Title: The Genealogy of Grace
Introduction:
Most of you know I like to do a little woodworking. Have you ever been sawing a board and run into a knot. The saw blade just grinds its way through and slows it down.
Well, Jesus’ family tree has some knots in it. Usually when we read the Christmas story from Matthew’s gospel we like to begin around verse18. I mean what do all those begits and begats in the first 17 verses have to do with anything, especially Christmas?
Glad you asked, because Jesus’ ancestry may surprise you. There are some family members in here that you would be shocked to find in the royal line of the King of kings. Every name in this list gives us a lesson about God’s grace. It shows how God’s grace went to each generation as the Lord nurtured and protected the lineage He had chosen. A long-standing spiritual conflict has been going on throughout history, even to this day. But in the midst of all that conflict are those who found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
One of major purposes of Matthew’s Gospel is to establish Jesus’ right to Israel’s kingship. To Matthew’s mostly Jewish audience these verses vindicate Jesus’ claim that He was King of the Jews. Matthew proves that claim by giving the Royal Line of Israel’s kings. If Jesus is to claiming to be King there must be proof that He comes from the recognized royal family.
The royal line for the Jews must begin with David, because it was through him, Nathan the prophet said, that God promised that David’s descendants would bring the greatest King of all, who would reign over all Israel and establish His eternal kingdom (2 Sam. 7:12-16).
At the time of Jesus’ birth they were anticipating the arrival of the promised King and the restored glory of the kingdom of Israel.
Genealogy was an important thing in Israel. After they entered Canaan and they had conquered the land, they needed to have their own territories to live in, so they divided the land and cities by tribe. A person had to know what tribe he belonged to.
And after the exile in Babylon, Ezra the priest, had to disallow some sons of the priests because they couldn’t locate their ancestral registration (Ezra 2:61-62).
Any transfers of property required an accurate knowledge of the family in order to buy or sell it, like Boaz had to follow in order to get Ruth.
The census required by Rome at the time of Christ’s birth demanded that each Jewish family go back to the home of their ancestor in order to register who they were, so they could be taxed. That’s Joseph and Mary ended up in Bethlehem so that the prophecy could be fulfilled that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.
Before his conversion, the apostle Paul was very concerned for his lineage, and could detail the fact that he was of the tribe of Benjamin.
When Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D., when the temple was destroyed, it wiped every trace of the ancestry of any Jew. That’s significant for those Jews who are still looking for their Messiah to come, because they would now have no way to confirm the lineage of the one who would come and claim to be Messiah. Jesus is the last verifiable Person to the throne of David and the Messianic line.
In Matthew’s Gospel we have the ascending line from Abraham through David, through Joseph, to Jesus Christ. In Luke’s Gospel we have the descending line, starting from Jesus and going back through David, and Abraham and Adam, to God. Matthew’s intention is to validate the royal line of Jesus by given us His legal ascent, through Joseph, His legal but not natural father. Luke shows us Jesus’ royal blood ancestry through His earthly mother, giving us the racial descent of Jesus from David. So Jesus was the blood descendant through Mary, and the legal descendant through Joseph – making Him perfectly qualified on both grounds, legally and racially, to take the throne of David.
Yet, in spite of all this evidence, they still rejected Jesus as the Messiah who had come to set them free from the very sin that was keeping out of the Kingdom of heaven and from the King who had come to save them from their sin.
But this genealogy is not just showing the royalty of Christ but the Grace of God. Jesus was sent by the God of grace to be a King of grace.
Four ways Matthew shows us the grace of God. He shows us the knots in Jesus’ family tree.
1. His grace is seen in the choice of One Woman vs. 16
Jesus was going to come as a King of law and with an iron fist, but as the King of grace. This genealogy testifies to how gracious a King He is.
First of all God showed His grace to Mary by choosing her to be the mother of Jesus. Although she was in the royal line, Mary was an ordinary, barely known, and probably poor, young woman. She needed grace in her life, just all of us do. She might have been much better morally and spiritually than most other people in her time, but she was a sinner who needed a Savior too. She indicates that in her song in Luke 1:46-48, where she said she “rejoiced in God my Savior”. She recognized she was a recipient of grace. Many have tried to make her a dispenser of grace, making her a co-redeemer and mediator with Christ. But she recognized at some point in time that she needed grace for her spiritual need, and she rejoiced in the fact that God had become her Savior. And when the angel said she was a “highly favored one”, it means grace had come to her for her salvation, just like it is for everyone of us.
She had such a great relationship with God because of His saving grace that God chose her to become the one to bear Jesus into the world, saying in Luke 1:49 “for He who is mighty has done great things for me…” . And she received this assignment from her God humbly. God had looked down on her “low estate”, her ordinariness, and allowed her to be the blessed mother of Jesus, the Son of God.
This meeting of God’s greatness with our nothingness, our purposelessness, our emptiness, is nothing but a blessing from God our Savior. To think that He would look down upon Mary or any one of us is an amazing thought – it’s what makes Christmas so amazing. It’s what thrilled Mary. She became the touchable and visible demonstration of God’s dwelling with mankind. Isn’t that what Christmas really is all about – God dwelling with man?
And just as God the Son was born in Mary so He can be born in us by His Spirit and we can become born again. If He can take this lowly, nothing special kind of person like Mary and made her into something special, He can and wants to do the same in us. Mary gave Him a human nature, but He gave her His divine nature, just as He will do in each of us who will receive Him as our needed and only Savior.
2. His grace is seen in the Characters of Two Men vs. 1
David and Abraham are the first two descendants listed in this genealogy, and they are clear examples of God’s grace.
We know about David’s life – his adultery, then attempted cover-up and lies, and his murder of Uriah. All that affected his sons and daughters, with his son Absalom trying to take over the kingdom and ended in a tragic death. Because he was a warrior who shed much blood he wasn’t allowed to build the Temple.
Then there was Abraham, who lied about his wife twice out of fear for his own life and lack of trust in God, claiming she was his sister, bringing shame on Sarah and himself, and in the God he claimed to believe. Yet God chose him to be the father of the faithful, through whom the Messiah would come. So Jesus was the Son of David by royal descent and the son of Abraham by racial descent.
If you read through the OT you can see God’s grace through the lines of Abraham and David. And it truly is Amazing grace.
Isaac was the son of promise, a type of the sacrifice God would make by sending His Son, being willingly offered to God.
Jacob was his son, a real trickster and wrestler with God, who became head of the 12 tribes of Israel. And God’s grace and faithfulness was extended through those 12 sons of Israel, even though they often proved unfaithful.
Then there was David’s son, Solomon, who was given more wisdom than anyone ever in the world. He was peaceful and wise, but then became foolish, sowing seeds in his home and his realm that would corrupt the kingdom of Israel by marrying hundreds of wives, mostly from foreign countries with their foreign gods, who turned his heart from God. His son would see the kingdom divided. But God’s promise to David would eventually be fulfilled, and His grace will prevail.
When you think of all the descendants of both Abraham and David listed in this genealogy you will often find those who were unfaithful, immoral, idolatrous, and who forsook the faith. But God was always revealing His grace in the midst of this.
It was through the likes of these men that Jesus was sent into the world to overcome, forgive, cleanse and empower those who followed. God’s grace accomplished what a man could ever accomplish, that is, to offer grace to a fallen race, to those who were His enemies instead of His friends. Abraham became a friend of God, and David a man after God’s own heart. What amazing grace!
3. His grace is seen in the History of Three Eras vs. 17
Matthew’s genealogy is organized into three eras – from Abraham to David, the era of the Patriarchs, like Moses, Joshua and Judges.
Then there’s the era from David to Israel’s exile to Babylon. This is the era of the Monarchy, when Israel insisted that they have a king like all the other nations. And if they could see it, if they looked back, they could see that more often than not those kings led them away from God and into trouble more than it did to bring peace and prosperity. It was an era with almost uninterrupted spiritual decline, degeneracy, forsaking the faith of their father of faith, and ruin. They were often defeated, being conquered, then exiled to Assyria and Babylon, then the destruction of the Temple. In fact, there were only about 4 kings who showed any amount of godliness: David, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. All the rest moved Israel away from God.
The third era is from the time of their deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ. It was a time of captivity in Babylon, of frustration, and just marking time, and then 400 years of silence from God. Most of the men Matthew mentions in this era, from Shealtiel to Jacob the father of Joseph, are unknown to us, because it was a time of great darkness to them.
But God’s grace was still at work on behalf of His people through all these eras. While Israel was stagnating, rising and falling, going from glory to disgrace, from heroism to indifference, and finally to the point of rejecting and crucifying the Messiah God had sent, God in His infinite grace still sent Christ through them. That doesn’t mean we can take sin lightly and think that God’s grace is going to keep us anyway. What it means is that God by His grace will reach out and call each generation to receive His grace.
4. His grace is seen in the Inclusion of Four Outcasts vss 3-6
There are four names given here of those considered as outcasts from the Lord. And the four are all women. They are the only women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, except for Mary, which is highly unusual to have women mentioned in a Jewish genealogy. But more importantly we need to see the grace of God toward these outcasts.
The first is Tamar, the Canaanite daughter-in-law of Judah. God had taken the lives of her husband Er, and his next oldest brother, Onan, because of their wickedness. So Judah promised that the next son in line would be her husband after he grew up so that the family name would continue. But Judah failed to keep that promise, so Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and tricked Judah into coming in to her. But from the illegitimate union were born twin boys, Perez and Zerah. Through Tamar and her son Perez we can trace Jesus’ lineage. Despite prostitution and incest and deception, God’s grace fell on all of us through Jesus.
Then there was Rahab, a Gentile and a professional prostitute from Jericho, who helped the two Israeli spies to escape detection by lying to those who sought them. She did this out of fear of Israel’s God that had delivered them from Egypt and the 5 kings east of the Jordan. By that she saw a living God, not one of their dead gods that weren’t active in their peoples lives. She had worshipped them but found them to be empty.
Because of her kindness to the two spies and to God’s people her life and her family’s life were spared when Jericho was destroyed. God’s grace not only spared her life, but she became the wife of Salmon and the mother of Boaz, who was David’s great grandfather. God’s grace changed her life and she became a part in bringing the Messiah into the world.
Like Rahab, God sees great potential in all of us, and wants to make the most of ourselves for His glory. God can make a new creation out of anybody who will do as Rahab did, fear God and believe in God, no matter what your past sins might have been. If you’ll begin to follow Him He will make you into what He wants you to be. If we’ll humble ourselves before Him, He will do that in us what we can’t do for ourselves – that is, He can change your heart, the direction your life is going. He did that with 12 disciples, who were ordinary blue-collar fishermen, and some were despised tax collectors, and rebels. He did that with many others in the Bible and since then.
Rahab had come to trust God. How do I know? Look at Hebrews 11, the hall of fame of faith, and it says she was a great woman of faith, leaving her past behind and began believing God. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”
Then Ruth is listed in this genealogy of grace. She became the wife of Boaz, the son of Rahab. She was a Gentile, a Moabite. The Moabites came from an incestuous relationship involving Lot and his daughters after leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. His daughters became concerned about carrying on the family name, so they got dad drunk and caused him to lie with them. Moab was one of the sons that came from that relationship, and he became a nation of people that were despised by Israel. In fact, Israel was told by God not to let a Moabite or Ammonite enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. Because of famine in the land of Israel Naomi’s family went into Moab for a living, and their boys ended up marrying Moabite women. One daughter in law stayed in Moab after her husband died, but Ruth chose to go wherever her mother in law went, and to follow her God not the god of the Moabites.
But even though this was a marriage that was a violation of Israel’s law. Even though Ruth was a Moabite, a former pagan, with no rights in Israel, God’s grace not only brought Ruth into the family of Israel but when she married Boaz she was brought by God’s grace into the royal line of Israel, becoming the grandmother of Israel’s greatest king, David. “Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt! Yonder on Calvary’s Mount outpoured – there where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. Grace! Grace! God’s grace; grace that will pardon and cleanse within; Grace, grace, God’s grace! Grace that is greater than all our sin.”
Then there’s Bathsheba, the wife of David, the former wife of Uriah. This is the woman that David saw bathing one day, had her brought to him and committed adultery. To cover things up he had Uriah placed at the battlefront, had all Joab’s army fall back and left Uriah fighting the enemy by himself. He died, but he took a bunch of the enemy with him and was listed among the brave men of David. The son produced from that adulterous relationship died in infancy, but the next son they had was Solomon, the one through whom Messiah would come. Christ came through Bathsheba.
Conclude:
So why do I mention all this sin and disgrace at Christmas time? Why do I mention all these knots in Jesus’ family tree? God ran into some knots in this family tree of Jesus but He built a beautiful family display case from it for us all to observe.
It’s almost as if Matthew is nominating people for the Hall of Shame – two harlots, one cursed Moabite, an adultress and adulterer, a liar or two, a line of disobedient kings. It seems Jesus’ royal line is populated with the worst of sinners.
But I think that’s Matthew’s point! The reality of the lineage of the Messiah is something we’d rather ignore, but God doesn’t want it ignored - that’s why Matthew was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write it down for us.
That’s because the people in this genealogy are not who is display – God is! God’s grace is!
Rahab and Bathsheba are not there because of their sins, but because of God’s mercy in forgiving them of their awful sins and bringing them into the family of God.
Jesus came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. He came as Immanuel, God with us, to live among sinful men, then to die the death they deserved.
I heard the story of a Bible professor who had driven to Florida from Michigan and on his way he stopped for breakfast in Georgia. He ordered the typical American breakfast – eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. When the waitress set the plate down before him he asked her “what this glob of white stuff on the plate was”. She said “grits”. He kind of protested a bit and said, “I didn’t order grits.” And she said, “that’s correct, but down here, sir, you don’t order them, and you don’t pay for them, but you get them anyway.”
After arriving in Florida, and as he was teaching a class on God’s grace, he told about this incident to his class. Then he made the application. He said, “That’s what grace is – we don’t order it, and we don’t pay for it, but we get it anyway; grace is grits and grits is grace.”
From the beginning to the end of the Bible we have a book about grace. Grace is full of surprises, just like we see here in this genealogy. And it ceases to be grace when it ceases to be amazing grace.
God’s grace comes to us even before we’re saved, in order that for us to be saved, and it comes to after we’ve been saved. Our life is all about grace.
If God called sinners by His grace to be His forefathers, should we be surprised when He calls us to be His children? We who tried to ignore His grace, and are alienated from Him because of our sins, and are strangers and foreigners and even enemies of God (Col. 2:11-19), who were children of wrath, walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, and were disobedient, conducting ourselves in the lust of the flesh, and were dead in trespasses and sins; He came to us and offered the Gift of Himself for our salvation. That is nothing but grace, folks! And that’s what’s on display in this genealogy.
So next time you read the Christmas story, don’t overlook this genealogy of grace. It’s a story of grace for sinners, a story of restoring broken lives because of sin; a story of mending shattered hopes; the story of saving people from their sins, the story of reaching out to sinners instead of shunning them.
But the best part of this genealogy is that this same grace that was evident in the line of Jesus is still available to you today. The same Jesus is saving the same kind of people from the same kind of sins.
This isn’t telling us that we can go on committing these sins and still think we’ll make it to heaven. It’s telling us that God’s grace can make the foulest clean, that God’s grace is sufficient to cleanse any, every, and all sin from our lives.
There is no sin so terrible that God cannot forgive; there is no sin too deep that He cannot reach; there is no sin so hidden that He does not reveal; there is no sin so dirty and corrupt that He will not cleanse out from our hearts; there is no sin so habitual that He cannot break; there is no sinner so alienated or so hostile that He cannot reconcile; there is no child of the devil that He cannot bring into the family of God; there is no guilt that He cannot pardon; there is no unfaithfulness that He cannot show Himself faithful; there is no crooked way that He cannot straighten, no mountain He cannot make smooth, no valley He cannot fill. There is no knot in the family tree that can keep Him from bearing fruit unto righteousness, and display His grace in our lives.
If God’s grace was revealed in this kind of genealogy, His grace can much more abound toward you. Don’t frustrate His grace by ignoring His grace or despising His grace. Let His grace go to the depths of your real need. Let His blood cleanse you from all, every, and any sin.
If you aren’t a part of this genealogy of grace, wouldn’t you like to enter into the family of God today? Let His grace be on display in your life.
