Matthew Part 1

Intro

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Context:

Before we spend the next several weeks diving into the book of Matthew it’s important for us to understand some things.

Some context

Some information about the author

And some of the reasons he wrote this gospel and some of the themes and ideas we will see

Matthew is the very first book in the NT. It’s one of the 4 gospels we find in the NT and one of the 3 synoptic gospels

Although the gospels are similar, especially the synoptic gospels, Matthew stands out for a few reasons

The gospel of Matthew has been primarily accepted to have been written by Matthew the tax collector turned disciple of Jesus

tax collectors of this day were considered some of the worst of the worst

Not much is known about Matthew’s life prior to Jesus so speculating on his past would be just that, speculation.

What we do know is that he was an excellent writer.

His gospel is laid out in a way that would have been very easy for the early church to see and understand Jesus’ teaching

So much so that it has been considered as the “teaching gospel” and many believe that Matthew must have become a pretty influential teacher himself.

It was the gospel most copied, read, taught, and used in the early church.

Matthew was a “messianic Jew” but no other gospel displays a greater commitment to world evangelization than that of Matthew’s

Matthew’s primary audience was believing Jews, or Jews who were hovering on the verge of confessing Jesus as the Messiah

But we will also see some secondary readers of concern

the Gentiles were very much a part of the original readership too through his acceptance of them as brothers and sisters in Christ and in his pursuit to convert them

Another major target for the book of Matthew would have been teachers

We have to remember that many people during this time could not read and write so the role of the early church teachers was very very important

And this gospel would have been a pillar in their teaching material because of the way Matthew wrote and presented it.

Matthew’s primary goal is to show the kingship of Jesus

To show the readers that Jesus is the rightful and long awaited king. Not only of the Jews but the King of the world.

He will show Jesus as the King revealed along with His kingdom

He will show Jesus as the King rejected

And he will show Jesus as the King to return

In most of the chapters of Matthew you will see Jesus interact with 3 audiences.

The disciples

The crowds

And the teachers of the law and Pharisees.

Now if you were fairly new to reading and studying the Bible and you wanted to read a NT book and you just opened to Matthew, it wouldn’t take long for you to become confused and perhaps even a little bored

If you had read a lot of OT but were new to the NT you would probably read Matt chapter 1 and think there isn’t much a difference between the 2

In fact, if you were with us at the beginning of the year as we walked through the first 11 chapters of Genesis you may be thinking that we are about to spend our 4th sermon this year on a genealogy.

The beginning of Matthew’s gospel is going to be very showing to us. In fact the beginning of every gospel is showing to their aim and purpose of writing.

The 4 gospels all share the same story, yet from a different angle, with a different purpose, and yet all are succinct and harmonious in their message.

These beginning chapters show us a lot so it would be detrimental to simply skip it and move forward

As Matthew’s goal is to show Jesus as King, Mark will present Him in an extreme opposite role, a servant. Luke will present Him as the Son of Man and yet John will present Him as the Son of God

And if we looked at these individually we may be enticed to believe they contradict themselves but if we look at them together we see that Jesus was both sovereign God King and servant son of Man

In presenting Jesus’ servanthood Mark gives no genealogy at all, because a servants lineage is irrelevant.

In presenting Jesus as the Son of Man, Luke traces His genealogy back to the first man in Adam

In presenting Jesus as the Son of God, John gives no human genealogy but states “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Here in our text, in the gospel of Matthew what we will see is a genealogy of Jesus going back to Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, through royal line of King David, Israel’s model king.

Matthew 1:1 NIV

1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

If we read through this genealogy there are a few facts that we may notice

It is a list of 3 sets of 14

The first set from Abraham to show us that Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham in the OT

The second from David to show of Jesus’ royal lineage and right to kingship

And third from exile to Jesus to show that He has come to save the world

Matthew did it this way specifically because he intentionally leaves people out of this genealogy

Now the reasons probably wouldn’t catch our eye but there are a few possibilities to why he breaks it up like this and has 3 sets of 14

Matthew could have chosen 14 because in Hebrew the numerical value of the name ‘David’ is 14. So it could have been kept to 14 to easily be remembered by the Jews that Jesus is through the lineage of David the rightful king of Israel. We must remember that not many could read during this time so writing in a way that would have been easily remembered was important.

Why I believe it’s written this way is because the reader could have also viewed this, instead of 3 sets of 14, as 6 sets of 7 with Jesus beginning the 7th set of 7

Why is that important?

Because most Jews of Jesus’ day believed that although they were no longer in exile in Babylon they were still enslaved in their own land and in a way still exiled.

They knew that the great promise of Isaiah and Ezekiel had not yet come true.

There’s a moment in the book of Daniel chapter 9 where, as he is in Babylonian exile he cries out to the Lord to ask if Jeremiah’s prophecy would soon be fulfilled. That the exile would last for seventy years.

God replies to him with not seventy years, but seventy weeks of years. 70 times 7 years. 490 years.

Now that sounds like a pretty devastating blow to the Israelites and it most definitely would have been but the idea of “seventy times seven” carries a certain ring with it

To them the number 7 meant something. Every 7 days, they had a sabbath

Every 7 years they had a sabbatical year

And every seven times seven years they had a jubilee.

This was when slaves were freed, land was restored to its rightful owner, when things returned to how they should be. It was a time of restoration and redemption

So yes seventy times seven, 490 years, is a long time but the point is this: When the time finally comes, it will be the greatest “redemption” of all time.

And Matthew, I believe, makes it clear beyond doubt to His Jewish audience. That this moment has arrived through Jesus and he shows it through the generations, through this genealogy.

Jesus is the 7th of 7. He is the one that will rescue, restore, and redeem all that has been foretold and lost.

Israel had been sent to exile because of their sin so being forgiven of their sins made them free of exile.

Jesus being the king gave them and you a royal pardon. With a royal pardon, you get out of jail free. You get your sins covered for free.

The point Matthew is trying to make that above everything else is this: there is a single story that now reaches its conclusion in the person of Jesus Christ.

He redeems His people back to himself and then uses those people to continue the message of redemption to the ends of the earth

Matthew is telling us, through this genealogy that this is a Jubilee of jubilee’s. Jesus is here, the one we’ve been waiting for.

We can notice the repetition of the title Messiah in Vs 1,16,17,18

It is used here to show the reader that Jesus is the Messiah, the savior of the world whose coming they have been eagerly awaiting.

But I believe the big take away from this genealogy would have been, yes Jesus is the rightful king of Israel, but that He is a King of Grace.

As the original readers read through this list of names there would have been some names that stood out above the rest.

They would have seen Abraham’s name and remembered his faith and remembered him as one of the pillars and founders of their faith

But they would have also remembered some of his shortcomings. That He lied about his wife out of fear and lack of trust in God not once but twice

They would have seen David’s name and remembered him as the model king of Israel. A man of God. But they also would have thought about the fact that he committed adultery and had the husband murdered. They would have thought that he was often bloodthirsty, the reason he wasn’t allowed to build the Temple. He wasn’t the best father and often failed to discipline his children

They would have seen the deportation to Babylon and thought about a period filled with darkness. Marked by captivity, exile, frustration, and unknowns including the list of men in Matthew’s genealogy.

Perhaps the thing that displays God’s grace through this genealogy the greatest is the mention of the 4 women we see. No where else do we see women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy. We have to remember that women were thought to be more of a possession than a person at this time. They were under the reign of their husbands and had little to no rights and freedom outside of what their husband did and allowed

For Matthew to mention women in Jesus’ genealogy and especially the women that he mentions would have jumped out to the original readers and would have been absolutely intentional.

We see Tamar a Canaanite women who disguised herself as a prostitute and tricked Judah and ended up becoming pregnant and having Perez and Zerah

We see Rahab, a prostitute and an inhabitant of Jericho, a gentile, who protected the two Israelite spies and because of this act and her fear of God, God spares her life. She later marries Salmon and becomes the mother of Boaz and enters the messianic line

We see Ruth. She was a godly, and loving woman but she was Moabite. Her people were the result of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters. The moabites were one of Israel’s most hated enemies.

Although Ruth was a Moabite and former pagan, with no right to marry an Israelite, God’s grace not only brought Ruth into the family of Israel but through Boaz, into the royal line

The 4th woman we see is Bathsheba. She’s not mentioned directly but rather indirectly as Uriah’s wife to remind the readers that this woman was the woman David had an affair with and he ended up murdering her husband. Her son through the adultery died in infancy but her next son would be Solomon the successor to David’s throne and continuer of the royal line that leads us to Jesus

So as we see this genealogy of Jesus is so much more than just a list of ancient names.

It’s even more than a list of Jesus’ human forebears

It is a beautiful testimony and display of God’s grace and a foreshadowing of Jesus’ ministry. The friend of sinners, who “did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” Matt 9:13.

This is Jesus. The one who calls the broken to be healed

The dead to life

The sinner to salvation

The lost to be found

The one who calls you

Because he is truly the King of grace!

This is the God we serve and thank God for His grace

But there is still a problem. If we are just following this line through Joseph to David we know that Jesus is not of Joseph’s blood.

Because Mary’s pregnancy is miraculously done Jesus is not yet Joseph’s. Jesus was not Joseph’s biological son

So the rest of Matthew chapter 1 will remedy this for us

Matthew 1:18–25 NIV

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Only if Joseph formally “adopted” Jesus could he too be the “Son of David” as described earlier

We see Joseph faced with this decision.

Does he divorce Mary, which would have been the right thing to do, or does he really believe this angel?

Through faith Joseph listens to this angel from the Lord and fulfills the prophecy

Now, we read this and may be tempted to think of it as just a Christmas story but this is far more than that.

Matthew tells us that this is Immanuel, God with us

This is the messiah, the savior of the world

This is the prophesied rightful king of the world

It’s Jesus

And this is what Matthew wants us to see

That the prophesies have come true

The long awaited king of Israel has been born. It is God himself who put on flesh for His people, for you and for me

And He chooses all of these sinners to come through because He is a King of Grace

And because this is true of Him, because He is a King of Grace, He also chooses us.

He gives of himself, puts on flesh, and goes to the cross on our behalf. You and me. We simply have to choose to put Him in the only place He deserves to be.

As King of our life.

Matthew has painted this vivid picture for us. Jesus is King. Do we treat Him that way?

Is he ruler of our lives. Lord of our life

Can you say you’ve made that decision?

Can you say you truly live that way?

Who is king of your life?

You or the true King of Grace?

You would make an awful king

I’ve said from the stage before that my daughters all have a royal name around my house

Matthew will tells us that Jesus is either King of it all or He’s not King at all