The Beginning of the Story-Matthew 1:1-17

Key Elements

In Matthew 1:1-17, Matthew began his gospel by pointing to Jesus as the promised Messiah and King of Israel, the One who would save them by His mercy and grace.

Main idea of the text: When we surrender to Jesus as Savior and King, it radically redefines the way we see Jesus, ourselves, and others.

I want my audience to surrender to Jesus and Savior and King and allow Him to redefine the way they see Him, themselves, and others.

Intro

Open your copy of God’s Word with me to Matthew 1:1-17, as we begin a new sermon series today entitled The Book of Matthew. Now, I’m really excited about this new series. Every year in praying through and mapping out the sermon series for the next year, I really believe God is leading us to walk through completely at least one book of the Bible. Last year, we spent a good amount of time walking through the Book of Mark and so today we are going to begin a journey through the Book of Matthew. And as we navigate these somewhat familiar events and stories that Matthew records for us, what we are going to see is the unique perspective of Matthew on the life of Jesus. As Matthew tells the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ-how Jesus came, what Jesus did, what Jesus said, and what Jesus accomplished through His life, death, and resurrection-from an eye witness perspective, there will be truths that will come to light for us that should transform our lives forever. And as we navigate Matthew’s Gospel, we will see him emphasizing over and over again from the very beginning that Jesus is the Sovereign King and the Savior of the world.

Now, the Book of Matthew is a fascinating Gospel. It’s of course one of the four Gospels that records the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Scholars say that it was written anywhere between AD 50-100 and that Matthew, in composing his Gospel, relied heavily on the Gospel of Mark which is believed to be the first Gospel written. Matthew writes his Gospel to a predominantly Jewish audience made up of men and women who had placed their faith in Jesus as the Messiah or who were contemplating placing their faith in Jesus as the Messiah and as a result had lost or would lose everything. By following Jesus and believing in Him as the Messiah, the Son of God, they had put themselves in a position of losing family, possessions, and some even were experiencing threats to their own physical safety. And it’s this audience of Jewish Christ followers and those who were considering placing their faith and trust in Jesus as the Son of God that Matthew writes this Gospel for, proclaiming Jesus Christ as the sovereign King, Messiah, and Savior for all people.

So, as a church, we are going to be walking through the Book of Matthew for a little while, this Gospel that is so rich in references back to the Old Testament. We are going to be looking at the life and ministry of Jesus through the eyes of Matthew getting an eye witness account of his unique perspective. And in doing so, our prayer is that God will use the truths that we find in this powerful book of the Bible to show us who Jesus is and how life found in Him can transform the way that we live as we surrender all that we are and all that we have to King Jesus.

Message

The Gospel of Matthew has probably in the last couple of years come to be one of my favorite out of the four Gospels. Each of the four Gospels are unique in how they approach the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It’s a perspective that can be compared to a diamond that you look at from different angles. It’s the same diamond but depending on the angle that you view it, it will present a unique view and perspective. That’s a way to look at the four Gospels. They all give us different perspective on Jesus, the same Jesus just a different viewpoint all inspired by the same Holy Spirit. John writes his gospel from the perspective of Jesus as the Son of God-showing Jesus’ divinity from the very beginning of his Gospel; Luke writes his gospel from the perspective of Jesus as the Son of Man-showing Jesus’ significance for all humanity. Mark writes his gospel from the perspective of Jesus as the Suffering Servant-showing Jesus’ coming not to be served but to serve and give His life for all people. And then we come to Matthew who writes his gospel from the perspective of Jesus as the Sovereign King-showing that Jesus came as the promised king from the line of David.

Insights on the Book of Matthew: Now, before we dive in to Matthew 1, I want to set the stage for us with some interesting facts about the book of Matthew. This is something I’ll do every week because these are things that I’m learning as I study and I think, hopefully, they’ll be impactful for you as we walk through this Gospel together. A lot of these that we talk about are coming from a podcast that I listen to entitled The Forgotten Jesus podcast by Pastor Robby Gallaty.

3 Major Themes in the Book of Matthew-Jesus is the Messiah from the lineage of King David, Jesus is God with us, and Jesus is the new Moses. All of these themes are important and all are things that Matthew is emphasizing to his Jewish audience but probably the one that he centers in on the most and pushes the most with his audience is that Jesus is the new Moses. Why? Why is this such a big deal to the Jewish people and the ones Matthew is writing to? For the Jewish people, Moses is the Messiah or a Messiah like figure. He was the mediator between God and man in the OT. He brought the Law down from God to the Jewish people. Moses provided food in the desert when the Israelites were journeying from Egypt to the Promised Land. He provided direction for the journey. Moses in the OT is the deliverer that took them from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land. Moses actually did not enter the Promised Land himself because he disobeyed God. Joshua was the one who completed that task, but Moses is the one the Jewish people look to and hold in high esteem as a Messiah like figure from the their history in the OT. And what Matthew wants to point his Jewish audience to is that Jesus is the new and better Moses. When Moses could not take the people into the Promised Land and provide complete deliverance, Jesus came and provided complete deliverance from sin by dying on the cross and rising from the grave. Moses was an imperfect Messiah like figure where as Jesus is the new Moses and is the deliverer that Moses could not be. And all throughout the Book of Matthew, Jesus will do things and perform miracles and teach truths that call the Jewish people back to Moses and the OT proving that Jesus is greater and is the complete version of what Moses could not be.

The Outline of the Book of Matthew-There is also significance to how Matthew outlines his book. Moses gave us 5 books of the OT-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-these are the first 5 books of the OT and are called the Torah by the Hebrew people. These 5 books are considered the most important by the Jewish people. These are the ones that would have had major focus in Jesus’ day. Remember, the OT is all that they had. They actually called it the Hebrew Bible because it’s what they referred to in Jesus’ day. And Matthew is going to organize his book around these 5 books of the Torah to intentionally point back to Moses and the OT. Matthew sets it up in 5 discourses of Jesus in his book and they are bookended by in intro section and an outro section. So, adding the intro and the outro makes it 7 sections, which is significant also, but let me give them to you real quick: the Intro is Matthew 1-4, then there’s the Sermon On The Mount Matthew 5-7 (1st discourse); then in Matthew 10 we have the Commissioning of the disciples to the house of Israel (2nd discourse); then in Matthew 13 we have Jesus beginning to teach in parables (3rd discourse)-this is the dividing line of Matthew where a major shift occurs, at this point Jesus disconnects from mainly focusing His teaching on the crowds and begins to focus His teaching on the 12 disciples, the crowds benefit from it but the teaching in parables is mainly focused on the disciples; then in Matthew 18 we have Jesus giving us a manual on how to live after He is gone (4th discourse); then in Matthew 24-25 we have the Olivet Discourse (5th discourse) where Jesus is going to talk about how the Kingdom is going to come; and then we have the outro section in Matthew 26-28 where Jesus gives the Great Commission and charges the disciple to go to the nations. And Matthew organizes his book this way purposefully in hopes that his Jewish audience will see that the 5 major discourses or sermon sections of Jesus are just as or more important than the first 5 books of the OT that Moses wrote.

So, those are couple on insights on the Book of Matthew that really help set the context and background for us as we dive into this Gospel. These help us see things in the Book of Matthew that, on the surface, we will not see.

So, as we begin this series today on the Book of Matthew, we begin where Matthew begins and that is with the Genealogy of Jesus. And by doing this, what we see is Matthew beginning his Gospel by pointing his audience and us to Jesus as the promised Messiah from the Old Testament and the King of Israel, the One who had come to save Israel and all people by His mercy and grace.

And what we are going to see today from our text in Matthew 1:1-17 and this is the main idea of the message: when we surrender to Jesus as Savior and King, it radically redefines the way we see Jesus, the way we see ourselves, and the way we see others.

So, let’s read Matthew 1:1-17 first and then we’ll talk about how Jesus redefines these three viewpoints in our lives:

1. Surrendering to Jesus as Savior and King redefines the way we see Jesus. (vs. 1)

Now, if you’re like me, when you’ve ever read the Book of Matthew, you come to this first chapter and you almost think about skipping over it or if you do read it, you skim it. Really the thought on this first chapter is that it’s a list of a bunch of names that are just really hard to pronounce. The new D-Life journal we are walking through on Wednesday nights begins with this chapter and I can remember talking to some of the guys in my group and us discussing that these first 17 verses are some that we really haven’t focused in on before. But when we look at the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17, we see some deep truths that really transform our lives. Matthew purposefully begins with this genealogy and it was significant for his original audience and it is significant for us. Every name listed in this genealogy would have conjured up emotions in the Jewish people who new the OT well. Every name in this genealogy would have brought to mind a significant story in the history of the Jewish people. But the one name that stands out the most in this list is the first and most important name listed, Jesus Christ. Matthew is basically saying, “you won’t understand the story I am about to tell you—unless you see it in the light of a much longer story that goes back for many centuries but leads up to the Jesus you want to know about.” And that longer story is the history of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians came to call the Old Testament. It is the story that Matthew ‘tells’ in the form of a mapped out genealogy—the ancestry of the Messiah.” For it is Jesus that this genealogy is pointing to and leading to as the Savior and King. It is Jesus that Matthew from the very beginning of his story of Jesus is calling his Jewish audience and us to look to and to surrender to as Savior and King. And when we recognize Jesus as Savior and King and when we surrender our lives to Him, it will redefine the way we see Jesus.

a. First, we will recognize He is the one who saves us from sin and death. (The Messiah)

Matthew begins in vs. 1 and he says… Matthew right out of the gate declares that Jesus is the “Anointed One, the Messiah” the one that the people of Israel were anticipating and waiting for. Now, we talked about this before, the Jewish people’s concept of the Messiah was more military than spiritual. They were looking for a figure who would come and deliver them from Rome and lead them out of that oppression. And what Matthew is saying here is that Jesus is the Messiah that you’ve been waiting for but He is not one that will deliver you from the oppression of Rome, He is the one that will deliver you from the oppression of sin. He says His name is “Jesus” which is the Greek form of the name “Joshua” which means “The Lord is salvation.” And he continues and adds the title of “Christ.” Now Christ is not Jesus’ last name. Christ is a title. It’s Matthew telling us that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the one who has come to save us from sin and death. And how would He do that? He would eventually die a brutal death on the cross for the sins of the world, He would be raised to life from the grave and through Jesus’ death and resurrection He would provide forgiveness of sin and a restoration of the relationship between God and people. And for us that view of Jesus is important. Seeing Jesus as the only one who can provide forgiveness of sin and salvation is where a relationship with God begins. When we come to see Jesus as our Savior as the Messiah as our salvation then we want to surrender our hearts and lives to Him and as we do that it reinforces in our lives that Jesus gave His life for us so that we would live for Him.

b. Second, we will recognize He is King over everything. (the Son of David)

Matthew continues in vs. 1 and he says… Here we learn Jesus’ royal identity that He is a descendent of the line of King David. David, who was the second King of Israel, was promised by God two things: that the throne of his kingdom would be established forever (2 Sam. 7) and that an honored son of his would reign on the throne (2 Sam. 7). This promise had been immediately fulfilled in Solomon but beyond that, the ultimate fulfillment came through Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 9 and 11, we see the prophet Isaiah proclaiming that the Messiah the deliver of Israel would come from the line of David. And Matthew is telling his Jewish audience and us that in Jesus Christ that promise has been fulfilled. He is the Son of David and through this genealogy he proves it. Jesus is the Sovereign King, He is the ruler over all and seeing Jesus in this way transforms our lives. Jesus being the King has huge implications on everyone of our lives today. Because Jesus being King means that He has rule and He has reign over our lives and the reason our lives are found on the pages of human history is to know and to worship this Savior King. You are not the center of it all, I am not the center of it all, there have been many rulers and kings and queens who have come and gone but there is one King that stands above them all and His name is Jesus.

c. He is the fulfillment of God’s promise. (the Son of Abraham)

Then Matthew says in vs. 1… Again, we are taken back to the OT, all the way back to Genesis where God makes a promise and a covenant with Abraham that He will form a covenant people, that He will give them a promised land, and that He will accomplish a global purpose. And what we see in this genealogy is that God works out His promise to Abraham through Israel’s history and ultimately through His Son Jesus Christ. Matthew takes his readers and us back to the beginning with Abraham and says that God’s promise has culminated through His Son Jesus. God has delivered on His promise to His people. Nothing in history is accidental. Every detail that we read about in this Bible from the OT did not happen by chance or coincidence. From the very beginning, every detail was pointing to a Savior King would come. History revolves around a King who would come. God promised a Savior King for the people of Israel and God has delivered on that promise and His name is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. And what does that say to us sitting here today. That Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise of a Savior. That Jesus is the delivered promise from centuries ago to God’s people. And what it calls us to today is a confidence as God’s people in a God who keeps His promises. That there is nothing that God has promised us in His Word that will not come to pass. And when we surrender to Him as Savior and King, we surrender to a God who loves us, who is faithful, and we can trust Him with our very lives.

Surrendering to Jesus as Savior and King redefines the way we see Jesus. And that’s just vs. 1.

This leads us to a second redefined viewpoint....

2. Surrendering to Jesus as Savior and King redefines the way we see ourselves. (vs. 1-17)

I would dare say that most all of us have a self image problem, how we actually see ourselves. Some of us may not, but I would say that most people do. The truth is this, when we look in the mirror, sometimes depending on what day it is, most of us can be overly critical of ourselves. And I find myself falling into that same pattern. I have hair growing in places it used to not grow and I don’t have hair growing where it should be. For some reason, I have only one suit that actually fits, all the others have shrunk. I’m blaming it on the dry cleaners. The truth is the way we see ourselves changes, it ebbs and flows through different stages of life. But when we look at the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, again it calls us to surrender to Jesus the Savior King. And one of the viewpoints that’s redefined when we surrender to Jesus is the way we see ourselves. Because this King has called us to be a part of His Kingdom. When we surrender to King Jesus, we find our place in the Kingdom of God. And that transforms our lives or it should which should lead us to see ourselves not through our eyes or the eyes of others but through the eyes of Jesus. And that’s one of the major points Matthew was trying to communicate to his Jewish audience and he is communicating to us as he maps out this lineage of Jesus. Every person in this list and every situation tied to each person working from Abraham forward, God used them and their situations to orchestrate and establish a Kingdom that culminated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as followers of Jesus, we are called by God to live in that Kingdom, communicating the message of that Kingdom, and spreading the Gospel of that Kingdom. So, what calls us to that redefinition of how we view ourselves?

a. First, we realize we are rescued by the sovereign grace of God. (God working through history)

Again, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is so much more than just a list of names that are hard for us to pronounce or a historical record for first century Jewish readers. It is a picture for us of how Jesus saves us. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is vital because it is a resume of the history of salvation, of God’s redemption of all people. This genealogy is so different from any other ancient genealogy because of the list of characters that it’s made up of. All the people listed would not be ones that you would want on your resume if your goal was to impress and yet they appear in the genealogy of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Here we find some of the most evil kings and sinful men and women in the history of the nation of Israel. All kings who led the people of Israel astray from serving God and some to even the worship of idols and child sacrifice. Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, was a polygamist. David, the great king of Israel, was an adulterer and a murderer. And, we’ll talk about this in a few moments, but there are four women in the list who have a checkered past and were involved in some of the most immoral acts recorded in the OT. Nevertheless, God in His grace was working in and through these people to bring about the salvation of the world. Pastor David Platt puts it this way, “It is clear that Jesus came not because of our righteousness, but in spite of our sinfulness.” In spite of these sinful people listed here, God worked through His sovereign grace to bring about the coming of Jesus Christ.

And when we come to the realization that we are all rescued by the sovereign grace of God, it redefines how we see ourselves. That when we were in our sinful state, living a life that was separated from God, He by His grace reached for us, He ran after us, so that we might find life in Him-life here and life for eternity. That in and of ourselves we have done nothing to deserve a relationship with God but are only deserving of sin and death and God in His grace sent His Son and worked throughout history so that salvation would be possible for all. Because of the grace of God, there is nothing that puts any of us beyond His reach. The reason Matthew includes the immoral people that he does in this genealogy that leads to Jesus Christ is the same reason our names are included in the line that leads from Jesus Christ-to show us that it is only by the sovereign grace of God that we are rescued.

b. Second, we are called to God’s global Gospel story.

In Genesis 12, God made a promise to Abraham that “all the peoples of the earth would be blessed by him.” God made this promise to His people for the sake of all people and this promise is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. At the center of God’s plan of salvation for all people is His Son Jesus Christ-that’s God’s global Gospel story.

As we continue to walk through the book of Matthew, we are going to notice three distinct groups of people: the religious leaders who deny Jesus; the crowds of people who follow Jesus as long as He meets their needs and gives them what they want; and the disciples who follow Jesus, are taught by Jesus, and who lose their lives for Jesus. And so a question at this point that we have to consider is which one of these groups will we fall into? Will we be like the religious leaders and completely reject Jesus, will we be like the crowds who only come to Jesus when we need something and who only claim to follow Him as long as He is doing something for them, or will we be like the disciples who unconditionally follow Jesus and commit to be a part of God’s global Gospel story? Surrendered to our Savior King going wherever He asks us to go, giving whatever He asks us to give, serving however He asks us to serve, abandoning all we are and all we have because He is worthy of nothing less.

What a privilege God gives us to be a part of that. To take the Gospel of Jesus Christ across the street, across the state, across the nation, and across the world. That, in itself in a redefinition of who we are as disciples of Jesus, people that God would use to share His grace and mercy and love. People who have experienced the rescue of God’s sovereign grace in our lives and are sharing that same Gospel with the world. It started with 12 disciples that Jesus poured into and commissioned in Matthew 28 to take the Gospel into all the world. God sent His Son Jesus, the beginning of salvation who poured into 12 disciples who took the Gospel to the nations and now all followers of Jesus are on God’s global Gospel mission to make King Jesus known.

Surrendering to Jesus as Savior and King redefines the way we see ourselves.

Which leads us to our final redefined viewpoint...

David Platt, Exalting Jesus in Matthew, ed. Daniel L. Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2013), 13–14.

3. Surrendering to Jesus as Savior and King redefines the way we see others. (vs. 3, 5, 6)

And this is really the result of Jesus redefining how we see ourselves. Because when we ourselves have experienced the rescuing grace of God in our lives and we reflect back on where we were before we met Jesus and what Jesus has brought us from, it opens our eyes to see others in a different way-through the eyes of Jesus. And that’s what surrender to Jesus as Savior and King does for us, it redefines that view. And when that view is redefined, it causes us to realize...

a. First, that salvation through Jesus Christ is available to all people regardless of their past.

Like we said before, this genealogy of Jesus is full of evil men and women present throughout the history of Israel. But among the names listed are four women who have a checkered past, are Gentiles (pagan people), and who are involved in some of the most evil acts recorded in the OT. So, let’s look at the stories of these women for a moment. Three of them (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth) were Gentiles-Canaanites and Moabites. People of the pagan culture that surrounded the people of Israel in the Promised Land whom God commanded His people to drive out. They were “racial outsiders” to the Jewish people and yet, here they are in the lineage of Jesus Christ. They are people tied to some of the most immoral incidents in the Bible. In vs. 3 it says that “Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar” (in this incident, Tamar tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into committing an incestual act with her). In vs. 5 it says that “Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab” (remember that Rahab was the Canaanite prostitute that assisted the Israelite spies in Jericho). Also, in vs. 5 it says “Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth” (Ruth had spent a rather shady night at Boaz’s feet and was a Moabitess who were the direct enemies of the people of Israel). In vs. 6 it says that “David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah” (King David and Bathsheba had an affair and as a result of her pregnancy, David had her husband Uriah murdered). So, here in the genealogy of Jesus the Son of God, we have adulterers, those who participated in incestuous relationships, and prostitutes. We have those who were outcasts of their culture and their race and their gender. All a part of the genealogy of the Son of God.

Now, there are two reasons Matthew highlights these women in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. First, he is including all of these women with scandalous pasts to set the stage for the scandal that will surround Mary the mother of Jesus and her being a virgin. Second and most prominently, he’s proclaiming that salvation through Jesus Christ is available to all people regardless of their past. That Jesus Christ came for and desires to work through the lives of people regardless of their past. And what does this show us? That God saves us not based on any good in us but solely on the mercy and grace found in Him. And when we surrender to Jesus as Savior and King our viewpoints of others must be redefined by the grace of Jesus Christ. That no matter their past, no matter what they have experienced and walked through, that God can transform their lives just as He has transformed ours.

b. Second, we realize that God redeems all who place their faith and trust in Him to be used for His glory.

One name that didn’t make the list but is an example of the grace and mercy of God is Matthew himself. We’ll talk about this in the coming weeks when we look at the calling of Matthew in chapter 9, but Matthew was a tax collector. Now this may not raise any red flags for us or carry the same weight it did in the first century; but essentially Matthew was considered a traitor by the Jewish people. Matthew was a Jewish man hired by the Roman government to collect taxes on his own people and in the process of doing his job, he made his living cheating his own people. In fact, outside his booth a Roman guard had to stand watch to make sure that Matthew wasn’t killed by his own people as he collected taxes daily. Matthew was rich and comfortable but Matthew was considered an immoral outcast by his own people. And in one moment that all changed. Jesus saw something in Matthew no one else saw and called him to be His disciple and to follow Him and in that moment the course of Matthew’s life was changed forever. He gives up everything to follow Jesus and is used by Jesus to write the Book of Matthew and to spend the rest of his life for the glory of God.

And Matthew’s story is our story or it can be. That we can turn from a life focused on ourselves to a life focused on Jesus Christ. That God can redeem us and use us for His glory. And if God can do that for us, then He can do the same for anyone who places their faith and trust in Jesus.

And as we surrender to Jesus as Savior and King and as we begin to see others as Jesus sees them, we realize that anyone can be saved and redeemed regardless of their past and used for the glory of God.

Conclusion