Matthew 1

Series Info

Tonight we are going to be starting a new series on the book of Matthew. I know at the end of last semester I said we would pick back up with Elijah when we start back, but God gave me an idea over the summer and I haven’t been able to shake it so we are jumping into Matthew instead.

I want to take a look at Matthew and really examine the entire book. When jumping into one of the Gospels, we tend to feel like we already know everything. It is the story of Jesus after all, we have grown up in church so if there is one story we know it is the story of Jesus. I believe that we may not know it as well as we think. We know the broad strokes of what He did or what He taught, but do we know all of the details? Probably not, and scripture tells us that all of scripture is good.

Why the Genealogy?

2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,”

This means that there is not a single section of scripture that we can’t learn something from and grow through. That being said tonight we are going to handle a section of scripture that I often would skip over and before I began working on this series never put any thought into how this is profitable to us. Tonight we are going to look at the opening of Mathew, the genealogy of Jesus.

Now I want to be honest with y’all, Matthew is not my favorite Gospel. My favorite is John. I have always loved the Gospel of John for many reasons, but for one thing let’s look at how it opens.

John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The book of John opens with such a strong theological statement and carries on to further discuss this theology and then jumps right into the story. It is a great opening. Now lets compare to Matthew.

Matthew 1:1 “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

After this there are 16 more verses describing His genealogy before Matthew jumps into the story. Why? I have always wondered that. Why would Matthew give us this huge list before he begins his story? What does this have to do with God or with the Gospel?

After putting some thought into it and doing some study I have decided that the way that Matthew begins his Gospel is just as theologically deep and powerful as the way that John starts his. We need to first understand Matthews primary original audience.

Matthew wrote his Gospel primarily for the sake of the Jewish people. He wanted to show his fellow Jews that Jesus really was the messiah that they had been promised and had been looking for their entire lives.

Mathew wanted to relate to his Jewish brothers and sisters reading the Gospel, but more importantly he wanted to remind them of where they had been.

When we look at the genealogy of Jesus what we see really is a summary of the Old Testament. We see an overview of the Jewish history up to this point. What we can see from that is how God’s plan worked through generations of people all leading up to this moment when Christ was born.

To see that plan, I want to look at three people in this list that show us different aspects of the redemptive plan that God set out from the beginning.

Abraham

The first that we need to look at is Abraham.

Matthew 1:1 “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

Abraham is someone that all of Israel looks back on as being the father of their nation and faith. He is the unifying person that all Jews will trace their ancestry back to and revere as a great man.

What Abraham most importantly represents is a promise from God.

Genesis 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

God makes a promise to Abraham (who at this point is called Abram) that out of him will come a great nation. God promises to bless him and those who do good to him and to curse those who dishonor him. The Jewish people clung to these promises that God made to their ancestor and looked back on it for assurance that God was with them no matter the circumstances they were in. God set forth a plan here and He promises to not abandon the plan. There is a specific part of this promise tough that Matthew would want the Jewish people to remember.

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed

It is not just the Jews who have been promised something here, but it is the entire earth. All of us will receive a blessing that will come through the line of Abraham. At the time I am sure that Abraham had no idea what God meant by this. How could one of his descendants bless every person on earth? The Jewish people of the time that Matthew was writing would likely set that promise aside and focused solely on the blessings for their people. But, of all the things that Abraham was promised I believe that Matthew would want them to remember this one the most as he is beginning his Gospel.

Rahab

God promises them a saviour for the entire world. Someone who will bless the entire earth. This is further illustrated by some of the inclusions in the genealogy that would have been considered odd in this time.

Within this genealogy there are five women listed. In these days the women were not typically accounted for and would hardly ever be seen in a genealogy list. Yet, in the most important man to ever lived’s ancestry we see five women listed. Why? Let’s look at one of these women and see what we can learn about her.

I want to look at a women mentioned in verse five named Rahab. Rahab is better known by her profession. She is often called Rahab the harlot or Rahab the prostitute.

Let’s talk about her story for a minute.

Joshua 2:1 “And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there.”

Joshua, on his conquest of the promised land, begins by sending spies into the city of Jericho to see how they can take the city. The spies needed a place to lay low and hide so they hid in the house of this prostitute named Rahab. When guards came looking for the two Israelites at her door she tells the guards that the spies had been there but that they ran away and had just went through the city gates. What she actually did was hide the two men on her roof until the guards left.

Once they had left she goes back to the men and says look, I heard what your God has done to everyone who stood in your way. I don’t want to meet my end so please when you come and your God tears down this city please remember me and my fathers house. The two spies promise her that they will all be spared and tell her to hang a scarlet cord through the window so that all of the Israelites will know to spare that house.

They go back to Joshua and report what has happened and Joshua chooses to honor their promise to the woman and when they come to capture Jericho they spare the woman and all of her family. They then bring them along with the and adopt them into the family of Israel.

Why is she listed here? Why would Matthew want to point out to the Jews that in Jesus’ ancestry was a gentile prostitute? To remind them that everyone is given the opportunity to do what is right. Someone who they would have condemned and likely put to death. Someone who they would have said is to far gone, God used to bring about the saviour of the world.

Matthew uses Rahab to remind the Jews that the story of the Old Testament is not solely about them. When God put His plan in motion He had every human being on earth in mind. He desires that we all come to know Him.

1 Timothy 2:3-4 “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

David

Christ came for the multitudes of men who could connect themselves to Abraham, Christ came for the people of earth who had a rough start in life, but there is one other person I want to highlight in His genealogy that gives us another truth about Christ and Gods plan that we see played out in the Old Testament.

Matthew 1:6 a “and Jesse the father of David the king.

We see here the honor that is bestowed on David here. There are other kings mentioned in this list, but only David gets mentioned for it. This is because he was considered the greatest king to ever live. He was their super hero. He was remembered as a man after Gods own heart and led the nation into their most prosperous time period.

So now Matthew points towards the greatness in the genealogy of Christ. He shows them that Jesus is of the line of King David. The messiah was promised to come from this line so it clearly showing the prophesy fulfillment in Christ, but there is more to the story on why David is mentioned here. It isn’t simply to show the greatness of His heritage or the rights He would have to the throne of Israel, but it is to further remind the Jews of an important lesson.

Matthew reminds us all of that lesson by the next half of the verse.

Matthew 1:6 b And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,”

To quickly recap Davids story for those who aren’t familiar, when David was a young king he happened to stay back in the city away from the battle one day. While sitting on his rooftop he saw a woman bathing across the street basically and decided that he had to have her. He asked who she was and it turned out that she was the wife of one of his men named Uriah. David requested that she come to visit him and without getting into too many details here she wound up pregnant.

Well her husband was off to war so it was going to be obvious that it wasn’t his so David called for him to come back and spend some time with his wife. After Uriah had returned David found him sleeping outside of Davids house. When he asked Uriah what he was doing Uriah responded saying all of my fellow soldiers are out fighting a war. I can’t just go enjoy time with my wife while they fight so instead I will sleep outside of my kings home.

What a guy right? Well David knew that he was too dedicated for plan a so he swapped to plan b. He sent Uriah back to the battle with a note to give the commander. The note told the commander to put Uriah on the front lines. David wanted to ensure that Uriah died on that battlefield. Once the commander recieved the word Uriah was placed on the front lines and was killed in that battle.

David then took Bathsheba for his wife but was punished by God and the son they conceived died.

David was remembered as a great king and a great man, but he was also remembered as an adulterer and a murder. Even the greatest men in their history were capable of doing the most evil despicable deeds. Matthew points this out in the genealogy to remind them that none of them are worthy. No one is righteous enough to get into heaven. Not even our greatest humans could live a life without sin and failure in it.

Conclusion

This is why we need a savior. This is why the Christ has come and why we should read an study the gospel. Matthew is saying that this book is the culmination of thousands of years of Gods plan finally coming to fruition. Everything that we have seen and studied up to now all leads to this point in history when a little baby boy was born in a manger in Bethlehem.