A interim situation in which believers and unbelievers can coexist politically and otherwise and so on. What's a completely different covenant, bomber offices and confuses these, all kinds of other people, and if you confuse these two, you're going to end up completely unable to handle properly the questions of what is the state and what is the church and what are the functions of the two, you're going to get them all confused. So that's one of the big important things that we want to deal with when we come back to that section. And now here we are, chapter 10 verse 1, and following, and it's the story once again of the city of Man. Remember what's having chapter 10? The table of nations. It's the account of how after the flood, the world is repopulated through the three sons of Noah. And it isn't just, obviously, God's people, the covenant people, but here's mankind in general spread all over the earth and many of them are unbelievers and some are believers, some are unbelievers, but this is the story of just the city of Man. And by the way, the city of Man, as I said, in itself a legitimate thing, God institutes it. It's perfectly good. Believers are in it as well as unbelievers. And today, in our relationship to the state as Christians, we should act responsibly toward the state as those who are part of it, fulfill our obligations within and so forth. We just shouldn't be expecting the kingdom of God to come through this avenue, but it's just a legitimate thing which we can play our role. Well, here is the city of Man now. It's developing after the flood, and the japetites are going there, and the sun mites are going here, and the ham mites are going there, and various kinds of divisions are developing ethnically, geographically, politically, linguistically, the text tells us how they were being divided and they spread all over the world. But unhappy, the old ideology is still there, that old urban ideology that leads up ultimately to anti-Christ, it's there again, and how do we see that? Well, before you come to the end of that section, you move into chapter 11, and you get the summary of the Tower of Fable. That particular account then is a window on religious developments within the city of Man. As various political organizations were developing here and there, and there are various differences among them, but the spirit that is driving them underneath is that same old diabolical lust for a name, and it comes to a particular expression in this place in the land of China, where, and again, we'll have a rather lengthy account of that in Kingdom Pro-Log later on. But the essence of the thing is this, look, mankind realized that things weren't the way they should be. Back in the Garden of Eden, there was a nice coherence to everything before the fall. There was the mountain of God, there was the glory of God in the midst as a cultic center for all of human life that was going on, so that this man made his way culturally fulfilling the mandate to fill the earth and subdue it. There was a coherence, there was a connection between heaven and earth, there's the presence of the God of heaven on earth that the mountain of God was just sort of an access to stairway between heaven and earth, and there's a connection with heaven and immortality and life, and the fall happens, and they lose that, and they're dispersed, and they're scattered. That's the story of Genesis 10, they're being scattered all over the place, and now mankind feels that he wants to get hold of things again, he wants to get power over his existential dilemma, he wants to get hold of access to the realm of immortality up there in heaven, and so on. Come, let's build this staircase tower that reaches onto heaven, they say, man made, let us make the bricks, let us do the jobs, so you can see what the ideology is. How is the Garden of Eden, how is paradise to be restored? Well, we know the story, it's the story that's developing on this bottom line, the covenant line among the people who have got heaven to restore and access to heaven, the secret of eternal life, just to be found in the message of grace leading up to the seed of the woman, the Christ who will come and so on, but man doesn't want to do it that way. He rejects the grace of God, I'm going to do it my way, I'm going to do it by works, not by grace, and so he tries to make his way up into heaven, and that's the story of the Tower of Babel, it's the story of a man in his rebellion refusing the message of the gospel of grace, and trying to assert his way back into glory without the help of God in terms of human strength and for human glory. Well, that's what's going on there in the city of man, and the genealogies have developed in such a way that they take you now from Noah down to Abraham. Back here we had the story from Adam to Noah, now in this second triad it's going to be the story from Noah down to Abraham, and so you get the list of the table of nations and everything that was developing down to that point. Meanwhile, was there still a remnant in the earth, even though things are going all wrong again, they're still a remnant, and the fifth section, which would be 11, verse 9 perhaps, begins the dissection, and that was a genealogy of set back in the city. Here are those folks who were calling on the name of the Lord again. Here's the covenant community in the earth, and the story of the covenant community is sketched very rapidly just in terms mostly of a list of names, it's family, the covenant is always organized in terms of families. If you're arguing the subject of Presbyterians versus Baptists on the subject of Infant Baptism and what's the membership of the church, well here's something that's relevant to that, the story of the history of the covenant is told as the history of particular families, the line of Seth here, the line of Shem. And so the covenant line is still in the earth, God's purposes are on the move again, Satan is still busy in the city of man, but God is still busy fulfilling his eternal purposes in Christ, and so there is the line of Shem taking us from Noah to Abraham. Next thing we're going to do after we get through this structure of the book of Genesis if we ever do is to go back and take these two sections, what about the line of Seth and what about the line of Shem, those two genealogies, and to study them from the angle of what this tells us or does not tell us about chronology, about the antiquity of man, how long has man been on the earth. That's a special subject we want to take a look at in a moment and it involves very much those two genealogies, alright, so here's the second one, the line of Noah through Shem up until Abraham. Same tensions are building up again, and now just as the third section there led to the great covenant episode that God's covenant with Noah, whereby God gave to Noah and his family the kingdom in the ark, now we have another covenant. God's covenant with Abraham, whereby God gives to Abraham and then his seed the covenant in the promises. Now Noah got the fulfillment of the kingdom very quickly in the ark experience. Abraham gets the kingdom in the promises but now there's going to be a weight before the kingdom promises materialize, and in fact we'll go all through the book of Genesis, and that kingdom will not yet have come not even in its first form, not even in its typological preliminary form, which it does in the mosaic covenant, the old covenant. And of course later on he comes to his Messianic fulfillment and the new covenant, by the time he comes to the end of Genesis he hasn't even had the typological fulfillment of the kingdom, but nevertheless Abraham has it in the promises of God which cannot fail, and so now we have this covenant which is so basic to all the rest of the Bible. God's covenant with Abraham. Now the covenant with Noah is a big right, it is a dramatic picture as we've seen of God's final kingdom accomplishments for us, but you and I have nothing to do with that covenant, that covenant was all fulfilled within one year. Within one year the pledge of covenant gone, the ark had fulfilled its purpose, and that was what that covenant was all about. But now here's the Abraham covenant, and you and I, it has everything to do with us today. Here's the foundation of all the rest of the Bible, and so the old covenant as I said the whole testament is one fulfillment of it, and the new covenant now is the second fulfillment of it, and we are involved in that, and so this is a supremely important development now that takes place here with Abraham. So in the line of Shem, here in the world, there is faith in the world, and incidentally, all of the story concentrates on the line of Shem here, it is in saying that there wasn't any true faith in the line of Jacob or in the line of him, anymore than it's saying that everyone in the line of Shem was saved. What it really seemed to be doing is to say that the main development, the main ongoing continuous presence of true faith and covenant community in the earth was associated with the line of Shem wherever else there might have been pockets of faith as well. Now, out of all of the expressions and communities that face in the world, now here God focuses on Abraham, there were other believers in the book of Job, up to the patriarchal period, so up there is Job who's not in the Abrahamic line, so there was faith in the world over there. Up there in the land of Canaan is Melchizedek, Melchizedek isn't in the line of Abraham, but Melchizedek is a representative of true faith in the world. So here and there are elements of true faith still in the world in Abraham's day, but the future doesn't belong to them. Whatever other pockets of faith they are, they are gradually dying out, but the future is going to belong to the line of Abraham. And in part, it's because of this special revelation, the God multiplies the means of grace, including presently the coming of the scriptures themselves into the midst of this people as a preservative for them so that this line of faith is preserved in the world and it moves on. So here then, and as I say again, when we come to the later part of Kingdom and Prologue, we'll want to be analyzing this Abrahamic covenant in all kinds of detailed meaning of its principles of promise and so on and we'll want to be assessing a biblical view of the fulfillment of those promises that's over against the dispensation of the scheme and we'll be doing all of those things. But meanwhile coming back here to the structure of the book of Genesis, starting with chapter 6 then we have again come to the climactic third. Now the rest of the book of Genesis, that's 10 seconds we said, there are four sections remaining, 7 and 8, 9 and 10, and all of these you might consider then a sort of expansion of the Abrahamic covenant found in section 6. The expansion either by way of dismissal from the covenant or continuance of the covenant. Section 7 deals, it's a short section, look at your outline, which deals with Ishmael. So Ishmael is within the covenant but he moves out from the covenant back into the world. See up on the top line, section 1, section 4. Here's the world out there, here's the bottom line, the covenant line. But we have this phenomenon, you see that out from the covenant ranks, there are those who don't genuinely belong to the covenant. And so there is Ishmael. So chapter 7 speaks about, he moves out from the covenant community back into the world. But meanwhile, look, there is Ishmael. There is the seed of promise Isaac, the covenant goes on. And then the next section, here is Ishmael and Jacob, both of them within the covenant. Ishmael and Jacob both within the covenant, both receive the sign and the seal of membership in the covenant. And yet Ishmael, I have hated, he is rejected. And so section 9 deals with the dismissal of Ishmael. Ishmael is moving back from the covenant family back into the world. But then there is Jacob, Israel. And so the covenant goes marching on, the grace of God, the triumph of God, goes marching on. And there is a people of fate now from what we've already seen. You know, there are big messages about what the covenant structure is and what the structure of the church is today. Or one thing that we right away see is this, the covenant is a big circle. But not everyone who's in the covenant is elected. They are not all Israel who are of Israel. Not everyone who is a member of the church today is elect. They are in the covenant. And they are not all elect. What determines whether you belong to the covenant? What determines that is if you profess the faith or if you are under the parental authority of someone who professes the faith, you are holy in that sense that you belong to the covenant. But that doesn't mean that you are necessarily elected. It is not a presumption that you are elect or re-genering. That is the basis for you being baptized. The basis for you being baptized. The basis for you being reckoned as a member of the church is in the case of those who haven't professed the faith to themselves, but are under their authority. The basis for that is simply that you are under the parental authority of someone who has Esau and Jacob are under the parental authority of Isaac. That is why Esau is given the sign of circumstances that he is in the covenant. It is not because he is elect or presumed to be elect. It is a matter of fact before he is born. The parents know that he is not elect and that God has rejected him. That has nothing to do with you being a member of the covenant. He is a child of those parents and therefore he is in the covenant. But he in due time shows he really doesn't belong there. In Section 9, he is dismissed from the covenant, but Jacob shows himself to be genuinely one who owns the covenant and so the covenant I proceed. The end of the book of Genesis with the 10 sections divided. You see into these nice patterns of three and two pairs in terms of various themes so that you just don't go marching ahead. You are marching ahead chronologically from beginning to end, but you deal with one theme. Back up, go through the same period again, come up to the flood again, back to the flood the same way. You go from Noah to Abraham, you back up, straight to the Godly line, and so on. So that is the way Moses develops his trade. But I think the main thing we should try to get out of this survey of the structure of the book of Genesis is what the Bible is all about. Because what we have been talking about is what the whole Bible is all about. This is what is going on in history. This is what is going on with the kingdom of God. This is how the covenants are developing and all of this is foundational to it. Now in terms of the Abrahamic promise of the kingdom, as we said, within the book of Genesis, you don't get there. The other promise is that the kingdom hasn't come. The book of Exodus is kingdom come. That is the coming of the kingdom. But even there, not the real kingdom. It is the typological kingdom. It is the preliminary provisional thing that God set up as a sort of an historical parable for the world to look at to see what was going to come and what the real thing would be. Not Moses, but Messiah, was the leader of the covenant. But nevertheless, there was a coming of the kingdom with the book of Exodus. The kingdom comes and God redeems of people in the book of Exodus. The entrance into covenant by which the kingdom is instituted there, and actually there is a 19th and following. And the king has his coronation. He has his covenant people build a kingdom out for him in which he assumes his throne and so on. And so there is an establishing of the kingdom. That is what the book of Exodus is all about. And the rest of the Old Testament history is the ongoing story of that king who claims his land and has his people march in and take over that land and so on. So the Old Testament, there is the story of the coming of the kingdom as the first fulfillment of those promises given to Abraham back into the book of Genesis. And then we come to the New Calvary. And we have the anti-type, the real fulfillment, not just something provisional, imperfect, passing, transient, but that which is perfect, the real thing, the anti-type, the fulfillment, not just the promise. That's the coming of the kingdom for sure, okay? Up to that point, it's kingdom prologue. The background is the foundation that here here Apple Thomas, but here is kingdom prologue. So that's the meaning of the title of the book, but you can then see I trust. The foundational character of Genesis is an introduction to all the rest of the Bible. Very immediately it's the introduction to the rest of the Old Covenant. It tells you when you come to the book of Exodus and this mosaic covenant, you read about Hebrews, you read about the God of the Hebrews who enters into a covenant relationship with them. What's that all about? Genesis tells you who these Hebrews are. It tells you who this God of the Hebrews, it tells us what is that covenant that God remembers in through Moses and so on. The book of Genesis is immediately preparing for that and of course in its earlier chapters, especially the book of Genesis is the foundation in a universal way for all of the rest of the Scriptures. It must be time for a break. I don't know how to handle time for discussions or so on, but maybe just before we take a break, on all of that confusion was there's something that was even more confusing than the rest that you would have. As I said, we recovered rapidly, we'll be backing up and treating gradually, but maybe just having a feel for where we are going and what the overall message is and reading the Prologue will be able to piece it together more and more. So we take five minutes or so. The person's go and the evidence seems to be some of the evidence seems to say 100,000 BC, at least the 35,000 BC until at least fairly recently you would read about Neanderthal. There's another big question. There are certainly Neanderthal beings and it's a difficult question. I would say they are not genuine human beings. They are not descendants of Adam, they are not genuine modern men, but it should be thought that they went back to around 100,000 BC and that you come to the middle of that period around 35,000 BC or so on there seems to be a little overlapping between Neanderthal and modern men. How is it that Neanderthal died out and modern men continued and what were the relationships between these two communities, if we can speak about communities of Neanderthal, there seem to be some cultural remains, but the evidence at least then from modern men seems to go back tens of thousands of years in BC. So does the Bible allow that? Does the Bible allow that or not? That's the question we're trying to ask. And that's for the flood. No one knows for the flood when the flood happens. One of the things we can say it certainly didn't happen in the 2500 BC or 2300 BC. I don't know where the flood happened, but it was long before 2500 BC was much longer than 300 years before Abraham. That is a conclusion I'll be coming to, but as I say the question is exegetically, can we believe whole to the authority of Scripture and allow for, let's say a date for Adam of 100,000 BC or 50,000 BC or a date for the flood that we could adjust before the beginning of what is called the agricultural revolution and sort of the neolithic age or from about to the end of the last ice age. Since the end of the last ice age, where you have this agricultural revolution as they described where men proceeded from being nomadic and food gathering to a settled community and food growing and domestication of animals and development of cities and so on. From about 9,000 BC on, there was this development of cultural on these lines with no evidence of the biblical flood there on this side. So for myself, I don't see where you can date the flood before 10,000 BC and maybe it's five packages 35 just don't know where to put it. But we can leave those questions open. We don't have to have the precise answers for it. All of what we do have to be prepared to do is to ask, does the Bible allow for these possibilities at least? So that's what we wanted to do together. Because as ministers of the word, as teachers of the scriptures elders in the church and so on, that's what your job is, is to know what the scriptures say and not to go off, have talked in the name of God and the scriptures and say, this is what the scriptures do say. And I actually impose limits on the Bible that are not there and you're not doing God in this cause of Christ or the Bible any good by doing that. You're just creating something blocks in the world of young Christians who have had a court and the science and no better is all on the line. Well, but study of the Bible is our job. And so let's try to address that question about the antiquity of man in the light of what Genesis 5 and 11 say. Now there are really the two main views I've already described. We can mention a third view too. So here are these lists of names with a certain routine formula to them. A lived X numbers of years. And after you begot B, they lived so many more years and the total number of years were so and so and he died. And now what does that mean? So of course, there is the view that we can call the complete view, the complete view. It's saying that the genealogy is complete list of names with no gaps, no generational gaps between any of them. So when it says that a lived so many years and begot B is the immediate son of a who was begotten in that particular year. And all right. And as I said, if that's your interpretation of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, then the flood took place about 300 years before Abraham and Adam is 4000 BC. And whatever we're going to do with all the evidence to the contrary, then there's a big problem. But that's what the scriptures teach us that we're going to hold, but do the scriptures and insist on that. A second view, then, I'll just mention this in passing because there isn't that much to be said for it. You will encounter it maybe in some place or other. It's a less literal view. Now the complete view understands these names is the names of people, individual persons. And it also takes literally if it says that so and sold some 900 years that they actually live 900 years. Now the view that I'll be coming up with, the third view on praise that these are literal individuals. And also that says they lived that number of years that they did. So there was this longevity. We won't be taking exception to that. But there is a less literal view as a second view, whatever we want to call it, we might call it dynastic. Where these names that you find are no longer regarded as the names of individual persons, but as the names of a dynasty, a series of kings in a particular dynasty. And so the lifespan would not be the life of an individual, but it would be the duration of the dynasty. Now in the first view, on the first view we discussed the complete view, you get your total numbers, A, where there's numbers of years, you would get your total simply by adding up the small number, how the individual was when he began the next one. So you add up all of those and that gives you the totals we talked about. Now on the dynastic view, you don't take that small number the day was actually one of the people, but you take the whole lifespan by the time you died. That's how long that dynasty lasted. And then dynasty B would be added onto that. And if you take that approach to it, then you get some obviously bigger numbers. And just to give you some rounded up suggestions on the dynastic view, you would have something over 8,000 years from Adam to the flood, something over 8,000 views on the dynastic view. And you would have something over 11,000 years from Adam up to the days of Abraham, so you'd have something more than 3,000 instead of 300 years between the flood. So you have a little more space to work with on that view. But there's really, exigenically, there's nothing much to be said for that dynastic view. Clearly the text is not talking about dynasty. It's talking about individuals and let's see if I can find some illustrations. In, for example, in chapter 7, 6, it says, no, it was 600 years old when he entered into the ark. This is not talking about the dynasty. When you come to the end of these lists, it comes to Abraham. Obviously Abraham's not a dynastic, he's an individual exigenically that there is no part for taking these as the names of dynasties rather than an end of individuals. So we can dismiss that view. But now the third view, and the one clearly I'm leading up towards the one I'm going to favor, is the one that we can call the selective view. Now we call the first view the complete view, because it says there are no names missing there in complete Danielle. This third view, the incomplete view, but I don't like the ring of that. And so let's say the selective view, the idea then is that here are all these generations and they all might have been listed, but that for whatever reasons that the Moses here has selected just certain ones that he has mentioned. And nothing, what does it mean? When it says A, the ex numbers of years, and he begot B, it would mean that when A was that old, that they're branched off from him. He begot someone, we started a line that eventually did in figure B, but how much longer, how much later, we don't know. So it is just that at that point, the B branch, the B line branches off from the genealogy of A, but there is a principle now of discontinuity, discontinuity that's introduced or elasticity. And we don't know how I might be. And so there is now a flexibility in the thing that would be the result. So that you are limited to 2000 years for this period, you're not limited to 10,000 years for this period. How far the elastic will break before it breaks, that's going to be I'm afraid a matter of subjective opinion. And to anticipate the end of the story, I think that there is that principle of elasticity. And I don't think that it would be stretchable enough to allow that genuine dynamic man could be identified with fossil remains of subhuman critters that are going back to two or three million years BC. But I do think that the elastic would stretch far enough to accommodate what very well could be the genuine evidence of mankind going back to 50,000 if not 100,000 BC. I think the biblical text would allow for that much of a stretch. Now, the real question is either exigenical considerations that will allow for this approach. Now, what is our fundamental principle of our hermeneutical principle in dealing with the Bible? The Bible's the word of God is therefore completely self-consistent with itself. And integral coherent goal is not self-contradictory, it is harmonious in all of its parts. I have a problem at this point in the text. And I must therefore look all over the Bible at the analogy of Scripture to see if there are other places in the Bible that throw some light on this particular problem. So that our basic hermeneutical problem is the analogy of Scripture. If we want to deal with certain questions here, let's see what the evidence is from elsewhere in the Bible. And we're going to be concerned, especially with genealogies elsewhere in the Bible. And so the questions we want to ask ourselves as we examine this kind of literature, genealogical literature, as we examine this kind of literature in the Bible, do we find that the language must always be taken with strict literalness or is there flexibility? Does the language like beget father-son relationship always describe an immediate father-son relationship? Or does it allow for something more remote than that? When you see genealogies elsewhere in the Bible, are they always complete? Or are they frequently incomplete? And if as they are often incomplete, what are the signals? What are the signals that a particular genealogy is incomplete rather than complete? These are the questions that let's ask. And so the first one, these are evidence in other biblical genealogies that language like beget or father-son might be used for something other than immediate one relationship. And of course, you're certainly already familiar with the fact that there's a lot of evidence like that. Now, when we were looking at that heading in the tenfold heading in Genesis, we said that same heading is found at the beginning of the New Testament in Matthew 1, verse 1. So we're going to be making a lot of use now by this principle of the analogy of scripture, the genealogy in Matthew 1 in order to interpret the genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. So now, let's come to Matthew 1 and right away the text opens with the statement concerning Jesus that Christ was the son of David. So it was the son of Abraham. So the language of son, you know, we're all familiar with this fact. The language of son is used in the Bible for quite remote relationship. In this case, a thousand years between the Christ and son of David a thousand years, we said that a round number for Abraham was 2000, a round number for Abraham would be about 1000 BC. And so Christ, the son of David, a thousand year gap, David, the son of Abraham, another thousand year gap. All right. So that's the just one small sample of it. What about the term begat? A, A is so many years and he begats someone. Can you use that kind of language for someone who's down the road of peace? Well, who actually wasn't begotten that particular time. You look a few verses later on in Matthew 1 at verse 8. And in verse 8 it talks about King Joe Ram and tells us that he begat Zaya. He begat him. Zaya was the great, great grandson of Joe Ram. And we know that, you know, because elsewhere in the Bible there are other genealogies which are more complete than Matthew 1, which is incomplete. Matthew 1 is not a complete genealogy. There are other places that fill out the relationship between Joe Ram and Zaya. For example, the second king is 8 and the second king is 11 and the second king is 14. And when you check it out, you find that the Zaya was the great, great grandson of Zaya and yet the text says Joe Ram begat him. So you can't come to the biblical text here in Genesis 5 and 11 with some preconceived notions of what this language must mean. You have to sensitize yourself to how the Bible itself uses this kind of language and be ready to feel a little more open and flexible. You might think if I'd say a man might be get someone who was a great, great grandson, but it wouldn't say that a woman would bear a child that was not her, the media child. And yet we have evidence to even know that kind of language. In Genesis 46 verse 18, Genesis 46 18, it says that a woman bore a child and once again the supplementary biblical evidence that we have shows that this child was actually a grandson, a great grandson, was a great grandson. The woman's war and so that's the flexibility of the language that we are dealing with here. So much for terminology. The terminology in the Bible will allow for our exegesis. Then the broader consideration and the way we've already dealt with that our genealogy is always complete, which is the assumption. And we've already seen no Bible genealogies are not always complete. Matthew 1 is a good example then of a genealogy where there are big gaps along the line. And there are lots of illustrations of incomplete genealogies. Another one for example is in chapter 7 of the book of Ezra 7. Here Ezra himself is tracing his own genealogy and he wants to trace it back to Aaron. And he does so in terms of 16 generations each linked by the term son. This is the son of that one and so on. But again when we compare in this case first chronicle 6 for a more complete genealogy, we find that Ezra has left out some of the names along the line so that Ezra 7 is actually an incomplete one. Another illustration is in the book of Ruth toward the end of the book of Ruth. There is that genealogy that traces the names from the patriarchal period up to David. And it does so in terms of 10 names, which simply do not cover the whole period that is involved over 800 years and so on. So there are lots of incomplete genealogies of selective genealogies in the Bible. So those are steps one and the two. Our exegesis, our selective exegesis is warranted by biblical terminology. It's warranted by the fact that biblical genealogies are very often selective rather than incomplete. Now, the really interesting question for me, I think is hiding a note. We're not saying that all biblical genealogies are incomplete, but we're saying some of them are, but others are complete. Are there any clues? Are there any signals along the way that would expose you didn't have another genealogy to check it out? Would there be any clues just in the literary form of other genealogy that would suggest that the author was more concerned with certain literary phenomenon than he was with. A complete listing of the data. Now, here's right here where Matthew one that is very interesting again. And Matthew one, maybe you could be helpful to turn there, you read through the list of names. And then when Matthew has finished that in verse 17, he wants to tell you the shape of what he has just written. Now, now this reader, he is saying, look at this list of names that I've just presented. And if you look at it, analyze it, you'll see what I've done. And he says, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations. And then from David to the exile, 14 generations. And then from the exile of Christ are 14 generations. Now, you know, this is an incomplete genealogy. And he calls it our attention to the fact of the next symmetry of what he's done. He has selected names, and he has left out others in order to achieve this particular pattern where you get the three, four teens. And of course, the 14 is the double Sabbath. So in effect, there are two sevens and there are two sevens. And there are two sevens giving you a total of these six sabbatical things. So there is the sabbatical number seven and the 14 is the double that. And so the history from Abraham to Christ is the story of six sabbaticals. And that means that when you come to Christ, you come to the seventh seven. You've had six of them. And now you come to the ultimate Sabbath. You come to the Jubilee. In other words, he has made use of certain numbers in structuring this pattern, numbers that have theological significance, sabbatical significance, in order to tell you who Christ is. And what the entrance of Christ into the world means in terms of the eschatological progress of the world. There are the six sabbatics lead up to Christ. And when Christ comes in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises of the King as the son of David and so on, when he comes, he introduces these last days. He introduces the ultimate Sabbath age. And that's what Matthew is telling us. He has seized upon certain numbers. And he has seen to it that these are the numbers that he ends up with by leaving out certain ones and selecting others. And even to achieve that, by the way, he has to count the name of David twice. Even to come out with these conclusions. Now you see what he, if you say that in verse 17 that Matthew must be understood as describing the actual history, then the Bible has an error in it. Because there were more than those 14 generations, 14 generations. And so you have to come to the conclusion that that was not his intention. His intention was to present that the history in this particular form that conveyed this edition. Eschatological point and a help to identify who Christ was. And so what he's trying to do is to show who is Christ. He is the Messianic King who fulfills the promise that was given to Abraham. And you see how he sets it up sort of in terms of themes. The first theme now is from the Abrahamic promise of the king through the king himself, David. 14 generations. Then there's the second subject, the history of the monarchy, when there actually was the David King on the throne from David up to Josiah who marks the days of the exile. And then the third theme is beyond the Old Testament monarchy because of course the typological monarchy David's throne was terminated. And after the exile, where's my glass of water? Stay there. After the exile, there was no longer a dividing king on the throne until Christ comes. And so that's his third theme, but you see what he's doing there. That's what you should be looking for. Some nice obvious patterns, some symmetry with certain conventional numbers with theological significance. That's clearly what he needs up to. Another example of that, that's Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. Luke has one too.