Matthew 1

Why the genealogy at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew?

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Episode 121

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Transcript

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What's the deal with the genealogies that begin the Gospel of Matthew? Well, there are several things that are going on right here as Matthew starts his gospel. First of all, Matthew is writing, we believe, to a largely Jewish audience. So genealogies were very important to the Jewish people, your descendants, it goes all the way back, especially to the Exodus when they entered into the promised land and they had land that was divided up by allotments, and your tribe and your genealogy was very important, but also being able to trace your lineage back to people like King David or Abraham, these major figures among the Jewish people, this was of great importance to the Jews. And so part of it is that's what Matthew's doing. In fact, he shows how Jesus is a descendant of both Abraham and David. If you remember in the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 12, one of the parts of that is that through Abraham, through his descendants, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Through his seed, actually, it says. So what we find is that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that. It is through Jesus, a descendant of Abraham, that we all are blessed. As we repent and believe on him, we receive everlasting life. Also, David, he was given a covenant, the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7, where David wanted to make a house for God, a temple for God, and God said, No, I'm going to make you an enduring house. And God said that David would never lack someone to sit on the throne. In other words, that his line would be an unending line. And so Jesus comes as the fulfillment of that Davidic line to sit on the throne and rule and reign forevermore as King of kings and Lord of Lords. So Jesus is the specific fulfillment, the final fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant and that of the Davidic covenant. So that's a big deal, and that would have stood out to the Jewish people as they read this. But there's something else. There's some ladies that are listed here, and there's a point being made. In verse 1, it says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, Judah begot Perez and Zarah by Tamar. So first lady is mentioned is Tamar. This was not a good story. I'm not going to go into all of it. Judah and Tamar, it was not a good story, but God brought beauty from ashes, and Tamar is listed here. It goes on to say Perez and Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Aminadab, and Aminadab begot Nashan, and Nashon begot Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab. Now again, Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth. Okay, so Rahab was in the people of Jericho. She was in the battle of Jericho, and she was a prostitute. Again, God brought beauty from ashes. She believed God, and she and those in her household were the only ones saved when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down because she believed God. And then when you have Ruth mentioned, she was a Moabitus. She was an enemy of the Israelites. Her people were, and yet she believed God. She came to know the true living God through her mother-in-law, and she claimed to believe in the God of her mother-in-law and remained faithful to that belief. And God used her and brought her in to the line of Jesus, the line of David that ultimately became the line of Jesus. So Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, Jesse begot David the king. Then it says David the king begat Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah. And we know that's Bathsheba. So there's these four ladies that are mentioned, and it's all kind of done in a way where these are ladies that would not be in many aspects of their life, ladies you would hold up as examples. And yet they believe God, and God brought again beauty from ashes. If you fast forward through the rest of this genealogy, you come to verse 16, and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ. Mary was an unwed teenage girl living in a small town. The penalty of adultery was death, to be stoned to death. They all thought that Mary had committed adultery, but she knew that she had not. She knew that she was pure. She knew that what was in her was conceived of the Holy Spirit. But yet she had to endure that shame, that grief, all of those things that came with that in a small town. And then Jesus was born. And so it's interesting that in this genealogy, you have these heavy hitters like Abraham and David, who made their own mistakes. But the ladies that are selected, there are other ladies that could have been selected, but the ones that were selected were ones that in many ways, for different reasons, didn't have very good reputations, but God used them mightily. And this is the line through which Jesus was born. And again, it's amazing. Jesus is coming through this line where there's so much brokenness. And that is God, I think, also sending us a message. Not only is he the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, not only is he the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, but he has come to redeem what is broken. He has come to restore us. He has come to bring the lost back home. He has come to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. And we see this even in this genealogy. There are these broken people that result in the birth of Jesus Christ. It's an amazing thing. That's how the gospel of Matthew starts. And I think there's more to it than even that. There's more to the genealogy, but those are at least two big things that I wanted to point out. So it kind of maybe will help you look at the beginning of Matthew a little differently in the days to come when you look over that. Thank you for joining me today. I hope this has been a blessing and an encouragement to you. Remember, we serve a God who saves and He came to redeem us, and He specializes in taking the broken and bringing beauty from ashes. I hope you have a great day.