His Story, Our Story

It is deeply ingrained in every person to know where they come from. It is a natural part of who we are. Many of you are probably familiar with Ancestry.com, a site dedicated to people building family trees and discovering their ancestry. Just last year, a woman found her biological father through DNA testing and was connected with a family she didn’t know she had. It was a really neat story. My sister did a bunch of work on our family tree and I have been able to see the names of my great grandparents I never met. Ancestry.com has helped millions get a better understanding of their family history.

Now the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all of scripture is inspired by God. That word inspired literally means breathed out by God. All of it is important. This includes the genealogies full of names that we have a hard time pronouncing. In the case of Jesus, you will find two genealogies, one in Matthew and the other in Luke. Today we will be looking at the one in Matthew.

Last week we talked about starting out a book in a way that grasps the reader’s attention. Matthew begins his book with a list of names. This doesn’t seem very captivating…unless you’re Jewish. Matthew’s gospel is written to a Jewish audience. Of the four gospels, it has the most Old Testament quotations. Fulfillment of prophecy is a major theme in the book. Matthew’s sole purpose is to present Jesus as the long awaited Messiah Israel has been waiting for. Right out of the gate, He presents Jesus as the heir to the throne of David.

Matthew 1:1 CSB

An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham:

Matthew traces Jesus’ family tree back to David, and then back to Abraham. In the first seventeen verses we get a snapshot of Israel’s history through a list of its major players. As readers in the 21st century we might be tempted to skip these verses or ask, “So what?” Maybe it is important for Jews, but not for us. To discover meaning in the genealogy of Christ we must dig a little deeper than merely reading a list of names.

The genealogy of Jesus shows us God keeps his promises.

Matthew’ first verse tells us Jesus is the son of David and of Abraham. These two names are perhaps the most important of all the other names. It was these two men who God made unconditional covenants with. That means no matter what these men did, no matter their faithfulness to God or the terms of the covenant, God would fulfill his promises to them.

God’s covenant promise to Abraham is found in Genesis 12:1-3.

Genesis 12:1–3 CSB

The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

God called Abraham out of Haran to the land of Canaan. God promised Abraham a land of his own, numerous offspring, and blessings received and blessings poured out to others. All the people of the earth would be blessed through Abraham.

Matthew is writing to convince a Jewish audience that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. Jesus came into the world to redeem the world from sin. He is the gateway to salvation. People from every tribe and nation can find forgiveness of sin through Jesus, a descendant of Abraham. Abraham was not alive to see this promise fulfilled, but the genealogy of Jesus shows us how God’s covenantal promise passed from generation to generation until it found its fulfillment in Jesus. Through Christ, every person can find salvation.

Do you remember the covenant made to David? You can find it in 2 Samuel 7:12-13

2 Samuel 7:12–13 CSB

When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, 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.

God is promising to David that there will come one after him who will build the house David wanted to build. The temple was a project David wanted to take on but God said no. His son Solomon, who succeeded David after his death built the temple. But look in verse sixteen:

2 Samuel 7:16 CSB

Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever.’ ”

God’s promise to David includes an unconditional promise that his throne would be established forever. But then Israel went off into exile and Jerusalem was destroyed. Since that day, no one has ever been king over Israel. Today there is no one sitting on the throne of David. But God is not done writing his story. By connecting Jesus to the lineage of David, Matthew is showing his readers that Jesus is eligible to take the throne of David. This is something that will take place upon his return, so this is a promise that has been fulfilled in the sense that we already know the identity of the one who will sit on the throne of David, but unfulfilled in the sense that it has yet to occur. When Jesus, the descendant of David, returns to the earth, he will establish his kingdom and sit on his throne in Jerusalem. Then the covenant promises made to David will be fulfilled. David did not live to see this day, but he believed God.

So by connecting Jesus to David, and David to Abraham, Matthew is demonstrating to his readers that Jesus meets the qualification for claiming the throne of his father David, and thus fulfilling God’s covenant promises to David and Abraham. God keeps his promises.

The genealogy of Jesus is a testimony to the grace of God.

When we take the opportunity to listen to the stories of the people in this genealogy, we begin to see a common thread. They are deeply flawed people who God used to bring forth the savior of the world. Abraham is the patriarch of Israel. It all started with him. He is one of the top most important people in Judaism. It would be a poor move to say anything negative about Abraham to a Jewish person. But Abraham was not free of faults. Do you remember when his wife thought it was a good idea to have him sleep with her servant Hagar to produce the offspring God promised? Do you remember that not one, but twice Abraham lied about his relationship with his wife Sarah, saying she was his sister so the kings of the land they were travelling in wouldn’t kill him and take her as their wives? This lie didn’t stop them from taking her into their harems, but at least Abraham didn’t die, right? Yet this was the man God made an unconditional covenant with. All the people of the world would be blessed through him.

Do you remember Judah’s story? First, he was complicit in selling his brother into slavery. Then you read a crazy story in Genesis 38 where he failed to live up to his promises to his daughter-in-law Tamar, the very same Tamar mentioned in Matthew 1:3. She then dresses up as a prostitute and sleeps with him while he is travelling, only to wind up pregnant. It is a huge scandal. Yet Judah is the one of Israel’s sons who inherits the promises made to Abraham.

Do you remember what David is known for? He was a man after God’s own heart. But it was by the wife of Uriah which David produced Solomon. You can read this story in 2 Samuel 11. It was wartime and David stayed home instead of going to battle as he should. He saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof, sent for her, slept with her, and got her pregnant. Her husband came home on leave and David tried to cover up the whole thing by sending him home to be with his wife. Uriah refuses, opting to stay with his fellow soldiers. His reason: if they can’t go home, why should I? So David’s plan was to get Uriah to go home, get intimate, so the pregnancy could be credited to Uriah, not David. His plan failed, so he sent Uriah back to the battlefield with a letter to his commander to place Uriah in the front line and then have everybody retreat so Uriah would be alone, making him an easy target. Mission accomplished. This is not behavior God condones. Far from it. God then sends Nathan the prophet to confront David, but this story is in there. From then on, David’s family is riddled with drama. Yet, David is remembered as a man after God’s own heart.

One of the unique characteristics of Matthew’s genealogy is the inclusion of four women. You have to understand that women were never included in genealogies. Women had no voice in ancient times. They were not independent. This is why they had laws concerning the care of widows in Israel. But the fact that Matthew includes these names is an act of grace. Tamar was messed up. She dressed as a prostitute to sleep with her father-in-law to produce offspring for herself. Do you remember Rahab? She was a prostitute of Jericho before Israel came in and took over the city. Ruth was a Moabite. There were laws against marrying outside the Israelite tribes. Boaz was gracious and compassionate toward her. We talked about the scandal surrounding Mary. These women didn’t have it easy, yet God includes them by name in the genealogy of Jesus. The reality is that every one of these men had mothers. What would we learn from them if we dug deep into their stories? We know that Tamar and Rahab were not Jewish. Tamar was most likely a Canaanite, Rahab definitely was, and Ruth was a Moabite. What does this tell us?

All kinds of people are welcome into the family of God.

The genealogy of Christ is filled with people of a checkered past. Yet from them comes the perfect, spotless lamb of God who takes away the sins of those who will believe in him. Not one of these people deserved to be in the ancestry of Jesus. He is not the savior of the Jew only, for he is also the savior of the Gentile. There is only one race under God and it is the human race. The grace of God is oozing from the pages of Matthew’s gospel as something like a genealogy begins to show us a gracious and compassionate God who came down to the mess that is the human race to bring forth one who can rescue us from the mess. For Matthew, he is first the long awaited Messiah, the deliverer of Israel. For the rest of us, Jesus invites us in regardless of our own ancestral history.

You see, it no longer matters where I come from. It doesn’t matter what I might find in my own family history, whether good or bad, because Jesus is rewriting my story. I’m a part of a new family now. The family of God. I have seen God’s faithfulness throughout my life even when I was not his. This makes me grateful and willing to serve him no matter what. Jesus is my king and my brother. Now I am a part of his family.

.

..

...

....

.....

......

.......

[YOUR NAME HERE]

God is still writing His story. And His story has become our story as we enter into it through Christ.