For our third Sunday in Advent at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Charleston, SC, we continued our new Matthew sermon series with Matthew 1:1-17. Our senior pastor on Sunday, December 17 reminded us that the Gospel of Matthew, like all books in the Bible, are inspired by the Holy Spirit. We see the joy of Matthew as he writes about Jesus who came to call sinners--a group Matthew identified with since he was a tax collector. Because Matthew's audience was religious folks, he included a genealogy in those first 17 verses to prove Jesus' pedigree to those who would put lots of stock in which family he was from. Yet he includes plenty of sinners and people with questionable morals in this genealogy highlighting God's grace and shocking many religious folks. And Matthew writes his story because this story of grace must be told.
