My wife was telling me during the sermons, she was distracted because one of the hairs was just sticking straight up. And I said, “Which one?” She said, “I think it was Joe!” I have started to name them because they are so precious. So I put Joe back in place, and it looked much better.
We tend to name the things that are precious to us. This morning we are going to be looking at names, and that is one of the things in the Bible that is quite often we like to avoid. We get to the genealogies, and what is it that you do? Genesis 5, for example is the chapter of insomniacs. If you have trouble sleeping, open to Genesis 5, and you can read all the “begets”. You read Adam who begat Seth, who begat Enoch, who begat etc. Before you get to the 10th or 12th beget, you begin to fall asleep.
We are going to begin a series in the book of Matthew. And this is the beginning of the series.
Matthew has a list of names that are special to him, because they had some significance in the genealogy of Jesus. Some people consider reading genealogies as the most uninspiring text. Yes, they may say it is inspired, but it does not seem to be inspiring.
READ Matthew 1:1-17
In this interesting list, we have famous, infamous and unknown people.
There is an old Italian spaghetti western that was made. They call it, “The good, the bad, and the ugly.” We might have a little bit of all the three in the list, and some people who are also in between.
1. FAMOUS PEOPLE
These are people that are heroes of faith. In each of these names is a story; a real human being, who lived and loved, who experienced life, who sometimes served God, and sometimes disobeyed God, and who died. They are not just a list of letters arbitrarily joined together.
We have stories of people whom we all admire. We have Abraham, David, Boaz, Solomon etc.
ABRAHAM
Abraham is the father of faith, not just of Christianity. He was the father of Judaism. The Muslims also looked to Abraham as the father. The Arabs think of him as the father. He is one of the most revered historical character in history.
BOAZ
Boaz, a large portion of the book of Ruth is about Boaz. We often think of it as Naomi or Ruth. Although the book is called after her name, the story is about this extraordinary man, Boaz. He ended being one of the great grandfathers of David.
SOLOMON
Solomon was recognized worldwide as one of the wisest human beings in history, who wrote Proverbs, and probably the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes as well, and a bunch of other writings which we do not have in the Bible. He was quite a prolific writer, and an extraordinary man in history.
ASA
Asa was one of the good kings in Israel. When you look at the kings of Israel and Judah, and you want to make a list of the good kings in Israel, it is only a short list. If you look at the list of good kings in Judah, it is slightly longer. By good kings, I mean that they did what God told them to do, and lived a life of obedience to Him. However, most of the kings lived in rebellion.
UZZIAH
Uzziah was such a godly man that when he died, Isaiah was grieved. And he marks a vision he had in the year that King Uzziah died in Isaiah 6. He was an important person to Isaiah because of his godly leadership, and when he died Isaiah felt that a godly reign had come to an end. Yet, Isaiah saw that it was God Who was sitting on the throne.
HEZEKIAH
Hezekiah did extraordinary works in Israel. He built a great reservoir and connected the water outside the city to the water inside the city. When the army laid siege over Jerusalem, they were able to survive because they had the water supply. He had some areas of disobedience too. When he gave birth to a son, he gave birth to one of the most evil kings in history.
2. UNKNOWN PEOPLE
There is also a long list in this genealogy of unknown people. How about Abihud? When was the last time you heard a sermon on the famous Abihud? Eliakim? He is not to be confused with a more famous Eliakim, one who was there during the time of the Judges. Azor? Zaddok? Akim? Elihud? Eleazar? There is a well known Eleazar, and this is not that person. How about Matthan? How many of us have named our children Matthan? History has no record of them, except that we find them in the genealogy of Jesus.
I used to skip the names in the Bible. And one of my friends said, “What if your name was in the Bible? Wouldn’t you want everyone to read it?”
3. INFAMOUS PEOPLE
This list is too long. Some of the lowlights are:
Manasseh, he sacrificed his children to Molech. He was an evil man. He even sacrificed the whole nation of Israel for his own greed and pleasure. After him, Israel went into captivity.
Under the reign of Jeconiah, God laid a blood curse on him, He said, “No one from your genealogy/blood line, will reign on the throne of Israel.” You might think, what about Jesus? Jeconiah was the great, great, great…grandfather of Joseph. But Joseph was not the father of Jesus. So this blood curse does not end up on Jesus.
We have some extraordinary evil men that it is difficult to relate to the kind of evil they did, who apparently had no sense of guilt upon them for what they did. They were people without conscience and yet they are in the genealogy of Jesus.
4. WOMEN
In the Jewish genealogies, usually a woman is not mentioned. (Sorry ladies!) Obviously the men who are born there couldn’t be there without a mother bearing them.
a. Tamar
But we have Tamar mentioned. She married one of the sons of Judah. His name is Er. He erred and God struck him dead. So Judah asked his son Onan to marry her. And he too made a mess of things and God struck him dead. You can read more about this unpleasant story in Genesis 38. She acts like a harlot before her father-in-law. She gets pregnant and has a son. That son’s name is in the genealogy of Jesus.
b. Rahab
You have Rahab, probably the same one we see in Joshua 6. She ran a house of prostitution. Yet she saw that God was blessing the people of Israel. And so she helped the people of Israel and God blessed her.
c. Ruth
Ruth is Moabite woman. The Moabites were cursed to the tenth generation. Marrying a Moabite would not let one’s children go into the temple until tenth generation. That was the law. It is from Ruth, we get King David, who actually had the temple built! Ruth was a person of good character, yet she was from a group of people who were considered to be cursed. And, we see her name in the genealogy of Jesus.
d. Bathsheba
The name of the woman is not mentioned. She is called the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba. We might know her as one of the wives of David or the mother of Solomon. David, in the times when the kings go off to war is hanging out in his house. He is out, standing on the roof and sees a lady who is on her roof taking a bath.
When I was a child, I thought that is why she was called, “Bathsheba.” David finds out that she is the wife of Uriah, who is one of his lead men. She is brought to David, and she gets pregnant. David gets Uriah back from the battle so that they might think that the child to come would be his. But Uriah would not do it. David even tries to get him drunk, but Uriah won’t lie with his wife while other soldiers are out in the war. He was a man of strong character. So David has him killed. Joab sends a note back and says, “Uriah is dead.” David then brings Uriah’s wife to his place and marries her. It looks like a magnanimous person taking care of one of the widows of the military person, until Nathan comes in. This is the Bathsheba who is in the genealogy of Jesus.
e. Mary
The Bible speaks very well of Mary. In the Protestant tradition we do not speak well enough of Mary, and in the Catholic tradition, they speak too much of Mary too well, talking about her being sinless, which the Bible does not teach. People are encouraged even to pray to her. Jesus has asked us all to go to the Father in His Name – if you could go directly to God, why would you go to anyone else?
The Talmud mentions of Mary and says that she was unfaithful to Joseph and found to be pregnant. It keeps that record. She was thought of in her day as being an unfaithful women. Later on, she has several other kids. One of the old tradition again which teaches about her perpetual virginity, which is not there in the Bible at all! Her other sons are listed in Mark 6. The Bible does not speak anything bad about Mary, yet in her day she had a bad reputation.
ILLUSTRATION
Few weeks back one of our graduates came to give me his wedding invitation. He said, in one of our classes, we were going through the genealogy of Jesus. He did not go into details. He said, his mother had an inappropriate relationship and that is how he came to be. And he said that that class really touched him because he saw that in the Bible God is able to use people with, you might say, a tainted genealogy. He said he is really blessed by God, his ministry was growing. He was getting married to a beautiful lady. He sees God’s blessing all over the place and he realizes that God is able to bless. It does not have to do with our past, or our history, or family or with our heritage, but His desire to bless.
So in this list we see famous people, unknown people, infamous people, and list of women, who may not be someone whom you would want to proclaim as part of your ancestry. It sounds like a mixed up genealogy.
ILLUSTRATION
I’M MY OWN GRANDPA
Many Many Years Ago
When I Was Twenty Three,
I Got Married To A Widow
Who Was Pretty As Could Be.
This Widow Had A Grown-Up Daughter
Who Had Hair Of Red.
My Father Fell In Love With Her,
And Soon The Two Were Wed.
This Made My Dad My Son-In-Law
And Changed My Very Life.
My Daughter Was My Mother,
For She Was My Father’s Wife.
To Complicate The Matters Worse,
Although It Brought Me Joy.
I Soon Became The Father
Of A Bouncing Baby Boy.
My Little Baby Then Became
A Brother-In-Law To Dad.
And So Became My Uncle,
Though It Made Me Very Sad.
For If He Was My Uncle,
Then That Also Made Him Brother
To The Widow’s Grown-Up Daughter
Who, Of Course, Was My Step-Mother.
Father’s Wife Then Had A Son,
Who Kept Them On The Run.
And He Became My Grandson,
For He Was My Daughter’s Son.
My Wife Is Now My Mother’s Mother
And It Makes Me Blue.
Because, Although She Is My Wife,
She’s My Grandma Too.
If My Wife Is My Grandmother,
Then I Am Her Grandchild.
And Every Time I Think Of It,
It Simply Drives Me Wild.
For Now I Have Become
The Strangest Case You Ever Saw.
As The Husband Of My Grandmother,
I Am My Own Grandpa!!
Now that is a messed up genealogy.
Jesus also had an interesting genealogy. Notice how this genealogy begins in Matthew 1:1:
“The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, Son of Abraham.”
In II Samuel 7 God promised David that He will build a house for David. David wants to build a house for God. He thought how could God live in tents while he lived in a nice house? As he speaks about this to Nathan, Nathan says that it is a good thing to do. But God speaks to Nathan and Nathan told David that he would not be able to build the house for God because he had blood on his hands. And also why would God need a house for Him when the the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Nathan then says, “But God is going to build a house for you – there will not cease to be a king from the line of David, forever.”
Obviously there is no king today. It is a prophecy and it cannot be broken. And we see it fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is seated on the throne of all nations. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and He will reign forever and forever.
We see that at least 10 times it says in the book of Matthew, “This happened in order to fulfill that which God promised…etc.” Matthew is showing the connection between the promises in the OT and the fulfillment in the life of Jesus Christ.
We also see Gen 12, 15, 17 – God says to Abraham, “Go to a place that I will show you. Leave your father, mother and family. I will make you a blessing.” He actually says seven “I will” in these passages. God was telling Abraham to do this little act of obedience, (for some of us it might be a big act of obedience, walking 600 miles and move your family to a new location), and that He would bless him. The whole world was going to be blessed through this one person.
God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, and that He would bless him through a son. When Abraham was well past his age of bearing children, and Sarah well past her age of menopause, they miraculously have a child. God is faithful to His promises. And as a part of those promises, we find fulfillment of the blessings in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Whatever He promises to do, we know He will do. We can have absolute certainty about our future, because we have absolute certainty about God’s faithfulness in the past. He will be faithful in our present, because He was faithful in our past.
We also notice that God is gracious. This list is full of unknown people, who would have no other claim to historical fame, other than that they were included in the genealogy of Jesus. Some are heroes of faith, but even they had faults and failures in their lives. Others were outright scoundrels, through whom God chose to give His Son. Some of them were even cursed. Lot of people preach on generational curses. I do not know about you, but I want to learn about blessing. Even when there is a generational curse, they are broken in Christ, because they do not have any meaning at all.
If you are in Christ, there is no past that has any meaning to you. No ancestral curse that has any significance to you. He, whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.
We do not live in the curses of the past, but in the blessings of the present and in the promises and hope of the future. And those blessings are absolutely certain.
“What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”
Therefore in this genealogy, we see the character of God that He identifies Himself with imperfect people like you and me, and He is willing to work through anyone to accomplish His purposes! He still works the same way today. Our past, our history, our story does not determine our future. Our future is determined by the good, gracious, and love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself to us.
The beginning of the book of Matthew reminds of the blessings of Abraham – Jesus is the son of Abraham. Abraham was told to “Go…” The same way, the ending of the book of Matthew too we see Jesus commissioning His disciples to “Go..” and make disciples of all nations.
So through this genealogy, we can see the character of God -the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the willingness of God to work through imperfect people like me and like you.
