Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the
Son of Abraham
Matt 1:1-17
Introduction: People celebrate the birth day; Soon we will
celebrate the birth of my grandson Nathan; one year. So the life of Nathan
began when he was born into this world. His legacy is from his parents and
grandparents.
It is the beginning of one’s life ; from nothing into
something; so we call it ‘create’ We begin our lives as soon as we are born.
Today’s passage records the genealogy of Jesus. Here the word
genealogy is the same word ‘genesis’ in original language. It denotes beginning
or creation.
One’s legacy is created what he did through his life on the
earth and how his word will affect the generation after him.
In looking into the life of Jesus, Matthew revealed that the
legacy or meaning of Jesus’ life is not just what he did while he lived on the
earth. Rather, it began in God long before he came to the earth in flesh. That
meaning and purpose is revealed in the genealogy of Jesus.
I.
God
created a nation of blessing [2-6]
Here Jesus is to be significant in three ways; he is Christ, the
son of Abraham, and the son of David. This
is the summery of who Jesus is. What did it mean that Jesus is the Christ, the
son of Abraham and the Son of David? The meaning is revealed in the genealogy.
So as we will explore the details of the genealogy, I pray that God may give us
understanding of what he meant.
Abraham lived about 2000 years before Christ. After God
destroyed human race with flood, Abraham was the first person God called
personally with specific goal and purpose. The ultimate goal was to bless
Abraham and through him God wanted to bless the people of the whole world.
God made this in form of promise; Gen 12:1-3. This promise
may be considered as ‘Suzarein form of covenant’ in which the maker of this
promise is responsible for all that was written in the promise. God did this by
saying repeatedly ‘ I will make, I will’
The essence of the promise is to make him a nation of
blessing with a specific land, Canaan. The final goal is this promise was to
bless the whole world.
God nailed down this will when Abraham showed his absolute
obedience to God by offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God[Gen 22:10]
So God reaffirmed his will in this way. [Gen 22:10] here the
key word are ‘because you have done this’ and ‘through your descendant’ God will bless the
whole world.
Here if we summarize God’s purpose, and promise, God will
make him a nation of God’s blessing and through that nation God wanted to bless
the whole world. So the first stage of God’s work is to create a nation of God’s
blessing out of one man Abraham.
This forms the first 14 generations; it starts from Abraham
and ends when David was enthroned. During his tenure as king, God did everything: he destroyed all of
his enemies under the leadership of King David. God was so happy with David
that he called David a man after God’s own heart. The nation enjoyed a peace
and prosperity.
But up to this time God
labored hard and it took about 1000 years. God did many things to bring out
of one man into a great nation. If we list few of these things:
Exodus of Israel by killing all the firstborns of Egypt while
saving Israel
God did numerous miracles while they were on the way to the
promised land
God showed his glory and gave the Law.
God sent diseases and killed in the desert all those who did
not show faith in God.
God raised one man David as the most faithful and obedient
king.
In this period. We can say that God fulfilled the first part of God’s promise to Abraham; to make him a
nation of God’s blessing with a specific land, Canaan. Also this is the
period when God worked directly on his people to impress on them the will of
God and provided them all that was necessary to live in God’s covenant.
During this period many men of chosen showed their unbelief
and unfaithfulness. In order to maintain God’s will, God deselected the
unfaithful and chose the faithful. This went beyond human expectations. The
most prominent examples of this is the three women recorded in the genealogy of
David.
Judah went out to live among Canaanites and got a wife and
through her children. But the first two sons died. It was more than likely that
they died early because of their sins influenced by ungodly life of Canaanites.
The first son’s wife Tamar was given to the second son. As the second son died,
she was told to wait for the third son to grow up. His father in law was
reluctant to give her to the only son left fearing that Tamar was the source of
such premature death of two sons. After all it was Judah’s sin and sins of the
two children that came upon such calamity on the family. Tamar knowing well of
her father in law’s fear, she disguised herself as a prostitute and slept with
Judah, father in law. Tamar risked all her life on this with two clear intention
and faith;
God will do his justice if she is wrong and she shall be
stoned to death. If she is right, God will vindicate her. She dared that challenge. She was determined to be included in
this family because she was God’s justice and righteousness despite of the fact
that her husband died twice. She saw God of Israel to be the God of
righteousness that would not tolerate evil and God of goodness.
Out of this union came a son that will inherit God’s blessing
after Judah.
What does it mean? There was a great danger that God’s chosen
line of blessing through Judah was about to be cut off. God used Tamar a great
woman of faith to continue that line of blessing. Tamar is the one who had
shown faith like Abraham who sacrificed his son Isaac to God. Such decisive and
fully committed faith is what God is looking for.
God did such extra ordinary thing through Rahab, a prostitute
of Jericho, and Ruth a Moabite woman.
On each time the line of God’s blessing was threatened to be
cut off. But through these women of faith God maintained that blessing.
Here God’s will to maintain the line of blessing; who is to
be included?
1.
God
will do an extra ordinary thing in order to keep the blessing
2.
God
will use those who demonstrated their faith though they are gentiles with very
ungodly background.
3.
God
is looking for those who show the kind of faith that Abraham exhibited when he
sacrificed his son Isaac.
4.
God
will use even women to maintain that genealogy!
5.
If
such crisis occurs would God do such a drastic measure? Surely!
Here I deduced an idea that God would do similar things in
sending His son Jesus. But in God’s perspective, in order to show how God will
send his son Jesus God used these women of faith. History of God is able to
explain the things of God that cannot be explained by human logic.
II.
Israel ran the kingdom with God’s
covenant [6b-11]
The second period started when Nation Israel was well
established under the leadership of King David. It ended when David’s kingdom
was taken to exile to Babylon 586 BC.
The nation started with the best king that they could have
with the best system to be God’s people. The law of God, sacrificial system and
God’s covenant were with them. So they had all the means and ways to keep their
faith and carry God’s blessing. In this period, kings were the direct agent of
governing and ruling and God oversight them through the covenant; when they did
wrong God sent prophets to give them warning.
How did it turn out? They deserted God and His covenant. They
committed sin and even served idols. Simply they could not control their sins
and the nation as a whole failed to keep the covenant.
God allowed them to run themselves so that they may be the
source of blessing for the world. But this failed; man king and man’s kingdom,
despite of all the blessings that God provided them with. This is the solid
evidence of men’s failure to live according to God’s will and purpose.
God gave them a period of 14 generations to try out as God
had labored because God worked hard for 14 generations to make a nation of
blessing equipping them with all that he had. We can say that this is the time
of provisional blessing or a period of testing with autonomy.
God provided them with the best of truth; they saw God’s
truth, they were given all the laws and they experienced God’s judgment as well
as God blessings. Who could have such intimate knowledge in this world? No
nation or no men or no kingdom! If they failed to live to honor God, when who
or what kingdom could? Through this, it became clear that no matter how much
truth and knowledge God provided them,
men could not run the life of faith. It testifies the failure of men-king and
failure of men’s kingdom.
If God has to bless the whole world despite of such failure,
then God has to do something different or extraordinary! What would that be!
III.
Israel to pay off the transgressions
[12-16]
The third period started when the Davidic dynasty was taken
to Babylon in 586BC as exile. Davidic
dynasty disappeared and God’s people were taken to foreign land. There they
suffered a great deal; What were the super powers that governed the nation
Israel? Babylonian kingdom, Medo-Persian kingdom, Greek Empire, Roman Empire.
Living under ungodly king in ungodly land is a great stress.
There was a great suffering and pain, sorrow and hopelessness and futility of
life.
How can we characterize this period? How long would this
period be?
We can find this through the prayers of Daniel, the one of
the three exilic prophets.
Dan 9:15-19
15 "Now,
O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and who
made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done
wrong. 16 O Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn
away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our
sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people an
object of scorn to all those around us.
17 "Now,
our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O
Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. 18 Give ear,
O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears
your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because
of your great mercy. 19 O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O
Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city
and your people bear your Name."
Dan 9:15-19 (NIV)
Here Daniel admitted that
1.
the
nation Israel sinned against God and God is just in punishing Israel in this
way subjugating the nation under hostile kings of gentiles.
2.
In
repentance Daniel sought God’s mercy to forgive sins of Israel and restore the
kingdom.
What was God’s answer?
Dan 9:23-24
23 As
soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you,
for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the
vision: 24 "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people
and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to
atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up
vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.
1.
They
had to suffer to finish the transgression and to atone for wickedness
2.
After
finishing the transgression, God will bring everlasting righteousness.
So this is the period of paying off the transgression that
they did during the 14 generations. Only then God will send the Messiah, the
Savior to restore and to redeem the nation of God’s kingdom.
This is the darkest time of Israel, God’s chosen nation. But
it is the brightest time in the following aspect:
1.
It
is the time when they came to fully accept and acknowledge that they were
helpless in their sin.
2.
It
is the time when they came to repentance.
3.
It
is the time when they sought God only and were eagerly anticipated for the time
of fulfilling of God’s promise; the time of coming of the Christ, the Savior.
IV.
Jesus the Christ, the Son of David
and the son of Abraham
Then, what does these three periods tell us about the coming
of Jesus?
The history of God’s salvation tell us three facts:
God provided everything for men and their kingdom but men
failed and the kingdom of men failed.
At the heart of problem is sin and if sin is not or cannot be
resolved, it is impossible to restore the nation for the purpose of blessing
the whole world.
So the coming Messiah shall be
1. Not
of man but of God.
2. He must be able
to redeem sins of men
3. Establish
not man’s kingdom but kingdom not of man
Here Jesus is the Christ
1.
He
came exactly on time at the 14th generation from exile.
2.
Jesus
shall be not of man but of God.
3.
He
is to redeem the sins of men
4.
He
is to establish the kingdom of God.-the king!
So Jesus is called Christ. It means the anointed, king,
Savior. God planned to send Jesus long before his actual coming; at least
according to history, from the time of Abraham, 2000 years before Christ’s
birth. As His name indicate, he is to be the redeemer, the Savior and the king
who will establish God’s kingdom.
He is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and his
promise to King David.
What does it mean to us?
We must recognize that men failed thoroughly to live
according to God. Only then men can seek the Messiah, the Savior Jesus. As long
as we think that we can be good and we can manage our life with godly goodness,
then, we will surely go through the time of trial and testing until we fail
fully and thoroughly.
Sin is at the heart of issue. It was in Israel so it is with
each of us. Jesus is the only hope for all
that suffer under the darkness of sin.
Also we must recognize that Jesus is the king that will
establish God’s kingdom and the world will see the true hope of salvation.
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