I don't think I'm a liar when I tell people where I'm from and give them details about my story. But if all the people I've ever met around the world who have had conversations like that with ever compared notes, they might think I was a liar if they didn't have all the details. Here's what I mean. When I'm traveling and I meet somebody on a bus in the UK and they're like, oh, well, we're from Iowa. Like, what? I grew up in Iowa, which is completely true. I lived in Cherokee, Iowa, and Makokata, Iowa, up until I was in fourth grade. So I grew up in Iowa. But that isn't all of my growing up. And so if I run into somebody on a plane in Dubai, which happened one time, who's from Greeley, Colorado, I'm like, what? I grew up in northern Colorado, which is completely true. I lived in Fort Collins, I lived in Alt, Colorado. I wasn't lying to either of these groups of people. If I run into somebody in another part of my own country and they're like, well, you know, I've never really been west of the Mississippi and I'm from Connecticut. Where are you from? I would say I'm from around Jackson, Wyoming, or I live near Yellowstone National Park. Well, because they can picture where those things are, but there's no way they're going to know the town that I lived in for nine years. It's called Lander, Wyoming. Why would I even try that? So if all these people did get together and compared notes, they might be like, wait a minute, this guy's just making stuff up left and right. But if I were there to fill in all the gaps, it would be really easy for me to say, nope, I told every single one of you the truth. I just only told you the part of the story that was relevant to what we were talking about, instead of burdening you with extraneous details that don't in any way pertain to what we're doing, which is really socially awkward if you try to do that. Likewise, when we look at this genealogy stuff in Matthew, and then we go to compare it to the genealogy over in Luke, we see differences. Not a few differences, a lot of differences. We see differences right off the bat in how they're structured. You'll recall in Matthew chapter 1 that the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, starts with Abraham, so not the beginning of time, and moves forward to Jesus. All of the decisions Matthew made about which details to include in this genealogy were clearly run through the matrix of what most demonstrates Jesus' kingship and descent from David. Well, Luke has some other matrix for decision making. In Luke chapter three, Luke works the other way, starting with Jesus and working all the way back to Adam himself, the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Well, clearly, Luke's thesis is right there in the very, very last phrase of the genealogy, that Jesus is the son of God. Now, Luke is doing this thing for people who would have been very, very enthusiastic about the Roman legal system and it would have felt that Rome's judgment was probably reliable and that Jesus was a brigand who needed to be executed, that there's nothing more to see here. So Luke is interested in vindicating Jesus, who was found guilty by the government to say he wasn't guilty. He was wrongly convicted. And in fact, he's not only some guy who was wrongly convicted, he is truly the Son of God for all people. So going back before the history of the Hebrew people, the descendants of Abraham, what we would now call the Jews, is really important for Luke because he wants to get into the history that is like the patronage of all of humankind, because Luke is advancing the idea that Jesus is for everybody, whereas Matthew is focused on convincing his audience, his Jewish audience, of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah and positioned properly to sit on the throne of David, which is a very Jewish throne, of course. So what's the deal then with all of these points of difference in terms of how exactly we trace it? How can that even be? How can you have two genealogies? Well, I suppose if you go back in time enough, even in my own genealogy, there are places where you run into forks in the road because of remarriage, early death, adoption, things like that. And so I suppose even from my rather well-documented genealogy, I can pull this green folder off the shelf here behind me and flip through it, and I could write out three or four different genealogies just from the forks in the road that I know about. So there is wiggle room when you go back this far. And well, when you're going back to the complete dawn of time, I suppose there's a lot of wiggle room. And look, I understand that genealogy that dates back to Adam and God and the Garden of Eden definitely raises questions about how we interpret Genesis. How long did this take? Is Luke's genealogy comprehensive? Is there anything we're missing here? And guess what? That is one thing that does not advance our understanding of Matthew, so I'm not gonna go down that rabbit trail right now. But what I can say is this Matthew very clearly seems to be advancing the idea that Jesus is king and has the right to sit on the throne of David as the completion of the promise God made to David for the Messiah and the King and the kingdom to all come through his line. Whereas Luke seems to be following something that is more tightly genetic. We have lumbered around in the details, the controversies, the challenges, the, hey, well, what about this, and what about that portions of this for a really long time. And I think it's absolutely crucial. And as I told you in our last conversation, I wanted to make a little bit of a case for that here. And the case would be this: if we start with the book of Matthew and we see things that make us scratch our heads and we don't bother to make any effort, try to understand what's actually going on there, then we're lying to ourselves. Step one out of the gate. We've decided we really want this to be true, and so we'll just overlook any challenges. We won't think about that because it might trouble someone or might rattle their belief a little bit. We'll gloss over it, hand wave it, and get on to the next thing. And maybe some of you are like, you did just gloss over it and hand wave it. These are absolutely crucial tensions. Maybe I'm satisfied with what scholarship has produced in response to these apparent tensions, at least satisfied enough to hear Matthew out. But I don't want us to get in the habit of being like, oh, this part is hard. Let me just tell you things that make us feel good and sound spiritual and get on with it. When we're into the passages that make us feel good and do provide all kinds of encouragement and wisdom, then well, we're gonna focus on that and lean into that as well. So thank you for indulging me on getting after the nuts and bolts of this passage. Next time around, I want to switch gears into the beauty of the passage, into the symmetry, into all of the things that these simple names on a page would have richly evoked in the mind of the original audience. And I want to try to get us into their heads and their position so that it can evoke in us a little bit all of these same stories that everybody would have known so that we can be better positioned to move into Matthew 118 and moving forward and appreciate just how big a deal it would be if what Matthew is saying about Jesus were true. Hey, huge thanks to everybody who's supporting this program right now at patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast. It is a complete game changer. I wasn't sure what was going to happen there. And the initial response is um really energizing for me. So thank you so much for that. I have a favor to ask today. I would be so grateful if you would buzz over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for this podcast. Apparently that makes a really big difference here in the early going. And well, we are in the early going. And you know what's crazy? This podcast is actually trending on a whole bunch of those podcast rating things. How much does that actually matter? I don't know. I like doing this even if it's just a few of us, but I also like the idea of including other people in the conversation. I think there's a tremendous amount of good to be gained by just talking Bible the way we do it, letting people agree to disagree on stuff and trying to look at the raw material together. So I'd like more people to be here, and you leaving a rating and review would really help me with that. If that's your thing, awesome. Thanks in advance. If that's not your thing, I'm still glad you're here. Thank you for being a part of this. I'm Matt, this is a 10-minute Bible hour. Let's do it again soon.