WWUTT 1897 The Genealogy of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:1-2)

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The Gospel of Matthew begins with Christ's beginning, his genealogy, so that we might know that he is descended from Abraham, from the line of David.

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He is the promised one when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. We come back to our study in the Gospel of Matthew, but today we're starting at the very beginning.

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I'm going to read through the entire genealogy in Matthew chapter 1, starting in verse 1 and going through verse 17 out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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

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And Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron was the father of Ram.

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And Ram was the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab was the father of Nashon, and Nashon was the father of Salmon.

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And Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed was the father of Jesse.

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

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And Solomon was the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam was the father of Abijah, and Abijah was the father of Asa.

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And Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat was the father of Joram, and Joram was the father of Uzziah.

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And Uzziah was the father of Jotham, and Jotham was the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz was the father of Hezekiah.

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And Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh was the father of Ammon, and Ammon was the father of Josiah.

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And Josiah was the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

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And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud, and Abiud was the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim was the father of Azar.

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And Azar was the father of Zadok, and Zadok was the father of Achim, and Achim was the father of Eliud.

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And Eliud was the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar was the father of Methan, and Methan was the father of Jacob.

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And Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom

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Jesus was born, who is called Christ. Therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the

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Christ, fourteen generations. Now I know that genealogy is not everyone's most favorite subject, and sometimes going through a whole list of names like that can seem rather tedious, but I had to read through that at least once.

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This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and much more fascinating when you get down to the details.

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Looking at the surface, nobody's really all that fascinated with genealogy. Well, I don't know, some people are. My dad is.

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He really gets into genealogy, and he's kind of the keeper of our ancestry tree.

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He tells us all about who we were descended from, and there's even some royalty going back a thousand years or something like that in our line.

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All of that's real fascinating to hear it come from my dad, but most people are not all that interested in genealogy.

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Matthew is showing here that Jesus is born in the line of Abraham, so therefore he is a

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Jew, a true Jew. And he is born in the line of David, which means he is the rightful heir to the throne of David.

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Yesterday, in the introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, I mentioned to you that one of the things that Matthew does in these first four chapters, he shows how

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Jesus succeeded where Israel failed. And we're going to see that in some of these prophecies, prophecies that we would have thought ordinarily pertain to Israel, and yet Matthew ties them right to Christ, because Israel was not able to keep what

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God had commanded of them, but Jesus does the will of the Father perfectly.

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And so where Israel, who was called a son, a child of God, failed,

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Jesus, who is the Son of God, he succeeds. And so, fulfilling all of those things that Israel was not able to do, and Christ is, therefore, true

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Israel. He is the true Son of God. And so, at the start of Matthew's Gospel here, it is said, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Now, we often don't think about this with regards to that name genealogy, but it's also translated

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Genesis. So Genesis, which means beginning, genealogy is a list of beginnings.

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And so there is a certain sense in which you can think of the Gospel of Matthew starting the same way the

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Gospel of John begins. How does John start? In the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So that's how John starts.

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Matthew is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. In the beginning, Jesus. So there is somewhat of a similarity there.

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He is, of course, listed as the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Now, he says that in that order, but then goes the other way when he lists the genealogy.

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So he starts with Abraham. But when he gives that introduction there at the start of the

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Gospel, he says that Jesus is the Son of David first, and then the

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Son of Abraham. Now the reason why he lists David first is probably because of everything that pertains to kingdom that we will see come up in this

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Gospel. Now when it comes to talking about the kingdom, Matthew mentions kingdom more than any other

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Gospel. The word kingdom itself appears in Matthew's Gospel 54 times, and then the next most number of times it appears in a

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Gospel is in Luke, where it's mentioned 44 times. Mark kingdom is said 18 times.

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In John, the word kingdom comes up only three times. Now only Matthew refers to the kingdom as the kingdom of heaven.

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Mark and Luke refer to it as the kingdom of God. What's the difference? There are some teachers out there who have tried to come up with a difference.

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Like some have said kingdom of heaven is in reference to the kingdom that is going to be on earth, like talking about a millennial reign, for example, whereas kingdom of God could be talking about that kingdom that is above where God dwells.

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But when you look at the parallels, like where you'll see a parable in Matthew and then the same parable in Mark, in Matthew it's kingdom of heaven, in Mark it's kingdom of God.

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Or when the story of the rich young ruler, when Jesus confronts the rich young ruler in Matthew, he refers to the kingdom of heaven.

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When he's talking to the rich young ruler according to Mark's account, it's the kingdom of God.

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So really there's no difference between the two. One is identifying the kingdom by its ruler, by the sovereign, which is the reference to the kingdom of God.

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And the other is a reference to the kingdom itself, which would be kingdom of heaven. So no real difference between the two.

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But Matthew does refer to kingdom more often than any other gospel writer.

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And so it's significant, therefore, that he would begin his genealogy by referencing first that Jesus is the son of David, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, for he is the ruler over this kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, which is the place where God dwells.

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It is also the kingdom of God. So he is the son of David and therefore the son of Abraham.

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So we start the genealogy at Abraham, verse two, Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father of Jacob and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

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Full stop, we have the patriarchs, the male heads of the family, which is what patriarch means.

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Patriarchy is established by God. You can't smash it. There is no smashing of the patriarchy.

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As long as there are men in families, there will be patriarchs. And when it comes to the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the patriarchs are

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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By the way, they are our patriarchs, too. They're not just the patriarchs of the

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Jews. As said in Galatians chapter three, whoever is a child of God adopted into his family through faith in Jesus Christ, we are also children of Abraham.

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And so you and I, through faith in Jesus, we can also call Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob our patriarchs.

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Now when it comes to the list of the patriarchs, we generally leave it to just those three. After all, when the

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Lord addressed Moses from the burning bush, he said, I am the God of your fathers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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But I think that we can include Judah into this as well. After all, at this particular time, there's only one land allotment that remains.

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And that is the land that was given to the tribe of Judah. Benjamin is there as well, but they had kind of emerged in with Judah.

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And there's members of some of the other ten lost tribes. So there's a remnant that remains there.

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But overall, there's only one land allotment left, and that's the tribe of Judah. So therefore, we can understand

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Judah as being one of those patriarchs also. The Savior was going to come not only through the line of Abraham, but specifically through the line of Isaac.

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Remember what is said in the Old Testament, it's also recalled in Romans 9, 7. Through Isaac, your seed will be named.

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The Lord had promised Abraham that he was going to have a son. Abraham told this to Sarah.

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Sarah said, well, it's not going to come from me because I can't even have children anymore. As said in the book of Genesis, the way of women was no longer with her.

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So she gave her maid servant, Hagar, to Abraham, and he had a child through Hagar, and that was

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Ishmael. But that was not what the Lord intended. The Lord was going to bring this promised seed for Abraham through his wife,

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Sarah. And so the Lord surely delivered. And all of the promises that were given to Isaac were not going to be passed through Ishmael.

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They were going to be given to Isaac. Isaac was the promised seed. Isaac had two sons,

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Jacob and Esau. Esau was the older. Esau was the one that Isaac loved the most.

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But it was not going to be the older son who would receive the blessing of the father.

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It would be the younger. As the Lord had said even to Rebekah when she was in labor, there are two nations that are warring in your womb, and the older will serve the younger.

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Even though Isaac loved Esau more, Jacob was the one that God had chosen.

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And so the promise would continue through the line of Jacob. Consider that in Malachi at the very start of that prophet.

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It said, Jacob I have loved, yet Esau I have hated. And that's repeated also in Romans 9.

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This is by God's choosing. It's not by man's doing, but the Lord is the one who has accomplished all of this.

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God called Abraham, chose this man. Now Abraham was not just some random dude.

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He was born in the line of Shem of the three sons of Noah, and God had promised that it would be through the line of Shem that the promise would be fulfilled.

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All of this goes back to Genesis, by the way. I guess I could have started there, but in Genesis 3 .15,

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we're in the curse that was given after Adam and Eve disobeyed God. The curse that God gives to the serpent, he says that I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

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He will crush your head, but you will bruise his heel. And we refer to that as the Proto -Evangelion.

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It is the first declaration of the gospel. First gospel is what that would mean. And so you had

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Adam and Eve with two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain was the oldest, but he strikes down Abel.

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So if Adam and Eve had considered that Cain was going to be the promise of deliverance, well,

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Cain proved that he wasn't when he murdered his brother. They had another son whose name was Seth.

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And then it's from the line of Seth, you have a man named Noah who is a righteous man. Noah has three sons,

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Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And it's from the line of Shem that later on down the line, this man named

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Abraham would be born. Abraham of Ur of the Chaldeans.

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And God would call Abraham. So it wasn't that Abraham was some random dude, but God surely chose

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Abraham. It was by God's choosing that Abraham would be the man through whom God would fulfill his promise of a

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Messiah that would come. Abraham has two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. But Abraham took matters into his own hands to have

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Ishmael be born. That was not the one that God chose. God opened the womb of Sarah, who was barren, who was unable to have children.

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But by God's miraculous intervention, she is able to have children. And the son that is born to them is

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Isaac, which means laughter. Because Sarah had laughed when God told them that they were going to have a son.

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So joke was on them. And so was the joy of the Lord when this son was delivered to them.

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And so they called him Isaac. Isaac has two sons. His favor is upon Esau.

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But as said in the scriptures, Jacob I loved, Esau I have hated. God's favor was with Jacob.

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Jacob was the one that God chose. Now, between these two brothers, Jacob was not the more righteous man.

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He was every bit as much of a cheat and a scoundrel as Esau was. But Jacob was chosen.

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This is the one that God intended was going to be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

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And so he has sons that become the heads of all of the different tribes.

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Jacob's name himself becomes Israel. It gets changed to Israel. And that's where we get that name from.

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And then you have his sons, which make up the 12 tribes. And it wasn't just going to be any son that God had chosen to continue the promise of the seed that would come.

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It would be specifically the line of Judah, who was the fourth born. So Reuben was the first born.

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Though he was entitled to all of the rights of the first born, everything that belonged to Jacob would be passed on to Reuben.

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Nonetheless, it was not Reuben that God chose. He chose Judah, who was the last of the first four sons that were born to Jacob from Leah.

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Remember that Jacob had two wives, and his favor was with Rachel. He loved Rachel the most.

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But Rachel would only give him two sons, and those were his two youngest, Joseph and Benjamin.

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Leah was much more fertile. And though Jacob did not love

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Leah as much, she was the one who gave him more children. And so it was the fourth of those first four children that were born, the first four sons that were born to Jacob, who would be

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Judah. If Jacob had had it his way, he would have made sure that the promised seed would have come from either

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Joseph or Benjamin. But the Lord had chosen that it would be Judah.

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It's amazing. It's so fascinating. It's mind -blowing to consider how the Lord is working through all of this.

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Despite man's best intentions, the Lord is the one who is bringing this about, who is orchestrating all of this through redemptive history to bring about the

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Messiah who is to come. You have Abraham of Ur of the

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Chaldeans. He has two sons born to him by two different women, Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac is the one that God chose.

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Isaac has twins, twins through Rebekah. You have Esau and Jacob. Isaac's favor was with Esau, but God chose

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Jacob. Jacob sees this woman who is beautiful, wants to marry her, but he's not allowed.

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Her sister has to be married first, and through some manner of trickery,

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Jacob ends up married to Leah. That wasn't the woman that he wanted. He wanted Rachel. He worked seven years for Rachel, ended up with Leah.

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Had to work seven more years in order to get Rachel, but that's the woman who Jacob loved. But because Leah was despised, the

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Lord's favor was upon her, and she was the one that bore all of these sons, particularly the one that would be chosen by God to be the father of the eventual

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Messiah who would come. All of this is being guided by the hand of the

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Lord. I want to make one other point about this as we close out. This is going to sound a little bit graphic, but I'm going to be as modest about this as I can be.

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When a man knows a woman, and I'm talking biblically, okay, so like a husband knows his wife, he releases over 200 million seed.

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In fact, by some estimates, it's between 200 and 600 million seed.

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You understand what I mean? The woman has only one egg, and it takes one of those hundreds of millions of seed to make it to the woman's one egg.

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One seed to one egg fertilizes that egg, and then the egg begins to grow into a person in her womb.

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How much control do we think we have over that process? You can have a husband and a wife who decide that they want to start having children, and so they try to have children.

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In one of those tries, they're going to be successful, they would hope. They would pray and desire that God would bless them with kids.

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But how much of that were they really in control over? God is the one that ordained this one seed out of hundreds of millions that the man released, only one.

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God would ordain that that one seed would be the first to make it to that one egg and become the one person that you are.

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This was all chosen by God. It doesn't matter whether you were an accident or on purpose, according to your parents' best intentions.

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You were chosen and intentioned by God to exist.

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And so as we see this genealogy that is beginning to unfold here at the start of the

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Gospel of Matthew, this was not done by man's intentions. This is the miraculous working of God.

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And as far as the genealogy covers here, we're going back 2 ,000 years before Christ.

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So we got 2 ,000 years that are covered here, from Abraham to the birth of Christ, and all of it guided by the hand of God to bring about the one who would be the

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Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. This one whom God had appointed, he chose, who would be conceived by the

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Holy Spirit in this woman who herself was a descendant in the line of Judah. Jesus the

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Christ would come, which God had promised, which God ordained, which God caused to happen.

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And you have come to faith in Jesus Christ and are saved, also not by your doing, not by any mechanism of man.

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It is only by the hand of God. As it says in 1 Corinthians 1 .30, look it up.

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It is his doing that you are in Christ Jesus.

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Heavenly Father, I thank you for what we've read here. And I pray that we would ponder and consider these things and give you the praise that you deserve.

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For it is by your mercy, your grace, that you looked upon our low estate and provided for us the

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Savior who would save us from our sin, the sin that we deserve judgment for.

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But Christ took that upon himself with his death on the cross and conquered death by rising again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish under the judgment that we deserve.

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But we will have everlasting life. Continue to work out in our lives this understanding of you that we may become better worshippers of God today and from these days forward.