Episode 15 - Matthew 1:1-17

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Introduction

What’s up, guys!

This is Josh with Shepherd’s Cast and I want to welcome you to the podcast where I talk to you about the things that I find important. My content is meant to inform, educate, puzzle, or be funny. If it does something other than what I’ve just said, then Soli Deo Gloria, we will just call it providence. All of what I say is read from blog posts that I have written and can be found on my website with the link in the show notes.

So, anyway, yeah, here we go…

Episode

Before I dive into the text, I want to give a word of warning and a bit of an announcement. I may, or may not, pronounce these names correctly. I’ve probably heard them all said correctly, so I hope it will at least be a 90% success, but I truly hope you do not hold it against me if I absolutely destroy these names. Also, I will be reading out of the ESV. If I feel the need, in my study, to translate a word differently I’ll bounce over to a different version and give a short explanation. So, without further pause, let’s dive in!

The book of the 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 Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon 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, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and 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, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and 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 fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

Matthew 1:1-17

As tradition goes, thus ends the reading.

A lot of people tend to skip over the generations because they either do not want to take the time to stumble over the names that are presented, or feel as if they won’t get anything out of it, so they skip to the part that will benefit them in some way. There is, however, an important reason these genealogies were included, here and in Luke, we should take the time as followers of Christ to study and understand what these mean.

As you will recall from my introduction, we determined the audience from internal, and external evidence, to be the Jews, themselves. As Jews, they believed in two specific covenants that had to be fulfilled in order to maintain a belief that Jesus was who He said He was, and who Matthew was in the process of explaining He was. These two covenants were the Davidic covenant, found in 2 Samuel 7, and the Abrahamic covenant, found in Genesis 12. In order to have a better understanding of these covenants I want to take a moment to lightly touch on each one.

The Abrahamic Covenant is best summed up in Genesis 12:2-3 where it says: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” It was an unconditional covenant made with Abraham in that is completed in Genesis 15 with God being the party to make the covenant while Abraham was in a deep sleep. Typically, covenants are conditional with both parties taking part in the promise, but God binds Himself, and Him alone, as He was the only one to pass through the halves of the animals.

The Davidic Covenant was a promise made to David that one of His descendants would reign over the people of God. This is the true basis of hope for a Messiah and it makes sense of the reason why the gospel authors went to such great pains to show that Jesus was rightful King of the Jews. Simply put, it is a restatement or a continuation of earlier promises made in that it promised a Davidic king as the person who God would complete the promises of land, blessings, and descendants.

It was important to show how, if Jesus were the true Messiah and He was the fulfillment of these two covenants, that He was a part of the rightful line of David and Abraham. And it was also important to note instances such as Jechoniah, in verse 11, was cursed in that none of his sons were allowed to be kings. Jeremiah 22:30 says “Thus says Yahweh: ‘Record this man as childless, a man who will not succeed in his days, for no man from his offspring will succeed him, sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.” In other words, Jechoniah did have children, but they were cursed from ever being able to sit on the throne. Thus, the recorders of these genealogies, Luke and Matthew, had to also show how, if Jechoniah was one of those who fathered Jesus, how and why He was still able to sit on the throne.

We haven’t made it, and we will not make it to this until the next episode in the series, but Jesus was born of a virgin, simply meaning that He was not born of man, but from God. He was begotten by Mary, thus He was truly human, but He was born of God, as His first and only eternally begotten Son, expressing that He was truly God. This is important, as we see that Jechoniah, the cursed one, was included in the genealogy. It’s important because biologically, He did not receive the curse as born from the line of Jechoniah, just as He would not have received the curse of original sin as He was not born of men, because Jesus was not one of His sons, but He would have the legal ability to reign as King on the throne.

This whole idea goes back to how things are transmitted or inherited. Original sin, sometimes referred to as ancestral sin, is what was committed by Adam that plunged the whole of humanity into sin. We inherited the condemnation for sin, as well as a nature prone to sin, a nature that the Bible regularly defines as dead, like we see in Ephesians 2:1. My Reformed people will cringe at this, but I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water. In Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, he says, “Now it is evident that in the opinion of philosophers, the active principle of generation is from the father, while the mother provides the matter. Therefore original sin, is contracted, not from the mother, but from the father: so that, accordingly, if Eve, and not Adam, had sinned, their children would not contract original sin: whereas, if Adam, and not Eve, had sinned, they would contract it.” Or, by our more favored theologian, St. Augustine, he says “Adam’s sin is passed down to each of us through his seed, literally, a natura seminalis “seminal nature.” This means that all who are conceived by the natural way, through sex without Godly intervention, are recepients of this original sin.”

It is the same way with the curse to Jechoniah. The curse was transmitted through the father to the Son, of which Joseph was not to Jesus by anything other than legality, thus, to reiterate, Jesus does not contain the curse of Jechoniah, and can be crowned as king.

Another important thing to notice about the generations is how Matthew breaks it up into 14 generations. As interesting as it would have been, providentially speaking, there are many more generations in the midst of it. Matthew, much like earlier recordings in the Old Testament, lists people who have, somewhere in their ancestral line, been the father of that person. It is not necessarily immediate son to immediate father. This is because Jewish reckoning didn’t really require that every person in order be listed to satisfy a genealogy. The word, γεννάω (gennaō), means beget, which can be any number distance apart, but descendant of.

Another important thing to notice is the inclusion of women, but not simply women, Gentile women, and not simply Gentile women, but Gentile women of somewhat ill repute. *Gasp.* This should lead us into a thought process about the sovereignty of God in His own free choice.

To explain, Paul says in Romans 9:6-8, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”

Let’s break that passage down just a bit. In the context, Paul is explaining, in the negative since, why people of ethnic, or national, Israel were not considered children of the promise. John the Baptist comments on this as well in his discourse with the Pharisees when he says, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children from Abraham.” Matthew 3:9. John tells us, however, in the positive sense, that God can make anyone a child of Abraham, even from the rocks! Why is this important? Because it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, as in, it is not the nation of Israel, itself, that is a child of God. The children of God are those who believe, who have faith; the children of God, or the offspring of God, are those who are children of the promise. The promise being extolled in Romans 8:30, “those who He predestined He also called, and those who He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.”

It is up to God in His own good pleasure in His sovereign election of who is to be what. Exodus 33, in the ESV, records God saying His name. I disagree with where the translators placed the quotation marks, as in the following chapter when God stated His name it included what was outside of the quotations in Exodus 33. The verse reads, “And He said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name The Lord, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Exodus 33:19. His name shows His explicit freedom of choice in who He so chooses, which we can see in the list of the genealogy we are covering in Matthew.

So let us reflect back on the totality of the importance of this genealogy. The audience was, as we’ve discussed, the Jewish people. They would have asked the question as to if Jesus fit the bill of the Messiah. Can He be king? Does He fulfill the covenant? Without a doubt, after reading the initial part of Matthew, it would have been a clear “yes.”

Final Word of the Day

I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. It is always a pleasure to bring the word of God to those who are seeking to know more about Him.

The final word of the day comes to us from Jonathan Edwards’ Sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God.”

*Listen to my podcast for this!*

A special thanks to Jesus Wannabeez for allowing me to use their track, Ephesians 6, in my intro and outro music. You can find a link to their Spotify in the show notes.

And, as always, may the light of the holy God shine upon you.

Amen.