100: Wait No More! - God's Promises Arrive (Matthew 1)

G' day and welcome to episode 100 of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Episode 100.

How exciting.

Thank you to everyone who's listening.

Thank you to everyone who's helping the show to grow and help more kids learn about our faithful God.

It's such a privilege and joy for me to be able to share the good news about Jesus with all of you and and I'm really looking forward to what God does next with the show.

Can I say how much I treasure it when parents get in contact with me and pass on news and messages from their kids?

A big shout out this week to Joe and Elijah.

Elijah asked a really great and important question about Noah.

Thanks for the question, Elijah.

I hope my answer was helpful.

Now on with the show.

Have you ever had to wait a long time for something?

And I mean a long time.

Like maybe your mum or dad or your other grown ups said to you, one day I'm gonna teach you how to drive a car.

And you're like, umm, I'm five years old and my feet don't even reach the pedals.

And you wait while you're six and you're seven and eight and I suspect most of you are still waiting to learn to drive a car.

Or maybe you found out your mum's pregnant and going to have a baby and you're really excited but you have to wait and wait and wait and you think about how you're going to have long conversations in the car with your brand new brother or sister and then they're finally born and you realise that all they seem to do is poo and wee and cry and sleep and you have to wait even longer before you can talk to them.

Or maybe you know you're going to be taller one day and.

And you wait and you wait and you wait and it just seems to take forever.

In today's episode, we're going to hear about people who knew that something or someone wonderful was coming.

But they had to wait and wait and wait.

Now though, the wait is finally over.

Get ready for episode 100 of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

In our last series, we heard about the beginning of the world.

We heard how humans messed everything up.

But also we heard about God's great plans to make things better.

Well, now Matthew wants to tell us how God kept all his promises.

To do that.

He starts with these words in Matthew, chapter one, verse one.

This is the family history of Jesus Christ.

He came from the family of David.

David came from the family of Abraham.

The two men named there David and Abraham were both told to wait.

They were promised amazing things by God.

But those things weren't going to happen immediately.

You might remember David from episodes 84 and 85 of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

God made David king of Israel, and then one day, he made David an amazing promise.

In 2 Samuel chapter 7, God promised David that one of the sons from his family would not only be king, but be a forever king.

I suspect you can work out why kings aren't usually kings forever.

But this king from David's family would make a kingdom that would last forever.

A kingdom with no danger.

A kingdom of happiness and peace.

And now Matthew's telling us that Jesus came from David's family.

Not only that, he tells us that Jesus is the Christ.

Christ isn't Jesus last name.

It's a word that means anointed one.

You anoint someone by pouring oil on their heads.

The kings of Israel were anointed.

And now this Jesus, who's from King David's family is called Christ.

Hmm.

The other man, Abraham, we met in the last episode, although at that stage his name was just Abram.

God changed it to Abraham.

Later on, you might remember that God promised Abraham that his family would grow really big, they'd be blessed, and the whole world would be blessed through them.

Well, now Jesus is here from Abraham's family, ready to bless the whole world.

Right at the beginning of Matthew's gospel, Matthew's telling us that all the waiting, the waiting that's happened for about 2,000 years since the time of Abraham, the waiting that's happened for about a thousand years since the time of David, well, the waiting is over.

After telling us that in the very first sentence, Matthew then tells us how the family got from Abraham to Jesus.

He does it by listing the names of lots of people in the family.

So for example, in verse two, he says, Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

As he lists the names, he's actually telling us a story, the story of the whole Old Testament.

For example, those three men, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had to wait.

God kept promising them things that were coming in the future.

But so many of those things weren't going to happen in their lifetime.

Things like owning the land of Canaan.

By the time Jacob died, he only owned one small field in Canaan, and his family had moved out of Canaan down to Egypt.

But don't worry, more was coming.

As you hear some of the names, you think, ooo, he was really bad.

Like Judah in verse three, we're told Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah.

Their mother was Tamar.

We haven't covered that story on the podcast yet, but let me tell you, Judah treated Tamar really, really badly.

It shows that the sin that was in the rest of the world was also in Abraham's family.

So how are they going to bless the world?

Don't worry, A saviour is coming.

As the list goes on, there are some women in the family tree who actually aren't originally from Abraham's family.

There's a lady named Rahab who we haven't talked about yet on the podcast, and Ruth, who we have.

Neither of those women would have been expected to have the blessings that Israel had from God.

And yet God brought them into Abraham's family to be blessed.

It's a reminder that God was going to bless not just the Israelites who are Abraham's family, but also the whole world.

Of course, that's only two women.

It's not very many.

Don't worry though.

The blessing to the world is coming.

Finally, we get down to King David.

Under King David, it seemed like lots of the blessings promised to Abraham were coming true.

The Israelites were in the land God had promised to give them.

There were lots of Israelites, just like God promised.

And God also gave them a new promise, how one of David's children would be the forever king.

It seemed like under King David, things were finally coming together.

Matthew reminds us, though there were still major problems.

Listen to what he tells us in verse 6.

David was the father of Solomon.

Solomon's mother had been Uriah's wife.

Can you hear the problem?

Solomon's dad was King David.

His mum was Uriah's wife, not David's wife.

Uriah's wife.

David had actually stolen Uriah's wife and had Uriah killed.

That is not what you'd expect from the king of God's people.

Don't worry though.

A better king is coming.

The next 14 names on the list are all kings of Israel.

With each one, people could wonder, is this going to be the forever king?

Is this going to be the forever king?

Is he going to be the one who finally brings a blessing to the whole world?

But each time, the answer was no.

Sometimes they were pretty good kings, trusting God and trying to do what he wanted.

But then they died.

Other times, the kings were really awful.

They ignored God and did things their own way.

In fact, things got worse and worse until finally God punished his people by sending them out of the land into the land of Babylon.

It felt like all of God's promises had failed.

Israel didn't have any kings anymore.

They weren't in the land anymore.

Instead of being a blessing to the world, the world was defeating them.

Don't worry, though.

God's going to do something amazing.

God brought the people back from Babylon, but now they were just a tiny country.

They had no kings, they had far less people.

And it seemed like all the blessings were gone.

King David's family was still around, but they became less and less famous.

Let me read you their names from verse 12 and you see if you recognise any of them.

Jehoiachin was the father of Shealtiel.

Shealtiel was the grandfather of Zerubbabel.

Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud.

Abiud was the father of Eliakim.

Eliakim was the father of Azor.

Azor was the father of Zadok.

Zadok was the father of Achim.

Achim was the father of Eliud.

Eliud was the father of Eleazar.

Eleazar was the father of Matthan.

Matthan was the father of Jacob.

Jacob was the father of Joseph.

Joseph was the husband of Mary.

Hmm.

Joseph and Mary.

Joseph and Mary.

I feel like I've heard those names before.

Were they a great king and queen?

No, no, that's not it.

Were they really famous prophets from the Old Testament?

No, that's not it either.

They just seem like unimportant people.

In fact, the only time I usually hear the names of Joseph and Mary are around Christmas time.

Of course, all I needed to do was read the next part of the verse.

It says Jacob was the father of Joseph, Joseph was the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus.

Jesus is called the Christ.

How good is that?

Because in Jesus, all of God's promises were going to come true.

Through Jesus, the whole world was going to be blessed.

Through Jesus, God would make a huge people for himself.

In Jesus, we meet the forever king who will never die again, who's made a kingdom that'll last forever.

A kingdom where people listen to God, where they're ruled by God and not by sin.

The perfect kingdom.

In Jesus, God has faithfully kept all his wonderful promises.

But how has he done that?

How does Jesus fulfil every single promise?

And how will other people react to Jesus arriving?

Well, that's a story for next time.

Hi everyone.

Thanks for listening to episode 100.

Oh, I'm so excited.

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If you're enjoying it, please.

It would be great if you could tell people, tell your friends, tell people at church.

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Thanks, everyone.

Keep trusting Jesus.

Bye for now.