Advent Lessons in a Genealogy

Advent Lessons in a Genealogy: Faith

The first book of the New Testament begins with a bang, and follows with a list.

“Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of David and the Son of Abraham!” it blares, in what might as well be ALL-CAPS.

Mark follows his world-changing declaration by jumping right preaching, John the Baptist, and miracles. John starts by declaring that Jesus is God and that he created the world. Even Luke holds off on a genealogy until chapter 4.

But not Matthew. He grabs your attention by declaring that he has found the Messiah, that he is the fulfilment of the Jewish hopes and of the Divine Promises. Then he begins the first Bible book in 400 years with...

A list of names.

We weren’t expecting the next book of the Bible to start like 1 Chronicles! Read More

Advent Lessons in a Genealogy: Jesus Is for Gentiles Too

The gospel of of Matthew was the first biblical book to be written in over 400 years. And Matthew breaks the centuries of silence with…a genealogy.

He has a strategic reason for doing so—the goal of his book is to persuasively argue that Jesus is the Messiah, and so he starts by tying the person of Jesus to the history of the Jews, and particularly to the lines of David and Abraham.

Matthew is aware of the end of the story before he pens the beginning. He knows that Jesus was the Messiah, was crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. More importantly, he knows why Jesus was rejected. In fact, the seeds of Jesus’ rejection were already sown in Jewish history. The very reasons the Pharisees, Sanhedrin, et. al., rejected Jesus were already evident in the ancestry of the Savior. Read More

Lessons from a Genealogy: Expect the Unexpected Birth!

Matthew divides Jesus’ genealogy into three sections: Abraham to David, David to exile, and exile to Joseph. His goal in doing this is to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham (that the savior would be Jewish) and that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to David (he is from the line of Jerusalem’s king).

With that background, its interesting that the first third of the genealogy (Abraham to David) is doing more than simply establishing that Jesus is Jewish. Matthew uses the genealogy to subtly provide a response to Jesus’ enemies. Jesus was opposed by the Pharisees for many reasons, but Matthew preempts their objections by opening with the genealogy, and by structuring as he does. Read More