I think that most of us instinctively understand the importance of beginnings in our lives.
As we embark on our journey through the life of Jesus, we’ll find that His beginnings had tremendous impact on his life here on earth and a significant influence on His ministry. So we’re going to spend the next several weeks looking at the beginnings of Jesus’ life and ministry from the differing perspectives of the four gospel writers. This morning, we’ll begin with Matthew’s gospel account, so go ahead and turn in your Bible to Matthew 1. You can follow along as I begin to read in verse 1:
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Matthew 1:1 (ESV)
Let’s pause here for a moment before we go any further. Matthew begins his account with a genealogy – you know one of those long sections where some guy with a funny sounding name begat another person with an equally funny sounding name who then begat another person with another funny sounding name, etc. etc.
Before we read any further, I’d like to get some input from all of you and I need you to be honest with me. When you come to these genealogies in the Bible what do you do with them? How many of you just kind of skip over them? Be honest now. And how many of you read them, but you read them pretty quickly without really spending much time on them? I’ll admit that’s what I usually do. And are there any of you that really enjoy reading and thoroughly studying those sections?
But what I’ve come to find is that there is some very important and significant information contained within many of those sections of Scripture. And certainly the opening section of Matthew’s gospel is one of those places. So as I read the next sixteen verses here in Matthew 1, I want to encourage you to follow along in your own Bibles and see if you can pick out some aspects of this genealogy that are unusual or intriguing.
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
17 So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.
As I read through this record of the lineage of Jesus, is there anything that really stuck out to you as being unusual or that you found intriguing? [Wait for answers]. Very good observations. We’ll be addressing many of them in the message this morning.
Today this whole area of ancestry and genealogies has become a thriving industry here in the United States. The website Ancestry.com now has nearly 1.4 million paying subscribers and they claim to have access to over 6 billion records. This publicly owned company had revenues of $91 million just in the first quarter this year.
Obviously Matthew didn’t have access to Ancestry.com or any other website. But for many reasons that we don’t have time to discuss this morning, this information was so important to the Hebrews of Matthew’s day that they had carefully preserved the records of their lineage.
I’m sure that many of you know that Luke also has a genealogy of Jesus in his gospel account – one that is quite different from the one we find here in Matthew. I’m not going to examine that one in the same kind of detail with which we’ll look at this passage in Matthew, so I encourage you to explore that some more on your own. But let me briefly make a couple of observations about the differences in the two genealogies.
• Because Matthew is focused on presenting Jesus as the “King of the Jews”, he presents the genealogy of Joseph since the right of royal succession, the right to rule as king, was passed down legally through the father. And even though Jesus did not bear his blood, Joseph was His legal father.
• Because Luke is focused on the humanity of Jesus, he presents the genealogy of Mary since Jesus bears only the blood lineage of His mother Mary, but not that of his earthly parent Joseph.
• Matthew begins with Abraham and traces the lineage forward to David and then to Jesus. We’ll discuss the significance of this in some more detail in a moment.
• Luke begins with Jesus and traces his lineage backward to David and then ultimately all the way back to Adam. Again we see the emphasis on the humanity of Jesus as His ancestry is traced all the way back to the first human, Adam.
There is so much that we can learn about Jesus just from these first 17 verses in Matthew’s gospel account. But this morning, we’ll limit our focus to just three aspects of who Jesus is.
WHAT WE LEARN ABOUT JESUS FROM MATTHEW’S GENEALOGY
1. Jesus is the fullness of God’s promise
We see this immediately in verse 1. Let’s look at that verse again:
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
In the Old Testament we find that God made a number of covenants with His people. These were solemn agreements in which God made specific promises and demands. Because Matthew is focused on proving that Jesus is the King of the Jews, he begins by showing how Jesus fulfilled two of those covenants – the one made with Abraham and the one made with David.
The entire Abrahamic covenant covers several chapters in Genesis, but it begins with these relevant words:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis 12:1, 2 (ESV)
There is much more to the covenant, but Matthew is primarily concerned with showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to one day bless all the families of the earth through Abraham’s offspring.
The Davidic covenant is summarized with these words from God:
And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.
2 Samuel 7:16 (ESV)
God promised David that He would establish a permanent kingdom in which one of David’s descendants would rule forever. Again, Matthew’s purpose is to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.
By demonstrating that Jesus is the fulfillment of both of these promises, Matthew succeeds in proving that Jesus is indeed the king of the Jews. Knowing that Jesus is the fullness of God’s promise has two important implications for our lives:
• Implications for us:
1) God will keep all of His promises toward us
This ought to really encourage us in our walk with God. Because God faithfully carried out these promises, we can have confidence that He will also carry out all of His other promises toward us. I’m reminded of this encouraging passage from the book of Numbers:
God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Numbers 23:19 (ESV)
The Bible contains hundreds of promises that God has made to His people. Among those are promises like this:
o He will never leave us or forsake us.
o He will supply our every need
o His grace is sufficient for us
o Everyone who commits his or her life to Jesus has eternal life
The fact that we can have complete confidence in every one of these promises makes it possible for us to live life even in the face of the trials and difficulties we face. And it also leads to a second implication.
2) We need to keep our promises toward others
If we want to be like Jesus, then we must also keep our word. James emphasizes this principle in his epistle:
But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.
James 5:12 (ESV)
Unfortunately we live in a culture where many people no longer value the value of keeping a promise. As someone once said, “Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. “ So we have nearly half the marriages in this country that end in divorce because one or both spouses fail to keep their promise to love the other person for the rest of their lives.
Politicians make all kinds of promises in order to get elected and then immediately get amnesia when they take office. So maybe we would do well to follow the advice of Bernard Baruch:”Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.”
But as Christ followers we need to be different than the rest of the world. And one of the best ways to do that is by keeping our promises towards others, even when it is difficult or costly.
2. Jesus is the fruit of God’s people
By listing real human beings in the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew first of all confirms that Jesus was indeed a real human being and not just a ghost or a figment of one’s imagination. He also points out that Jesus, in His humanity, is the fruit of all these human lives that preceded Him.
I don’t know about you, but as I read through this list, I’m frankly not impressed. Many of the names in the list are found nowhere else in the Scriptures. And of the ones we do know from elsewhere in the Bible, this is not exactly a list of people I would pick to be in the lineage of the Messiah. Although there are a few good kings in the list, there are also some really evil ones as well. And even those upon who we would tend to look more favorably are flawed people. Abraham was a liar and his son Isaac learned well from him and was an accomplished liar as well. Judah has a sexual encounter with his daughter-in-law and their son Perez is born out of immorality. Even David, a man after God’s own heart committed adultery with Bathsheba.
And then, if you include Mary, there are five women mentioned in this genealogy. That in itself is intriguing since Matthew is tracing the legal right to the throne, which was always passed on through the fathers. And these five women are not exactly the godliest women we find in the Bible:
• Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and seduces her father-in-law Judah and becomes pregnant with his child.
• Rahab, although she was faithful to help Israel by hiding their spies in Jericho, was a prostitute.
• Ruth was a righteous and noble woman in many ways, but she was also a Moabite – people who originated from an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters.
• Bathsheba’s sin of adultery with King David is so heinous that she isn’t even mentioned by name – she is referred to as the wife of Uriah.
• And Mary is merely a teenage girl. Although she is sexually pure, unlike the other four, she too is a sinner.
In a sense, this isn’t the lineage that we would expect for the Messiah, the king of the Jews. But on the other hand, what we learn here is that God often chooses to work through the people that world often considers to be weak, so that He might be shown strong.
That is the point Paul was making as he wrote to the church in Corinth:
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29 (ESV)
This revelation that Jesus is the fruit of God’s people has one important implication for us. In fact, if you don’t get anything else out of the message this morning, I want to encourage you to focus on this.
• Implication for us:
1) God can use me to serve Him regardless of my background
Over the years I’ve run across a lot of people who just don’t feel they can serve Jesus because of something in their past. Maybe they grew up in a dysfunctional family or were engaged in some kind of sinful lifestyle. Maybe they had turned their back on God and had even been antagonistic to Him. In fact, I sense that there are some of you here this morning that are being held hostage to something from your past and as a result you don’t feel like you can serve God now.
But Jesus was certainly not limited because of His “checkered past” and we don’t need to be either. Regardless of our past, each one of us has the ability to choose whether or not we will serve God today. We can’t use our parents, or our youth or our spouse or ex-spouse or our past sins as an excuse not to serve God today.
Nobody knew that better than Paul. Although he had a lot going for him as a well schooled Pharisee, he also spent part of his life persecuting the followers of Jesus, even approving the execution of Stephen. But Paul didn’t allow that to hinder his service to Jesus once he became a Christ follower. As a result, as Paul neared the end of his life here on earth, he could write these familiar words:
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13, 14 (ESV)
Some of us here this morning need to do exactly that. We need to forget what is behind – the abusive childhood, the painful divorce, rebellious sons and daughters, past addictions and immorality and whatever else might tend to weigh us down. And then we must choose, day by day, to serve Jesus wherever he has placed us.
3. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s plan
We see this in the structure of Matthew’s genealogy. There are 42 men included in the lineage of Jesus beginning with Abraham. These are grouped into three groups of fourteen. Although we know from Biblical and historical records that there were actually more than 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus, Matthew edits the list down to these three sets of fourteen.
So in a sense there are “gaps” in this genealogy. This was actually a very common practice in Biblical times, when only the most significant ancestors would be listed in a genealogy. But this does not mean that what we have here is not accurate. The word translated “father” throughout the genealogy is a verb that can indicate that someone is a father but can also mean other ancestors like a grandfather or great grandfather.
Some have suggested that Matthew broke his list into these three sets of fourteen to make it easier to memorize. Remember that in the early church people didn’t have their own copy of the Bible they could read at home, so they had to memorize Scripture to a much greater extent than most of us do today. Perhaps that is true, but even if that is why Matthew arranged things this way, I think the Holy Spirit who inspired his gospel had something far more profound in mind.
Remember that to the Hebrews, seven is the number of completion. And doubling something made it even more complete. And the number three is associated with the triune God. When we put this all together, we find that the three sets of fourteen generations represent God’s complete plan for bringing the Messiah, the king of the Jews, into the world. Matthew is emphasizing that Jesus’ birth at precisely that point in history is not a coincidence or an accident. It is the fulfillment of God’s plan which He put into action from before the creation of the world. That is exactly the same point that Paul makes to the Galatian church:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:4, 5 (ESV)
Once again, what this genealogy reveals about Jesus has an important implication for how we live our lives today:
• Implication for us:
1) We are God’s co-workers in carrying out His plan in this world
Every one of the people in the genealogy of Jesus played a role in carrying out God’s plan. And there is a sense in which all of us who have committed our lives to Jesus have been grafted into that family tree. Listen to the words of Jesus.
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:49, 50 (ESV)
Those who chose to do the will of God and commit their lives to Jesus become part of His family tree, just like all the people listed in Matthew’ genealogy. And as part of that family tree, we are also given the privilege of being part of the carrying out of God’s plan here on this earth. Or as Paul puts it in his first letter to the church in Corinth:
…we are God's fellow workers…
1 Corinthians 3:9 (ESV)
I doubt that Abraham or Abiud or Matthan or even David realized during their lives that they were playing such an important role in the carrying out of God’s eternal plan. But fortunately, on this side of the incarnation of Jesus, we get to see that much more clearly.
I’m thoroughly convinced that the one thing that would most radically transform our lives is to understand that everything we do is part of God carrying out His plan here on this earth. What we do each day in our homes, our jobs, our neighborhoods and our communities is ministry because we are God’s co-workers here on earth. And the more we understand that, the more meaning and purpose our lives will have.
Beginnings are important. And perhaps today some of you need to make a fresh start. If you’ve never committed your life to Jesus, then a lot of what we’ve talked about this morning might not make a lot of sense to you because you have not yet been grafted in to Jesus’ family tree. If that’s the case, then I encourage you to talk to someone today about how you can have that kind of relationship with God. You can talk to me or one of our elders or you can fill out the information on the flap of the bulletin and place it in the offering plate or give it to me or one of our greeters. I promise that someone will be in contact with you this week to discuss further how you can know Jesus more fully.
But for others who have already made the decision to commit your life to Jesus, you might need another kind of fresh start today. Perhaps you need to let go of your past so that you can live effectively for Jesus in the present. Maybe you’ve been reluctant to really commit to serve Jesus because of something or someone in your past, but it’s time to move beyond that and join God in carrying out His plan as His co-worker in this world.
