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IV.    THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS SHOWS US WHO JESUS IS
So very quickly, if we can start deducing some lessons here in this genealogy, what is Matthew really trying to communicate by all these funny names, so and so gave birth to so and so... and the list is "endless".


Well, for starters, Matthew is saying that before you even celebrate the birth of Jesus, you need to know WHO JESUS IS.  Because the "who" of Jesus is what gives him the value and determines that relationship that you will have with Jesus.

Who is this man Jesus? What makes him important? Why should the world come to a standstill because Jesus has been born? Why should people all over the world, on December 25th, gather together to celebrate the birth of the man who lived more than 2,000 years ago? Who is this man?

A.    The Royal Qualification of Jesus To the Throne as The Messiah
And Matthew, by giving us this genealogy, is basically answering the "Who" of Jesus so that you can know the "Why" you should pay attention.  And he begins right away from Matthew 1:1, without mincing his words, and says, "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham." That is an express statement and an express introduction to who Jesus is because the rest of the genealogy will make an apology for that statement that he has made in verse one.

It will seek not only to show who Jesus is, but to establish the fact in the history of who Jesus is and he demands your attention. 

Notice that Matthew begins by saying, "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah..." Not just Jesus a baby who will be born in a manger, not just Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, but Jesus the Messiah! And mentioning that word in Israel at that time itself could only draw you into two corners: either you were right and that the Messiah that had was long-awaited for by God's people had finally come; or that you were wrong and had committed an act of blasphemy that deserved a death sentence. 

So, Matthew begins with a suicide not here. He is saying the man I want to introduce to you, the baby you expect to be born is none other than the long-awaited Messiah, the anointed one of God, the one that whom for thousands of years God's people have been waiting for as the man who will seat on the throne of Israel and be the king and establish God's kingdom as God promised thousands of years earlier.

Matthew says, "this is the man you should expect." So, when you think about Christmas, don't just see a baby in a manger. Don't just see a helpless child in the arms of a poor woman from Nazareth. When you think about Christmas, think about the anointed one, the Messiah, Jesus Christ the Lord. And when you start Christmas by recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, then Christmas begins to make sense and becomes transforming. 

On the other hand, when you start Christmas by recognizing Jesus as just a mere baby, then the true meaning of Christmas is lost, and Christmas gets reduced to a mere party and a celebratory mood that at best will leave you feeling happy and fatter than you were before, but really not transformed.

1.    Jesus the Messiah is a descendant of Abraham
Matthew says, "I want to introduce the Messiah to you. And if you have any doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, let me show you how he comes to be the Messiah. This Jesus I introduce is the son of David, the son of Abraham." Why is that very important? He draws out two key figures in Jewish history, men that God made a covenant with, the covenant that will eventually be realized and find its ultimate fulfilment in Jesus Christ.  First, Matthew draws us our attention to Abraham.

You will recall that God had given Abraham a promise and made a covenant with him. That through Abraham's offspring, God was going to bless the nations of the world. That the offspring of Abraham would be the reason, would be the channel for the blessings of all the nations of the world. And Matthew is saying, "when you think about Jesus, think about that promise. That in Jesus Christ, in Christmas, God is fulfilling the promise that he gave to Abraham, that through Jesus's offspring, now the blessing of the nations is going to be realized.  The Messiah would have to be a descendant of Abraham because only through Abraham, would blessings for the nations come.  So, if Jesus is going to be the Messiah, he has to be a descendant of, or he has to be connected with Abraham.

2.    Jesus the Messiah is a descendant of David
For Jesus to be the rightful Messiah who sits on the throne of Israel, he would have to be a son of David. 

When God was making a covenant with King David, he said, I will raise an offspring from you, your son will sit on the throne of Israel, and his rulership or kingdom, will be forever, will be eternal. And history had proved that that promised son of David was certainly not Solomon because Solomon was not an eternal king.  History had proved that that king was not Solomon's son or Solomon's grandson. So, for all these generations, Israel has been waiting for the one man who is a descendant of King David, who has been promised to have royal access to the throne and whose rulership is going to be an eternal one.

So, when Matthew says, "Jesus the descendant of Abraham and David..." It's not that he has forgotten other people in between, nor is he saying, that Jesus is a direct son of David and a direct son of Abraham, but he pulls out these key personalities to remind us of the two covenants that God had made way back in History that are now coming to fruition and finding their consummation in the person of Jesus, the real blessing of nations.  

In the person of Jesus, the kingship or the kingdom of God becomes real in the Messiah for the salvation and the redemption of God's people. In one statement, Matthew makes a case and brings it to a conclusion that Jesus is the son of David who has a right to sit on the throne of David for an eternal rulership; that Jesus is the son of Abraham, who fulfils the promise for the blessing of nations. And no wonder, he is the Messiah, because the qualifications for the Messiah would ultimately be hinged on these two covenants: the covenant with Abraham and the covenant with David. 

And in that one statement, Matthew has said, "If you have any doubts whatsoever, look at the genealogy and you will see who Jesus is. That he is not just a casual guy who has been born and will just live like anyone else has done in the family tree, but that this is a promise coming to fulfilment; that this is Jesus bringing the purposes of God in redeeming a people for himself into ultimate realization. Without this genealogy, the rest of the story does not even make sense because it doesn't tell us who Jesus is.

3.     Jesus the Messiah is the focal point of the Old Testament
At the heart of this introduction of who Jesus is, and what he will do, not only do we see the whole New Testament fall into perspective, because of what Jesus will do; but this genealogy even takes us way back into the Old Testament. It takes us to the Old Testament and helps us to see the Old Testament promises, the Old Testament temple rituals and worship, the Old Testament commandments, the Old Testament prophetism and priesthood -- we see all this coming together now in this introductory statement "Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the son of David and the son of Abraham."

Later in Luke 24:44-47 Jesus would summarize this very thing again when he tells the disciples that don't you know, haven't you read, don't you know what was written about me in the law of Moses, in the Psalms and in the Prophets, that the Christ or the Messiah will suffer, die and rise on the third day that repentance may be proclaimed in all the nations of the world? 

What is Jesus saying? That the whole writings of the Old Testament are actually all about him. That when Moses wrote, he wrote about Jesus. When David put the Psalms down, they were really about Jesus. When the prophets prophesied, they really talked about Jesus and how he was going to be central in the grand scheme of the redemption of the whole of the created order. And Jesus says, when you think about the priesthood when you think about the law, when you think about the prophets -- they all find their destination in me.

And Matthew is saying that this genealogy is the bridge between the Old Testament and the New. And quite often you will see Matthew, in fact, doing a lot of this kind of connection. You will see Matthew in his gospel quoting the Old Testament and he doesn't just quote it, but he keeps saying, "And these took place to fulfil what was written by the prophets." Matthew will keep on reminding us that we are not dealing with two different gods: one for the Old, and one for the new; that we are not dealing with a God of two plans: plan A and plan B; but we are dealing with a God who has one plan: plan A.  The God who has a plan to redeem his people through the person and ministry of Jesus Christ his Son; a plan that was realized through the covenants of the Old Testament and now the plan that comes to the climax and fruition in the New Covenant in which Jesus is central, and in which Jesus is the head.

If you are going to appreciate the birth of Jesus and the ministry that Jesus brings to you, you must know who he is before you can know what he can do for you. And Matthew is saying, a relationship with Jesus needs to start with his identity. And the question is, "Who is Jesus?"

Matthew says, "He is the Messiah." If you don't believe it, trace it back into history and see where he comes from. He is the son of David, he is the son of Abraham, and all those show you that he qualifies to be the prophesied Messiah and therefore worthy of attention and worthy of kneeling one’s knee in worship.

B.    The Historical Roots of the humanity of Jesus the Messiah
But we will also see, that this genealogy is not just attempting to establish the royal qualification of Jesus to the throne as the Messiah, but this genealogy seeks to trace Jesus’s own historical roots. 
That when we come to the person of Jesus, we are not dealing with a superman who just jumped out of space and fell into the world.  You know when you think about Jesus and the role he plays as the Savior, it is much easier to think about him in magical terms and imagine some super angel who just flies into Jerusalem overnight, he has power to make magic and things happen, the sick get healed, the dead come back to life and then you say, "No wonder he is the Savior of the world!"

That's not actually the picture that the Bible gives us. The Jesus that we come in a relationship with as the Savior of the world, is in every way and in every sense, human just like you and I are! He has parents. He has ancestors. You can go through the family tree of his tribe in Israel and you will find his record there. Matthew wants us to know that the Savior that we receive in Christmas is not just a superman who jumps in to intervene in the affairs of the sinful human race, but he is one who is in every sense human. Although he is a 100 percent divine Savior, he is also a 100 percent human Savior who identifies with us in every sense of the word. Jesus is a human Savior who will understand us, one who will live in our world, one who will be limited by the limitations of this world that we are limited with such as hunger. Jesus is ultimately one who qualifies not just in understanding us as human beings, but even in representing us before a God that we would never come before apart from Jesus the God-Man.

Jesus qualifies to represent us, Jesus understands us enough that when he intercedes for us, he is not just using foreknowledge as the Messiah, but he is one who has been there.  There is no surprise that you are going to give him. He's been there. He has felt it. He has gone through it. So, when he says in Luke 23:34 that, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," he actually does understand. He knows you in and out. This makes him the perfect representative in your standing with God. That in Christmas, we receive not just Jesus the anointed one, but we receive the historical Jesus the God-Man.  We receive Jesus the human being. We receive Jesus, the man who identifies with us. We receive Jesus the one in whom the fullness of the Godhead has come (Colossians 2:9). That when we encounter Jesus, in that sense, we encounter one who is fully God, but we also encounter one who is fully human, who is fully just like you and I – this is the mystery of salvation!


Matthew will tell us that this Jesus of history, is the same one who has become the Christ of our faith. That he will not only just identify with us in our sin, in our problems, in our sorrow, in our pains, but he also qualifies in a more powerful way as the anointed one to deal with our sin.  If he were the kind that only sympathizes with us and walks away, that would not be good enough. He would know our problem, but if he wouldn't provide a solution, what good is he and what kind of Savior is that? But in Jesus, there is a combination of both: that he understands, but he also provides the solution.

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