was a godly man? The man who raised King David in his house? Absolutely. Do you think that Boaz was a great man? Absolutely. Think about this. You say, well, these genealogies are boring. Well, you've got to think about these as you read through this. Think about what God's saying here. Think about the fact, and by the way, you would not know that Rahab was the mother of Boaz unless you were reading this particular genealogy in Matthew 1. So you can find out all these great truths, like picture Rahab the harlot, a prostitute, living in Jericho. She's saved by faith, the Bible says, by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not. See, the difference between Rahab and everybody else in Jericho was that she believed and the people in Jericho didn't believe. That's why the Bible says by faith, in Hebrews 11, the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she had received the spies with peace. And so here she is, she believes on Jesus Christ, she puts the scarlet thread out the window, the whole city is destroyed, the wall comes crashing down except the part of the wall where her house was. God leaves it intact and everyone who's in that house is saved. She comes out of that house, she joins up with the children of Israel, she becomes, not only was she saved, but she also begins to follow Jesus Christ and the things of God. She marries a man named Salman and she has a child with this man Salman named Boaz. Look at the book of Ruth and read about Boaz. He's a wealthy landowner, very successful man. He's a very godly man, he knew the law, he knew exactly what was right, he knew exactly what he was supposed to do. He's a godly man, he's a merciful man, he's a kind man, he's a great man in the Bible, he's the great grandfather of King David, the man after God's own heart. So that means that if you are a Rahab, you could still produce a Boaz of a child. Hallelujah. That gives hope to anybody to turn out the right kind of children for God. Don't tell me that there's some kind of an excuse about somebody's past why they can't live for God or why they can't raise godly children. If Rahab the harlot can produce a Boaz, well then there's hope for any of us to be used by God in a great way. See how encouraging this is to read through this and just be encouraged by the fact that God doesn't just pick certain people, certain perfect people who grew up in a perfect life, he picks people who love him now, who love him today, who want to serve him now, not the background doesn't matter, he doesn't care what color their skin is, because he doesn't care if they're a Moabite, he doesn't care if they're from the most ungodly race that came out of incest, he says that doesn't matter to me, they matter to me, is your heart right? Do you love God? Now! And so we've got one person, or two people really, who are ungodly. Well actually let's break this down. Really the first person, Tamar, is the one who was, well Tamar and Rahab, I'm sorry I'm getting confused here, Tamar and Rahab are the ones who were wicked and ungodly women, and yet God used them in a mighty way. Like Ruth, she was the one that was from the other side of the tracks, she was the one that was from the wrong race, she was the one that was from the wrong family, and God used her. And then there's this woman, Bathsheba, who, we don't know how much of that was really her fault, I don't know, that's kind of up to interpretation, but either way she was a victim of some very bad circumstances. And yet God used all these women in a great way. And God honors these women even, putting them in this list of honor, in Matthew chapter 1, honoring these women for what they did. Isn't that amazing? And so we read through this genealogy, and there are many other things that I could go into about this genealogy, but I don't want to spend the whole time just on this. For example, there are three men's names missing from this genealogy. Very conspicuously, there's a gap in here, and the gap is between Joram and Ozias, if you'll notice in verse number 8. There are three men's names who are not listed in there that were kings of Israel, and in a casual read of the Old Testament, you would think, if you compared the Old Testament to this, you'd think, well God left out three people's names. But, and I know this is a whole sermon in and of itself, this is like more than a sermon in and of itself, but if you study out the Bible, I could prove to you from the Bible that those three men were not natural children. They were not legitimate children, and they were from a whole, it's very complicated. But there are a lot of interesting things that God teaches us through these genealogies, and if you study these and you compare these around with different things in the Bible, for example, 1 Chronicles 1-9, the first nine chapters of the book of 1 Chronicles is nothing but names. Just solid names, lists of names. But you can find a lot of interesting facts that can teach you the rest of the Bible, like for example, Samuel, the Bible says in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 1 that he was an, his dad was an Ephrathite. But if you read the book of 1 Chronicles, you can trace Samuel's lineage back a few generations, you'll find out that he physically was a Levite, and that his dad just lived in Ephrath. His dad was not necessarily of that nationality per se, you know, physically. But he was actually a Levite, which is what gave Samuel the right to be a priest. And I've heard preachers say strangely, you know, that Samuel was, because why would he be allowed to be the high priest of Israel if he was not a Levite? But you can only find that out, that he was actually legitimately a Levite, that he was actually legitimately a son of Aaron, and the priestly family, if you study 1 Chronicles. That's the only way you're going to find it. And so God puts everything in the Bible for a reason. He's not just trying to fill up pages here. He's trying to teach us valuable truths. The moral of the story is, don't ever skip these when you're reading your Bible. And the temptations there as you're reading, oh these are his names, I'm just going to skip it. No, read every word. The Bible says every word of God is pure. He's a shield unto them that put their trust in him. And the Bible says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. All of it. Everything. You can get doctrine from this list of names right here in Matthew chapter 1. But after all the list of names, look at verse number 16. And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Of course, the Bible is always very careful to explain that Joseph is not Jesus' father. Very careful to explain that all the time. It says that Joseph was just the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Now this genealogy in Matthew chapter 1 is the genealogy of Joseph. In Luke chapter 3, you find the genealogy of Mary. And so those are the two different genealogies of Jesus. One is in Matthew and one of them is Luke. Now look at verse number 17. The Bible says so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. And from David until the carrying away into Babylon are 14 generations. And from carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are 14 generations. Just the orderliness of the way that God does things. Just the way all the pieces of the puzzle always fit together. Now look at verse number 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph. Now does everybody know what a spouse means? A spouse is when you're married. If I said this is my spouse, what does that mean? Does that mean she's my girlfriend? No, it means that she's my wife. My spouse. Now look at verse number 16 because I'm clearing up a misconception here. Look at verse number 16. What does it say? Joseph the boyfriend of Mary. Is that what it says? Joseph the fiancé of Mary. No, it says Joseph the husband of Mary. So these people are married. And it says here she was espoused to Joseph before they came together. So they had been married, they had been vowed to each other, but they had not consummated the marriage is what God's saying here. They were a spouse, but they had not come together. So look at verse number 18. It says when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph. Hey kids, come back here and sit down. Get in here and sit down. All right, verse number 18, the Bible says when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together. So she was a virgin, obviously the virgin birth. Before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. Now think about this. Here's Joseph, a godly man. And we don't really talk a lot about Joseph, but this entire chapter is about Joseph. It starts out with his lineage and you'll find that the whole rest of the chapter, everything is directed at Joseph and Joseph is the key character in this chapter. Now, here's a godly young man, a great man, a man who is descended from great men, a descendant of great kings, a godly young man, a righteous man, a just man. And here he is, he just got married to this beautiful, chaste, pure girl, a godly woman, a righteous woman. And can you imagine when he found out that she's pregnant? I mean, just shocking to him. He doesn't know what to think. Good night. Can you imagine the horror when he finds out that she's pregnant? You have to put yourself in this position and think about what he's going through. And it says that he was a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. And while he thought on these things, so here he is, he's in anguish. He's wrestling with this idea. He's crushed. His whole life is just crushed. I mean, this is his dream of his life to get married to this woman that he loves and he finds out she's pregnant and it's just shattering his whole dream, shattering his whole image of his life. Well, notice the wording there. And this just begs me to explain this and teach this to you. Because it says here, he was minded to put her away privily. Now what does it mean to put away in the Bible? Does anybody know what that term means? It means to divorce. Putting away means to divorce. Now, notice what it says. It says Joseph the President being a just man and not willing to make her a public example was minded to put her away privily. Now does it sound like he's doing something right or wrong by putting her away? It sounds like he's doing exactly what he should be doing. Because God says that because he was a just man, this is the Holy Ghost who wrote the Bible, because he was a just man, he was minded to divorce his wife? Now this is a little bit confusing. At first you read this and you're like, what? So because he's so just he's going to divorce his wife? But here's the key. This is all explained greatly in the Bible. And I especially want to teach this kind of as an introduction to the book of Matthew. Because if you don't understand the concept that I'm going to teach you right now about this particular subject, you might as well not even come for the next 27 weeks. Because if you're not going to understand this one concept about the book of Matthew, you might as well not even come. Because I want to tell you something. There's false doctrine that says that the book of Matthew is not for you. And I'm going to prove to you right now, I'm going to teach you that the book of Matthew is for you because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. And that's present tense. Right now it is profitable for doctrine. This whole book is written for us, for our doctrine. The words of Jesus Christ that we're going to read throughout the book of Matthew are for us. Jesus is talking to you when he says these things. Let me show you this. Turn back to Deuteronomy chapter 24. And this will make perfect sense to you. Turn back to Deuteronomy chapter 24. Deuteronomy chapter 24. Look at verse number 1. And this is explained. There are two passages in the Old Testament that explain this. I've selected Deuteronomy chapter 24. I'm not going to go through both of them just for redundancy. But there's another chapter that explains this exact same concept. It says, when a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes. Why? Just because you didn't like her? He just doesn't like his wife after marriage? No. Keep reading. Because he hath found some uncleanness in her. Then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. Now, are you seeing this? Now, at first read, this seems totally contradictory with what Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 5 and Matthew chapter 19. But notice the clear teaching here. This is the exact same scenario as in Matthew chapter 1. You've got to compare spiritual things with spiritual. You've got to compare Scripture with Scripture. Joseph found out that he married her and then he found out she's pregnant before they came together. You see that? And then here in Deuteronomy chapter 24, it says that he marries a woman and ten years later they can't get along. Is that what it says? No. It says he marries her and right away he finds uncleanness. He realizes that this woman is not pure like he thought he was getting. He finds out, just like Joseph, what he thought. Obviously his wife was pure, but that's what he thought. And right away he finds out, hold it now, this is not what we agreed upon. I thought that you were a clean woman and I'm finding this uncleanness. And so it says that he will give her a bill of divorcement and put her out of his house and she can go marry another man. Why can she marry another man? Because she never really became his wife because they never consummated the marriage because he sent her away immediately when he found out that she had uncleanness. And this is detailed in another part of the Bible in the book of Leviticus, I believe it is, where the Bible says that if a man marries a woman and finds her not to be a maiden, which is another word for virgin, it says if he finds that out, it says that he can go to her dad and say, hey, your daughter's been whoring around and I don't want somebody who's not clean. And it says that he then has the right to put her away. That's totally different than the modern idea of divorce where people are married, consummate the marriage, live together as married, and then want to get a divorce down the road. It's totally different than what God is talking about here. God is talking about before they came together, just like in Matthew chapter 1. That's why Joseph is just following Deuteronomy chapter 24. And he said, I don't want to make a big deal out of it. I'm just going to do what God said here in chapter number 24 of Deuteronomy. He knew his Bible. He knew what he was supposed to do. He said, I'm going to do it just quietly, just under the table. I'm going to give her a bill of divorcement and send her out of my house because I don't want to marry somebody who's not clean. Now, a lot of people will teach you that the book of Matthew is not the doctrine for us today, which I find completely ridiculous that you're going to take the words of Jesus Christ himself, Jesus Christ preaching a sermon on how to live a godly life and say, that's not for us. Only the books that the apostle Paul wrote are for us. Now, that is ridiculous. Yeah, I'm sure you would like to just live by 14 books of the Bible, but you probably, there's just a lot less rules to live by if you want to live by 14 books. But, sir, there's a whole Bible here that you've got to learn the whole thing and obey every word that's written in this book. Now, there's a clear teaching in Matthew chapter 5 and in Matthew chapter 19, and they basically both say the same thing, but I'm going to show you the one in Matthew 19. Look at Matthew 19. The reason I'm spending time on this is because I want you to know that as we study the book of Matthew, this book of Matthew applies to you today as much as if you picked up the newspaper at Circle K today and read it. It's for today, it's for now, it's the present tense God. I am that I am, and this is my word today to you. And Jesus Christ, when he preached on this earth, that's the greatest preaching that you'll ever hear or read in your life. And here's one of his great sermons in Matthew chapter 19. I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong book of the Bible here. All right, Matthew chapter 19. The Bible says here, the Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? See how they've blown it out of proportion? God has this very clear, certain instance where a man can divorce his wife before they come together, before the marriage is even really completed. He has this very specific situation where it says, if she finds no favor in eyes because he finds uncleanness in her, okay, then I will allow him to get a divorce and for her to be married to another man because she was never really his wife. Look at this, how they've blown it out of proportion. Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? That's the day that we're living in, where men think it's right to put away their wife for every cause. Whatever the hell. Oh, we just don't get along anymore. I just don't think I love her anymore. And so we get a divorce. And look at this, and he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. Therefore, what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give her writing of divorcement and put her away? This is Deuteronomy 24 verse number 1 and 2 that he's talking about. He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. He says, Moses, because of the hardness of your heart, where you love this woman, and you marry her, and you find out that she is not a virgin, and then you have a bad attitude about that. You know, the hardness of your heart, saying, basically what he's implying is that it shouldn't really have stopped him. You know, if he's going to commit to this woman, he should have just stayed married to her. But God says, because of the hardness of your heart, I'm going to allow you to divorce her immediately before anything goes on. But from the beginning it was not so. He says, but that's never God's plan for that kind of thing to happen. That's not the standard of just divorce. He says unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, now can Jesus get any more clearer than what he's about to say? Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committed adultery. He says, if you divorce your wife, you're causing your wife to commit adultery. And you say, well wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, it says there except for fornication, if my wife fornicates, can I divorce her? No, because you cannot divorce your wife till hell freezes over, because there's no such thing as grounds for divorce. I've heard people say, well that's grounds for divorce. Grounds for divorce is an oxymoron. Grounds for divorce is a phrase that came out of the pit of hell, which people use and Christians use all over America to get divorces against God's will. Because from the beginning it was not so, and don't put asunder what God has joined together, is what God said here. And you say, well what did I except for the cause of fornication? Well let's put our thinking caps on for a second. It says here that if a man puts away his wife for any reason except fornication, that means that they just don't get along. That means that, you know, I don't know, whatever, whatever stupid reasons that people get divorced for. And it says here, if it's for any other reason, if she marries somebody else, he's causing her to commit adultery. Because it goes on to say, you know, whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committed adultery. And so he says that getting divorced and getting remarried, there's a word for it, it's called adultery. There's no other word for it. It's called adultery to get remarried after you get divorced. Is it going to be any clearer here? No. It's very clear what God's saying. But think about this. It says except for the cause of fornication, because if you're divorcing your wife because of fornication that she did, you're not causing her to commit adultery because she already committed adultery. Do you see that? So he's saying if you divorce your wife for any other reason except her committing adultery, then you're causing her to commit adultery. Now how is that so hard to understand? Because how can you cause somebody to commit adultery when they already committed adultery before you even did anything? See, does that make sense? It's very clear. And it goes exactly with what's being taught in Deuteronomy 24.1 where she is the one that had done wrong. And he says if you put her away for any other cause, you're causing her to commit adultery. But if you put her away for the cause of fornication, you're still sinning. You're still wrong because once you get married, it's till death us do part. And God said, God hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that thou hast vowed. And the Bible says if you open your mouth to the Lord and make a vow, you better pay it. Think about Jephthah. Judges chapter 11. Story about a man named Jephthah who makes a stupid vow to God. He doesn't think and he makes this vow to God because he's in a jam and he needs God's help. And he vows that he's going to sacrifice to the Lord the first thing that comes out of his house when he gets home from the battle. And in Judges chapter 11, when he comes home from the battle, his only child, his only daughter comes out to meet him. And you know what he says? He says, I've opened my mouth unto the Lord and I cannot go back. And his daughter willingly lets him kill her and sacrifice her. Now, that's horrible. That's one of the most horrible stories in the whole Bible. But the whole book of Judges is filled with horrible stories. The key phrase found in the book of Judges over and over, every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Hey, they didn't do what they thought was wrong. He thought they were right. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. But, so, it's a bizarre book in the Bible. But Jephthah, was he right to kill his daughter? Absolutely. Because he had opened his mouth to the Lord. Should he have opened his mouth to the Lord? That was the wicked, stupid, ungodly sin that he made was when he opened his mouth to the Lord. But God is very serious. When you vow a vow to do something, when you open your mouth unto the Lord, you do it. That's why the Bible says don't even swear at all. It says just let your yea be yea and let your nay be nay and don't swear at all. Because he says it's better not to swear at all than to swear and then break your vow. So he's saying God is pretty serious about breaking vows, huh? And yet people just break their vow, they get up on an altar and they perjure themselves. They should go to jail. People who get a divorce should go to jail because they're committing perjury. Because they're standing before an officer of the state of Arizona and they're swearing to God under oath before the officer of the state of Arizona, I take thee to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part, you know, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep me only unto her so long as we both shall live. And then they just lie before God, they lie before the state of Arizona and it's wrong and it's sin to get a divorce ever for any circumstance. You say what about a woman that gets beat up? Alright, you know what? Then you go believe in situational ethics then. Go tell me, tell me that the Bible only applies in certain situations and that situational ethics apply. You say well that's, you're insane. No, you're insane if you believe that God doesn't mean it when he has ten commandments that say thou shall not commit adultery. If you think God makes exceptions then you're insane. God doesn't make exceptions. If God was going to make an exception, he would have made it when Jesus was on the cross and when Jesus was the adulterer. When he had all the sins of the world on his back, he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. And when Jesus Christ on the cross had the sins of the world on him, the Bible says he that spared not his own son but offered him up for us all, how should he not then freely with him give us all things. And so he says look if one time God was going to go soft on sin and say you know what, I'm going to look the other way. I'm going to make an exception. I think it would have been when Jesus was on the cross when it's his own son. But if he won't spare his own son, then obviously God is not this God of sloppy making exceptions and you know it's different for one person and all this gray area. I mean think about it. If some kind of abuse is grounds for divorce, well where do you draw the line? It's this big gray area and God is never a gray area. God says if you vow a vow to the Lord, pay what you've vowed. God says in Genesis chapter 2 and you know this dispensationalism where they try to tell me that the book of Matthew is not for me. Well forget the book of Matthew. Look, let's start in Genesis chapter 2 when he says that they twain shall become one flesh and a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. Then we can go to the minor prophets, so we're hitting every phase here. We're hitting the mosaic wall. Then we'll hit the minor prophets where God says the Lord thy God hated putting away. It says he hates divorce. Then you get to Matthew chapter 5 and he says that whosoever divorced his wife and marrieth another committed adultery and that same teaching that we just saw. And then in Matthew chapter 19 find the exact same teaching. Then in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 it says let not the wife depart from her husband, but if she depart let her be reconciled to her husband. He said don't depart from your husband. And then you go all the way through the Bible. It's the same thing being taught because God is consistent from beginning to end. He says I have a picture of a man and a woman getting married for life. The two become one flesh. They never are going to part. And it's just a picture of Jesus Christ is the savior of the body. Jesus Christ is to the church as the husband is to the wife. And let me tell you something. If I go out and commit adultery tonight, you know what? God is not going to divorce me. I'm still going to be married to God and I'm still going to be saved and go into heaven. So if God doesn't divorce me, then how am I going to divorce my wife? No. I'm not going to. Because I'm supposed to love my wife with the same love that God loves me as a Christian, as a saved believer. And God gives me eternal security as a believer. And so I'm going to give my wife the security that I give her of till death has to part. No matter what. For better, for worse. Worse includes adultery. Worse includes beating. Worse includes anything. That's what worse is. And so yes, those are awful, wicked, ungodly things that should never happen. Obviously abuse and things go on and it's terrible and it's wicked and ungodly. But you know what? That doesn't give you the right to break God's laws. You chose who you got married to. And so you have to live with the hand that God has dealt you and the hand that you've dealt yourself. And so you must understand that as reading through the book of Matthew, it is consistent with the rest of the Bible. Don't find a verse in the book of Matthew that you don't understand like the verse that we just read about Joseph putting away. And just say, well, you know, it's the book of Matthew. It's not the Epistles. It's not the church age. No, it's the Bible. It's God's word. And it's consistent with Deuteronomy chapter 24. Joseph was carrying out exactly what God's laws taught. And in the same book of Matthew, Jesus goes on to clarify and explain that no divorce is not acceptable after you're married. It is not acceptable ever. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Period. He didn't give any exceptions there. That's all there is to it. But back to Matthew chapter 1, I wanted to go over that with you and make sure that you understood that. But it says here, But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. Wow, what a relief, huh? I mean, here Joseph thought that his wife was an ungodly woman. Praise the Lord. It turns out it's all of God. And this child that's in her womb is actually Jesus Christ in the womb. And the Bible says, And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. Now notice everything in this chapter is directed at Joseph. This is what I was saying. Besides Jesus Christ, he's the central theme of this chapter. It says, And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. So who's the one that's naming Jesus? Joseph is the one that's given the responsibility of naming Jesus. Why? For he shall save his people from their sins. Because the word Jesus means savior. And so he's saying, Call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Now notice that. It doesn't say save them from hell. Now throughout the entire Bible, the biggest theme that God is hammering home is about heaven and hell, you know, being saved from hell. You read through the New Testament. A lot of talk about hell. Almost every single chapter in the New Testament refers to hell. And that's the main thing that you're getting saved from. But look what's being highlighted right here at the beginning of the New Testament. Not being saved from hell. Not being saved from eternal damnation. But look, for he shall save his people from their sins. That's talking about once you get saved, God wants to deliver you not only from the punishment of sin, not only from the penalty of sin one day when you would have died and gone to hell, but God wants to deliver you now from the power of sin over you in your life right now. You say, Well, save me from my sins. Well, think about it. Your sins are destroying you. Your sins will destroy your life. They'll destroy your body physically. They'll destroy your family. They'll rip apart your family through divorce and through other things. They'll rip apart the relationships in your life. They'll hurt you emotionally. They'll ruin your life. They'll ruin you financially. And sin will destroy you. And God says, Not only do I want to save you from hell, but I want to save you from your sins. I want to save you from the miserable, stupid life of living a life of sin. Boy, it's so ridiculous sometimes. You stop and think about this. And you know, the verse that always comes to my mind is in Proverbs where it says the way of the transgressors is hard. It says the people who are living the hard life are the transgressors, the people who are the sinful. You say, Man, it must be so hard to read the Bible every day and pray and go soul winning. And God says, For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. His commandments aren't grievous. The way of the transgressors is hard. They're the ones who live the hard life. I was thinking about this. I remember in Sacramento, California, you'd see a lot of, for some reason we'd just see a lot of bums and a lot of homeless people. And I remember we lived in a certain place. We, get this, we lived right next to the recycling stop. This big recycling place. And there was this guy there. I've always remembered this guy. This guy's out there with his big recycle truck. And this was just in the woods, practically, because we lived in this place called Hidden Oaks in this apartment complex. And it's in this forest, just right in the city of Sacramento, on the border of Sacramento and Citrus Heights. We're in this little wooded area by this little creek, this little wooded forest. And on this little road back to our apartment complex, here in the woods there's this guy. And he had glasses like Coke bottle lenses, real thick glasses. And this guy knew everything. No, I mean like he knew about the word on the streets. I mean he knew about all the crime. He knew about all the drug traffic. This guy was an informant to the police, big time. But he was the recycle man, so everybody went through him. And so here he is, and he's just out in the woods. He's got his thing set up. And so constantly we're just seeing bums every day. I mean we're driving home, we're driving out of our apartment, and constantly we're seeing him push the shopping cart full of all the cans and everything. I got the glass and everything. And I'm thinking to myself, some of these days, I mean it would be like a hundred and some degrees outside. And I'm looking at these guys, he's pushing like a train. I mean he had assembled three shopping carts into a train. He had two in front of him and one behind him. And he's pushing them just filled to the brim. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy is working harder than me today. I mean I'm going to my job, I got up and went to my job. And this bum, this homeless guy, is working harder than me. Why doesn't he just work a job? Why is he living in the streets? The guy is slaving. Is this such a nice, relaxing life for him to be lazy? No, the guy's ending up working harder than I am. On the hottest day of the year, he's pushing 200 pounds of metal around. And I'm thinking to myself, the way of the transgressors is hard. But he just wanted his freedom. Bosses are going to tell me what to do. I don't get up and go to work. So you know what, he gets up an hour later because he sleeps in because he's lazy. And then he probably just works three hours later, pushing around his stupid cans, pushing around his stupid shopping cart, hanging around with Mr. Coke bottle lenses all day. Because he was so lazy he wouldn't go to work and he ended up having a harder time than if he had just done what God said and got up, took a bath, shaved and went to work. But no, he wasn't going to let anybody tell him what to do. He ended up working twice as hard as I worked that day. And I got paid a whole lot more than Mr. Coke bottle lenses gave him for his cans. I'll guarantee it. And so Jesus Christ didn't just come to save you from hell, he also came to save you from your sins. Because you may not realize it and you may not understand it or maybe you do understand it, but sin is what is destroying anything in your life that goes, I mean not anything that goes wrong. But anything in your life that is negative about you is caused by a sin problem. And sin will destroy you. The Bible says, then lust when it hath conceived, that bringeth forth sin. And sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Sin will kill you, just like it killed Ur and Onan. And sin will destroy you and Jesus wants to save you from your sins. He wants to deliver you from a sinful life to living a godly, righteous life of joy and happiness and peace. But let's finish this up quickly for the sake of time. The Bible says, now all this was done that it might be fulfilled. There's our key word for the book of Matthew. Fulfilled, which was spoken to the Lord by the prophets saying, behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. And of course I've taught many times and compare that with Isaiah 7 14, you'll see that conceive and with child are used as synonyms, proving that life begins at conception. Then the Bible says in verse 24, then Joseph being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife. Again, she was already his wife. You see that? It says, he did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and took unto him his wife and knew her not. So they're married, but they've not consummated the marriage. He took unto him his wife and knew her not, till she had brought forth her firstborn son and he called his name Jesus. And you say, well, if you go back into the Hebrew culture, you'll realize they weren't really married and this and that. Look, this is an English Bible that I'm holding in my hand. It's a King James Bible. It was translated in 1611 and in 1611, you know what the word wife meant in 1611 when this was translated? It meant somebody who's married. And so when this was translated, and obviously God's Spirit led them in the translation to preserve the word of God for us today, to make sure that we had a copy of it passed down as he promised that he'd preserve it from generation to generation, you don't think that the guys who translated this being led by God, of course, you don't think that they knew a little more about what the Hebrew meant and what Hebrew culture was or the Greek was when they made this Bible than we do today? When the man who translated the King James Bible, most of them spoke in excess of 18 languages each and they spent their whole life studying this and they spent three or four hours a day praying and begging God, God, show us how you want this translated. We want to do it exactly the way that you want to do it. They spent hours a day just praying and begging God. They studied their whole lives to do this. And of course, it wasn't done by man. God said that thou wilt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. And God preserved his word through the King James Bible to us in the 21st century today. But look, would you just read the Bible and just believe what it says? It says that it was his wife. It's his wife. Put away your stupid history book. Take every stupid history book that's ever been written about the Bible times and throw it in the trash can because it's probably got an agenda trying to teach you something that's not true. And so get rid of all the stupid history books and read the Bible only and read this book and find out the truth. Hey, look, it was his wife because I've been taught my whole life for some strange reason that they were not married. And so if they weren't married, then what are they doing staying in a hotel together and all this stuff? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Obviously, they're married, and he knew her not. And plus, this reconciles it with Deuteronomy chapter 24. It reconciles it with Matthew chapter 5. It reconciles it with Matthew chapter 19, the perfect harmony of God's word where God says, I hate divorce from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21. I hate divorce. I'm consistent on this. The only reason he was going to put her away is because they were married, but yet he had not consummated the marriage exactly like in Deuteronomy 24-1, the only time God ever tells anyone to get a divorce before they consummated the marriage. But then in verse 25 it says, And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son. That means she had other children after that, of course. Mary had other children. That's why if it's the firstborn, that means that there must have been a second or else it wouldn't use the word firstborn. Only in the King James Bible we find the word firstborn. It's been taken out of all the modern versions because of Catholic influence. And he called his name Jesus. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for the word of God and its teaching, dear God.