I WAS ONLY a kid the first time I picked up and started to leaf through the pocket-sized New Testament my grandmother had given me. It was musty and old, smelling of worn leather and yellowing paper and mystery. I did not grow up in the church or a Christian household, so I had no useful idea what I would find in its pages. But my grandmother gave it to me in the hope that I might someday read it.

That day finally came. With only a smidgen of curiosity but the best of intentions, I started in with the gospel of Matthew. Begin at the beginning, right?

As a kid, however, I was immediately in over my head. It didn’t help that the text was in King James English, with its odd slew of “begats.” But more than that, what was with all these strange and unpronounceable names of people? Who cared? What did they have to do with anything?

The Christmas story came next, with Mary, Joseph, and the wise men from the East; at least that felt familiar. Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness? A little strange, perhaps, but I persisted. Then came the Sermon on the Mount. I barely understood what Jesus was saying, but somehow I knew that his words had to be taken seriously. It was like walking through a forest only to find yourself suddenly standing at the edge of a vast canyon. I stopped there, unsure if I wanted to risk tumbling over the edge.

FOR ALL THE complexity it brings, it’s a gift to have four separate accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Each account has its own style and emphases, and each begins the story in a different place. Mark jumps right into the action with the ministry of John the Baptist. Luke pushes a bit further back, with the birth of John the Baptist. And John goes back furthest of all, to the very creation of all things.

But Matthew begins with a genealogy, with a list of Jesus’ ancestors going all the way back to the time of Abraham. Why?

For our purposes here, there’s no need to delve into each name or the stories attached to them; it’s enough to see the overall thrust of the genealogy. Matthew himself tells us what’s important right up front:

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham… (Matt 1:1, NIV)

This, Matthew tells us, will be the lineage of Jesus the Messiah. Through his adoptive father Joseph, he is a descendant of the house of David, who in turn is a descendant of Abraham. At the end of the genealogy, we get the same three people — Jesus, David, Abraham — but this time in chronological order, to follow the story of God’s people through the ages:

Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. (vs. 17)

In a sense, the background history of God’s people underlying the genealogy is like a three-act drama. Act I runs from Abraham to David, from the birth of a people to the birth of the monarchy. There’s more than one king in the list, but Matthew only gives the title of “king” to one of them: David, the ideal and prototypical king in the minds and hearts of God’s people. Act II runs from David to the Babylonian exile, chronicling the decline and eventual failure of the monarchy. Reading the names, Matthew’s readers would remember the tragic stories of all the kings who failed in their role and turned to other gods — with devastating consequences.

Does their failure ring down the curtain on the very idea of monarchy and kings? No. Act III of Matthew’s genealogy runs from the exile to the birth of Jesus the Messiah, the anointed king. In this way, Matthew prepares us to ask, Will there be an Act IV?

Indeed there will be. Instead of reading Matthew’s Christmas story in chapter 2 as a drama about the birth of the baby Jesus, we can read it as the opening scene of Act IV, continuing the play that was begun in the genealogy. Strange magi from the East come to Jerusalem seeking…what? The child born to be King of the Jews. To whom do the magi go to find this King? To Herod the Great, the brutal, paranoid, self-serving politician Rome has appointed as king. Matthew sets up the story in a way that seems to say, See? This is how earthly kings operate. But the kingdom of heaven will not be like this. In the end Herod, the man who so abused the power of his office, simply dies and the story moves on without him.

In chapter 3, Matthew introduces John the Baptist, who prepares the way for Jesus by preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (vs. 2). In chapter 4, Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Note Satan’s final bid to turn Jesus aside from his Father’s will:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”  Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (vss. 8-10)

Look at all this, Satan says to Jesus as they survey the splendor of all the kingdoms of the world. You can have all of it. You can rule it all. There’s just one tiny condition: you have to serve and worship me. Deal? But Jesus refuses. There is but one right way to be King, and that is to serve and worship the one true God — as his human predecessors had mostly failed to do. They might have taken the deal. Jesus does not.

After this, Jesus begins his own preaching ministry. And what is his theme? It’s the same as John the Baptist’s: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17).

“THE KINGDOM OF heaven has come near.” In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks repeatedly of the “kingdom of heaven”; in the other gospels, it’s the “kingdom of God.” The word “kingdom” here doesn’t refer to a place on a map, defined by geographic or political boundaries. It refers to the way in which a king discharges his office, the way a king rules and reigns.

The long-anticipated day of God’s Messiah has come. It has “come near” in the person and ministry of Jesus; as some translations have it, the kingdom is “at hand.” Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of God in a way that won’t be fully complete until he returns to earth fully and finally as King to rule forever. But it’s here, now, at hand. What does that mean for us?

As those who acknowledge and follow Jesus as Lord, we are people of dual citizenship: we are simultaneously citizens of earthly dominions and citizens of the kingdom of heaven. The question is, which citizenship will define who we are? And what does it mean to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom?

Glad you asked. It just so happens that we have a sermon from the King about the kingdom. Maybe we should take some time to hear what he has to say?