Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham
Matthew 1:1-17
Introduction:
People celebrate birthdays; soon we will celebrate my grandson,
Nathan’s first birthday. His life began when he was born into this world, and his
legacy is from his parents and grandparents.
Birthdays recognize the beginning of one’s life, their journey from
being nothing to becoming something; this is why we call it ‘creating’ life. We
begin our lives as soon as we are born.
Today’s passage records Jesus’ genealogy. Here, the word ‘genealogy’
is from the same word ‘genesis’ in original language. It denotes beginning or
creation.
One’s legacy is created out of what he did during his life on
the earth and how his words will affect the generation after him.
While looking into Jesus’ life, Matthew revealed that the legacy
or meaning of his life was not just in 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 Jesus’ genealogy.
I.
God created a nation of blessing [Matthew
1:2-6].
Here, Jesus’ coming was significant in three ways: he was
Christ, the son of Abraham, and the son of David. This is a summary of who
Jesus was. What did it mean that Jesus was the Christ, the son of Abraham, and
the son of David? The meaning is revealed in his genealogy. So, as we explore
the details of Jesus’ genealogy, I pray that God may give us understanding of
what it means.
Abraham lived about 2,000 years before Christ. After God had destroyed
the human race with a flood, Abraham was the first person He called personally.
God’s specific goal and purpose for this calling was ultimately to bless
Abraham and, through him, to bless the whole world.
God communicated this purpose in form of a promise (Genesis
12:1-3). This promise is also known as ‘the Suzerain Covenant’, in which the
maker of this promise was responsible for all that was written in it. God did
this by saying repeatedly ‘I will show, I will make, I will bless’(Genesis
12:1-3).
The essence of the promise was to make Abraham a nation of
blessing and give him a specific land, Canaan, for his inheritance. The final
goal of this promise was to bless the whole world.
God nailed down and reaffirmed His will when Abraham showed his
absolute obedience by offering his son
Isaac as a sacrifice to Him [Genesis 22:10].
Here, the key phrases are ‘because you have done this’ and ‘through
your descendants’, signifying why and how God would bless the whole world.
Here, if we summarize God’s purpose and promise, He was going to
make Abraham and his descendants into a nation of His blessing and, through
that nation, He wanted to bless the whole world. So the first stage of God’s
work was to create a nation of His blessing out of one man, Abraham.
This resulted in the first 14 generations, starting with Abraham
and ending when David was enthroned. During David’s tenure as king, God did everything: He destroyed all of
his enemies under his leadership. God was so happy with David that He called him
a man after His own heart. The nation of Israel enjoyed peace and prosperity
during David’s reign.
But during the next 1000 years, God had labored hard and did
many things to bring a great nation out of one man. As we look at this time, we
can list a few of these things:
· God’s killing of all the Egyptian
firstborns enabled Israel’s exodus and salvation from slavery.
· God did numerous miracles while the
Israelites were on their way to the Promised Land.
· God showed His glory and gave the
Law.
· In the desert, God sent diseases and
killed everyone who did not show faith in Him.
· God raised one man David as Israel’s
most faithful and obedient king.
In this period, we can say that God fulfilled the first part of His promise to Abraham - to make him a
nation of God’s blessing with a specific land, Canaan. Also during this
period, God worked directly with His people to impress His will on them
and provided them with all that was necessary for them to live in His covenant.
Throughout this time, many chosen men showed their unbelief and
unfaithfulness. In order to maintain His will, God deselected the unfaithful and
chose the faithful. This went beyond human expectations. The most prominent
examples of this are the three women recorded in David’s genealogy.
Judah went to live among the Canaanites, got a wife from among
their people, and, through her, had children. However, his first two sons died;
they most likely died early because of their sins, influenced by the
Canaanites’ ungodly living. The first son’s wife, Tamar, was given to the
second son. After the second son died, she was told to wait for the third son to
grow up. Her father-in–law, Judah, was reluctant to give her to the only son he
had left, for fear that Tamar was the
source of the premature deaths of his two sons. Ultimately though, it was
Judah’s sin and the sins of his two children that brought such calamity upon
the family. Tamar, knowing well of her father-in-law’s fear, disguised herself
as a prostitute and slept with Judah, her father-in-law. Tamar risked her life
on this with faith and two clear convictions:
·
If she was wrong, God would accomplish His justice and she would
be stoned to death.
·
If she was right, God would vindicate her.
Determined to be included in this family, she dared that
challenge, because she was God’s justice and righteousness, despite the fact
that her husbands both died. Tamar saw the God of Israel to be the God of
righteousness and goodness, who would not tolerate evil.
Out of this union came a son (Perez) that would inherit God’s
blessing after Judah.
What does this mean? There was a great danger that God’s chosen
line of blessing through Judah was about to be cut off; however, God used Tamar,
a great woman of faith, to continue that line of blessing. She was the one who demonstrated
faith, like Abraham who sacrificed his son Isaac to God. Such decisive and committed faith is what God is looking for.
God did such similarly extraordinary things through Rahab, a
prostitute from Jericho, and Ruth, a Moabite woman.
Each time the line of God’s blessing was threatened to be cut
off, God maintained that blessing through these women of faith.
Here, God’s will was to maintain the line of blessing; who was
to be included?
· God will do extraordinary things in
order to bring about His blessing.
· God will use those who have demonstrated
their faith, even if they come from ungodly backgrounds.
· God is looking for those who show the
kind of faith that Abraham exhibited when he sacrificed his son, Isaac.
· God will even use women to maintain
that genealogy!
· If such a crisis occurs, would God use
such a drastic measure again? Surely!
Here, I deduced the idea that God would do similar things by
sending His Son, Jesus, but, according to God’s perspective, in order to demonstrate
how He would send Jesus, He used these women of faith. The history of God is
able to explain the things of God that cannot be explained by human logic.
II.
Israel ruled the kingdom under God’s
covenant [Matthew 1:6b-11].
The second period in Israel’s history started when their nation
was well-established under King David’s leadership and ended when David’s kingdom
was sent into exile in Babylon in 586 B.C.
The nation started with both the best king that they could have and
with the best system in place for them to become God’s people. God’s law, the sacrificial
system, and His covenant were with them, so they had every means for keeping
their faith and carrying God’s blessing. In this period, kings were the direct governing
and ruling agents and God oversaw them through the covenant; when they did
wrong, God sent prophets to give them warnings.
How did this turn out? They deserted God and His covenant,
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 the Israelites to rule themselves so that they might
be a source of blessing for the world, but this failed; man’s king and man’s
kingdom both became corrupt, despite all the blessings that God provided for them.
This is solid evidence of men’s failure to live according to God’s will and
purpose.
God gave them a period of 14 generations as He labored to make them
a nation of blessing again, equipping them with all He had. We can say that
this was a time of provisional blessing or a period of God testing Israel with
autonomy.
God provided Israel with the best of His truth; they saw His
truth, they were given all of His laws, and they experienced His judgment as
well as His blessings. Who could have such intimate knowledge in this world? No
nation, man, or kingdom! If Israel failed to live to honor God, than who or
what kingdom could? Through this, it became clear that no matter how much truth
and knowledge God gave them, men could not live a life of faith on their own.
This testifies to the failure of human kings and their kingdoms.
If God wants to bless the whole world, despite such failure, than
He will do something extraordinarily different! What could that be?
III.
Israel to pay off their
transgressions [Matthew 1:12-16]
The third period in Israel’s history started when the Davidic
dynasty was taken into exile in Babylon in 586B.C. The Davidic dynasty
disappeared and God’s people were taken to a foreign land. There, they suffered
a great deal under the governace of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and
Roman Empires.
Living under ungodly kings in an ungodly land was very stressful.
There was great suffering and pain, sorrow, hopelessness, and futility of life.
How can we characterize this period? How long would this period last?
We can find this through the prayers of Daniel, one of three
exilic prophets:
"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. 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.
"Now, our God, hear the
prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor
on your desolate sanctuary. 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. 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." (Daniel
9:15-19 NIV).
Here Daniel admitted that:
·
The nation of Israel had sinned against God and that, He was
just in punishing them in this way, by subjugating them to pagan Gentile kings.
·
In repentance, Daniel sought God’s mercy for the forgiveness of
Israel’s sins and the restoration of the kingdom.
What was God’s answer?
“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: "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.” (Daniel 9:23-24).
Israel had to suffer to abolish their transgressions and atone
for their wickedness.
After this, God would bring everlasting righteousness.
So this was a period of time for Israel to pay off the
transgressions they had committed over the past 14 generations. Only after this
debt had been paid, would God send the Messiah, the Savior, to restore and
redeem the nation of His kingdom.
This was the darkest time of Israel, God’s chosen nation, but it
was also one of the brightest times in the following aspects:
· It was during this time that the
Israelites came to fully accept and acknowledge that they were helpless in
their sin.
· It was because of this time that they
came to repentance.
· It was also when they sought God only
and eagerly anticipated the time of the fulfillment of God’s promise - the time
of the coming of the Christ, the Savior.
IV.
Jesus the Christ, the Son of David,
and the Son of Abraham
Then, what do these three periods tell us about Jesus’ coming of
Jesus?
The history of God’s salvation tells us three facts:
· God provided everything for men and
their kingdoms, but they and their kingdoms failed.
· At the heart of problem is sin.
· If sin is not or cannot be resolved,
it is impossible to restore the nation to its original purpose of blessing the
whole world.
So the coming Messiah shall:
· Be of God, not of man.
· Be able to redeem men from their sins.
· Establish not man’s kingdom, but a kingdom
not of man
Jesus is demonstrated as the Christ in the following ways:
· He came exactly on time in the 14th
generation from Israel’s exile.
· He would be not of man, but of God.
· He came to redeem the sins of men
· He came to establish the kingdom of
God - the King!
So Jesus is called Christ, which means the Anointed, King,
Savior. God planned to send Jesus long before his actual coming; according to
history, from the time of Abraham, 2000 years passed before Christ’s birth. As
His name indicates, he came to be the Redeemer, the Savior, and the King who
established God’s kingdom.
He is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and to King
David.
What does this mean for us?
We must recognize that men have thoroughly failed to live
according to God’s laws. Only then can we seek the Messiah, the Savior Jesus.
As long as we think that we can be good and manage our life with godly
goodness, then we will surely go through trials and testing until we fail.
Sin is at the heart of our issues; it was in Israel, and it is
with each of us. Jesus is the only hope for all of us who suffer under sin’s
darkness.
Also, we must realize that Jesus is the king who will establish
God’s kingdom and that, through him alone, the world will see the true hope of
salvation.
May the Lord Jesus come to save us!
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