The Kingly Ancestry of Christ

The Purpose of Matthew

Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is here, right y’all? For some of y’all, Christmas started in like, August, but we won’t get into all that. We can all agree now, I think, that it’s officially Christmas season.

So I think it’s a pretty appropriate time to start the Book of Matthew.

Now, if you’re relatively new with us, you may not be aware that we go through books of the Bible in what we call an “expository” manner. We go through whole books of the Bible as our main “diet,” and every once in a while, we’ll take a detour to talk through things we need to talk through. For example, we will be in the Book of Matthew until January 9th, which will get us all the way up to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Ch. 5). Then, we will take 3 weeks to look at what the Scripture has to say about Church Membership, and in February, we’ll return to Matthew.

Now, this is our first time tackling such a large book of the Bible, so if you’re thinking of how we go through something like Philippians or Colossians, where we went verse-by-verse, pulling out everything we can from the text, it’s going to be a little different than that. Specifically because the Book of Matthew is narrative, whereas the letters of Paul are more oriented toward individual commands.

So it preaches a little different. In narrative, you’re given elements, some of which may be background details included to make sense of the story, whereas in something like a letter, you have a whole bunch of specific commands that require more of a microscope approach, getting everything you can from just a few verses.

In other words, reading narrative is more like taking a 30,000 foot view and asking what all of these elements brought together in the story truly tell us about how we are to live and believe. So we’ll go at a quicker pace than we do through something like a letter.

But there’s also another element I’ll be adding to our time through Matthew… I’m not going to be able to cover ALL that we need to cover on Sunday mornings. One big example of this is the Sermon on the Mount. We could literally spend 20 weeks just going through the Sermon on the Mount alone… So, we’re going to take all of the minor accentuating pieces of Matthew and go through those on Wednesday nights. So if you want the full picture of Matthew, join us on Wednesday nights, and you’ll catch all the stuff we’re not able to hit on a Sunday morning. We’ll be beginning with the Sermon on the Mount this Wednesday at 6:30. Now, some of y’all serve on Wednesday nights, either in our youth or in our AWANA program. We’ll have it recorded and posted to YouTube so you can keep up if you like.

So, to take a 30,000 foot view of Matthew, and to ask what this particular Gospel is teaching us, we need to look at it in light of the whole Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are each Gospels, written about the same man, Jesus Christ, from different perspectives. Mark was likely the first-written of the Gospels, and it was written to a largely gentile audience, given its brevity. Luke was written by a doctor who had an eye for chronological history. Luke wanted not just to tell the story of Jesus, but to tell it in order. That wasn’t necessarily a priority for the other Gospel writers. John was written, “so that you may believe.” And Matthew, was written to a largely Hebrew audience.

As we go along, we will see a lot of Hebrew themes in this telling of the story of Jesus. As with all historical accounts, there are many perspectives to look from and facets to the full story. As we look at Matthew, Matthew is going to draw out from Jesus’ life the aspects which fulfill the Old Testament Prophecies about Him. The biggest one of which is that he would come as the Promised King. And this Promised King would have a Kingdom. Matthew refers to this Kingdom as the Kingdom of Heaven. This is likely due to, again, his Jewish audience, who would be reticent to mention the name of God.

Now, what is the Kingdom? A lot of times we think of the Kingdom as a place, but we have to leave that idea behind if we truly want to understand what it is Jesus came to do. Let me put it clearly. If you do not have a good understanding of the Kingdom, you do not have a very full picture as to why it is that Christ came.

You’ll notice as we get to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the first thing he preaches is,

Matthew 4:17 (ESV)

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

To begin His very ministry… Those words must be very important.

However, I think it’s something we really need to recapture in the Church today. I think we have traded in a message about the Kingdom, which is essential to the New Testament, and made most of our Sunday mornings about an invitation to know Jesus for the first time, or advice for a better life.

Now, you’ve not heard me do that, I hope. My goal is always to teach the full counsel of God’s Word, and to allow God’s Word to speak for itself. So today, as we begin the Gospel of Matthew, we start in a passage that is often overlooked.

The Kingly Lineage of Christ

Perhaps if you’ve ever started reading Matthew, or any portion of Scripture that includes a Genealogy, the temptation is to skip over it and move on to the good stuff, and I can understand that. I don’t think it’s necessary that in your daily bible study times you go through a whole bunch of names that you don’t have context for. But that doesn’t mean that the genealogies of the Bible are not important. Especially not this one.

The way this genealogy is set up shows in v. 17…

Matthew 1:17 (ESV)

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

Now there are other important names in the list, but the 2 names and 1 event displayed show major highlights in the history of Israel, specifically as they relate to the two covenants represented here, and prophecies made about God’s covenantal relationship with Israel.

Start with the first name in the Genealogy… Abraham.

Matthew 1:2 (ESV)

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

Now, this covenant promise is really more important to the story of Jesus than you may realize. If you don’t know, this is one of God’s first covenants. This is before Israel is even a nation, and it’s the covenant that blesses faith in a man named Abraham. And God promises to Abraham, because of his great faith, to bless his descendants forever.

Genesis 22:15–18 (ESV)

And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

For the jews, this promise is everything. They believe it is their birthright both to inherit this prophecy and to fulfill it. However, they would not be able to uphold the following covenant of Moses in such a way that would enable them to fulfill this covenant.

ELABORATE on Fulfillment Abrahamic Promise using slides.

And it’s not like Abraham was perfect. Abraham had MANY flaws that would make anyone in this congregation today wince.

And along the way to David, you see a couple of more interesting names: You have Rahab, the prostitute woman who helped the Israelites when they came into the promised land.

That the Coming King would come through a prostitute’s lineage was pretty scandalous. Next, you have Ruth and Boaz… Ruth being a foreign woman. She was not of the pure, Jewish bloodline that a Jew would want for their Messiah, even if she has a whole book of the Bible named after her.

And then you get to David the King.

Matthew 1:6 (ESV)

and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,

David is a highlight not only because he was a faithful King of Israel, and one of the biggest stories of God’s promise in the Old Testament, but because of the Covenant made with David that is now fulfilled in Christ. It is first spoken to David in 2 Sam 7, but is reiterated here:

1 Chronicles 17:11–14 (ESV)

When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’ ”

Now, notice, as we continue on, who makes up the lineage of Christ… Solomon, who is the daughter of David’s Great Sinful act… Where he takes a wife who is not his wife, and has the husband killed on the front lines of battle. It’s likely, too, that Uriah is not a jew, as we know Uriah is a Hittite.

Again… Unexpected things in Jesus’ lineage.

And this is just the point I believe Matthew makes to his Jewish readers… These facts are difficult for the Jews to deal with. Yes, they trust them as in their Old Testament, but they had forgotten God’s power and purposes in exchange for their own piety. For Matthew to recount the genealogy of Christ and highlighting such people… That was a little scandalous.

Now, see, you’ll notice Matthew doing this and things like this all throughout his gospel. He wants to show the Jewish audience how Jesus fulfills the prophecies, but you also see how Matthew presses them to look outside the box a little bit too. It’s like a, “Hey, you didn’t consider THAT, did you?” And it all builds up to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20, in which Jesus commands the first followers of Christ to take the Gospel beyond the nation of Israel and into the whole world.

It’s important to note at this point that God can use anyone to do anything He pleases. He is the great cause of all history, and to show that it’s not any man’s power behind what happens, He chooses to use, oftentimes, those who are the least likely to do His will.

And finally, you have the generations from the Babylonian captives forward…

Matthew 1:11 (ESV)

and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And it’s in Babylon that the Israelites receive many prophecies about the coming Messiah. Isaiah, who prophesied before the Babylonian captivity, still had a lot to say about Babylonian captivity. His contemporaries would have also been important during the time of exile, but this is when you get some of the most detailed prophetic pictures of what Christ’s coming would be like.

Isaiah 53:4–6 (ESV)

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Now this is one of the most encouraging things about the Bible to me. If you ever consider yourself in doubt about the validity of the scriptures, consider that this prophecy Isaiah made about Jesus oh, say, about 17 generations before Jesus. Now we don’t often think about generations in our day and age. We MOSTLY think about the 2 generations before us, our parents and grandparents, and the two generations after us, our children and grandchildren. So we think in terms of 5 generations. To think about 17 generations? That’s somewhere around 600-700 years… Actually, with Isaiah, it’s 800 years before the coming of Christ. Go back 800 years from today. America hadn’t even been found by our forefathers yet, much less thought about. That wouldn’t come for another 400 years. Crazy.

And all of these things came together for the coming of Christ our King. This is a lot of work. And when he came to this earth, He was received by three kinds of people. And we’ll see these three kinds of people all throughout our journey in Matthew.

Those Who Rejected Him

This group is made up of the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees, those who would look at Jesus and say, “you know, I’d rather not.” Some would see Jesus there in the flesh and outright reject Him. They were more concerned with keeping their lives the way they were than submitting to Jesus as Lord. They had their comfort, they had their lifestyles, and they would not trade those for following Christ. The same is to be said of people today. They will hear of Jesus and meet that message with a firm, “no thank you.”

Those Who Followed, then Left

This group is made up of the crowds of people who came for the spectacle of Jesus. They wanted what Jesus had to offer, but they would give nothing in return. As a result, when persecution came and Jesus was put up on the cross, the people left the movement. The crowds turned on Christ. They believed what they had seen was a worker of false miracles, a false Messiah.

Those Who Followed, and Stayed

This group is made up of the disciples. And not just the 12. Remember Mary and Martha, too, who would visit Jesus’ tomb and be the first ones to discover His resurrection! These are the folks who followed Christ and gave their lives over to Him as Savior and Lord.