You know what's really fun are curses. I've never been cursed myself like by a witch or a soothsayer or anything, but I've had people curse at me over bad driving and things like that. But no, I mean like the juicy curses from history, like the curse of the Hope Diamond, where supposedly anybody who comes across it and touches it or owns it has some horrible tragedy befall them, or the curse of unlocking King Tut's tomb, or even the fictional curses, like the curse of the Maltese Falcon. I don't even know what that curse actually is. I don't know that story very well. I'm making stuff up now. But it's fun. It's Halloween fodder and it's mystery and all of this. And as much as it seems like pure fiction, the reality is that the curse thing actually has a basis in the Old Testament. See, anytime anybody would make a covenant or a deal, there would be a section of that legal document called a blessings and curses section. And predictably it would say, like if you do all the stuff that the covenant says and you get this good stuff, and if you blow off the covenant and don't do what it says, and you get this bad stuff. One of the most significant covenants of the Old Testament is the one between God and Moses. And this is a conditional covenant where it really does come down to what you do is what you're going to get. And this is a distillation of like tons of chapters of Bible, because there's not really one singular smoking gun verse that gives you the whole of the covenant between God and Moses. But it goes like this I'm going to be your God, you're going to be my people, and you and the nations are all going to know this because when you get stuff right according to what I said, I'm going to bless you. And when you do stuff wrong according to what we agreed on, I'm going to curse you. You can do whichever you want, but either way, the results will be steady and consistent, and everybody will know that I am truly God and that you are truly my people. Now, a lot of the Old Testament can really be summarized as the cycle of blessings and curses as God's chosen people get stuff right or screw stuff up. And one of the really big examples of this happens at the end of 2 Kings, when an 18-year-old king named Jeconiah or Jehoiachin, same guy, just two different names get used. He comes to power in the southern kingdom of Judah. Now, at this point, we're in the early 500s BC, so the northern kingdom of Israel has already fallen to Assyria, and the southern kingdom is in big time trouble as the Babylonians, under the leadership of the enormously famous, powerful king Nebuchadnezzar, are banging down the door of Jerusalem. Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, comes to power, and one of his first acts is to be like, okay, I totally surrender. I'm sorry we offended you, our bad. And Nebuchadnezzar's like, What, really? That's it? Uh okay, cool. Well, I guess I'll just I'll take you all into captivity then, like thousands of you, and I'll take your army and I'll take all your money. Because Jeconiah just waves the white flag, maybe trying to save his own hide. Well, everybody's pretty unimpressed, and the whole curse thing is what follows. And in fact, Jeremiah, the prophet who is a contemporary of all of this activity in the early sixth century, relays aloud a curse from God that is in keeping with the covenant that God made with Moses. And the curse is, frankly, pretty withering. It goes like this As surely as I live, declares the Lord, even if you, Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. This is Jeremiah chapter 22. I will hand you over to those who seek your life, those you fear, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and to the Babylonians. I'll hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you will both die. You will never come back to the land you long to return to. Is this man Jehoachin, a despised broken pot, an object no one wants? Why will he and his children be hurled out, cast into a land they do not know? Oh, land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says. Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah. I feel bad even reading it with inflection, because I'm not qualified to say those kind of things about anybody, but I guess Jeremiah was. And this is a brutal takedown. Now you might be wondering, okay, that's interesting, but why are we doing this? Because aren't we working through genealogy and Matthew? And you're telling me some story about some king who's like in trouble or whatever. Well, the reason I'm telling you this is because that last part of what was said about and toward Jekoniah or Jehoiachin is theologically very significant. None of his offspring, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah. So if you're descended from Jehoichin, it means you're not going to rule in Judah and you can't sit on the throne of David. Fast forward to the genealogy of Jesus Christ, who is to sit on the throne of David in Matthew chapter 1, starting in verse, oh, let's go with 10. Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, these are the people Jesus is descended from, and Josiah, the father of, uh oh, Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. It didn't say Jekoniah, let's just keep reading. It's a typo. After the exile to Babylon, Jeconiah, oh dear, was the father of Sheelteil, Sheelteil, and the father of Zerubbabel, and then da-da-da-da-da. Just keep going through Eliud and Azur, Matthew, and Jacob, Jesus. Yeah, there it is, right there in black and white. What is Matthew doing? He's trying to demonstrate that Jesus should be regarded as king. Why would he put together a genealogy that has like the name that everybody in the original audience would know just can't be king? His descendants can't be king. A Mosaic covenant curse was placed upon him. Well, there are two possible answers to this question. No, there are three. Possible answer number one, uh Matthew's an idiot and he ruined the entire book before he even started. I wouldn't be putting my time into doing this with you if that were my opinion, but I wanted to acknowledge it as a possibility. Possibility number two is that the curse on Jekoniah absolutely is a legitimate curse, but that the curse was eventually lifted. We see God doing things like that, throwing out his anger, expressing his righteousness and his judgment, and then also showing mercy to future generations. So if we go to Matthew's genealogy, once again it's Jeconiah, father of Sheelteel, Sheelteel, the father of Zerubbabel. Okay, well, in Haggai chapter 2, we get some prophetic words about Zerubbabel, and they go like this. Now remember, Zerubabel's the guy who participated in putting things back together in Jerusalem. After a couple generations in exile, the Persians come along, defeat the Babylonians, and Cyrus the Great, king of the Persians, lets an entourage of Jewish people go back to rebuild things in Jerusalem. And so this is better. This is encouraging. Verse 20 of Haggai chapter 2. Tell Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, that I will shake the heavens and the earth, I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of the foreign kingdoms, I will overthrow chariots and their drivers, horses, and their riders will fall each day by the sword of his brother. Oh, okay. So Zerubbabel and his generation have been faithful, they have upheld the covenant, and well, we're getting a heaping of blessings here. Okay, this is familiar. On that day, declares the Lord Almighty, I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel, son of Sheeltiel, declares the Lord, and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord Almighty. Whoa! That's the exact same imagery. Well, it's the opposite of the imagery used in this Jeremiah. Remember? He said, Jehoichin, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, if you were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. And then once again, Haggai 223, and declares the Lord, and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you. It looks like God is lifting the curse that was applied to Zerubbabel's grandfather, Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, again, same guy. So possibility number two, number one, everybody screwed up and the whole thing's wrong. I don't buy that. Possibility number two is that the curse on Jeconiah was lifted in the generation of Zerubbabel, and therefore being descended from Jeconiah and Zerubbabel would mean that you absolutely are qualified to sit on the throne of David. Could be. Possibility number three is that we've got Matthew's genealogy all backwards, and even most of the assumptions you and I have gone with as we've talked about this, maybe could be called into question. I don't know what to make of this one, but it is a possibility. It goes like this Matthew, with this genealogy, is maybe responding to a very common objection that the original audience had to Jesus. Maybe the Jews knew of Jesus' lineage through Joseph, and they're like, look, Joseph, his dad, is directly descended from Zerubbabel and ultimately Jekoniah. Now, all of your language about him being from David and other stuff, that's all swell and fine and good. But the problem is that in order to sit on the throne of David, you would have to be descended from David, but not from the part of the family tree that runs through Jekoniah. And Joseph is descended that way, therefore Jesus cannot be the Messiah and cannot sit on the throne. If that is the case, then what Matthew is doing here is genius, because he's shooting down that objection by showing that Joseph, who is the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ, he goes on, starting in verse 18, to talk about the birth of Christ. This is how the birth of Christ, Jesus Christ came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, and then we all know the story. Joseph isn't his actual dad. So it was thought that Joseph was his dad, but not actually. Okay, I think I've said this before, but we're dealing with the most controversial, difficult passage in all of the book of Matthew here. And this is the most difficult part of the most difficult passage, the curse of Jehoiachin. But I think it is enormously answerable. Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, is one of two things. Either the curse on him was lifted in the generation of Zerubbabel, or it's the exact opposite of what we thought. And Matthew is demonstrating that Jesus isn't actually by blood descended from Joseph and therefore would be exempt from the curse on Jeconiah. I think both answers to the question of the curse of Jeconiah really do have merit. If we assume that Luke chapter 3, where everything is through the point of view character of Mary and everything is about Mary, and therefore in a subtle way the genealogy there is about Mary as well, then we get a double ticking of boxes where Jesus is exempt from being descended from Jekoniah through his fatherly line because he was adopted by Joseph, and he is still able to tick the box of being descended from David because he is the physical offspring of Mary who is descended from David. If we accept that, and there are questions there too, then it really all adds up. Here's what I want to say. We're going to do one more conversation, trying to land the plane on everything we're supposed to take from the genealogy, but this is a fascinating little wrinkle in the discussion, and it is either a glaring black hole and giant oops in the whole proposition about Jesus that Matthew just whiffed on, or the original audience would have also seen the genius that Matthew was operating with here, and that would explain why so many people signed up, because they believed this objection was addressed and that Jesus did tick all the right boxes as the fulfillment and completion of the themes and the story and the prophecy of the Old Testament.