Part 1 of 5
Read: Matthew 1:1-17, Genesis 12:1-9, II Samuel 7:1-17
I have to make a confession. Before I got married, I wasn’t one to decorate for Christmas. I never actually celebrated Christmas at my own home. I would always travel to go and see my family, but the fact remains that I was never into decorating.
However, since I got married, everything has changed. Not only do I appreciate everything my wife does to decorate the house, but I am spiritually encouraged by the symbolism of these decorations. It’s the darkest season of the year, and yet by decking out our houses with little lights, we make the Christmas season a beautiful defiance to that darkness.
That is essentially the meaning of Christmas in Matthew’s Gospel. In the darkest season of human history, the Light of the World shines forth to bring hope to humanity.
We don’t typically spend a good deal of time reading genealogies. I have to admit that I don’t get excited about them either. They’re a great reference for technical study, but they’re not great for devotional inspiration. However, there are more nuggets in the genealogies than we typically think. We shouldn’t skip over them or skim through them in our Bible reading plan. I hope that in this study that I can help you read this opening genealogy in Matthew with greater insight and clarity.
Jesus, Son of David and Son of Abraham
Genealogies might seem straightforward, but this genealogy is unique, and not simply because it is the genealogy of Jesus. The last verse in our reading tells us that this genealogy is broken into three parts of fourteen generations each. Numbers are important and the number fourteen symbolizes the order of God. He has been working things out in His sovereign planning from the beginning of time. Furthermore, this genealogy doesn’t start with Adam and Eve, as does Luke’s Gospel, but Abraham and David serve as the figures at the top of their respective lists while the third is represented by an event, the exile to Babylon.
Abraham is significant here because he is known as the father of faith. When God made a covenant with Abram, before he was eventually renamed, it was that He would be the father of many nations. The Jews really cared about their genealogies. They wanted to prove that they were descendants from Abraham, and thus, beneficiaries of the covenant blessing. But the Apostle Paul tells us that our relationship with the patriarch of faith is not based on genetics, but in belief. We are children of Abraham when we put our faith in God, as he did.
David is also significant to this genealogy because he is the king that was chosen by God. The covenant that God made with David was that the true king would come from his lineage and He would rule forever and ever.
Essentially, Matthew is presenting the genealogy of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise Abraham received by faith and the fulfillment of David’s rightful heir to the throne.
Jesus, Son of the Unlikely
Perhaps the most helpful way to read through this genealogy is to take note of any time additional details are included. While there is a long list of names, half of which we don’t recognize and can’t pronounce, there are little nuggets that pack a great deal of important information.
Notice how Judah is described, “Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” If you were reading through the book of Genesis and you got to the story of Jacob’s sons, you might be inclined to think that Joseph would be the one in the line of Jesus. That’s what Jacob thought, but it’s Judah instead. In fact, Judah is not even Jacob’s firstborn son. He was born from Leah, whom Jacob did not even want. Leah longed for the love of Jacob and named her sons out of desperation, but when she gave birth to Judah she declared, “This time I will praise the LORD.” That is the son who God blesses with the promise of a savior.
But Judah was not even the best candidate based on His own merit. There is a sort of back and forth between Judah and Joseph. Joseph would resist temptation while Judah would go looking for trouble. Joseph was a saint, Judah was a terror. In fact, the next line in the genealogy shows this. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law. When Judah’s son died, he refused to give Tamar to another one of his sons to provide her with a child to support her, so she dressed up like a harlot and tricked Judah into getting her pregnant.
But the strangeness doesn’t stop there, a few generations later, we see that Salmon fathers Boaz by Rahab. She was a Canaanite harlot who helped the spies hide in Jericho and was subsequently spared the destruction of that city. Boaz eventually married Ruth, another outsider to Israel and widow to a wayward son. Why are any of these included in the lineage of Jesus? Because they show that faith is not something that is inherited by genetics but by the grace of God.
Then, we see one more anomaly to this lineage when we see that Solomon was the son of David by the wife of Uriah. The text doesn’t even tell us the name of Bathsheba, just that David had committed adultery with her and murdered her husband in order to have her. This might be how many monarchs have maintained their kingdoms, but what is it doing in the lineage of Jesus? What is consistently demonstrated throughout the Bible is the brokenness of man, but the providence of God.
Jesus, the Christ
The line of kings from David’s throne were a mixed bag of those who feared the LORD and those who lead the people into sin and idolatry. By the time of Jechoniah, God had brought the evil empire of Babylon down on Judah and carried them off into captivity. This is the darkest period of Israel’s history. It is described by Ezekiel during the time of the exile that the Shekinah Glory, the presence of God that had rested in the Holy of Holies in the temple, left and ascended into heaven. God no longer dwelt among His people.
It was Zerubbabel who eventually brought the people back into Jerusalem, but he would never rule on the throne. While the city and the temple would be restored, the glory was gone, and the following years would remain dark. But it was out of that darkness that a little light would eventually shine forth. When an angel told Mary that she would give birth to a son, and this child would be the Son of God.
This genealogy is not only showing us how God is sovereign over all things, or that He can work with messed up people, it is also showing why God would choose such an obscure couple, the virgin Mary and her betrothed husband Joseph. Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah. We would have thought he would have come by a greater pedigree.
By coming in this way, Jesus shows us that the thing that matters most is our relationship with Him. We might have made some major moral mistakes, but Jesus is not ashamed to include us in His family. We might be embarrassed by our pedigree and feel like an outsider, but Jesus will bring us into the fold. We might even feel that the circumstances around us are too dark and heavy to make anything good come out of it. But it was in the darkest hour in history that Jesus came into our world. It’s a beautiful picture of the gospel that moves us to want to draw closer to Jesus. And it is an inspiration to us that if we shine our light into the world, no matter how dark it might seem, we can make a difference by God’s grace.
Adam Miller is the president and host of Songtime Radio and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church. This article is a condensed version of one of his sermons.