Jesus Family History Matthew 1:1-17 Preached at 8.15, and on 4th December 2016

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Marylou Jocelyn Turner
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1 Jesus Family History Matthew 1:1-17 Preached at 8.15, and on 4th December 2016 Intro Researching your family history can be be really interesting. But listening to someone else s family history might not be all that enthralling. Our sister-in-law spends a lot of time on ancestry.com and loves to dig up all the dirt on Sue s side of the family all the convicts and all the bad stuff they did. But she ll tell you that her side of the family is related to royalty somewhere back in the past. Here in the first chapter of Matthew s Gospel we ve got the family history of Jesus. Reverend Lovejoy in the Simpsons, whenever you saw him preaching, was usually reading one of the many family genealogies in the Old Testament and you can see how he captivated his parishioners. I hope today won t be like that! Perhaps you might wonder why we have genealogies in the Bible, or why we put our Bible readers through the ordeal of pronouncing all those names! But there isn t anything in our Bibles that s isn t there for a reason. Genealogies have something to teach us, as much as any other passage in Scripture. And that s certainly the case for this one. Like our family tree there are some unlikely characters mixed in with royalty. But this genealogy traces the history of God s salvation promises through the Old Testament up to the event we celebrate as Christmas the arrival of Jesus Christ in the world. 1

2 And so it has much to teach us about the reason for the season as we come into Christmas this year. A Royal Heritage Sue and I have started watch a series called The Crown on Netflix. It s the story of our present Queen, Elizabeth II. It s interesting seeing the flashbacks into some of the history of the royal family. What we have here in Matthew 1:1-17 is the history of the royal family of God. In verse 1 Matthew states his purpose is to introduce the central person in his book. It s Jesus, the King. In our new 2011 NIV transition it says: This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: (Matthew 1:1 NIV11) In the previous translation it said the genealogy of Jesus Christ We re used to hearing the word Christ immediately after Jesus name, like a surname like Paul James. But Christ is a title. It s the Greek translation of the Hebrew word we know as messiah. The meaning of both words is anointed one. In The Crown series you see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The most solemn part of the ceremony is the anointing. It s so solemn that there are no pictures of it. Even the people in Westminster Abbey have their view obscured by a canopy that s placed over the Queen at that point. The anointing is the symbol of God s choice of this person to rule. 2

3 In the case of Queen Elizabeth, it s to rule over the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth for the term of her life. But for Jesus to be the anointed one of God means much more. This genealogy doesn t just give us the interesting family tree of a first century man call Jesus Christ. It reveals this first century man to be the one God has anointed to rule in line with his ancient and great promises. A Promising Heritage At the very start in v1 Jesus is called the son of David, the son of Abraham because the promises God made to David and Abraham shape his identity. Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham because Abraham is the one who receives the great promises of God, beginning in Genesis 12:1-3 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. (Genesis 12:2 3) and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, (Genesis 22:18) The word offspring or seed there is singular meaning that the promise of blessing for all peoples will be realised through one of Abraham s descendants. So the genealogy sets off towards this descendant. Here s something to help us follow the journey One of the first things you notice is that it doesn t include Abraham s entire family tree. Abraham had two sons Ishmael and Isaac, but the promises are going to be fulfilled through Isaac. 3

4 Even though Ishmael s descendants will give rise to many nations, they won t form part of the great nation of God s people. The same applies to Jacob and Esau. Only Jacob s descendants are in the line of the promise, even though he and Esau were twins and Esau would have many descendants too. Right from the start God s promise applied only to those he chose to apply it to. Just being a descendant of Abraham doesn t entitle anyone to the promise. It s God s sovereign choice. The second thing we notice is that Matthew has set the genealogy out in three sets of fourteen generations. If we compare what we have here with Luke s Gospel we ll notice some differences and the same if we compare the names with the genealogies in 1 Chronicles. Some of the generations are compressed, so that father of sometimes means ancestor of. What he s done is to arrange the history of the promises into a pattern of three periods, as he says in v17: Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. (Matthew 1:17) The first period is from Abraham to David. This period runs from the giving of the promises to their initial fulfilment under David. From the beginning the promise of a great nation and a great name is under threat Abraham didn t even have Isaac until he was 100 and then he was commanded to sacrifice him! 4

5 Through slavery in Egypt, the exodus to life in the promised land where Abraham s descendants didn't always trust the God who d saved them, they came to the time of David. Under David, the promise to Abraham had a fulfilment. They were a great nation, living in their own land, with a great name among the nations. The second era begins with David (v6), a great King, and with a new promise to him and his descendants in particular. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. (2 Samuel 7:9) I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. (2 Samuel 7:12 14) Again the offspring is singular. This promise is for a future, even greater, King from David s family. He will be uniquely God s Son, and his kingdom will be never-ending. In Psalm 2 it says about this king: The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, (Psalms 2:2) Serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, (Psalms 2:11 12) It s the promise of a messiah God s anointed king of all the peoples on the earth. But by the end of Matthew s second era, the kingdom is in ruins. And so the third era begins with the children of the promise in exile and no descendant of David on the throne. 5

6 At the end of those fourteen generations stands the man this has all been leading up to Jesus who is called Messiah. the descendant of Abraham who is the Son of God and anointed Messiah, King over all people whose rule brings blessing to the world. A Surprising Heritage Matthew begins his book with this genealogy for a reason for his first-century readers who d heard of Jesus and what he d done, but didn t really appreciate yet just who he was and what he had to do with all that God had promised. So it s surprising that he hasn t tried to hide any awkward details in Jesus family history. A Jewish family history was traced through the men, but in this one, four Old Testament women who played a significant part in the fulfilment of God s promise to bring his Messiah are mentioned Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba who all came into the story in less-than-ideal circumstances (to say the least). And when we get to the last generation, we don t read Joseph, the father of Jesus, but Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Matthew might have been tempted to smooth over the fact that Joseph didn t father Jesus to save any possible embarrassment about his parentage. But he doesn t. And the reason is in the name he s already mentioned in v1 Jesus. In v21 Joseph is commanded by an angel to give Mary s child this name, Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. His people whose people? God s people. In Jesus, God the true king has come to rescue the people he s chosen from the disease that afflicts them all sin. 6

7 And though a man, he s also God the Son who is sinless. Matthew highlights the fact that the birth of Jesus marks a break in the natural family history so we see that Jesus is the one who s come to break the cycle of sin. He came to save and to rule by going to the cross in fulfilment of all God s promises. Forgiveness, blessing and eternal life now flow through him to people who believe in him, and who bow down and worship him as God s Son, the Messiah. The Response So what will you do with this genealogy? We might not be all that interested in someone else s family history. But we d be foolish not to pay careful attention to this one because it reveals Jesus as God s anointed the Son of God. These verses show us that he has come to rule as the eternal king of all the peoples of the world. That means he s come as your rightful ruler, with eternal life or eternal destruction in his hands, depending on how you treat him. As your rightful ruler, he is entitled to your worship, your reverence and your obedience and he is fooled by empty words. He can see by the way we live whether we really worship him, revere him and obey him. Over the course of a busy year it s so easy to lose sight of how important Jesus is. Christmas is the perfect opportunity to refocus. Think this week about the place you ve been giving to Jesus in your life over the past year. 7

8 Perhaps he s become more like Jesus Christ, that first century guy who died on a cross so that I could have eternal life. instead of Jesus, my king and rightful ruler of my life to whom I owe all my worship, reverence and obedience. Perhaps you ve never thought of Jesus in that way. The genealogy of Jesus here doesn t leave any other option open. It demands that we recognise Jesus for who he is, and worship him with all we are, every day, in every area of our lives. 8

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