1. God’s plan for a ruler through promise (1)
2. God’s plan for a ruler through people (2-16)
3. God’s plan for a ruler through providence (17)
This morning we’re starting a three-part series called, “Who Is This Child?” In today’s world, it’s hard enough to see Jesus at Christmas time through all the commercialism. But even when we do see Him, all too often, we see Him as only a baby in the manger. As we go through this series, I want us to not only see the Baby in the manger this Christmas. I want us to see so much more. I want us to see Jesus for who He really is. He is our King. He is our Savior. And He is our God. This morning we’re going to be looking at Jesus our King.
MATTHEW 1:1-17
I told my daughter that our text this morning was going to be the first part of Matthew. She thought about it for a second and then her eyes got real big. She said, “You’re not going to preach on the begats, are you?” Someone was telling me once about how faithful they were in reading the Bible through every year. Then they said that they just read some parts a whole lot faster than others. That’s what we tend to do with genealogies—or as my daughter calls them, “the begats.” If we read them at all, we just breeze through them. That’s understandable. The names are hard to pronounce. Most of the time they’re names of people we don’t have any historical context for. We don’t know who they are. But it’s different if you look at your own family tree. Looking at your own family tree is fascinating because it always ends up in stories. You’re not looking at a bunch of names on a piece of paper. You’re remembering stories. Stories that bring meaning and context to who you are and where your family has come from. That’s why God spent valuable space in His Word passing these genealogies to us. The genealogy we’re looking at this morning in Matthew is very important as we enter this Christmas season. It’s important, because it shows us that Jesus’ lineage was no accident. Jesus didn’t just show up one day in a manger in Bethlehem. He was born to fulfill a specific plan of God. In a specific time. In a specific place. From a specific line of people. It had to be this way, because God promised that Jesus would be born a ruler. Not just an ordinary ruler, but King of kings and Lord of lords. This morning we’re going to be looking at God’s plan for a ruler. And as we do, I want each of us to begin to see Jesus Christ for who He is. He’s not just a baby in a manger. This morning and for all eternity, He’s our King. In order to see Christ as our King, we’re going to look at three phases of God’s plan for a ruler. His first phase is that God planned a ruler through promise.
MATTHEW 1:1
God planned a ruler through promise. The God of the Bible is a God who makes promises. He makes promises and He is faithful to keep them. The Old Testament is full of promises that God made to His chosen people. But out of all those promises, two stand head and shoulders above the rest. Those two covenants are the Abrahamic covenant and the Davidic covenant. Now, Matthew lists them in reverse order here in verse 1. He says that Jesus is the son of David first. Then the son of Abraham. He reverses the covenants. Matthew does that because his purpose in writing his gospel was to show how Jesus is Messiah—King of the Jews. And that’s what the Davidic covenant was about. It was about establishing the throne. Turn with me to 1 Chronicles 17:11-14. In this passage, God is speaking to David through Nathan the prophet. He reaffirms His promise of the land to Israel and He promises David an eternal throne.
1 CHRONICLES 17:11-14
By saying that Jesus is the Son of David, Matthew is saying that He is the fulfillment of God’s prophesy to David. Jesus is the One whose throne is established forevermore. He is the seed of David that God would raise up and establish His Kingdom. As the Baby Jesus lay in that feed trough in Bethlehem, He was the eternal heir to the throne of David. Isaiah spoke of this promise in Isaiah 9:6-7. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Jesus was the literal fulfillment of God’s promise to David. But the Davidic covenant is not the only one Jesus fulfilled. He also fulfilled the Abrahamic covenant. Not only did Jesus fulfill God’s promise for a throne, He fulfilled God’s promise for a seed. In Genesis 12:1-3 God tells Abraham, “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” God told Abraham that through his lineage, all the earth would be blessed. That didn’t happen through Isaac. It didn’t happen through Jacob. It didn’t even happen through Judah, or David, or Solomon. The blessing happened through Jesus Christ. Galatians 3:13-14 says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” And later on in verse 16, Paul says, “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, “and to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “and to Thy Seed,” which is Christ.” Jesus is the seed of Abraham by which the whole world is blessed. Not just the nation of Israel—the whole world. God planned a ruler through His promise to David. Jesus fulfills that covenant God made with David. In Jesus, David’s throne is established forever. God planned a ruler through His promise to Abraham. Jesus fulfills that covenant God made with Abraham. He is Abraham’s seed and the whole world is blessed through Him. But not only did God plan for a ruler through promise, He planned for a ruler through people. Those people are listed in verses 2-16. We have already read through them once this morning, so I won’t try you by going through the entire list again. Follow along in your Bibles though as we will pick out certain names as we go along.
God planned a ruler through people. As I look through this list of names, the first thing that strikes me is that these aren’t people that I would have chosen. If I would have chosen people to be in the earthly lineage of the Son of God—God in the flesh—I would have picked some better people than these. Abraham was a liar. Isaac learned real well from his daddy and was a liar too. Jacob was a cheat and a swindler. While Joseph was resisting temptation and living a blessed and holy life in Egypt, Judah was hanging out with his daughter-in-law Tamar, who was disguised as a prostitute and got her pregnant. So their son Perez was illegitimate—born out of immorality. Do you see where we’re going here? I mean, they weren’t all bad guys. Boaz was very honorable even though he married a Moabite woman who the Law forbid him to marry. Some of the kings were pretty good. David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was a murderer and he committed adultery with Bathsheba who is also in Jesus’ lineage. I look at it and it’s just not the lineage that I would have chosen. I would have chosen pretty people. The best and the brightest. People like Saul—Israel’s first king. Remember why Israel chose him? They chose him because he was pretty and stood head and shoulders above the rest. But Israel chose him to be king—God didn’t. God chose David. A little shepherd boy that wasn’t even worth bringing to see the prophet. But doesn’t that show God’s goodness and mercy? Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t just choose the best and the brightest? He chooses to work through the weak things of this world that He might be shown strong. God’s glory shines through this motley lineup of people. People who were in no wise qualified to be in the human lineage of the Son of God. In God’s plan for a ruler through people, He used the royal line of David to give Jesus legal claim to the throne. From Solomon all the way through Joseph, there was an unbroken line of descendents of David. They weren’t all kings, but they were all legitimate legal heirs to the throne. They weren’t all kings because by the time the line got to Jechonias in verse 11, God had had enough of Israel’s rebellion and sent them off into exile. When He did, He made another promise. Actually it was more of a curse than a promise. In Jeremiah 22:24 and 30, God says, “As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah (Jechonias) the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence…. Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days. For no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.” God said that nobody from the line of Jechonias would sit on the throne of David ever again. But we already said that Jesus established David’s throne forever. And Jesus was in the line of Jechonias, right? Legally, yes. Because legally, Jesus was the son of Joseph. But look at verse 16:
MATTHEW 1:16
See, Matthew makes a definite point of not saying that Joseph is Jesus’ father. He says that Joseph is Mary’s husband and Mary is Jesus’ mother. So, Matthew’s lineage establishes Jesus’ legal claim to the throne of David. Sometime in your own study, notice that the lineage in Luke is different. It’s different because it’s Mary’s lineage back through David, through Abraham, and back all the way to Adam. That lineage would do no good to establish a legal claim to the throne. But it does provide for the fact that Jesus is a blood relative of David, through His mother Mary, bypassing the curse of Jechonias. God planned for a ruler through people. He took a lineage of broken, sinful, imperfect people and used them for His purposes and His glory. He can do the same thing with us today. He can take worthless broken vessels like you and me and cleanse us with His blood and fill us with His presence and use us for His purposes and for His glory. God planned for a ruler through promise and He planned for a ruler through people. He also planned for a ruler through providence.
MATTHEW 1:17
God planned for a ruler through providence. Now, this verse isn’t saying that there were 42 total generations between Abraham and Jesus. Matthew did what was common in Jewish genealogies of the day. He left a few names out here and there. God inspired Matthew to write it this way to make a point. He wanted to point out how the amazing hand of God worked through history to plan His ruler. He listed 14 generations from Abraham to David. Look at the events that went on during that time. We had the time of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How God brought Abraham up out of Ur of the Chaldees. How He gave him a son Isaac in his old age. How God preserved and prospered Jacob. Look at God’s hand in the life of Joseph. How God brought him up out of the pit and placed him at the highest level of government in Egypt, just so he could provide for the children of Israel. And 400 years later, how God used Moses to lead the Israelites back out of Egypt where they had gone from being welcomed guests to being captives. God’s hand was with them through the times of the judges and the dark times when every man did what was right in his own eyes. God preserved them through their demand for the wrong type of king when they picked Saul. And He graciously provided them the right king when He gave them David, the man after His own heart. That was how God worked through the first 14 generations to providentially plan His ruler. Matthew then pointed out the 14 generations from David to the exile. God grew the kingdom under David and Solomon and allowed civil war and strife to divide the kingdom after Solomon. But God’s hand was with the tribe of Judah despite her rebellion and sin. All through the books of Kings, you can see God’s hand of providence. All the way till He punished their sin by allowing them to be conquered and sending them into captivity. God worked through those 14 generations to providentially plan His ruler. Then came the 14 generations from the Babylonian captivity to Jesus. Over that time, Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed twice. The Jews were dispersed, persecuted, and punished. But God providentially preserved them. God had a plan. He had a plan of mercy. He had a plan of grace. He providentially preserved His plan during the times from Abraham to David. He providentially preserved His plan during the times from David to the exile. And He providentially preserved His plan during the times from the exile to the birth of the Messiah—God’s ruler, the King of all kings, Jesus Christ. God planned His ruler through promise, He planned His ruler through people, and He planned His ruler through providence. The question for you is, what will you do with this Jesus? Is He the ruler of your life? There is coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord—He is King. That is a fact. It is undeniable. Jesus is King and all will eventually bow before Him. You have two choices before you today. You can humbly come before Him and recognize Him as Savior and Lord of your life. If that is the case, you will bow before Him with joy and praise Him for being your King. Or, you can keep your pride. You can be like the ones in the parable who said, “I will not have this man rule over me.” If you do, you might not bow now, but rest assured, you will. But then it won’t be willingly. If you reject Jesus as your King now, you will be forced to bow as He casts His eternal judgment upon you. I beg of you, if you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior today, today is the day to bow before Him. Don’t wait until you’re forced to bow at your judgment. God is a gracious God—look who He used to create the human lineage of Jesus. He used them, He will surely use you if you let Him. Let Him use you today.
