I love watching all those television programmes where people explore their ancestry. Do you?
In the words of the Ancestry website – it brings their back-story to life. Which is exactly what Matthew seeks to do with his genealogy of Jesus. Matthew wants to bring the back-story if Jesus, the Messiah, to life.
God’s people had been waiting hundreds of years for the promised Messiah to arrive, and now the time had come. That’s why Matthew declares that Jesus is the Messiah.
Just for clarification, the Greek title Christ, is the same as the Hebrew title Messiah. So wherever you read or hear the word Christ you can swap it with the word Messiah, and vice-a-versa.
While we are clarifying terms, I want to distinguish in this talk between Israelites – who were all descendants of Abraham, Ancient Jews – who were the remaining tribe of Israel anticipating the arrival of the Messiah, and modern Jews – who are the remnant of the Ancient Jews, who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.
Just for the record, there is a further group, called Messianic Jews, who are modern Jews who have converted to Christianity, because they have personally accepted that Jesus was their Messiah and as their saviour. But this group will not feature in this talk.
Matthew, the writer of this gospel, is the same Mathew who as a thieving money lender/Roman tax collector (collecting money with menaces) was called by Jesus to become one of His disciples. The gospel of Matthew was written about 60AD (30-ish years after the death of Jesus). This date will become important later on in our talk, but it is also important because Matthew, (and his critics), still had access to the official authorised genealogies of Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and King David. So when it was written, if anyone doubted Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, they could simply go to the temple in Jerusalem and look it up for themselves. We, of course, don’t have that option, because the official, authorised, genealogical records of the Ancient Jews were destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.
Matthew is writing his gospel primarily to the Jewish nation. He really wants to show that Jesus is the Messiah they have all been waiting for, so he starts by addressing the biggest objection of all: that some say Jesus is not the son of Joseph. And he does it by examining the genealogy of Jesus.
In verse 16, instead of saying: “Joseph was the father of Jesus”, it says “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born”. Matthew takes this potential problem —that Jesus isn’t Joseph’s son, and thus not necessarily a descendant of Abraham and David – to show that Jesus, and only Jesus, is the Messiah.
Some argued that Jesus couldn’t be the fulfilment of God’s promises, since Jesus was not a direct biological descendant of Abraham and David, i.e. illegitimate. Matthew anticipates this objection, by including four women in his genealogy.
What Matthew does in effect, is hang out the dirty washing hidden in the ancestry of King David – their righteous Priest, Prophet, and King, whom they all revere. Matthew shows that the bloodline of King David is not quite as pure as they like to pretend.
Lets take a very brief look at these women:
For example, Tamar’s family line would have died with her (Gen 38). She was not just a widow, but her father-in-law Judah refused to let her marry her brother-in-law, as was her legal right at the time. But, in a dramatic twist, Tamar pretends to be a prostitute, tricks Judah into sleeping with her, and gives birth to two sons. These sons become part of Juda’s family tree, but only by adoption, because they, just like Jesus, were illegitimate. Because Judah never married Tamar.
Likewise Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite, were all women who, because of their nationalities, had to convert to Judaism before marrying their Jewish husbands. For some hard-line Ancient Jewish groups, as with some Modern Jewish groups, conversion was not enough to make their children proper members of the Jewish people. If you follow that line of reasoning, then King David was not a ‘proper’ Jew either.
Matthew is saying, “As it was for King David, so it is with Jesus.”
What Matthew has given us, is not a direct blood line from Abraham to David to Jesus. But a legal or royal genealogy, where the legal or royal rights are passed on by legal adoption as well as birth right.
So the sons of Tamar did not automatically have legal succession from Judah to David, but acquire legal succession by being legally adopted by Judah. Which is very important for Jesus, as we will see later.
Before we go any further, there is one other objection we have to consider, with which Matthew did not have to contend. And that is the Gospel of Luke, written some 20 to 30 years after Matthew (so 50 – 60 years after the death of Jesus).
Luke’s gospel also contains a genealogy, but from King David onwards it is very different to Matthew’s. In Luke’s genealogy, Jesus is descended from Nathan, King Solomon’s younger brother, rather than from Solomon himself as in Matthew’s genealogy.
Some believe this is the bloodline of Mary the Mother of Jesus, from King David, showing that Jesus is also related to King David by blood, in a way that Joseph could not be, rather than just by adoption, as in Matthews genealogy.
Others believe this is a just an alternative bloodline route from King David to Joseph, but avoiding the major complication of Matthews genealogy – which we will get to in a moment. For this to be true, either Joseph’s grandfather was known by two different names, not an uncommon occurrence at the time; Or Joseph’s father died, and his widowed mother married the brother or brother-in-law of Joseph’s father, also not an uncommon occurrence. So Joseph might have had two fathers, one by birth, one by adoption, but both in the same genealogical bloodline.
This means the genealogies in both Matthew and in Luke could be genealogies of Joseph and both be correct. Once you leave the royal line, there could indeed be many bloodlines leading from David to Joseph.
We also have to bear in mind that the official, authorised, genealogy of King David, to which Matthew might have had access, no longer existed when Luke was compiling his gospel. Luke might have needed to compiled his genealogy from the surviving relatives of Jesus, giving more credence to the idea it is a bloodline family tree, rather than a legal or royal line of descent.
Now that’s out of the way. Let’s go back to Matthew’s gospel, which is the story of how the birth, life, and death of Jesus fulfilled every prophecy of the Messiah contained in the Old Testament writings. Which is exactly what the first Christian proclaimed.
Here is the Apostle Paul introducing himself in his letter to the Christians in Rome:
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle. Set apart for the gospel of God. Which he promised beforehand through his prophets. In the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh. And was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness. By his resurrection from the dead; Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Remember, the titles Christ and Messiah are interchangeable).
So what are these prophesies about the Messiah?
There are up to 300 prophesies about the Messiah in the Old Testament, but don’t worry, we are only going to look at the main ones concerning his birth. So here goes:
To be the Messiah, Jesus would have to be:
• An Israelite, a son of Abraham: “and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” Genesis 22:18
• From the line of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson: “‘I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a sceptre will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the people of Sheth.” Numbers 24:17
• From the line of Jesse, the father of King David: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Isaiah 11:1
• Of the line of David: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will raise up for David[a] a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteous Saviour.” Jeremiah 23:5-6 and 2 Samuel “when your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” 7:12-13
• Of the tribe of Judah and born in Bethlehem: ‘But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.’ Micah 5: 2
• To be born to a virgin: “ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
• The ruler of the day would kill lots of children in an attempt to kill the Messiah: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
• The Messiah would spend some time in Egypt: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Hosea 11:1
There are also two other prophesies, which are very important. One of these is that the Messiah:
• Must not be a blood relative of King Jeconiah: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Write this man, Jeconiah, down as childless, A man who shall not prosper in his days; For none of his descendants shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Judah.” Jeramiah 22:30
Why? Because he was so evil that God cursed him and his entire bloodline. And there he is, two-thirds of the way down Matthew’s genealogy of Joseph, right at the start of the exile in Babylon.
This reveals the beauty of God’s plan, “If Jesus had been the blood or physical son of Joseph, He would have been cursed by the curse on Jeconiah and could never have been the Messiah.
However, when Joseph married Mary, Jesus joined the legal or royal line from King David, by adoption as Joseph’s legal heir. So Jesus joins Joseph’s legal lineage, which is also a Royal lineage, which descends from King David, but because Jesus is adopted into this lineage, he bypasses the curse of Jeconiah, fulfilling all the prophesies about the Messiah – of the line of David, but not a blood relative of Jeconiah.
Is God not amazing? There may have been hundreds of people alive at the time that could trace their legal ancestry back to King David, but almost none, if any of them, could have claimed to be the Messiah, because all of them carried the curse of Jeconiah. But only one had a virgin birth: Jesus was the Messiah, the true Messiah, the only possible Messiah at that time.
Then Matthew does something rather odd. He groups the genealogy into three groups. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David. Fourteen generations from David to the deportation to Babylon (if you count David again, as one of the fourteen), and fourteen generations from the deportation to Babylon, to the Messiah.
Given that Abraham to David is about 1000years, David to the exile is about 600 years, and the end of exile to Jesus is about 400, this can’t possibly be accurate. So what is Matthew trying to say?
I have to admit, no one really knows. There are a number of theories:
• He may have been playing with numerology.
• He may have been pointing to some commonly held belief of the time, or a writing, that is now lost.
• He may have been attempting to back up his claim that only Jesus could be the Messiah.
We just don’t know for certan.
Now, I am a great believer in never just skip over scripture because we don’t understand it – in fact the most difficult bits of scripture are often the most revealing.
In this case, though, we may have to conclude we simply do not know what Matthew means. However, we can conclude that Matthew is probably pointing to there being some sort of special symmetry at work that confirms Jesus as being the only possible candidate for the Messiah – as though a virgin birth is not enough. Maybe because Matthew knew there will always be people who doubt the idea of a virgin birth.
However, the prophet Daniel might give us a clue about what Matthew is meaning, because he also uses numbers in prophesying about the Messiah. In fact, in Daniel ch9, not only does Daniel prophecy the Messiah must die, he prophecies the Messiah will die before the destruction of the second Temple (which happened in 70AD), and then provides an exact date.
So this is our final birth prophecy:
• The date of the Messiah’s death: “‘Seventy “sevens” are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. ‘Know and understand this: from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven “sevens”, and sixty-two “sevens”. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two “sevens”, the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: war will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one “seven”. In the middle of the “seven” he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” Daniel 9: 24 – 27
Daniel, of course was not using the same calendar as ourselves, but if you convert this time-line into our current, Gregorian, calendar, Daniel prophesies the Messiah will die in AD33:
Calendar conversion [From jewsforjesus.org]
The prophecy describes a time period of sixty-nine weeks (units of seven-years). Sixty-nine weeks is 483 lunar years (LY). One lunar year is equal to 360 days. To convert the time period from years to days, one multiplies 483LY X 360 days/LY = 173,880 days. One solar year (SY) is 365.2422 days. To convert the time period from days into solar years, one divides 173,880 days ÷ 365.2422 SY/day = 476.07 SY. Therefore, the prophecy speaks of 483 lunar years or 476.07 solar years.
If the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was given in on 444 BC, then add 476.07 solar years and one arrives at the year AD 32. However, there is no year zero. AD 1 came immediately after 1 BC. Therefore, it is necessary to add one year. The final number is AD 33. A number of scholars have supported AD 33 as the year of Jesus’ crucifixion including H. Hoehner, J. K. Fotheringham, J. Finnegan, P. Barnett, R. E. Brown, and C Humphreys.
[From jewsforjesus.org]
Have you never wondered why Israel in the first century BC was in such a fever-pitch of expectation for the arrival of the Messiah? It wasn’t just because they we oppressed by the Roman, they had been oppressed by plenty of nations before the Romans arrived.
Have you never wondered why the wise men were in search of the arrival of the Messiah at exactly this time? And why Herrod was so fearful of the infant Jesus?
Daniel’s prophecy is why. Because Daniel predicted a timeline for the arrival and death of the Messiah – 33AD. Exactly the year in which Jesus was crucified.
Incidentally, Daniel is the only prophet who refers to the Messiah as the ‘Son of Man’. Which is also the way Jesus referred to himself, showing Jesus himself identified with he prophesies of Daniel.
Okay, that’s all very interesting, dry, and academic. If your mind has wandered or you have drifted off, you can wake up now, because this is the important bit. Why does it matter?
It matters, because God’s promises matter.
It matters, because if Jesus is not the Messiah God promises, we might as well all pack up and go home.
If the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, didn’t happen as God promised it would, even when those promises seem to contradict each other, how can we ever trust that any of God’s other promises about what the Messiah would do for us, are true. And those really, really, matter to us, in a deeply personal way. Here are some examples:
• “The Messiah will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6–7
• “The Messiah will bear our sins and suffer in our place.” Isaiah 52:13–53:12
• “The Messiah will bring in a new covenant: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more., says the Lod.” Jeremiah 31:31 - 34
• “The Messiah will not be abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor will God let his faithful one see decay.” Pslam 16: 10
• “Your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise – let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy.” Isaiah 26: 19
• “You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will take me into glory.” Psalm 72: 24
• “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, for ever.” Psalm23:6
Amen.
