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Matthew 1:1-17
1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram,1 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph,2 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos,3 and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel,4 and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
17 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.
[1] 1:3
[2] 1:7
[3] 1:10
[4] 1:12
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Invite you to open your bibles to Matthew chapter 1. For the, for Advent season, we're gonna part from our study in the book of James. We'll pick that back up in January, and then come mid February, we're gonna start a new series on the gospel in the light of in in the life of David. But for the month of December, we are going to look at the first two chapters, as the of the Christmas story told from the gospel of Matthew. We'll begin reading in Matthew 1 verse 1, and I'll just go ahead and tell you now that there's a lot of hard names and there's no way I will get through this without mispronouncing some of them.
Joel Brooks:The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac the father of Jacob. And Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah, the father of Perez, and Zerah, by Tamar, and Perez, the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nishan, and Nishan the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz, by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed, by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam.
Joel Brooks:Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asaph, Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amos, Amos, the father of Josiah, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shatiel, and Shilteel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiad, and Abiad the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, And Azor, the father of Zadok, and Zadok, the father of Akim, and Akim, the father of Eliud, and Elud the father of Eliezer, and Eliezer the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, 14 generations.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, we ask that you would, be present, that we would hear from you in this place. Your scriptures testify of you and you speak through them to us.
Joel Brooks:Lord, no one needs to hear from me. We need to hear from you. And so I pray now in this moment that my words would fall to the ground, blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain. May they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I asked about 5 different people to read that text tonight and they all refused. And I, I want you to resist the urge to leave right now. After reading that and hearing that, I'm sure that was about as exciting as reading through a phone book.
Joel Brooks:Growing up, I've heard one sermon on the genealogies all the way through, and that was by Reverend Lovejoy on the Simpsons, cartoon. And it was just completely mocking Christianity in doing so. So that that doesn't count. This is not how modern people would begin a biography, because family is just not that important to us. How many of you here, and I'm just curious, can name the first names of all of your grandparents?
Joel Brooks:In your head, can you can you can think of them. How about your great grandparents? The first names of all your great grandparents. Alright. We've got 2.
Joel Brooks:2 people. Alright. Maybe 3. You're you're now thinking, like, well, you know, I don't know. Genealogies, family names just aren't that important to us.
Joel Brooks:We only have to go back a few generations, and we don't even remember the names of our great grandparents. But it it was much different in a 1st century Jewish culture. A lot of them would have their entire genealogies memorized. They were they were of huge importance to them. And and so we don't need to we don't need to look at this genealogy the way that we would typically look at it.
Joel Brooks:We need to see it through the eyes of somebody from the 1st century in which this is, in many ways, the highlight of Matthew, as they get to see really this parade of names coming forward and they're waiting to see who comes last in this. It's important that the story of Jesus begins this way with these genealogies. It doesn't begin with, once upon a time, there was a man named Jesus. But but you see here, this is a real story anchored in real time with real people with with really deep history and roots. This story has historical roots that trace back 2000 years.
Joel Brooks:And this tells us something else that's really crucial about the gospel. It doesn't begin with, let me tell you how you need to live your life. That's not what the gospel is about. The gospel is primarily news. It's primarily telling us about something that happened in history.
Joel Brooks:It's not primarily telling you about how you need to live a better life, all the things that you need to do. It's it's about, let me tell you a real historical event about a real person and something that he has done. And what he has done changes everything. Now, one of the things that, not just religious historians, but secular historians have also noted about this is that it's a really unusual genealogy when compared to other great figures of the time. It's just done a lot differently.
Joel Brooks:Now, let me explain the, in the 1st century, a genealogy is kind of like, like a person's resume. Alright. It's the person's resume. And just like then, like they, like they do now, people lie on their resumes. Okay.
Joel Brooks:In order to get the job, they want to present themselves in the best possible light. And so, you know, you can say I graduated with a 4.0 GPA because nobody's going to go back and check your GPA. And so a lot of people lie on their resumes and they say things like that. And, you know, famous people over the years have been busted from that. I think of, the former coach of Notre Dame, George O'Leary, lied on his resume.
Joel Brooks:You know, said he played football at New York University, said he got his master's there, And actually, he did neither. He just attended one class. And when that came out, he lost his job. You know, the former director of FEMA, you know, I think during the Bush days, he had to step down because he lied on his resume. People do it all the time.
Joel Brooks:A lot of times what people do is they don't technically lie on their resume. They just they leave out the events that they would not want a future employer to know about. And so if you graduated with a 2.0, you don't mention that. You just say, I graduated from so and so University. After all, GPA isn't that important.
Joel Brooks:Why do I need to to give that information? Or if you got fired from a from a job before because of negligence or something like that, you're just not gonna list that person as a reference. You're not gonna really mention that you ever worked there Because you wanna present your your past as being as glorious as possible. People do that now. People did that then, but you don't find that here.
Joel Brooks:One of Jesus's contemporaries, King Herod, tried to lie on his resume. King Herod, his parents were Edomites. Basically, that means they were not Israelites. And so, Herod, although he was king of the Jews, he wasn't really Jewish. And so he tried to doctor up his genealogy.
Joel Brooks:So it were present that he was Jewish. The problem was, well, everybody really knew his parents, and so it was hard to doctor it up. And so he tried to burn everybody's genealogies. And so he was able to get almost all of his rivals to the throne, all of their genealogies, and he burned them all. So at least they would all be on equal ground when looking at their resume to who qualifies for the throne.
Joel Brooks:And we'll look at some of Herod's insecurities, in the chapters ahead. But what is so fascinating here, and as I mentioned, both secular and religious historians have noted this, is Matthew does not do this with Jesus's resume. He doesn't do it with his genealogy. It's obvious that even though Matthew leaves out some names, and he does that because of length and he wants to structure things a certain way. He doesn't leave out the bad people.
Joel Brooks:He puts in and he is sure to include the really kind of shady, seedy people all throughout gene Jesus's genealogy. And it's fascinating that he does this. Names that you would think there is no way I would ever include in my history, in my past, Matthew puts to the forefront and says, look, this is who Jesus, is descended from. It would be like, you know, mentioning that you graduated with a 2.0 from Burtsdale Community College. I hope there's not a Burtsdale.
Joel Brooks:And if there is, I hope you're not here. It's like you mentioning you you graduated from there with a 2.0 and you failed to mention in your resume that you also went to Harvard. It's like, you don't do that. That's what Matthew does when he lists Jesus' genealogy. He includes murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers, liars, people just full of violence.
Joel Brooks:There there's a few good people here. You know, you look at look at verse 10 where you find Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a really good, really godly king. That's great. But then you look right after Hezekiah, and it says he's the father of Manasseh.
Joel Brooks:Manasseh was one of the most evil people to have ever lived. Manasseh worshiped pagan gods, and he actually burned his sons as an offering to pagan gods. It's one of Jesus' ancestors. It's crazy when you see all of the sinners, all of these shady people being listed here. And there's a couple of things.
Joel Brooks:There's a couple of reasons why I think Matthew wants to pull this out and things he wants us to see. One is he wants us to rest in the absolute sovereignty of God? When we're bogged down in a time of suffering or in despair, and we can't see any hope. It it looks like God has lost com complete control, that God doesn't have a plan. What this reminds us is we need to zoom back.
Joel Brooks:We need to take the lens back and look at the big picture. And you can see that in horrible situations, in good situations, with ungodly kings, with godly kings, when there's famine, when there's feast, when there's a peaceful kingdom, when they're in exile, you see God's plan, his purpose being established through it all. If you just take a step back, God's purpose was never in doubt. And so when, when you're going through this period of suffering, just remind yourself, like, if I were to get God's point of view on this, I could see the whole plan. He is so sovereign that, when looking at the Christmas story, if you look at it through the gospel of Luke, you'll see that god puts it on the heart of an emperor to call for a emperor empire wide census, which is gonna cost tons of money, involve 1,000 upon 1,000 of people.
Joel Brooks:People are gonna have to move all over the empire. This was a huge undertaking, but God caused that to happen just to move a poor little couple, Jewish couple from point a to point b because he needed Joseph and Mary and Bethlehem. And when I think of that, I'm astounded. Huge world event happening here and all just to move a little couple from point a to point b. And so and so when I think of that, I'm like, Wow, God, I have no idea what you were doing and all these world events, what what's happening in my life, but I can trust this.
Joel Brooks:There is a plan and we see that here. One of the most astonishing things about this genealogy is the fact that there are 4 women, 5 if you count Mary, but there's Tamar, there's Rahab, there's Ruth, and there's the wife of Uriah, 4 women. What's extraordinary about this is women had no legal rights in the 1st century. There hardly had any rights at all. Women were thought of more as possessions than they were as people in this day.
Joel Brooks:It's why Jewish men, you know, would wake up and first thing they would pray is, God, thank you. Then I'm not a Gentile, I'm not a woman, I'm not a slave. Yet here, Matthew goes out of his way to not only list women, but Gentile women. Not just Gentile women, but 3 of these 4 women have, we'll just say quite a past. So why mentioned these 4 women?
Joel Brooks:If, if G, if Matthew just wanted to list women in Jesus's genealogy, he could have listed anybody. Why these 4 here? It's obvious he's trying he's trying to draw our attention in because he also includes the husband of all of them. But then he says, and by Tamar, and by Rahab and by Ruth. He he's he pulls in them as well.
Joel Brooks:It's like he wants us to look at their stories. That's the reason he is listing these 4 women is he's saying, as you go through the genealogy of Jesus, take time to look in at those 4 stories. And so, let's do that. Let's look at all 4 women beginning with Tamar. Tamar is found in Genesis 38, unusual story to say the least.
Joel Brooks:The story of Joseph begins in chapter 37. We all love the narrative of Joseph. It goes from chapter 37 to chapter 50 of Genesis. But right after Joseph is introduced, you have this bizarre story about Tamar. And then in chapter 39, Joseph picks back up and finishes the book of Genesis.
Joel Brooks:And a lot of commentators are like, why the heck is there this random bizarre story about Tamar in the middle of Genesis? Matthew tells us why. It's because Christ will be descended from this person. Jesus will be descended from this person. And so we need to look at her story.
Joel Brooks:The story is this, Judah, who is one of the 12 sons of Jacob, he leaves his family, he leaves his faith, and he goes away and he's living with, you know, people who don't believe in the same God that he believes in. He has 2 sons, Er and Onan. It's the only time you're ever gonna find this. These sons were so wicked, it says that god just killed them. They were so wicked, it says, and the lord took their life.
Joel Brooks:So these have to be some pretty bad kids, alright, who who come from Jacob or from Judah. Now, heir had married Tamar and after her husband had been killed for being so wicked, Tamar is just kind of, you know, she's, she's still in Judah's family now. And, she's like, well, can you give me another son? Can I get married? And I don't know if he was just thinking, well, so what happened after my last son married you or if he's like, I don't know what it is, but he hates Tamar, Hates her.
Joel Brooks:Doesn't want anything to do with her. And he says, okay, I'll find you a husband, but he never gives her a husband. He doesn't like to look at her. And so, she's thinking, what can I do? What what can I well, she disguises herself as a prostitute?
Joel Brooks:And so when Judah is going down to, shear sheep, he sees this prostitute and he sleeps with her and they have a child together. And so, Tamar sleeps with her father-in-law and they have a child and that child, you know, is listed here. They actually have twins, Perez and Zera, and those are the ones in the genealogy of Jesus. So there you go. There there's one of Jesus' ancestors right right there.
Joel Brooks:It, when I picture the lineage of Jesus, the first image that comes to my mind is Jerry Springer. I'm like, these people belong on Jerry Springer. It's it's the type of people that that would be called for, you know, the sleeping with your father-in-law or something like that and and that they're highlighted. Let's look at Rahab. Now Rahab didn't have to disguise herself as a prostitute because she was a prostitute.
Joel Brooks:That that was her profession. And if you remember the story in Joshua 2, the Israelites are about to invade the city of Jericho, and so they send in a couple of spies. The spies don't go to stay in a hotel. The spies go to a prostitute's home, which says a lot about the character of the spies. But somehow in that connection in this, in this home of this prostitute, she decides to hide them.
Joel Brooks:She decides to lie for them and she helps them to escape when the officials of Jericho are going around looking for them. As a result, she is saved when Jericho is destroyed and then she becomes one of the people here in this genealogy, a former prostitute. Look at Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite. Here's another story that will never be in any children's Bible.
Joel Brooks:Moabites were the descendants of Lot. Remember, you had Abraham's nephew Lot. Well, after Sodom and Gomorrah and God destroyed the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot, he fled, And he lived in a cave with his 2 daughters who really wanted kids. But they lived in a cave. I don't know.
Joel Brooks:They didn't get out much. They didn't meet other people. They thought, you know, our best, our best hope of having a child is to get our dad drunk and sleep with them. So that's what they did. And they both had kids.
Joel Brooks:Their descendants were the Moabites coming from an incestuous relationship with their father. They were looked so down upon by the Israelites. Deuteronomy 23 says this, no Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the 10th generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever. This is pretty strong.
Joel Brooks:If you're a Moabite, you can never go to the temple ever to worship. Ruth is a Moabite. She's a complete outsider, not just an outsider because of her ethnicity, but she was poor, she was powerless, She was a widow. You can't get in any any more of a hopeless situation to her. She is in desperate need of a redeemer in which Boaz comes and redeems her and brings her into the covenant family.
Joel Brooks:It's a beautiful story of the gospel. Look at the wife of Uriah. This is the last of the women listed, not counting Mary, the wife of Uriah. Interestingly, Matthew doesn't give her name. We all know who this is.
Joel Brooks:This is Bethsheba. This is Bethsheba, but he doesn't say Bethsheba. He says the wife, not former wife, but the current wife is how he puts it, of Uriah, the Hittite. I mean, that's, that's who we know him as. The reason that he does this is because he wants to highlight that relationship.
Joel Brooks:So when you think of this story, you know what? I want you to think of the adulterous relationship that David had. He stole somebody's wife and he killed her husband. And when he mentions Uriah's wife, you're thinking of Uriah. Uriah was one of David's mighty men.
Joel Brooks:He was one of David's most loyal friends. He he was one of his closest allies, and David betrayed and killed him. And that's what Matthew wants you to think of here. It's like, David took one of his best friend's wife and then sent his best friend off to go get killed. Jesus's line comes to this betrayal and murder, in either adultery or rape.
Joel Brooks:I mean, do do you see how strange it is that Matthew would mention this? I mean, look at verse look at verse 6 here, when you have, you know, and Jesse, the father of David, the king, And David was the father, father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah and Solomon, the father of Rehoboam. Now it'd be so much easier to just to like leave out that the wife of Uriah, and then you just have father, but Jesse, the father of David, the king. And David was the father of Solomon, and Solomon the father of. I mean, it would just be so easy.
Joel Brooks:It would flow a lot more natural, but he wants to be sure to bring that in. He's pointing to this sin. Now, let me tell you what. This is one of the highlights actually of this genealogy because David is central in this. Look at verse 1.
Joel Brooks:We know the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Being called the son of David is being called the Messiah. You know, when he had blind man Bartimaeus crying out on the side of the road when Jesus walked by, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner. Son of David. And people kept saying, Be quiet.
Joel Brooks:Be quiet. Why? Because they recognized that he was calling Christ the Messiah. To be called the son of David was to be called the king. There was no greater honor than that.
Joel Brooks:And the genealogies are kind of structured around this. I I I really hope I don't put you to sleep with this. I was I didn't know if I do numerology or not, but there's a lot of little numerology in here. The genealogies are broken up into sections of 14, you know, 14 and 14 and 14. Well, David is the 14th person mentioned, showing that he's like the highlight of this.
Joel Brooks:The numerology of David's name, every Hebrew letter in the alphabet has a different number ascribed to it, adds up to the number 14. And so, you have, like, his his numerology is 14. He is the 14th person listed. He is at the, mentioned at the very first. And so, we are leading up into this David.
Joel Brooks:David, he's the son of David. So, why highlight this? And the reason it's being highlighted is the same reason that all the other genealogies are being highlighted. All the other people in the genealogies are being highlighted. It wants to show you that when we say that the word of God became flesh, we mean the word of God really became flesh.
Joel Brooks:Alright? Not flesh at a distance, but flesh embedded in all of our dysfunctional families, all of our hideous sins. He was really flesh, and he had to be immersed in this flesh if he was ever going to save flesh. You know, when you go to a family reunion, I quit going a long time ago because my family drove me crazy at these things. But there's always the black sheep of the family, black sheeps of the family that are out there.
Joel Brooks:You know, the ones that when they walk into the room, everybody talks in hushed tones. You just have to be quiet. I remember family reunions not even knowing what a person did, just just whenever they talk about this person, it was always in hush tones. They did something bad. You know, maybe it's like, you know, uncle Bob, the serial adulterer or, you know, cousin Sue, the just floozy.
Joel Brooks:She's, she's completely unaware that everybody rolls her eyes behind her back. Every time she says something, then there's those people, those people are in Jesus's genealogy. And you know what? He's different than me because Jesus is not ashamed to call them his own. He's not, he says, that's right.
Joel Brooks:That's my family. I come from a long line of sinners and I'm not ashamed to call to my own. You see that later in Jesus's baptism, when he gets into baptism, did he need to be baptized for a sin? Not at all. But he says, permit this.
Joel Brooks:It is necessary. Why? Because Jesus, once again, is getting in line with sinners. The word is becoming flesh, and Jesus is saying, there is no family that I cannot redeem. None.
Joel Brooks:Jesus before him, prostitutes, kings are equals. Nobody stands on a pedestal before him. He sees us all as sinners and he's come to put an end to it and to redeem us. A number of years ago, when Caroline who's now 10, she was, she was a baby. We were at Lauren's family's house and, arguing just broke out around the dining room table.
Joel Brooks:This was a common experience, and so there was lots of yelling. There's lots of extremely hurtful things being said. And it just all kind of just it erupted. And you could see in this moment, all the ugliness that is in her her family was coming out. And Lauren left, and she went to her old room.
Joel Brooks:And I'm trying to to calm things down, and it just kept escalating and it it things would not calm down. And so after a couple of hours, I went back and Lauren was in her old old room and she was holding Caroline and she was crying and she was just rocking Caroline. She was just rocking Caroline. And, and we sat down together and we prayed and we said, Caroline will never know this ever. All this junk ends here.
Joel Brooks:It stops. All that generational sin that was been a part of her family, all that stuff for like, it's gonna break here. And we had one of the the best prayer times that we have had as a couple praying in her old room after that. And of course, we were only partially right because Lauren and I are still sinful people and we've still have hurt Caroline plenty. But that's what Jesus does here in full.
Joel Brooks:This is Jesus's family. It's all the arguing, all the cheats, all the adulterers, all the murderers, and he's there. And then Jesus comes and he says, this all ends here. I can redeem it all. And he does.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't run away from his past. He takes it on to the cross and he deals with our sin forever. Let me just say for those of you who, in the weeks ahead, will be going home to dysfunctional families, and every family is dysfunctional, and some of you might be dreading some moments, Just hear this, Christ can redeem any family. He can. He took on all of that and he put it on the cross.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Our father, we are so thankful that we are not here looking at a fairy tale with a moral. That this story does not begin with once upon a time. That I'm not up here trying to give life lessons to how we could become better people. God, we're broken, we're sinful, and that would do us no good.
Joel Brooks:I am thankful that what we just read here is a real event, a real person. The gospel is good news. Jesus who came from a long line of sinners broke the power of sin, and we wanna remember that during this Advent season. Thank you that in Jesus, all of that stopped there, and he gives us new life and new hearts. Thank you, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:And we pray this in your name. Amen.