Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

What do Genesis 5, 10, 11, 25, Exodus 6, 1 Chronicles 1-9, Ezra 2, 10, Matthew 1, and Luke 3 all have in common?

They’re all lists of genealogy.

What we have in Genesis 5 is the lineage of Adam to Noah; then in 10, Noah and his sons’ descendents.

Chapter 11 deals with only Shem’s descendants and gives us a better understanding of when they lived, and that took us to Abraham.

Then of course we get Abraham-the twelve tribes of Israel/Jacob in Genesis 25.

In Exodus, Moses picks up the genealogy and shows his own descent from three of the tribes, including that of Levi his great-grandfather.

For an extensive genealogy, we’d need to go to 1 Chronicles.

Nine whole chapters!

From Adam to those returning from exile.

Now in those nine chapters, there are two sets of genealogy that ought to stand out.

The first is the genealogy of David and from David.

Two long chapters cover this.

Chapter two is from Jacob to David and chapter three is David to Anani.

Seventy-eight verses on David’s descendants.

That’s the first list that should really stand out to us.

The second is actually longer and is just as important.

That is the list of Levi’s descendants.

It takes up 81 verses!

Why are these genealogies so important?

Because David is the royal line in which the Messiah would come and Levi was the priestly line.

Anyone not in the Davidic line had no right to the throne of Israel.

Anyone not in the Levitical line had no right to be a priest.

Thus, genealogy was a huge deal to the Jews.

When Ezra the scribe was in charge of those returning from exile and of genealogy-keeping, there were a number of men who claimed the line of Levi and said they were to be priests.

Clearly genealogy was important to the Jewish people.

Not so much to us though.

Until Ancestry.com

or 23andMe, most of us may have been able to go back to our grandparents, perhaps great-grandparents, but that was about it and we were content with that.

But let someone come into your life claiming to be a half-brother or sister and insisting on their share of the inheritance and suddenly we care bloodlines.

So it was with Israel.

If someone was going to claim to be a priest, they’d better be able to prove it.

If someone was going to claim the throne, they’d better be in David’s bloodline.

And here we have Luke providing us with evidence of Jesus’s bloodline.

And as we study this section, I want to focus on four of Jesus’s ancestors because these four are especially important for Jesus to be the one Luke and all Christians were claiming him to be, specifically the Savior, Christ the Lord.

The Son of Joseph (Supposedly)

As we look into the ancestry of Jesus, we come first to his father—his adoptive father.

Now it is clear from what we see in the gospel accounts that people believed he was Joseph’s son.

Luke strategically put in the words, “as was supposed” in his genealogy.

Thus, it would seem that no one was told otherwise.

We already know however that Jesus was the Son of the Most High, the Son of God in whom he is well-pleased.

But Joseph was his adoptive father and as such, the lineage of Jesus would be traced through him.

Now, if you’ve ever compared the two genealogies of Jesus—Matthew’s and Luke’s—you’ll notice that they differ quite a bit.

There are two reasons for that.

First, Matthew was being stylistic.

He didn’t list all of Jesus’s relatives.

Matthew gave fourteen generations from Abraham to David and then David to the exile and then the return of the exile to Jesus’s birth.

Each had 14 generations.

This was a way of writing at the time and Matthew utilized it.

Some think it was based on the numerology of David’s name.

In Hebrew, numbers were based on what letter they were in the alphabet.

So today A would equal 1, B equals 2, C equals 3, and so on.

In Hebrew the Daleth is the fourth letter and so it represents 4.

There are two daleths so when we add the two together, that equals 8. Daleth (4) plus Daleth (4) equals 8.

The vav is the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet and so that represents the number 6.

There were no vowels in Hebrew so all we have are three consonants: DVD 4+6+4=14.

Luke wasn’t being stylistic.

He was a historian.

And so, he’s interested in getting as much detail in as possible.

So that is one reason for the lists being different.

Style versus detail.

The second is that Matthew was going through Joseph’s line.

Joseph was a direct descendent of David, but not only David but Solomon.

Solomon was the line in which the throne was given.

Unless one was of the line of Solomon, he still wasn’t eligible for the throne.

Luke however was most likely giving the line of Mary.

Hence, the son of Joseph “as was supposed.”

He points out Joseph’s adoption, but proceeds to give the line of Mary.

It’s important to understand why this is important.

Pastor Matt mentioned this some weeks ago.

David’s line was cut off when Jeconiah took the throne.

Jeconiah was to be considered as childless and God put a curse upon him that no child—no descendent would be allowed to sit upon the throne.

Joseph was a direct descendent of Jeconiah.

Thus, no child of Joseph was allowed to sit upon the throne of David.

Yet, they still had to be in line of Solomon.

How can one be in the line of Solomon, but not in the line of Jeconiah and be able to sit on the throne?

Only through adoption.

One could be adopted into the line of Solomon, but not born into the line of Jeconiah.

You know, even when it seems like God has painted himself into a corner, he has only shown how great he is.

We do not always see how God is going to work things out and yet, he always does.

May we always trust in God’s wisdom and power to bring about what he has promised.

The Son of Nathan

Which takes us to his second ancestor: Nathan.

This is my shortest point, but I wanted to make sure we understood what was going on in this passage.

Mary was of royal blood, but not of Solomon’s.

Her lineage came from Nathan, another of David’s sons.

In fact, Nathan was David’s third-born son while Solomon was David’s tenth born son.

We actually don’t know much more than that.

We don’t know who his mother was.

Some think he’s the same Nathan as the prophet, but that seems pretty unlikely.

The only other thing we know about Nathan is that he was born in Jerusalem and that David was already king at that point.

Thus, Nathan was a prince but not in line of succession.

Whoever was born from Prince Nathan had royal blood running through their veins.

That included Mary and thus included Jesus as well.

So now we have someone who is genuinely of royal lineage but not yet eligible for the throne because he is of the line of Nathan and not Solomon being adopted into Solomon’s line by Joseph thus making him eligible for the throne.

By Mary, Jesus was the Son of David.

By adoption, he was the son of Solomon.

He was just as much eligible for the throne through adoption as a natural born son would have been.

Beloved, Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:4 and 5 that in love God adopted us into his family.

And he goes on to tell us that through that adoption we have been guaranteed our inheritance.